A snake is the perfect final enemy for my time as a caterpillar, Adon thought. I remember when I was still in the egg, and I wondered if I might be a worm or a snake or something. No one’s likely to miss a snake—though he supposed that wasn’t really true.

Considering that he and Goldie would certainly miss each other if something happened to either of them, but back in Adon’s last world, most people had been afraid of spiders.

Maybe the snake had loved ones.

It was hard to imagine. As he stared down at the tan brown incarnation of small animal death, he struggled to believe even its mother could love it.

He shook his head. Why am I even thinking about this? I didn’t think about depriving something of a loved one when I decided to kill the crow, and I think they’re way more social than snakes.

Adon used Identify on the distant reptile.

Children’s Python (Male)

Python means it’s not venomous, right? He was almost certain of it.

Not that it mattered. This creature was so much larger than Adon that it would have no need to use venom on him if its fangs got near him. It would just swallow him whole.

Adon began charging his Mana energy ball. The snake seemed preoccupied with something. It was digging in the ground with its head and didn’t appear to be paying any attention to its surroundings. Adon wished he was a bit closer so that he could aim more accurately, and he crept nearer, moving along the garden wall so that he could get within range to launch his attack.

But he did not want to waste this distracted time while the snake was directing its attention elsewhere. He thought that if he could land a single attack, it might kill the monster in one blow. If it was a surprise attack while the beast was distracted, Adon had every reason to expect it should land.

He rushed faster along the wall, unconcerned about stealth. He was still using Color Change, so even if a predator was looking right in his direction, it shouldn’t be able to see him.

The snake was making progress in its digging almost as quickly as Adon was rushing to attack it. If the snake retreated into a hole, Adon doubted he would ever see it again. And one thing his Mana ball had shown it wasn’t particularly good at was digging through earth. The soil seemed to stop it almost as well as if he was simply dropping lit matches.

As Adon closed the distance, he had to jump down from the wall to get closer. He landed and rolled, careful not to let his mandibles—and the ball of energy they held between them—smack into the ground.

I probably shouldn’t have started charging it so early, he thought. It was already almost burning, hot and urgent between his mandibles, demanding to be let loose.

He bounded through the grass, rushing to close the distance with the snake, grateful that he had seen his Stats increase again and again as he hunted advanced creatures.

And he saw, as he got within ten feet of the snake, that it wasn’t trying to dig a hole to get somewhere it could hide. It was digging into the burrow of one of the nocturnal creatures Adon had seen on that terrifying night when he encountered the Little Brown Bat and the Exploding Carpenter Ants. The Midnight Garden Vole.

Adon was torn about how to react as he saw the creature that had once frightened him—not so much larger than he was anymore, really—exposed in its burrow. It blinked sleepily, then tried to retreat further into the nest in a panicked rush.

The snake bit into its back leg and began pulling the vole back out. Its body stubbornly clung to the dirt and the roots, but there was precious little that it could do. Its stubby toes had little purchase, and the soil was not something particularly firm that it could cling to reliably.

On the one hand, Adon felt the smallest stirrings of sympathy for the little creature. On the other hand, this was the perfect opportunity.

The snake looped its tail around the vole’s body and slowly wrapped it in three layers of scaled coil. Adon waited for the python to fully commit to constricting. It shouldn’t be able to dodge much while it was killing its prey.

As it released the vole from its jaws and began slowly squeezing the life out of it with its body, Adon finally launched the Mana ball. It had been causing mild pain as he contained it, and he only realized how much when he finally let go.

I have to be really careful how I use that, he thought. He supposed he could always grow new mandibles, if they shattered under the pressure of containing his Mana, but he didn’t like to think what would happen if his mandibles snapped while he was holding onto a Mana ball right next to his head.

The python looked very preoccupied with suffocating the vole, but as Adon watched the trajectory of his Mana ball, the python seemed to notice something amiss as well. It saw the bright energy ball heading toward it, tilted its head slightly, flicked the air with its tongue—and then started to move its body to the side.

The Mana ball missed it by a hair. The snake looked after it and saw the ball strike the tree behind it and gouge a hole through one of the thin places in the tree.

Goddess damn it!

Adon immediately began charging the attack again. The snake turned to look at him, and its eyes stared at the Mana ball that was slowly forming in between Adon’s mandibles.

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The snake began slithering toward him, its movements only slightly slowed by the vole it was still choking out with its lower body.

Shit. Shit!

Adon started walking backward quickly. At least he seemed to be able to move faster than the snake while it had the vole in its clutches.

He was not prepared for the python to finally release the vole and focus completely on him, which it did with a hiss.

Shit. I guess I’m a legitimate threat!

Adon continued to run while charging his Mana ball, facing forward as his legs pulled him backward. The snake began to gain on him, closing the distance to four feet.

