"That's an understatement if I've ever heard one," I chuckled.
"Eh? You say somethin?" the old snake asked.
I shook my head. "Nothing important."
The old snake watched me for a few more seconds then shrugged and laid his head down. "Suit yourself," he said with a yawn.
"So, who are you?" Torga asked after a few moments of watching the old snake-man sleep.
"Hmm?" he asked.
"Who are you?" I repeated.
"Hmm, I'm Naunet, the royal snake-man."
I blinked in surprise. "You're the snake-man king?"
The old snake waved flippantly. "Pleasure to meet you, and all that jazz."
I watched the old snake for a few more minutes, then said, “You know... Usually, this is where we’d fight, right?"
The old snake sighed, then sat up and looked at me. "Now, why would we do that?" He trailed off as his eyes grew wide and he looked at something over my head.
My curiosity got the better of me and I turned my head in the same direction he was looking, but only saw the ball floating on the horizon. Over the past year, it'd grown exponentially, and I could now see it shining brightly even from this end of my body. It glowed a deep orange and its intense light was turning the horizon a similar color.
"How... How do you have that?" Naunet asked, his pupils briefly contracting as he stared at the ball. They returned to their normal slits when we locked eyes. "Come with me. I’d like to make you an offer."
"What could you have that I’d want? I’m supposed to kill you," I interrupted.
Naunet grimaced. “Would you believe me if I said I’d let you kill me?”
"Not a chance in hell."
"Suppose that's the most I can expect at the moment." Naunet sighed. “Fine. I can train you to fight.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I can fight. Your friends Unger and Urosh can attest to that.”
“They’re not my friends. If anything, I’m glad they’re dead. And alright, then you shouldn’t have a problem proving it.”
“Gladly—"
MY EYES SNAPPED OPEN and I sat up—and immediately had to grab hold of the branch before I fell off.
“Morning.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw Naunet floating next to my head with a cocky grin on his face.
“You—You knocked me out?”
“Something like that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, again. "Alright, you’ve made your point. But if I go with you, you understand that I will still kill you when the time comes, right?"
Naunet rolled his eyes and nodded. "Of course, I do. Hell, were it in my power to do so, I would help you kill me."
"Wait, you want to die?"
Naunet shrugged. "I'm as much a prisoner here as Lord Orochi, so death will be a sweet release for me."
"You have nothing to live for?" I asked curiously.
Naunet glanced at the other moon then slowly shook his head. "Not anymore."
I followed Naunet's gaze to the other moon, then nodded my acceptance. "Alright, then. Just out of curiosity, what do I get if I agree to this—offer?"
Naunet shrugged, "The only thing I have to trade with is knowledge. I was a fairly well-known brawler in my youth," he admitted.
"Could you teach me to control my skills?"
Naunet blinked, then grinned. "I can teach you a lot more than that if you do what I ask."
I nodded. "Let's get this over with then, shall we?"
Naunet nodded, then slowly lifted off the branch and began following it back to the closest moon while I followed closely behind.
Chapter 18
I FOLLOWED BEHIND NAUNET until just before entering the moon's atmosphere. Naunet held out his arm and asked me to stop. "Before you can approach any further let's do something about that size of yours."
"Like what?"
"I realize that you may not like what I'm about to say, but you're simply too large. If you were to land at your current size, it would crumble under your weight."
"Oh, come on! I'm not that heavy," I protested.
"Were this a normal planet you would be correct. However, both of the moons here are hollow on the inside. The shell simply cannot take such a large creature landing on it."
I stared at Naunet in surprise, then shrugged. "If you say so. How small are we talking?”
"Much, much smaller than you are now." He paused and cupped his chin. "I couldn't say for certain, of course, but I would have to guess that anything below a few hundred feet should allow you to remain under the maximum weight capacity," he finished, while looking pointedly at my tail.
"Well, I can shrink myself, but that size eludes me. Believe me, if I could, I would stay at that size," I admitted.
"Why? If you possess the ability to shrink yourself, then shouldn’t you be able to become any size you choose?" Naunet replied with a shake of his head.
I thought about the answer to his question seriously for a few moments, then carefully said, "I don't possess the ability to shrink myself. An item I carry does that for me."
Naunet’s eyes widened and he gave me a look of simultaneous amusement and disgust. He mumbled something under his breath and exhaled a sigh. "I guess we're starting from scratch then," he finally said. "Before we get into that, however, what kind of training have you had?"
“In what field?” I asked.
“Take your pick.” Naunet replied with an annoyed sigh.
"Well, I learned several martial arts forms decades ago, but I’m out of practice with most of them. I can handle basic weapons with some degree of competency, and a friend taught me how to manipulate the elements around me and I taught myself how to fire off a beam of magical energy."
"And? What else?"
"That's it."
Naunet's eyes snapped up to meet mine. "That's it?"
"That's it," I agreed.
Naunet's right eye twitched in annoyance. "How have you survived this long without killing yourself from magic overdose?" he asked tiredly.
"Magic overdose?" I asked.
"Wait—let me guess. No one explained that to you either?"
"First I've heard of it."
