Kor perched atop the small stool in her loft, bare toes gripping its edge for balance. Her elbows rested against her knees as she leaned forward over the open book on the table. Snek’s tiny head poked out from the goblin woman’s tangled mess of white frizzy hair, eyes trained on the book.

  “There do not appear to be any lim-i-ta-tions on what can become a zone with-in a get.” Kor slowly read, pausing to sound out unfamiliar words while twirling her moustache with ringed fingers. When she read the last word, the little snake tapped on the nape of her neck twice - indicating a mispronunciation.

  Kor sighed and her nose flared, the small silver ring that poked through the side of her nostril glinting in the light of the solitary desktop candle. Good natured annoyance crept into her voice as she let out a low growl and responded to the little snake’s prompt, “Snek… Kor knows this! Kor cannot mek that sound with her mouth. How does Snek even know it's wrong? Snek can’t pronounce at all!”

  Snek lifted the end of her tail and patted the top of the goblin woman’s head knowingly. She liked reading with Kor. It was fun, even if she had already finished both pages and was just waiting for Kor to catch up. She had been listening somewhat inattentively as she waited, staring at an interesting diagram that had been drawn in the margins of the page.

  The diagram was complex, and portrayed multiple circles ensconcing stars with candles at each point. The lines of the star were written in a language that Snek didn’t understand - which had caught her off guard. She had believed that her Literacy skill had given her the ability to read all forms of writing, but as she gazed at the angular and sharp characters, no meaning came. They looked like a cross between letters and shapes, and seemed to indicate a different and deeper meaning than the other words.

  “There are re-por-ts. Reports… what is reports?” Kor asked. Snek made to move off the top of her head, but Kor continued before she did. “Reports of zones the size of a single room up to containing an entire city… Oh. So report is telling what happened…”

  Snek felt a surprised pride flow through her at Kor’s words. The goblin woman had figured out what the word meant without needing Snek’s help. A subtle popping sound resonated in her mind, and she pulled up the corresponding notification.

  Snek had wondered if teaching Kor to read would earn her a Feat of Power, but had largely given up on the idea as the days passed. Apparently Kor learning to figure out what a word meant based on the context of the surrounding text had pushed her knowledge beyond some hidden requirement.

  Snek excitedly pulled up her status screen to see the new changes as Kor continued to read.

  Her level hadn’t gone up at all in the last few days, and Snek wondered if her lack of progress was related to the relative ease she had been having while dealing with the rats. Her new stealth skill had made hiding and ambushing the unsuspecting rodents trivial in the chaotic mess downstairs. It was so easy, in fact, that she had been relegating the hunt to the instinctual part of her mind as she thought of other things.

  She had started referring to her instincts as her ‘snake brain’, and had experimented with its capabilities as she hunted the rats. Her snake brain could function almost completely independently from her thoughts, but couldn’t handle deeper levels of speculation - hence the name she came up with. Snek was fairly certain that other snakes didn’t think as deeply as she did.

  As her snake brain had hunted, killed, and eaten the trespassing rodents, she had let her mind wander over a myriad of topics. She thought about her life, about her newfound friendship with Kor, and about her goals. Snek was happy with her life, but knew that she needed to grow stronger. She knew that she had gotten lucky and had barely managed to survive - and she needed to change that.

  So she had been trying, with very little success, to push herself past her limits and develop new skills. She preferred focusing on this project instead of worrying about her future evolution. She still didn’t know what would happen to her excess intelligence and charisma when she eventually did take on a new form, and those worries had plagued her mind and intruded on her thoughts frequently over the past few days.

  It was to the point where she was worried that she would earn a skill for worrying if she continued to worry, and that gave her a headache. So instead, she focused on her project of developing a new skill and had been imposing limitations on her snake brain as it hunted. She made it hunt in new territories of the hut, made it hunt without smelling the air around her, and even made it kill the last rat with her eyes closed.

  Yet she still hadn’t earned a new skill.

  She had also pushed for more information about the brain in the jar and the strange talon she saw, and Kor had explained a bit further.

  “Bren is special. Elder shamanka said bren is alive, and has much power. Bren can protect from worst kind of enemies.”

  How can it help you while it's stuck in the jar? Snek had asked.

  “Kor has not needed Bren’s help. Shamanka before Kor also did not need Bren’s help, so Bren is kept safe in jar.” Kor responded.

  Snek hadn’t continued pushing for information. She could tell that Kor didn’t like talking about the brain - not nearly as much as she liked holding it anyway - and Kor had been nothing but kind and helpful. That did not mean she liked the brain jar, however, as she always felt like she was being studied when in its presence.

  She felt that way now, as she gazed down at it from atop Kor’s head. It was on the table next to the book, but she couldn’t see the brain within. It was just cloudy and purple, swirling back and forth.

  A rattle and clunking sound from downstairs caught Snek’s attention, and she made her way off of Kor’s head and onto her shoulder. Kor absentmindedly lowered her arm to the ground, and the little snake slithered down the arm and onto the floor towards the ladder. Kor kept reading, but they both knew it would take her some time to get caught up to Snek.

