It ached.
My limbs, my head, my guts. All of me. Something growing closer to pain, but not quite there. The need pressed at the back of my mind, filling my ears with whispers.
Parts of me looked to the ocean, and wished its waves were greater, their splashes grander. Sound to wash away sound. But the bay remained stubbornly calm, as peaceful as the moment I first saw it.
I trotted faster. This was near the place. A rocky formation I remembered loomed over the beach in the distance. In other circumstances, I might have worried I wouldn't reach it before...
My stomach growled, the noise so distorted, so deep, I felt a tinge of cold fear rolling on my spine.
There had been so little life left in Sea Orchid. I wanted to laugh, and I wanted to cry. It hadn't lasted me long. Tiny sparks of anger brazed in my chest if I thought about it. Death, for so little? Wasn't that a big fat joke?!
“I love you, Orchid.”
She had been loved, damn it! She had had a stallion to share her every thought, her every desire. She had been someone! Not just an automation! Someone!
Every other step, my ears ticked at the phantom sound of metal clicking against another. I wasn't wearing that armour, but I could still feel it sticking to my fur. A monstrous thing had lodged in my heart, confident in its coming time.
Then echoed a feminine scream, and I shook off the pangs of hunger. Before my eyes, Small Pond materialized, in full gallop, face marred by streaks of tears and mane dishevelled. Hot on her steps, a royal blue creature roared, raising two pincers the size of doors in the air. It was close. Close enough to snap at the tip of Pond's tail and cut off a handful of hair.
“Prince William!” she cried, her face suddenly lit up with such shine. “Please, help me!”
I took in the familiar scene, the so familiar scene, and scoffed.
“No.”
Small Pond's eyes widened to a truly comical extent, near bulging out of her skull. Her mouth fully opened to speak, she quickly closed it again. And there, her hooves tangled together, bumping on the sand. Small Pond splayed across the grains on the beach with a cry of horrified shock. Behind her, the shellfish monster shot forward, its pincers gleaming under the sun.
A bolt of crimson lightning sent it scampering back a respectable distance.
“You,” I growled at the snarling lobster, “quiet.”
Its beady eyes seemed to darken then, its pincers closer and bigger than before. They clicked, as if baiting my neck to be placed within their tender care. And truly, I wished I could have cared.
My voice strained from the thunderous eruptions I reigned in. “You know how many of your siblings I killed in horrible ways. Save yourself a good deal of agony and be quiet for a little bit.”
The pincers stilled. A rumbling growl rising from its guts, the creature shrunk back. Weariness sparked in its eyes, and its gaze shifted between Small Pond and me. Its mandibles clicked quickly.
Small Pond hung closer to me.
“Prince William,” she whispered, looking at me as if for the first time. The sense of familiarity had gone from her eyes. Dread and worry shone on her face. “Please...”
This wasn't like me. I could tell, she was thinking it. Prince William was a nice and boastful stallion that saved the damsels and dudes in distress without a second thought. Hell, for a moment, even the strong resolve I drew upon faltered. Was this influenced by my newfound hunger? Or was it the strings in the dark my mind insisted upon seeing?
But no, on this, I refused to hesitate any longer. Here and now, I knew right and wrongs, and I had the decency not to lie about them any longer.
“I always seem to find you here, Small Pond,” I said, pretending not to hear her gasp.
Because... because this was where I drew the line in the sand. How many times had we done this before? Thinking back, I couldn't even be sure. It had become a habit, something far from noteworthy, and now the thought brought me a special kind of shame.
I hadn't helped Small Pond at all.
With a growl, I rounded on her, wings flared. “Why aren't you crushing that lobster into the ground? You've seen me do it.”
She looked at me as if I still resembled a mannequin, and a somber feeling clawed at my insides. At the tip of my horn, magic sparked and sizzled.
“I... I can't...” she sobbed.
A sort of madness seized control of my senses, and our surroundings blurred.
“You can!” I jumped forth to grab the sides of her face. “You absolutely can! You're dreaming, Small Pond! Do you hear me?! You're dreaming! What does one tell a foal when they wake up from a bad nightmare?!”
Small Pond's face was white under her fur. Her eyes were jumping, darting over every inch of me in search of the old William. The one she could cower behind and safely ask to destroy her fear. She paled further, when she found no sign of him. Lives were at stakes, hers included. I couldn't afford to play nice anymore.
