Joroboros

[YF] Chapter 242: Origin Point

“Wow, the ocean sunrise sure looks glamorous up this high.”

Two days have passed since the second Collapse, and somehow, I still haven’t managed to shake Anoures. The Jarl slouches in the flames between my wings; an unwanted guest that refuses to leave.

“Do you even know the meaning of the word?” I ask, appropriately snarky.

She leans back further, using me as a recliner. “We've been together for days now, and you still think of me that way? Be a little malleable...

[KoJ] Chapter 53: Repeat

The trio of young are completely oblivious to their surroundings. As I slither up beside them, not one even glances my way. Of course, the fallen nests and broken stones are the perfect environment to remain obscured, but they are unbelievably unwary of their surroundings. Do they believe nothing can threaten them?

Is this the foolishness of younglings? Those who have not yet grown into the fears of their instincts. Or do their kind truly not have anything to worry about around here? 2024-11-10 13:13:19 +0000 UTC View Post

[YF] Chapter 241: Alternate

The soft soil chars black beneath my feet as they reform on the heights of the clifftop. A grunt escapes the Jarl as her back impacts the earth, while Leal slowly lowers to the earth cradled in my flames.

Stepping forward, I cast my gaze over the ledge of the cliff. Considering only a few minutes ago the steep slope had been some hundred metres ahead of me, the ground beneath my feet seems strangely still. And it’s not the ground alone; the entire world has returned to its previous ca...

[KoJ] Chapter 52: Literate

Cipactlteteo tier update: I accidentally unlocked this chap rather than 51, so instead of rolling that back, i'll just keep it up instead of friday.

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

I remain on the back of the not-snake, the train, for a good long while. So long that the warm spatial ripple gradually disappears.

Without knowing what exactly the energy is, or where it originates, its disappearance means nothing to me. I don’t know if it...

[YF] Chapter 240: Drained

Once more, after so many months of silence, the world shivers.

The Titan Alps, barely even visible by the glowing white envelope of its summit-line, shifts. It fractures. The entire line breaks, filtering light through cracks in mountains that weren’t there moments ago.

With Eldest Ember’s protective light gone, the world quivers in response. The very air falters as the earth screams out in agony. Deep, groaning rumbles thrum up from the deepest parts of the land, declaring a ...

[KoJ] Chapter 51: Communication

"I'm telling you, there's no way a snake made this hole. Are you sure it wasn't, I dunno, a bit of pipe or something?”

“And you think all of us hallucinated together? Unless there’s a mage playing tricks on us, there’s a snake in this train.”

“A mage huh? Well that’s a bit more believable than a snake breaking through the roof. Can someone head up to the conductor; let them know something might’ve broken.”

“Already on it.” After saying so, one of the sa...

[KoJ] Chapter 50: Interest

The land is covered by the touch of these sapients.

Between their large stone nests, the perfectly organised plant-life, and the web of compact dirt that carries moving structures, nothing is untouched by these beings. They’ve reshaped the land, and made it more suited to their needs to such an extent that even after a thousand breaths flying through the air, I cannot find anywhere their influence doesn’t reach.

Not only are they one of the larger sized swarm creatures, but th...

[YF] Chapter 239: Jarl

Jarl Anoures stands alone on the bow of her massive longship. With a vicious smile, she stares up at me. The axes she dropped stand wedged in the timber to her sides. She may have discarded them in a way that I hope means she wants to talk and not that she thinks taking me on will be easy — though her chances would likely be better without them — but they are still by her side; it would only take a moment for her to grab them again.

I halt my approach. My widespread flames through t...

[KoJ] Interlude IV: What Just Hit Us?

The defensive ring was in uproar. Mercenaries rushed around, those closer to the attack moving to fill the gap in their defence, while those further away tried to figure out what happened.

Ceph was no different. She crept toward Hirsh’s station in the hopes he had a better understanding of the wave that had just broken through.

It was a snake, she knew. She’d gotten that much information from the volan scouting over her head. The little wingsuit-lovers had far better eyesight ...

[KoJ] Chapter 49: Offence

The first to attack, is one of those flying squirrels with fake wings. I snap at the creature, but its reaction time is swift, and it twists away from my jaws. Small claws that extend from the fake wings — and are likely just as unnatural — scrape against my scales to no effect.

Following close behind the first, the other four dive for me, each just as agile. I slide through a bend, reversing my momentum, and they sail right past me. Before I’ve even finished slithering through my...

