—Orion—

  It seemed that Sally had finally finished her tantrum, and stopped being angry at me. She had even let me teach her another command. It only took almost getting eaten to make her forgive me.

  What about a giant snake almost killing me made her happy with me again, I do not know. I still didn't understand what I'd done to anger her in the first place, the whole situation from start to finish was something I just could not grasp. She seemed to only ever exist at either end of her extremes, never anything in between her obstinate indignation or reluctant acceptance of my assistance.

  Even now with her in my arms, she still showed aggression if I dared to stray from what she’d allowed me to touch. Though for her, it seemed to be the highest expression of her trust. I’d gladly take and reciprocate it.

  But after spending some time sitting there, both making sure that Sally understood my gratitude and finishing my mental preparation for the test ahead, I stood up. Sally jumped out of my arms as soon as I shifted out of my position, and she followed me to the back exit.

  Well, I say exit, but it's not technically one—yet.

  It's just a portion of wall that is especially weak, and is above the path we needed. The stone wall was thin enough to ram and run straight through it, and land on the stone route we had to take.

  I pressed my fingers against the barrier, the stone flexing under the slight pressure I applied. If it was thin enough that it could bend without snapping, it should easily shatter if I shoulder charged it, I couldn't imagine that it'd put up more resistance than a thin sheet of ice or glass.

  As Sally watched me closely, I backed up towards the front entrance of the petrified house, stopping when my feet crunched on the broken remains of the door. It was another reassurance that it wouldn't be hard to run through the wall, given that I'd already barrelled through the thicker front door after tripping.

  I leant down and grabbed one of the door's stone shards, and collected the last thing I needed for my—admittedly bad—plan, the small slate-like pebble resting in the palm of my hand.

  Before I committed to doing anything else, I fastened my makeshift blindfold over my eyes again. It wasn't a very thorough one—which was a decision I'd made on purpose. It allowed me to see the area around my feet clearly, and I could vaguely see the shapes of the objects around me.

  I had been surprised that my new night-vision had worked so well even through obstructions—even species that only live in complete darkness do not have this level of clarity. Eyes—no matter how adapted—still required some light to see, so this caused me to suspect that the mutation was enhanced by some strain of magic.

  But after testing its effectiveness against the serpent's white light, I had been pleased to find that it did help fight off its effects. While it wasn't enough to free me physically, it did help me to retain my memories and thoughts a bit better.

  Reducing the [Dazed] effect had allowed me to—mostly—remember what it looked like, the blur in my memories was more defined than what [The Hunter’s Anathema] had shown me. The gigantic brown snake—with what were maybe antler horns on the sides of its head—liked to hunt just how I expected. That was the most important detail for the last part of the escape.

  As quietly as I could, I leant down and offered Sally my arm, and while she did hesitate for a few seconds, she eventually clambered onto me. As always she ignored the shoulder I offered, for her to instead perch on my head.

  With a deep breath I steadied myself and prepared to take the first running step towards our freedom. Before I did, I created the distraction that we needed to be able to escape without dying in the first couple of seconds.

  I created the distraction for the serpent to fall for, by throwing the rock out the front of the house. It landed loudly, the pebble hitting a stone path going in the opposite direction to where we were going to go.

  As soon as the rock left my hand, I began to run, pumping every bit of strength my thighs had into accelerating as much as I could before hitting the wall. To protect myself and Sally, I raised my arms to cover my face and Sally from any stone debris. My forearms and hands were able to cover us enough to avoid any dangerous cuts.

  With a grunt of pain I collided with the wall, I felt a moment of painful resistance before it gave, and that millisecond of collision definitely caused bruising—if I didn't have my talent. But the inconsequential pain didn't matter, as the wall broke into a million pieces.

  Through my blindfold, I could just make out the stone landing I’d need to jump off of, and the stone path I needed to take to reach my next location. I didn't let myself slow down—even though a second to assess safe places to put my feet would've been helpful—as I continued running, preparing to jump onto a stone log.

  I launched myself into the air, and landed on one of the many stone logs surrounding the raised stone platform the house was on. I needed to traverse a chain of them, and a few above-water stumps, to reach the path I needed to take.

  I landed on the damp rock, and thankfully it was sturdy underfoot, my shoes gripping the wet, fossilised bark without slipping. Though as I ran along its length, I heard the splashing of water in the distance, and the faint noise was a confirmation that the snake had fallen for the distraction. It was lucky that the trick had worked again.

  Something that still astounded me was the basic intelligence of the serpent, it still continuously chased random noises and thrown objects like a dog. As terrifying as the monster was, I was surprised it’d been able to survive so long, with such a rudimentary intelligence.