“Tell me!”
Her muscles went slack, and she would have fallen if not for my grip. “You say... it can't hurt them...” Each word, bitten out through tears. “It's not real.”
“Then why?!” I pointed a black hoof at the giant lobster. “Why do they scare you so damn much? You fish them every day!”
Small Pond froze. Not for the harshness of my tone nor the anger rumbling in my chest, but the root of it in my words. I'd said the wrong thing, and my brain went into overdrive trying to figure out which part it had been. She fishes them everyday?
In the corner of my eyes, I caught a sudden glimpse of royal blue. Startled, I barely add time to conjure a barrier before two razor sharp pincers struck them with a resounding crackle of thunder. Heat pumping in my veins, I stared at the sharp tips inches from my cornea.
In my hooves, Small Pond remained as unmoving as a statue. I wouldn't get anything of her.
“From Hell's heart,” I growled while a ragged lance materialized in my hoof, “I stab at thee!”
The lobster, in all its berserk rage, didn't see me coming.
The barrier went down.
Guts and blood rained over my body. I did not flinch.
The lance slipped out of the carcass, fell onto the sand, disappeared. So did the corpse.
Only the shallower breaths I gulped in could indicate this even happened. Or, perhaps, that was the pressure of fear pushing me farther than I should go. It boiled inside me. Begging to be let out. Granny was dead, and I had been dying before that. Luna was right, everything she said, about the dreamers and me. It was kill or be killed in this realm, and I was covered in blood.
“I am a dreamon.”
Small Pond's gaze broke away from the spot the lobster's corpse had been in.
“W-what?”
A strange smile showed on my face, and I chuckled under my breath. “I'm a dreamon. A pony-eating monster that lives inside dreams. I don't know how or why it happened, but that's what I am now.”
She tried to form words, her mouth moving silently. Her hoof raised, as if to ask a question.
“I... I don't understand...”
Neither did I, for that matter, but the words were spilling out of me like blood from an open wound. “Granny Orchid is gone. It's my fault. I didn't mean to, but I did it. She vanished, right in front of my eyes. Because of a kiss.”
“Granny Orchid?” she repeated, her ears drooped to the side.
“Yup. She's gone.” I pushed forward, despite the itch at the tip of my muzzle and the sting in my eyes. “A... a kiss... and she thanked me, damn it! She said I was kind!”
Small Pond stared down at her hooves. I could not see her face anymore, hidden by the falling strands of her mane. What did she think of me?
“You're in a dream, Small Pond, your own dream, and you're in danger because I could eat you. You need to wake up before it happens.”
“It's... I don't believe you.” She shook her head, hard enough her fringe flew to the side. “Prince William, I'm not afraid. You are kind. You said you wouldn't help but you did.”
I bit back a scream of frustration. A stinging feeling erupted in my bottom lips, where I had bitten with sharper than equine teeth. Her trust in me was the very reason I hadn't wanted to help her. She had just been the damsel to my shining heroic knight, and who would believe the paragon to be a dangerous monster?
At the back of my mind resonated a raspy chuckle. It'd be easier, said a voice like the String-Man's. And with a shudder, I clamped my wings against my midsection. No.
It would have to be the hard way, I decided then. My stomach growled louder in protest, but I gathered what little of my determination I could. Like the others. I only had to will it.
I was working up the nerves and the guts to try, when my breath stilled in my lungs and a sudden heat flared up around my heart. No. The word had come and hammered down into my will from the purest, most basic instinct I had. NO. Others had been fine, but I shouldn't force Small Pond out. I shouldn't even think about it.
Separating a person from their dreams was a bad idea.
It wasn't this simple. Not if I wished for her to still be herself on the way out. And, with a flicker of warmth near my heart, I realized that I wished her to be nothing else than Small Pond. Fishermare, her own pony.
Said mare was gazing at me with a slight frown, hesitant, biting her lip.
So, she was bullheaded, but caring. What a coincidence. So was I.
“You were lying,” I said, stern. “You are afraid. This whole place is proof that you are afraid. I just killed a lobster that scared you out of your wits.”
“I...” She tensed, her frown turning into a scowl. “I am not afraid.”
“Tell me.” It wasn't an order this time. Maybe a demand, or a plea. “What are you afraid of?”
