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I look up, toward the exit. As I do, considering how best to plot my escape, he pins me to the ground again, this time digging deep into my skin. I cry out.
“Stay!” he roars.
The cavern shakes from the ferocity of this beast. I have never seen a creature so terrifying, and even now, I struggle to understand it. Rocks come crashing to the cavern floor beside me, as the power of his cry shakes the very structure of the cave around us.
Looking up into his golden eyes, which shimmer and burn even against the brightness of this radiant, imposing cavern, I am too terrified to speak.
But there’s an incomprehensible glory to his appearance, and the way he carries himself, that I have never known before. Unlike the monsters above me, who carried me away into slavery, he is honest about his intentions.
I wonder, if I stay here, will he truly devour me, as he says? And am I better off staying in this cavern, or finding some way to return to the world above?
I scan his form for any signs of vulnerability, and there is nothing. There are jagged cuts running along his formidable scales, and if I were quick enough, I could go for the beating wings that carry him aloft.
But as I am now, I am still far too weak, far too slow, to consider attacking him. And I’m not sure that I want to, because though he has cut into my flesh, and my shoulder burns from his latest attack, I’ve seen no indication that he wants to kill me. He could overpower me and devour me whole in an instant if he wanted to.
Which makes it all the more puzzling that he hasn’t tried.
That’s when I hear it. The strange, roaring sounds emerging from the depths of the caverns around us are approaching fast, resounding through the darkness.
I look around me, trying to determine the source of the sounds within this reverberating, dense cavern, feeling my very survival at risk from something potentially even more fearsome.
He gets down on all fours, looking toward the wide, dark, beckoning entrance ahead of us.
“Stay back,” he insists. “Do not leave.”
He flies forward, and another great monstrosity, whose origins I cannot bring myself to understand, appears in full view, illuminated by the crystalline walls of this massive cavern.
Its flesh is gray and smoke-colored eyes protrude from its shoulders. Bright, luminescent boletus grow out of the holes in its muscular body. Where its head should be is nothing, to my vision, and despite its immense size, it seems to glide as it moves, charging into the dense space before me. It stands some eighteen feet tall in the distance.
While my captor charges forward, flying directly at it, I can already tell that it sees me. Its speed increases, and it pivots away from the creature keeping me here, flinging him aside while it continues its forward assault. This beast is far larger than even the creature keeping me here, and I dread to think of what it intends to do to me.
But he picks himself up, then charges toward the beast, claws fully drawn. Maybe the beast is larger than him, but it doesn’t have his agility.
He penetrates one of the beast’s monstrously open eyes with his claws fully extended, driving it into the rock face below me. The monster staggers, but before it can even stand to its feet, my captor has dove upward and pierced yet another eye.
I feel immense gratitude before realizing the type of creature he is.
His maw opens, and he devours part of the horror’s shoulder, mouth agape. This great horror attempts to collect its strength, reaching up to swat at my captor, but as it does, he dives out of the way, ripping into the creature’s arms with his fangs.
There is something so macabre about the spectacle on display, the scene unfolding before my eyes. He mercilessly tears into this creature, and despite its tremendous size, by comparison, I can see the life leaving it.
Yet something about it excites me. I am uncertain if any creature in this known world could stand up to him – what the limitations of his power truly are.
The monster vanquished, I walk slowly over to him, crossing the great threshold, careful not to stumble in the darkness. I just use the bright cristallum in the wall ahead for guidance.
“Do you have a name?” I ask him uncertainly. He is still tearing into his meal, ripping it to pieces.
“Why would you ask me such a question?” he asks.
“I’m Ariella,” I say in response. There’s something quick and jumpy about the way I say it, an eagerness I don’t understand.
“A village that I gradually tore apart gave me a name once,” he replies, through mouthfuls of boletus and flesh. “They called me Zyranth.”
“Then I will call you Zyranth,” I say, looking around me at the great expanse.
Several thoughts run through my mind.
One is that I’m very hungry and that everything in this cavern terrifies me as a food source.
