An agonising tug on my spine, and suddenly my constriction is not so strong. I slip from the leg. My fangs slide free of flesh despite my efforts to hold them deep. I am pulled backwards, tossed through the air and disoriented. When I adjust, I am already falling in the mouth of the lynx.

  Vicious, predatory teeth surround me, each ready to carve through scale and flesh.

  My spine aches and tail feels dead, but I have no time to pay it any mind. The jaw of the lynx — now free of its diamond binds — clamps down on me. Each impossibly sharp crystal tooth threaten to end me in an instant.

  I don’t have time to move. Even creating a bend before me would be too slow; I’ll be chewed and swallowed before my head can pass through.

  In an instant, I react. It is not instinct, but my action triggers long before I can gather my thoughts properly. Two large bends open in the path before the largest fangs of both its upper and lower jaw. With how hard the lynx snaps its mouth closed, I can only imagine how painful the piercing of its own teeth would be.

  It’s upper fang crunches through the roof of the feline’s mouth, while the lower tooth pierces its tongue and pins it to the lower jaw. Unable to sink deeper, the jaw crashes to a halt, leaving me just enough space to slither through another bend and escape with my life.

  The lynx wails. Blood flows from its mouth as it jerks its head back and shatters the distortion. The reaction to fight against the bend instead of pulling out only bisecting the teeth and leaving their sharp points embedded in its mouth. Only its own strength could cause this damage; not the bend itself.

  I desperately swim away. My focus never leaves the lynx now that its legs are free. It howls in a mixture of anger and pain. Energy riddled eyes burn as it watches me, the blood encrusting its lips — both mine and its — crystallise as it fills its growl with pressure.

  That was a mistake. I should never have gotten so close. I’d already known the lynx would have the upper hand in such close quarters, and yet I still engaged like that. Foolish. It is the opposite of the sapient way.

  With space regained, I turn to inspect the horrid wound along my tail. All I can say, is that I’m glad I wasn’t cut in half again. The diamond fangs sunk spine deep, and even the lower vertebra are barely holding together; that momentary bite sliced through me like water.

  But I can still move. I’ve experienced this much in the past and survived. This is not over.

  The crystal cave no longer shrinks, confirming that the lynx had needed to remain still to do so. Well, even if it no longer shrinks, the cavern I’m locked to is far narrower than I could ever be comfortable with. I can see every corner without having to extend my sight; which is horrifyingly tight when the lynx takes up a fifth of the distance from wall to wall.

  Before I can settle, the lynx leaps at me. I slither out of its path, but the moment it crashes into the wall, an explosion of diamonds fly out from the wall. I do my best to avoid, but there’s simply too many. Most scrape along my scales ineffectively, but the ones that pierce into my wounded tail reinstate the agony at the forefront of my mind.

  Behind me, the lynx thumps to the ground, and suddenly a spike pillar rushes at me from my side. I try to force a hole before it, but the moment the distortion appears, the pillar freezes. Another takes its place. As I shift the hole to the new pillar, the old one spears forward again, scraping along my scales and nearly skewering me.

  There is no success for me unless I do something to fight back. I can’t get close to the beast, nor can I simply flee forever. The only option I do have, is to overwhelm the feline with countless small pricks. My jaw slams shut, then opens, and shuts. The cycle continues almost endlessly, every time I crash my fangs through the distortions set in the base of my jaw, they slice a little deeper through the wounds of the lynx.

  The lynx growls as it feels me digging through the openings I have, and leaps into motion. It chases me around the narrow cavern. Always keeping a foot touching the diamond floor or walls as it runs so that it can keep the onslaught of sharp pillars rushing at me again. I continually create distortions before the pillars, hoping to get lucky and have it inflict another wound upon itself, but it has grown too wary of such ploys.

  While doing everything I can to avoid its claws, I discover that its rear leg is limping. The lynx has covered it in a splint of diamond, but that fracture I heard must have been more than just the crystal around its legs shattering. The sight emboldens me.

  I clamp down on the temptation to take it on directly.

  That injury almost cost me my life. Applying such high risks to break a few bones is hardly worth it. Instead, I’ll remain in this small game of chase until my fangs dig deep enough to strike something important.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  And they do hit something important.

  The lynx suddenly stops. A horrid choking sound wheezes out its mouth along with a torrent of blood. It dribbles over the sharp crystals of the surface, only to solidify into diamonds of blood.

  My fangs had been striking at the wound in its neck. Gradually scraping away flesh until striking its throat and the arteries around it. If its flesh was as hard as the diamond exterior, I could never have inflicted so much damage.

  The lynx lets out a scratchy cough, and blood flows from the sides of its hanging jaw like a pair of waterfalls. It is hurt — that is clear — but its eyes glare with fury.

  A presence laden hiss almost stops me from reacting when the feline suddenly leaps across the cavern toward me. All restraint gone.