She shook her head. “I'm not. There's nothing to fear in Horseshoe Bay! I'm happy where I am!”
My heart skipped a beat. Gotcha! “Nothing to fear except the shellfishes. Why are you scared of them? What makes them so scary? What are they?”
Her eyes searched for an exit.
Sand rose into walls around her. The only way out was through me.
She looked like she'd rather die than try. She backed slowly, until her tail touched the sand and there was nowhere to run.
Her teeth sunk in her bottom lips, so hard I winced. A trail of blood dripped off her chin.
The sight of it made my heartbeat faster, unease spread to the tip of my wings. “No... nopony will know. Just tell me, acknowledge it. You're afraid of those shellfishes for a reason, a better one than just them being big in this dream. What are they?”
“No!” Tears fell into the sand and mixed with the pooling red. “Don't make me say it! It's wrong!”
“WRONG IS YOU DYING, POND!” I shouted, screamed, hollered, so loud my throat felt raw, because I couldn't, I couldn't let it happen! I wouldn't watch her blink out of existence, never to wake up again. Granny... Granny alone had been too much! “WHY WON'T YOU SAY IT?!”
Before my eyes, I saw the trails of tears in her fur darken. They spread over her, mingling over her frame, through her body. Her legs shook, and her back began to cave. Each 'no' she frantically whispered added to the weight on her limbs. The trails took on a solid shape, like chains of a deep purple iron, and from each link in the chains oozed a sickening fear.
The sensation struck me straight at the heart, and my stomach lurched. It felt like the String-Man was holding me. It felt as if I would die from the fright.
In my veins came rushing a stream of fire. Stomping, I bent the dream to my will. “WHAT IS THIS?!”
Air turned into flesh, glistening red under the sun and the moon. It shifted and twisted and hardened, suddenly a creature under a carapace, six-legged, looming above us both.
The crab's pincers grabbed Pond at the throat.
“WHAT IS IT?!”
I watched, my heartbeat hammering in my ears, the faint glaze over her eyes dimming. Her mouth moved, without a sound. Small Pond's chains splintered, and she fell to the ground, free from her restraint and the summoned crab's grip.
It hissed, shaking on all six legs, before its shell burst open in another shower of gore. There was no time to shield myself from it. A splatter of blood hit me straight in the face, blinding me in one eye.
“Damn it,” I swore, one hoof rubbing my face.
When I could see again, all of my anger felt blown away by the sight in front of me. I had yet to meet the stallion fading in the air, but one glance at Small Pond, and I knew. The resemblance was just too strong.
My voice felt strange to my own two ears. “Your brother? Small Fry, right?”
Small Pond laughed, sobbed and nodded.
Could it be? Truly? “I haven't met you inside the town, have I?”
Always on the outskirt. Always on the beach, fleeing for her life from a shellfish. The only time she hadn't been, she had led me to Horseshoe Bay, then disappeared.
It felt like a puzzle piece falling into place. And now, I realized that there had been others.
"You never went to Canterlot, did you? Not there, nor any of the other places. When we spoke about sensations and things only ponies would experience, I heard your voice. When you were a kid. You wanted to see Canterlot. Have you ever actually left Horseshoe Bay?"
My question startled her. Too much. Small Pond made a visible effort to gather herself, to protect her heart laid bare.
“I'm a fisherpony, one of the best,” she said with a quiet confidence. “Of course I leave town with my boat.”
Parts of me wanted to smile at the way she held herself. At her pride. But I couldn't bear to, not with the words at the tip of my tongue. The facade was so fragile a breeze would break it.
“But you always land back here.”
Her tail violently flicked to the side. She looked back to me with wide eyes. “I... you...”
Softly, I lifted her chin, feeling as if she would break like fine china. “Am I wrong?”
“I want out! Can you understand that?!” she screamed. Every inch of her broke out with unrestrained frustration, and she shoved me away with surprising strength. “I suffocate every breath I take in this damnable town! My cutie mark is a mobious salmon! It's the largest fish in the celestial sea, and it goes crazy in shallow water! Doesn't that tell ponies something about me?! Isn't there one pony that see that?”
One pony. Anypony at all. But really, what she meant was for one particular pony to see it.
“Your brother doesn't,” I breathed out in a whisper.
