The wyrm had heard the sounds of fighting on the floor above her, tasted the blood of the invaders in the water. She was slightly irked that something had been stealing prey from her, and smelled like the kobolds, those lesser creatures. However, when the fight lasted practically no time at all, she found herself disappointed, knowing from the kobolds swimming by her in high spirits that the invaders couldn’t have been worth her time to begin with.

She’d been feeling put off after her change recently, too. She wasn’t as at home on the fourth floor anymore, it was much too bright and generally riotous to her. She felt something on the floor that she hadn’t before: discontent. Now, even to the sedentary serpent, she felt it necessary to head downwards, something she’d not done past the fourth floor, ever, before now.

Her eleven and a half meter body uncoiled, and she twisted and contorted in ways that seemed impossible for a living creature, stretching her muscles and flaring her hood. The snakes and kraits of the floor stopped their movements, looking forward to the creature their very blood revered. After her first molting, this reverence had only increased in strength, and now her every move was of utmost importance to them.

The wyrm gazed at them, her pride growing as she watched them offer loyalty. Nodding to her subjects, she turned around to the tunnel made specifically for her, the one that led deeper within, without the tight space of the shaft she had outgrown guarding. She went deeper within, winding up on a floor entirely black, though the miniscule amounts of light that trickled in from her guarded entrance allowed her to see, and her incredibly sensitive combination of smell and heat pits made the maze as welcoming as her old floor, though she had issues navigating. The creator seemed to widen the tunnels she went through them, allowing her more freedom of movement, though she knew the ones behind her were being narrowed off simultaneously. She was followed by her procession of snakes, some having evolved gills, others still burdened by lungs, but each of them following resolutely.

Along the way she ran into that odd five limbed creature. It obviously wasn’t a snake, since it didn’t acknowledge her superiority beyond waving enthusiastically with two limbs. The strange woman that she had seen once before was there too, happily playing with the wiggling not-snake. She too acknowledged the wyrm, though the lack of respect by the girl wasn’t as upsetting as it was by the creature, mostly since the wyrm felt that they knew one another well enough.

As they continued, the wyrm found the “official” exit to the sixth floor, and was able squeeze herself down through it, to the once again cramped space of the sixth floor. Almost immediately, she was forced to swim downwards at an unusual angle, finding herself on another level of the floor, one containing a vastly different environment. There appeared to be nothing on the floor at all, visually, though she could make out the tiny shapes of fish and stranger fish. One of them even had the audacity to try and bite her when it thought she wasn’t paying attention. A quick hiss of intention sent her entourage into a frenzy, and over a dozen serpents charged after the offender, still trying to chew through her scales with that tooth lined sucker of a mouth.

When the creature learned that its attempt had not gone unnoticed, and that it would neither go unpunished, it tried to flee. While it had gone nearly entirely invisible, this was something that only worked visually, and that was a limit that the snakes were not subjected to. Because of its transgressions, it found itself being injected with the potent venom of a greater faint-banded sea snake.

Thankfully, it seemed most of these two levels were not so brazen to attack the wyrm and her followers, who proceeded forward slowly and unstoppably through the waters, over the lands, and ever forward. The wyrm enjoyed witnessing the varying reactions to her presence, though they were always some form of fear. Some fish darted away, others tried to hide. Some of the less intelligent creations seemed to want to fight, though that last example was the same type of fish that the creator had forced her to live with on her floor for a while. They were still just as dimwitted as before, it seemed.

After proceeding to the exit of the maze, she found herself slithering onto a floor much like the one she’d just left, though it was larger and richer in mana. She also saw him, that infernal wyvern that frustrated her unlike any other. She realized what him living here meant, too, that she’d lost out on a floor even better than the one she started her pilgrimage from. She’d been tricked, and this irked her.

Yet, she wasn’t driven into a rage like she would have been if she were younger. Instead, she simply puffed her hood, raised her head, and continued forward, not sparing him a second glance. The parade of serpents continued forward, many of the reptiles shooting mocking glares at the now dumbfounded wyvern, who’d already been preparing himself for a fight. The small reptile simply sat there, watching the long line slither and swim past, slowly deflating in confusion.

