The new puddle has been being slowly but surely overtaken. The salamanders were all too happy to dig around in the muck some more to widen the canal when the little fish started swimming in. They loved the things! She supposed she should enjoy the extra energy while she could. Her theory was that once the new pond was fully claimed, they would become HER fish and then she wouldn’t get anything back out of them.
Today, for the first time, the canal was finally wide enough that Liv could squeeze her way through to the new area. Gods, it was the first time she had seen anything besides her 20’x20’ puddle in AGES! She didn’t care if it was just as filthy and smelly as the other one. The simple thrill of something NEW was enough to have her diving into the new pond with glee.
The first thing she noticed was that this body of water was significantly larger. Until she claimed all of it she had no way of knowing exactly how much larger it was, but she’d already doubled her area. It was also a lot deeper. It had to be at least four feet deep, and she could see dozens of little fish flitting about in the murky water. A splash rumbled through the liquid over her head, and Liv looked up to see Wiley had apparently joined in her excitement and leaped into the new pool. She hadn’t known they were capable of jumping like that, but if any salamander was going to manage it, it would be Wiley.
Laughing at the goofball’s antics, she saw Masque slip sinuously into the new waters along with some of the others. She was so used to seeing them slowly wiggle around on land, but in the water they were actually quite graceful. Grinning with wonder, she spun about to watch her little buddies playfully circle around her, snatching up fish as they went.
It was in the act of twirling about that she noticed the first signs of something she was growing increasingly excited to add to her soggy little dungeon. There on the edge of her territory, poking through the foggy boundary that somehow existed even beneath the water, were the first few roots of the tree. Liv hopped up enthusiastically, jogging through the water without any resistance.
“Oh buddy, have I got plans for YOU!” she cooed. If moss and algae could get her some tiny trickle of SP, what would a full on tree do? Looking up at it, she could only see a hazy outline of most of it. Only a few roots were sticking through. The tree almost seemed to be standing on stilts in the water. She felt like she should know what kind of tree this was… Mandrake? No, that was something else. Mandrel? MANGROVE! That was it! It looked like a mangrove tree!
Her little critters would probably have a ball swimming around all the roots. Liv dropped down to sit on the pond floor and see how much was visible beneath the surface. Dense thickets of roots and stringy green weeds seemed to dance in the dappled light passing through the water. Multiple varieties of fish were weaving their way through them. Little silver ones flashed and darted, slender catfish nibbled the algae covered wood, and she could see still more shapes moving around in the shadows and behind the fog. It was oddly peaceful, and probably the prettiest thing she’d seen since she arrived.
She took a moment to just breathe, kind of enjoying that she could do so without fear of drowning. This investment has been worth every Skeeter… Liv opened her eyes again, and promptly screamed in terror.
Right in front of her, seemingly unphased by her presence, the massive, pale, mottled yellow and brown snout of a sleek and dangerous snake emerged from the shadows and passed right through her head.
Flailing, she turned to run on pure instinct. Then she saw the others, playing in the water. Oh no…
“RUUN!”
This wasn’t a little cat sized bush, this snake was HUGE. How was she going to stop it?! Her salamanders turned to flee but the massive snake simply outclassed the primitive amphibians. With a single gulp, poor Sally was just gone. Swallowed whole. They weren’t going to make it.
“HEY!! HEY YOU!! ASSHOLE!!”
The desperate woman pulled off her leather jacket, leaving her in just a tank top, so she could whip the studded leather around. It was useless. It couldn’t see her, or didn’t care. Either way, she was powerless to stop it. “No…” she whimpered.
A red arrow pierced the silty gloom, slamming home in the side of the snakes head as it was reaching for another bite. Masque. The foot long salamander had just rammed a snake at least six times his own size, buying the others time to flee.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Her first companion in this insanity. The first thing in this hellish cesspool that she’d come to love. That brave little idiot was going to die just like poor Sally.
“Like Hell!!” Liv raged, charging forward.
