Chapter 71: Snowflakes, Snakes, and Fake Snakes (Patreon)

Thank you for your patience, hopefully this chapter is alright for you guys! I'm a bit worried that it will feel out of place, but I finally want to move things forward. Let me know how you feel!

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The wyrm was many things, well aware that the list of accomplishments and achievements was longer than even she. But she was just as aware of what she was more than anything else, something she made sure nobody else would ever question. She was a ruler, the queen of myriad twisting caverns, and the legion of serpentine dwellers therein. She may not have had much territory under her rule, but some primal part of her knew that great empires started small before covering continents or sprawling across the seas. Just like the snakes who should rule them.

She knew that her reach, be it in influence or in body, was nowhere near that large yet, but her ambition was, and even as she surveyed her domain she made plans to expand it. Being a young snake, these plans weren’t exactly going to be winning wars yet, but the battles she and her subjects constantly waged against the not-snakes were another matter.

The cavernous level which she claimed as her home had undergone many changes since the time she had moved in, back when she was a tiny thing hardly larger than some of her more favored kin. Back then, it had been dark and barren, hardly any life called this pit home, and those that did were all crazed or cowardly. While she had to leave many of her kin behind, those reliant on lungs simply couldn’t follow her descent, she had fought against this.

She poked her head out of the cave she had been curled in, and even without her hood flared, not a thing on the floor could miss the motion. She could truly be called massive, now, at over twenty meters in length and nearly two in width, not seeing her wasn’t an issue for anything that could see. Not that she cared much, very little of the Lord’s own subjects could do much to her, and she was confident in her odds against those few who could. Her amber eyes bored holes into the mass of many-armed not-snakes across the floor, pulsing and flashing with dull colors and lighting up the floor with their hunger, idly noting that they seemed even fewer in number than before her nap.

Her snakes had likely further thinned them out, or they went on yet another cannibalistic rampage. The results were the same, uninteresting. Her gaze moved, taking note of the diminutive figures darting across the floor in the murk or the luminescent fish streaking through the corals the Lord had recently covered the walls in. There had been some on the floor, too, but invaders were not kind to her home and neither was she to them, and the few times she had participated in these fights rather than letting her subjects and generals finish them off saw most of the water in her general area being tainted beyond what most things could endure, including coral.

She watched bright blues and reds appear and disappear in the distance, no doubt using the practically glowing darkness to hide, and also took care to note the more outstanding serpents under her command. Despite most snakes being far too well adapted to stand out so egregiously amongst their surroundings, not a single one of them could escape her gaze. They reacted any time they felt their queen’s attention, and whether it was through shuddering or preening or cowering or anything else, all of them treated her with the deference she was owed. Everything on this floor treated her with respect, or fear, as it should be.

Unfortunately for the regal wyrm, something interrupted her survey of her budding kingdom. Something she couldn’t see, but she absolutely felt. She simply knew that somewhere nearby, something grotesquely insulting, more than even the wyvern that seemed so intent on disrupting her, more vehemently wrong than even being outclassed so thoroughly by an invader, had just been created. Her head shot in that direction, and she shot halfway out of the yawning mouth of the cave she’d claimed. 

Her hood was already flared, and her fangs already bared before she realized that she was staring at a wall with all the malice and disgust she could muster, but she hardly cared. The fact that her generals had gathered by her side and the rest of her subjects had grown agitated only supported her ire, but a moment of thought was all it took to realize that whatever it was that had happened was not within her sphere of influence.

Another moment of thought, and she had decided on the best way to fix that: she’d mount a crusade and erase whatever it was that was so vile. And if the Lord didn’t allow her that, at the very least she could impress upon it her own superiority early on instead of letting it grow arrogant like a certain reptile she could think of. She was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, of course, but for reasons she simply couldn’t fathom most of the things that she deemed offensive were on the list of creatures the Lord considered too important to die and whatever this thing she was rallying her kind to go towards was certainly offensive. 

What a rally it was, too. With an intensity she hadn’t had in some time, she slithered the rest of the way out of her den, and the rest of the floor went still. She stayed low to the floor, barely above it as she swam towards the other end of the arena, towards the light. Behind her were at least hundreds of lesser snakes, some hardly centimeters in length while others were upwards of meters. Some were thin and muted in color, some were flattened, some glowed or had garish markings, and a few that the wyrm knew of even had a second head, or another tail. 

But in spite of the sheer display of variety, the horde moved in time with itself in a manner that was almost uncanny, moving in a single serpentine formation through the sparse wonders of the environment. Everything else gave them a wide berth, and rightfully so, anything straying too close to the wake of the wyrm’s procession found itself caught up in a light haze of fatal milky yellow seeping from the queen’s maw or falling prey to the many fangs that would lash out at them for their impudence.

