After rising from her makeshift medical bed within the cabin and shaking off no shortage of those who clung to her out of one emotion or another, the first of the Lyrheans exited the cabin and stepped outside. She took a deep breath, but unlike a certain Prince Adam, she did not ‘get real high’, nor did she exclaim at the top of her lungs a question about what was ‘going on’.

Instead, she merely slowly swiveled her head, or rather, that and her gaze, back and forth across the menagerie of various basic buildings, though none of them were as… how should I put it… maybe ‘intricate’ as the cabin she had just walked out of. There were a lot of tents, a few tens of makeshift lean-tos, and more than a few overcrowded gatherings of what appeared to be hastily-made sleeping bags made of random materials.

On the bright side, there did seem to be a concerted effort to build more stable, long-term housing, among other things. She looked back over her shoulder at the cabin. How long did it take to build that, and if it took more than a few days, maybe weeks, then how long was she out for?

A few members of her newborn civilization took notice of their ‘Great Mother’ and alerted others to her presence. “Great,” thought our favorite sarcastic snake-lady, “just what I need to start my day; an army of religious zealots stopping everything they are doing to come pay homage to me. As if that can’t possibly slow things down.”

Sure enough, a large crowd gathered and stood at attention… somewhat. It was more of a bunch of people waiting rather patiently to hear what she had to say rather than some kind of disciplined, organized gathering. A bit like a political rally where everyone had to stand up, you could say.

She heard something someone said float in over the breeze, and she assumed it was nothing serious, but replied to the words, “I thought she was dead!” with an ancient and well-known Old Earth quote.

“As you can see, the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

She swore she heard more than a few snickers and muffled laughs from the humans among the gathering. Well, that was a good start, wasn’t it?

“I, like all of Old Earth’s intelligence agencies have done, can neither confirm nor deny that the Ranger that has been hunting me for almost my entire new life may or may not have been responsible for my injuries.”

Oh, she knew it wasn’t the Ranger Bitch who nearly smashed her face in on the stone ground, but she would let the Primordial Serpent get a pass for now. Once she built up a following of great enough size and loyalty, then and only then would she reveal that her own Patron had, in a moment of divine idiocy, accidentally almost killed their Chosen.

“I have been asleep, recovering from my injuries that were sustained a while ago, but I must say that you failed to disappoint me. While I was recovering and near dead, you built all of this, and for that I thank you. But we still have quite a long ways to go.”

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She didn’t exactly know which direction to look, so she just chose one and pointed that way.

“Our potential allies and foes have had quite a while to sneak a head start on us, and they have used that opportunity to do so. Our human allies here can attest to that. If we as a fledgling nation wish to exist for any decent length of time, we need to close the gap, if not completely, then to at least put us nearly on parity with them.”

As she looked out over the crowd, she felt like something inside of her just kind of clicked. Maybe she was better at this than she had initially thought, but either way, she still had no desire to become a God-Queen for her own personal gain, nor to rule like a tyrant over others.

She still hated the idea of what she now felt that she needed to do in order to secure her own safety and that of those who willingly served her, but despite that, she needed to do it regardless. She may have never made much progress in Acting School due to certain factors beyond her control, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t put on an act when the time came for it.

She was, after all, a Thespian at heart, and if she needed to act like the God-Queen her subjects and ‘children’ expected her to be in order to achieve her goals, then so be it. She wouldn’t like it, at least until the power inevitably got to her head and changed her bit by bit, but she would act this part regardless.

“And so, I ask of you these two things. Survive and thrive. We Lyrheans have inherited the power of serpents and the sheer survival ability of humans. Snakes are varied and many in form and function, but humans are uniform, for the most part, yet despite this can survive nearly anywhere and everywhere due to their sheer refusal to give in and accept defeat. If nature, gods, and even other humans can’t stop humans from living and thriving somewhere, then they should not stop us, the successors of humanity, from doing so either.”

She paused for a few moments before further driving home her point.

“According to known, scientifically-backed history, humanity went from stone to copper in merely a few hundred thousand years, then went from bronze to copper in a fraction of that time, and from copper to iron and then to steel in even less time than that. In less than a couple of centuries, humanity then went from swords and bows with steel to firearms and then took to the skies, and merely a few decades later stepped foot upon old Earth’s moon.”

She now had to finish her bit of persuasion to drive the point home.

“We are the successors of humanity, and we must do better than them. We will learn from our neighbors, we will take their knowledge and strength and make it our own, we will push through the metaphorical tech tree faster than them, and all without stumbling as much as they did. This growing settlement is proof of that, and it will only grow faster and better as time goes on. We are not ready for war or conflict in general right now, so my order as your future Queen is such; master the arts of creation, for only after we have mastered creation can we think about mastering destruction. That is all. Now, please return to your business and take my words to heart.”

As she retreated back into the cabin, she honestly hoped they would take her words to heart. Of course, they could also just ignore them and go about business as usual, but she suspected they would take her monologue and run with it.

They were zealots, after all, and zealots tended to take the word of their leader as absolute fact. And, if that was indeed the case, then she could expect that she may very well see her first Lesser Lyrheans welding tools and weapons of copper and then bronze soon enough, especially if the human cultists could teach her subjects some things.

Of course, that would depend on her kin being willing to learn from humans, but she could give them a nudge if that was all it took.