“Snake!” Erwin decided.
Finn stroked his chin, “You aren’t just shouting some random animal, right?”
“No!” Erwin said indignantly. “Snakes be sneaky and deadly!”
“And that makes them the best hunter?” Finn queried.
“Erwin think best hunter depends. Clue not very helpful.” Erwin huffed.
“Fair enough.” Finn sighed.
-=-=-=-=--=-==-=-=
Time Resumed.
“We should just try the hole now.” Charlie said.
“Really, the snake?” Veles asked, skeptical.
“I think this thing is just here to waste our time while our lovely host prepares a welcoming party for us.” Charlie replied.
“Yeah, and snakes are deadly ambush predators.” Oswin pointed out, the stag rubbing his chin with his hooflets. “Honestly, this is a hard puzzle. Not much of a clue to go on because it’s all about context.”
“Maybe you have to fight whatever picture is above the hole,” Veles pointed out.
“Yeah, it’s true, we might be misinterpreting the meaning of the puzzle.” Oswin nodded.
“Either way, someone’s gonna have to go through the hole.” Charlie shrugged.
Charlie walked over to the hole.
Below it was a metal ladder, positioned so that, despite the hole’s small size, it would nonetheless be easy to go through headfirst. When Charlie tried shining his lantern in the entrance, all that got illuminated was a dark, empty hallway. He frowned. There was an infamous trap in DnD that was just like this.
Cautiously, he poked a dagger into the darkness up to the hilt, then withdrew it.
The air around the hole seemed to ripple, but his dagger was still intact, so the hole wasn’t an illusion containing an orb of disintegration. That was a good sign. And as he inspected it, his dagger appeared unmolested. Taking a breath, he did the next test.
The wolf thrust he paw into the dark orifice and held his breath.
It was strange, the movement slower than it should have, like the air inside the hole was made of thick syrup.
His fingers felt as though they were piercing some unseen resistant force. It didn’t slow his movement down, but rather felt like it gave as he pushed through it. A strange warmth passed over his paw, followed by tingling and then… nothing.
To his surprise, he couldn’t feel anything. It was like he’d lost all feeling in his appendage. Panicking, Charlie tried to pull his hand out, but there was a powerful suction tugging against his wrist – it was like trying to pull a boot out of mud – and the more he pulled, the more force there was holding him in place. Thinking that this might be like a Chinese finger trap, where a small amount of steady force was the trick to breaking free, Charlie briefly relaxed.
That was a mistake. Charlie’s resistance to the suction disappeared, but the suction itself remained constant and he felt everything up to his elbow just disappear as he was tugged further into the hole.
Thinking fast, Charlie braced his other arm against the wall and yanked…
With a pop, his hand came free.
Heart pounding, Charlie looked down his paw and saw…
A perfectly normal paw.
He flexed it experimentally. All fingers appeared to be in order. He took a deep, calming breath. Perhaps he’d imagined it?
“What are we dealing with?” Oswin called.
“Looks like a dark hallway, but I think there’s something more. My hand was numb.” Charlie called over his shoulder.
“Dagger passed the test and your paw was unharmed?” Oswin asked.
“Dagger? Yeah, it’s fine. My paw was a different story, like I said. Veles, can you detect magic?” Charlie said as he looked over at the cougar.
“Detect Magic!” Veles intoned and his eyes lit up bright blue.
A minute passed as the cougar inspected the portal. “It’s difficult to tell, but it is magical. Someone placed a False Magic Aura on it.”
“I definitely lost feeling in anything that went through it, so why did I come out unharmed?” Charlie wondered aloud.
“Perhaps it’s a portal to somewhere else?” Veles said in response, “it maintains structural integrity but nerve impulses don’t go back through.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up as he listened to Verus, before inquisitively asking a simple, “you think that’s how it works?”
“The hell if I know!” Verus snorted out, “whatever it is, its not a spell I’m familiar with. It certainly feels like Paranor magic though.”
Velus looked to Palseks to see if she knew anything more, only to receive a shrug followed by, “Palseks play with Finn before, never see Finn use trap like this.”
Charlie listened to the cougar and kobold discuss the hole some more, though neither was able to come to a conclusion beyond that it didn’t seem imminently harmful. If anything, the group was drifting towards the consensus that whoever went through it would have to fight the image above on the other end. And as the class best prepared for dealing with a quick animal, Charlie remained the prime candidate to go through first.
