Star Side

Chapter 15

In the midst of his most painful hell, he caught the most divine scent.

He'd been suffocating, teetering between a life of strange metal walls and a death of hot darkness. The strange prey he'd chased into the strange, giant egg had filled the innards with heaven's unbearable air on seeing him hiding in the ceiling, and he'd thought he'd died then. But then he'd come to back in the egg, alone, and barely able to breathe. He'd clawed out of his hiding space, desperate for air, only to collapse on the strange, narrow floor.

He didn't how long he had lain there, slowly dying, when the blips of time where he was conscious began to grow longer, and then he'd smelt it: that certain something. It had been on the edge of his senses the entire time, he realized. He just hadn't been aware enough to process it. Dying could do that.

But now, he felt a bit more alive than he did dead, and that smell, faint as it was, held him awake like a thread of steel.

It was unlike anything he'd ever encountered. A sweetness beyond words, a spice, a sour, a fresh brush of ice with the warmth of rare sunshine. It called to the deepest parts of him. Before he knew it, breathing had become less of a problem then stopping his fangs from dripping claiming venom across the floor. He'd only ever tasted that venom a few times, but never in gushing, nearly drowning amounts as this.

Then he was upright again, shoulders heaving against a newfound weight. His body ached and his head spun.

But he had to find it.

He followed blindly through the crevice of the metal egg to a metal great hall he couldn't begin to describe. But even as he looked at the blinking lights, the white, and the sea of stars outside glass walls (if it even was glass), he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, where he had come.

Heaven.

It made him quake with fear. He nearly crawled back into the egg, but even alone he couldn't show such weakness. His integrity would not allow it, because even if no one were here to see him, he could see him, and one's own image of oneself trumped what other's saw any day.

A new desperation overcame him in tracking the scent, as it now held the only source of comfort for him. Tales of heaven were those of great beings who ruled the sky with jealousy and unimaginable power. Yes, they may have created the earth, but that didn't mean they allowed the worms dwelling beneath it to tread to close to their lair, as only made sense. A god could defend their territory indefinitely.

Had the curious prey he captured been a servant of these gods?

He shuddered at the thought, even as he followed the scent to...a dead end.

He scratched at the metal, flinching back at the squeal against his claws. He looked all around for a hole or some kind of crack. His kind specialized in making use of any hole. But all he found was a grate of metal against a narrow, square tunnel, which rumbled like the airway of a titanic beast.

But his senses told him there was space on the other side of that metal wall. If he could just find a way around, he could continue his hunt, find the scent...

Still unable to breathe completely, he let himself fall to the floor to wheeze for a bit as he gathered his courage. The stars outside the glass filled him terrible dread, so he gave them his back.

More time passed. He wavered in and out of sleep. Each time he woke up he thought he could breathe easier. His body grew lighter. His back grew hotter.

Then, he woke up, and found himself breathing as easily as he did in the earth. His body tingled with electric energy. He didn't even feel hungry, though he imagine it had been quite some time since his last meal.

With this newfound energy he easily broke through the metal grating. He did find it more difficult to streamline his body into the enclosed space. His usually pliant joins and flexible bones seemed to have hardened. Something about him had changed, he knew, but he didn't fear it anymore. Heaven's toxic air had somehow failed to kill him. That could only mean good things.

The tunnel he found turned out to not be as simple as he had anticipated. He'd hoped it would direct him to the space beyond the wall straightway, but instead it forked, again and again, and he quickly found himself lost. His sense of direction, which never failed his kind, spun about his head as though it still suffocated without him.

Many new and terrifying things had happened to him up until then. But none had broke him until then. He'd known which way he faced since the moment he hatched. Never had he found himself...directionless, floating, and trapped in a tunnel nonetheless with a slowly hardening body. What if he got to the point where he couldn't move at all? What if he ended up just dying here, in some unknown hole, with the whole of heaven being none the wiser?

Breathing became hard again. His eyes rolled. His spines clacked against the metal walls over and over, a drilling death rattle.

Just as his jaws dropped to let out the whine he'd sworn to never make, the scent returned to him.

Divine. Gentle. Intoxicating. Calling him.

He slithered back into motion, fueled with a new desperation. He didn't even know why he was following it anymore. There was no promise that whatever gave off this scent would save him. More likely than not, it would only give him death. He knew that. But with everything around him so strange, and even his sense of what was up or down lost, all he had left was his instincts and his instincts told him to find that scent with every fiber of his being.

He came to another grate. By then, his stiffening body felt bruised and cramped from tunneling, yet more unnerving news to him. But the electric energy had yet to leave him, so the grate fell away like paper. He slipped out onto a metal floor, groaning, whimpering, wincing as his joints popped back into place when before they would have slid in like butter, like a tongue withdrawing into a maw. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to fit into such a cramped space again. His tunneling days may be over.

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt the moment his head went up.

Stars. Colors. Clouds. Nothing held the heavens back. It spread above him like a sea.

Without his sense of direction, a sudden terror of falling up and up into that never-ending ocean of jewels and silks overcame him. He yanked his head down, wheezing as fear grappled in his chest and tightened his throat.

Only for his eyes to fall upon her.