—Sally—

  The pain that raced through my wings was so exquisite and all-consuming, that I was genuinely tempted to beg Ulun’suti to end me right then and there, glorious future or not. Out of a corner of a bleary, unfocused eye, I could see that my mostly-unused limbs were bent at angles that made my draconic instincts cringe.

  From the half a second of blurry memory I had from when I was thrown to the floor, I think some instinctual part of me flung all of my limbs out, wings and legs splayed in a way to break a fall. Which I suppose they did—in a literal sense—but my wings were sensitive enough that I’d rather have just landed in the lake and drowned. I'd rather that, than be put through the pain of breaking these new limbs—be made to suffer this incredibly shitty sort of pain.

  In a futile attempt to take my mind off of the agony, I shifted my neck—just enough to be able to get a glimpse of Orion. I saw the man already on his feet, walking towards a coil of the great snake, with his golden dagger in his hand. I vaguely knew that he’d been knocked down, and realised that I must have had lost some time for him to have moved so much—my mind had been too consumed by pain to notice anything happen.

  I flicked my eyes away from Orion and down the path he had walked away from, my curiosity immediately rewarded with a horrifying sight. A length of the great horned serpent’s body already blocked the path. A glance in the other direction showed that both escape routes had been cut off by the gargantuan body of the snake, the impossibly tall wall of scales penning us in without any way to escape. The monster's head was resting on the portion of its body that was cutting off the direction we’d been running, its eye watching Orion’s back with an amused look.

  I could see it clearly now—its actions, the behaviours that were so strange they felt stupid. Stupid enough that whatever did them had to be a demented, broken thing, that the snake rhymed about fish because that's all it could remember.

  But the Horned Serpent wasn't a broken animal, it did every pointless action because it didn't think it mattered, and why would it? It showed that it was capable of catching me at any opportunity.

  Its mind wasn’t a maddened monster that’d spent too long locked up in a stone pit, or a vicious serpent that bided its time with a careful, cunning plan in wait. Those weren’t contradictory personalities, or the products of time taking its toll, it had always been like this.

  The [Appraisal] had told me that the serpent had poison in its blood from the very beginning, and like its foul essence, its personalities have always just been parts of the greater whole. It uses them like weapons—inflicting the facets of its personality like a torturer's daggers flaying the flesh. It used its madness to let you hope, only to crush it at the exact moment it wanted to, taking pleasure in the act.

  Before I could sink any further into my state of despair, Orion caught my attention again with a sharp movement, and I looked back at him to see him swinging the golden dagger downwards. It accelerated to a blur as the blade magically lengthened, slamming into the serpent’s scales—moving fast enough that I couldn’t track its movements. However, instead of sinking into its flesh, it bounced off, Orion letting out a cry of pain as he barely held onto the weapon that ricocheted wildly.

  “My scales! Much prettier than gold!” Ulun’suti screeched with a warbling, off-kilter noise, my eyes locking onto its face as it gloated. The one weapon that Orion had left, had failed. It couldn't even scratch the monster’s scales. Its one unburnt eye glanced at me, amused as it saw how much pain I was in.

  It ignited a fear in me, one so consuming that it couldn’t be just from a threat to my life. I’d been in dangerous situations before, like almost falling off the edge of a cliff, or being faced with the corpse of the Deer-woman—but there was something fundamentally worse about this.

  “Given up already? All the easier for me!” The serpent laughed. With its words clearly directed towards me, I couldn't bear to look at it any longer, and instead turned my attention to Orion in a feeble attempt to stem the terror.

  I was surprised to see that he’d turned around at some point and stashed his dagger, his feet moving in my direction. But his uncovered eyes were staring directly at the serpent’s forehead, his feet dragging his half-conscious body towards the serpent's head. He never spared me a glance as he followed the light from Ulun’suti’s gem, its power coaxing him towards it.

  I didn’t manage to get a good look at his face as he stumbled by, but he seemed beaten and bruised.

  Without even seeing them, I knew that his eyes must've been glazed and unfocused. I knew that I needed to wake him up if I was going to live.

  I barely managed to stand up, shakily rising to my feet as my broken wings trailed behind me like an unironed cape. The first step that I tried to take reignited the pain I was feeling to a new burning crescendo, causing me to fall over with a screech as the caustic agony surged through my spine.

  But before I could try to get up and walk to him again, Ulun'suti looked at me, a mocking pity etched into its serpentine features.

  “Stay down little blood, I’ll… talk, to you later.” It commanded coyly, the implicit threat in its words enough to terrify me further.

  I fell to my knees, the fear turning both my muscles and whatever will I had left into piles of jelly. I’m sure that shame over the irrational emotion would've also been something that I found myself feeling in that moment, but in reality I was confronted with a thought that I didn’t consider before. A realisation that brought feelings so demanding that I couldn't ignore them.

  I was going to die.

  Eaten alive, and Orion couldn’t help me this time, because he will be swallowed first. I wish that I could just get up, and at least have the chance to make a valiant final stand, but I was forced to face the fact that I wasn't capable of it. I wasn’t somebody who could just face down a giant snake for the sake of an honourable death.