"Okay, let's do it this way," Naunet began. "Let's pretend you're a child and we'll start with the utmost basics. Okay? Okay, great. Let's start with that." He floated up to my eye level and folded his legs under him. "Magical overdose occurs when a living creature becomes so saturated with magical energy, their body can no longer filter it out and they die."
"But don't they need magic to live?"
"Yes, usually. However, just because something is good for you, doesn't mean it can't kill you in higher doses. Take water, for example. Most creatures need it to live but if we were to drink too much water at one time, we could die. Same applies to magical energies. Your body needs it to support itself, but if you take in too much at one time, it'll poison you."
"What constitutes 'Taking in' magic?"
"What do you mean? Anytime you use magic you're taking it in. Magic spells by their very nature cause magic to flow through you and into the spell."
"That’s not true. I know for a fact that druids manipulate the ambient mana in their surroundings to use magic. No true 'spell work’ required.”
"Interesting. I was unaware of that.” Naunet paused to think it over, then he nodded his head. "Yes, I suppose that would certainly help prevent the magic poisoning. And probably also explains why you were never taught the basics.”
"Why do you say that?"
He shook his head. "Never mind. We've wasted enough time standing around talking when you could have been practicing."
"Okay. I’m ready whenever you are. But—do you have any idea how long this’ll take? I need to get something to eat soon.”
Naunet shrugged. "Everyone's different. Some are born with the innate ability to control their magic, while some require many years of dedicated training to gain even the slightest hint of control. Basically, what I'm trying to say is
this. You'll be here anywhere from thirty seconds after we begin to the moment you die of old age," he finished with a smile.
"Oh, well then—We should probably get started." I blandly replied. “By the way, how do you know so much about magic? I thought you were a martial artist or something?”
“That’s a story for another time. Suffice it to say back in my day, you had to be at least passable in multiple disciplines in order to make it in this world. Nowadays, you kids have no idea what it takes to live outside of the civilized world,” he finished cryptically.
AND SO, A MONTH PASSED without anything too interesting happening. Naunet shot me some strange looks the first time he saw me take a bite out of Yggdrasil, but he didn’t say anything about it.
I floated in place with my eyes closed. I’d been following Naunet's instructions to the letter and happily managed to shrink myself by a few hundred feet. Of course, Naunet wasn’t impressed, but I’d learned pretty quickly that he wasn’t impressed by much of anything.
I wanted—no needed—to be small again, and no matter what Naunet said about several hundred feet being the minimum, I wouldn't be satisfied until I was below one hundred feet long again.
While the actual technique to shrink myself wasn't too difficult, it required tremendous amounts of concentration to pull off for any length of time. I was actually surprised I hadn't done it completely by accident. It was basically my beam trick, but in reverse. Instead of compressing magic into my mouth and shooting it, I covered my body in magical energy and began drawing it towards my forehead, thus pulling my body into a more compact form.
Then came the tricky part: While I was doing all of that, I also had to focus on reducing my weight via gravity manipulation—a feat Naunet claimed was something any child should’ve been able to do before they left the nest.
That was the one thing that never failed to grate on my nerves. Naunet, though he was one of the nicest people I’d met in a long time, was one of the most insufferable know-it-alls I’d ever had the displeasure of meeting. He was always talking about his past and explaining everything as if I were either a small child or dumb, though lately he tended to favor option two.
I breathed out a frustrated sigh and refocused on the task at hand. I didn’t have time to be thinking about this stuff. I had to maintain focus or I’d—
"How's it coming?" Naunet asked.
*Pop*
My eyes snapped open in surprise and I lost focus. The next thing I knew, I was suddenly back to normal. "Damn it!"
ONCE AGAIN, I WAS FLOATING in place with my eyes closed. It'd been a little over a year since I began trying to shrink myself and I was actually making good progress. But I was still far too large to stop.
“You should’ve been done with this exercise ages ago,” Naunet complained.
*Pop*
“Godamnit, will you shut up? Every time I start making progress you open your mouth and I’m back to square one.” Of course, once I successfully shrunk to a certain size then I could quickly and easily return to it, but that wasn’t the point.
Naunet was just doing it to annoy me.
“My bad,” he laughed. He leaned against the branch and closed his eyes, presumably to go to sleep again. "Say, would you mind if I ask you some questions?"
I narrowed my eyes at him. "If you agree to answer my questions, then I'll answer yours."
Naunet thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure, I'll agree to that."
"Then I'll go first," I said, before Naunet could say otherwise. "How old are you?"
"I don't know,” he admitted. “Time moves in odd ways here. Though, unlike most of the other royals you’ll meet, I came equipped with my own prison.” He finished, gesturing to the ground beneath us.
“So, you’re senile. Got it.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He laughed. “Do you know how old you are?”
I wanted to blurt out “of course,” but—That wasn’t true anymore. I had no idea how old I was or how long I’d been on the path of kings. “Touché,” I sighed.
"My turn. Are you a naturally born serpent or a reincarnation?"
"Reincarnation. I used to be human."
"Figures. No natural serpent is stupid enough to challenge Orochi."
