So, I messed up big time. The only leverage I had on Zana, I accidentally revealed it didn’t exist. At that point, I expected for a big battle where she’d kill me, but she simply asked me to leave her cave. I tried to talk her into rethinking it, but in a rage, she let the aura she had been hiding flare and sacked me out of the cave.
Currently we were on our way back to the lizardman village to get the others and teleport right back to the West.
“Hey, you there.”
We encountered a snake person on our way.
‘Who are you?’
I forwarded a message to their minds. Its eyes widened in brief shock, before completely disregarding my question.
“Follow me to my village for a moment.”
They said,
“I have information that will be very crucial to you.”
‘Huh? Don’t ignore my question in favour of your own.’
The snake person still slithered past me into the fog.
‘Oi. Snake dude, girl, person, thing? I don’t know what your deal is, but either you speak now or we just leave.’
Still not responding to me, they kept moving off. Angrily, I shot a ball of fire to their side as a form of warning.
‘It seems I didn’t make myself clear. Why should I follow you?’
The snake person glared at me after my warning shot.
“It seems that you don’t understand the situation you’re in at the moment.”
‘What does that mean?’
“If you don’t do as I say, you and everyone you hold dear will die.”
A cold chill ran down my spine after hearing that. I really didn’t like this always went in fantasy novels, so I shrugged and decided to follow. Maybe if I listened to the end unlike some edgy main characters, I could find a solution to my problems.
For instance, if the issue he was bringing up was related to the necromancer, I figured using shadow summons to beat them was practically the ultimate decision. They couldn’t be harmed by undead, basically wouldn’t stop fighting till I said they should and my strongest summons could call for more summons. Logically speaking, the issue of a necromancer was nothing to get my mind wrapped about. Besides, it would be nice to see the village of a bunch of snake people.
I relaxed my posture and shrugged to signify my willingness.
“Good. Also, it is Copperheads.”
‘What?’
“My people are called the Copperheads, because of our copper colour and hoods.”
I guess that was a good enough naming sense. Better than lizardmen because they were lizards. I felt like mocking them even more.
‘What’s with big sister’s weird expression?’
I accidentally read Ulva’s mind, and my heart broke in half. We just followed after the copperhead.
‘Hey, do you have a name?’
After minutes of silence, it was plain as day that I would get too bored to remain silent.
“No.”
‘Do you molt your skin?’
“That is a private matter.”
‘Eh? Bros can talk it out.’
““Bros”? As in brothers?”
‘Yep.’
“I am a woman.”
‘Huh? So it’s like menstr-‘
Out of nowhere, Ulva came with a devastating punch.
“P-P-PERVERT!”
She shrieked, and I could only reflect on my choices in life. In what world was asking about a woman’s ovulation cycle perverted? I mean, doctors did it on a regular in hospitals. What made them so different? Did I simply need a certificate and a white lab coat to ask the bigger questions?
‘Haa… I see. I just need to be a certified doctor to do anything I want with a woman’s body and get away with it.’
“What?”
Ulva was glaring disappointedly at me, but her gaze could not harm me. Not today after I received enlightenment once again. At the pace I was going, I would soon become a buddha.
‘Throw that disgusted face of yours away, Ulva. I have attained a state of true inner peace. Here, you could use some.’
I grabbed her cheeks and started to play about with them.
“Shtwop jhat, bissh, shister.”
She muffled out, but I wouldn’t let her get away with her face from earlier.
“We’re here.”
The copperhead stopped our childish play and revealed what seemed to be a hut, over a massive swamp that had a grey hue to it and a thickness much like a choked gutter.
‘Is this your village?’
I asked, shocked by the lack of huts and structures. One would expect a minimum of 20 huts even if it were a small village.
“The others sleep in nests in the caves, that are beneath the swamp.”
She entered the hut and waved for us to enter. We quickly entered after her, but inside the hut was practically empty.
‘Wait, you guys can breathe underwater?’
“We hold our breaths long enough to get to the bottom.”
She signaled for us to sit down, and having felt exhausted from the whole ordeal, I for one was happy to do nothing more.
“The journey from the west must have been long. Rest well.”
‘Don’t mistake me accepting your invitation as me agreeing to rest here. You said you possessed urgent news about my life?’
She looked at me for a while, as if I was some kind of hostile creature before finally giving in her.
“Very well, I shall explain from the time my father found the tyrant Zana. About sixteen years ago.”
‘Huh? You’re giving me Zana’s backstory.’
“Do you want to listen to my story, or not?”
‘Tch. Continue.’
***
Sixteen Years Ago.
In a cave at the outskirts of the copperhead village, there was a bit of a commotion.
