NOVEL WEB [Arc I] Chapter 18 – Big snake dream 2
The Taker grew for thousands of years. Now, it grew bored of its home. When it was born, the earth was in the age of change. Many species died out, while others were born. The lordly Clams, once towering like hills over land, producing bull sized rubies and diamonds inside their spiky carapaces, defeated, their corpses and shells now hills and mountains, their children lowly beggars of the sea. Earthworms (an unforgivable mockery of the noble snake form) eat earth to form valleys, fighting with intelligent gelatinous swamps that wished to fill every nook and cranny of earth with their offspring.
But then, one of the greatest sons of the sun, brimming with curiosity, wanting to experience what until now it only watched, came to earth. For 100 days he tried to touch, to feel and to experience what for so long was out of his reach. On hundredth day, in despair, of all the wonders he saw grow for eons, all the life, burned (but for those like the great snake, then much much smaller, that hid underground or in deep seas), he threw himself into the sea, which, sizzling in anger at the death of all the creatures of both land and sea, obliged in his death wish.
And now few remained as old as the one that takes. And it started to wonder… has it taken it all? Has nothing remained?
And so it left, left in the only direction it hasn’t traveled in before- the Angry sea, the resting place of the young god. It was mighty now, it was strong. But even it, when it came to the foaming shore waited for the Blues permission to pass.
Yes, the sea was as vain as it was vast, it knew of the One-Who-Takes, and its humility humored it. The waves stopped, and a host of sea serpents, some small, some ancient, came to welcome their guest. Even the solitary snake felt glad to see that some of its cousins survived the Months of fire! Serpents are indeed the greatest of all kinds!
It was welcomed with honors becoming its station, shown to the depths of underwater forests, crystal caverns, and sulfuric vents. To show its might he challenged mana whirlpools, to defend honor of land snakes, dueled an ancient sea octopus, who proclaimed that due to having multiple tentacles, it is better than a measly single-tentacled snake. In turn, it was proclaimed dead.
Finally, it was taken to the elder serpent, living in the skull of the Beloved-Son-of-the-Sun. The seafloor scorched, bones still hot enough to make stone touching them lava. “Stay here” it said “It pities me to see a serpent as great as you wasting away under the sun, bound to earth.” “The sea is mightier than the sea, look, look at who lies defeated here!” “Look at how many creatures there are in the sea you haven’t tasted, how many foes to defeat”. It wondered. Yes, the deeps were vast, and diverse… a millennia of taking! When it was about to accept, a small spark shone from sun-skull, much brighter than the sun reaching the depths. And in this moment of light the taker saw the elder serpent, tired white, covered in barnacles. It saw its eyes, milky and blind. Yes, indeed! What seemed wondrous to mana senses, in light was but a forest of ghosts! Accepting this offer would mean its scales would dull, and it could never see the above world again. No, this will not do.
So it left the sea, taking the memories of the underworld with itself, to the unknown shore, as it continued its search for… something.
It passed a desert, where it defeated a king scorpion, it passed mountains, where it stole a tooth of a living mountain, it passed land of eternal ice, which already took everything covering the land in uninterrupted white. And the excitement of travel passed as well. After years of travel, it was tired. And just as it considered turning back home, it found a great forest! Greater than the one it lived on.
“I shall take it as my home”
***
"Stupid dreams"
("It should have just found a nice egg to stay inside off")
