15 REBIRTH

Claude knew not to waste energy during the tracking stage. It was good to gather information of all kinds with patience.

Something they couldn't have.

So, the three of them sprinted through the redwoods, eyes peeled for any and all signs of a den.

Claude followed river and rock settlements to dead ends and terrain changes until he could taste the coppery tinge of microtears in his lungs.

The forest was growing quieter as the snakes died out. Evening sun was settling closer, like a physical timer coming to a close.

Ironically enough, it was that very closeness that illuminated the expansive backdrop of land through a wall of bushes and stone.

Claude stood atop the hill, eyeing the rocks, studying the sanded baby-smooth surface of them, forming a ramp of sorts. To the left of it, a river ran, frothy and alive like the one back home.

Nobody said anything. The silence was telling.

"No birds, no megatherium of woodland rodents, no life here….. that only happens when there's a predator nearby. Not to mention these rocks…. they've been sanded down to tablets damn near. A plated-snake underbelly could do that but it would take decades…. At least at their current size." Claude pushed through the bushes and stepped over the smoothened stone with shaking hands and sweaty skin. Ursula and Warren followed.

A clearing of dead grass welcomed them, leading to the mouth of a cave draped in dead vines and flowers that looked ready to turn to colored dust.

The place looked completely sapped of life. It made his skin crawl and the taste of ichor rise in the back of his throat from the smell. It reminded him of when he held the spear in Beargrin's Blades. Only magnified.

That same aura of death and a bizarre incongruous deviation from natural bounds. The spear was crafted seemingly with no direct combative purpose in mind. Still, it was expertly made and dangerous.

The clearing wasn't marked by snake skins and travel marks, but still, it was the home of something. Something deadly. Even in so much death and undoing, bizarre life was flourishing.

With that being said, bizarre life rose….

Not from the mouth of the cave, but the cave entrance itself.

It slithered and yawned with a booming chortle. The whole front half of the cave unfurled like a stretching muscle. The stony sections split and cracked. Steam rose from the spaces between like body heat and ambient air had been collecting there since the beginning of the Tangents. It stunk of sulfur and rot and raw meat drenched in bile.

The head rose with a forceful jolt that shook the earth— splitting it even, as its horns ripped out of the grounds they once lay sheathed in.

What faced them was no plated-snake he'd ever seen. Even in relation to Patriarchs, Matriarchs, Alphas and all other leading variants. It was a mutant.

The thing was over twelve feet tall. It's armor plating functioned less like a keratin coating and more like a viral infection. The spread was uneven and painful looking as black veins bulged and unsettled the hard surfaces. The armor plating covered the entire top half of its face except the left side around its eye where the gnarly red glow seemed to overpower its own hideous biology.

It sluggishly slithered, almost stumbling like a drunk before twisting and letting out a territorial roar. In its mouth, he could see fleshy bits of scale and white shards of eggs.

"Its been eating its offspring's remains. To hide evidence of the dens location? For cannibalism?" The thoughts were distant in his mind. They never would've came if he wasn't constantly considering creatures and their behaviors.

More importantly, snakes didn't roar….

Before Claude knew it, he was getting yanked off-sides as the horrifying creature charged him.

He watched in pure awe as its horned head collided with the earth, causing a small mushroom cloud of dirt and dead grass to rise in its wake—

"—aude! Wake up!" Ursula's voice brought him back into the moment. Back to the present.

He gripped his spear tighter and did a squat— which probably looked weird in the moment, but ever since the snake revealed itself, he'd lost feeling in his legs.

Blood pumped. Adrenaline surged. The race began.

"Warren! It has one eye, if you can hit it, we can completely shut off one of its senses….. snakes tend to look with their noses but it's a start."

Warren was silent, but when Claude looked back, he was still there.

The snake's eye rose from the blast. A glimmer of red burning through the smoke of destruction. Like embers of war rising.

"SHOOT WARREN!"

The first arrow flew.

Almost literally miles above its head.

"Motherfu—"

"Keep shooting! That's good. Everybody keep fighting or I'll kill you after this." Ursula's urgency carried her into battle.

Everyone moved, running alongside the snake, holding their reverse-arrow formation.

Warren fired a slow volley of cover fire aimed at its face to keep its eye off of Claude and Ursula.

Brazenly, Ursula held its left side. The spot where it's only eye resided.