Onto the ninth floor, the wyrm found herself in the first area she felt at ease in since molting. It was large and it was open. The many creatures who’d been here as she arrived expressed various degrees of interest, confusion, shock, and fear at the new arrival. All eyes were on the knot of snakes that had suddenly appeared, and their gazes were matched by the serpents own; dozens of pairs of cold and calculating eyes scanned over everything in sight from behind the striking figure of a titan of a snake.

Motion resumed not long after, with the wyrm continuing forth through the floor. It wasn’t quite her ideal, but she did like it much more than the reef floors as a whole. As she went through the center of the floor the animals parted before her, showing what she felt was an adequate amount of deference for a creature of her status. Then, she spotted a hole on the far side of the wall that was large, dark, and foreboding. It felt perfect.

She entered the passageway, finding that her air-breathing entourage would not be able to follow her to her final destination. She turned to them and gave them a quick hiss, instructing them to return to the fourth floor, before she and the remaining third that had developed gills in some capacity continued into the gaping maw that lead to the floor beneath.

The tunnel was long, longer than any she’d been through before, and much more spacious. Her entry onto this floor was different. Here, she no longer looked for the entrance to the next floor, she didn’t need it. This floor really was perfect, it was large, not as large as the one above but still plenty big for her purposes. The waters here hugged her tight, and she felt that this was what she was looking for. It was dim, almost pitch black, and the alien creatures that swam in groups or crawled along the floor excited her in a way she hadn’t felt before. This was right where she belonged now.

The group of creatures swimming along seemed to notice her, and they didn’t seem pleased at her entrance. They were shaped oddly, long with many serpentine attachments at the end, yet they were decidedly not snakes. They began flashing colors at her, and she did not appreciate it. Rearing back, she extended her hood fully, the ribbed skin flaring outwards and pulling the skin taut. The spines that lined the hood too stuck out, curling out and upwards as they were pushed out, and forming her crown, thirty two barbed horns in total that lined the spectacularly large hood. She opened her mouth, hissing at the creatures, baring all four of her fiendishly long fangs, and the sound was matched by the chorus of serpents behind her.

Still, they refused to back off, and one bold individual even charged at her head on, a foolish choice that resulted in the creature being swallowed whole. It tried to adhere itself to the inside of her mouth when it realized its mistake, but it was met with the pharyngeal jaws she hadn’t yet gotten to use. Grabbing onto the creatures tube-like body, they proceeded to shred the creature with a saw like motion, swallowing the thing hole, before she sneered at the remaining crowd.

One of them got it in its head to attack her subjects, a sentiment quickly shared by the crowd. The snakes and the assailants were of roughly equal length, but the creatures were obviously of a bigger build, and with the aggressive tactics and large numerical advantage they had, they had gained a large lead at first. However, venom is a scary weapon, and many of the squids swiftly succumbed to a cocktail of it, ranging from magically boosted, to horrifically necrotic, to obscenely paralytic. The wyrms own toxic concoction was beginning to cloud the water, something that was swiftly fatal to any creature unfortunate enough to ingest or otherwise accumulate it within. The serpents were mostly resistant to the empowered poison, as what it produced could no longer be considered simply venom, but the skirmish ended swiftly once the wyrm joined in, with both sides suffering losses.

The snakes had been reduced in number by more than half, and the aggressors by nearly two-thirds, before they decided that continuing wasn’t worth it. Their goal hadn’t been to kill her personally, it seemed, but rather to drive her away or otherwise intimidate her, a futile tactic but one they tried nonetheless. The survivors went their separate ways, the serpents headed towards the far edge, which had been adapted to a series of small caves along the walls during the fight, seemingly for them, and the non-snakes went back to doing whatever it was that they did. She didn’t care as to what that was, but had found a creature that annoyed her more thoroughly than even that wyvern could, and would be happy to drive off anything that encroached upon what was now her territory. As she was still young, she felt that she didn’t need anything more than a third of the floor devoted to snakes, and snakes alone, and she made sure that her territory was clearly displayed, having her subjects drawing a line in the silt.

With that, her quest for proverbial greener pastures had come to a close, and she happily swam to the largest hole in the wall, at the very bottom, near enough to the exit that she could once more stand guard. She finally started to close her hood when she saw that the others on the floor seemed to be respecting the boundary she had laid, and before long she had once more coiled around herself, shifting and squirming slightly before finding a comfortable position, and falling asleep.