A pair of bilbies clamber over one another. The larger of the two slides its head under its sister, raising it off its paws to flounder as its snout snaps forward. The little one rolls off to the side and regains its footing before striking its claws at the larger’s ear.
A tiny squeak echoes through my cavern before the larger snaps back at the smaller bilby, nipping it on the neck with its tiny mouth. It pushes through the reactive bite and snaps up its prize: the dead bug they fight over. Little bilby rushes along the cavern before its older brother can notice the missing prey.
I love to watch their playful fighting. It is entertaining to no end.
The two are young, maybe a dozen hunts, and they will be lucky to live a couple dozen more. Such small creatures are at the bottom of the food chain; no matter how much enjoyment I get from watching them, they will be gone before too long.
It is sad, but there is no changing the way of life. I was here when their ancestors found a home in my cavern five generations ago — a short seventy of my hunts — and I will be here for the next five.
Unless, of course, there is no next generation.
Brother bilby finally catches up to Little bilby, pouncing forward, but the rear pair of the small one’s four long ears flick back and it dashes to the side, sliding through a spatial bend as the larger sails past. Its small, beady eyes watch as the younger sibling slips out of its grasp, along with its meal.
Bilbies are odd creatures. Where to most, sound is a distraction, their four long ears give them quite a decent awareness of how space bends around them. It isn’t true-sight as I see, but the echoes help them better than most creatures not adapted to the dense spatial bends of my territory.
It took me a long time to discover the eyes of other creatures work differently to mine. Even now, I struggle to understand exactly what they see. Rocks and other animals seem perfectly visible, yet distorted space simply confuses them. They almost exclusively move in straight lines, even when that direct path is the slowest possible choice.
The thought of creatures that are adapted to uniform space brings my mind to the massive cavern I tried to reach the top of a few hunts ago. The dissatisfaction of being unable to learn anything, to satisfy my curiosity, has yet to leave. I hiss in agitation, unintentionally startling the bilbies who flee into their burrow.
There are other tunnels and paths that lead to areas with less spatial distortion, but I’ve never found a path leading completely outside the bounds of warped space like that immense pillar without rock. I never thought it was possible. There is more to this world beyond the reaches of warped space.
It makes me oh, so curious.
And that curiosity angers me. I’ve already discovered how much worse the feeling of dissatisfied curiosity is than any wound I might receive in a fight. So much worse than the annoyance of having my clean scales marred.
But… part of me wonders, if this is how bad it feels to be left unsatisfied, how good would it feel to find those answers I desire?
Despite my attempts to bury the curiosity, questions keep rising. No matter how hard I try, I cannot return my mind to what it once was. I cannot remove this desire to learn. And it frustrates me; why must I accept new parts of myself that will only bring pain and frustration?
This new fascination I have with the things beyond what I know doesn’t help in my hunts. It disturbs my rest and prevents enjoyment of the energy seeping from my favourite basking rock.
With my entertainment gone and my thoughts continuing to spiral, I rise from my resting spot. The stone face of the wall emits a slight heat alongside an intense flow of energy. I have bathed in the empowering glow for hundreds of hunts; since I ate the last apex of this cavern.
My mind refuses to settle. I need a distraction. Silently, my body slithers through the air above those two bilbies’ shared burrow. I could join them in their home at my current small size, but I would only terrify them. Watching them is fun, so it would be disappointing if they run and dig another burrow further from here.
The small creatures have long since been removed from those I would consider worthwhile prey. Too small and weak; not only would they not be filling, but there would be no thrill in the hunt. Not that there are many things that give me that same excitement anymore; the stronger predators of the area have long since dwindled to nothing.
I slither through a hole in space, taking me near the amber barrier. Spatial distortions are at their most intense here, and the closer I travel to the impassable wall, the faster they change. It is impossible to tell which way is up. Gravity, like space, acts by its own chaotic rules. Normally, even through distorted space, it is possible to tell which way is down simply because the countless fractures of space trend one way. But here? There is no consistency.
Despite the immense distortion of both gravity and space here, the amber barrier remains the only thing that is unbroken. It was the first thing I ever saw that had uniformity. My sight cannot breach the barrier, meaning there are no spatial distortions that reach inside. I never questioned it until now, but simply observing it incites my curiosity.
Curiosity that I crush before the futility of its questions can crush me once more.
Occasionally, I’ll pass by the amber barrier to hunt in areas with more prey than in my cavern. The holes and rifts near the barrier never last long, so those hunts must be quick. Resting immediately after a meal like I did with the tiger would leave me stranded. It has happened a couple times now, and each time took almost a dozen sleeps to find my comfortable, energy emitting rock again.
But a path for a good hunt isn’t why I’m here. The space near the amber barrier usually scares off most other creatures, but for me, it is enjoyable. There is a certain danger about being within such tight, constantly changing space that gets my heart pumping.
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I figure, if my goal is to get my mind off something, why not experience the thrill and exertion only the barrier can provide?
My body snaps forward with the help of a bend in space. I push off myself in a way that gives me near double the speed striking from the ground would give. My body shrinks down to the smallest it can reach. I don’t even remember a time when I might have been this small naturally, but I’m sure there was a time; most of my earlier memories are cloudy at best.
The slender shape of my body is perfect for sliding between each curve in space. For now, traversal is no issue, but this isn’t the challenge I intend to face. Close to the barrier, space changes from moment to moment. Each bend is sharp and if not quick, they might shear my body into pieces when space morphs.
I fall, my speed growing each bend I pass until my entire body passes through a point within a moment. Any slower than this, and it’d be too dangerous to get closer. Finally, I slide through a bend that takes me into a field of space that changes before my eyes. My eyes stay peeled as I watch for the changes as they occur.
