Synth was busy. She did not know if she had ever been tasked with this much before. Sure, she had been doing her job for at least a millennium, but the area she watched had been a wilderness for most of that time. Even back when the Grazz empire had expanded into her domain, she had never had this much that needed to be done.
The great watcher council had put her in charge of searching for any rending weapons that might be circulating around Creon.
“Ma’am! Wait!”
She was walking down a hall in the Watcher's primary base when her second found her.
He yelled, trying to get her attention, as he dashed down the hall after her.
“There has been a discovery in the eastern quadrant of H7. A rending item has been found. I have been gathering together a team to retrieve it, but I need you to finalize the specialists I have chosen.”
“Retrieve? Why is retrieval being prioritized over destroying the otherworld artifact?” Synth asked as she glanced sharply at the younger watcher.
“Because, Ma’am, I had thought that you would want to study the item to find more information about how they work, and perhaps, where they are coming from, before we destroy it.”
“Very well, I suppose that that would be a smart thing to do. Send whoever you think will get the job done, and bring me the item as soon as it is in our possession. I want to directly oversee the its study and destruction.”
With a crisp salute, Synth's second nodded and went to see that all was done to her standards.
As she continued on to oversee several of the search groups, she was interrupted.
A ping went off in her head demanding immediate watcher input, and it was sourced not too far from the first location a rending weapon had been found.
Worried that the hole in space had not solved itself, she immediately put all her plans on hold and rushed to find and fix the issue.
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Error- no solution found. Contacting Watcher… …
Confused, the little snake tilted his head. “Whaa??
Contacting watcher… … …
Watcher in transit… … …
Solution found by Watcher
Hidden: [boon of hospitality] activated. 1 tier reimbursed. Name given: Anar’tin Ufeya
Commencing adaptation: Racial debuff removal. Fully engaging conscious mind.
Closing feat selection windows. Note: complete more feats to reopen.
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“Ooohhh??” The sudden, loud silence where there was once an even louder voice confused the little snake, but it decided that it rather liked the peace and quietude that filled its head.
Tounge flicking, he started to search his new surroundings. He smelled the liquid he had been eating, but it was distant. What was much closer was dirt. Real, crumbly dirt. Preparing to start burrowing like he hadn’t since he had starved, his mind went black.
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Butch was finally full. As a bird, he should not have eaten so much because now, he was too fat to fly. The bear was just that good.
Now, with a full stomach, he decided that he would practice a common custom he had seen the proper humans engage in. Manspreading.
Back to the bear’s corpse, Butch leaned back and relaxed with his scrawny bird legs spread wide. Closing his eyes, he started to drift to sleep.
“Whaa??”
A noise chased his sleep away. Looking around for the source of his awakening, the little string that had burned his mouth attracted his attention. It was moving. It was alive.
Curiosity taking over, he slowly approached the small creature. Hunching over to get a better look, he noticed itty bitty scales coating it. Butch reached out to poke the little… Snake? Deciding that it must be a snake, he continued reaching forward to poke it with his beak. He was acting cautious because the last time he touched the thing, it had been very hot.
Before he could determine the temperature of the purple-brown snake, he was interrupted by the snake suddenly twitching.
“Ohhh”
Before Butch could do anything more than jerk back, the snake twitched violently then it stilled.
Wondering if stillness meant death, he approached once again, only for a dome to shimmer into existence over the snake. As he watched from beyond the little dome, the snake started to visibly grow. Its head started to shift and change. Its skin cracked and peeled, revealing larger, more defined scales beneath.
As Butch watched, a realization dawned on him. This creature was the source of the Nickleback bear’s death. It had somehow managed to kill a being vastly superior to itself.
This little snake had performed a feat.
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Synth watched as the [greater] Crowhaunt Buzzard tried to approach the otherworld serpent with a mix of emotions. At some level, she was impressed with the feat that the little snake had accomplished. But at the same time, she almost wished that the big bird had just eaten the thing so she would not have had this distraction interrupting her concentration.
All the same, rules were rules, whether she had time for them or not. So here she was. Wasting her time with little, worthless snakes that would, more than likely, never progress again.
But, if she had to do this, she did not want it to be a waste of time. So she formed a shield around the small snake’s prone body, before activating the adaptation process.
Then she left. If the snake were to survive, it would have to be due to its own efforts, not hers. Besides, she had more useful things to be doing. She hurried off to continue her hunt for rending weapons.
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The little snake awoke to a world much different from the one he had blacked out in.
His mind was assaulted by a concept so foreign to him, that he had to sit without moving while his mind tried to reconcile and decode the sights around him.
Colors. There were so many things that his mind told him were colors surrounding him. They shifted and clumped together. Some would not separate, and others seemed to move almost constantly. Two bright colors assaulted his head causing two spots of pain to flare up. Moving colors caused noises. Shuffling. Rustling. Chaos. It was all so very much.
His mind went dark. Again.
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