Kin of Jörmungandr

Reigning in the power of my presence while also relying on it to speak at all is impossibly difficult. It's like trying to bite, without closing my mouth.

I slither along the surface, ignoring the collapsing earth behind me. My mind falls back on the sapient swarm species, trying to remember if any had to speak through presence. None did. Their bodies were made almost by design to be able to speak, while mine wasn't.

I recalled the Beyond. It's words never felt like presence, but entered my mind easily without any reason. Could that have been a well-controlled presence? Should I be trying to speak into someone's mind rather than through space?

For some reason, that felt off. The Beyond was an existence greater than most creatures, so the way it did things was surely different than normal.

That brought me to the Titan. The first one I saw. The one that destroyed my home and hid beneath a veil of space.

Despite how long I've spent in the Other Side, no Titan has ever given me the same feeling of terror and inferiority as that one. They are all well beyond my capabilities, but the phantom being with uncountable limbs had been on such a different plane of existence that I hardly dared compare them.

It would be nice if I could simply brush off the feeling as me having grown stronger since then… but I don't think that's it.

That phantom Titan has been the only one to speak. And speak with presence. So despite my hate for the being, I need to learn from that experience if I want to eventually speak to Scia without terrifying her.

The creature had somehow shook space itself to create its words. It's possible it was manipulating the fabric, as I have learnt to, but the words were too heavy through my body for me to reasonably believe such. If it was controlling space, it wouldn't have affected my personal fabric.

No, I believe the Titan struck its presence through the world, but somehow left me exempt.

As terrified as I was at the time, I hadn't been rendered incapable of action. Something I'm sure would have happened if it had tried, and actually unleashed its presence down on me.

If I can do the same, and exclude a creature from my presence, would it still understand me? Or did the phantom Titan do something more to create such an effect?

"Khi-rig."

I see no point simply wondering. With each breath, I hiss out the names of the species I discovered on the surface. Both to ingrain their kind into my memory, and attempt to bend my presence to my will.

"Dohrni."

"Volan."

"Albanic."

With each word, the earth shifts and ripples. The power emit from my throat not something even the air itself can ignore as it shrivels up and rolls away.

As the ground leaves a clear pattern after each attempt at speech, I quickly find that the best way to improve myself is to watch those ripples through the gravel. If I can start off by limiting the pressure to one side, then I know I'll have made progress. From there, I can narrow it down further.

I hiss, the sound shaping to words as my presence incorporates my will into the world around me. Glancing back, the ripples remain. They're the same as before, but if I look close, I can see the effect was ever so slightly lessened.

It works!

Well, the improvement is so slight that I just know this will take forever. But that's fine; I have plenty of time between my hunts.

I repeat. Over and over again, I speak whatever word comes to mind. My performance starts out abysmal. But with each attempt, I get a little bit better. The ripples in gravel behind me become more subtle, and I shift to narrowing the range of my target. Soon, I tighten the influence to only what is directly before my head.

But I can never seem to suppress the pressure fully. While I can focus the most intense of the pressure in a single direction now, the sphere of influence around me remains affected, even if only slightly.

Scia is too fragile even for that, so I need to suppress it further, but my presence refuses. It seems impossible to rein in.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Well, It's not like I expected it to be easy, so I simply move on to the inverted practice. I focus on a small region, and keep it free from the pressure of my words. As it is essentially the same exercise I've been doing, it comes easily. Only when I try to split my focus to two areas free from my pressure does it become challenging again.

Despite how I hit a wall when trying to bring my effect on the environment down past a certain point, I find that the exercises are enjoyable. Unlike with the practice of my distortions, there is no strain at the effort. I can either succeed, or fail with my attempts. There doesn't seem to be a punishment for failing to use my presence in any particular way.

I enjoy the act of improving myself, and the idea that I'll be able to use this to talk with countless creatures in the future. With my presence infused will, it's possible even non-sapient creatures can understand my intentions, so I might not even be limited to speaking to the creatures who can talk back. That is my goal for Scia, but even if the Beyond will return her to me, it will take such a long time to reach the heights of the Titans that I can only imagine I'll be given the chance to speak to another creature before then.