Small Pond plastered a bitter smile on her face, and looked me dead in the eyes. “He's just so bucking happy here! It's his dream, opening the first gourmet restaurant in our little village. And I'm glad for him. It's amazing that he actually did it! But he needs fresh product often, the best one can find.” Her expression fell. “He... he needed, no, needs me.”
Water droplets splashed against the side of my face. Seafoam glided over the beach, far enough to reach our hooves, and leave muddied sand. Like lost souls, seashells followed the height of the waves, and disappeared into the blue.
“So that's it. The monsters. They keep you from the sea. And you can't attack them, because deep down, you know they are your brother. You can't bring yourself to stop coming here or fight for your own dream.”
Small Pond buried her face on my shoulder, and I felt it become damp.
“Please don't tell Fry,” she whispered. “He can't find out.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Why would I tell him? I never even met the guy.”
From the look on her face, Small Pond wanted to melt into words of gratitude and shame. But she never had the time to.
“No need,” said a stranger's voice behind us, “I'm here and I heard.”
In a distant part of my mind, I recognized this from my own nightmares. This was the masochistic part of someone's brain that wanted the realization to sink in. The part that turned despite screams not to. I saw it reflected in Small Pond's eyes.
He was here.
Her brother. The real one, not an afterimage hidden in her fear.
My first instinct was to close my wing over Small Pond and bring her against my shoulder. I heard her breathing, so fast, so shallow, her mind in the full throes of panic. This was her worst nightmare, in a way that couldn't have been more accurate if I had tried to engineer it.
Small Fry was glaring at me, but I could feel the hurt radiating from behind his mask. His sister had confided her worst fears to a stranger. She'd hidden it from him, and she burned from the shame.
If there had ever been any time for me to meddle, it was now.
Yet I couldn't speak. Her fur had started to glitter. Gold specks tingled at the end of strands of her pale fur, weakly at first, then with a radiance that seemed to push darkness away. My chest tightened at the want that suddenly seized me.
A trail of drool dripped from the forked ends of my lolling tongue. Alarms should have rung inside my head, but a fog had fallen on my mind. I was leaning over Small Pond, clicking the fangs I suddenly had.
Dreamon.
The air around us shifted.
And my breathing suddenly seemed to slow down, heavy. The hunger, pushed back. Once, I heard a pulse, blood pumped into my veins, a part of me waiting for the next beat. Small Pond and Small Fry stood still before me, unblinking. Despite myself, I found my head turning left, an instinct speaking to me with a startling clarity.
The heartbeat that was to come never did. Mind-numbing fear swept it away.
My limbs refused to move. All I could take notice of was the water exploding as a dark green shape burst through. I did not understand. Rows upon rows of curved fangs came toward us all, so wide they could sink into half the beach itself. Screams rang inside my head, screeches and shrieks for flight. Burning heat filled my legs and wings.
But the shadow already loomed over me. I'd never make it. The jaws spread so far apart they scratched the sky. That's how it ends, huh?
“Prince William!” I heard a shout, and felt my insides jumbled.
My hooves skittered on the sand, vainly grasping for a hold. The sea and the land felt like blurs on both sides of me, and in front, I saw only a shape in the form of a mare shrinking. Above her, fangs attached to a scaly mouth.
It slammed down into the ground with enough force to send a house flying. I barely even felt it, but I thought I would double over when I realized what had happened.
She pushed me. Small Pond wished me away from that.
Dust settled down, the shadow within becoming visible to me, to the stallion I noticed at my sides. Under the suddenly cloudy sky, only hints of its scales were visible.
The reptilian head slunk away beneath the water. Just like that, Small Pond was gone.
“Sis!” roared Small Fry as he charged the waves. “Pond!” He coughed out a mouthful of water. “Pond, I'm coming!”
Then, a stronger wave lifted him off his hooves. I stared without a word as he crashed down on his back, legs in the air. It didn't seem to even slow him down. Small Fry rammed into the next wave and pushed through. His cries of rage kept coming.
He was struggling, spitting seawater with every other breath, twisting and turning to catch a glimpse of the monstrous creature that had taken his little sister. His screams of anguish broke. He kept calling for her, but his body failed him. Racked with sobs, the stallion could only whisper words I was too far to hear.
Silence fell, and shattered again with a heartbreaking cry of rage.
I... couldn't move.
When Small Fry's voice died out, he dove beneath the sea.
