Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Okay, old mate, I will. And for once I don’t argue.

I curl up in the dog bed, tail wrapping round and round until I’ve got the letter tucked right against the middle of my coils, right up close to where my heart is. I breathe in through it, slow, dragging Lyra’s scent through my tongue in long pulls until the smell of her replaces whatever’s still sitting sour in my chest from thinking about Dad and the funeral and all of it. It works, mostly, just enough to sleep on.

Morning comes the way it always does down here, which is to say I don’t actually see it happen; I just know because the Old Mate tells me.

[System: Rise and shine sleeping beauty! Got a quest for you.]

I uncoil slowly, tongue flicking out to taste the stale air of the burrow, and stretch out along the length of the dog bed before I bother answering. ​Go on then.

[System: Training Arc! Kill ten creatures bigger than yourself, get a thousand exp a pop. See? Very straightforward and efficient. Bloody good deal if you ask me.]

My coils freeze.

Ten thousand exp? That’ll shoot me up a whole evolution.

[System: Bingo.]

Why now though, why the sudden rush? I flick my tongue, tasting for a lie, not that I can actually taste lies, but it feels like the thing to do.

[System: Cause I need you above ground quicker, mate. Simple as that.]

Suspicious but fair enough. I’ve wanted the same thing since I woke up as a piece of legless meat. I’m not about to argue with the system finally getting on board with my own plan. ​Where exactly am I supposed to find ten creatures bigger than me that I can actually kill? Everything down here already wants me dead first.

[System: Glad you asked, my aloe vera noodle! Turns out there’s an illegal fight ring not too far from here. Mutant Sewer-Hounds, The Manhole Snapper-Crab, and I think some Gator-Rats; the odd wild thing, all thrown in a pit one at a time vs something else for entertainment and betting. Now, I don’t want you maiming them for show; I want you to kill them. Clean, quick, over. You reckon you can manage that?]

Something about the word illegal snags in my head, but only for a second, because right after that the reward numbers show up and the snag stops mattering so much. ​Bigger reward it says?

[System: Even bigger, yeah.]

I flick my tongue again, slower this time, like I’m actually thinking it through instead of just going along with whatever gets me closer to being something other than a snake in a dog bed. ​Are they bad guys? The people running it- do they deserve to die with the creatures or?

[System: Maybe yes and maybe no.]

Illegal fight ring, forcing animals to tear each other apart for cash- that’s messed up, that’s genuinely messed up, and if I go down there and start murdering things in that pit, then really I’m just speeding up the inevitable; I’m just doing everyone a favour. The creatures get put out of their misery quicker, the organisers get a nasty surprise, and I get my exp. Everybody wins, more or less, if you squint at it from a certain angle; I’m going to squint at it from that angle.

Alright, let’s do it.

Finding the place isn’t hard, not when I’ve still got the flyer clamped in my mouth from where I found it plastered to a pipe a few tunnels back, some hand-drawn thing with a crude picture of two Wall Street bull frogs scrapping and a scrawled address underneath. I drag it the whole way there, tail hauling the paper along the tunnel floor behind me like some kind of deranged parade, because showing up with proof felt smarter than trying to explain myself to whatever’s guarding the door.

The door, as it turns out, is guarded by an actual bouncer, which is not something I expected sewer real estate to have, but here we are. Big guy, some kind of boar-adjacent build, even though he isn’t a beastkin and more just a massive human, just naturally built like a fridge with legs. He looks down at me, and I nod my head at him, slow and deliberate, tail still holding the flyer up like a business card.

He tilts his head, very confused, like his brain’s trying to process a snake dragging its own advertisement to a fight it wants to enter. ”...Okay then,” he says eventually, shrugging in the way he’s seen weirder things down here and decided this isn’t the hill to die on. ”Come in, and sign here.”

There’s a ledger on a crate just inside, ink pad next to it, half the page already covered in names and paw prints and one suspicious smear that might be a hoofprint. I loop my fucked up chopped up tail down into the ink, then slap the inked half straight onto the paper, leaving a neat little crimson stamp next to all the other prints.

The organiser, some scrawny guy with a clipboard and the energy of someone who stopped being surprised by anything years ago, glances over, squints at the stamp, then just shrugs. ”Whatever. I like it, fresh blood, ha.” He doesn’t even look up twice.

I settle back, coiling up near the entrance to the pit while the crowd noise starts filtering in from somewhere deeper, and figure now’s as good a time as any. The pit itself is a wild thing to look at, once I get a good angle on it from my little coil by the entrance. It’s a massive circle, dug down into the earth and then built back up again with scrap, chain-link fencing bolted to rebar, wooden planks gone soft and dark with old blood, and rocks jammed into the walls where the concrete’s crumbled away. Spikes stick out from the lower rim, rusted things, probably there to stop whatever’s fighting from climbing out mid-match.