What would it be like to get another creature to work with me, the way the sapients did on the surface?

Each word that thrums through the air fills with my full enthusiasm, and I'm sure any creature that feels my presence will know just how excited I am at the possible future prospects.

And then one of those creatures just had to go and ruin my fun.

Some lizard crashes through the earth with its bulky, unwieldy legs in an effort to slam its jaw closed around my side before I can react.

Of course, I saw the vicious-looking beast coming from a distance away, and while the beast is larger than myself, the mindlessness in its eyes leave me less than impressed.

It's body and teeth are entirely metal. The scales are flared outward, more like a porcupine than any normal lizard. They shift and scrape along the surface of its body. Those jagged scales move fast enough that I know just from a glance I can't coil around its body unless I want my own scales to become ripped to shreds.

It's large, razor-sharp fangs are much the same. They buzz along the inside of its jaws, sliding back and forth in a way that will tear through anything without even the slightest of jaw strength… not that I believe this lizard lacks power in its jaws.

This creature is of the Fenghuang's kin. That is clear. Though it is incredibly odd to see a subspecies that takes on the form of a lizard over a bird, which is far more common for their kind. The metallic exterior, shifting feathers — or in this case scales — and their brief, hyper-aggressive transformations are all unique to their kind.

They are usually incredibly docile creatures. Only in brief bursts do they become vicious and far more deadly than usual. I only need to wait out this aggressive transformation of it, and I'll be able to fight the beast with ease. Or, at least more ease than right now.

I slide through a few holes and linger in the air far above the creature. It doesn't try to leap after me, instead glaring up with hateful, mindless eyes as it snaps its jaw a few times.

I don't know what 'the Fenghuang' refers to. The Beyond was never perfectly clear in the things it said, and its name for the creatures with shifting metal coatings was no different. Unlike most, they didn't have a name for themselves, but were referred to as kin of something else.

The beast, sinking to its knees in the gravel, bends its spine and lifts its tail. I watch from where I slither in the air, as the scales shift along its back, congregating along its spine before accelerating down its tail and ramping off. Dozens of razor scales shoot through the air towards me.

I'm surprised by the ability, but it isn't the worst I've faced. A large bend tosses them back. As soon as I see the scales that collide against its back simply reintegrate into its body rather than pierce — as I'm sure they would me — I twist the bends so that they scatter.

Each individual scale is rather large — about twice the size of a surface sapient — but the beast has no way of getting around my distortions. Really, the more I fight the creatures out in this featureless expanse, the more I realise how blessed I am to have learnt Scia's ability to warp space. So many ranged attacks simply become ineffective where they might pierce scales ten times harder than my own. As long as I can see them coming in time, I can divert any projectiles. And with the constant field of distortions I keep in existence around me, I often don't even need to be aware.

Even with that benefit, it rarely means my hunts become easy. I remain a physical creature. I need to get close to bite or crush my prey to death, unlike the many creatures that can bend nature to their will and strike from great distances. The worst are those that crash waves of their respective element at me without ever coming close enough to see. How they see me when I cannot them… it still baffles me.

Any moment now, this lizard should lose its enraged state and return to the placid form that will be much easier to fight.

Another volley of razor scales flies towards my path, this time curving strangely in an effort to avoid the warped space, but they are no less easily dealt with. It is clear the creature wants to pounce, but some instinct tells it not to. Its chances are better to hold its ground and not lose its footing.

I wait.

Any moment now…

…

After flying through the sky and avoiding the scales for a while, I finally give up on the idea that it will return to some normal form.

Whether this Fenghuang kin has more control over its body than any of its weaker brethren, or it is simply stuck in this state for some reason, I don't know. But I can no longer wait around for things to get easier; I'm losing out on time to practice speech with each volley that rises my way. And it doesn't look like the creature will run out of scales any time soon.

I hiss angrily as I twist in the air. No longer do I retain my distance. I dive for the hyper aggressive lizard with the full intent to finish it, consume it, grow, and return to my speaking attempts.

That's the only thing I care about right now.

But as much as it's the only thing I want to do, I still have an unreasonable goal to achieve. And the only way to achieve it is to hunt.