Limitless Evolution As a Snake

[System: Thrall-Bite, the three-minute reset. You’ve used, what, forty seconds of that? You’ve got maybe two and a half minutes left before that trick’s back on the table.]

That’s fine though, right? I mean I just murdered a capybara with my mind, I’m basically built different now.

[System: Yeah, nah. You’ll probably be right for the fight after this one. This one you’re doing the old-fashioned way.]

I don’t love the sound of that, but before I can ask what exactly ”the old fashioned way” means, the hydraulic gate across the pit lets out a hiss like a dying bus and starts grinding open, metal shrieking against metal, and something on the other side of it is already breathing loud enough that I can hear it over the crowd.

The gate finishes opening and out steps something that should not exist.

It’s the size of a minivan. An actual minivan, wet grey skin like poured concrete that never finished drying, shoulders built like some jacked pitbull decided to go to the gym for ninety years straight, and a turtle shell riding its back, all cracked and slick with pit slime. Its mouth is a horror show of its own, rows and rows of little turtle beaks stacked one behind the other, and green drool drips off its bottom lip and hits the mud with a hiss, actual smoke curling up where it lands.

It opens its mouth and lets out a bark so loud the ceiling sheds a little rain of rust down onto the pit, and every single thing in my head that felt cocky thirty seconds ago packs its bags and leaves without saying goodbye.

Oh. Oh no.

[System: Yeah. That’s the Wall Street Bull Frog, big lad, absolute unit isn’t he.]

Big lad, he says. Big lad. That’s not a frog, that’s a building code violation, that’s a war crime with legs, why does it have a turtle shell, frogs don’t have shells, this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair at all...

The throat under its chin starts swelling up, ballooning out huge and taut like a water balloon about to pop, and every instinct I have left screams move, so I move, throwing myself sideways into the mud a full half second before the tongue comes.

It doesn’t so much fly as it does simply arrive, one second gone and the next already buried a foot deep in the brick wall behind where I used to be standing, and the crater it leaves is the size of my whole body twice over, dust and brick chips raining down everywhere.

I don’t slither away from that. I don’t do anything with grace or dignity at all. I just scream, or whatever the internal snake equivalent of screaming is, and go scrambling flat out across the algae mud like a drunk noodle, no plan, no direction, just away, away, away.

[System: Careful, that mud’s slippery.]

Thanks, incredibly useful.

The frog crouches down low, all four legs bunching up at once, and something in my gut says jump before my brain even finishes processing why, and I’m right, because it launches itself straight up into the air and the shockwave off the landing throws me a full six or seven feet off the ground like a leaf in a hurricane.

I don’t even get to enjoy the brief moment of flight before gravity does its thing and slams me back down into the mud, and half a second after that a foot the size of a small car comes down directly on top of my middle and pins me flat, mud squelching up around my sides, air punching straight out of my lungs in one useless little wheeze.

I can’t move. I physically cannot move; I’m stuck under four tons of concrete-skinned nightmare, and my whole body is just one long scream of please no please no please no.

The jaw above me opens.

Leisurely, rows of little turtle beaks all click against each other, green acid drool stretching down in long ropes that hiss and smoke where they land in the mud next to my face, and the whole massive head starts tipping down toward me like it’s got all the time in the world, like I’m a snack it’s savouring in advance.

[System: You gonna do something about that, or we just watching?]

Do something, do something? What am I supposed to do? My head’s an inch from the mud, and my mouth can’t reach anything except dirt. I’ve got nothing, I’ve got absolutely nothing...

My tail. My tail’s still free! It’s the only part of me that foot didn’t manage to pin, and my brain isn’t giving orders anymore; there’s no strategy left in me, just pure blind toddler-tantrum panic, and I thrash the back half of my body as hard as I possibly can, no aim, no thought, just flail flail flail.

Something gives, and it’s something soft.

The knife bolted to my tail punches straight up into a loose fold of skin under the frog’s jaw, right into that soft throat pouch, and I feel it sink deep before I even understand what just happened.

The frog’s whole body seizes.

I don’t think; I just keep thrashing, and the blade drags sideways through whatever I just stabbed, and the next thing I know hot black blood is spraying out in a fountain, scalding across my face and scales, and the frog’s throat convulses hard enough that I hear something tear wet and awful inside it.

Its eyes roll back white.

The whole four ton mountain of concrete skin and turtle shell goes rigid for one long second, and then it just topples, slow at first then all at once, crashing sideways into the mud with a boom that shakes the whole arena. The foot pinning me finally lifts off as the leg goes slack, and I’m free, gasping, drenched head to tail in stinking black frog blood, lying in a puddle of mud that used to be a killing field.

The crowd goes completely silent.