With the party still debating how to approach the hole, Charlie figured that since he was going to end up going through it regardless, there was no point in delaying. Digging into his belt, he pulled out a rope and tied it around his waist, cinching it tight, then tossed the rope to Oswin.
“Hold on to that. If I’m not back in fifteen seconds, pull.” Charlie advised. “And you might need the other guys to help. It’s like pulling something out of mud.”
Oswin wrapped the rope around his muscled arm and nodded.
Charlie looked back at the hole and gave it a more thorough inspection. He noticed that there was a small metal bar jutting out from the wall in between the hole and the picture of the cobra above it.
“I guess I’m supposed to hold onto that and go through feet first?” he wondered aloud.
“Go for it,” Veles shrugged his shoulders before winding the rope taut. “I’ll pull you out in fifteen seconds.”
Grabbing onto the bar, Charlie pulled himself up, planting his legs against the stone wall to either side of the hole he was about to jump through.
Pushing off, Charlie swung back, still holding the bar, then pressed his legs together and headed for the hole. As his feet passed through the wall, everything sort of slowed down. Charlie felt that strange resistance pushing back against them, like they were squeezing through a tight membrane. With a pang of relief, he felt them continue to move through the wall.
That relief was cut short, however, as warmth and tingles engulf his lower body.
He immediately lost feeling in his paws – but it wasn’t that he had lost the sensation of touch in the small part of his body that was now through the wall. No, he could still feel something on the other end of the hole, it just felt very different. They felt tight, squeezing impossibly together.
Charlie’s swing carried him forward as his calves passed through the hole, then his knees, then his thighs.
The more of him went through the hole, the more the sensations coming from his body changed, joints popping, muscles shifting.
He tried looking past the hole, to see what was on the other side, but it was just the same, empty hallway from before. Whatever this hole was, the sight of his body vanished as soon as it went through, which meant that it was a portal to somewhere else, and the empty hallway it was showing was an illusion.
Thinking back to his legs, Charlie tried to mentally scan over the nerves inside of them to build a mental picture of what had happened.
Whereas his old legs had constituted two, distinct limbs in his mind, now he realized that what he was feeling was a single, tubular mass. At first, he had interpreted the feeling as though his legs were pushed together, with two sets of bones and muscles just bound by a single wrapping of skin. But the more he mentally probed the limb, the more he came to realize that it was different - there was a single set of muscles wrapped around a single bone.
Rather than feeling like a leg, it almost felt like a tail?
As the momentum carried his stomach through the hole, Charlie eyed the picture of the cobra on the wall above him. Its mouth was open in a snarl, tongue flared out, hood spread wide, its body tapered down into a single, limbless tube - a single, long tail.
"Guys!" Charlie shouted as his eyes bugged out of his head, "help! I'm not going to fight a cobra, I'm going to-"
But it was too late.
Charlie tried to pull back on the bar, but his initial jump had imparted too much momentum into his body, and it now inexorably carried the last parts of his torso through. Unable to maintain his grip on the bar, his hands slipped off and his arms began to enter the hole. Charlie could only watch as his head came closer and closer to the hole, all while the sensations coming from his arms slowly shifted.
It felt like his arms were merging and flattening against his neck. His shoulders were pulling together, muscles shifting as they flared around his head as they slipped through the hole.
Charlie closed his eyes in fearful anticipation as he felt the invisible membrane bend and flex against his chin before he slipped through it.
His head snapped and crunched pleasantly, like a million little hands were stroking and massaging his skull. Light flooded back into his now lidless eyes as they grew slitted and unblinking. As his head transitioned fully through the wall, he felt suddenly tired. It was like someone had stuffed his skull with soft cotton.
He landed with a soft thud on the floor of a metal cage, coils of rope falling limply around him.
Charlie lay on the metal floor, his head swimming. His tongue flickered out to taste the air, a nervous gesture, and it took him a moment to realize what was wrong. Why was his tongue forked? The cobra shook his head in confusion. Something was wrong, but it was hard to focus on what that was. His tongue flickered again as he struggled to figure out what was so off about this, but all he could taste was his own nervousness.
The cobra thought back to the hole – something about that hole had made him afraid. He had the vaguest sense that everything would be ok if he could get back through it. Looking around the area, all he saw were the thin steel bars surrounding him. And the more he looked, the less he could remember why he was looking.
