The January Issue of Animalia Magazine was called the Year of the Snake edition because the celebrations would begin on January 29th this year. Because of this, there was a number of articles that were focused on snakes, both in real life, mythology, and popular culture. There was also a (gender neutral) anatomy chart on Snake Animalians, mainly because many people had questions on how snake Animalians were able to stay upright.
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Hide's latest adventures in the Lands Between were not only interesting and/or amusing, but they also included a powerful message overall: be wary of meddling with powers you don't understand, especially if they come from someone else's culture. The best example of this was when Hide began studying magic with Sellen. As a kind of "mutual exchange", Hide gave her a spirit stone, but like those who came before her and those who will come after her, Sellen ended up losing herself to the power of the spirit stones, which not only hastened her transformation into a School of Graven Mages, but also made her an unwilling vessel to a dark power from Hide's world known only as Yami, forcing Jerren and Hide to put her down, much to Sellen's relief.
Of course, there also had to be at least one snake-focused story. During Hide's fight with the God-Devouring Serpent, Hide's grip slips on the Aun Stone, and the God-Devouring Serpent devours it by accident. This not only caused the snake immense pain but also caused it to transform into the Yamato-no-Orochi, which forced Amaterasu to materialize inside the Lands Between as a white wolf (a reference to the Okami series) to aid him. But it was only after all eight heads were completely sh*t-faced from drinking 8 Purification Sake that Rykard revealed himself, but after he gave his "together we can devour the very gods" speech, he discovered, much to his chagrin, that the powers of the Yamato-no-Orochi (power over fire, water, earth, air, light, darkness, lightning, and poison) were simply too much for him to control all at once. Eventually, Hide used both the Serpent-Hunting Spear and Sohayamaru to behead seven of the eight heads and split the remaining head (and Rykard) bilaterally and recover the Aun Stone.
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The final article was more like a schedule for Lunar New Year Celebrations, which everyone was grateful for.