Her Majesty dived into the dark place, a feeling of cold liquid washing over her as she crossed from this place to that; Her purpose clear, she wasted no time as she sped off towards her goal.

Not that she would have wasted her time otherwise. No, not in this dark place.

She kept to the surface as she travelled, as close to the border of the dark world and the bright one as she could without crossing back over into the light. She had never had problems within this place before, but her time with the boy and the link that they shared had instilled into her some of his senseless fear.

It was a gnawing thing, that anxious, a cold fire that tickled her insides in a way that made her constantly want to regurgitate, constantly question every one of her actions, her choices. A senseless and pointless thing. But still, it affected her.

She would have preferred to avoid this…realm…was that the word? But time was important.

Time; it was one of the new notions that had come along with her expanded understanding, her growing attributes; Whatever those were? Her mastery of it far from complete.

She had merely been ignorant of such things before, life tolerating stupidity no more than it did weakness, and she had known the difference between day and night, but beyond that, her thoughts had been of nought but survival, filling the void within herself and avoiding anything that could devour her in turn. Which is why she was, here to begin with.

She needed to move faster. Needed the properties of this dark world to help her reach her destination as quickly and as stealthily as possible so that she could get her and the boy away from the danger above.

‘And the spider,’ she added regretfully.

The gnawing grew as her thoughts turned towards that…thing. But then turned away as she remembered there was another amongst them. The not kobold. A confusing name. It was a shadow demon such as she, but also not.

That was not why it was called not, though. The creature was apparently not a kobold, a creature that resembled a kobold, whatever that was, in every way without actually being one.

That concept confused her; how could one thing be something yet not be it? But each day her understanding grew, and she was certain that in time the knowledge of it would be hers.

A wonderful thing, understanding. But not perfect.

There was a wrong thing that accompanied that growth: distraction. As her mind expanded so too did her ability to lose focus on what was important.

Such as now.

Her Majesty had unconsciously slowed as her thoughts overtook her. Something that she corrected as she redoubled her efforts in racing onward.

Speed; That was important.

She had always known that importance. It was an obvious and absolute fact that even the ungrown mind of her former life could comprehend. But only now could she also comprehend that it was a part of time. Speed, patience, schedule, pattern; strange concepts for a snake to consider.

That she now had to keep considering as she tried to keep the boy and herself alive.

She was racing, hurrying to find the people that were attacking them, their magics having blasted her and the boys former ca…house, home, leaving the thing gone now.

She flinched at that momentary slip back into ignorance, her speed once again flagging as her mind was briefly distracted by her momentary mental stumbling.

She regained herself as she simplified what had happened; ‘Something of theirs had been taken from them, and it would never be returned.’

She had never been possessive of anything before, not beyond the basic desire to protect her territory, that is. If one sleeping place or hunting ground was no longer available, then she would find another; The annoyance over their loss gaining her nothing, so why bother with such a thought? In fact, the notion of attaching an emotion to a specific place or thing was such an odd concept to her that it was almost incomprehensible, almost alien; But with her new awakening came a notion of ownership, and the understanding that certain things could be owned. And lost. And never be replaced. Not easily, at least.

Things could be lost, and also…life.

She had to move; every moment wasted was another moment that more could be lost. That what was hers could be lost. She was wasting time.

Another odd concept. One not taught to her by the boy. She had time. And she could waste it. But she also had no time, and could waste none of it. She wondered if he knew of this concept, or if it was hers alone?

‘Perhaps she would tell him? Teach him something. Or perhaps not?’ The thoughts pleased her in a way she could not describe, to another or even herself. But they were pleasing.

The gnawing grew again as she realised that she was letting herself get distracted again.

‘Why was thinking and feeling getting harder?’ She wondered as she suppressed a growing anger, ‘The Boy had made her better, made her attributes grow and become more? She should be able to control herself. But she could not? Perhaps it had something to do with her injury? The harm inflicted on her when she had been stung by the magics of the people that had enslaved the boy and forced him into the earth? Yes, that was probably it?’

She had lost many attributes when it had happened, and that was no doubt why she was losing herself inside herself.

‘Hm,’ she thought, ‘Another odd concept.’

‘But no more loose thoughts!’ She declared to no one as she focused her mind once more and let the anger over her injury and thoughts of revenge upon those who had wronged her and the boy bring order to herself.