He rolled over onto his belly, the feel of scutes on metal familiar to another form he’d had, though that memory was fading and distant. Charlie inspected his body, but could only see the long, brown scaled tail of a cobra.
No, he thought, he didn’t have time to look at himself, he needed to find–
What did he need to find? When he tried to think back to what had frightened him, all he came up with was darkness. He could remember looking at his tail in confusion, but further back it just got more and more blurry, until there was nothing but an endless void in his mind.
Still, he had a dim sense that he needed to find something, so he let his tongue flick out in an attempt to identify what he was looking at, and as he brought his tongue back inside and pressed it to the roof of his mouth, his brain was flooded with a taste that confirmed what he already knew - the taste of a cobra.
The taste of himself.
He moved his tongue side to side, feeling two large fangs pressed up against the room of his mouth. Opening it, he felt those fangs extend forward until they were perfectly positioned to bite down and... Charlie felt himself squeeze new muscles located in the top of his snout, causing a small amount of liquid to dribble out of his fangs.
Venom.
He’d expected it to taste bitter or acrid, but it actually tasted like tangy, sweet water. He moved, his muscles rolling, and he glided forward on his smooth, polished scales. The movement was natural, and when he flicked his tongue, he picked up the scent of water. He slithered forward, inspecting the cup of liquid near the front of his cage. Fresh.
The cobra gulped it down, feeling thirsty. It felt like he’d been put through a wringer, though there was no pain and the discomfort was more akin to stretching after waking up from a nap than anything bothersome. He was feeling cool after the refreshing drink and found a hot rock in the middle of his cage, a light beaming down on it.
He slithered over to it, enjoying the sinuous twine of his body through the cage, and lay upon the warm rock, basking in it. He was starting to feel a bit sleepy.
Charlie’s body relaxed and wrapped itself up into a coil. The movement was as instinctual as the flicker of his tongue from his mouth. Looking at the metal cage surrounding him, he gave another flick of his tongue, only to be bombarded by the smells of dozens of other animals. He smelled an eagle and reacted instantly.
Predator!
He hissed, rearing up, scenting predators and prey. His great hood flared wide and his little heart beat rapidly in his chest. Cobras had excellent eyesight, and he searched for the horrible, winged menace.
That was when he felt a tug on the limp rope that was loosely wrapped around his tail.
Wait, Charlie struggled to remember a few moments ago, that… that was his way out!
The rope was rapidly being drawn back up towards a hole in the ceiling of his cage. Charlie felt his slick scales sliding over the soft silk rope, then out of it. He panicked, lunging for the loop, maw opened wide, and clamped down on it.
There was no way for him to get a proper grip, the silken fibers too smooth. If it had been made of hemp, he might have been able to hold on long enough to get drawn back through - backwards, of course. Which would have presented some other interesting problems, but alas.
Charlie dropped back to the floor of the cage with a thump as the last bit of rope slipped out of his mouth and through the hole.
A few moments later, the hole closed, as though it had never been there.
The cobra sat on the rock, sunning itself and trying to think. It was now trapped in this cage with no way out. That was something his snake brain understood. It didn’t like it anymore than Charlie did.
Then, a few minutes later, the hole in the ceiling opened back up and a giant rat fell through, landing with a soft thump nearby in his cage.
The rat picked itself off, shaking its head as it tried to regain its bearings. Then it saw Charlie.
Its eyes widened and Charlie could feel the racing of its heart through the stones below him. Before Charlie had time to react, the rat jumped backwards, landed on its feet, and sprinted headfirst into the metal bars of the cage. It grabbed at them with its paws but found that it was far too big to fit through.
Charlie’s tongue flickered and his brain lit up: DIRE RAT. PREY. FOOD. That sweet watery venom filled his mouth in a moist flush, fangs tingling in anticipation.
The rat turned and pressed it’s butt as far into the bars as it could, all the while looking at the Charlie. As the two continued to stare, the rat seemed to grow calmer, as though it had expected Charlie to attack immediately, rather than waiting for it to tire out. Then, it lifted a paw and pointed at Charlie.
“Squeak!”
The rat just sat there, looking as though it had expected something to happen. But when Charlie didn’t move, the rat drew its paw back, pointing at its own body.
“Squeak!” It furiously pointed back and forth at itself. But still, Charlie didn’t move.
The rat looked oddly frustrated, and pointed at Charlie again, “Ter-Wueek!”
