He would eat the Tamara, but first, there was self-discovery to be done.

Even magical snakes must have something they are good at besides the obvious devouring.

Ruth had once seen a picture in a cave he had been exploring under the mines of a mountain where he saw a giant snake on the wall depicted as consuming its own tail. He had felt the picture resonate strongly with him at the time because he had just been wondering if he could sustain himself by eating his own limbs if he had to.

He had torn his gaze reluctantly from the mural on the wall and continued onward.

Later that evening as he was flying around near dusk, he had come across a carriage with a pretty eye-catching purple canopy. More interesting than that were the two horses he had seen pulling the carriage. Since he had found his way out of the cave system after a long and arduous journey he was feeling pretty generous.

Ruth had swooped down and grabbed the horse with his mouth around the middle, pulling and shaking it violently in order to free it from the carriage, and then stalked off with it into the trees nearby to eat it. He felt like he had been pretty generous by only taking the one horse, and was also pretty smug about the fact that he’d even had the foresight to pull the horse out of view so that the monsters in the carriage didn’t have to watch him dine on something that had previously belonged to them. It hadn’t occurred to him that the initial shrieking of the still-living horse or the subsequent crunching from the nearby trees would send a local duchess into a fainting spell and incur the wrath of the local magistrate's army.

The important part of the story, and what made him think of this particular story in relation to the snake, was that the horse was very good to eat and it would be far superior to dining on his own limbs. Snakes were stupid. If he was destined to be a snake, there just had to be something he could do other than eat himself.

↢↦

“Why did you pick this creature? Just listening to it think from this range is making me dumber.” A crow flew from the darkness. Red fringes and highlights started on its throat and carried down the underbelly all the way to the under-tail feathers. Otherwise, it was an unremarkable black. The only truly disturbing thing about the avian that had appeared from nowhere was the small closed eyelid on its forehead between the two glistening and attentive open ones.

The crow shrank in size as it approached, appearing initially to be somewhere near the size of a small horse and miniaturizing until it was about the size of a small purse chihuahua. It landed on Tamara’s shoulder without invitation but invoked no ire or real attention from her. Her golden eyes hadn’t left the screen.

“It has an interesting soul shape,” Tamara said softly. She lifted a finger and scritched under the crow's chin. “My Arathan. Don’t be jealous.”

“It would be weird if I was jealous. I’M your soul shape. You are stuck with me.” Arathan cocked her head to the side and allowed the scritching anyway despite her tone of voice. “We share experiences and life. What amuses you is important to me.”

“...and vice versa. Look at the soul shape and tell me what you think,” Tamara advised.

“Must…I?” Arathan did not seem so sure. She was looking at the window with a dubious expression. Impressive considering the slightly curved beak. “I feel like I’ll lose intelligence.”

Tamara smiled. “I insist.”

“Fine…” Arathan grumbled. “Not sure what I’m supposed to see anyway. Will that soul even have a shape? It can’t even have developed intelligence yet. It’s not even a thing.”

Arathan sighed one last time and grew still, black eyes staring intensely into the window.

Tamara smiled, returning her extraordinary golden eyes to the window once more as well. She would watch the encounter, though she already had a faint idea of what would happen.

↢↦

Arathan, born of Tamara, flew through a different type of darkness now. It was the space between worlds and the river between souls and minds. If she were just looking it was fine, though it would have carried danger for lesser soul forms.

She approached the mental space that the Ruth creature was comprised of and sneered slightly as she came nearer. The Ruth ‘space’ was slightly shaped like a draconic image. Which was stupid. The sea of consciousness of a creature didn’t need a shape. Most of them that were shaped like this from the outside were lesser creatures who identified so strongly with their species that they never broke free of the ground and learned to soar higher.

Arathan had a slight doubt, though. This couldn’t be what attracted Tamara’s interest.

Arathan couldn’t see the soul form within the consciousness yet, despite her proximity and the pathetic and feeble size of the consciousness itself. Arathan sighed and flapped her wings once, soaring closer.

HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTH

Hesitation appeared in her wingbeats as the strange noise sounded from within the darkness of the consciousness. Ruth was a pretty dim lightbulb, Arathan noted dryly, annoyed because the space was so dark.

Despite the danger inherent in the noise, Arathan was not afraid of much anymore. There weren’t many creatures in the known universe or the outer universes that could get her to fly off after such a low-level warning.

Arathan flew into the draconic shaped mist and was startled at how dark it was in there. Even dimmer than she had given him credit for. Her black eyes started to flare with a red light as she took a look around.

Feeble, as expect-

HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHTTTTTTTH

Arathan flapped her wings gently to keep herself hovering in the darkness, now faintly aware of a shape that was hidden in the very center of the space. The space, it should be noted, was small enough that a strong flap of her wings would carry her out of it. Or more likely, shatter the space altogether. The warning noise had increased in volume this time.

Arathan was much like Tamara. She did not respond to threats very gently or kindly. While she wouldn’t harm this soul shape since it was Tamara’s toy, she couldn’t be letting it get ideas about the pecking order either. The thought of slaughter and murder rose in Arathan’s breast as she released the tiniest bit of her aura. Red light played down her feathers and pressure crushed down on the space, distorting but not harming the draconic shape of the consciousness itself.

Shake-shake. Shake-shake. Shake-shake.

Arathan startled, surprised at the calmness of the response she received. A rattling noise had begun to emerge from the darkened thing in the center. What initially she had thought was a ball of black light was actually a creature that had coiled itself into a ball. A thin tail slowly raised from the ball. It was skinny like a normal reptile tail, but flared at the end into an obvious bell shape.

