I slam my will back into the bend.

  The space around me shivers in response. It groans. a low, slow noise that rises from the space falling momentarily out of order with the air it holds.

  By shoving my own spatial fabric through the unsettled distortion, I have stopped its collapse, but its sudden stop left the space around me disturbed. Instability is at dangerous levels, and that is without the distortions that usually causes it. What would happen should this discord in the fabric grow any further?

  Not wanting to accidentally replicate whatever those spatial cracks down in the abyss had been, I no longer force the rift to reach further. I let it settle and connect into the nearest spatial intersect. Tension grips the air, and I can feel that it will not calm any time soon.

  Realising how dangerous it is to push these rifts beyond what they can handle, I declare never to strain them this hard again… but that doesn’t mean I’ll not stretch them.

  After sliding through the rift, I quickly do the same to another. I filter through a dozen spatial intersection points before the distortion grows strained and move onto another. It may not take me directly where I want, but this method massively expands my search speed over a manual travel.

  In essentially no time, my target appears. I slither through the modified rift and head for the rend across the cavern. Soon, the intense grinding stone of the Other Side welcomes me once more.

  This place has always remained a source of nightmares for me. A terror. Somewhere to be avoided at all cost. And now, I enter willingly.

  As I land within the cavern of countless stone waterfalls and rising walls of churning earth, my head immediately snaps to the side. Through a hundred bends and holes, I find an unimaginably huge tail consuming all space of a dozen caverns. It quickly disappears from sight, but the spiky fin lining its length vaporised all it touched with a dim hum. Power flowed off its form and left the caverns in a storm of turmoil.

  Been here for moments and I’ve already come across a Titan.

  Ignoring the deadly being, I work my way up. The rough sea of gravel tosses me around, but by growing my size some, I avoid any wounds to my scales.

  Not wanting to linger within the dangerous mass of broken rock — what with any number of things hidden from sight likely strong enough to kill me in a single bite — I rush to the Other Side’s version of the surface. While that is where the Titans reside, it is also the home of my prey.

  It is… difficult to consider the lynx prey, what with its near Titanic size and strength, but this is why I’m here. I’m to hunt the lynx using every method I can think of. I will adapt what the weak sapients achieved, and bring it to new heights.

  What I’m getting myself into wouldn’t have been given the slightest of reasonable consideration at any other point in my life. It is insane. It might as well be impossible. But it is something I need to do, not just for Scia’s sake, but for my own. No matter the danger involved.

  Once I find the lynx — or at least its trail — I intend to make the creature’s life a living nightmare until I am confident I can take it on. But as I breach through the flowing gravel and land on the surface, I realise a problem.

  How am I going to find it?

  The Other Side is vast. And if this surface is anything like the sapients’ version, I might be searching for a lifetime before I come across it. The method I used to find the rend won’t work; there’s no distortions up here to connect to. I can’t cycle through landscapes to find the beast I want. No, the only option is to find it directly, by scouring the Other Side.

  Reducing my size — but not to my smallest — I take to the air. A few bends appear before my eyes, connecting as far as my own creations will reach, so that I can nearly double the range of my sight. It’s not nearly the same capability I can achieve down in the warped tunnels, but it is an improvement.

  The first oddity I come across, is the sight of a bird pecking away at the moss of a shard; one of the Titan’s bones. It is large; likely holding more mass than an ōmukade. I outweigh it easily, even from a glance I can tell that.

  This is confirmation that there are creatures on the Other Side that somehow survive despite the hostile landscape and common appearance of Titans. I’d considered the possibility — what with the lynx being here — but this shows that an ecosystem is able to form even beneath the devastating feet of Titans.

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  It also offers a solution to my problem.

  Creating a hole, I slide my quarter-sized body right behind the neck of the bird, and snap forward. The swallow-like form of the creature continues to scrape its beak along the what might be a rib shard, to eat the moss that clings to it, completely oblivious to my approach. I bite.

  My mouth burns.

  In an instant, the swallow is gone. Intense heat flows through my jaw, somehow aching worse in my eyes. My saliva evaporates, leaving me to snap down on nothing but dry gums.

  In the air high above, the swallow now flies. Its feathers shine with energy and the spatial ripple flowing off each combine to overwhelm the one from the surface’s distant cavern ceiling. As I watch the energy gather beneath its plumage, and the intense ripples calm slightly, its eyes snap to mine.

  I barely dodge the beam in time.

