It had been nearly a day since Big Thing had left us. Much to my surprise, none of the injured things in my care died - though they did whimper and mewl for food every ten minutes like spoiled fucking children. They could all stand now, if not run or fight, and I had them help me gather up as many useful parts of spider as I could save from there hungry stupid maws.

I had managed to squeeze enough webbing out of our kills to make two more spider shivs, but I had at least five more scythe like spider limbs on top of that, wrapped up in a single huge leaf from the nearby bushes.

We were going to have to move soon. I counted myself lucky that nothing had attacked us in the single day of recuperation we’d already done, but I really didn’t look forward to traveling through the woods with five defenceless snacks for the next probably flagrantly demonic animal we came across.

I tried to teach the least injured Things to use the swords, but the morons kept trying to eat them until I took them away. I also tried to get them to respond to specific combinations of chirps and trills - names basically - but they were too stupid for that too. By the time the afternoon of my second day away from Big Thing had come around, we were still no closer to leaving the clearing with anything resembling organization or safety but we had no choice.

Not because we were forced out mind you. But because the spider meat had run out. Already, I could see idiots one through five hungrily eyeing each other, and I decided enough was enough.

I trilled once and started off in a direction perpendicular to where I remembered Big Thing leading the rest of the cohort. It would have been nice to say the my group fell in neatly behind me but they really didn’t. Without Big Thing to shove branches and other obstacles out of the way, we tramped through the woods like five extremely loud, delicious, morsels. Every step I took ratcheted my paranoia up another notch, and I held a death grip on my spider shiv as we travelled - praying we could find a cave or something to set up in before night fell.

The forest was oddly cheery given how full of death I perceived it to be. The leaves were a nice bright green, a gentle breeze wafted past tickling my face, and the waning light of the late afternoon danced among the treetops to give the entire place an almost picturesque appearance.

And that was what scared the shit out of me. If the forest was withering and magical or some similar bullshit, I could wish the spiders away as an aberration - something not meant for this world. But the healthy state of the forest said otherwise. It said that those spiders were a part of a functioning ecosystem. And that scared the shit out of me - because it meant there was a food chain, and unless the Bile Spiders were at the top of it, there was at minimum, at least one much scarier thing in these woods.

My heart was jackhammering so hard when something finally happened that just knowing what it was was enough to help me calm down.

We had started to follow a little stream of water we had chanced upon in our blind stumble through the forest, and I was angrily kicking the tenth pebble I had stepped on out of the way when the familiar sound of construction work filled my ears. I thought I was going crazy at first - I mean, it sounded like there was heavy machinery churning the earth somewhere ahead of us, which would have been a welcoming though if I wasn’t presently some kind of cannibal goblinoid.

But then the sound began to grow closer. Urgently, I began trilling quietly at idiots one through five, leading them off the clear path the stream presented and shoving them down to hide in the nearby bushes. Once we’d all settled to my satisfaction - I waited.

It didn’t take long to arrive, and I thanked whatever sick designer had created this world that Things didn’t seem to excrete any waste. Because I just about would have shit my pants. If I was wearing pants I mean.

Tearing through the underbrush directly in the center of the stream, came the form of what I can only describe as a fuck off huge snake. It’s head was recognizable enough - elongated snout, long flicking tongue, ophidian eyes on either side of its head. But everything after the head was one continuous whirling series of bony axelike scoops. They came in sections as big as I was, like the notches on a spinal cord, connected to each other by a coiling network of tendons and sinew that never seemed to tangle or become wound too tight.

The rotated at dizzying speeds, in a pattern that undulated across the snakes body like a sine wave - propelling the monster forward as fast as any car I had seen. The speed it was travelling at gave me hope that it would simply pass us by, by as it did, its tongue flicked out, and its head swivelled slightly to turn one single, freakish orange eye towards the bushes we were hiding in.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The scales on its head, I noted, were a sickly bone white to match the coloring of the bone spurs it used to move. Then, like lightning it whirled around in the opposite direction from us, diverging from the easily traveled stream.

Shit. It’s going to double back on us isn’t it.

I quickly started shoving my cohort out of the way, urging them to stand and begin fleeing, but there was a hungry look in their eyes that I feared might be mirrored in my own. On the one hand, the feeding frenzy meant I wasn’t going to panic and then die frozen still in fear. On the other, I could feel my body tuning up for a fight, half thought out reasons why it was a good idea to stay already flitting through my mind.

The Gyre Snake - as I had decided to call it - must have turned around, because the sound was no longer growing distant, instead I could hear more than see the thunderous crashing of trees as it tore apart the undergrowth on its return path to us.

