“This isn’t fair,” Haunt complained. The small cyan stood over his ritually ribbon-trussed and blindfolded former comrade, who remained silent, despite being left un-gagged. While the captive was unclothed, Haunt wore a vest, leg-warmers, and a loincloth, all in a pristine white that matched his aberrant shell color.

The two weren’t alone. This ritual was, at least nominally, quite important. The god Rhoda would surely welcome the offering of an infantry officer as accomplished as Kur, and Haunt had apparently known Kur since they were both children. Distrusting that Haunt would be able to carry out his duties unsupervised, the army had appointed a military tribunal to oversee the sacrifice of the legendary soldier.

“It’s not fair,” he said once again, his words directed as much at the world as they were at the tribunal. “I don’t care if you get yourself sacrificed, but why did you have to make me do it?”

Kur’s chelicera twitched, and he said something that only his former friend could hear.

“Yeah,” Haunt acknowledged. The shell of his face started to stain black with tears, a vestigial response from a time when cyanen had eyes in softer places. “Yeah, I know. I’ll be praying too, ‘Spar.”

Kur didn’t seem to expect that response, because their resolve seemingly broke, and they let out a choked sob, tears staining their face as well under the blindfold.

“Fare well, Hunt,” Kur said, voice almost impossible to make out.

“Fare well, Gather,” Haunt choked out. He unfolded one of the chitinous blades that lay across his chest, and stepped close enough to his friend to embrace them. Instead, he held their head up with his hand and gently slipped his blade into the gap between their head and their chest, cutting his throat.

Aquamarine blue pulsed out of the wound when Haunt removed his blade. The stark blue of a life leaving its body filled the world and drowned it out.

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“Bolt from the blue”.

That is the term I’ve heard. Sometimes, even when a thunderstorm has passed, a divine fork of light will spill backwards from the top of the cloud like water from a too-full glass. Such lightning tends to be even more powerful than the lightning during the storm, as if mocking the enthusiasm of anyone rushing outside after the storm is over.

It wouldn’t be a bad way to describe what I am right now, either. After all, dimly, I can feel the massive current of power behind me, and the pre-burned path for it in front of me. I ride that power like kelp rides a wave. It pushes me down to earth regardless of my will, with a force that gravity can no longer exert on me, and I slam into the soft mud. I cannot hear it, but I’m sure the shockwave must have been tremendous. And as I lie there in the muck, I can feel the deadly energy that had carried me there surging around and through me. It feels like instant death, but it calls something else.

It calls pieces of me. The water that rained down from my storm, I can somehow tell that it had dissolved shreds of my life within it, along with something else. The call from the lightning creates pathways, and the shredded bits of who I used to be follow those pathways and slam back into me, forming layers of leathery shell and alabaster around whatever seed the lightning planted.

An egg. I sink into the mud.

I don’t know how long I stay like that. My shell lets the light through, and I can dimly see as day turns to night turns to day again, but my mind is too hazy to count. I only have the present tense for now. Any memories I may be making are out of my reach. But at the same time, because I have no memories, I have no sense of progress. If I’m growing, or if I’m not, I can’t tell. All I know is that I am in a cage and that I am not ready to be outside of it. Until eventually, I am.

Around the same time I start to feel the pressure of my body trying to push out on my leathery cage, I also feel a stirring in my mind. I have absorbed enough of myself that I can start forming memories again.

I also know that this isn’t my first life. I have died, and yet I continue. Although, my memories of the previous one are... chaotic. Swirling and churning. I remember enough to think it’s strange that I’m alone, and I remember that I didn’t die in battle. I tell myself to be patient, that my thoughts will settle over time and I will remember all of who I was and what I did. But for now, I know my name is Gather, and it is dark and uncomfortably tight in this egg.

It is... uncomfortably tight in this egg. Ouch. I lash out with my whole body in annoyance, but the egg isn’t so flimsy that it would crumble from only one struggle. Again and again I pull on every last muscle in my body just to find what part of my body will apply the most force, and eventually I realize that my head seems to make a hard knocking sound when I smash it into the egg at just the right angle. It’s good that I have something like an egg tooth, because I don’t seem to have limbs. Pointedly not thinking about that, I push out firmly with my head, leveraging my entire body, and break through into the light of day.

Immediately, from instinct, I sample the air and deposit the sample on the floor of my mouth. Closing it, I find that I can smell the air. I smell the heady scent of my own egg, the waves of warmth from the sun-baked soil... and death. I smell a lot of death.

I look around more closely. I take in the distant mountain range, the river and its floodplain, the fields which lay fallow and discolored by our worst poisons, and the decaying carapaces of cyanen bearing the colors of my homeland and the ones bearing the colors of my birthplace. I may not recognize my body, but I recognize this place. This is... Aoge. I killed a lot of people here. Why am I here?