Why wasn't I doing the same? Where was my courage? Where was all that bravado about princesses and damsels and monsters to exterminate with a broadsword? Small Pond had willed me away from the monster's jaws! And I couldn't even help her brother look for her!
Move, I told my shaking legs. Move, you fucking hooves! I fucking ate the String-Man, I can get a fucking grip and move now!
“You wish to save her,” rang a strong, crystal-like voice.
I whirled around, an adrenaline spike in my blood. That voice was known to me, and I could only lament my terrible luck that she came now of all times.
With an elegant flap of her dark wings, Princess Luna landed two ponies lengths away from me. Despite the lack of thunderstorms, blades or bolts of magic, I dared not yet relax in her presence.
I was the kind of monster she hunted after all.
“Fear not.” She seemed calm, with none of the storm ready to bring me down, and it was then that I understood she had not meant her previous comment as a question. “If I had wished you destroyed, I would not have announced my presence this time.”
“P-Princess Luna...” The words failed me. What had it been? Why... why had Small Pond saved me? “I don't get it.”
“She saved you.” Luna's brows furrowed together, and I felt a sliver of ice grip at the back of my neck. “She saved you like the foals did. The dreamers like you, dreamon.”
“I care for them. The... the hunger I feel...” My hoof stomped the sand. “It's not right. I don't get why, but I've never been this,” – quickly, I gestured to my whole body – “I've never wanted anyone to be hurt.”
“We shall see.” Her words grated against my skin, harsher than before. “My sister is artificially extending our subject's life, but it is only a temporary solution. For now, we must put all differences aside and quickly come together to exterminate the spawning nightmare.”
Wary, I looked Luna up and down in search of a hint. “That thing...? What does it spawn?”
Luna's sky blue eyes bore circles of ice into my flesh. I found no pity in them, nothing at all that spoke of mercy or even compassion. There, the naked truth stared back. “You. I would think.”
My mind went blank.
Taking deep breaths, the princess turned her head, her forbearance strained. “I can tell now. You are not the one anchored to the dream. Your presence is too fickle. You are not rooted in my subject's fear.”
Horror made my mouth dry. “I... I don't understand what you're saying. It brought me here?”
As my words reached her, Princess Luna startled. Her surprise was plain on her features as she looked at me, her voice, breathless. “Did you not realize at all...?”
“I said I wasn't a dreamon before! And if I can believe I am one now, it doesn't change the fact that I wasn't born like this!”
“Nopony ever is.”
Her words were as a chime ringing. They stole my breath from me. Stole my thoughts. Stole the warmth and the memories. I couldn't have spoken if I had wanted. And this, like so many other things, was taken from me.
Hell broke loose with the ear-splitting sonic boom of thunder.
Beneath my hooves, the sand slid in cascades toward the raging sea. Waves ten meters high crashed against each other, and the green sky had so darkened it had become a void of pitch black.
At once, the sea receded. Fled as if afraid of the two alicorns before it. Drew back, further until the beach stretched near the horizon.
“Brace yourself!” Princess Luna shouted.
Her words made something click in my head. Oh fuck, I thought as my legs turned to jelly.
On the horizon, the sky had turned a strange, dark shade a blue. The exact same as that of the sea, moments ago. And it was rushing toward us.
I believed my fear total, my horror unequalled, until my ears ticked at a noise beneath the thunderous rumbling.
A whinny. An inelegant, awkward cry, that came from a spike of fear. High-pitched, it drilled into my eardrums, and I cast frantic looks to our surroundings. It had reminded me of the colt that had kept too quiet in shame of his cutie mark, but now was faced with the fury of the sea.
Why was he here?! I asked myself in panic. Why was Sea Salt still here?!
He would not drown. I had the intimate conviction of that fact. No one would drown inside the dream. And yet, I pushed harder forward. Sea Salt's outward appearance hid his true age well enough, but I couldn't forget.
And no foal deserved to be subject to the fear of drowning. Nightmare or not.
“Sea Salt!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Where are you?”
“Prince William!” he called again, and I whipped my head around. The cream coloured stallion was running up the hills of sand, past sliding, broken huts and ships. “Help!”
Above him, the wave seemed to close down as the mouth of a monster.
“No.”
Simple the word, strong the meaning. In that one sound, I poured the whole of my will. I refused. I rejected the waves and the sea and the cruelty of the nightmare. It would not happen again!