She shouted curses and feigned charges, causing the snake to hiss and swivel in response.

Claude wasn't the most patient person in the world. But running alongside the creature in the clearing felt like it lasted an eternity.

Then his opening emerged.

One of Warren's arrows sank into the soft skin right below its only eye.

The snake dropped into its defensive pose.

After battling four other snakes, he knew what came next.

He moved preemptively, only to find Ursula still running in the snakes striking distance. Her skin was beet red with exhaustion. She must've been moving on sheer force of will.

Its tail vibrated as it rose, sounding more like a roaring tornado by the second. Like a swarm of locusts. He could hear the bushes rustle as Warren dove off the elevated grounds to take cover in the redwoods below.

Claude changed direction and charged Ursula from behind.

When its tail hit the earth, he was already hitting her. Lifting her off the ground— much to his surprise.

The barbed tail flashed past them so fast all he felt was the wind followed by the blast.

With Ursula being in front of him, he took the brunt of the blowback.

They flew.

His eardrums rattled and his shoulder dislocated as they hit the floor in a mess of limbs and weaponry.

A sky blocked by dust welcomed him when he opened his eyes.

He didn't bother staring or waiting for his ears to stop wringing. He sat up. The snake— with its back to them, was slashing its tail through the smoke in search of them.

Claude flung himself back into the dead earth.

His shoulder popped back into place and his vision went white for an instant. All the while, he couldn't help but notice his exhaustion faded.

If what he felt was an adrenaline rush, it was smoother than usual. He felt lighter. Calmer as he ran and scented the air, eyes sharp as blades when he searched for openings. There were none other than the most obvious.

He came from its right side where the eye still burned with fury, steps loud, voice louder.

"HEY!"

The snake's head swiveled like living stone. Claude jumped over its body from behind just as it dove, ramming its horns into the ground again.

Now on its left side, Claude spun around to its front, drifting in the grass, its softer white underbelly flexed with every breath.

Claude lunged with his spear, tearing through the skin and muscle with a series of repeated jabs. He couldn't overcommit and risk getting his blade lodged between tough organs or flexed muscle. Not when it was only tied down by megatherium fur.

The snakes body writhed like a bag of water and spit Claude's spear out on the fourth stab.

Claude disengaged with his weapon and moved just enough to be hit by its backside around its neck instead of the horns sweeping his way.

The hit was fast. With his adrenaline rush at its peak, he felt nothing. Even as he smacked the earth and rolled like a tumbleweed.

The world went quieter. He panicked for a moment that he was both knocked out and lucidly dreaming. Then he felt the cold stone against his fingers and scalp. The cave was as he imagined. Dark, cold and ominous.

He got up with his spear held in a death grip and ran. The only thing that kept him going through the dark expanse was the light at the end. The fact that he'd die fast if he stayed. He pushed. Even as the sight of massive black veined eggs with half burned snake embryo's inside almost forced him to stop and gag. The place looked like a dark alchemist's bunker.

So many questions spun in his mind. He'd have to survive to get them answered.

He came out of the cave just in time to see Ursula take the entirety of the snake-mothers charge to the face.

The sound was like nothing he'd ever heard. He could hear the wind leave her chest. The broken armor shattering further. Her helmet flew off as she was knocked out of the clearing and back into the redwoods.

"Ursula!" The words escaped his lips in response to nothing else other than dread. A cold dread that magnified as the snake turned to face Claude and…..

Smiled?

His first reaction was to blink away the horrific image. Then the snake was moving. Hesitantly. Comically slow. Descending on Ursula from outside the clearing. Completely uncaring of his presence behind in an absolute rejection of nature.

What a mess.

He just escaped a cave that looked like an entryway to a hell dimension. He lead her and Warren to this— and because of his own missing Rebirth, she could be dead—

"I'm good!" Ursula yelled from deeper inside the redwoods.

"How?"

Ursula wondered the same thing as she got to her feet, shaking the snowflakes off her now exposed chest and shoulder. If she wasn't years past exhausted and alert to her environment she wouldve commented on how good the coolness felt. Heat was always annoying, to say the least.

"Warren, I thought you ran off again." Ursula moved to grab one of her axes—

"Don't—.... Gods, please just don't move." Warren's voice shook but he held his bow firmly.

"What? We have to get back to Claude."

