The light faded but did not wholly recede as a different series of sensations pressed upon Victor. He realized he could not hear, taste, or see—at least, not in the traditional way. The world around him was strange, and shapes and figures were revealed to him as a series of reflections. He imagined that this was what echolocation must feel like.
Beneath the pulsating hues of towering luminescent trees, Victor gazed at the alien woods the god had deposited him. The greenery undulated slowly, their respiratory rhythms harmoniously resonating with the underbrush below. The entire forest felt like a single living entity that breathed as one.
The understory was a bustling community of life forms, both flora and fauna, evolving in harmony with one another. Strange plants with feathered fronds and tentacle-like appendages sprang from the wooded floor, drawing nutrients from a thick atmosphere.
Among them, Victor observed a multitude of tiny organisms floating gracefully, b buoyed by an unseen force that permitted a delicate dance of levitation. Everywhere Victor searched, he could sense flora and fauna communicating in silent dialogue, exchanging pulsating lights and releasing aromatic pheromones to permeate the dense air.
Absurdly, the politician felt like he belonged in this verdant landscape. A part of him yearned to be among them, yet the strangeness of his senses separated him. He knew there were brilliant colors and enticing aromas, but he couldn’t authentically experience them. Victor was among them, yet removed—a cancer waiting to consume its host.
As far as he could surmise, the difference was that some items in his field of view gave off better reflections than others. Small insects and some plants had more vibrant reverberations than things like stones or trees. As automatically as his breathing, he felt a series of waves extend from his body.
Upon further investigation, he realized they originated from two small pits above his snout, just under where his eyes would be if they existed. A resonance of sorts was generated when they hit something like a tree. This manifested itself as a blue-white outline of the world around him. His “vision,” as it were, only extended fifteen feet or so in every direction.
He noticed he did not need to turn or move to “see” the terrain around him. At first, the sensation gave him vertigo, but it quickly started to feel natural. Once the nausea passed, Victor realized he could see his surroundings in more detail than his conventional vision had ever provided.
It wasn’t that he could distinguish the striations in the trees or the faceted wings of buzzing insects. It was the fact that he could see everything at once. He could determine the outside edges of objects with incredible accuracy, and seeing behind a tree was just as easy as seeing in front of it.
He accomplished this by delineating the world around him in layers. It was simple to detect an unusually bright object behind the tree by removing the obstruction from his vision while remaining aware of its presence. His mind was easily and naturally able to accomplish the task. However, seeing into the tree's center simply wasn’t possible, and Victor surmised that was because his senses couldn’t actually penetrate the object itself.
Every breeze that blew through the vegetation in his surroundings caused his attention to dart over with laser-like intensity. This happened simultaneously in all directions, and Victor knew little could escape his gaze.
Even more interesting, the politician could comprehend and pay attention to most, if not all, of the minor movements around him. As soon as he determined that the activity wasn’t prey, it ceased to be consequential.
Victor's thoughts stuttered at the realization. Predators possessed this type of vision. Humans evolved and optimized for finding and capturing prey. The human mind filtered out most stimuli captured by its senses. It was why sharp, darting movements were more attention-grabbing than slower, steadier ones.
He attempted to focus his vision on himself and was pleased to discover that he could study his own body in great detail. Not only that, but his senses could penetrate his form, unlike the objects in his surroundings. He was stunned to learn he had no arms, legs, or anything resembling his human form. He was more snake than man, and the irony wasn’t lost on him.
Well, not exactly. Victor’s new form was about six feet long and around the width of a human wrist at his thickest point. Using his senses, he could see that he had a variety of organs that pulsed with blue light more vibrant than anything he could sense in his immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, his vision did not reward him with knowledge of how those organs functioned.
Physically, his hide consisted of soft, delicate scales that fit together smoothly. They were more sizable on the top of his body and got smaller until they were almost indiscernible on the underside of his body. Looking closely, he observed that each scale was covered in tiny, nearly invisible ridges. The overall effect gave it the consistency of sandpaper. He couldn’t be sure, but he discerned that this was a method of attacking with his body. The ridges looked small enough to slough off the flesh of prey.