The ground began to change underneath Adon’s feet, but he hardly noticed. This was happening much too fast!

Three feet.

Adon tried to put some high grass in between him and the monster, but it kept coming. He thought he detected a glint of victory in its eyes.

Two feet.

Adon began moving even faster, top speed, back toward the palace. He thought he might be able to quickly climb up the wall. But he knew almost immediately that he didn’t have the time or the space. The palace was just too far away. Close as it was in human terms, it wasn’t possible for him right now.

One foot.

I’m not going to make it. I have to stand and fight. I still have plenty of tricks, remember that.

The snake struck.

Adon fired his Mana ball. It wasn’t fully charged, but there was still a powerful concentration of Mana between his mandibles.

The python was caught off guard. He could see that in its eyes and the posture of its head. It didn’t understand quite what it was dealing with and didn't know what the power of Adon’s attack was, exactly. Didn’t know what to do.

It kept moving forward along almost the same trajectory, though it half-heartedly tried to weave to the side slightly.

That was what kept the energy ball from scoring the death blow.

It struck the serpent’s head squarely on the right side, and it did the same thing to the snake that the attack seemed to do to everything else it hit: tore right through.

The ball hit at the top of the snout and cut a path up the right side, until it reached the eyeball, which it burned through. Then the Mana ball flew off the top of the snake’s head and kept going.

Adon lost track of it. The python was taking all of his attention. It writhed in pain before his eyes, but he could tell it was far from mortally wounded. The snake’s remaining eye looked filled with rage to Adon, and he had no doubt that it would continue to pursue him if it could. Looking at its long, thin body, it struck Adon that the creature could endure a number of such attacks. Some of the energy balls would simply miss. Some would graze. If Adon was lucky, he’d kill the snake before it killed him, but clearly this was not the right tactic to try against this monster if he didn’t have the element of surprise.

He looked down at himself to make sure that Color Change was still active. It was.

Then Adon turned tail and ran.

For a few seconds, as the palace loomed larger and larger in his view, he thought he might have gotten away from the python completely.

Then he heard it. The sound of the grass behind him being bent and what twigs there were being snapped. The snake had pulled itself together. It was following his trail, convinced it was about to win this lethal game of tag.

He considered charging another energy ball—but no, that would just draw the snake’s eyes right to his position.

Instead, Adon darted into a nearby bush and tried to get as close to the stem as he could.

Please run past me, he thought. His body felt hot and tense, both from the repeated use of his Mana energy ball and from the life or death chase. He wanted to take a few minutes and regroup. Make a new plan.

The snake slithered closer to the bush, and then it pulled alongside it.

Keep going…

The reptile turned its body and lowered its head until it was almost at eyeline height with Adon. It stared right at him, and Adon felt almost as if he and the snake were making eye contact. Suddenly he knew—even with Color Change active, he was not invisible to this creature.

Adon took a step to the side, away from the stem.

And the snake’s head turned to follow his movements.

Shit.

His mind raced through options for escape. At the same time, it hit him what the problem was. Just like him, the snake could sense things using the infrared spectrum. And unlike the snake, whose body was cold-blooded, Adon was currently quite warm from the repeated use of his Mana ball. In the middle of a bush that stood in the cool shadow of the palace, he would stand out like a firecracker.

Adon wished he had some kind of temperature changing magic, or maybe just access to some mud or water he could use to cool his body quickly.

I can’t launch any of my actual attacks unless he gets closer, Adon thought. Spine Shot would strike the snake from this distance, because Adon had repeatedly enhanced that ability until it was an incredible weapon. But it would probably bounce off of the snake’s scales at this range. And all of Adon’s other attacks besides his Mana ball were close range attacks.

I really need some offensive magic. Or at least illusions so I could get in close without being noticed…

There were a few tense seconds as the snake and the caterpillar stared each other down. Each waited for the other to make the first move.

Then the python struck! In a blur of speed, the head rocketed toward Adon’s position.

Adon saw a blur of scale, fang, and red blood streaming from the snake’s wound rushing toward him.

He threw himself to the side, and he felt the edge of the snake’s blind side brush past him, spattering him with sticky red blood. Then Adon was running, stumbling and catching himself, trying to get away as best he could.

He was turning his head to look back at the snake when a shadow fell over him. He turned his head to look ahead again, and a heavy object smashed into his head.

Adon tumbled backward. The impact left him stunned for a moment.

The tail, he thought. The snake knew I would run away even before he struck. He clubbed me with the tail…

Then the snake’s coils were wrapping around him, and Adon found himself unable to move for a different reason.

The snake was trying to crush the life out of him.

The worst part was that it happened so quickly that he couldn’t even try sticking it with his spines. Adon’s best natural weapons were pressed flat against his body, as the snake’s grip tightened around him.