"I'm so done with this place— where's Mr. Raizen, how did they get in here if SkyLight Guild members are guarding the forest perimeter!" Warren sniffled away a tear as something chortled in the distance. Shapes danced between the spaces in the trees ahead of them.

Ursula balled her hands into white knuckled fists.

"Warren, what is in here?"

"Lizardme—

They moved between the trees in a blur of scales. They ran like terror-birds— no matter where they moved or climbed, their heads remained level and focused on them. So horrifically focused….

Some were large with heads like a t-rex and matching short muscled arms. Others were lanky and fast with overgrown claws that looked more like curved blades.

There were no more than eight. But three would've been too many. Even one would've….

"We need a war." Claude's words echoed, cooling her blazing skin and forcing her to fight down the rising urge to vomit.

Then, memories of her father's letter came again.

And the rage came like something worse than fire….

She pushed past Warren and charged the first Lizardman— no real plan in mind. No real thoughts other than she didn't like how the red scaled hunter looked at her.

Like she was just meat. Like her demise was preordained.

Her fist connected with its jaw. Her fingers broke from the toughness of its scales. She felt teeth crack on her knuckles and talons rip at her shoulders so deep she could've swore they knicked bone.

At the same time a rustling explosion echoed from behind followed by a familiar reptilian roar.

As the snake Ursula punched tumbled backward barely any distance, she turned around just enough to see the plated-snake mother slithering straight for them.

Claude held onto its plated backside from behind, riding the thing like a chariot. Face angry as he reached around front to stab it with his spear.

"Clear out!" Claude yelled as the snake crashed onto the scene, knocking down trees and flattening bushes effortlessly.

Ursula and Warren jumped out of the way.

The lizardmen weren't so reactive. The largest of them dropped its head in a humanoid bow only for the plated-snake mother to lunge downward, eating the monster whole.

The other lizardmen hissed in a panic and made a run for it.

The snake laughed and darted around the forest, blasting them to giblets with its tail and eating the others in monstrous swooping gulps.

By the time it was over, Claude had only just got to his feet.

"For a second I thought you made a new friend…." Ursula forced a joke, trying to ignore the gaping wound on her shoulder and gnarly bend of her fingers as they all hid behind trees.

"It's the opposite I think." Claude didn't elaborate. There was no time. He knew that. He knew it was killing the Lizardmen first because it wanted them all to itself.

Greed.

Malicious greed. It's smiling asymmetrical face flashed across his mind.

The others were so far away. But this is what he wanted. What he needed.

That felt like a distant memory. The end felt closer, eve—

"MR RAIZEN! HELP!"

"Warren!" Ursula snapped as the snake spun around in the distance.

Lizardman intestines dripped from its open maw, sizzling as the saliva burned it to liquid ash.

It's tongue flickered.

Claude didn't see it with his back against a thick redwood tree. He heard it. It was so loud he almost fainted. Wet, slimy, undulating clicks.

The only thing that kept him awake was the fact that the snake knew where they were now. If not from Warren's defeated cries, then from their scents.

"…..hehehehehahah…..ha…ha.." The laugh came again. A hideous, liquid filled cackle that wasn't human enough but trying so hard to be. It made his skin crawl. It made his legs move.

Time slowed. Not really, but the continued tweak of his senses brought things into new perspective.

His mind rambled as he made a break for Warren and Ursula behind him. In his peripherals the smiling one eyed serpent from hell began to twist. Tail raised and carnage on the horizon.

"The only thing to hide our scents is water. If it's cold enough it'll bring down our body temp and make us harder to see. Maybe we're not ready. Maybe not today. But I'm not dying if I can try again tomorrow. Ursula forgive me…. I don't have many friends."

Claude dropped low and tackled Warren. He might've been the only person as thin as him which allowed Claude to maintain speed as he heaved Warren up over his shoulder and crashed into Ursula.

The blast had already hit when he shoved them both into the shallow river further to the side of the den entrance.

He didn't hear the trees fall.

But when the dust settled, the snake stood in a newly made clearing.

And Claude was stuck with wooden shards in about a dozen places.

"Fuck…" He didn't mean to drop his spear but a wooden spike went through his forearm and…. Complicated things.

In the distance a hawk screamed. Or he was just wheezing louder than ever.

He ripped a wooden spike out of his shoulder and held it like a dagger to the snake as it slithered to him.

Still smiling, while he was still without rebirth. Without power.

