"Have you ever seen the horizon move?" I asked no one in particular.

"No," came Qīwù's quick reply. She was lying on her back, looking at birds up in the branches. István was examining the tree trunk, while Viktor was taking another cat nap. I wouldn't even be surprised if he started sprouting whiskers, considering how many of those he'd had recently.

I scrutinized the direction we had come from again. There wasn't anything visible, just a low line of foliage, shimmering with the waves of heat rising off the grass. Maybe I was seeing mirages.

I pushed myself up from my position leaning against one of the sizable roots protruding around the base of the trunk. Stretching my arms, I wandered my way out into the grass: not really intending to go too far as I wanted to examine the way forward.

There had to be some reason behind the odd structure of this fissure in the earth we were moving through. It wasn't even remotely explainable via geologic processes, nor did it look artificial, to my eyes.

On one side we had the long canyon. On the other, after the grassland, lay the mountain, surrounded as it was by the sheer walls of the canyon. It was as though a child had built the slowly sloping foothills inside the bottom of a giant bucket with a crack on one side leading out into the grassland and the ravine we'd entered through.

My two 'Elders' came beside me, with Qīwù bringing up the rear, as something or other had distracted her.

"There is a weird bird in that tree. I couldn't get a good look at it though; it kept hopping away whenever I caught a glimpse of it," she explained, still tugging the strap of the pack onto her shoulder.

"We're good to go then?" Having received a trio of affirmations, we set back out into the grass.

Viktor took point this time. His large... largeness was not only giving him a vantage point to see further into the area around us, but also doing me the favor of not having to push through the grass personally, as he'd already stomped it flat just from his passing.

The stream meandered back and forth across the meadow. Curiously, it was running towards the mountain in ahead of us, rather than away from it. It did this despite the land slowly rising, appearing like it was defying gravity but instead just cutting a deeper channel as it went, picking up width and depth alike. It seemed something was adding to the flow, but we never saw any other flows join.

Little fish were swimming with the current, flashes of their color catching the eye as we jumped back and forth over it when it got in our way. The leaps were something I couldn't have made before I had Nebula, but seemed all to easy now, something I hadn't really noticed before.

It was odd how the slow improvements snuck into the gap in your perception. It reminded me of how much better the family ate after I got my job, and then again after the promotion. I went from being able to see my ribs to actually having some skin to stick them together with.

Now with Qīwù essentially force-feeding me, I was in real danger of losing track of them. Who knows, keep this up and someday I might have an actual bust.

I may or may not have startled some birds living in the grass into flight by bursting into laughter at the thought, garnering some strange looks from the others. Pretty sure Alessa stole all of those genes long before they got to me.

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Meh, it was easier kicking bad guys in the face without unneeded 'accessories'. Besides, if anyone had thoughts about it, and were dumb enough to say them to my face, I could just yeet them into next year.

"You look like you have some pleasant thoughts," István commented.

"Thinking about hitting people halfway to the horizon," I answered truthfully.

"The best kind of thoughts," Viktor said. "I approve."

Not sure why, but having the big guy approve of me made me legitimately happy.

"You would," said Qīwù under her breath next to me, clearly back to being annoyed at life in general.

Her slipping and falling into the edge of the stream the next time we crossed was totally coincidental, I assure you. Pretty sure it was karma or something. The other sticks-in-the-mud needed company.

The grass slowly yellowed as we grew closer to the mountain, and the air gained a bit of a chill. It was like walking through the seasons, and it didn't seem at all natural. By the same token, it didn't seem any less natural than anything else happening in this weird sunken plain, either.

A shudder ran through the ground. Followed shortly by a second, then a third a few minutes later.

"That's definitely no good," Qiwu, now looking a bit muddier around the bottom half, said.

"You do realize that you saying that is definitely a curse at this point, right?" I said, attempting not to be annoyed with her, while also not being entirely serious - joking about being cursed.

Well, I was joking until there was a quake that would have knocked us directly off our feet if not for the kind of enhanced reflexes I had been musing about earlier.

I looked up at the still-shrouded peak of the mountain, expecting some sort of volcanic nonsense to come tumbling down at us, when I heard a rumble that was distinctly in the other direction.

Turning around and looking, I realized I hadn't been off originally; the horizon was in fact moving. Or rather, from our enhanced vantage point, I was able to make out the biggest damn lizard I had ever seen was slowly trundling its way down the valley.

The quakes? Footsteps. That sucker was so huge that merely the act of dropping feet was enough to shake the ground. How on earth had we not seen this thing?

"Fascinating," István said. "That explains the growth patterns of the plants before."

It took several seconds before I recalled what he was talking about - the weird way all the vines were bent over and grew in the odd bowl shape across the width of the canyon. That sucker had been dragging its belly through there, knocking everything over. I remembered another detail.

"I bet those oddly shaped pools of water were footprints," I commented as we all stared down at it. "We were just too small to see the outline well." It was in the middle of ever-so-slowly lifting a foot. At least it looked slow from here. From right in front of it it was probably like watching buildings move while a rather well-scaled sky moved past like clouds zipping through on the breeze.

As we watched, its mouth peaked open and a pink ball appeared in front of its nose. It looked almost as though it was blowing a bubble with some gum.

Then it shot out like a cannon, moving so fast I could barely make it out. It came back moments later with one of the lizards we'd been fighting firmly affixed to the end.

Only I could tell that this particular victim was far larger than any of the ones we had fought. It disappeared into the mouth like a piece of candy might into the maw of a hungry Liam. He could be quite the monster himself when he wasn't fed.

Shaking the odd thought aside, I realized that we were very much in danger from this thing, even if it was many kilometers away.

"We should probably run." I said, tearing my eyes away from the scene. "Now, preferably."

"I find myself agreeing with you quite often lately… This being one of those times." Viktor surprised me by being the first to join my sprint. You'd think he'd want to try to punch it first. Apparently even he had his limits. István joined soon thereafter.

As the last of our group, Qīwù surprised me by doing little more than sighing loudly, like she expected this. She flashed forward in a burst of speed after one last look.

I guess if you're always expecting the worst, at least you're never disappointed.

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