Free. Finally free.
The dark, the wet, and the cold had been his cellmates for the length of a hundred lifetimes. All three clung to his steel-gray fur, stiffening his flesh and bones, commanding that he stay in his subterranean cell. But the ribbon was finally broken, after centuries of its supposedly unyielding resilience. If he could not distance himself from this prison quickly, his captors would be upon him with the force of lightning and earthquake. If they discovered that he could no longer be contained, they would destroy him.
His legs fired like pistons. His lungs ached from all the years of pumping icy air and stale dust, and they burned as fresh, warm air greeted them in his flight. So many parts of him burned: his eyes from the light, his nose from the million new scents, and his blood for raging, ravenous revenge.
His nose sniffed the winds. The world smells so different.
His ears twitched at the cacophony that echoed from all corners of the land. The world sounds so different.
The world. I despise it.
He had always hated the world. Not that the world itself had ever done anything to him, other than force him to live in it. He had been born with the sole purpose to devour it one day. He couldn’t possibly love the world if his existence demanded that he would end it.
Not yet, though. There were things to be done first. He would devour that fool Lawkeeper who tied the ribbon on him, dooming him to an eternity of solitude. He would devour the fool gods who thought he could be locked away. Then, with great relish, he would devour the world, the moon, the sun, and anything else he craved.
His tongue slid into the empty notch of his teeth that had once displayed his most prized feature. My fang. How I have waited to reclaim you.
He had heard whispers trickle down through the cracks of the earth while he had been decaying in his prison. He had heard rumors about what had been done with his fang. Had he known that his fang would have snagged in the Lawkeeper’s wrist and been torn clean from his mouth, he never would have bitten off the traitor’s hand to begin with.
The whispers had spoken of his fang being transformed, smithed into a wondrous dagger. The whispers had rumored that because it was his fang, it might be the only weapon in the world that could kill him.
He had to find his fang. He needed it if he was to consume those who had betrayed him. He had to ensure there was nothing, and no one, out there who could pose a threat to his quest.
The whispers had once mentioned, very softly, very provocatively, that his fang may have fallen into the possession of the last living sphinx …