With a bit of focus, he realized that his new senses could further penetrate his body beyond the bright blue-white organs and study the structure within. His skeletal and muscular systems resembled that of a snake as well. However, his bones weren’t very dense, and he didn’t have any traits that could house sensory organs like a nose or eyes. After studying his anatomy further, he couldn’t find any offensive features outside his skin—no fangs, claws, stingers, or anything.
How was he supposed to defend himself as this six-foot-long piece of rope? His mouth was soft, and his scales were flexible and weak. The only redeeming factor seemed to be the sharpness of the scales’ edges. He felt that one good stomp would send him back to the hell the god retrieved him from.
With little thought, he slithered along the ground for a small distance. He was relieved to learn he had a highly attuned sense of touch. He could feel even the subtlest differences in the soil beneath him.
An exploratory darting of his snake-like tongue made him realize that he didn’t have a sense of taste or smell. Victor keenly felt their absence. He enjoyed exquisite dinners and liquors in his past life, and now he would have to forget that. Even his incredible sight, as fascinating as it was, couldn’t cheer him up.
Victor realized he needed to collect more information about what he was, where he was, and what he needed to do. The first step was observation. Ideally, the politician would gain a higher vantage point and determine what to do next.
Satisfied he’d made a decision, he began to move toward the tree in front of him. He soon realized he could travel far faster than he’d initially estimated. The tiny ridges in his scales acted like the tread on a tire and gripped the soil around him. He rocketed across the forest floor when he flexed and moved his muscles.
A few seconds later, he felt his body slide over a small bump in the ground. The jolt threw him off balance as it plunged out of the earth. The abrupt change in direction startled Victor, but he quickly righted himself before coiling up instinctively into a defensive position.
He extended his upper body and issued a snarling hiss. The entire adrenaline-driven reaction had taken less than a second. Automatically, Victor tried to use his senses to identify what had attacked him. As he focused his sight on the attacker, he realized that he could see lines of blue-white veins that extended into a core about the size of a small marble and still buried beneath the earth.
Relaxing his vision, it became more like sonar or echolocation again. What he saw made him shudder. Eight long, angular legs covered in geometric planes ascended from the small hole. It turned out that the little bump Victor had slid over was, in fact, the hidden head of an oddly-shaped spider.
Victor usually didn’t have a problem with spiders. Many times, he had admonished his daughter that they were helpful creatures. In some ways, Victor saw some of himself in their essential role in the universe. A spider was meant to eat the less desirable insects in the garden, and it laboriously created an intricate web to trap those less capable than itself. It wasn’t a very honorable creature, but it had a noble occupation—a role he empathized with.
Something was odd about this spider. Well, something more bizarre than the fact that it was more than half the size of Victor’s human body. If Victor had still been a man, the creature's size alone would have been nightmare-inducing. A rational being would burn down the whole forest to ensure its destruction.
As it was, Victor felt the slight edge of panic that the mind produced to keep the body alive in combat. It had been a while since Victor had felt this kind of fire in his veins. As Victor studied it, the spider wobbled drunkenly as it attempted to right its many legs. It was having difficulty focusing on Victor even though he was only half a meter from the creature. It’s multitude of eyes spun in various directions. The two fore of its chitinous skull couldn’t hold still while they subtly shifted, trying to lock onto Victor’s exact position.
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Besides its drunken behavior, this creature was like no arachnid that Victor had seen on Earth. The spider seemed to be part arachnid and part stone. The abdomen and head of the spider looked like basalt had been fused into the carapace. The legs themselves looked like pieces of polished stone stacked together. If Victor’s life hadn’t been in immediate peril, he would have been fascinated at the amalgamation of creature and rock.
As it stumbled drunkenly toward Victor, he decided he didn’t want to wait for the creature to snap out of its fugue. Launching himself forward, he tried to bite down on the leg closest to him. The resounding crunch of his soft mouth closing on the stone made him curse.