Her speed increased again as she brought herself to heel. Despite all the time she had, she had none to spare.

Her Majesty observed her surrounding, using them to settle her thought as she raced on.

The dark place; There was no colour in this existence, just a vast and unfathomable depth of shadow, an ocean of darkness whose shallows she now swam through. She could see nothing, hear nothing, even feel nothing. By all that she understood of existence, as limited as it may have been, she should be lost, wandering within this nothing place, forever. But there were also currents of a sort, a disturbance of information that allowed her to feel the direction that she wanted to travel to, the things happening above her in the world of light…and things passed down below.

There were things down in the dark. Many things. This place, whatever it was, wherever it was, was far from empty.

The multitude of bodies swam in the depths below like fish in the water, their motions sending out small but powerful waves of…something that washed against her essence as they passed through her.

Their presence scaring her greatly.

More than the large thing that could have ended her before the boy had made her alive again. More than that one of the people that had ended her. More than even the spider.

She had proven her abilities time and again against those in the normal world, but the things below were, assumedly, like her, shadow demons, her powers more than likely having no effect on them. A fight would come down to a physical confrontation and she was still recovering from wounds at the hands of the humans that had dragged her and the boy into the underground, and the creatures below felt so, so big.

‘But nothing had ever happened’, she reminded herself. The things down below seemingly content to stay where they were and the shallows she now travelled having never once been occupied by anything other than herself.

But the gnawing from the boy and the instinct of her old life kept reminding her that it could happen; And that fear sped her onwards.

She was oddly grateful for that? Another strange concept.

She would have much preferred to have travelled on the surface, the warmth of the day on her back as she moved. Or better yet, she would have had it as it had been back in the people’s ne… the city, the boy carrying her, the heat from his body and the rays of the sun blanketing her in utter comfort while she slept. Wonderful days. But travelling through the dark place was quicker. Sort of.

There was something wrong with the time in the dark place. Something wrong with how it travelled.

Though the boy had given her the attributes that allowed her to understand more than she could ever have during her first life, he had not given her the knowledge to go with it, her understanding of things limited if not outright absent. But she was learning.

And what her advanced understanding of time had allowed her was the ability to discover what that oddity was.

The boy thought that her journeys through this place took mere moments, the abilities of the shadow demon allowing her to cross entire lands within the span of time it took to exhale. He was not wrong; But he was also not right. It took far longer than that. Much longer.

It was hard to tell the exact difference without the stimuli of the world in the sun, only the crashing waves caused by those below and the shortening of the distance between her and her destination allowing her to even take a guess at it, but it seemed that the time it took to pass through this world took nearly three times as long to reach her destination as it would have taken if she travelled there through the world above, crawling instead of swimming.

Three times as long to get to the people attacking them. Far too little time, and far too much of it.

Too much time alone in the dark. Too much time to think.

Her thoughts usually turned to time, down here. The time that had already been, that had already happened. But going backwards.

The attack. The underground. The village on the hill. The flight from the city. Her life made new. And her old life ended.

The boy had done that. The new life; he had not been the one to kill her. No, that had been a female, much larger and older than he. And crueller. She too was dead now. Of age. Unsatisfying, but good.

Then, the boy had brought her new life; After having found her in the drinking room, within a see through…glass…container of said drink, in fact.

She had been in there for so long; waiting and watching. Somehow, she sensed that she was not supposed to have been aware, something deep inside telling her that she was supposed to have been dead, a person having drowned her in the substance that surrounded her, storing her on a shelf for what seemed like an eternity. It had not been an awful death, the liquid doing much to dull her awareness of what was happening to her at the time, but it was still death.

And she had been alive.

She could not remember much of her former life; Her death, yes, she could remember that quite clearly. But not her life.

She had been alive, she had lived.

She had eaten, she had fought, she had slept, she had hidden, been angry, been scared; she had lived.

Her majesty slowed then, her thoughts gripping at something deep inside of her.

Children, she had born children. Many times. She had given no thought to it before. Not once had she spared a moment to even think of her many offspring.

Where they were?

How they were?

Had any of them ever thought of her?

Not even once.

She had never had reason to consider such thoughts before; her new, heightened mental-faculties having changed that, expanding her capacity for empathy and self-contemplation. It was not a welcomed growth. The simplicity she had enjoyed before her new life had allowed her to act without question, to focus only on the things that mattered, not pointless curiosity and idle thoughts.

