The golden light from the depths continued to pulse upward, each wave of energy causing the ice around them to crack and shift. What Grim had initially thought was the sound of ancient machinery was becoming clearer—it was a heartbeat, massive and slow, reverberating through the walls around them.
"Sothing’s wrong," Lin said, pressing her hand against the cavern wall. She felt sothing in her palm. "This isn’t ice." Instead of the expected cold hardness of ice, it felt warm and slippery.
Suanni’s flas flickered higher, revealing exactly what was around them. The walls weren’t carved from stone or frozen water—they were ridged, pulsing gently with what sounded like a distant heartbeat. Bioluminescent veins ran along the surfaces, glowing red as it pulsed.
"We’re inside sothing," Grim realized, his voice barely above a whisper.
As if responding to his words, the chamber shuddered. Not the violent tremor of an earthquake, but sothing vast was beginning to stir. The red light pulsed brighter, and with it ca a sound that made their bones ache—a deep, resonant moan that seed to co from everywhere at once.
"A Leviathan," Lin breathed, her face pale in the strange light. "But this is impossible. The Leviathan we’ve seen is massive, but this..." She gestured at the cathedral-sized space around them. "This would have to be..."
"The mother," Suanni finished grimly. "The original Leviathan."
The chamber lurched again, more violently this ti, sending them stumbling against the organic walls. When Grim’s hand touched the surface, he could feel a pulse beneath his palm—not just a heartbeat, but the flow of sothing warm and viscous through its veins.
"Blood," Lin whispered, following his gaze to the glowing veins.
As they processed what was going on, a new danger beca apparent. The floor beneath their feet—which they now realized was the bottom of the creature’s stomach—began to glisten with moisture that hadn’t been there before. The liquid seeped from hidden pores in the organic walls, pooling around their boots with an acrid sll that made their eyes water.
"Digestive acids," Lin said urgently. "The BloodGate’s energy is waking her up."
Grim knelt and carefully used his finger to touch a pool of liquid, jerking it back imdiately as the fluid burned like concentrated acid. Where it had touched his finger, redness appeared over his finger and part of his flesh had burned off.
"How long do we have?" he asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice.
"In a normal Leviathan? Hours, maybe days," Lin replied, her eyes scanning the chamber desperately. "But this beast is massive. It could take days or weeks, or even less ti. We don’t know enough about the creature to know for sure."
The acid was rising faster now, already covering their feet despite the chamber’s enormous size. Suanni’s flas hissed and stead where they t the corrosive liquid, but even his fire couldn’t evaporate it fast enough to keep up with the flow.
"There," Lin pointed to what appeared to be a sphincter-like opening high up on the chamber wall. "That has to lead to the esophagus or respiratory system. If we can reach it..."
"That’s forty feet up," Grim observed, watching the red veins pulse with an increasing intensity around the opening.
"Then we’d better start climbing," Suanni replied, already leaping toward the wall. His claws punctured the rigid wall, though the acid that was now seeping from the walls made climbing the walls very treacherous.
Lin spread her crystalline wings, using them to hover while she examined the walls more closely. "The muscle contractions are getting stronger," she called down. "She’s not just waking up—she’s beginning to digest. If we don’t get out of here soon, the entire chamber will compress."
As if to emphasize her point, the walls pulsed inward slightly, the space around them noticeably smaller than it had been monts before. The acid level rose, now reaching their ankles.
Grim pressed himself against the wall, searching for handholds in the anatomy of the beast. The surface was warm. It was like climbing the inside of a living throat. The red veins provided so grip, though when they pulsed, your grip would slip a little.
"Wait," he said suddenly, noticing sothing about the reaction from the veins.
Where his hands touched the bioluminescent veins, the red glow intensified, spreading outward from the contact point. More importantly, the section of wall he was touching seed to solidify slightly, becoming easier to grip.
Grim experinted, pressing both palms against a large vein that ran vertically up the chamber wall. The red light flared, and for a mont, he felt a connection.
"I can feel her," he said in amazent. "She’s... curious about us. Not angry, just... trying to understand what we are."
"Can you communicate with her?" Lin asked urgently. The acid had reached their knees now, and the chamber walls were beginning to contract in earnest. They were standing on large rocks to stay on higher ground.
Grim closed his eyes and focused on the connection, trying to project his thoughts. The response was overwhelming—a series of mories ran through his brain.
But underlying it all was confusion and the growing urgency of the Leviathan’s body. The body was treating them as food to be digested, regardless of any higher-level recognition.
"I don’t think she can stop it," Grim called to the others. "It’s automatic."
He pressed deeper into the connection, searching through the creature’s vast anatomy for alternatives to being dissolved. The circulatory system, the respiratory chambers, the neural pathways that ran like highways through her body...
"There," he said suddenly, pointing to a different opening that had appeared as the chamber contracted. "That leads to her gills. If we can reach the gill chambers, we can get out."
The acid had reached their waists now, and the organic walls were beginning to secrete additional enzys that made the air itself burn their lungs. They were running out of ti for debate.
Suanni, having reached the original opening they’d spotted, called down to them. "This passage is too narrow and it’s filling with acid too. Grim’s right—we need to try the gills."
The new opening was lower on the wall but required them to swim through increasingly concentrated digestive fluid to reach it. Lin wrapped herself in a barrier of crystalline ice, creating a temporary bubble of protection to guide them.
As they swam through the narrow passage leading away from the stomach, Grim felt the creature’s massive body beginning to move in earnest. After centuries of stillness, the beast was returning to life.
Behind them, the stomach chamber collapsed entirely, crushing the space they were just in monts before.
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