[KoJ] Chapter 48: Guilt

The climb was long, but not nearly as difficult as the abyss had been. With a satisfied stomach and a body willing to cooperate, the flight is so much more enjoyable.

Spatial distortions extend only a quarter up the voided column’s height; no wonder I never found the end last time I tried. My rise slowed tremendously once I'd escaped the natural distortions, unable to take advantage of the further reaching bends and holes that allow me to abuse the shift in gravity to gain speed as I ...

[YF] Chapter 238: Firewood

Jarl Anoures' forces are an unwelcome sight.

Despite the Jarl’s entire purpose for being here likely to put down Sylvan and his navy, she is still the slaver I’ve been fighting to free the heqet from. We may now have a common enemy, but that hardly makes us friends.

But the fury bubbling through my flames will not allow Jarl Anoures to reach Sylvan first. He is mine to unleash retribution.

While her fleet sails in from the horizon, blocking the entire mouth of the fjord,...

[KoJ] Chapter 47: Hunger

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 i...

[YF] Chapter 237: Jarlship

In an instant, water is everywhere. The flood crashes over me with a power rivalling a chthonic cube — though thankfully nothing near the Anatla boosted power of the island — leaving me stranded beneath a raging river as it closes in on me.

With the waterfall already below, and this new gushing river breaking through the ruin of the fortress, there’s no room to escape, and even less time to think.

My body puffs out of existence. Extinguishing before the stream can slow enoug...

[KoJ] Chapter 46: Hope

With my full sized girth locked around the pillar, I create a distortion in the air before my face. The spatial fabric bends in on itself before touching and creating a link between the two separate points.

This is not the first time I’ve achieved so, but finally, the distortions open wide enough to pass through. The bend is still small, and only my smallest size can fit, but with this, I can move on.

It will be a tight fit, and the bends barely cross any distance at all, yet I ...

[KoJ] Chapter 45: Discovery

The climb is far slower than I hoped.

Considering how long we fell, it's not all that surprising that it takes forever. Each curl around the pillar seems to bring me no closer to my goal, but there’s no other way.

My body coils around the pillar, gripping it and pulling myself up in a constant slither. Without my weight dragging me down under the effect of gravity, it’s not at all difficult to gain some speed, though I never come close to the pace of the fall.

Even then,...

[KoJ] Chapter 44: Depression

I stretch far from the pillar, but as always, gravity remains absent.

It is such a strange sensation, like constantly falling, but that could only be the case if the pillar I cling to is falling alongside me. Lacking an external point of reference, it is impossible to say. Only the fact that the ever-constant melody remains the same leads me to believe I’m not moving.

I could suspend myself in the air before, but that was always taking advantage of the counteracting forces of gr...

[YF] Chapter 236: Fort Path

Leaving a burning fleet behind me, I fly to the docks at the neck of the fjord, where the cliffs funnel into a river. With hard stone meeting my feet as they form, I cast my gaze up the path cut from the side of the cliff. Unlike the insets for the cannons, this is wide. Wide enough for a dozen men to march toward the steadfast fortress.

Once again, I grumble at the task Sylvan gave me. It would be so much more simple to fly over the duo of gate defences that stand in my way. Even more ...

[YF] Chapter 235: Fjord

The Jarlship fort is unmistakable, even from kilometres beyond the fjord it sits within. A massive wall of stone stretches across the sheer-cliffs, with many other fortifications carved into the rock. Directly below the wall, the cliffs taper into a river of rapids that flow into the fjord. If not for the speed of the water rushing out from a waterfall beneath the fort’s major structure, one might have been able to sail a fleet up the wide river.

From here, where Sylvan’s fleet sail...

[KoJ] Interlude 3: Hirsh

“This is an inconvenient situation for all. Upper management would like you all to know that you remain important and shall be generously compensated once these difficulties pass, but we must ask that you follow regulations and comply with the Order’s changes.”

Hirsh watched on from the back of the gathered crowd of mercenaries as a bureaucrat from headquarters delivered his speech. He had to give the albanic credit; as he delivered the news that the Mercenary Order has taken to t...

[KoJ] Chapter 43: Despair

Scia is dead.

There's no denying it any longer, no arguing against fate, no fighting reality, no refusing what's real, no living in a fantasy I so wished was true.

Scia is dead.