I could feel my mouth salivate, and a plan begin to take form in my mind. Still, I was rational enough to know that I was probably going to die in a few moments.

Stupid god damn biology. Where are the breaks on this thing? I want to get off!

***

It was easily the dumbest plan I had ever come up with, and that includes my adult life before becoming a Thing.

It had all the subtlety of a matador and none of the finesse. I was going to bury some of my handleless spider shivs in the ground at an angle so that the snake would plow into them. I was going to stand behind them so I could be sure the snake actually hit them.

And then I was probably going to be turned into snake shit.

It was a testament to my single minded focus on obtaining food that I considered this a workable plan. It was an even greater testament to the human mind's ability to fuel itself with fear that I got all the makeshift piles in to place in time.

The snake must have had some trouble moving with speed or delicacy through an environment with lots of obstacles because it should have reached me much faster than it did. It must use the streams and other clearer paths to get around, only diverging from them when it couldn't find pray along them.

I had just managed to bury the last shiv when the thunderous destruction of trees was punctuated by an almost quiet splash of water.

The snake had crossed the stream.

Certain I was about to be plowed into by an angry snake the size of a semi truck, my hands and feet began scrabbling across the dirt, quickly lifting me off the ground and into a running posture.

And not a moment to soon I realized as the snakes cavernous maw burst through the foliage charging towards me.

Its head dwarfed the makeshift trap I had crafted, the spears - which were nearly as tall as I was - only slightly longer than a single one of its massive fangs.

Those same fangs crashed through the air toward me, even as the snakes own momentum carried it forward into my trap. The results were less than I had hoped. Only a few of them landed on the softer flesh of the snakes head, one managing to wedge itself in an immense ophidian eye.

The sudden blindness the wound caused was probably all that saved me from being impaled on the snakes fangs. I dove forward out of the way of the snakes attack, its mouth opening and closing with such swiftness it was nearly impossible to follow the movement. The snake wasn’t to be deterred however, and it continued to drive forward thrashing blindly in my direction as the pain of its wounds distracted it.

Unfortunately none of those wounds were mortal, and I had no way of escaping or fending off the beast.

I continued forward, zig zagging back and forth through the underbrush, narrowly avoiding death with each erratic movement. I jumped over stumps and stones, changed directions at random, and at one point - my body beginning to grow tired under the exertion - even considered trying to jump on top of the snakes head. But nothing worked, and I was still rational enough in my fear and hunger to pointedly ignore the last idea.

Holy shit I was going to die. I was going to die, and I hadn’t even figured out what the hell had happened to me yet. I was going to die fucking hungry God damnit.

Panting, I burst through the tree line onto a fairly wide meadow that ended abruptly at a cliff.

‘Shiiiiiit’ I thought as I came to a halt in the center of the meadow. A moment later the Gyre Snake exploded into view, its prodigious body arching through the air above me in a leap that would have probably allowed it to swallow me whole if I'd still been running. The rotating sections of its body ripped through the air inches from my face as it passed and only a last minute jump to the side stopped me from becoming pasted under its girth when it landed.

Heart hammering I turned, hoping for some of that pulp fiction luck, desperately praying that the snake would careen off the edge of the cliff.

It was a close thing, but Flash Gordon wasn’t on my side this time, and the snake made a wide turn that sent part of its tail slipping over the edge of the cliff before it reoriented on me, mouth wide and ready to swallow me whole.

Shit fuck shit.

Jerking back in to motion I made one final futile attempt at to sprint back into the tree line - knowing I wouldn’t make it in time.

Why does everything here have to be so god damn big? I swear if I reincarnated I want to be a mountain sized bear. Only seems fair what with all the bullshit I've had to deal with.

Mt thoughts trailed to a stop when I realized I hadn’t been eaten yet, and I glanced over my shoulder, nearly plowing into a nearby tree as I skidded to a halt.

I wasn’t dead because the snake wasn’t chasing me anymore. It wasn’t chasing me anymore because - somehow - my injured things had jumped onto its fleshy head and begun eating it alive.

‘How!?’ I mentally howled. These useless fucks could barely limp let alone make that jump so how did-

My question was answered as the last of the Things jumped from a tree to land haphazardly on the snakes spine. The snake was flailing wildly, shaking its head and doing basically everything short of smashing it's own face into the ground to get my cohort off of it.

I winced as I saw the spinning disks of bone on the snakes back tear apart one of my allies. But with this, we at least had a chance.

Taking a firm grasp on my spider shiv, I - for the second time since birth - ran screaming at a nightmare creature.

Because of course, I was hungry.