Limitless Evolution As a Snake

My throat feels raw, like I gargled sandpaper, from firing that ballistic mouth chamber thing. Twice, with the recoil of a small cannon each time.

My wings won’t fold properly. The left one keeps catching on my scales, sticking out at a weird angle like a broken umbrella.

I am, in the professional medical terminology of snakes, fucked up.

I push myself upright, or whatever counts as upright when you’re a tube of meat with anxiety. The water slides off my scales in dirty rivulets. I taste the air with a flick of my tongue and immediately regret it, gator blood mist, swamp gas, and the faint metallic tang of whatever was inside that prehistoric nightmare now atomised into the humidity.

Old mate, I think I broke something.

[System: reckon you broke several somethings, mate. Scales are cracked, wings are jammed, and your ego’s taken a proper beating. Solid 7/10 on the damage level.]

Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr Obvious.

[System: anytime. You want the good news?]

There’s good news?

[System: the gator’s deader than my enthusiasm for this conversation. Also, you earned 15 IP for that kill. Not bad for a snake who spent the first half of the fight having a staring contest with a rock.]

15? I almost died twice, turned a gator into a skin bag, and the going rate is 15 Indulgence Points.

I start moving. Slithering is normally smooth. Right now, it’s more like watching a drunk red bungee cord navigate a minefield. I favour my left side, keeping the cracked scales away from the rough stone of the tunnel floor. Every few feet, I have to stop and adjust my wings, which keep snagging on nothing.

The gargoyle watches me go. Its stone face hasn’t changed expression; it’s still doing that permanent frown thing, but something about the way the swamp light catches its empty eye sockets feels almost... approving? Like it’s thinking, ”Well, you’re an idiot, but at least you’re a competent idiot.”

I flick my tongue at it.

Don’t look at me like that. You didn’t help.

It doesn’t respond because it’s a rock.

The realisation hits me somewhere between the swamp and the first proper tunnel junction. I’ve been playing at this. Playing snake. Playing predator. Flaring my hood like it’s a party trick, baring fangs I hardly ever use, acting like the mere fact of being a crimson serpent with wings and a gun in my throat makes me scary.

The gator didn’t care. The gator saw a snack with delusions of grandeur and tried to eat it. The only reason I’m not digesting in its stomach right now is that my venom turned its insides to slurry, and even that was a fluke a desperate bite that happened to land in the right spot, with the right venom, at the right time.

Being a forbidden gummy worm in this world isn’t about looking scary. It’s about being scary like actually scary. The kind of scary that doesn’t need to flare its hood or bare its teeth because everyone already knows what happens if you get too close.

And right now, I’m not that. I’m a cracked-up murderous pipe cleaner with malfunctioning wings and a sore throat, limping through a sewer tunnel with the tactical awareness of a goldfish.

[System: you’re having one of those moments, aren’t you? The ’existential crisis in a drainpipe’ special?]

Shut up.

[System: no, no, this is good. Healthy, even. Reckon every * homicidal red licorice needs a proper arse-kicking now and then. Builds character. Or in your case, rebuilds it after you’ve dented it beyond recognition.]

I keep slithering. The tunnel narrows, then widens, then forks. I take the left branch because it smells less like death and more like the faint, distant promise of civilisation. Twawi, maybe. Or at least somewhere with a dry patch where I can sit and not smell gator blood for five minutes.

Every shadow makes me twitch. Every drip of water sounds like footsteps. I’m jumping at nothing, which is embarrassing when you’re a six-foot serpent and the nothing you’re jumping at is literally nothing.

My wings finally fold properly on the third try. There’s a clicking sound, like something mechanical resetting, and then they slide into the scale-pockets along my ribs with a wet squelch that makes me cringe. At least they’re tucked away. One less thing dragging behind me like a sad parade float.

I find a small cubbyhole where the tunnel wall has crumbled inward, creating a shallow depression filled with dry debris, broken concrete, twisted rebar, the kind of urban landfill that counts as prime real estate in the Undercity. I coil into it, tucking my head against my body, and just breathe.

The cracked scales along my side throb in time with my heartbeat. I can feel each individual fracture, tiny hairline splits in the keratin that shouldn’t hurt this much but absolutely do. One near my midsection is loose, hanging by a thread of tissue. I nudge it with my snout, and it falls off entirely, landing on the concrete with a soft tink.

Great. I’m shedding prematurely. My body is literally falling apart.

I stare at the discarded scale. It’s iridescent in the dim tunnel light, dark crimson with that weird oily sheen that makes my scales look like they’re moving even when they’re not. For a second, I almost feel bad for it. It gave its life so that I could live another day of making terrible decisions in wet places.

Then I remember it’s a scale, and I’m anthropomorphising dead skin, and I need to get a grip.

But the point stands. I need to be better than this. Smarter. More deliberate, less.

ooh, shiny rock, let’s stare at it until a dinosaur tries to eat me.

The tunnel stretches ahead, dark and wet and full of things that would happily turn me into a cautionary tale. Somewhere beyond it is Twawi, and beyond that, the penthouse, and Lyra.

I close my eyes. Just for a second. Just until the throbbing in my scales dulls to something I can ignore.

Being a snake means something here. I just have to figure out what, before the next thing that wants to eat me does.

{{PLEASE READ THIS ON NovelPhoenix I NEED TO FEED MY SALT WATER CROCS}}