"I have something I want to accomplish," I said. "How’d you become a Royal Serpent?"
"You kill enough people, you’ll earn yourself some titles you don’t want too. Now, if they'd only asked me before giving me the title, I would have informed them exactly what I thought of their proposal and where they could shove it," he said with a twisted grin.
I found myself thinking about Asgard in that moment, and the citizens I’d let fall to their deaths.
"Anyway," he shook his head. "What planet are you originally from?"
"Originally? As in, before I was reincarnated or after?"
"Before."
"I'm from a planet called Earth. It's a—"
"Oh? Which one?"
Any thought of future questions was blown away and I stared at him in stunned silence...
"What did you just say?"
"Which Earth are you from?" he repeated, slower this time.
I just stared at him.
“What? What did I say?
"You—How—What do you mean 'which Earth?’ You know about Earth?"
"Okay, that's two questions, so I'll be asking two questions in return. But yes, I do know about Earth. I know about all five of them, as a matter of fact."
"How? How do you know about Earth?"
"That's three questions and, well, I've been there—Well, to one of them anyway."
"You reincarnated?" I blurted out.
"No." Naunet replied in confusion. "Wait a minute, you are aware that Earth exists on Yggdrasil, yes? Four of them are somewhere near the very top of the tree, while the last is somewhere in the center. Why they all have the same name, I have no idea. Then again, humans always did have a weird naming sense. I once met a man who named his sword “Big Bertha." Can you imagine—"
I didn’t hear what else he said. My mind went blank and my vision blurred. When I snapped out of it, Naunet was laying on the branch with his arm over his eyes.
"Oi! Hey Naunet, wake up!"
"Hmm?" He grumbled for a minute then opened his eyes. “What?”
"You said Earth exists here, right?"
"Yes?"
"Is it my Earth or just something using the same name?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know? Like I said, humans aren’t the most creative bunch when it comes to naming things." Naunet rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. "Though, I do remember that it was mostly water with, uh—a white moon and a yellow star?"
"What're the names of the surrounding planets?" I asked as calmly as I could.
"Don't remember. This trip was ages ago, Torga.”
"What do you remember?" I hissed.
Naunet sighed. "I remember there being eight or nine planets in the cluster I visited, and that particular Earth was weird because it was solely dominated by large reptiles—Hey, put me down!" Naunet barked in surprise as I yanked him into the air and yelled,
"Yes! I can actually go home!"
"Put-Me-Down!" Naunet hissed.
"Oh." I released my grip and allowed him to fall to the branch. "Sorry, I'm just so excited!"
"Yeah, yeah, well, don't get too excited. It's highly possible that Earth isn't yours and even if it was, it might no longer be there."
That took some of the wind out of my sails, but I couldn’t stop smiling. "Even so, it’s a chance."
Naunet sighed. “How about you focus on getting this exercise down, then you can worry about going home. Sound fair?”
“Oh, I’m going to master it. Just you wait.”
"WELL, WOULD YOU LOOK at that! You finally managed it, did you?" Naunet asked sarcastically.
I grimaced and directed a sharp glare at him. "Shut. Up," I hissed. I was sitting on the branch in my Naga form, while desperately
fighting to maintain my current size. After three years, I’d finally managed to shrink my body to around one hundred and thirty feet in length and about eight to ten feet around. Every attempt to get smaller than this resulted in failure, for whatever reason, so I’d simply stopped trying.
"How do you feel?" Naunet asked after a few minutes of silence.
I stared at my arms. I felt like if I so much as twitched, I’d lose focus and lose my tenuous grasp on my size. "Like I'm wearing clothes ten sizes too small."
"Don't worry, that feeling will pass as you get used to maintaining your current size and soon you won't even notice you're doing it," he said while nodding his head.
"I hope so."
"Can you move?"
"I—I think so."
"Good, then we can finally begin your training!" Naunet said with a bright smile.
"Wait—” *Pop* “You mean this wasn’t the training!?" I yelled.
"Of course, it wasn't. I told you at the start." A sinister smile spread across his face. "This was only the beginning."
Chapter 19
WE WERE JUST ABOUT to break through the atmosphere when suddenly Naunet glanced over his shoulder at me, an irritating smile on his face. "You're very durable, aren't you?" he calmly asked.
"Yes?"
"Excellent! Then this should be a good learning opportunity for you," he replied as we broke through the outer atmosphere and clean air flooded my lungs.
"What will—" I screamed in surprise as gravity grabbed hold and an overwhelming force sent me hurtling towards the ground.
"Don't forget to maintain your size!" Naunet yelled at my back.
Before I could even think to reply, I slammed into the unforgiving ground at high speed. I groaned in pain and tried to lift my head, but even that proved impossible as the sheer weight of my own body prevented me from moving.
"Wow, I'm impressed you managed to maintain your size throughout that fall," Naunet cheerfully said as he landed beside my head.
"W—What h—happened?" I mumbled while struggling to keep my eyes open.
"Everything feeling incredibly heavy?"
A Snake's Path (A Snake's Life Book 2) Page 16