Limitless Evolution As a Snake

One down.

Now the other golem,

I turn my head. Or I try to. My neck muscles respond about as well as wet paper.

Vision’s fading. The edges are going soft, colours bleeding into each other like someone smeared Vaseline over my eyes. My tail is gone, not cut off, not bitten, just gone, like the part of my brain that remembers having a tail decided to clock out early.

The eel’s been flayed open somewhere along the line, guts hanging out in a way that would be disgusting if I had the energy to be disgusted.

Snake? I don’t even feel like a snake anymore. I feel like a shitty bong pipe someone left in a gutter. Not even a red bong pipe. Just a brown, busted, waterlogged piece of garbage. Life sucks. Why did I even care about being red? I’m red alright. I’m bleeding red, painting the concrete beneath me in a colour that’s way too vibrant for someone this close to dead.

Is that the other golem back there? The one that got roof-shit all over him. I can hear something. A wet, grinding sound, like rocks chewing on rocks. Or maybe that’s just the blood sloshing in my own skull. Is he still alive? Is he trying to say something? Or am I just making up noises now because my brain’s turning to fucking soup?

I want to lift my head and see what fell. I want to know what crushed him, if it was the tunnel collapsing or a slab of concrete or a rogue subway car falling through the ceiling like a divine intervention that showed up thirty seconds too late to matter.

But apparently that’s too hard; apparently, lifting my own skull off the ground is a task that requires more energy than I have left in my entire body.

I’m about a foot away from his foot, the golem’s foot, the one still attached to the crushed body, poking out from under whatever pile of debris just pancaked him, some Wizard of Oz type shit, just less shiny shoes and more shiny rocks.

I’m going to try; I’m going to try my absolute fucking best.

Ah, fuck. Do I have any other skills up? Thermal is dead? Not that it would help me bite a foot. What’s Thermal Sense going to do? Let me feel how warm his toes are while I bleed out?

Fantastic.

Wait.

Legless but Fast. I still have Legless but Fast, the skill I unlocked back in F-Tier, the one that Old Mate described as, and I’m quoting the System verbatim here, because I remember every stupid word: ”perfect for biting someone and then running away like a bitch.”

Three hundred per cent speed boost.

The world goes sideways, or am I going sideways? I’m not slithering. I’m not striking. I’m a red smear across wet concrete, a nosebleed of a streak of desperation moving faster than anything this size has any right to move.

I hit his ankle, like face smashed into his ankle, if I were into feet this would have been fantastic, sadly I’m into tits and ass. The concrete ankle, cold and rough and tasting like absolute garbage. Like the colour yellow, like someone ground up a school bus and made it into a building material. My fangs scrape against stone, find a crack, and I bite down with everything I have left, which is approximately the force of a stapler closing on a thick stack of paper.

The venom goes in its last use. The very last drop in glands that have been squeezed dry.

The golem under the rubble twitches a little bit. He was already dying, crushed flat by whatever fell; the venom did its work, seeping into cracked concrete, finding whatever magic was holding him together, and unravelling it. He turns to dust and air the same way his partner did, except slower, like watching a sandcastle dissolve in reverse.

Two down.

My vision goes black and white, and no, not metaphorically, like literally black and white. The emergency lights are still on, but they’re grey now; the blood on the concrete is grey; the dust particles drifting through the air are grey. It’s like someone switched the world to an old film reel and forgot to tell me.

I can’t feel my body anymore. Can’t feel the concrete beneath me, can’t feel the cold, can’t feel the pain that was so overwhelming thirty seconds ago. That’s either really good or really, really bad, and given that I’m a glass aquarium decoration bleeding out in an alleyway with two dead golems and no functioning venom glands, I’m leaning toward really bad.

And then the System screams.

[System: OI FUCKING CUNT CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW YOU DICK HEAD?]

It’s so loud it rattles something behind my eyes, and I almost laugh, except laughing would mean opening my mouth and I’m pretty sure that would let whatever’s left of me leak out, and I really don’t need that right now.

h-hello?

My vision goes black at the edges. Black in the middle. Black everywhere except a thin ring of red at the very edge, like I’m looking through a telescope the wrong way around.

[System: OI YOU, MATT, YOU FUCKER, I NEED YOU TO LIVE OR I’M OUT OF A JOB AND THEY GET RID OF MY REINCARNATION, I NEED YOU TO LIVE SO I CAN GO ON GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE AGAIN AND FUCK HEEPS OF SHEILAS, AND TELL DAYMO I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE AFTER LIFE, YOU HEAR ME? YOU SELFISH PRICK!]

Government assistance. The thought hits me like a final, pathetic punchline. My divine guide, my cosmic connection, my ticket to power... is just some deadshit work dodger trying to get back on the dole? I’d laugh if I had any air left. He’s not trying to save the world; he’s trying to qualify for unemployment.

everything’s gone real quiet and soft which is either peaceful or terrible, i keep waiting to feel one way about it and i just dont, im not scared but im not not scared, i had a whole list of things i was going to do and i cant remember a single one except i touched a tit that one time which probably shouldnt be the thing that makes the highlight reel but here we are.