The quad-eared bilby didn’t know what hit it. Before it can even detect my presence, I’ve already swallowed it whole.

Once, I enjoyed watching the little burrowing creatures. They were nothing on the joy of being with Scia, but it was amusing to watch them play. None of that enters my mind as I consume it without hesitance.

The critter slides down my throat, unable to resist. I relish in the satiation that floods my body, my starvation finally being appeased.

But it doesn’t last.

Mere moments after it reaches my stomach, the feeling disappears, and I’m ravenous again. As if I never ate the bilby. It is not enough. Such a small creature, with such negligent nutritional energy, is barely better than nothing.

I whip through the tunnels, passing many of the places only moments ago I had been so excited to see again. I pass by the amber barrier, the stone near it destroyed beyond expectation, but the distortions remain as dense as ever. There is so much to see. So much to relish after having been away for so long, but all my mind can focus on is another meal.

There. A harsh acrid stench stings my tongue. I lap it up and dive through a rift as my body grows involuntarily. The sight of something larger, more filling, reaches me. Through a dozen bends, a diosgris slinks through a grassy cavern.

The rare electrified tiger is in its own territory this time, with far fewer distortions through the cavern. Regardless, I rush it head on. The beast notices me as soon as I enter its cavern, but doesn’t react immediately. It believes it is hidden where it crouches. That doesn’t last. I don’t have the patience to take it on with the assistance of the few bends around, or create my own. I simply snap towards it.

The diosgris understands I can see it immediately, and pounces. Lightning sparks along the walls before slamming into my sides. The tiger’s pounce is a feint — or maybe it reconsiders — and it immediately tries to leap away as its paws strike earth, but I’m too fast. I widen my jaw, intent on sinking my fangs into its spine and uncaring for my typical strategy; all I care for is sating this hunger.

My fangs miss, but the diosgris does not escape. In my snap strike at my prey, its entire body lands within my jaw. My mouth slams shut, and I swallow the beast as it struggles, scratches and sparks at my innards, but it could do nothing last time and it can do nothing now.

Without realising, I’d enlarged in my haste to feed. Now at my full size, I barely fit in the cavern itself, and succumbing to my strength, the diosgris is quick to still in the crushing prison of my stomach.

One of these tigers has always been enough to tide me over for a few dozen sleeps, but now, it barely feels like I’ve eaten anything. The satiation of its consumption is there, and it is enough to push past the base level of hunger, but it is not filling. Unsatisfying. I need more.

I am far too large for this beast to sustain me. Maybe if I hadn’t starved for so long down in the abyss, I could limit my size and survive off a standard beast. But my body refuses. It demands I fill my stomach to the absolute maximum.

I must continue my hunt, but the diosgris has energised me enough to return my focus to more than simply food.

After having spent so long in the company of one I’d considered less than prey, I find I have changed. I no longer find satisfaction in the squirming of prey within my gullet. They had no chance to flee. To them, I’m just a Titan that brings suffering and takes any hopes of the future they may have had.

They could not oppose me. Had no time to flee. Their lives ended in the agony of being crushed and digested. The squirming of life struggling in my stomach no longer brings satisfaction. Instead, disgust is all I feel for the way their lives have to end.

But I cannot avoid the wretched demands of my body that have gone far too long unanswered. I continue through the familiar caverns, swallowing every beast I cross. They find their end at the fangs of a being they had no hope against.

Is this how things must be? Must I continue to treat these creatures as nothing more than food and lesser beings? Must I take away any future they may have, and the opportunity to grow beyond their lesser origins. Scia did so; why can’t others?

No. I immediately deny the thought. Scia was unique. A singularity upon herself. No other creature could act as she did. No other creature could replace what she had been to me.

I do not like thinking these thoughts, these questions of the way of things. Scia and the Titans have upended everything I knew. And now, I view the world differently. But I wish the world was not so complicated.

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As I shatter through a stone wall and chomp on a colony of centipedes, I cast my mind away from the doubts. For now, I must feast. I cannot allow myself to falter from these questions cast over my understanding of the way things should be.

For now, they are prey, and nothing more.

And so, I hunt. I hunt for beasts that fill my ravenous stomach. I hunt until I can no longer shrink, bloated on the mass of my feast. I hunt far longer than I should.

And when my stomach is full, sleep follows soon after.

I awake with a start, feeling the tight grasp of stone around me. I uncurl from my locking coils, but the motion topples a wall of stone over my scales. My body freezes, saving myself from any further collapse as I gain my bearings.

The tumbling stone momentarily terrified me; thinking I’d somehow landed back on the Other Side, with walls ready to swallow me the instant I wasn’t ready. No, the stone here is too solid, unbroken, and… well, maybe not all that strong, but it is stable.