  If not for my instincts, I would be dead. The ripple suddenly spiked to a strength I didn’t think possible. The few scales left within range incinerate in an instant, and without travelling, but rather just appearing, it vaporises stone and gravel below to the edge of sight. All entirely in a straight line. The few scales outside its direct path come out unharmed, and so too does the earth beneath.

  The spatial ripple it created was so intense that I can hardly call it a ripple any more. It nearly folds space as it burns everything in its path. And the space grows malleable in its wake. The beam doesn’t last long — mere moments — and leaves the fabric in such a foldable state that I have no choice but to use it.

  Rapidly, a hundred bends and holes appear between myself and the bird. The creature grows confused, as my entire form is now obscured by the distortions that leave it looking in all sorts of directions except at me. Again — far too quickly considering how powerful the blast was — it unleashes another towards where it thinks I am.

  For a moment, I worry that with how it can affect space, it will pass by my bends as if they aren’t there. If such happens, I’ll have no chance to defend myself; I can’t dodge something that moves instantly.

  But thankfully, the undulating space of the empowered ripple appears as if following a straight line through my bends. The wide beam passes through many, fractalling wide and opening so many more paths for me to freely create distortions.

  The flexible space rapidly becomes more stable, so my bends rapidly diminish, but with how many are already around, I have no problem slithering up behind it and taking a bite into its neck.

  This time, it doesn’t disappear. My fangs slice through its neck, and it cries in pain, flailing its wings. It tries once more to gather energy, but I jerk my head, snapping its neck. The ripple across its body soon dissipates as it falls limp within my jaw.

  I’d assumed that because it was a similar size to the ōmukade, that it would be as easy a fight as it. But this swallow’s attack could have killed me in an instant… likely even in my largest form. It may not have the strongest body, but what need does it have for that when it can incinerate its competitors in an instant.

  This is the Other Side. I cannot be treating this as some new cavern of the warped tunnels these beast only survive here because they are the strongest. I have my new prey to hunt, but growing will mean nothing if I die before I kill the lynx. These are not creatures I can underestimate.

  I hiss at myself for falling into the trap of arrogance again. Even in the smallest of fights, against the weakest of opponents, I need to learn to incorporate sapient strategies lest I fall to them myself.

  Falling to the earth with my prey, I grow just double my size so I can swallow the beast, and soon I’m back through the air. My manipulation of spatial distortions has become better, but I don’t want to even attempt to chase down the lynx until I’ve got bends large enough to sustain flight of my full size. It is convenient that I can now continue to feast and grow while I search for the lynx.

  ???

  Many dozen cycles of the ceiling spatial ripple have passed, and my hunts have been fruitful. There may not be many beasts to find, but those that do appear, fill my stomach with so much energy I almost regret taking so long to dive into the Other Side.

  Almost. Considering how close I’ve come to death on more occasions than I’d like to admit, if I’d come any sooner I would not have been ready.

  Every beast keeps out of the paths of the Titans. Rarely, I’ll come across some unfortunate corpse that likely wasn’t able to avoid their paths, but usually their bodies don’t remain. Or, if they do, the earth is quick to swallow them.

  I’ve come to learn that the creatures here consist entirely on the moss of the Titan’s bones, or by hunting others. And considering how infrequent sources of that moss are — either being on a few concave section of bones in small amounts or the larger masses guarded by the more vicious predators — every creature around is indiscriminately hostile.

  As I’ve flown over the land — keeping myself mostly obscured from sight — I’ve come across plenty of beasts of comparable or greater strength than the lynx. I don’t ever engage them. Only against Scia’s killer will I risk that fight. But it does raise the question about the gap between these relatively giant creatures, compared to the warped tunnels and sapient surface, and the Titans.

  The Titans are simply a class of their own. Not even the the strongest of these beasts I’ve come across has come close. There’s a full scale missing between the existences that are larger than my sight can see, and that of my similars.

  My search for the lynx has been… difficult. The landscape of the Other Side changes often — thanks to the Titans — and leaves nothing recognisable to follow. Most of my time is either speeding through the air while keeping my eyes out for any sign, or speeding through the air to get as far away from a Titan as possible.

  But as I travel, the slightest of tinges at the back of my mind guides me forward. Barely more than an instinct. A feeling. Only because I have no other possibility before me, do I follow its subtle, wordless directions.

  And soon, I come across a field of crystals littering the earth. Some rise out like pillars, while others are broken fragments that sink beneath the waves of gravel as I watch.

  I have found my prey.

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