When I wake again, the first thing I see is Scia. Her minuscule form rests leisurely on the flat top of my snout, both wings lifting a piece of mushroom to her mouth, where she takes the tiniest of nibbles.

The injured wing, while not yet healed, looks much better. She moves it without twinges of pain, which is better than can be said of her state before my rest.

It’s surprising to see her out from the safety within my coils. I never move in my sleep, so she shouldn’t have needed to leave, but I guess she got hungry. She faces away from me, her ears swivelling every which way as she lets out the occasional light chirp. Scia sits there, watching over the cavern as if she will protect us from any threat.

I find it amusing.

Unless there’s another of those Ōmukade around, I’m not too concerned, and I doubt there would be another anywhere near. It is rather obvious now that the wide tunnel filled with half-eaten corpses was the Ōmukade’s nest. Such an aggressive being wouldn’t allow a competitor to its superiority go unchecked. Even if it had some restraint against one of its own kind, it wouldn’t have left me alone long enough to rest.

With my post-meal rest, I’m feeling much better. Not even my back hurts all that bad. With the slightest motion, I lift and turn my head to the wound only to see it almost completely recovered. A new layer of scales have almost grown in as well.

I stare, surprised. This is far more rapid a recovery than I’m accustomed. Just how long was I asleep?

My subtle movement wasn’t subtle enough, apparently. Scia turns, squeaking and jumping on a scale above my nostrils. She looks so small. I know she seemed so before, but I didn’t think she was this tiny when I went to rest. On legs and wings, she scampers up my snout, closer to one of my eyes.

Her limp is obvious, but the fact that she can put any weight on the wing is a vast improvement to before. Scia stops before my eye, hanging off the side of my head to squeak happily at me. She is too close. It would have been easier to look down at her if she stayed in her spot above my nostrils.

Scia hangs upside down, but still somehow jumps around in excitement. She blinks to the other side of my head, to chirp at that eye too. In the time I’ve slept, she has become rather comfortable climbing all over my body.

She sticks to the edges of my scales, where it’s easier for her tiny claws to grip. I suppress a hiss as Scia continues her happy little greetings, knowing the sound will startle her. While she chirps eagerly and repeatedly, I take the time to unwind my coils.

My rest was satisfying, but it’s left me stiff and tight. With Scia leaping all around my head, excessive excitement bleeding through every action and noise, I move. There’s no goal for now. I just slither forward tepidly to let my spine flex and stretch.

It feels great to extend my full body like this. Not even in my territory cavern could I stretch my unhindered length straight. This vast expanse was worth coming to, even if it turns out a waste of time.

While getting some movement in feels great, the tightness doesn’t dissipate. My skin grips tighter than it should. The sensation is familiar; I’ll be due to shed soon. It’s far earlier than expected, but I’m happy to restore my scales to their former sheen. The time spent compressed within too small skin is never enjoyable, though.

Scia finally settles down and returns to the small pile of mushroom at the end of my snout. Am I too big for her to return to that same spot on my back? Well, it matters little. She better clean up any crumbs she drops, but she can stay there. It’ll be easier to keep an eye on her, anyway.

The surrounding area is the same as when I fell into slumber; destroyed and covered in flying bugs. Not seeing any reason to stick around, I choose a direction and slither. The hole in the earth shows some signs of the fungi regrowing, but it is there should I want to return down to the labyrinth. Although, now that we’ve reached further than I’ve ever been, going back is the last thing I want to do.

There’s not any difference in the cavern. Each direction is the same. A ceiling far above, and the earth below, but no matter where I look, there is nothing connecting the two. The range of my sight isn’t as far without the distortions of space, yet I wouldn’t consider it short. We’ll have to travel and see what we can find.

A few Nareau linger on the ceiling in the distance, but none show any detection of my movement. Considering they each have eight eyes, one would think they wouldn’t lack in sight, but I guess not. Each cling to the ceiling. Not one sticks to the lower ground where the swarms of bugs hover. With how quickly they threw themselves down to attack earlier, they have a way to climb back up. I just have to find it.

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Distance disappears rather quickly at this size. Each slither covers more ground. Soon, we’ve left the site of my battle and head deeper into the unknown. I should clamp down on the feeling, but excitement fills me at the thought of what might lie ahead. Curiosity is something I should avoid, but the satisfaction of discovering this massive, open cavern was indescribable — incomparable to the satisfaction of a full belly, as I’d assumed — and I wanted more.