I feel dizzy, and I’m not sure whether it’s because of the miasma, or because of the sudden weight that lodges deep in my heart as I remember what I was.

In a daze, I wiggle around to crush more of my shell, widening the opening in it, and I start the lengthy process of extricating my body.

It takes a very

very

very

long time. Likely due to my similarly long body.

I stare in amazement at myself when I’m at least halfway out into the open. My chitin is so long and flexible! Or rather, I have scales, now. They’re rough, and spiny. As much protection as that may afford, I still feel exposed. Even though my scales are hard in their own way, they’re made of a completely different material from my old shell, and they flex and bend as I move. Like this, I could be killed with a mere bow and arrow, let alone a spear strike or hammer blow.

No, I don’t need to worry about that yet. I’m completely alone out here for now.

I turn my attention back to inspecting my body. Bands of deep maroon and deep green travel down my spine, separated by thin ribbons of dull yellow. I rush to pull the rest of my body out of my egg so that I can confirm that the pattern does continue down my entire body all the way to my tail, which tapers to a point. I had more or less figured it out already, but now I know. I am some manner of snake. A small one, I note, and I try not to be too frustrated about that. I am just hatched, after all.

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I have never been one to pay undue attention to beasts of the wild - I always had someone else to hunt for me - but I am fairly sure most snakes don’t come from thunderstorms. Presumably a normal snake would have a parent who would lay its egg, and perhaps watch after it for a while before eventually leaving it to the whims of fate as all parents must eventually.

Fine. So I’m not a normal snake. Then, what? Well, I used to be a person, a warrior. I try to remember if it was considered normal for warriors to start life again after death, but it’s no good. The maelstrom will not budge.

While I muse over such insignificant things as my provenance and the meaning of my birth, I try to move. It is the hardest I have had to work to move in my life, barring injury. Even if I were to compare it to crawling in the earth as a cyan, I have no arms, no legs, no ventral blades to crawl with. I do have a hazy instinct to move sideways if I want to move forwards, and I compare it with my own image of how snakes move. I hesitantly undulate my body, forming bunches and waves, and to my delight I realize I can push my body with a forward bias in that position. And so I slither slowly, clumsily, practicing until my new muscles know it even a tenth as well as my old ones knew running.

It’s difficult to do consciously. My body understands all of the little forces it needs to apply and where, but if I try to think about it, my path wobbles. I think about walking. Pushing with the left foot should send you to the right, and pushing with the right foot should send you to the left, but with balance you can walk forward. It must be a similar principle where the motions must cancel each other out.

It must be an hour of this before I realize something is missing: I’m not hungry at all. Hm. Again, I never really paid much attention to snakes before, but I’m fairly certain they need to eat. I remember soldiers and supporting personnel complaining about wild snakes stealing our poultry and eggs, and stories of larva and children being stolen away in the night. Well, if I don’t get hungry, I probably won’t need to do that.

For the first time since I hatched, the sky begins to dim. I taste the rank air again. It’s not as if nothing is alive. This place is brimming with life, lousy with it, the way that corpses are. But none of it is useful life; I can’t repurpose any of it. But I might be able to make something else that can.

I try to blink, only to discover that I lack eyelids, so I content myself with shaking my head to clear it. Where did that thought come from? What would make me think that I can create life? Can this body lay eggs? A brief exploration yields the answer that no, this body cannot.

Although snakes don’t seem to have external genitalia, I’m pretty sure the two things I find hiding in a vent don’t lay eggs. I’m disappointed, but not too surprised.

But, making life? Is that an instinct I possess?

Hm. I start to feel a hazy sense of what I could do, a blueprint of an outline of a silhouette. But, I have a feeling that I shouldn’t play around with it, at least not yet. I may not be used to being alone, but I’m even less used to being a mother.

And I would be a mother, I’m realizing. I’m in a new body. Even if it isn’t a body I wanted, it’s a body I have a chance to define on my own terms, in my own mind. Sure, I’m a snake now, and it’s very unlikely that anyone will ever see me as a woman, but it’s no more unlikely than anyone seeing me as a man. Since I do have a mind, since I still am a person, I am finally the one and only authority on what kind of person that is.

It’s not like it matters which barracks I choose now; I’ll be kicked out of them all equally.

I’m a little surprised to realize that the thought of being forced out of every military barracks in the world doesn’t make me very sad, but thinking about barracks also makes me realize that I am tired, and very cold. Aoge could be quite hot during the daytime, but the evening chill is making me sluggish, and that feels dangerous -- I think there’s nothing else moving around me, but how much do I trust that I’m truly safe?

