Sol turned and limped along the massive tree trunk, heading toward the sliver of light, he prayed to every god, ancestor, and developer he could think of that he wouldn't pass out before he reached solid ground.

But the jungle, it seemed, had a very specific sense of humor, and wasn't done with its chew toy.

As Sol navigated the slick, moss-covered surface of the fallen iron-wood giant, he felt a sudden vibration beneath his boots. There was a frantic, high-pitched buzzing, like a million tiny drills working in unison.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

The bark beneath his feet began to ripple.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Sol whispered, looking down.

The log wasn't solid. It was a fucking hive.

With a sound like tearing parchment, the rotten wood exploded upward. A fountain of Corpse-White Adder sankes erupted from the hollow core of the tree. They were small… no longer than his forearm… but there were hundreds of them, pale, eyeless, and writhing like a wave of frantic maggots with fangs.

"Maggots with teeth?" Sol yelled, dancing backward as the wave washed over his boots. "Is there anything normal in this damn hole?!" almost crying at this point. He could swear he hadn't danced so much in his last life in his last life than he had just in the past few hours. And could easily defeat Jackson with his moves.

He kicked out, sending a spray of the pale snakes flying, "Get off! I am not on the menu today!" But they were swarming up his legs, their tiny jaws snapping at his shins. They weren't strong enough to pierce the Cobra hide easily, but they were trying to find the gaps.

He stomped, crushing them with wet crunches, slipping and sliding on the snake puree. He had to run. If he stopped, they'd strip him to the bone in minutes.

He broke into an uneven sprint along the log, balancing like a drunk tightrope walker, the wood crumbling behind him as the swarm burst forth in a chain reaction. It was like running on a bridge that was detonating in slow motion.

He reached the end of the log… a barbed splinter hanging over a drop into a muddy sub-section of the ravine.

"Jump or be eaten by forbidden noodles," Sol muttered.

He obviously jumped, as he felt that he was too handsome to become red sauce.

He landed hard in a pool of brackish water, the splash soaking him to the bone. He scrambled up, checking his legs. A few adders were clinging to his trousers. He ripped them off with a grimace of disgust, crushing them in his hands before throwing them away.

"Disgusting," he shuddered. "Zero stars. Would not recommend."

He looked around. The gorge had lifted him onto a higher ridge now, an exposed shelf of stone where the ground sloped upward and opened wide. Ferns clung to the edges, their fronds spilling down into the drop below. The air here felt different… maybe a bit sweeter, he couldn't grasp it, but It smelled faintly of jasmine and wet stone, something.

His heightened senses, usually a reliable radar, suddenly felt fuzzy.

Danger, his instincts screamed, but he couldn't pinpoint the source.

A soft, melodic hum filled the air. It wasn't the threatening rattle of the Iron-Scales. It was a soothing, oscillating thrum that seemed to massage his brain.

Sol's eyelids drooped. The pain in his leg seemed to recede, replaced by a warm, fuzzy numbness.

"Sleep..." a voice seemed to whisper, though it wasn't words, just intent.

In front of him, the air shimmered. A creature uncoiled from the rock.

It was the Prism-color Cobra. It wasn't large… maybe only four feet long… but its scales were made of biological mirrors. It flared its hood, and the bioluminescent light of the cave refracted through it, creating a dazzling, hypnotic light show of shifting colors.

Sol stared at the lights. They were beautiful. They promised rest. They promised that if he just lay down in the mud, everything would be fine. Pain didn't matter. The snakes chasing him didn't matter. Just sleep.

NO.

The thought was a sharp spike in his mind.

Sol bit his own tongue. Hard.

CRUNCH.

The sharp, copper taste of blood flooded his mouth. The pain was an anchor, dragging him back from the edge of the hypnotic cliff.

"Nice try," Sol spat, blood dripping from his chin. "But I prefer my dreams without fangs."

He didn't know the biology, the physics, or how the fuck a snake evolved a disco ball for a hood, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty: if he kept looking at that shifting light, his brain would melt out of his ears.

So, he squeezed his eyes shut, instantly plunging into the darkness. The hypnotic throbbing ceased, replaced by the pounding of his own blood.

"Okay," Sol breathed into the darkness, his hands trembling. "Hey senses, dear sense… it's time for you to work, show your magic." He whispered mentally.

He focused inward, pouring the dregs of his mental focus into the Ash Gray receptor in his brain.

Without his vision, the world became a map of and vibrations. He felt the cold, damp rock. He saw the frantic beating of his own heart. And he felt it.

Ten feet away, a cool, swirling signature swayed back and forth in the void. It moved with a fluid, hypnotic rhythm that felt disjointed from the rest of the world. It was the Prism-Cobra. He could "see" the tension in its coils, the way it tilted its head, confused by his lack of reaction. It was used to prey that stood slack-jawed and drooling, not prey that turned off the lights.

Sol didn't move like a man anymore. He moved like a machine guided by radar.

He stepped forward, blind but seeing. The snake seeing that he wasn't affected lunged, aiming for the heat of his face. Sol didn't see the blur of motion, or anything, instead he felt the displacement of air, a pressure wave rushing toward him.

Target acquired.

He didn't panic. He sidestepped, a minimal, efficient movement that let the striking head sail past his ear, his hand instinctively lashing out. and he grabbed it.

Snap.

His fingers closed around something cool, smooth, and muscular. He caught the snake mid-air, gripping it right behind the flared hood.

He opened his eyes.

The world rushed back in Technicolor. The Prism-Cobra was thrashing in his grip, its scales flashing frantically in a strobe-light effect of desperate colors—violent violets, angry reds, blinding whites… trying to overload his brain at point-blank range.

It curled its tail, trying to wrap around his arm, its mouth gaping open to deliver a bite to his thumb.

Sol didn't flinch. He stared directly into its mirror-like eyes, his pupils constricted to pinpoints.

"Pretty," Sol snarled, looking directly into its mirror eyes. "But I'm taken."

He squeezed hard.

SQUELCH.

He crushed the delicate vertebrae with a single, brutal contraction of his enhanced grip. The light show died instantly, the scales turning a dull, lifeless gray as the pressure severed the connection to the brain.

Sol dropped the carcass, panting. His head was pounding, a migraine drilling behind his eyes. The mental toll of resisting the hypnosis on top of the physical exhaustion was pushing him to the brink.

"No more," he wheezed, stumbling forward. "Please no more surprises."

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