We fall.

The abyss welcomes us with its vast emptiness. Nothing reaches my sight. There’s not a rock to be seen, nor does space bend and weave beyond the rend we just fell through.

Gravity grips us tight and drags us down.

The Titan's roar bellows into us from behind, unleashing the fury of the lynx whose arrogance allowed us to escape. It was complacent. It let us free; twice. The first may have been because of Titans far larger than itself, but this time it knows fault for our slip lies entirely in its own hubris.

Its howls reveal every thought it has, every ounce of irritation it feels.

They remind me of the same discontent I had with myself when the encroaching emotion of pride had overcome my actions. Is the lynx facing the same problems with sapience that I only recently pushed through? Considering the beast’s power, I expected it to have long since gone through the troubles I am. Or, has the lynx simply never needed to work through those problems?

Regardless of the Titan’s thoughts and troubles, its enraged roar freezes my body stiff. I don't have the strength to fight back. I can’t lift my presence to put up any sort of opposition. The pressure rips through me and jabs into every scale and muscle of my already aching body. The pain, while thick and heavy, is secondary to the success of actually escaping the beast.

We are free.

While we're free of the Titan, Scia and I still tumble through the endless abyss. Every breath, we gain speed; gravity’s tug growing fiercer despite the air already pelting me from below. We’ve escaped the immediate danger of the lynx, but this is not a place I could ever consider safe.

I turn my eyes — barely able to overcome the instinctual terror of the presence I feel — looking for anywhere we may flee. But the only distortion is this sole one that we came through. Not another in sight. In a dozen heartbeats, we've fallen out of range of the rend, leaving absolutely nothing in my sight.

I can no longer see the spatial distortion, but the Lynx's enraged bellows still pelt us from above. They never stop, yet the longer we fall, the quieter it becomes. The roar dims in the distance as we continue to tumble.

Scia's blood, I can taste it.

She lays limp in my mouth, protected from the intense winds that would otherwise cut at her wounds.

With a flick of my tongue, I feel over her body. Her wings, shredded; chest, mangled; and a leg, missing. She is not in a good state right now. There’s so much blood. It fills my mouth and I reflexively swallow some of it. I would never allow myself to eat the small bat, but my body instinctively reacts to the presence of a creature in my mouth. I feel my throat contract, but the moment I realise what I’m doing, I clamp down on the feeling, preventing it from reoccurring.

She is bleeding too much. Her wounds are debilitating. With immense difficulty, I attempt to wrap my tongue around her body, covering her wounds in hopes of suppressing the blood-loss.

She squeaks at the contact. It is a subdued, weak little noise, but the relief that flows through my chest is immense.

More blood trickles down my throat, and I recoil. Usually, the taste would be more than welcome; an indulgence. But right now, the taste disgusts me. I wish there was any other way to hold her, but with the lower half of my tail gone, there is none.

The Lynx's echoing roars finally fade into the distance, and with full control over my body back, I try to readjust her to a more comfortable position where I can look after her better.

She whimpers. Pained and frail.

The sound pierces my chest sharper than any diamond spike or Titan's presence. It is good to hear her voice, to know she’s still okay, but the agony, the fragility of her tone… it is terrifying.

I want to let her out, to check her body with my eyes and see what I could do to help her, but with the wind whipping over my scales in the fall, doing so would be reckless. Instead, I regain some of my size, hoping that the more room between my teeth makes it more comfortable for her.

As we fall, I keep searching for something… anything that might help us. We no longer face the danger of the Other Side, but without distortions or any sort of ground, I have no control over my descent. I can angle myself one way or the other through the air, but lacking anything visible, it’s not like I know where to go.

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Gravity continues to tug at us. A hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of breaths and still nothing. All that happens is we continue falling, endlessly. The abyss is overwhelming. Regardless of how far we drop, regardless of how fast gravity drags us down, no solutions present themselves.

The abyss is vaster than I could have imagined, yet the nothingness is suffocating. I feel so small in this emptiness, but there is so much I know I cannot see. We may have escaped the Titans, we have escaped the lynx, but how are we going to escape the abyss? Is there even an end?

Scia chirps; a hollow noise, barely audible even in the silence. It strikes me like a physical blow. The lynx’s howls have long since grown too faint. While the silence of the abyss is unsettling after so long having my ears pounded by the constant grinding of earth, that ever so slight whimper from my little companion is deafening.