Victor rapidly retreated by coiling his form away from the spider, who halfheartedly tried to bite him with its oversized mandibles. Thinking rapidly, Victor launched himself at the spider that was almost as large as he was and tried wrapping his body around it like a python from Earth would. The serpentine monster found that the same traction provided by his hide also worked on the spider. With a bit of thought, the ridges on his body slightly extended, and he realized he had control over the natural weapon.
A horrible screeching sound came from his scales cutting against the stone legs of the spider. To his chagrin, it wasn’t very effective in removing any of the limbs from the spider. His exterior was still soft, flexing instead of remaining rigid when pressed against his opponent's body. He did succeed in trapping the eight-legged creature and coiling around its significant bulk, which caused some of the legs to break simply from the awkward angle Victor had caught them in.
Victor strategized the spider would begin to fight more, but the opposite seemed to be happening. As he wrapped himself around the spider, it began to struggle less. After moments of him holding on for dear life, the spider stopped moving.
Confused, Victor relaxed his coils until the spider dropped to the ground in an awkward sprawl. He nudged the spider with his nose, but there was no response. The unexacting victory put Victor in an awkward position; he had been expecting a proper fight to the death, so the spider’s sudden defeat was just... uncomfortable.
Regardless, the snakelike monster was happy to win his first battle, but he wasn’t sure what to do with the corpse. Leaving the arachnid nearby could attract larger predators that would make simple work of a creature like him. Victor didn’t know if he could kill anything like the spider again.
As he thought about the problem, he felt a gnawing pain blossom in his midsection. It was reminiscent of the consuming hunger he experienced during his rebirth. He was ravenously, uncharacteristically hungry. His eyes snapped to the spider’s corpse, and his mouth watered at the proposition. The rest of the world faded from view, and all that was left was the uncompromising need to consume the alien creature.
He quickly summoned justifications for the hunger. He didn’t have a sense of taste, so it shouldn’t taste terrible. The stone parts of the spider would likely be inedible, but the innards could be nutritious. Finally, who knew when another meal would present itself? At least, these were the reasons he tried to convince himself that eating a spider wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Marshaling the courage, Victor slithered closer to the spider and tentatively placed his mouth on the head of the spider. Afterward, he gummed on the skull like an infant with a teething toy. The serpent noticed that while Victor couldn’t break off any pieces of the spider, he realized he could generate excessive saliva in his mouth. After only a few seconds, he heard a sizzling sound from the spider. Victor drew back a little to study the effect.
My saliva is acidic! It’s tearing down the spider, he exulted.
The snake watched as the stony carapace of the arachnid melted into a brackish pool. Victor’s physiology began to make a twisted kind of sense. This must be how this snake eats…
Drawing closer, Victor tentatively licked the spider's head—which made a small organ shaped like a straw extended from beneath his tongue. His tongue appeared to serve dual purposes as a potential sensory organ and proboscis similar to a mosquito’s.
The organ seemed to stick to the underside of his forked tongue, and Victor guided it toward the biological slurry. Instinctively, the monster sucked up the dissolved corpse like he was downing a thick milkshake through a straw. This revelation inspired Victor to wonder if he could weaponize his acid saliva.
Drawing back again, he tried to launch the spit like a human. As he tried to do so, two membranes on the top of his mouth opened, and acid catapulted from the orifices. With some internal study, Victor could see that these membranes connected to two organs within his skull that Victor had previously identified with his vision. The spit landed on the spider and immediately began to hiss.
The experience caused the gnawing pain in his gut to grow. His body responded to the action, guiding him instinctually toward an inevitable outcome. Victor did a little snake-shaped dance. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with his new body, but suddenly, the world was looking a lot more positive.
He gave in to the demands of his monstrous appetite. Victor chowed down on his liquid diet with fervor. He couldn’t taste what he was drinking, but it didn’t much matter. He wasn’t sure that tasting the liquified remains of a spider appealed to him.