  I put the monster out of my mind for the next few seconds as I tilted my head back as I ran along the log. With the improved view, I identified the stump I needed to jump to, then leap from to reach the next knocked-over tree trunk I could use to reach the path.

  Running over the horizontal remains of trees felt incredibly familiar to me, and as my feet instinctively found the perfect places for reliable and safe foot-holds, I realised I'd done this before. Not fleeing from a giant snake—but for most of my childhood, there'd rarely be a day where I wasn't running through a forest. While dead and turned to stone, it wasn't that different to sprinting over their living descendants.

  With immense familiarity, I jumped from my current log onto the stump, and only one foot ever rested on its surface. With a grunt of effort, my other leg swung past the stump without ever touching it, its momentum carrying me forwards as I launched off of the stump with the planted leg.

  After spending a second in the air, I landed on the final stone log, my footing as reliable as ever as I kept moving without stumbling once, never losing time or speed to needless fumbling.

  But before I could make it halfway across the stone cylinder, only a few seconds from reaching the stone walkway, my confidence in my plan was proven wrong.

  The log beneath me suddenly exploded upwards, sending me stumbling forwards as chips and splinters of stone shredded my back. A force from below had blown through the portion of the tree trunk I'd been standing on a second ago, rupturing it in two by using the blunt kinetic energy of an artillery shell.

  My stomach churned as one of the small projectiles hit my face, partially cutting through the blindfold and leaving a sharp scratch on my cheek.

  I had to ignore the loosening of the cloth as I struggled to keep my footing on the surface, the previously flat log abruptly rotating forty-five degrees in less than a second.

  I only barely managed to ride the stone through the madness—my assigned points in [Dexterity] becoming the only reason I was able to stay upright and out of the water in the chaos. As the wave of water and the petrified and improvised raft I was on got thrown to the path I'd been aiming for, I jumped to it.

  By using my skill, the artificial [Dexterity] the Path had given me, and an incredible amount of luck, I managed to land on the stone path without getting hit by debris. I had to stop running for half a second to regain my balance and wits.

  Sally however was almost lost in the chaos of the situation, and I had to almost slam my hand over her to stop her from flying off. She didn't almost fall off because of lack of effort, several deep cuts in my scalp attested to that. Before the pain could seep through the shock or interfere, I let my nature heal them, the blood from those wounds would only get in the way of seeing.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I didn’t dare glance at what had attacked us and almost ruined our escape not even ten seconds in, as far as I knew, there was only one thing in this cave alive and capable of that other than Sally and I.

  I could have sworn that I'd heard the serpent go for the distraction, but maybe I'd been mistaken about what I'd heard—did I start running too soon? Should I have waited a second or two longer? But I did the trick the exact same way as the last two times I'd used it, so it wasn't me who'd made it ineffective.

  The thought that I was missing something, or that a factor had changed without me noticing, made my heart race faster than exertion alone could've. But it was too late to change plans now, and all I could do was stay committed to the course I'd chosen.

  Without missing a beat, as soon as I tried to start running down the path, Sally immediately screeched out a warning, forcing me to move and strain my unprepared muscles into dodging. I jumped to a nearby stump that I'd spotted earlier.

  I landed on the top of the stone pillar, and my feet loudly slapped against the rock, causing me to realise that my shoes had gotten wet, splashed by some displaced water sometime after the snake's ambush.

  Behind me I heard the terrible noise of stone screaming from being crushed and torn, and I restrained the instinctual urge to look at the threat. Even if I was half-blinded, I knew its light would affect me enough through the blindfold to slow me down, or even stun me. That alone would be enough for it to catch me.

  I tilted my head back again, mapping a route back to the stone path I'd just been chased off of. In a split second I saw another walkway that I could reach, that ran relatively parallel to the one I needed. When they split off into opposite directions, about fifty metres down the path, a log connected the diverging paths, and I could use it to reach my original stone walkway.

  I hopped onto the detour, and started running again, sprinting down the stone path with every ounce of strength I had in me. The sound of my wet boots slapping against the stone was almost louder than the rising pounding of my heartbeat in my ears, the drumming drowning out my thoughts.

  A loud hiss informed me that it’d already rid itself of the stone it’d bitten, if there was a portion of petrified tree-trunk in its mouth, it would've muffled the noise. A loud splash that accompanied its verbal threat confirmed that it’d decided not to crunch it into smaller chunks. It confirmed another divergence in its usual behaviour, prioritising us instead of biting down on what was already in its mouth

  This only fed the rising tide of jitteriness, and fluttering thoughts of my death. The only thing that had kept me calm before was the plan I had, a way to survive. Though that reassurance grew fainter with every chaotic action the monster took. But I tried to push down the learnt signs of fear as I forced myself to run even faster.

