[prev]

Plop. Plop. Plop.

The sound of her saliva dripping onto the stone ground from her slack-jaw is the only noise to be heard in the caverns. Then, she moves again, a soft clop ringing out with each footstep, preceded by the snap! and pop! of her aching joints. A beast her size would surely have an audible heartbeat as well, but it has been lifetimes since she last heard the sound of her own organs. Now, the only noises she makes are deliberate—or, in the case of her saliva, the result of venom poisoning her nerves and blood. 

There is foam clinging desperately to her lips, inaudible as bubbles flake off and float gently to the ground. Lifting her head is becoming increasingly difficult, the venom sending a searing pain through her skull each time her head is taller than her heart. 

She knows she will not succumb to this, that centipede venom is not deadly to any creature larger than a bat. She knows this for certain, just as she knows that she is a God and this life is her Destiny. It is not faith that guides her—it’s fact.

Plop.

The dripping is slowing now, her mouth drying out from hanging open for so long. Good riddance.

Her whiskers are hypersensitive, surely a result of the venom, twitching erratically as they attempt to detect any signs of prey. A small bat and a centipede could never be enough to sustain her, not as her only meals in an impossibly long span of time. No, her adaptation to life as a predator means that on the rare occasions that she does feast, she must consume more than any herbivore could in one sitting. In many ways, she supposes her dietary habits are more arachnid than equine.

She tries to swallow back a blood clot caught in her gums, a lingering consequence of her prior chiropteran meal, but the attempt dislodges a bone shard from her inner lip and she chokes on it, dry mouth unable to produce enough saliva to force it down. Her strangled hacking assaults her ears, the stones reverberating it back to her as if cackling at her helplessness. 

And then, finally, a hard cough spits the bone out, slick with blood and undigested flesh. It lands with a disgusting sound somewhere between squelch and tik, a desperate shout in the new silence of the cavern.

Blind as she may be, Eremita can feel the darkness glaring at her, as if mortified by her blatant display of weakness. She disregards it, giving her head and neck a hard shake to physically reject her discomfort, the motion immediately followed by countless tiks as more bone fragments fly out of her mouth and collide against the stone surroundings. 

Plop.

Blood, again. She almost prefers saliva—its salty taste is certainly more bearable than the metallic of blood. Not that she can taste much of anything at the moment, not with her lower jaw still hanging limply beneath her head and her tongue swollen to the point of being completely non-functional even if it weren't dangling along with her jaw.

Da-dum.

The sound is almost inaudible in the distance, but her ears pick it up anyway. The distinct beating of a tiny heart. 

Fwip-fwip. Fwip-fwip.

Wing flaps. Those of a bat, specifically. It is flying away from her, the rhythmic beating fading into the silence. No!

Her legs are trembling, now, as she forces them to canter toward the prey. And it aches, her nerves dull and throbbing from the effects of the venom, but her hunger drives her forward in spite of it.

The fwip-fwip is getting closer, closer, closer, until she’s lifting her head and ignoring the pain of doing so, adrenaline returning control to her jaws and neck outstretched to reach…

Clack!

Her teeth collide with each other, sending a violent jolt through her skull, having just narrowly missed her target. Damn!

She comes to a halt, attempting to regain her composure before she returns to the chase. Her entire body rattles, a shuddering skeleton in the dark. She’s so tired, her body so weak, but the hunger persists. The hunger always persists. Her stomach does not care for the venom coursing through her veins nor for the way her legs threaten to buckle beneath the weight of her skin and bones and organs. Why should it? She does not care for those things, either.

Function has returned to her lower jaw, however fleeting it may be, and she will not let it go to waste.

Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. 

Hundreds, thousands of heartbeats. A million unsynced thumps filling each passing second, the most sound the dungeon has to offer at these depths. The cacophony assaults Eremita’s sensitive ears, threatening to deafen her with the overwhelming noise. Even her own thoughts are drowned out by the volume, the plop from her mouth-blood hitting stone nearly inaudible when previously it was the loudest sound to be heard. 

But, ‘A feast,’ her stomach gurgles, contracting in a way that makes her feel nauseous to the point of vomiting if that were a skill her species possessed. 

But, ‘Pain,’ her brain replies, too weak to think clearly. 

‘Hurts. Hurts. Hurts.’

Da-dum. Da-dum. 

‘Hunger! Hunger!’

Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum.

‘Pain. Pain. Pain.’

Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum.

‘A feast! Feast! Feast!’

With the scream of a predator with nothing left to lose, she lunges into the air, hunger parting her maw and gnashing through the delicate flesh of multiple bats at once. 

Tik! Tik! Tik!

Their shrill cries fall on uncaring ears, their wings beating frantically against a mouth that will not concede. They sink tiny claws and teeth into whatever flesh they can find purchase on, but their hunter is a far cry from a stranger to pain. 

Tiktiktiktiktiktiktik!

But still, they scream. Until their pleading is cut short with the sickening crunch and crack of skulls and spines shattering between flat teeth. Until their bones are forcibly torn from their flesh by desperate masticating and embedded into the mouth of a being far less holy than themselves.

Perhaps these are the dracula bats Eremita has encountered before. Or perhaps they are the far gentler painted bats. Neither outcome makes any difference to her—they’re both equally tasteless when she swallows.

Fwipfwipfwipfwipfwipfwipfwipfwip—

Tiktiktiktik!

Another mouthful of prey, stolen from their flight by a whisker-guided mouth. Another crunch!, another crack!, another plop-plop-splat. 

She doesn't need saliva, dryness no longer a concern with the blood of bats and her own mutilated mouth to lubricate the meal. A long splinter of bone embeds itself behind her incisors, and her swollen tongue works it back out, spitting it onto the stone ground with a p-tik. 

And then, a step forward, reaching for another bite. Knees and hocks buckling beneath her, adrenaline losing its battle with the venom still coursing through her veins. Slack-jaw, again, mouth raw and burning and spilling blood and flesh onto the stone below it disobediently. 

She shifts her front hooves beneath her, pushing against them with all of the strength she can muster in an attempt to stand again. Her efforts are futile, legs far too shaky and muscle control far too poor to raise herself. 

Tik! Tik! Tik! Tik! Tik!

The bats mock her, unimpressed by how few of their colony she managed to consume before collapsing. Unimpressed by her weakness.

Gods do not surrender. Nor will she, divine as she is.

But even the mightiest must rest.