Shake-shake. Shake-shake. SHAKE-SHAKE.

The rattle from the tail got even more persistent, picking up speed and making a clamor that actually gave Arathan pause. This soul shape had acknowledged Arathan and the extreme danger that she represented and… was excited?!

Two vertical yellow slits appeared near the front of the ball and a golden line formed. Despite the way the darkness broke up the shape, Arathan recognized that she was looking at the front of the creature. She still couldn’t quite make sense of what it actually looked like. It was possible that it hadn’t fully formed or decided what it looked like yet, either. Tiny, adorable, and energetic wings broke out from the ball while the rattle on the tail began to oscillate with increasing intensity.

Arathan was getting a headache from the noise. A headache that could only be a mental attack. She was far too powerful to be affected, but such innate gifts were rare features in soul shapes. This mental attack would be very strong if it was allowed to mature.

Arathan began to feel the slightest, the tiniest, the most infinitesimal amount of curiosity.

Arathan sorta forgot that this was Tamara’s toy and was looking at it with renewed interest.

She decided to provoke this tiny thing a little.

↢↦

“W-what is that?” Arathan finally stirred on her shoulder and Tamara smiled, pleased at the surprise in her soul shapes raspy voice. “It’s so… so… mean! Caw-caw-caw-caw-caw!”

Arathan laughing for the first time in what had to be several hundred years made Tamara smile brightly.

“Yes. It is very tiny and full of spite.” Tamara agreed.

“It actually tried to eat some of my aura.” Arathan tilted her head, regarding the window gravely as if she still couldn't believe it. “Just the tiniest bit. It spit it back out immediately. Just as well because it would have exploded…”

“Then what?” Tamara had a pretty good understanding of the small evil spirited creature in Ruth’s consciousness herself.

“Then it just tried to eat me directly. It was like a baby trying to eat an adult from the toes up. Caw-caw-caw-caw!” Arathan just started laughing again. “I feel like I had better go bribe it or something. It seems so petty that it might even remember this grudge!”

“Yes,” Tamara agreed, thinking much the same thing. “A grudge made before consciousness. A petty creature indeed.”

“Fun though!” Arathan started to lower her body a little, nestling onto Tamara’s shoulder. It appeared the crow was also interested enough to stay and watch. “What if this Ruth does not evolve fast? What if it just sits around eating fish?”

“I did not leave Ruth anywhere as nice as that,” Tamara said gently.

“Ah.” Arathan had an expression of grimness all of a sudden. She loved Tamara greatly, but even Arathan was afraid of her sometimes.

↢↦

Ruth sat cross-legged in the stream, ignoring the increasing amount of cold that was settling into his body from below. He was having a hard time finding his mana. Normally, it was a breeze to look into yourself and find your mana pathways and get a rough idea of how much you had.

Despite the ease with which he could have done it when he was a dragon, it eluded him. Not only that, but he was getting increasingly agitated! There was just something that was gnawing at the edge of his consciousness. It was like every noise in the forest was starting to piss him off.

Arathan shook her head, noting that Ruth had an awareness of their confrontation on some level.

He pushed all those thoughts from his mind and managed to dull the world of sound and sight as he inspected his body.

FINALLY. Ruth was growing excited. The mana pathways for this creature were wide streams, the circuit and labyrinthine type tunnels left him in awe; being almost stronger at this nascent level than his dragon body’s had been. He started to gloat that there were really good things about being a snake when he found the obvious flaw.

Despite the incredible gifts he felt within this body, he had no idea how to pull mana into it.

Well, this creature probably had an innate understanding of… no.

Well, perhaps if he tried to pull it in from the atmosphere or the surroundings… no.

He just ate a fish. Sustenance should affect the… Very small.

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Ruth was aggravated and opened his eyes. The warning noise he had made alerting two small creatures that had been approaching him from the shore with spears in hand.

Ruth narrowed his eyes as he looked at them.

Goblins.

Normally, he would just ignore them completely and go back to closing his eyes and trying to find a solution to his mana problem. He hadn’t acclimated to the danger that his new body entailed and very well might have just gone back to what he was doing even as they skulked closer with their rock-spears.

He might have done that except for the fact that his casual appraisal of their bodies revealed that they were both wearing rudimentary tunics that covered their entire torso and drew down to cover their privates as well, like they were wearing shirts that were too big for them made from some sort of animal skin.

Ruth was reminded of his own nakedness. Despite the discovery that he had midnight black scales that went down from the nape of his neck, down his spine, and shielded his tail, he was otherwise scaleless and furless(not including the sizeable mop of unruly hair that spilled carelessly over his horns).

Overwhelming envy and rage erupted from within him. He stood swiftly, cold water flying in all directions.

Now that he was standing up the goblins stared straight up, eyes starting to widen in fear as they realized that he was much, much bigger than they had originally estimated. If you had stacked four goblins they would have made eye level.

Ruth leaned down and reached into the water with one hand, slowly pulling the hand back into view with a large rock in his grasp.

Ruth had decided that he needed the things the Goblins had. He would take their shirts and fashion them into some sort of covering for his lower parts.

He would try eating them, too.

Two birds with one stone. Ruth pulled his lips back and bared his teeth.

The Goblins both readied their spears.

He would murder them for fun, and take their things. In the past, he had taken gold and jewels and the occasional marble statue to brighten up his lair. Now he would take Goblin tunics.

Ruth briefly felt sad.