The blood on my tongue is not something I ever wished to taste. It grows thick in my mouth, but the quantity screams at how bad Scia's state is. I need to find a way to help her, I need to help her wounds recover, but all I can do is wrap my tongue around her body and hope it's enough to stem the flow.

But the blood keeps coming. It fills my maw with its distinct metallic tang. My throat convulses again, and I coil in on myself to stop any further attempts of my body to instinctively swallow my little friend. My grip gets so tight that I nearly choke myself, but it keeps Scia safe.

For a while, the only sound that reaches my ears is the rush of wind from our fall. But soon, even that disappears. I still feel like I’m falling, but the slap of air reduces until it’s barely noticeable. Eventually, all that remains is silence.

Overwhelming silence.

With a start, I realise Scia no longer lets out those pained chirps. Her whimpers and her cries are gone. All I can hear in this endless abyss is the huff of my breath.

Scia has stopped chirping, stopped moving. I try to jostle her with my tongue to keep her awake. The last thing I want is her to pass out while in such a precarious state, but it does nothing. She doesn’t react.

I panic. What can I do? I wanted to keep her hidden away from the world to stifle the bleeding, but I can’t stay here and do nothing while she’s unresponsive. I open my jaw. First slowly, so that I know the wind — what little remains — won’t tear her from my grip. Assured by the lack of force, I let her float through the air before me.

Blood spills from my mouth, but I keep it wide in case I need to snap her up in an instant. Casting my eyes over her form, only the slowed bleeding from her chest is comforting. That is the only positive thought I can gather from her form. No matter where I look, there are more wounds to find. I scan her body, trying to think of something I can do to help her, but it is hopeless.

No!

I snap her back into my mouth, keeping her wrapped in my tongue to hold in what little blood she has left. She slumps, limp.

She’ll be alright. She has to be.

Scia is in too dangerous a state now to allow her out into the open.

As much as I want to look at her, as much as I want to fix everything afflicting her…

I can't.

I just need to fall, I need to look for an escape, find something that can help Scia and hope she'll be alright. There is nothing else I can do.

So we keep falling.

I rapidly lose count of the breaths I take. How many heartbeats have passed? Thousands? Millions? I don’t know. I can't believe we're continuing to fall; it truly is an endless abyss. It never ends, we just keep falling and tumbling with gravity dragging us evermore down.

Will it ever end? Does down have a bottom? Or have we breached the edge of the caverns? I thought there would be an endless wall of stone at the edge of the world, not endless nothingness.

Scia’s bleeding finally stops completely. No more blood flows from her wounds onto my sodden tongue. This… this is a good thing. Her wounds must be healing. She’ll be alright.

Constantly, every chance I can, I spin my head around, searching for an answer; a rock, shard, a bend, a hole or distortion. Anything to take us from this endless fall. Anything to help the tiny, hurting bat I hold.

Scia must be sleeping, but she's growing so cold. I can feel her nestled in the soft flesh between my fangs. Her body is usually so warm, but now…

I do my best to warm her with my breath, but that works no better than simply leaving her within my jaw; my body is not all that warm compared to Scia. Compared to her normal state. No matter what I try, her body continues to cool.

She will be okay. She has to be. She has to be okay.

I won't accept any other outcome.

But there is no way for me to help her, so I need to hold on to hope that we finally reach something that can. As I fall through this horribly constraining abyss, that’s all I can do; hope.

But hope doesn’t stop the chill of her body. Hope cannot hold back reality.

Scia is dead.

I refuse to believe it. I refuse. I want to strike out at something, but as ever, the abyss is empty. Refusing the thought, I open my jaw, twist around and nestle Scia within a loop of what’s left of my tail. My gaze pierces her, searching for the signs of life I know must be there.

Her eyes are wide, unseeing and glossy. She slumps over my coil, talons no longer clutch to the ridges between scales. No longer does she hold tight.

It's okay, she's just sleeping. She's just resting.

This has happened before; I'll find her something to eat and all will be good. Scia will be back to normal. She'll be back to blinking all around me with that unreasonable excitability of hers. She'll be back to refusing to leave my side.

She'll be back to the Scia I have come to love.

Scia is not dead.

I refuse to accept it.

I refuse.

I cannot.

Please.