Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Mine.

That’s the only word my brain is producing right now. Not hello or excuse me or even a functional threat assessment. Just that one word, running on a loop, getting louder with every second, with war drums thumping and with those two golem bastards staying within arm’s reach of her.

My dark elf.

I don’t know her name. Genuinely could not tell you her name if my life depended on it, which given that I am a meter-long furious glow-stick currently vibrating with rage on a sewer pipe approximately four metres above her head, it might. Doesn’t matter. Irrelevant information. What I do know is that she smells like me, the bond humming through my scales like a plucked wire, and the two grey-skinned, dead-eyed constructs crowding her personal space like they have any right to exist near something that belongs to me.

Don’t touch her.

My tongue flicks out. Tastes the air. Stone dust, mildew, golem reek that particular dry, mineral nothing-smell like smell throw off, like licking a footpath. And underneath it, her. Dark and cool, like deep water in a shadow. She’s scared. Or close to it. Close enough that the bond is pulling at my chest like a fishhook and every single reptilian instinct I apparently now possess is screaming Get down there in a frequency I can feel in my spine.

I am, objectively, the size of a small man. I do not care even slightly.

Old mate.

The system pings into my vision with the energy of someone who has been waiting for this exact moment and is absolutely loving it.

[SYSTEM: Hahahaha, you alright mate?]

Not helpful.

I hiss internally. The actual hiss comes out as a very small, very real sound that echoes off the pipe. Neither golem looks up. Good. Terrible. I’ll decide which later.

Skills.

I’ve got five IPs. What can I buy right now that helps me rip those things apart?

[SYSTEM: Yeah, nah, I heard you, little shit. Three options on the board, mate. Well, two for five IP and one sad little consolation prize for three. Here’s what you’re working with, you wanker.]

OPTION 1 — PRESSURE POINT INTUITION (Rank E) | 5 IP

You just know stuff. Where to strike, where to coil, where to tap something with the tip of your tail and have it hit the floor. Everybody you meet, you clock it immediately: that’s the off switch, that’s the freeze button, that’s the one that ends the conversation permanently. Nervous system required. Golems maybe, depending on what’s inside them. Hopefully something squishy.

OPTION 2 — MIND-FLICKER BLINDWORM (RANK E) | 5 IP

Your eyes go white, weird as hell. When you move, you throw a blurry optical distortion in your wake. Active use: flash your eyes at a target and their brain just... stops for three seconds. Forgets what it was doing. Walks into a wall. Sits there blinking like a golden retriever that just heard a weird noise. Three-second stun window. You’ll look absolutely fucked.

OPTION 3 — PLANT EMPATHY (Rank F) | 3 IP

You can talk to plants. They have feelings. The moss down here is apparently having a rough time.

I stare at the menu for exactly half a second.

Is this a joke?

[SYSTEM: Mate. Mate. I’m being serious. That moss has seen things. Genuinely traumatic things. You’d cry. Big tough test tube snake like you, absolutely bawling on a sewer pipe because a bit of lichen told you about its childhood. Could be very healing for you both. Three IP. Bargain reckon you’re not picking that one though, are ya.]

No. I am not picking that one.

Below me, one of the golems shifts. Its hand, big, flat, stone-grey, moves toward her shoulder, and my vision goes a very specific shade of red that has nothing to do with my scales.

Get Off her.

I’m hissing much louder now, probably sounds like a broken pipe.

Something goes wrong in my head. Not the useful kind of wrong. She steps back. The golem steps forward. My brain, that beautiful, tactical, overcomplicated brain, produces exactly one thought, and that thought is a big word for angry.

Five IP. Three skills. Blood venom on a ten-hour cooldown because sure, yeah, fine, absolutely, the one trick I’ve got that ends conversations permanently and I’m sitting up here completely empty like a broken vending machine.

I look at the selection, and I make a decision.

The System doesn’t even wait for me to finish reading.

[Transaction processed. Legless but Fast has been removed. PRESSURE POINT INTUITION (Rank E) installed. Remaining IP: 2.]

[System: Solid choice, mate. Reckon you’ll need it.]

I’m already moving before the text finishes rendering. Four meters of vertical pipe, gravity doing most of the work, my body a thread of a vase with anger issues unwinding toward the floor.

Below me, the dark elf makes a sound I feel in my chest before I hear it with my ears, a wet, punched-out grunt as one of the grey-skinned golem slams her into the stone wall a second time. Third time. I lose count. Her head snaps back, white hair plastered to wet stone, and something in my brain goes from angry to empty, the kind of empty that comes before you do something you won’t be able to take back.

”Hey there, pretty little piggy cop,” the golem man says, and its voice is like gravel in a blender, no rhythm, no joy, just words fed into a mouth that wasn’t built for them. ”What are you doing down here? The big boss told you. Can’t trade here. Can’t be here.”

She’s grumbling something I can’t make out, jaw working around pain, and I taste copper on the air, her blood, or mine from the venom leaking freely now between my fangs, dripping in thin amber threads as I descend.

”Your boss,” she manages, the words coming out between clenched teeth, ”didn’t say I couldn’t trade on the outer rim of Twawi. That’s, that’s still open territory, and you know it...”

Thud.

The wall takes her again. Her knees buckle. The golem catches her by the collar and holds her up like a rag doll, dead grey eyes showing nothing.