Slithering through the normal level of distortion in my territory has become second nature over all my hunts. The space near the barrier pushes me, forces me to improve to survive and become better. I cannot rely on instinct alone. My eyes must be wary of the changes as they happen, and I remap my surroundings each time.
The first change that occurs happens in the worst possible spot: right before my eyes. It starts as a little bubble, but quickly explodes to full size.
My body attempts to curve away on instinct, but it is already too late, so I constrict my panic and flow cleanly through the new bend. Better for a bend to appear before me than inside me. I’d rather not spend the next few dozen hunts regrowing my tail… again.
The sudden new spatial tunnel takes me away from the rapidly changing space, so I hurry back in. The challenge is exhilarating, pushing my mind just as hard as my body to adapt to the changing conditions. A single mistake might be my last… maybe. It’s been a long time since my last injury, after all.
I take enjoyment in the danger. Only a rare few of my hunts offer the same threat they once did. Almost never do I find a predator challenging the authority of my hunting-grounds.
The thrill of danger is great only when death isn’t certain. So many rifts lead to incomprehensibly dangerous lands that I am satisfied to remain within my territory, even if it does get somewhat boring.
When both body and mind tire from the exertion, I thread myself out of the tight weave of space. This is the closest I’ve reached to the barrier; less than a dozen body lengths. If I continue for another hundred sleeps, touching the unending amber wall might not be impossible. It is still beyond me, but soon.
As I slither back to the hole, ready to return to my favourite spot, an intense rumble shakes the air. I stop, my body rotating in a loop of space as I cast my sight through the hole that leads back to my territory. The earth is shaking, but only through the distortion.
Jagged stalactites dislodge from the ceiling, only to shatter against the walls or ground. One gets caught in a spatial loop for a few rotations before it fractures against the ceiling and rains down a shower of rock fragments.
It takes a moment for all the debris to find their rest, but another quake rocks the earth. This time, the ground on this side of the hole shakes, too.
The earthquakes have been frequent and unsettlingly strong as of late. For the shocks to reach this far through the earth, I’m not confident my cavern will remain undamaged. It hasn’t caved yet, but if it does, the spatial hole connecting to my territory will be buried. I’d much rather be in the comfort of my home than stranded out here.
I rush forward, slithering along the fastest path to the hole. The closer I get, the better my vision of what is beyond. Strangely, there are gaps in my sight of the cavern where there have never been any before, but what is visible is the collapse of much of the earth near my resting spot. There’s no time to delay; I slither through the spatial hole before I am blocked by a mountain of stone.
Immediately, my gaze snaps across the cavern, looking for a pocket to hide from the continual quakes, but that plan collapses at the sight of what lies before me.
An enormous presence, not visible by any means except a contradictory emptiness in space and sheer size. My eyes cannot see it, only the space that warps around it. The spaceless presence crashes into the stone of my resting spot, collapsing the entire wall and dropping a sheen of dust from the cavern ceiling.
It is alive.
The being hidden outside of physical space descends upon my cavern, crumbling the earth with the power of an earthquake from the Other Side. Only barely do I slide my way into a pocket of space to avoid the world crumbling around me.
My cavern is massive, large enough to home hundreds of critters, and yet this being climbing down is easily a dozen… no, a hundred times larger. The spaceless area that crushed my favourite resting place is a single limb which connects to a mass above. All above me, space disappears. It simply doesn’t exist past the creature’s unimaginable size. It is unbelievably immense, and yet the creatures still folds itself outside the fabric of space. Stalactites and boulders drop through the being as if it is not there at all.
The gap between space is deep. Much more of its presence is hidden away than the little I can see.
As it descends further into my cavern, the sheer scale of the spaceless being overcomes everything. A thousand limbs seem to stretch into every corner of space, and yet the space and rock it reaches through remains intact. It is only the empty void that reaches for my resting spot that sends quakes through the earth. Rock shears from the wall, not from any impact, but by space itself tearing apart.
What is this being?
A phantom, the word enters my mind from the Beyond, and yet the word I now intuitively understand does not seem appropriate. The Beyond can be wrong? It is the Beyond that tells me that ‘phantom’ is wrong, and yet it still told me. It is a concerning thought, but one for later. The next word it gives carries an immense weight, and I know it is true as it forms in my mind.
Titan.
This is a Titan. The mightiest of creatures. The uttermost apex predators of all the world. And, the Beyond tells me, the greatest enemy.
The phantom Titan slides a limb through the wall and a mountain of stone crumbles away like nothing. The cavern wall is stripped away to reveal a pillar radiating energy. Like the amber barrier, space doesn’t bend along it, leaving it straight even to my sight. The power flowing off that pillar is more intense than ever. It is only as the Titan separates stone from the column, leaving a massive pit trailing far below and out of my sight, do I realise it has destroyed my favourite resting spot. The place I have slept for ten thousand sleeps.
The hiss rumbles through my throat, unrepressed.
It is a horrible mistake to oppose such a being, but it destroys my home, so I continue to hiss in defiance despite the world of difference between us.
The logical part of my mind — the section where intelligence has nestled itself in — screams at me to shut up. It wails in hope the Titan might not have noticed us, or that it doesn’t care. But the rest of me wants it to know I’m here. I want the being to know I’m here and won’t stand for it to destroy my favourite thing.
But even with that thought running through my mind, my hiss still cuts short as it turns to me. The full, undivided attention of a creature able to kill me a thousand times over in an instant gazes down on me with a presence that crushes all resistance and defiance.
The Titan, greatest enemy to the world, looks at me.