  It made it tempting to unclip my jacket, throw off all other unnecessary items and weight I didn't immediately need, which could cut a half-second off the time it would take to reach the exit. But I stopped myself, knowing that it wouldn’t be a difference worth considering. Sally was the biggest and most distracting thing I was carrying, and was a part of the lose weight I could lose and still live. I wasn't that much of a coward. Not yet at least.

  Another screech from my companion warned me of an attack, and thankfully we'd just gotten within jumping distance of the log needed to return to the original route. Though the abruptness of her cry spurred me into jumping early, the length between us and the log further than I felt safe jumping.

  But that unconscious decision was confirmed to be the right one as I escaped its attack by the thinnest of margins. I had felt the torrent of air the snake's head had left in its wake, the gust of wind strong enough to ruffle my clothes, telling me that I'd only escaped by the skin of my teeth.

  As I landed on a knee and my hands, the explosion of stone rang out, chips of it and droplets of water hitting my back. It took a second that I couldn’t afford to waste to stand up again and start running. I'd managed to make it across the log and back onto the original stone path for me to realise what'd changed, and caused these unplanned close calls.

  Behind me I could hear the snake start to crunch on the stone, changing back to how it had originally acted before this confrontation. The snake wasn't predictable.

  It was an erratic, chaotic beast, that wasn't something that you could plan around. Its 'habits' were little more than coincidences, and wasn't something as consistent as the animals I'd modelled its actions on.

  Everything I'd planned had been ruined. While I don't think it was intelligent in any way—if it was, Sally and I would already be dead. Its unpredictability was enough to make every single prediction I'd made incorrect, the strategies I'd formed around them were now useless, and that'd lowered our chances of survival by an order of magnitude.

  I'd made a horrible mistake, and likely killed us both. The rising nausea from that realisation was ignored, something to punish myself over later—if we lived long enough for me to ruminate over every mistake.

  As I kept running, my feet aching from how hard I’m slapping them against stone, I fought the temptation to look back at the water behind me, at the giant serpent chasing us. It felt painful to resist the urge to find out where it was, how close to striking at us next. To wilfully stop myself from seeing where the monster was, to let myself stay in the dark about how much danger I was in was one of the biggest temptations I've had to bury.

  About eight seconds later the crunching of stone stopped, and I took it as a sign to check how far I was from the final stone path we'd be running on, the one that'd take us to the exit. I peered under the blindfold, and saw it, both the path and the hollow tree it led to.

  The exit path, and the stone route I was currently on ran parallel for a few seconds of running, and in the moment I decided to jump and change paths at the last possible moment. It'd allow me the longest period of time before the next snake strike on the path without any escape routes, and I'd need to jump in the next second anyway.

  I tried not to think about how my original plan for the stretch of walkway where I couldn't dodge was realistically ruined with its reveal of its true nature. But it's not like I had an alternative.

  As I reached the section of stone where I could safely swap paths, I readied my legs as I awaited the starting signal of Sally's next warning cry.

  As if prompted by my thoughts, Sally screamed, and without waiting long enough for a single coherent thought to form, I leapt across the black lake. I landed better this time than the previous jump, but Sally struggled to stay on my head with the sudden leap, her talons raking my head as she scrambled for secure footing. Before I could steady her with a hand like before, one of her feet clipped the blindfold, and what’d already been damaged broke.

  Damn it.

  I internally admonished myself for the bad-language out of habit, and my eyes saw the world in full detail again. The cloth had slipped off of my eyes, and then fully pulled off of my head and lost to the lake as the air rushing past my sprinting body caught its light folds.

  I glanced down at my feet and was surprised to see my shadow, my silhouette created by the white fog-light aimed at my back. However the sound of stone cracking assured me that it wasn’t about to try to bite me in half again, at least for the next few seconds. But the paralysing ray illuminating my surroundings—with me at the centre of the cone of light—told me that it was watching me, paying attention to my actions.

  So I kept running, my legs burning and begging to go limp as I reached the final stretch, the final challenge before I earned our freedom and survival.

  I looked up, and in the distance I could see it—the metal sign, painted red and immensely out of place for this world, just like the vision showed—and there was only eighty metres between me and what it promised. It filled me with immense relief, knowing finally that the vision shown by [The Hunter’s Anathema] was reliable, and the exit it'd tempted me with wasn't a lie.