Digging in the mud would probably sap all remaining heat from my body, so I head for the nearest source of warmth, which happens to be a pile of corpses. Actually, it’s surprisingly warm, which I quickly realize probably has something to do with how bad it smells. Ugh. Well, if I hate smelling it so much, I can always try not to stick my tongue out. It’s surprisingly difficult, though.

I’m thankful enough to have a place to sleep amongst the battered chitin and tattered standards. I wonder who piled up all the bodies like this. Ah, wait, they’re all missing armor and weapons. I guess that makes sense. Scavengers would have no reason to leave the bodies where they had originally lain.

Anyway, it’s not exactly the softest bed, but my own coils are softer than my body used to be. I curl up, unable to close my eyes, and let my still-swirling mind start to rest.

----------------------------------------

My dreams are uncomfortable, fitful, blurry, and full of a pathos that’s disconnected to who I am now. Long-dead comrades and foes flit through my tiny brain. My old body is splattered with viscera, then scrubbed clean, then splattered again. Scenes I was never even a player in play once again in front of me, my throat humming words I never thought of. I’m a passenger, and my journey has been torn to shreds. Where did it go? How did I get here? I claw at the abyss for answers, but I have no claws anymore.

----------------------------------------

I wake up and the sun is already some time risen, but it hasn’t warmed the air yet, so I stay in my putrid shelter for now. It’s truly awful, and I wonder if I can still catch illness in this form. It doesn’t... feel like I can? The feeling is similar to how I don’t feel like I can starve. But it still feels... impure, I suppose. An impurity that I won’t be stained by, but that doesn’t please me to dwell in.

Can I do anything about this?

I suppose I can always look for better shelter once it’s warm enough; rather, I’ll have to, because a pile of corpses is definitely not a permanent home. But this is Aoge. I can explore all I want, I know for a fact I won’t find anything convenient like a home. This place is a poisonous wound on the land, one that I had a hand in carving.

I don’t know why, but that thought is disquieting. Should I really be thinking of this life as something I can use for myself? Before, I’d never put thought to something so wide and abstract as “the land”, or my impact upon it. I was a tool to be used, and in its use it would prove its worth, its existence. I barely considered myself a person at all; perhaps I would have considered it arrogant to question the decisions of my betters. But what proof did I really have that they could take responsibility better than I could? All of my loyalty, all of my subordination, and in the end after dying alone I was still left with my own thoughts. Didn’t that mean I was responsible for all of my own actions? Was there really anyone else who could bear the weight of the deeds I carried out?

No. In death, the chains of command had been severed, so there was nothing to carry that weight for me. My own actions were my greatest burden in the new life I’d been given.

My thoughts have begun to careen uncontrollably, and not even I really understand what I’m thinking. But I feel like I have to do something to balance out my thoughtless life, here and now, even if it isn’t enough.

It’s still not quite warm enough for me, but I push my way out of the pile of bodies, dozens of minute contact points of friction giving me purchase to move in the tight space. As foul as the miasma was within, the chitin itself of the dead soldiers remained mostly clean, and so I did as well. I slide out onto the ground, and I start trying to rub my rough scales together.

I have a vague memory of the process for a purification ritual. Something important must be buried, its essence dedicated to consecrating the soil by beseeching the gods, and the consecration will match the magnitude of the dedication. I wouldn’t be so conceited as to call one of my own scales something important, but it’s something to start with, and I would have to see what kind of effect it would have. Unfortunately, I was having a problem. Despite how rough my scales were, not a single one was coming off from rubbing them together.

I try to look carefully at the area I rubbed together, but it’s completely scratch-free! I focus a little harder on just one of the scales in question and... it falls right off.

Apparently, if I want to remove one of my scales, the only way to do so is to ask it nicely. I can’t tell if this will be useful when it’s time to molt, or if it will be an absolute pain, but it will certainly be novel. It is getting extremely difficult to ignore that something is very strange about my body.

Using my tail, I dig a small groove in the earth and shove the dark green scale inside.

I don’t pray. As I watch the dirt cover my scale, I wonder if it will really be able to dissolve and spread through the earth, if even the gods will be able to heal this land. I don’t even have time to imagine how that would look before the ritual takes effect.

I feel something like a piercing note, like the bowing of a stringed instrument by a ventral blade. The world rips like paper being torn, and I can feel that something is ripped away. Nothing looks any different, when I turn my eyes over the landscape -- the corpses don’t disappear, the landscape is still torn apart by cannon fire, and everything isn’t covered with ferns and grass. But... the sun feels warmer. The putrefaction of the dead smells more like loam than it smells like disease. I’ll be able to sleep underground without the mud sapping the life from my body. And most importantly, I can tell. The poison is gone.

How far did this ritual reach? What god did I pray to? Why did my scale have such an immense effect?

Just what kind of snake am I?