—
Masque was a simple creature. If he’d had even a hint of a mental voice of his own, he could have spoken his every understanding of his world in just a few words.
*Masque is Masque. Masque like frogs. Masque like fish. Masque like lady. Lady is friend. Friend is like Masque, both have red on top! This is good. Then there is predator. That is bad.*
Masque’s every instinct was screaming at him to flee. Let the others get eaten! But… Some deep part of him felt the strange and alien pull of the red lady. The core. He didn’t understand her most of the time, her thoughts were decidedly UNsimple. When he looked at that slithering monster, that absolute leviathan of a thing, he felt desperation for the first time in his life. The red lady was afraid. She was afraid and that was BAD. He’d seen how she rushed to help Wiley when he was hurt. Now… Now it was his turn.
His nose throbbed from where he had impacted the monster’s jaw. It had barely phased the beast, but it had given Orange Hector a chance to escape. The beast was turning, any second now that mouth would swallow him up like Sally. He could see the fleshy, undulating folds of the monsters maw closing in on him like death itself. He had to stay away from those jaws!
He bit down on the beast’s neck. His little serrations had no hope of harming the scaled abomination, but if he hung on he could keep the snake from being able to bite him back, if only for a little while. He clung for all he was worth, eyes clenched shut as the dread serpent tried to shake him off. He felt the titanic body coil around him.
*Bad. This was bad. Predator was bad. Masque… Masque was bad.*
He heard the core’s voice. She probably thought he was bad too, he could feel her… what was that? A deep, burning feeling. Hot. Cold. So much. Too much!
“Like Hell!!”
Masque didn’t know the strange sounds, but the feelings! He opened his eyes one last time before the end, and saw lady reaching out to touch him. Then came a surging rush. A torrent so powerful Masque thought he would surely die. White hot! It was pain! It was pleasure! It was… RAGE.
This beast, this monstrosity was going to end him. It wanted to end all of them. It wanted to eat his fellows. It killed Sally! It wanted to undo what lady and they had worked so hard to do! The burning pain rose to a crescendo. The monster wanted to wreck it all and he was sitting here calling himself ‘bad’ and accepting his fate?!
Like Hell!!
He was MASQUE!
He was THE RED DEATH!
This pale worm would learn its place in this swamp!!
—
Liv practically crumpled to the ground, gasping as she overexerted herself. She hadn’t known what to do, but she’d known she could at least heal things. Masque hadn’t been hurt yet, but she’d charged over and slammed everything she could into the poor critter anyway. For a moment her hand had touched his tail, and she’d actually felt him. All of him. In that briefest of seconds she had found herself with a complete understanding of what Masque was, inside and out. Without really meaning to or understanding what she was doing, she’d pushed him. Just like she’d pushed the plants to grow or the barriers to move. She reached inside the floppy little salamander and PUSHED.
Now she sat, mouth agape, and saw what her powers had wrought. Masque had gone from a struggling little mouthful about to be squeezed in the coils of a snake, and surged into something new and terrifying. An eight foot long, crimson backed salamander shrugged off the snake’s embrace. A head large enough to swallow a cat whole whipped around and bit back down on the serpent’s neck, just behind the head, and she could see wispy tendrils of red seeping out into the water.
The two beasts rolled and hissed and thrashed about in the shallows of the pond. Two apex predators vying for survival. Liv sat there, leather jacket hanging limply in her hand, as the dull and muffled *Crack* reverberated through the water. The giant snake went limp, floating somewhat, until it was suddenly pulled up and out of the water.
She stood, wobbling a bit with the effort, and stared in awe at her not-so-little buddy. The exhausted woman watched, transfixed, as Masque proceeded to eat. The large constrictor slid down his throat, like it was nothing.
Her trance was only broken when the massive monstrosity she’d unwittingly created turned to look at her. It blinked first one eye, then the other, before flopping into the mud with it’s tongue sticking out just a bit in a lazy expression of contentment.