  Before the joy could dull my panic and turn my legs into jelly with relief, I willed the burning stiffness away as I tried to accelerate even more for the final sprint.

  A few seconds of sprinting later, and I was already a third of the way there. It'd also been that long since it’d last struck, and if it was going to act like I prayed it would, I was safe for now, but soon I’d need to enact my plan before it tried to strike again. There was no guarantee that it’d work now that the serpent has shown its unpredictability, but it's all I had.

  Even though the plan was egregious before it'd shown it's erraticness, walking into the lion's mouth in order to escape it still felt stupid.

  As time ticked into my best approximation of the fifth second, I realised that something was wrong, even more than it already was.

  I could no longer hear stone being destroyed or crunched in its jaws, and I didn’t hear the boulder being discarded and thrown into the water either. I looked down at my feet, and saw that the shadow I'd gotten from the serpent's light had dissipated. Sometime in the last couple of seconds, it must've stopped looking at me, its gaze—along with its attention—had become absent

  In that moment I realised that it’d changed tactics, and to keep up I would need to enact my plan early-

  All pretences of being able to outsmart the beast, or plan around it ended when its tail slammed into my stomach. It was so much faster than it’d ever been before, its appendage slamming into me before I could even flinch or realise what'd happened.

  I could feel my chest crunch as ribs broke, my bones brittle and unable to withstand the raw force it could output.

  More injuries were inflicted on me as I hit the stone path, somehow not tumbling off of it and into the water before I stopped bouncing.

  I could feel my bones stitch themselves back together as I retched, my stomach expelling the last of its contents. I spat out blood and bile as it slipped back into its rightful place, most of my insides dislodged and rearranged by the strike.

  I tried to stand up, but the pain from my internal organs shifting around made it impossible. I could also see Sally in a similar position to me a few metres away, mewling as she writhed in pain, her wings bent at unnatural angles. She would need the touch of my nature soon, before any of her injuries had a chance to sap her last point or two of health.

  But before I could even consider what I should do next, a glimmer of pale light beneath the dark water prompted me to fling my head downwards and hide my eyes from it. The sounds of water surging, and the unique sound of scales scraping and slipping over the stone around me, filled me with a new and unique sort of dread.

  As I kept my eyes to the ground below me, I saw my shadow dance on the stone below me the sight helping me realise that I already knew where its head, and by extension, the source of the light.

  I looked down the path, in the opposite direction of the white light, and saw that the stone path had been cut off by an unscalable wall of scales. It had draped its body over the walkway, creating an unscalable barrier that looked impossibly tall to scale.

  It’d trapped me between a wall and its maw, and only something intelligent would be capable of this sort of cruelty. Yet another reminder of how I’d ruined everything, just by underestimating it.

  It took a few seconds for my wounds to heal enough for me to stand up, and the serpent didn’t bother to intervene. The wall of snake flesh—at least ten metres high—stood only a few metres away from me.

  I stumbled the distance it took to reach its body, and on the way, I took out the golden dagger from my belt. I reached the brown wall made of scales—the interlocking plates double the size of my splayed hands—and raised the weapon over my head.

  I pressed the button as I swung it downwards over my head, the blade moving at a pace I couldn’t replicate naturally. However it failed—I suspected because of the level difference—the only thing hurt from my attack was the joints in my arms as the blade bounced off of the scales.

  “… damn it.” I scowled, and a hiss behind me was the only response that I got. It sounded like a laugh, in some twisted way, but the sudden mental anthropomorphism I’d placed onto the giant serpent felt strange. A problem for after, if we survive the trial ahead.

  Before I tucked my dagger back into my belt, and rolled the dice on whether my original plan would still work, I improvised. I raised the dagger up, and gave myself a cut above my eyebrows, just below the scalp. I then let my nature heal it, only partially, enough to slightly delay how fast the blood would well up, and also how long until it began to seep out.

  I always knew that this was the best chance for our survival, but it relied on luck too much, and went against every instinct that I had for self-preservation. So, for hopefully the final time today, I swallowed the signs of fear, and turned around to face the serpent.

  If the [Sacrificial Dagger] couldn't pierce its scales, then that only left one option. The original plan.

  Before the light from its forehead completely overwhelmed me, I etched its face into my memory as well as I could. Its rotting horns, scarred eye and gleeful look that twisted its face, the last things I was capable of holding in my mind before all I was, came undone.

  By that light, coming from that gem.

  A white light, shin-ing through the trans-parent crys-tal.

  From so-mewh-ere behind i-t, in-s-ide it, th-e bea-utiful white.