But if that was the price of intelligent…if that was the word, then so be it. Though lessened by her wounding, the boy’s gifts had allowed her to soar where once she could only crawl; The attributes alone making her faster, stronger, and smarter than any of her kind could ever have been, could ever have hoped to have been.

And then came the powers of the shadow demons on top of those gifts.

And then there were the levels.

The boy had tried to explain to her why he had her stalking through the sewers each day back in the city, something that was beyond her comprehension back then. She had thought the point of her efforts meant merely to rid their home of the foul creatures, but there was apparently more to it, though even now she still did not fully understand what.

They had apparently met the requirements for the levelling many times already, but the boy had said that their sacrifice allowed him to make her more, which he prioritised more than whatever the levelling would have given. Which was good, she was important. But then, after she had long since reached the peak of her growth, he had continued to sacrifice the levels, telling her that he was waiting for the best choice to present itself. Which was also good, why would anyone choose anything less than the best?

And that was how they had spent their days. In the dark and dank. Less so once the boy had found a better mousetrap. Which meant a better way of killing rats, apparently. He had used barrels to trap the foul things, then used his power over the shadows to kill them, needing her only to act as his eyes as the child could only kill what he saw.

It had freed up much of her time, allowing for more sleeping in the sun or around his neck. Which was very good. Until he had begun asking her to go out at night to once again kill the vermin down below.

‘To keep her from growing fat and lazy,’ he had said.

The work had its thrill, of course, though she much preferred lazing under the sun. But still, those days had been good. She was still not sure why they had left the nest of the boy’s people, something to do with the man who looked like a flower that they had stumbled upon one night.

‘A confrontation between siblings’, the boy had said. ‘Human stupidity,’ she had thought. And still did.

But that time, that meeting, had filled the boy with fear, more so than he usually was, and they had to flee. First, to the old one’s nest, then away; Away from their pleasant days in the sun; Away from their the city.

She did not doubt the danger that the boy had said the flower man posed to the two of them, but she still thought he should have had her kill the man. But he had refused her.

Why? She did not know. Something about how all the other people would kill him if they found out. Which made no sense at all? She was strongly of the opinion that the boy had merely been too full of fear to think clearly at the time. He always was.

She had not thought much of the boy when he had first awakened her; Admittedly, she had not thought much of anything at first, but when she could, she still had not.

A shadow lay over him, over his mind, a constant fear that followed him from waking hour to the time of slumber; Even then, not allowing him the peace that should have come from such a time. A weakness that provoked her, inspired her ire and filled her then still limited mind with thoughts of killing him.

And had it not been for the control that he had over her, she would have.

And then she would not have grown.

He was weak. The reason why he had summoned her, to begin with, was to make up for his inability to protect himself, his inability to fight.

And fight she did, slaughtering the hordes of the sewers, vermin that fed upon the waste from the meat cutters.

Butchers.

‘Words,’ she thought as she chastised herself. ‘Remember the words.’

Strange things, words; To contain entire concepts in a simple bleat or squeak was no small power. A power he had given her. A power she would never have had had she killed that weak, fear-filled boy.

Poor thing.

He felt no fear now.

The spider thing had lain its claim on him, drained all it could of his essence so that it could fulfil its nature. It was slowly leaving the boy little more than a thing, a husk, a nothing to be ordered about as it took what it wanted from him.

The creature was a terrible and frightening horror. Its power having nearly driven her mind back to the simplicity of her old life when she had first encountered it. She had done what she could then, made every promise she could think of to save her and the boy back down in the underground.

Her heightened mind had been a curse, then, the need to revert back to thinking in simple concepts when she communicated with the ancient creature had her confusing herself, tripping over her own thought as she tried to simplify the more complex ones into something that the little spider could comprehend.

A memory that angered her now as she strongly suspected that she need not have had to.

Though they had not been together for long, the way the thing had acted afterwards on their journey back to the surface had her believing that it understood far more of the greater thinking than she did. And the thought did not please her.

Her Majesty felt as if a heat was rising up with inside of her, right then. One that did not feel good.

But there was no time for that. Even though there was.

She hunted, now. To keep him alive. To keep them both alive.