  The sound of an infant animal mewling in pain and terror entered my ears, and it took a few seconds to realise that it was coming from me. I was the one making the noises of a broken, pathetic little animal. It was my legs that were trembling so badly that I couldn't walk, and my knees crumbled as I fell onto my front.

  My thoughts abandoned all those delusions of grandeur, that I was capable of even challenging that monster like Orion did.

  I just wanted to live.

  I wanted to run away and hide, leave the stupid snake and Orion behind. And I would’ve if not for its eye, watching me with a cruel amusement that felt like it could see exactly what I was thinking.

  And that was enough for me to become rooted to the spot, unable to think through the terror and pain. The fear that burnt every thought up into smoke, and left me unable to even tense a jittery muscle into doing anything useful.

  I barely moved or had a single coherent thought as I watched Orion stumble towards the Horned Serpent. I stared at his dirty and ragged back move further away, and when he approached its body, the snake finally moved. It slid its head off of its body and lowered it onto the stone path, a sadistic grin growing on its face.

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  When Orion stumbled within five metres of its maw, it opened its mouth, that terrifying abyss too black to see anything inside. It was so dark, and looked as if the world could fall into it, and there'd still be room for more.

  I heard another cry of a despairing animal, and I ignored it, instead choosing to plead with whatever cruel and sadistic god that brought me here. Begging for it to save me, save Orion and put an end to this nightmarish parody of what should be happening.

  I felt a sudden surge of warmth and wetness appear beneath me, and I didn't even have it in me to consider what that could've meant. It didn't even occur to me how it could've appeared, or why my surroundings suddenly smelt so bad.

  But no, nothing intervened to save the day, even as Orion placed one of his feet on the serpent’s lip and lifted his arms up like he was about to dive off of a swimming pool’s diving block.

  “Humans have always tasted the best!” The serpent gleefully announced, basking in the moment before the hero jumped into its mouth.

  Then, Orion tensed and jumped into—no, he didn't? Wait!

  He had almost jumped, but for some reason he'd paused before taking that final step into the jaws of oblivion, impossibly changing how the situation was fated to end. He twisted at the hips and looked at the path behind him, showing that a veil of blood had cascaded down his face—when and how he'd gotten the cut was a complete mystery to me. But it made him constantly blink, and wincing at the liquid flowing into his eyes.

  He wiped the blood off his face with a sleeved forearm, getting most of it off and revealing its source. A cut on his forehead, just below the hairline and far too straight and surgical for it to have been an accident. But with the liquid out of his eyes, he looked at me with clear, focused eyes, and when he finally saw me, he smiled.

  It was a small, slight smile, tame and chaste, but genuine. It filled me with… hope, and a swirl of other emotions, some that I recognised, but the meaning of most of them escaped me. Though I recognised the relief flooding through me, so profound that I would’ve cried—if I still could've.

  The despair had disappeared, and been replaced with hope, an optimism so overwhelming I couldn’t imagine anything other outcome than Orion succeeding with whatever plan he had. I ignored the dozen other fractionised, unrecognised feelings that had made my heart beat with a weird, excited beat—and how it caused a heady intoxication that was overwhelming my rational thoughts.

  I didn’t really give them much thought, because while the emotions might be new and confusing, the situation I was in was kind of extremely unprecedented and extreme.

  So the weird feeling could easily be attributed to y’know, the giant fucking snake. And therefore ignored.

  But that pure optimism and hope I was feeling became feeble when I watched him reach towards his belt, and pulling out the golden dagger again. But what could he even do with it at this point?

  No, he couldn’t be stupid enough to stab it while standing in its mouth, right?

  “Taking too long!” Ulun’suti suddenly decreed, its patience having run out. A cold anger entered its eye, and the next thing I'd assumed it was about to do, would be to bite down on Orion. But it was half a second too late to stop Orion's stupidity.

  The Ranger activated the golden dagger, and—with the full weight of his body—sent it sliding into and then through the gum of its mouth, giving it a new shiny lip piercing with a spray of black blood. Its mouth obviously lacking the hardness of its scales.

  But as he struck, he tucked himself into a ball and rolled backwards, deftly removing his body from inside the monster’s mouth as it tried to bite down onto him. He had to let go of the dagger in the process, and leave it behind, but a magic dagger was only worth something if you were alive to use it.

  The Uktena reared back in pain, and Orion dodged its flailing mouth by only centimetres as it writhed in shocked agony. It seemed that even ancient horrors weren’t immune to the surprise and shock of being unexpectedly pricked by your food.

  I watched as the horned serpent flailed about in pain, eventually falling off the path and into the water in the process. Its body thrashed in the water like a severed lizard's tail, sending waves of water flooding onto the stone pathway.

  Orion stood up with a groan, his bones creaking loudly enough that I could hear them from well over ten metres away. The Ranger glanced at the serpent, then hurried over to me as fast as he could. His stride had started off with a limping gait, but the kink in his steps quickly smoothed out as he jogged, presumably healing all of his injuries at an annoyingly fast pace.

