“How. Much. Longer. Do. I. Have. To. Do. This?”

As she withdrew from yet another failure, the only snake-human that currently existed tensed her body, though not to fight but instead to try and deal with the growing irritation at her string of failures. To be fair, she had tried a massive number of times to turn any snake she found into another one of her kind, but it would seem that luck was just not on her side.

Lyrhea rubbed her temples and kept her eyes closed, letting out a deep breath before taking another one in and holding it.

“Hey, God, what gives?” she finally asked aloud.

[“Your luck is shit, my Chosen.”] came the reply. [“But, hey, it isn’t nearly as shit as my other Chosen have had. They all died long before they even had this chance, so just keep rolling the dice a bit longer and you’ll eventually succeed. “]

At that, Lyrhea sighed harshly and asked a question fit for a pro-China pro-Wrestler.

“Are you sure about that?”

There was a pause before the silence was broken.

[“I mean, if you keep trying the thing that works based on random chance enough times, eventually it will work. Hell, if you play the same lottery numbers enough times over enough draws and over enough of a timeframe, eventually you’ll hit it big, right?”]

Tensing again in aggravation, Lyrhea kept herself from snapping back immediately. She let out another deep breath before replying to the reply.

“So, what, is this one of those situations where I need to just keep banging my head against the wall until something moves?” she said as she looked upward and tilted her head a bit. She gestured up and then to the side, almost like she was showing off exactly how luck had treated her thus far in her current endeavor.

[“Oh, it can’t be that bad.”]

“Have you even been watching me?” Lyrhea grumbled.

[“…… maybe.”] the Primordial Serpent said unconvincingly.

Lyrhea closed her eyes and held the bridge of her nose between her fingers. And turned around. She then opened her eyes and gestured openly at what was behind her.

“Quote the poem Ozymandias, ‘Look upon my works, ye might, and despair.’”

[“Holy shit.”] the multi-headed snake god muttered over whatever channel kept the two in contact. Before Lyrhea lay the tumor-like remains of over a hundred former snakes of various sizes, all of whom had expired in such a way that Lyrhea had not claimed a single bit of the useless XP that went to Leveling Up. [“Your luck is shit.”]

“I know.” muttered Lyrhea with a complete lack of any emotion other than quiet, bubbling fury. “So, then, any other way I can do this bullshit aside from spreading my legs?”

[“Not really.”] Well, that was not what Lyrhea wanted to hear.

“So, just gotta keep slamming my head into the wall, then?”

The silence after that line had been said went on for a few minutes before the God answered.

[“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, and if I told you that I felt sorry for you then I’d be lying. I am not sorry for you, I’m sorry for me for picking a Chosen with such abysmal luck.”]

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“Thanks, God, that really makes this whole ordeal a bit easier.” Lyrhea quipped sarcastically before immediately regretting that she had said it and braced for the retaliation. That retaliation didn’t come, and she rather foolishly asked why she wasn’t being forced to grovel.

[“In all honesty,”] the big fucking snake with a metric fuckton of heads replied apathetically, [“At this point, I could humiliate you, but you’ve already done that to yourself a few times over. Just, uh, keep trying. Prove that you can eventually win the jackpot if you pull the lever enough times. I’ll be making some popcorn and watching a bit more closely. Maybe that will change something?”]

The line was cut, and Lyrhea took a few more deep breaths and walked away from the field of dead tumors.

“Well, if a thousand immortal monkeys with indestructible typewriters and infinite time, ink, and paper can eventually type out the entire written works of Shakespeare then eventually I’ll succeed. Eventually….”

…

“I can feel the wind in my feathers!” shouted a man who was soaring high above where Lyrhea stood, completely oblivious to what was down below him. “This feels amazing! Thank you, Lord!”

[“No problem.”] echoed a voice in his ear. [“Now, there is somewhere I need you to go. Can you hold your cheeks together a little longer?”]

This question puzzled him a bit. “Uh, yeah? I mean, I don’t even need to do that anymore now that I’m-”

[“Awesome.”] interjected the God. [“I’m sending you a series of directions. Go to that point and drop a deuce on what will be below you.”]

He didn’t process that divine command at once and after a few seconds had passed he asked a single-word question.

“What?”

[“Yeah, there’s this asshole God who I hate who has been sending his Chosen and a few flunkies to kill my precious birdies.”] his God explained. [“So, we’re gonna drop a bomb on his temple. Simple as.”]

Again, this took time to process.

“O….k… but I‘ll be shot out of the sky the moment I get within range.”

[“Hah!”] his God laughed back. [“Why the fuck do you think I’ve got a full thousand or so other birdies coming to fly with you? This ain’t gonna be a single strike, my boy, but a fucking carpet bomb.”]

“Uhhhhh….” he was very confused. “So you made me into what I am now…. Because you wanted your Chosen… to shit with a bunch of birds…. on another God’s stuff?”

[“Yes.”]

He closed his eyes and sighed heavily.

“Jesus fucking Christ. I had no idea that Gods were this childish.”

[“He and His flunkies have been trying for years now to defeat and destroy my greatest masterpiece!”] the God yelled back.

“And what could be more masterful of a craft than I?”

The God snickered for a bit.

[“Ever wanted to see what would happen if you crossed a Canadian Goose, a Seagull, and a Grackle together and made them the size of an Ostrich? And then you made that thing able to fly?” Fucking glorious.”]

That was a nightmarish combination, and it severely shook the newly minted Chosen.

“You sick, twisted monster…. That… That’s just pure evil.”

As he kept flying towards his target, his God merely laughed manically in his head and he could swear that the Bird-God’s laughter only grew more intense, deranged, and twisted as time went on.

[“Yes! YEEEEEEESSSSS! Shit on their stuff, my children! Shit on ALL of it, like good birdies!”]