“Thisssss isssss great newsssss!”
A young copperhead screamed with joy as he received a black rock from the shaman.
“Shut up!”
She angrily ordered; however, the young copperhead was too excited to follow that order.
“Howwww can I-hisssss? I finally haavvvveeee a chiiiilllddd.”
“Ugh. Fix that speech of yours, it’s annoying to hear all the time.”
“B-B-“
“That is not the issue here. You found a black rock and it turned out to be an egg. I get that you are excited since your wife still hasn’t borne any children for you, but are you sure you wish to adopt this one?”
She questioned him. It wasn’t just any day that someone would enter her cave for something as spontaneous as finding an egg out in the swamps. Normally, she wouldn’t have even bothered to pay attention to someone, but since it was her very own son, how could she say no?
“Yessss.”
He confidently responded. She sighed and waved him off.
“Fine. Whatever. Although I would have preferred a grandchild with my blood, I guess it would still be better than waiting an extra year.”
“Yesssss.”
“I said fix that speech before the child acquires the same trait.”
She threw one of her skull bones at him, but he dodged and ran out of the cave towards his nest. Humming happily, he looked at the egg. The egg seemed to be calling out to him for help which was drew him to it in the first place. Other than the fact that the egg was black and twice as big as a regular copperhead egg, the egg looked exactly like any other copperhead egg.
This made him curious enough to send it to his mother for observation. After a week of waiting, she had confirmed that whatever laid within was safe.
CRACK!
A crack formed on the egg. Upon seeing this and realizing that the baby was about to hatch, he threw it to the sky for cheers. He caught it, then threw it once again. He kept doing this as he walked, till he tripped on a wild bush and failed to catch the egg.
Alarmed, he tried his best to reach out for it, but failed and it fell. Luckily the ground he was on was soft and wouldn’t harm a baby if they fell on it. Unfortunately, the egg landed in a puddle of acid one creature had left in its wake.
“EEEEEEEKKKKK!!!”
“So, if what I am hearing is right, you are an idiot.”
The young copperhead nodded his head.
“A hatching egg fell in a pile of acid, so you brought it here for me to do what exactly?”
The shaman asked her idiot of a son.
“C-C-C-Can you, check if it’s alright?”
He pleaded with tears in his eyes. The shaman observed the egg closely and noticed that it was starting to melt and form a weird outline. From the looks of things, the baby would die if it wasn’t already dead. She then glanced at his pitiful state.
“Did you tell anyone else about this?”
“No. I-I wanted to keep it as a surprise for my wife.”
The shaman grunted and stood up from her stack of hay.
“Good then. The child is dead. Now there will be no heartbreaks.”
She threw the melting anomaly into the fire that was burning brightly in the center of the cave.
“Eeek!”
He jumped at the fire, but almost as if the very fog fought against him, he was kicked back into his original position.
“I have tried my best to raise you, but me being so overprotective only made you an idiot.”
She slithered behind him and grabbed his head, forcing him to look right at the burning egg.
“That is a life that you just killed with your carelessness.”
He tried to resist her grip, but she was stronger than him.
“Open your eyes wide and look, my stupid son. You killed that egg. Not me, not destiny, you. My idiot son. So, learn from your mista-”
“W-What is that?”
He cut her off because of the odd thing he noticed from the fire. He pointed at it to make sure his mother also noticed it. Something was moving inside the fire. The son shook lightly, thinking this was another of his mother’s tricks to terrorize his brain.
The shaman herself had her jaws dropped in shock. She squeezed her eyes to see exactly what that was and she saw hands moving in the fire.
‘I-It can’t be.’
Completely clearing their doubts, a cry came from the fire. The shaman’s motherly instincts made her run quickly at the fire. With a wave of her hand, the fire was out leaving only a black charred body on the ground. She picked it and snapped her fingers, causing blue orbs to appear above her and illuminate the cave in place of the fire.
The creature was the size of a copperhead toddler. Its torso was abnormally big, as was its tail. It was something she had never seen before and at this point she could say she would never see its original form, since the recent events would probably permanently scar the creature.
“S-She lives.”
The shaman said heavily and looked at her son to present him with the baby. However, upon looking at it, he started to scream.
“Ugly! Ugly! It is ugly! Geettttt itttt awaayyyyyy- hisssss!”
“This is your daughter.”
She told him, yet her son stood up and ran out of the cave. At first, she was speechless at the pathetic display. That speechlessness was quickly turned into silent rage. Had she really been such a failure as a mother? Well, her son was proving that too well.
“Stupid brat… I failed you, but I will not fail this one.”
The shaman looked at the baby in her hands.. Where she failed in her son, she would succeed in her grandchild.