The lack of heartbeat in her cold body is nothing if not undeniable proof. Without so much as a breath through her tiny muzzle, I cannot ignore the blatant truth that floats before me; she's gone.

Scia's gone.

Such possibility barely even seems real. It feels like she'll just wake any sec...

[KoJ] Chapter 42: Abnegation

We fall.

The abyss welcomes us with its vast emptiness. Nothing reaches my sight. There’s not a rock to be seen, nor does space bend and weave beyond the rend we just fell through.

Gravity grips us tight and drags us down.

The Titan's roar bellows into us from behind, unleashing the fury of the lynx whose arrogance allowed us to escape. It was complacent. It let us free; twice. The first may have been because of Titans far larger than itself, but this time it knows fault f...

[KoJ] Chapter 41: Hyperfixation

The sharp pinpricks of diamond scrape across my scales, gouging ugly scars through the once pristine shine. But the marring of my scales is hardly a concern right now.

What's far more distressing is the major presence squeezing down on me. The power of the Lynx's growl crushes my scales and clenches every muscle through my body without permission. It bellows through the cavern, bouncing off the diamond spike walls and repeatedly slams through my chest with a rolling rumble.

The gr...

[YF] Chapter 234: Expansion

Turns out, the heqet’s main defence against the highly enhanced elite of the rest of the world in addition to their relentless aggression and apparent endless numbers, is their rapid construction times. In the few weeks we’ve been at war with Jarl Anoures’ forces, they’ve simply flooded the seas with those incredibly flammable ships and just enough warriors to man them.

If I wasn’t working with a heqet who followed by the same rules, there is no chance I could have held the sa...

[KoJ] Chapter 40: Reminisce

My attempts to help Scia bring her manipulation of space closer to what I can achieve were mostly fruitless, but it was still enjoyable to work with her.

She chirps again, happy that she’s able to hold the slightly shrunk state once more. I hiss a congratulations. Her reactions are far more entertaining than the achievement itself, so I find myself cheering her on whenever she thinks she’s done something impressive.

Scia hops once and blinks between my eyes. The action destabi...

[KoJ] Chapter 39: Tranquil

I slide through the bend, moss in mouth, and arrive next to Scia. She flaps once before landing on my head, snatching up her meal from the jaw that ripped it from its home.

While she chews through the strands, I spit out whatever remains. I know she likes it, but to me, it tastes horrid. Just by it touching the roof of my mouth does the urge to regurgitate rise in me. By shoving my head into the stone, I wash away some of the taste, but it lingers.

Next time, I’ll be going back ...

[KoJ] Chapter 38: Relief

We fall for a long time.

The Titan’s tear holds back the earth to both sides, but does nothing to slow our fall, or push us to either side. Gravity continues to pull at my body, a constant battle against the cushioning of air to drag us into the deepest pits.

Cleaved cliffs show a perfect cross-section of the ground in the state it was before the Titan’s powerful blow split it. Expansive cave systems open up to us, teasing an opportunity to escape, but never quite close enough...

[KoJ] Interlude 2: Ceph Part III

The blow was sudden and fast. Ceph was flung from her perch before she could react. A mighty shriek deafened her of all else. The dohrni wanted to react. She wanted to bring herself back to the earth, but the pressure was back. She couldn’t move her limbs; they flopped around like limp noodles as she was carried by the wind. Wind that seemed inclined to push her harder and further with each second.

All she could think about was that droning wail that ripped through her her body like t...

[YF] Chapter 233: Weight

It isn’t long before we reach Sylvan’s target. First, the islands’ mountain peaks rise over the horizon, followed by the tip of a lone tower. Finally, from my position flying far above the ship, dozens of masts come into view.

I dive back down to the deck below, passing the burning jets I have thrusting into the sail to amplify the ships speed. Flames bathe my body as I touch down, twisting my form from that of a falcon to bipedal in the blink of an eye.

“There is a fleet ...

[KoJ] Interlude 2: Ceph Part II

Ceph didn’t think. She just threw herself to the nearest collapsed structure. Heavy pillars and piles of junk were thrown to the side. She knew there were still people here. Whenever her team wasn’t out for work, she would be here eating and chatting with those who climbed the Titan Alps for all sorts of reasons. The opportunistic traders, Mercenary Order workers or bureaucrats, or even the families of Mercenaries that followed them up here.

None of which had the enhancement to surv...