Limitless Evolution As a Snake

[System: Aim for the water. That’s your solution. Water’s soft, relatively speaking. Softer than concrete, anyway.]

I slither east because arguing with Old Mate is like arguing with gravity. Yeah, you can do it, but you’re going to lose, and you’ll look stupid while it happens. The tunnel widens as I move, concrete giving way to older brick.

The air changes. Gets thicker, damper, carrying that particular swamp smell that’s equal parts rotting vegetation and something alive and moving underneath. My tongue flicks out, and the taste hits like a wall: wet earth, stagnant water, the metallic tang of iron from old pipes leaching into the ground.

The tunnel opens into a wide chamber where the ceiling has partially collapsed, letting in shafts of pale afternoon light that cut through the gloom and land on standing water. Not puddles. Proper swamp, black and still, broken by hummocks of twisted vegetation and the occasional rusted pipe sticking up like the skeleton of something industrial that drowned here years ago.

And on the north side, rising out of the water on what must have been higher ground once, the ruins of an old church. Stone walls, mostly intact, though the roof is long gone, replaced by a tangle of vines and creepers that have woven themselves into a living ceiling. A broken steeple leans at an angle that defies gravity, and the whole thing looks like it’s being slowly digested by the swamp, one brick at a time.

[System: There she is. Fuckin’ beaut. Decent updrafts coming off that water, plus the church gives you something to jump from that won’t turn to fuckin’ dust under a snake who still slithers like his mum’s dressin’ him for school. Get in there, ya useless grommet.]

I coil at the water’s edge, tasting the swamp air. For the first time since this all started, I feel something other than terror. It’s not confidence; let’s not get carried away- but it’s close. I’m still trying to decide if the ruins are cool or just depressing.

[System: righto. time for your quest]

I freeze.

My tongue hangs halfway out of my mouth, which is not a good look for anyone, let alone a snake who’s supposedly the protagonist of something, or a dog. Maybe I was right the first day; I am a dog.

Quest? You’re giving me a quest.

I turn the word over like I’m checking it for venom.

[System: yeah. staring contest, against that thing]

At first glance it’s just another chunk of debris, half-submerged in the black water, covered in the same green-black moss that’s eating everything in this place. Then the shape resolves, and I realise it’s not debris.

It’s a face.

Or it was, once. Now it’s a gargoyle or whatever’s left of one carved from the same stone as the church. It’s been weathered by decades of swamp water, its features gone soft at the edges.

The mouth is a twisted snarl, and the eyes are deep hollows crusted with lichen. One horn juts from its forehead at an angle suggesting the sculptor was either drunk or just really committed to making gargoyles look like they’re having a bad day.

It’s also, and this is the part that matters, very obviously a statue. A rock. A piece of masonry that fell off a building a hundred years ago and has been sitting in swamp water ever since, doing absolutely nothing except slowly turning green.

You want me to have a staring contest with a rock?

[System: it’s a gargoyle, mate. show some respect for the local architecture]

It’s a rock with a face carved into it. It hasn’t moved in possibly a century. Old mate, how is this a quest?

[System: It’s about holding your focus, ya drongo. If you can’t out-stare a rock, how’re you gonna face something that actually moves? And you’re already whingin’ about it. Classic.]

I stare at the gargoyle. The gargoyle, being a rock, stares back with the unwavering commitment of something that has literally never had a thought in its existence.

This is stupid.

But I’m already slithering into the swamp water. The alternative is listening to Old Mate explain why staring at inanimate objects is a critical survival skill in that tone that says he’s already written me off as a lost cause.

The water is cold and thick, black with sediment that clouds around my scales. My tongue flicks out, tasting mineral and rot.

I coil up in front of it, close enough that I could touch its moss-covered snout if I wanted to. I don’t. Touching century-old swamp moss is how you get whatever the underground equivalent of tetanus is, and I doubt my insurance covers that.

Shit, Hey Old Mate, do I have insurance?

[System: Nah, anyways. Rules are simple. You stare at it. It stares at you, and the first one to blink loses, ok go.]

Of course, but I don’t have eyelids.

[System: Exactly. So you should win this in your sleep. Which you won’t, because you’re a snake and snakes don’t sleep like that, but you get the point.]

I settle into position, hood flaring slightly out of habit, and I stare.

The gargoyle stares back.

The gargoyle, being made of stone, also cannot blink. But something is wrong; a ripple disturbs the black water to my left, and it’s not from my own movement.

Five seconds in, and I’m already overthinking it.

What does intimidating even look like for a snake? Do I flare my hood wider? Is that too much? Too try-hard? The gargoyle doesn’t care; the gargoyle is a rock. But what if it did care? What would a rock find intimidating? Nothing. Rocks don’t have opinions. But what if this particular rock, through some quirk of ancient masonry, does have opinions, and those opinions are currently judging my hood flare as inadequate?

Ten seconds later, and the gargoyle hasn’t moved- huge shocker.

I try widening my eyes. Snakes don’t have expressive faces. Our entire emotional range is conveyed through hood position and tongue movement, which is like trying to write a novel using only two punctuation marks.

{{PLEASE READ THIS ON NovelPhoenix I HAVE GARGOYLES TO FEED}}