  She moved down the side of the ladder before falling quietly onto a pile of stained fabric she had scavenged from the piles of random junk Kor kept in her hut. She landed without a sound, and began slithering through the various snake sized tunnels she had cleared through the mess.

  She felt the effects of her stealth skill as she moved through the room like a ghost. Her movements were exact and silent, and before long she located her prey. She wondered how she could push herself to grow while hunting this time, but Snek realized that something was off with the rodent sitting in the middle of the room.

  It was completely exposed as it jerkily cleaned itself on a small patch of bare floor. A low and persistent squeaking yowl was coming from the rodent, its eyes unfocused and darting chaotically around the room.

  Snek sat in a small coil as she watched its strange behavior from the shadows. As she watched the rat, it stood on its hind legs and reached up for something that was not there. It stretched up high before losing its balance and falling onto its snout with a small thud.

  It was amusing at first, but her snake brain was pulsing with unease. There was something wrong with the rat’s actions, and it lay on the ground kicking instead of getting back up. Its squeaking had changed into a low but continuous chirp. She decided that she would give it a quick death, not taking any risks in light of the odd behavior.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  She moved into position and as the rodent went to scratch its chin, Snek lunged forward in a flash of speed. Her fangs sunk deep into its neck before its little paw was anywhere near its snout, and her jaw clamped down hard with a muffled squelch and crunch. A small amount of warmth rushed through her as she felt the small bones separate in her mouth. It was dead.

  No venom was needed to take down her prey, as her newfound strength was more than enough to finish the job. Snek pulled the corpse back into her tunnel and swallowed the rat whole as she listened for hints of other intruders.

  She hunted through the room for a while, doing a few circuits on various paths through the hut to be sure there was nothing else hiding, but she didn’t find anything. She made her way back to the ladder, and as she approached the back of her tail flicked out - sending a shiny rock pinging off across the room.

  She froze, and turned to look in the rock’s direction. She didn’t remember leaving a rock out on her path. She couldn’t see anything else unusual in the room, besides the strange tilt it had. She realized her head was dipping down to the left, and she accidentally clunked it into the side of a rusty drinking tin with a sharp clang as she turned back around.

  She heard a loud snap, and a red screen materialized in front of her eyes. It was her system, but it was different. The words and letters were expanding and shrinking before her eyes, the color of the screen shifting to different colors as she read the notification.

  Snek blinked as she stared at the bubbling screen in front of her. It was continuously moving and swirling, changing colors and shifting around her field of vision. It was mesmerizing. For a short while, she lay uncoiled on the floor and stared at it. Distantly, in the back of her mind, she could feel her instincts telling her to keep moving. They wanted her to go up the ladder and into the loft for some reason.

  She flippantly gave control of that task to her snake brain so she could focus on the colorful presentation before her. Yet as she moved up the ladder, she glanced down towards the floor. It was swelling and shifting. The pile of trinkets shined below her and grew closer to her before falling back further away. She swooned, and wondered why she couldn’t feel the ladder below her anymore as the ground rushed up to meet her.

  With a loud clang, she slapped against a shiny metal container head first and crumpled into a tangled knot on the floor. She heard Kor’s voice from afar, but she was focused on the paneled wood below her scales. It was writhing angrily and Snek realized she must have upset it with her fall. She hissed in apology as she tried to prop up her body.

  She fell back to the floor as Kor’s visage appeared before her. Kor’s face was locked in stern concern, and Snek found it amusing how the individual hairs of the goblin woman’s mustache were dancing around independent of one another. They looked like little snakes. Snek’s heart was warmed by Kor’s thoughtfulness. Who else would change their prized mustache into little snakes for their friend?

  Kor’s eyes grew cloudy and white as her tattoos emitted a faint white glow. The light shone down on the little snake, and she felt like it was burning her. Had Kor betrayed her? Was she attacking her? That can’t be right. Kor wouldn’t do that. She thought.

  Suddenly Kor sped away, the little snek watching her friend’s after image flick around the room as the goblin woman tore through the various piles of junk. Kor retrieved a large, and significantly charred, sealed glass jar that looked like it had been left in a fire. She darted across the room again to the large pile of ratty armor and rusty weaponry before pulling out a small satchel and throwing it over her shoulder.

  Then Kor was back in front of Snek and was lifting her into the air. Snek was feeling a bit sleepy, so she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was in the cooking pot she had been trapped in before. Panic rushed through her, and her snake brain screamed at her. Her whole body hurt, and she looked upwards. She expected to see the lid closing in on her, but instead she saw Kor holding a small vial of red liquid. The goblin woman deftly uncorked the bottle, and then dumped it down onto the snake. The liquid felt good, and as it touched her scales, she could feel her snake brain relax somewhat.

  Kor poured out two more bottles of the red liquid on top of Snek and into the cooking pot, until she was swimming in a little pool of the stuff. The space she was in came to a lurching halt, but with the sudden clarity the liquid gave her came a pain that wracked through her small frame. It came from the rat she had eaten. It felt like it was trying to dig its way out of her.

