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The man who walks on air

The man who walks on air

Disgusting noises could be heard throughout the dark catacombs under the ground as the large creature began to eat the fleshy worm. ‘slurps’ and crunches could be heard as teeth ripped into flesh as the large creature continued to consuming the worm, digging its teeth deeper and deeper into it. Almost crazed by the taste of blood, flesh, and meat, the creature could not stop as it gained substance from its now prey. This subsequent ‘filling up’ led to a dark realization from the creature; it needed to eat, and to eat, it needed to kill.

The creature had chewed down on the same area on its prey’s body until it got to its spine. The creature clamped its teeth down on the spine of its prey but found it was unable to bite through it. For several minutes it chewed on the bone, unable to figure out this deterrent that did not allow continued consumption. Finally, it left its prey’s mutilated corpse alone. Turning to take notice of its surroundings. Its eyes had long since adapted to the darkness, allowing for the creature to survey around it. It sat in a small dug-out room not much larger than its own body. In this ‘room’ there were two holes, the one the creature had entered through and the one its prey had came from. The creature may be simple, but its rate of learning was almost instant.

First the creature raised its two front legs grasping onto the inner domain of the entrance of the hole it came from. It then used those legs to pull the rest of its body upwards into the hole. Once its body was in the hole, the creature used its hind legs to push its body forward, subsequently letting go of the ground with its front legs. It then moved its front legs forward, digging into the ground with its sharp feet before pulling its weight up. It continued this movement for several hours, slowly inching forward as if walking on a slope. Finally, it could see rays of light coming from its initial entrance.

When the creature got back to the surface, it was exhausted. It had expended vast amounts of energy to get out of the hole, falling back to the bottom of the tunnel multiple times unable to truly grasp the art of climbing. In the creatures’ multiple lives, it had sat and waited for death unable to understand or even grasp how to overcome its great tiredness. Instead waiting for the end like it had previously. It began to move in the direction that the black wolf had flown in too. The creature had come up with a simple solution to its exhaustion, consumption.

The creature walked for multiple hours in the same direction refusing to change direction for any reason. The black sand desert had expanded far further than the forest he had previously housed himself in. Even when looking towards the horizon it was difficult to see any kind of change in the environment. The creature endlessly walked through the sea of sand like glass, almost as if it was dragging itself. Consuming the worm had awakened something inside the creature and even he was obvious to it. His great hunger became his only motivator, he had a yearning to consume another creature despite only having its first taste of flesh the same day. The creature was obviously meant to be an apex predator. Its mouth began to salivate as it continued to will its body to an unknown destination. For hours on hours the creature walked at a slow pace with vile blue liquid escaping from its mouth. Its focus was completely directed in where he believed more food would appear, and soon enough he came past his first meal.

The creature stopped in its tracks as it witnessed a much smaller, four-legged creature that was walking at a slow space along the sand. For some reason the creature felt familiar, and it soon realized it was moving in a similar manner to itself. It observed the creature for a moment trying to distinguish whether it was prey, but before it could come to its own decision its hunger roared from the depths of its body. As if it had gained its second wind, the much larger creature jolted forward, propelling its body towards the smaller creature with great speeds. It used its wings in a similar manner to when it was flying, but instead of directing its wings descent towards the floor, it directed that same power towards the rear end of its body propelling it forward. The smaller creature was barely able to react to the speed of the much larger creature. At the final moments before its mid-section were consumed, the smaller creature turned its body out of the larger creatures’ flight path. The larger creature had become keen to the movement of others after observing different Kajin in depth for multiple days. Before the large creature was 2 paces away from the smaller creature, it planted its left front and hind legs into the ground, halting its movement. It then spread its wings again mimicking its early movements, quickly able to turn its angle of attack back towards its intended target. The small creature had already begun making space between the two, running in the direction it had dodged in. The larger creature caught up to the smaller within seconds attempting to attack it by stamping its foot through it. The smaller creature seemed to have keen senses and copied the technique of the larger creature, stamping its right front and hind legs into the ground to quickly change direction. The larger creature was unable to control its strength properly and, unintentionally, dug its leg into the ground all the way to its joint. The smaller creature took this as an opportunity to run once again, taking off without looking back.

The larger creature witnessed the smaller scurrying away and tugged on its leg, unburying it. The creature then focused all its weight backwards before bursting forward, at the same time it also blasted its wings backwards. This launched the creature forward at even faster speeds. It seemed the creature was using and combining the multiple movements it had witnessed into one, it was as if it had evolved mid hunt. The creature was learning on the fly, utilizing different movements in different ways to get different results, the rate of learning the creature had gone through was astonishing. Hunting had brought all its cells to their peak, burning through its energy like a wildfire. However, it seems as if the smaller creature had become used to evading creatures stronger and faster than itself. As the larger creature got closer it ducked half of its body to the floor, trading a large cut along its side instead of being eaten whole. As the larger creature swung past the body of the smaller it spread its wings slowing its body, slightly shifting it towards the sky. The creature landed and darted to turn and watch the smaller creature. The two creatures stood still, never breaking eye contact with each other.