Scia apparently agrees with my notion. Now that she’s calmed down after my awakening, she stands tall at the tip of my snout, holding her head high as she looks over the path before us. She holds herself a sentinel against threats, her ears flickering this way and that with the occasional squeak.

I’m starting to think she has a sense of sight that I can’t understand. She’s always chirping when her ears twitch like that. She might just have far greater hearing than myself — which is something I don’t like to admit, even if I find it mostly useless — but I think it’s more than that. The way she guided us through the labyrinth couldn’t have been done with sound alone.

In the distance, the swarm of bugs gradually flows in a single direction. Curious of what attracts them so, I follow. In no time, another fungal growth comes into view. Just like the one I crawled out from, the circular platform of platelet mushroom is identical. Even the hole in the centre where all the bugs dive into is the same.

It’s good to know that there are other entrances down into the labyrinth below, so I won’t need to remember the location of the first to return to my warped tunnels. As I’m still looking for a way up, I ignore the bug trap. It’s helpful, sure, but not immediately.

Each slither across the earth carves away more dirt, leaving an obvious trail in my wake. The vibrations through the earth are enough to send many critters fleeing. Surprisingly, most freeze, lower themselves, or otherwise try to hide themselves. Only, no matter their attempts, they remain visible. Do they not realise how obvious they are out in the open like that?

After some time, a wall finally appears ahead of me. For a vertical surface of rock, the cavern wall is a lot more daunting than it should be. The flying bugs don’t go anywhere near it, and the sudden transition from ground to wall is unnatural compared to the typical cave formations I’m used to.

A wall like this will be difficult, if not impossible to climb. Too vertical. Too smooth. And nowhere to go should I actually reach the ceiling.

The wall extends far to each side, disappearing beyond the range of my sight. If I had to guess, it likely curves around at some point, encapsulating this cavern. Not at all unlike any of the caves down below, only at a far greater scale.

I’ve already encountered two species of beast larger than most; with such vast space, what other kinds of creatures can flourish?

Movement to the side catches my eye. A large bat — the same species as the corpse we’d passed in the centipede’s den — flies down from somewhere above. I watch it closely until it is clear the creature is flying away from us.

My body moves forward, intending to give the massive wall a closer look, but the actions of the large bat recapture my attention. It lands on one of those fungi traps and shoves its head into the hole, gulping down thousands of bugs with each bite.

The bat crouches there, eating swathes of bugs as they dive by the million into the mushroom funnel, completely oblivious to the death that follows. Like when I climbed out, the wide platelet fungi trembles under the weight of the bat, and explodes vast quantities of adhesive liquid. The bat, leaning over the chute as it is, gets completely drowned.

With a screech and a flail, Scia’s large cousin scampers into the air. Despite the jam weighing it down, the bat can still fly.

It is not yet free from danger. Those bug swarms that the bat leisurely chomped through now turn on it. The many millions of tiny flying insects chase the jam-coated bat through the air. A carpet of bugs becoming a raging ocean as they turn the predator into prey.

The bat does its best to flee, but the insects are too quick. They swarm it as they did to me when I was covered, and eat all the viscous liquid they can, even if they chew the bat’s flesh by mistake.

With so many of the insects together, the strange ripple billowing off them amplifies to intense levels. What I had thought were harmless, suicidal creatures, now tear through flesh with viciousness.

Unfortunately for the bat, the suddenly carnivorous insects are the least of its worries. As it screeches and attempts to escape, its life comes to an abrupt end as a Nareau snaps it out of the sky as it falls from above.

It’s hard to tell whether the initial impact killed the bat, or its death came with the arachnid’s collapse to earth, but regardless, the bat is nothing more than paste beneath the large beast.

The Nareau allows the bugs to gather on the now lifeless bat before it begins its feast. Despite not being all that far from me, the arachnid shows no acknowledgement of my presence. How could it notice the bat and not me? My movement isn’t exactly silent.

On the tip of my snout, little Scia stares over the events with horror. Despite the separation between species, watching something that looks similar enough to herself die in such a gruesome fashion must be shocking. Maybe it reminds her of other sciacylch that have died.

Scia curls up and blinks behind my head, as if to hide from the arachnid. It is incredibly hard to see her where she’s placed herself; barely noticeable at the fringes of my sight, and it isn’t like she weighs enough to be felt. If she stays there, I won’t be able to watch her.

Maybe it’s because I just witnessed a bat’s bloody death, but I don’t want her out of sight.

I tap the tip of my snout with my tail. It takes a few tries before the little one finally understands what I’m asking and finally crawls back across my head, and sits where she was, less enthusiastic than before.

We move on.