Fire lit up within my horn, and spread outward with a flash. Red sizzled over the surface of the tidal wave, the water frozen on its rearing howl. My knees buckled under the weight that crashed atop of me, yet my stare burned into the ascent of the unruly wave.
You are not taking him! You won't be taking anyone else, you hear me?! Never!
The stallion-colt shot me one wide-eyed look. It was all it took for the words to spill out of my mouth and resonate with the dream itself.
“Wake up!”
Hunger clamped down on my midsection hard. So strongly I blinked stars out of my sight. So viciously I heard an onslaught of angry whispers, and a rumble from the pit of my stomach.
The power of my will faltered. The dizzying nausea seized me at the throat right as my ears picked up the thunderous noise of rushing water.
As cold washed over me, so did silence.
I was lifted from the sand, swept aside by the might of the ocean, lost within a lightning fast current.
My legs batted the water in vain. Useless. Too weak to make a difference. I spun to the whim of the wave. A veil of shadowed blue covered my eyes. My horn sputtered useless sparks that were immediately swallowed by the sea. With frantic flaps of my wings, I tried and failed to return stability to my world.
My hooves reached outward. Hopefully toward the surface. I couldn't differentiate between up and down anymore.
When an eternity had passed, the pressure pushed against my back. The wave that had swallowed the land had begun returning to the ocean, and dragged me with it. I was left drifting, a puppet without strings.
The strength to fight it crumbled.
My eyes were transfixed on what I knew to be the outline of the horizon. There, the water seemed the clearest shade of blue, gradually darkening in the depths until it grew pitch black. But what I saw chilled me to the core. Onto that canvas, a monster laid in satisfaction.
Its head held an angular, yet smooth, form. Up to the moment it split apart and stretched and stretched so it seemed it would swallow Horseshoe Bay itself with one gulp. Debris floated away from its rampage, mere specks next to its ridiculous girth. Houses couldn't even compare to one scale on its serpentine body.
I felt my gaze glided over its sinuous length, and a numbness spread to my whole being. Whales and giant squids alike struggled within the smallest of its coils, their bodies twisted by the monstrous pressure upon them. Beasts greater than both, thrice their length and width, could do nothing but let out mournful howls into the great blue and wait for death. The Nightmare ensnared them all.
As far as I could see, all across the water of the ocean, the Nightmare's body stretched, twists and turns making a painted window of the horizon itself. It seemed without end, mightier than even the limits of my imagination, and at long last, its coils lost themselves into the abyss, too deep for even light to dare enter its lair.
A part of me cracked. Luna's words had ceased to make sense. I couldn't be a dreamon. I could never compare to this.
This was a Nightmare, the purest fear. The most primal.
An absurd chuckle broke through my lips. Luna wanted to kill it. She wanted me to help. I'd feel shame, perhaps, if we were faced with anything else. But I couldn't muster the courage to even move.
Small Pond is there.
“Prince William!” I heard again, and my limbs trembled at the memory of being pushed out of the way of gigantic fangs.
I couldn't... I had to do something.
Echoes reverberated inside my skull. Traces of the William I had been threatened to resurface, enough for my mind to fight the numb veil shadowing my thoughts. Sweating despite the cool water surrounding me, I mustered what conviction I had left, and let the power spread into the dream.
In the abyss, power stirred. Mad as the thought obviously was, I could have sworn the coils within the darkness slowed in hesitation. Shadows rose from the depths, twirling, encircling the scaled form of the Nightmare. They became as claws, talons to grip and crush the titanic serpent.
They splintered into pieces.
Someone screamed in agony as burning hot nails were hammered at the base of my horn. And just as suddenly, the silence returned, my throat bloody raw, my body floating limply to the whims of the sea.
Everything blurred. Did I lack oxygen even in a dream? Was that possible?
In the distance, circles of light pierced through the darker waters. Two dots a shade of yellow seemed to materialized from a painted frame of nothingness.
Like stars on a canvas. Like spotlights searching for a prisoner.
I found it in myself to laugh, hearty bellows that scratched my irritated throat. Was there anything else than me in these waters? What else could it be after, but the one that had just failed to even inconvenience it?
My gaze met yellow eyes over the abyss.
Then, I saw nothing but a gaping maw full of fangs.