  He picked me up in a single graceful motion, but as soon as he shifted me I was reminded of my wounds and the extreme pain that they were putting me in. I’d managed to mostly ignore them for the past couple of minutes through the sheer power of shock, and just a little bit of terror.

  I found myself clutched to his chest—given the circumstances I could tolerate it—and looking up at my saviour's face.

  It was then I had to admit it to myself, that Orion had yet again outperformed both what I'd managed to do, and my expectations of anyone stuck in the same situation as he had been. I felt that blend of emotions return, along with satisfaction and begrudging respect for him, because as my heart raced with excitement, I knew that he wasn’t a sidekick. I admitted that I had to be willing to share the spotlight with him at this point, he’d proven himself worthy of that much.

  But as Orion began to run along the path we’d been taking before getting interrupted, a peculiar sensation invaded me. The excruciating agony I'd been in quickly abated, but differently to how it'd been relegated to a background ache like a minute ago.

  Much to my surprise, the pain quickly faded as an itchy feeling enveloped me—most of the sensation concentrating in my wings. I looked back to see them move by themselves, the bones shifting back into their proper positions as they healed at a pace I’d only seen once before.

  I did not know he could use his healing on me, but it became obvious to me that this wasn’t the first time he’d used it on me, just the first time I’d been awake or fully conscious while it happened. Yet again I felt immensely grateful towards the man, a feeling of camaraderie and satisfaction filling me up with a warm tingly feeling. It was probably just a side effect of Orion’s healing magic—it might pump me full of painkillers—but I was feeling extremely giddy.

  As I ignored the confusing emotions, I shifted in Orion’s grip to take a peek at Ulun’suti, and saw that it was trying to rip the dagger out of its mouth with its tail. The end of its body was surprisingly dextrous, able to twist enough to get the tip of its tail to grasp the handle, more accurate than I’d assume it to have been.

  Though the button to retract the dagger was slightly indented into the dagger, and to press it, you’d need a finger or claw smaller than the button itself. The snake’s tail, while limber, was not small or pointed enough for that.

  Though its attention was dragged away from the golden toothpick as it caught Orion hurrying towards god-knows-what.

  “You dare? Dare to cut my sacred flesh? Even the Thunderbird feared my wrath!” It roared, the cavern itself shaking with its rage. Though its grand monologue was a tad ruined by the lisp it'd gotten from the new lip piercing.

  But the serpent's roars spurred Orion to move even faster, racing down the path, before he suddenly stopped at a random tree. Though it had a hole in it just above the waterline, showing its hollow insides, and that the empty space inside the trunk tunnelled downwards, to somewhere far below the waterline.

  But what caught my attention—and my disbelief—was the disturbingly familiar fire-exit sign nailed above it.

  “And I’ll hunt its progeny born from thunder and smoke and the mountain’s belch for its transgressions.” The snake continued to scream, closing in on us in a moment, probably ready to strike in a second or two. But my attention was only half on it, my mind mostly focused on the words ‘Fire escape’, and its implications—ones that I wasn’t in the right mind to untangle.

  “But you! You I’ll hunt, boil your blood, burn the mind, and soil what’s left. Your corpse and soul violated by me and my curse to its very core.” Ulun’suti added to its threats, whilst getting on the bad side of such a god-like creature was usually a death threat, it was in a prison, so I wasn’t too worried about the repercussions of pissing it off.

  But instead of stepping into the exit, Orion jumped onto the rim of its boundary, staring downwards. I joined him and saw that our ‘escape’ was simply a pipe that stretched down into an endless pit.

  A glance back at the snake showed it rearing back, fangs bared as it leaked a fountain of its profane blood from the wound. Its black blood was mixing with the lake water, and making it even darker, alive with the moving shapes of its curses writhing in the abyssal depths.

  It seemed Orion was more willing to take a leap of faith than try his luck with it again, and he took the step into the empty air, and I found myself falling downwards into the unknown yet again, but I was strangely unafraid of it. I’d always found myself lacking a fear of heights, but now that I had wings, I didn't need to pretend to be afraid anymore.

  The tree hiding our escape route was destroyed in a flurry of stone splinters and wrathful destruction, Ulun’suti missing its chance to devour us by a millisecond. I suppose there was a certain level of irony to the situation, if it hadn’t played with its food so much, then we wouldn’t have ever had the chance to escape.

  “I’ll never forget your smell, thing of death and tail-eating snakes, of feathered scales, and watery skies. And you Hunter! Of fertile earth, choked skies, and snow-packed dirt! I shall hunt you until nothing that you’ve touched remains unspoilt, you’ll suffer a fate worse than what that hateful sun could’ve ever conceived.” The Uktena cried out after us, its voice quickly fading as we accelerated, gravity moving us far faster than the snake could screams move.

  I let out a high-pitched, foxy laugh that echoed off of the walls of the vertical tunnel, feeling truly alive for the first time in my life.