After a dare, he had once eaten a cricket, and the feeling of the struggling, unfamiliar creature in his mouth had been vomit-inducing. At least this bug was clearly dead. He just had to pretend it was a protein shake.
As he continued drinking his spider milkshake, a feeling of pleasure suffused his body. It was such a strange physiological reaction that the serpent stopped eating, studying the signals his form was transmitting. It felt like every cell was thrumming with hidden power. The experience felt more profound than mere satisfaction—it felt like…potential.
Victor continued eating the biological slurry, and the pleasant sensation changed subtly. Pulsating waves of memory accompanied each mouthful. At first, the images were disjointed and unconnected, like half-remembered dreams. Victor was the spider when it burst from its egg sack. He accompanied the creature as it fought and killed its brother and sisters before consuming them. The politician experienced every molt where the spider's exoskeleton became denser and stronger until it was more stone than chitin. He was there for every hunt and ambush. The surrounding forest gradually became more familiar, like returning to a childhood home after a lifetime away.
When the memories terminated at the arachnid’s point of death, new knowledge replaced it. Victor knew the biochemical makeup of his victim’s physiological traits. The serpent understood at a fundamental level how the evolutionary advantages developed over the generations of spiders. More than that, the politician knew he could incorporate those advantages into his form. He felt an instinctual desire to adapt those traits using the biomass of his victim as fuel for the process.
What had the god told him?
You’ll need to evolve in this new world, or you will die. Those are your only options.
At the time, Victor had merely taken it as an odd form of phrasing, but perhaps it needed more consideration. What if God meant that he would need to undergo evolution and strengthen his physical body?
Victor would need to be exceedingly careful about developing if that was the case. he couldn’t risk making any mistakes that would affect his long-term goals. He needed to survive for as long as possible, and it looked like the way to do that was performing as his powerful progenitor had ordered him.
Victor mentally rifled through his stolen genetic knowledge when he finished his meal. He couldn’t adapt the spider’s stony shell in its entirety. He still needed the mobility offered by his serpentine makeup. However, Victor visualized the best way to use the captured information. Basalt-colored armor started growing from the tip of his snout and extending down his length in layered plates until they terminated at the end of his tail.
The sensation of evolving comforted the politician. It was as pleasant as a warm hug or a triumphant achievement. The ingested biomass was put to other work when the biological armor was complete. Instead of new adaptations, Victor’s snake-like frame repurposed the primeval liquid to buttress his existing form. He grew slightly thicker and longer—years of natural growth condensed into minutes. When Victor expended the last of his meal, he felt the same gnawing hunger as before.
He needed more.
Victor’s first instinct was to continue the hunt, but he resisted the biological imperative. He needed to master his new physiology and then determine if everyone else in the area of operations played by the same rules. If he could figure out the strategies of this game, he could win it. He was sure about that—competition was what he was born for.
He explored his body with his senses and feelings. Victor was poking around his form like a piece of food lodged in his teeth. His hunger had returned with a vengeance. It was a genetic mission designed to set him on a particular path. The monster knew his purpose. He needed to hunt and consume creatures within the forest, sifting through their genetic information to find the most advantageous traits to incorporate into his body.
He was a predator in an environment rife with opportunity. Victor couldn’t say to what end, but the god hadn’t led him astray. His new body possessed the instincts and motivations that had to lead somewhere. He could trust in his form’s intelligent design.
Satisfied in finding a direction, Victor considered himself in his totality. He was an ambush hunter. The hide would be extremely useful on someone unaware of his presence, the acid spit would be helpful for an ambush, and the sharpness of his skin would be useful for straight-up combat. He realized that he wasn’t quite as helpless as he had thought. The problem was, as a six-foot-long snake thing, there was no way he could start a political movement in this world to give the god what it wanted.
I’m missing a piece of the puzzle, he mused. Right now, my best bet would be to continue attacking creatures within this forest, hoping to unlock more of my strength and find the missing link between this body and the form I must take to conquer this world.
Victor returned to the hunt feeling satisfied now that he had a plan.