Charlie flicked his tongue, trying to figure out what this strange prey was doing. He wanted to eat it, but something about this rat was triggering a warning in Charlie’s head.
That was when he realized what it was - he smelled rat, but underneath that was a familiar scent: Veles!
Though Charlie had trouble formulating complex thoughts, the moment thas the word ‘Veles’ passed through his mind, old thoughts began to resurface.
It was a jumble that ran through the cobra’s pea sized brain far too fast for him to make sense of it – there was a fox, then an cougar. There were others, a bear, a mink. They were his friends. Veles was his friend. Then there was a wolf. Charlie. The wolf was Charlie.
But Charlie looked down at his body, he tasted the air. He was a cobra.
He looked at the rat. Veles was a dire rat.
Neither of those things were right. Or, rather, they were right now, but they hadn’t been right just moments ago. It was the hole, the cobra realized, that hole had turned him into a cobra and it had turned Veles into a dire rat. He needed to get back out-
Charlie looked up, only to see the hole that Veles had dropped in through disappear.
Then the memories started to fade again. As Charlie felt his old life begin to slip away, his tongue instinctively flicked out and he tasted the faint hint of a cougar and a wolf. That sensory impulse ran straight to his brain, and the old memories flared back up, causing Charlie to remain Charlie – or at least as much of him as his new body could muster.
As Charlie tried to search through his memories for more help in maintaining his mind, he began to realize the problem. The memories were all still there, but something about how his new brain was accessing them was off. The more he thought, the more the old memories faded with nothing to replace them. But each time he tasted Veles’ and his old scents, the memories would come roaring back.
It wasn’t that the memories weren’t there – they were. It was just that his new brain couldn’t hold a thought for very long, and it didn’t index memories the same way that his old one had. He couldn’t recall a memory with a thought, but a physical sensation, like a smell or taste, easily brought them back.
Continuing to flick his tongue out, Charlie could only hope that Veles’ and his old scents lingered long enough for them to get out of here, and given Charlie’s new limited intellect, he could only hope that Veles still had enough of a brain to figure it out.
Staring at the still nervous rat, Charlie raised his tail and tapped it against the ground in a thieves’ cant.
Veles let out a relieved sounding squeak as he listened to the cobra greet him and ask for help.
But before Veles could make a meaningful reply, heavy thuds vibrated the ground as a large golem stomped over to their cage and picked it up. Charlie experienced intense vertigo as he accelerated upwards, the cage swinging, while Veles held onto the side.
Both animals were carried out of the menagerie and into a brightly lit arena. The golem set the cage down in the middle, then opened the top. Grabbing Veles, it threw him to the far side of the arena, where he skidded along the sand. Then, grabbing Charlie, it carried him somewhat more ceremonially to the other side and dropped him with a loud thump.
High above them, maybe thirty feet or so, was a soft chaise lounge. Lying atop the lounge was a huge, well-muscled pitbull, instantly recognizable as the visage carved into the statues in the ruins’ entrance corridor.
Next to the pitbull was a golden goblet, and above that a small anthro dog, gagged and bound with tight fabric. The pitbull signaled to a nearby golem, which walked over and slit the dog’s throat. It briefly howled, before its cries of pain were replaced with a sick gurgling and hot blood poured into the large, bowl-like cup.
As the dog went limp, the golem carried its limp bodyto a corner, all while a trail of blood formed on the stones below.
The pitbull took a lap of the blood, his eyes flaring red as he did.
“Ah!” The devilish pitbull licked his crimson-smeared chops. “The blood of the innocent is always so much sweeter than you horrible invaders. And the flesh is so delectable.”
The pitbull leaned over and surveyed the two animals.
“You are the adventurers who dared to intrude upon my chambers,” The pitbull’s voice was calm, though there was an undertone of menace to it. “I know you still retain a semblance of your former personalities and intellect. That will fade in time. But while I still have you aware, I want you to kill each other.”
Charlie hissed at his captor angrily, wanting to plunge his fangs into him.
Veles squeaked at the pitbull angrily, pointing a paw at him, “Trrreeak!”
The pitbull chuckled. “I’m afraid that won’t work. Animals cannot cast spells. It’s the vocal cords, you see. Anyways, as I said, fight to the death for my amusement. Should you survive 13 battles, I shall make you my personal guard.”
Neither animal moved.
“If you do not fight,” The Pitbull idly swirled his goblet, “I’ll have the golems turn you into something far, far worse.”