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The two creatures were in similar predicaments, the smaller was hurt while the larger was becoming more fatigued by the second. This feeling of fatigued did nothing but slow the creature down while increasing its, now ravenous, hunger. The smaller creatures’ left legs shook as it was barely able to lift both appendages, it was no longer in any condition to run. The larger creature could move, but each step took a large amount of effort. It seemed this chase had burned though the creature’s energy reserves. The larger creature began slowly walking towards its injured prey, locking eyes as it took slow step after slow step. Its prey struggled to move but it was useless, the blow it had taken was deep and seemed to sever several tendons within its body. As the large creature stood over its prey, the same slob like, blue liquid dripped from its mouth onto the eye of its prey causing it to scream out in pain. A ‘sizzle’ could be heard as the creature’s eye became deformed. Unbeknownst to the creature, its saliva had become some sort of acidic venom. As the smaller creature struggled and screamed with a loud “Kueeeer!!”, the larger creature quickly opened its jaw before shutting it closed over its prey’s head.

The screaming stopped as the smaller creatures’ body squirmed, hanging out of the larger creature’s mouth. It quickly began to chew, crunching the hard exoskeleton of its prey with its several row of teeth that sat on the top and bottom of its mouth. As it slowly consumed its prey it dragged more of its body into its mouth using its tongue. ‘Crunch’, ‘slush’ and ‘slurps’ could be heard as it consumed its prey in the open light of the black desert. Once finished the creature hunkered down.

Despite consuming food, the creature still felt tired. This was far different than its usual feeling of emptiness, but at the same time it felt the same. It slowly began to fall asleep as its eyes fluttered, struggling to stay awake. The creature had begun to understand the dangers of the world around him. While he may be the predator at this moment, it could become prey at any time. Unfortunately, the larger creature was unable to Stay awake and it slowly faded to black. As the creature slept, for the first time it dreamed.

The world was on fire and a singular man stood in the middle. The man was tall and broad, assumingly around nine feet tall. A specimen with muscles so built it was as if they were bulging through his skin. He had eight large wings behind him, half were white and dove-like, like those of an angel. The other half were darker but still had a tint of white, they were more draconic in their features. He had pure white hair with gleams of red throughout. His skin was a dark caramel tone and on his back you could make out some sort of markings as if he was tattooed. The figure did not move amongst the flames and looked up, the longing and sadness could be felt from his very presence. The scene went on for a while without any changes, except for the flames that moved as if they were waving to spectators. Suddenly the figure began to turn its head, but before its face was revealed- the large creature woke up.

The large creature woke up slowly, its eyes flickering attempting to adjust to the sudden exposure to light after the peaceful darkness of sleep. The creature stood up, but as it raised its body off the floor it noticed something different. It could feel three tails swinging around on the back of its body. That was not the only change that the creature had gone through, but it was the only one noticed. The creature stretched its limbs, as it did its tails reacted as if they were extra legs. The creature was keenly aware of its body and had noticed the mimicked stretching motion of its tails. It was almost natural at this point for the creature to ponder changes within itself, so it sat and began attempting to move its tails willingly.

At first it was slow, the creature was unable to distinguish between its tails and legs when it came to movement. It was almost as if the tails had a mind of its own, but slowly it began to be able to keep its tails still while it walked forward. The creature would individually lift its legs in sequence from front to back, and as it moved its feet it would try to feel the path of movement of its tails. Once it understood the path of movement, keeping its tails became simple. It was quite simple really. Once the front legs of the creature moved it triggered the movement of another grouping of muscles. It’s almost as if the creature had developed muscle to move its tails from the existing muscle groupings for its legs. Said muscles while, now separate, felt the same to the creature. Distinguishing the different muscles was key to controlling the tails on the back end of its body. Despite its shallow thinking process, the creature was clearly the master of its own body.

Once the creature understood how its tails worked, it began to try different movements. First it tried to strike the ground as it did with its legs, it came to realize that its tails were much more sensitive than the rest of its body. Every time it smashed a tail into the ground it felt a sharp pain followed by an explosion of sensations. It was almost as if he was able to feel the world in a new way through his tails. He could feel the vibrations within the ground beneath him and the air as it brushed his exoskeleton. It was as if his mind was opened to a whole new world. These new sensations threw the creature’s mind into disorder. Briefly it lost its balance as it stumbled to the floor in a confused daze. It looked up to the sky and witnessed a being, a man stood in the air between his eyes and the large red ball that sat in the unending, blue sky. The man standing in the air oddly looked like the one from the creatures first dream.