"Fuck…"

It seemed so trivial to rage about teenage personal failures and embarrassment in the face of an impending gory death. But it was all he could focus on.

He didn't win anywhere he wanted. The only time he got to be the hero he wanted to be, he had to do so and die for it.

All his boasting of mana resistance, all his training, every sparring match, every hour of studying.

All tossed into the sizzling abyssal maw of a bronze ranked beast.

The cries of nature came again.

He clenched his jaws. Frothy spittle pinked by blood sprayed from the spaces between his teeth. The veins in his neck bulged.

"FUCK!"

The snake was so close he could feel its breath. That crappy sulfurous fog.

When its tail slithered around him and lifted him off the ground, he went up roaring and biting and flailing in a blind rage— a blind fear, as the tears ran and his throat burned.

He stood eye level with the snake, ears ringing from all the screams. It was so loud. The snake was so focused on him with its single eye.

That taunting eye. A physical representation of his missed shot at survival. At victory. At Rebirth. It was right there, glowing and mean— practically asking to be taken with force. And he missed it. He took a thousand shots and missed a thousand times.

If he could tear it out with some invisible talon-like force, he'd never let go.

The snake laughed again as if it heard his thoughts, but he didn't hear it.

They were still screaming. Or was he?

A flash of feathers took over his vision, swallowing the setting sun and monstrous forest backdrop. The screams were deafening.

So much so that he couldn't tell the snake was in pain until it began to squirm and dropped him.

He looked up just in time to see a cloud of hawks, crows and vultures ripping at the snakes eye. Some even burrowed inside in a puff of steam and feathers.

His thoughts of talons and ripping eyes lingered— echoing like stones dropped in a pond.

Despite the inhuman clarity of his vision, he was fading. His opening was as well.

Instincts that didn't belong to him drew him to the trees where shapes called to him.

He took off, scooping up his spear and placing it in his jaws where it cracked from the new strength.

He ran past the snake and its fallen trees, leaping like a cat to land on the closest one still standing. He dug into the soft bark with his nails— with claws, and launched himself up its towering length.

The blind snake spun through the miasma of avian predators and head butted the tree he climbed.

Reactively, he jumped off the tree from a hundred feet up and latched onto the next, climbing higher. Shapes followed him, snarling and screeching at the snake destroying their home. Attacking their friend. Their kin.

Claude mimicked their sound, delirium turning him into a fiendish primal teenage boy.

As if a command could be heard somewhere in the sounds, the shapes descended.

They were fast. Like lions if they lived in trees.

The snake never saw them coming. The whole pack of them hit the snake like rainfall.

They were big— larger than Frosty, but somehow more nimble and sheathed in warm brown fur. It made them nearly invisible. Not that they needed it against the blind serpent.

With their curled climbing claws, they raked lines of red in the snakes underbelly as it twisted and lunged aimlessly.

One of the creatures overcommitted— he was young and eager. Claude didn't know how he knew that. The beast lunged for the snake, sinking its jaws into the soft stomach in search of softer organs.

The snake belly flopped and crushed the young hunter instantly.

Claude flinched as if he just lost a family member. Veins bulged in the thick straps of new muscle lining his jaws and forehead.

He chomped his spear in half again, catching the shortened spear in his left hand.

"MOTHERFUCKER!"

The snake spun around with its eyeless head. It was too late.

Claude landed on the snakes head and slammed his spear through its eye.

At the same time, the tree climbing beasts ripped open its stomach, playing a game of tug o' war with its organs until nothing was left inside.

It fell with a heavy thud as Claude stood on its head.

He looked down at his hands.

Thick curled claws tipped his fingers. He was covered in blood and wooden shards. Beneath his destroyed clothing and armor, he could see bits of dark fur covered his limbs.

Movement took him out of his reverie. The beasts circled him silently.

A pack of thylacaleo's.

One stood at his feet, dropping the snake mothers heart on his shoe.

"I'm sorry…. He died." Claude reached out for the pouched-lion—

"What the hell— Claude! Callisto! Get over here!"

The thylacaleo's scattered with the birds just as Mr. Raizen and the students arrived.

Just in time.

It was all over.

Claude turned to face them, finding eyes that regarded him differently as he pointed back to the river.

No words came. He was too tired for that. When the claws and muscles faded, sleep took him.

And that time, he didn't fight back. He didn't need to.

He'd been Reborn.