🙡 Chapter 2.1 🙣

First encounter

Suddenly, the hooves were on both sides of me. I could feel a mighty… chomp! My head-tacles were being pulled by something, something wet and slimy! What the hell!

NOoooo! I don’t want to die (again)!

It was pulling and squishing! Not a good thing! Not a goood thiiing!

I could feel it, trying to use its lips, to pull my tentacles out with its lips! And trying to smash them with its teeth! Ouch, ouch, ouch!

I did my best to move my appendages out of the way of its teeth, trying to move them towards the outside of the lips instead. Ouch. It still chomped on me from time to time, really, really unpleasant!

The constant dodging and moving seems to have annoyed the creature, most likely not used to its meal moving, it decided to just.. pull me out. And possibly eat whole?! I don’t want my first quest to be “survive the dietary tract of an otherworldly cow”!

Ouch! My lower-tacles! (leg-tacles?) It's pulling! They are stretching! They are gonna break! Noooo!

Ploop!

Finally, it gave up. The earth, and or my egg, not my tentacles. Fortunately. What was less fortunate, was the sudden release of strength, which made me fly straight towards the creature—Now that I look at it, it seemed to be a kind of... Cow? But with one horn, and bulging-goat eyes.

It might seem weird that I got enough time to look at its eyes, but you see, in moments like these, time seems to fly slower, and you notice many things. Especially when your whole body, like a cut spring, is flying towards the creature's eyes.

The attack was super effective! The rhino-cow let go of my tentacles, after making a loud, deep, barking sound. And in the process I bounced off its face, flying towards the air!

What rises has to fall, so I braced for impact…

Which never came. I opened my eyes… and found myself still in the air. And not because I was thrown so hard, I just stopped moving.

The rhino-cow was a few meters below me, looking at me angrily. Seemingly wanting to pay back for the new bump on its head, as well as a reddened eye. It started jumping around, but it was too low!

The seeming disappearance of gravity didn’t affect it, unlike me, mwahahaha! See you later, sucker!

…

Okay, but what now? Am I stuck? How do I fly without wings?

As I was wondering about this, I saw something wriggling beneath me, with an otherworldly hand shaped symbol floating above it. Otherworldly, as in I did not “see” it with my physical eyes, (I tested it by closing my eyes—it was still there), not to mention it somehow did not match the rest of the world, like a visual from an AR game.. This fate-marker must be related to my new “covenant”. It was a transparent human-like hand, as if made of glass, with colored embers dimly glowing inside (most of them green, but there were a few red and white ones). Even without a reference I somehow knew, it did not signify an important being.

Which seemed ludicrous taking into consideration it was a fucking ENORMOUS snake! At least ten times the length of the fantasy cattle, about half its height, and eyeing me with visible anger in its eyes. I have no idea why those animals are not panicking, I have to assume its fear that froze them in place, but I have to find a way to get out of here!

Blob blob blob, tenta tenta tenta and I wiggled a bit left and right, and down. Yeah, it seems I can swim in the air! Except… it seems the up direction is not working. And my distance changed quite a bit!

As I was doing my first steps in this new body, the cow seemed to get bored of trying to catch me, actually a whole herd of them now gathered watching the situation in amusement. What was not amusing, was the snake, as it now had another friend. Both of them looked at me. They haven’t tried jumping yet… but if I continue getting lower, they just might. The second, bigger one did raise part of its body

And holy shit. When it did, its head was above me. It hissed at me while seemingly smiling (can snakes even smile?!).

RETREAT! FULL STEAM AHEAD!

And so, using the old tested method of dropping kids into deep water to teach them how to swim, scaring me worked enough to teach me how to FLOOAT AWAYYY post haste!

I looked behind to see that the snake seemed to not follow. Fortunately, I didn’t seem to be a good snack.. Or there was some kind of barrier I couldn’t see. It slithered left and right around an invisible wall, as if there was a reason it didn’t follow. Well, I’m not going to stay here to find out if it will change its mind, move forward!

I slowly started getting the hang of flying… swimming.. Flyming?

The sun was shining, a slight breeze was blowing slightly, changing the trajectory of my flight... But taking into consideration I didn’t have much of a direction, I didn’t mind.

❁

I had a lot to think about, being just reborn. Yet, given the moment of respite, I just floated forward.

Around me, I could see hundreds of small point markers, showing that I wouldn’t have to worry about finding ways of getting some points any time soon… Not that I know how to spend them. This whole covenant thing is a mystery, only vague orders and promises. Yeah, typical shady white collar job—been there done that. I barely survived a brush with death, yet, I’m already thinking of progressing my new career, even if it was forced upon me… no wonder I died early.

But business was for later, for now, I needed a survival plan. And after I got the basic hang of it, moving forwards did seem to be quite instinctive for me. The only problem being? I couldn’t move up. And I seem to be slowly losing altitude. No idea why and how it works, but it seems even my (I suppose) magical form of flying requires something.

Well, I think it might be best to keep flowing next to the stream to have access to water. Pretty much everything needs water to survive, doesn’t it? Well… as long as I’m not some kind of eldritch horror that is…

Going downstream seems the safest way to reach civilization, if there is any… the only problem being that that way would be towards those damn snakes. And I’m not sure If it’s something I want to do.

A line of me-sized purple ants marched under me in unison, carrying leaves and branches thrice their size

I mean, I’m not human anymore! And while it is possible I might get a skill/ability that will allow me to pretend to be one, It’s certainly not now. And that’s assuming they exist... hopefully they do—being an omni-powerful devil seems far less appealing when no one around you can be jealous of you.' And that’s ignoring the simple possibility that there are no societies in here, or even if there are, they might differ so much from anything I would recognise, I might wish to avoid them! What if there is an omnipotent brain that requires everyone who lives in there to become part of their shared consciousness?

Or what if the ants that I’m looking at right now are the civilisation in question? Can I even produce necessary pheromones?

*GRAB* *SQUEEK* *WIGGLE WIGGLE*

HOLY SHIT!

A pelican looking thing swooped down and grabbed one of the ants before its comrades could react, its talons grabbing its body in a way that stopped any possible counter attacks.

It then flew up… and perched itself on a white stone that was floating about 4 meters above me—I didn’t notice it before, thinking it was just a weird shaped cloud. Ignoring the ant's pincers, it just threw it up, and then caught it in its beak, swallowing it whole.

I could only look in terror at the scene—unlike the ants, which now set up in defensive formation, but unable to move their chitinous heads up enough to witness the devouring.

And then… I was pretty sure it looked at me?!