The scaled stampede spilled out into the ninth floor, and the wyrm could feel the Lord’s gaze turn her way in curiosity as she took a moment to adjust to the light of the floor. After months of utter darkness, she and many of the other permanent residents of the faux abyss were almost blinded for a moment from the solid, magical light kept maintained overhead. But it was only a passing annoyance, and very quickly they set off once more. 

There was a small selection of serpents who were previous residents flocking towards her in reverence, quickly being subsumed into the rest of the knot and bolstering its numbers further, but most of the life in the open cavern seemed unsure of what to do. A few of the more daring inhabitants decided to try their luck, mostly trying to pull from the veritable cloud of serpents for a quick meal, but none found success. Very few even found escape.

The swirling line of scale continued towards the center of the floor, and the titanic deep blue figure at the head of this serpentine mass only grew more agitated as she approached. The rage and wrath had long since faded, leaving her as clear-headed as she usually was, but the gnawing frustration simply refused to abate. Just like her first confrontation with the wyvern, something instinctual was calling for blood, but she didn’t know why, she didn’t even know how she was made aware of this.

It was at the drop-off to the next floor that she began to grow confused, mostly due to her utter lack of personal familiarity with these caves. When the temperature of the water suddenly plummets, she was taken aback, but she also knew that she needed to descend to confront her newest annoyance. A moment of deliberation later, and she decided that concrete knowledge was more important than comfort she could go back to at any time. What she needed more time to decide, was whether the rest of her kin should follow her into the frigid pit.

Eventually, she decided they should not. Most of them would simply fall not a torpor in the face of these temperatures, possibly outright die. Those who didn’t would still fare poorly, even the biting cold of their home felt like sunbathing next to this malevolent chill. A single glance was plenty to convey her sentiment, and while most of her creatures seemed less than pleased about being ordered to wait, the wyrm’s word was absolute to them. They wouldn’t go back to the thirteenth, however, deciding instead to amass at the entrance as some half-sphere of tooth and muscle while the wyrm slithered into the entrance of the tenth.

It was distinctly unusual for her, her head was already poking into the snowy water before her tail had even gotten into the tunnel, and the entire passage was thin enough for her to be dislodging coral and crystal as she descended. She didn’t need to fully emerge, however, to spot the thing that she knew to hate. A hideously pink fake-snake coiled around a man-shaped dragon, the latter was already enough to spark contempt, but the former was outright mocking her with its very shape.

She pushed her way out into the frozen arena fast enough to leave a wake behind her, and she almost smashed right into the floor below before she could change her direction. Instead, she simply barreled into the outskirts, carving a path through any coral that grew too tall as she tried slowing down, eventually stopping at the end of the trail of destruction and settling onto the icy limestone floor. 

The wyrm was many things, but she was not designed to maneuver any better than a particularly angry boulder once she started moving. And unsurprisingly, her entrance made sure that, once again, every single creature on the floor became keenly aware of her presence, including the man-dragon and the living-insult. They were very obviously stunned by her sudden arrival, however, and both of them had a dumb look playing across their features. That was a bit redundant though, she knew that any look on either of them would be dumb.

Still, they kept gawking at her for a few moments longer, as she reared back and puffed herself out. She was supremely confident with her own image, half a dozen tiny horns studding the crown of her head and a dozen more on her hood flaunted her own royalty, and the sickly fog she created just by opening her mouth slightly had already begun scouring the floor around her clean of life. Her preening came to an end without any warning when the water around her turned solid.

She was stunned for a second, not expecting her entire world to go white, but the cold did wonders at snapping her out of it. A single flex of her body, and the frozen prison she was in shattered, but even before she could go after the two obvious culprits those very shards turned into spears that immediately set about trying to impale her. They didn’t have much luck, though, and she simply smashed through them. Her advance was unstoppable, but that was as much an issue as it was a boon, and the nimble pair simply evaded her. The man-thing bolted to the side, while the imposter simply swam upwards, and the wyrm went right by. 

She once more began the arduous task of coming to a stop, this time being assaulted on all sides by jagged spears of hazy ice and crystalline daggers of clear frost. They were more effective this time, and the few she barreled into gouged out chunks of her even through her scaly armor, albeit not very deep. 

By the time she did manage to turn around, bleeding lightly but otherwise unharmed, she noted with pride that one of the two irritants, the man, thought themselves invincible, and strayed too close to the path of black and green that had trailed behind her, letting her toxic water brush past him. He was more resilient than most, surprisingly, but the venom she left behind was plenty enough to turn one of his dazzlingly hands a dull grey as it wormed its way up his arm, and the mimic had turned frantic as it noticed his affliction. The thing’s care wasn’t very helpful, though, and even when it had turned any water nearby that held even a wisp of her gift, it wasn’t enough to stop what had begun.

