“And here we find the Lyrhean in its natural habitat.” said a soft voice in a tone fit for a nature documentary.

“Mother, why are you doing this?” Asked Frosrahsa as she shot a quick glance over to Lyrhea herself who was watching Luxnilae engage in a dance of death with a ten-foot-long snake.

“Hush.” Lyrhea replied sternly before pivoting back to the previous tone. “Like any true predator, a Lyrhean craves both the thrill of the hunt as well as the fruits of success. If its prey is weak enough, however, this can, indeed, put a damper on things, resulting in the Lyrhean, in essence, playing with its food, so to speak.”

As Lyrhea spoke those words, Luxnilae dodged out of the way of a lunging bite from the massive snake, flipping over backward to land her feet on a wall before springboarding off of it to fly over the top of her foe.

“Truly, an apex predator of this harsh, dangerous world.” Lyrhea said, diving fully into her act and putting on a fake British accent. As Luxnilae finally went in for the ‘kill’ and embedded her finger into the snake’s ‘forehead’, Lyrhea finished her narration in typical nature documentary fashion, all while moving to her first ‘daughter’ from where she originally was stationed.

“And so, this particular dance of life and death, of our harsh, beautiful world, come to an end. As is so often in life, a predator stumbles, and he becomes prey for a greater one.”

As Lyrhea finished, she was met with a slow clap from her two ‘daughters’.

“What? Was it not good enough?” Lyrhea asked, not being serious in her questioning due to not intending her monologue to be anything more than humor.

[“Eh, two and half out of five stars.”] interjected the Primordial Serpent, who had finally spoken to the three Lyrheans again after a decent length of time.

“So, I even disappoint my God.” Lyrhea cried, feigning despair and shock. “Oh, woe is me, for my Almighty God views my acting as insufficient! Mayhaps had the world not ended, I would'st have been allowed to attendeth a school and learn the ways of the thespian to give a better performance!”

[“Knock it off, Chosen of Mine.”] replied the God-Snake flatly. [“You are far from good enough or valuable enough to put on such mockery before me. I can break you; remember?”]

Lyrhea sighed. “Sure. I’ll be a bit more serious with you.”

[“I know.”] the Serpent in the Void added before going silent. [“I’m a buzz-kill. CARRY ON!”]

A short moment of awkward silence reigned for a bit before the ‘dead’ snake began to twitch. The two younger Lyrheans immediately went on full alert, but their Mother waved them down.

“Luxy,” Lyrhea addressed her eldest daughter, “you’ve seen this before, but hopefully you see it again. Hopefully, you won’t see what I ended up getting every time I did this to a snake that didn’t already have someone in its gullet beforehand…”

“Was it… disgusting?” Frosrahsa asked.

“Oh, it was totally disgusting.” their Mother replied with a dour tone.

The snake body went through the stages that every body that Lyrhea had touched had gone through before she ended up making her first daughter, all before a new stage of the gross transformation began and the blob of meat, bone, and gore began to transform into something entirely new.

Rather than taking on a purely human form, what was left after the transformation was complete was a mostly human being with scales covering parts of their body and a long, thin, serpentine tail extending down from the base of their spine. The being was of the size of a roughly 16-year-old average male from a Western Country on Old Earth, and, unlike the two previously made Lyrheans was born perfectly naked.

Also, for once, the new Lyrhean was male, or at least appeared as such. As it gasped for air and rose to its feet, Lyrhea checked her Menu because she assumed that she would be screwed yet again. And, lo, she was. The Tutorial demanded that there needed to be at least five Lyrheans alive in order to progress, and this new one apparently didn’t count.

“Figures..” she sighed as she walked over to a destroyed shop that was halfway stuck inside of another building at an odd angle. She stepped inside, grabbed a few things from within, and walked out. She looked down at the articles of clothing in her hands and then shot a glance over her shoulder back at the destroyed medley of seven different clothing retailers, all fused together due to the Apocalypse and mashed together into an unspeakable abomination of retail hell.

“It isn’t shoplifting if the company doesn’t exist anymore,” Luxnilae said with a smile. “I mean, what, do you expect the-”

“DON’T SAY IT!” Frosrahsa yelled, ultimately unable to stop the flag from being raised.

“-alarm to go off due to you taking clothes out without paying for them?”

As soon as Luxnilae said that, a loud beeping sound that was multiplied by many times due to the ungodly fusion of many different stores rang out. All eyes, even those of the naked newborn, went to Luxnilae.

“Oh, come on!” she yelled. “How the fuck is it still powered after all of that?! How would I have known?!”

Lyrhea simply handed some clothes off to the new male Lyrhean and told him to put them on. He nodded, and as he got dressed, another group of monsters rounded the corner, attracted by the noise.

“Ladies.” Lyrhea said as she pulled out her knives and deposited some venom on them. “Let’s buy your little brother some time to get dressed and enter the fight on his own, shall we?”

The trio rushed forwards, and the battle began.

…

“Urgh..” he groaned as he tried to put on the clothes. “Too tight… not enough room to move around… No place for my tail….”

He looked up and frowned as he watched his elder sisters and his Mother tear the monsters apart. He wanted to join, but they wouldn’t want him to be nude. He looked around and his eyes found something he could use to edit his clothing options.

“Well, I guess this one will need to sit this battle out, then.” he bemoaned as he set to work re-tailoring his clothes.