I twist my head, finding a crumbling tunnel behind my coiled-up form. The bends within this space are tiny, none large enough to hold me, and I rest on the soft ground that tears up beneath my subtle motions. Splotches of blood linger in some places along my scales, and the remnants of flattened plant-matter stick to others.

I shake off the weariness of sleep and stretch myself out, careful to avoid breaking any more of the low, enclosed rock. Despite my attempts, I can do nothing to stop the stone beneath my ventral scales from cracking under my weight.

As the last of the sleep grogginess clears, I realise I’m in my largest form. It is rare to find caverns in the warped tunnels large enough for my girth, so it is more likely I carved this one out with my size. In my sole-minded hunt — which seems like such a blur in my memory — I’d not cared for the damage I left in my wake. All I wanted was to eat my fill, even after having consumed a thousand beasts.

I worry for a moment that I won't be able to shrink, as the creatures I killed in my uncontrolled hunger contributed a considerable mass. Even in all my previous hunts, it has taken a sleep or two before I could reduce my size entirely. For as many bodies as I’ve swallowed, it should be a considerable time before I return to swimming through the air.

But no.

As I inflict my will on my body, it shrinks by an immense degree that shouldn’t be this easy so soon after a feast; especially not one this immense. Yet I find the cavern growing around me until the ceiling looms overhead. From my largest to smallest, the world becomes alien. No longer am I cramped within the tight encasement of rock, but a tall cavern with limitless distortions available to extend it further.

I slide through one, leaving the damaged earth and splotches of blood behind. Not all my hunts were clean; most I swallowed without resistance, but a few put up the minimum of a fight.

I've never felt bad for the prey I've eaten before. But as I slither away from the remnants of the creatures that fell, I cannot help the pang of pity I feel. They are just as I was in the face of a Titan; incapable of resisting, unable to flee.

But this is the way things are, the way things always will be. The rule of nature; the strong will do as they wish. One either avoids them, or succumbs to their will. Which, more often than not, means one’s death.

That is how it had always been… until I was struck down to that of a lesser being.

A vicious hiss escapes my throat, despising the thought that I have done wrong. I have hunted plenty throughout my life, so why do I care when I think of those victims of my most recent hunt?

Why does it matter if these small creatures die if I cannot have Scia?

So again, even with my mind gathered and wakeful, I push the thoughts out of mind. I have done nothing I shouldn't have. They are prey, and that is all they are. I should not worry about their fear, their pain, their deaths at my fangs.

They could not protect themselves; that is the only misfortune that has befallen them.

With my smaller size, I whip through the caverns. Aimless in my passage. I’ve not been back in a while, and yet, now that I’m here, it does not feel so comforting. This has been my home for thousands of hunts, but the brief time I’ve been gone now makes this place an unwelcome sight.

I don’t understand. I should relish my return; the bends are the same as ever, and the food is plentiful. But it now seems so… lacking.

I am here, I am safe, I am alive, and yet I do not feel victorious.

I slither along the surface of the Magma Ocean. A casual observation, but not truly investing into the search. The Crippling Depths come next, and I skim across the geysers that explode from bends where they connect to not-yet-flooded caverns. I gaze inside, but find nothing of interest.

Neither the wind channels nor the labyrinth hold my attention long. The effort of the search too great for any desire I have to actually find my way beyond. I should care; I know the warped tunnels will not remain forever, but I just can’t seem to gather any energy at the idea of escaping.

As I contemplate wasting away my remaining days in these rock tunnels, I glimpse something through half a dozen distortions.

It is no rend to the Other Side, nor is it anything dangerous. Rather, what I see tugs at memories from before the Titan destroyed my home. I turn, and immediately head towards it.

Soon, I find myself at the edge of the abyss, in the area of unbroken stone that once neighboured my territory. I cast a wary glance out into the abyss and the pillar that shines through the distortions that extend my sight. Only for a moment do I peer out into that which I only just escaped, before turning to that which gained my attention.

A massive column voided of earth. It reaches wider than my full size can extend and endlessly upward. The piles of rock along the ground seem far thicker than the last time I was here, but it is clearly the same tower I’d once attempted to climb.

This is the first place my emotions tempted me, and it is the first place I discovered just how horrific they could be. I lay there in the centre of the wide open cavern, simply staring up into the expanse where my sight trails off with the dispersal of distortions. Somewhere up there, space becomes as flat as down in the abyss. Whether it truly is another path down to that empty place, or it leads up to the Ōmukade’s large chamber, I don’t know.

To my annoyance, I find my curiosity peaks once more. I never did discover what lies up there. And now I have the method to create bends where none were before.

The climb might not be so impossible.