The lusterless grey scales were withering slightly, and black veins crawled up past his elbow. The matte markings were more than his own blood vessels, though, the skin and scales themselves had been branded with the mark, and the jet tendrils squirmed and writhed slightly as they slowly crept upwards. Unfortunately, her admiring was cut short, and even if neither her victim nor his abominable associate could stop the spread of her blight once it got started, there was someone who could.

She was struck with a thought that wasn’t her own, and it was overwhelmingly more potent than anything that was. A command from the Lord, no doubt, chastising her for the fight and proving her assumption correct by making sure she knew that neither of the two frustrations were to die by her actions. Fights were fine, but as the dragon-man was bathed in the Lord’s healing light she knew her most potent asset was off-limits. Surprisingly enough, though, even that wasn’t enough to completely free him from her fangless bite, and while her blight was flushed out, the black markings remained, still swirling ever so slightly around his forearms.

Her gloating was interrupted by a spear of ice much larger than any she had faced before getting conjured from the waters around her, and with a speed equally new to her, getting launched at her. It was enough to punch a hole through her hood, which had been plenty to infuriate her, but once more she was locked in an icy cocoon, only this time, she couldn’t simply shrug it off. Outside of her prison, she heard a muted roar reverberating through the floor, no doubt the fake-snake proving how unserpentine it really was, but she realized with some dismay that she was in no place to focus on contempt.

The crystal locked her in her pose, what should have been her, half coiled and staring down at the two things as they realized their own inferiority had instead become an awkward looking statue, one that even sprouted lances of ice to try and dig into the fleshy form underneath. The Lord set to work healing her after that, any errant spear that managed to punch through her was very quickly destroyed and the scales recreated, but she simply couldn’t break the ice, and it was infuriating.

This humiliation continued for a few minutes, though it felt like far longer, until finally she could twist herself in just the right way inside the ice, leveraging her own massive body to snap through the solid water. As the crack rang out through the floor, she shook the rest of her binding off and quickly caught sight of the culprit. The vile serpent had apparently separated from its partner, although the weak thing was trying to catch up to it. Still, all three parties were separated by a few dozen meters, and the wyrm was already trying to figure out how much mana she needed to pump into her venom glands to only cripple them both without making her blight too potent when they were forced to ceasefire.

The trio, and everything else in the Lord’s domain, could feel when their master was being invaded, the tether they all had with them was tugged on just enough to warn them that something that didn’t belong was entering, and it felt too soon. Another invasion, a new interloper had entered, and any squabbles the creatures were having before then suddenly stopped. They may not suddenly become some single-minded entity that wants nothing more than harmony, and grudges would most certainly be remembered, but the wyrm knew that no well-earned revenge was worth risking the Lord’s defenses during a siege. 

She had to settle with glaring at the two, her gaze laced with more venom than the waters she fought in, and then sulking off towards the exit. She was going to try and settle back into her own cave for the day, decide whether it was worth coming back and fighting a second round in this floor or trying to goad them out, but she was stopped before reaching the tunnel. A simple command, an intention coming from her bond, was telling her to stay where she was instead. 

She couldn’t begin to fathom why the Lord would want her to stay with them, but their word was law, and it could well just be temporary, so she decided to put up with it as best she could. When the vague information she was getting about which floor the invaders were on told her that they suddenly moved down seven floors, to the open waters of the eighth, she realized that the Lord likely knew much more than her.

Thankfully, the Lord didn’t seem nervous or afraid like they had with the small-man’s invasion, but it did seem confused, and confusion was still not good. The other two also seemed to realize something was amiss, and the two sides once more eyed the other down. Hostile as they all were, nobody made any overt motions to attack the other party. Eventually, they all settled on surveying the damage inflicted on the floor by their fight, and the wyrm had a feeling that the blackened coral was not normal for this floor, two large patches and multiple streaks of the stuff were actively withering away and the white shards flaking of the healthy corals and floating up were joined by ashen flecks of dead polyps.

It made for a very grim scene, and that was exactly to the wyrms taste. As many, many pairs of eyes turned upwards, being notified that the new group was one floor closer, apparently moving fast instead of fighting. The wyrm trusted that her generals on the floor above were competent enough to thin the apparent group of five, or keep her lesser kin from getting thinned too far themselves. With any luck, they’d outright stop them, but the wyrm had a feeling things wouldn’t be simple. She looked at the disgusting duo a final time, before swimming off to the other side of the floor, settling under a rocky overhang that was distinctly not her cave and far inferior. So she sulked, waiting for something she could use to vent to come descending into this annoyingly cold floor.