  I dodge, but the shower of diamond shards flowing off its fur impact me like boulders. They cut through scales, and send me tumbling off course and into the diamond wall. Both the lynx and I crash. The feline leaves the crystal wall shattered, with a spiralling crater around it. I hit hard, but the diamonds remain hard and still, knocking the air out of my stomach on impact.

  There’s no time for me to relax. The lynx takes the brunt of the blow with its forepaws, and pounces again the moment its rear legs touch. For that minuscule time its legs touch diamond, the crystals along the wall I impact spring to life.

  Where my ventral scales touch the wall, I can feel the spears coming. Immediately, I rip distortions in their path. Again, the intent is to ram them into the lynx, but they stop soon. An action the lynx expected. The true problem comes from the massive pillars already risen from the wall around me. They shift, and crash down on my form, not cutting through scales, but pinning me in place.

  The bend I created before my head sits there, teasing.

  Having crashed into the wall, I lost all the momentum that allowed me to flow so quickly. I couldn’t even poke my head through the distortion before I became trapped. And now the lynx — with its mass more than ten times my own — sails through the air with enough force to flatten mountains.

  I lash out with my body, trying my utmost to fracture my cage. A pair of pillars crack, but the others hold me still; no time to escape.

  A thousand thoughts flood through my mind as I watch the giant bearing down on me. A thousand discarded in an instant. No ideas come to me. Nothing besides a weak attempt at bringing the beast down with me.

  In an instant, I create a bend as wide as I can, linked to my spatial fabric. The lynx hits me, and I suddenly understand what all my prey experience when they are crushed to death. I’m slammed into the wall. Each crystal pillar holding me shatters and my body is flattened beneath a pair of diamond clawed paws.

  The bend attached to my fabric slams down on a sharp spear, even as three others pierce my body in other sections.

  As enraged and forceful as it is, Scia’s murderer cannot react to the diamond spike that appears before its eye. With double the power of its leap, the spear buries deep within the eye. Diamond shards explode everywhere, leaving no way to tell if I succeed or not.

  Except the screech of the lynx is answer enough.

  As its claws press into me, cutting through scales with ease, and its weight collapsing entire rows of ribs, it’s the waves of power thrumming through its howls of pain that impact me the worst. I have no time to mount a defence against the mountainous presence after being crushed, so it flows over me without restraint. Sharp spikes pinch at my muscles and bones. Overpowering even of my mortal wounds.

  I cannot move. Frozen in place by the pressure of a being I know I should never have faced. I stare up, unable to act, as the lynx growls down at the serpent it has finally caught. Crystal shards melt away from its head, revealing my attempt was successful. Scia’s murderer lacks an eye.

  Despite the pressure pressing down on me, I can somehow manage a hiss of satisfaction. It is amusing to see this beast brought so low.

  The lynx must see my amusement, whether in my eyes, or by the tone of my hiss, and it flies into a rage. Power burns in its eyes as it jerks its head forward, ready to end my life once and for all.

  I don’t just leave things like that.

  My hiss amplifies, power swelling in opposition. It does nothing against the lynx, but it allows me to snap my jaw. My fang slides into open wound of Scia’s murderer’s eye-socket, once again using the beast’s weight and power against it.

  The lynx screeches, and pulls its head out of the strike, instead opting to bash me with its paw. Its leg knocks me along the side of the head. Agonising pain fills my mouth as the distortion, with the assistance of the lynx’s strength, severs my fang.

  My tooth remains in the eye of the lynx, but I cannot focus beyond the burning pain that spikes directly into my brain. Even as the lynx batters me again, it has nothing on the agony of losing the fang.

  Realising this is the best chance I’ll get, I try to slither away, but a paw stepping on my tail prevents any escape. All the bones in my already injured tail are instantly crushed. A bend appears before my head, and I dive through it, but before I can reach anywhere, I’m tugged back through the distortion into the lynx’s grasp.

  There’s no doubt anymore. This is where I’ll die. If only I hadn’t allowed myself to be caught off guard, I could have continued to weaken the beast. I could have beaten it by outlasting it.

  I may die, but I have no intention of leaving Scia’s murderer to remain living.

  As the lynx growls down at me — slowly carving away my scales with its claws so it doesn’t inflict its own force upon itself again — I create a single, tiny distortion. I don’t let it connect anywhere. It forms, then remains.

  Gritting my jaw against the abuse, I focus entirely on the distortion. As the moments pass, as I gain countless more wounds, space itself begins to shiver. The shiver soon shifts to an outright quaking of the spatial fabric. Even as the beast scrapes away at my body, it’s sole remaining eye seems to notices something. The way it flickers around makes that obvious. But it cannot see what. It cannot see even the unconnected rend before it sending the fabric into a quivering mess.

  Then, as I push it beyond a point I shouldn’t, ripples of all intensities flow off the distortion, including the one that denotes the cycles. Only now, does the lynx turn to my distortion. Its eyes peel wide. Not in fury, but fear.

  In an instant, Scia’s murderer snaps forward.

  Too late.

  Read Next Chapter Free