  She unhitched her jaw and opened it wide, attempting to regurgitate the creature, but it was stuck. She had swallowed it head first, but now she could feel the small bones pushing into the lining of her throat and tearing into her flesh as she tried to force it back up.

  “Wait Snek, Kor can help.” Kor’s voice came from above. She felt Kor’s ringed fingers close around her body and press against the digesting rat's body, pushing across its protruding form underneath the little snake’s scales. She prodded and grunted as she felt the bones that were scraping through Snek’s insides, and as Snek looked up at Kor, Kor began casting.

  Yet it was different this time. Snek could still feel the ambient power woosh towards Kor, but her eyes remained unclouded. This time, her nose ring began to glow, and Snek thought she could just make out the form of small yet slightly familiar characters glowing across the ring's surface. She couldn’t quite read them, but they looked so familiar…

  Her attention was pulled from Kor’s glowing nose ring as she felt the rat’s bones move inside of her digestive track. The sharp leg bones that had been digging into the side of her digestive track relented and folded in towards the rat’s center mass. Kor’s fingers gently squeezed the bottom of the rat’s corpse as it slid towards her open mouth ever so slightly.

  The little snake briefly wondered if and how Kor was controlling the body, but didn’t have much mental acuity to spare on that problem as her body began heaving uncontrollably. It had decided that she could not wait to dislodge the rat corpse a minute longer. Kor was whispering to her in a calm voice, shushing her and reassuring her as her fingers probed the little snake's body in the faint light of her glowing nose ring.

  Slowly and painfully, Kor worked the rat corpse out of the little snake’s body. Snek’s mind descended into a confusing and perpetual haze of pain and soreness. Whatever Kor was doing was taking care of the largest of the rat’s sharp bones and folding them inwards, but more and more bits and pieces tore into her sides as the dead creature’s tiny bones shattered and splintered under the pressure of her digestive track’s powerful heaves, pushing the splinters into her sides with sharp pain.

  With each internal injury, each prod and cut, the red liquid she was laying in rushed into her dislodged jaw and mouth with a brief soothing feeling. She didn’t know how much time passed like that. Constant pain and cuts being immediately healed as more cuts and pain took their place.

  She wretched and wretched, and throughout it all Kor’s voice was a never stopping low rush of comforting words. Until finally Kor reached into her mouth, and pulled the dead rat out the rest of the way. Snek collapsed into a puddle, floating along the surface of the once red liquid in the pot. Now it was a dark brown color that stunk of rot and iron.

  Kor lifted her out of the liquid, seemingly unfazed by the stench and uncaring of the putrid liquid dripping off her lithe frame. She lifted a small cloth and dried the little snake, before gently lifting her up into her wild mess of hair.

  “Sleep, Snek. Kor will protect you.” She whispered faintly.

  Snek fell asleep so quickly that she didn’t hear the faint popping sound resounding in her mind.

  ***

  “-poison rats into Kor’s hut! Jigz should not be sending any rats at all!” Kor screamed from halfway up the ladder, startling Snek awake. She had been moved from her nest in Kor’s hair and was now coiled up on a small towel atop the table in the loft.

  The little snake groggily looked up in the direction of Kor’s voice, and could see the top of her frizzy white hair sticking up through the open hatch. A low nasally voice mumbled something back to Kor, but Snek couldn’t make out the specific words.

  She was exhausted, but as her eyes began to drift shut once again, she felt a surge of intensity come from Kor and almost malleable tension filled the room. What’s going on? Snek thought, and forced herself up into a more alert position. Did she say poison?

  Recent events flooded her mind, and her snake brain sent a vague pulse of concern down her spine. Her insides felt raw and torn, as if she had swallowed a tree branch wrapped in spikes.

  “Leave my hut! There will be a meeting!” Kor shouted. Then continued with, “Go!” as the other voice began to speak again. It abruptly cut off, and Snek could hear footsteps leaving the hut and the steady beat of Kor’s angry breaths.

  Snek could feel a slight mental pressure, but waited a moment to see if Kor would return to the loft. She heard Kor’s breathing shape into angry sobs, and she figured that Kor would come up when she was ready to talk. In the meantime, she pulled up the notification that must have arrived while she was sleeping.

  As she dismissed the notification, another immediately took its place.

  A new skill and a mutation? She wondered as she pulled up the menu for her evolutionary map. Sure enough, there was a new option listed underneath the mutations category:

  She selected it. Immediately. She didn’t even really think about it and just immediately confirmed the mutation. An itching sensation blossomed on each side of her head, below and behind her eyes. It was uncomfortable, but slowly lessened before dissipating all together.

  Snek took a deep breath as it finally passed, and was immediately greeted with yet another notification:

  No evolution point this time. She noted as she read through the description. Snek closed her menus. It was exciting, but she was worried about Kor. She moved to the edge of the table, slithering down to the floor and over to Kor’s lightly bobbing mass of hair.