The Pitbull might have been talking, but Charlie was too busy flicking his tongue in and out. As they had entered into the arena, those smells of his old life had been growing weaker, and his memories were getting harder and harder to hold on to.
The rat was so far away. He knew that something about its scent would help him remember what he was supposed to do to get out of here, but the more he flicked his tongue, the more it just smelled like a dire rat.
PREY.
The thought flashed through his mind. He knew he had something more important to do, but his thoughts just seemed to dead end into emptiness.
Another flick of the tongue and there was more of that rat smell. Charlie felt a rumbling pass down the center of his body. His mouth salivated and he could taste the smallest amount of venom bead out of the fangs pressed up against the roof of his mouth. He was so hungry, and that rat smelled so good.
He didn’t recognize where he was – he was in a circle, surrounded by high walls, with a sand floor. Far above him was a pitbull talking about the irony of being turned into a rat. And in front of Charlie, with its back turned to him, sitting in a passive, relaxed pose, was food.
Charlie still had a vague idea that he needed to get out of here, but he couldn’t remember why or how. All he could think of was the rat, so he silently slithered over to it, rearing up his head as he got close, and then-
He struck.
He could feel the rat’s furry body jolt in his mouth as his fangs sank into it. And then he tasted it – he tasted the dire rat, tasted the food, tasted Veles.
Veles!
Oh no! Memories flooded back into Charlie’s mind. The rat was Veles. Veles was Charlie’s friend. Veles wasn’t supposed to be a rat and Charlie wasn’t supposed to be a snake. They needed to get out of here, needed to-
Charlie felt a dribble of poison work its way down his fangs. He flung his jaw open and spit the rat out on the ground, hoping that it wasn’t too late.
“Trea-EEK!” The rat jumped up, scurrying away on one leg.
Charlie had a brief instant of hope as the rat turned towards him, watching with pained mammalian eyes while Charlie had no choice but to stare at it with glassy reptilian ones.
Then Veles convulsed, foaming frothing from his open maw. He gasped for air, little chest rapidly oscillating as the venom crept through its nervous system.
Veles lay on the ground as blood trickled down two large holes in his side. Charlie could only watch as the venom attacked Veles’ nervous system, causing him to spasm in a mix of pain and neurological dysfunction.
“Your friend looks like he’s suffering, you should show him mercy and end it quickly!” The pitbull called down from above.
Charlie kept flicking his tongue out, desperate to maintain his old memories. There had to be some way out of here, there had to be some way to fix Veles. Charlie searched those old memories for something, anything that could help, but he realized how futile it was.
Old Charlie, the wolf assassin, may have been able to find a potion or improvise an antivenom. But new Charlie was a cobra. New Charlie was a dumb snake. New Charlie was so dumb, in fact, that in the span of a minute he’d forgotten about Veles’ existence and, seeing only a rat, had set Veles’ new body down a path that could only result in death.
Charlie slithered forward, unhinging his jaw as he did so. As the tip of his muzzle pressed into Veles’ twitching, furry body, Charlie reared his head up and looked down. Below him was Veles, the rat, covered in blood, with a small trail of foam leaking out of his mouth. Veles’ briefly looked up and made eye contact – the pleading look on the rat’s face begging for an end.
At least Finn would respawn him, Charlie thought.
Charlie struck again, but this time he let the venom flood out of his fangs, and when the furry body in his maw stopped moving, Charlie began to swallow.
Fifteen minutes later, Veles was gone and Charlie slithered back into the cage. The pitbull clapped as the golem took him away. With Veles’ scent gone, Charlie’s memories faded as well. When the cobra was back under the light, it curled up and slept.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-===-=-==-==-
With a *pop*, a snake with a lump of meat in its gullet appeared on the stone floor of Finn’s lair.
“Oh, yeah, just like that, little one!” Finn groaned, bucking hips into the kobold’s maw.
He turned his head at the sound, staring at the reptile that was looking around, confused and hissing, having been woken up.
“Whoa, whoa, Charlie!” Finn chuckled drily. “No need to throw a hisssss-y fit! You’re really making an asp out of yourself.”
The dragon glanced down at the kobold nuzzling his cock and back at the snake.
“He might not have been thinking clearly. Poor Veles. He really should have known better than to turn his back on a snake. I suppose you’d better go back and try again, cause otherwise this is….”
The End
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