Getting close enough to the snake to hurt it turned out to be really goddamn hard.

As though it was reading my mind, it had started liberally bludgeoning its head against the ground the shake off its attackers. This posed a significant problem for me, and I stutter stepped just at the edge of its thrashing, trying to find a good moment to jump.

The snakes movements were shaking the meadow, and its gyrating body parts had started to dig a sizable trench in the ground where it was struggling.

The tipping point between hunger and self preservation came when a loose shred of flesh from one of my brothers tend ministrations landed on my face, and I subconsciously allowed my tongue to come out and flicker across it.

Almost despite myself I felt my mouth drop open, and I lurched forward, slamming my shiv home in a ridge beneath the beasts eye, feeling myself being carried up as it raised its head to continue thrashing.

There was a moment of free fall at the apex of my flight, and I released my makeshift hand hold to avoid being jerked to the ground by the return motion.

Its movements were slowing now, blood loss no doubt forcing the creature into a panic as its death drew near. My body landed neatly on the base of its head, just above the first spinning bone disk that made up its main body.

Without thinking I closed my jaw on the faded white scales, expecting to be jarred by the sharpness and hardness of them. Instead my teeth bit deep, holding me just out of reach of my oncoming mangling and presenting to delicious crunching sensation of potatoes chips.

Jesus how fucking strong were my jaws?

My newfound appreciation for the weapon nature had blessed me with didnt get alot of time to breath as the delirious snake decided to take drastic measures.

Unable to see, (one of us had eaten the eye that hadn't been blinded by my trap) the creature lowered its head, the gyrating of its body increasing in speed to send it careening towards the edge of the cliff.

There was a clear moment when every single one of us Things could have let go and leaped off. It wasn’t as though the cliff was falling apart - and the snake wouldn't be a problem if it jumped off a literal cliff. Probably anyway.

But instead, an unspoken agreement seemed to pass between us. By now two of our own had been pulped by the creatures mad struggle, leaving me and idiots one through three latched to it only by the strength of our jaws.

I began to wonder if Things even had brains - or if all the space our prodigious maws took up made them so small that we had no hope of greater intelligence.

Because so help me god I was going to fall off a cliff for snake meat.

We cleared the edge of the cliff in one smooth motion, the horrible grinding sound of the snakes trowel like body parts suddenly stopping as we entered free fall and my stomach leapt up into my heart.

I barely had time to register the view of our height afforded us before the ground shot up to meet us, but I thought I saw smoke in the distance.

Beneath us was another expanse of trees, there foliage so overbearing that the tree floor must be in constant shadow. We plunged through them with a vengeance, and I felt more than saw the slap of branches as they scoured my skin, causing me to bleed for the first time since being born here.

The snake had it far worse. It’s great size made the oncoming trees into a huge spike trap, and death struck it almost immediately as the gargantuan trees limbs impaled it, then cracked and fell off because of its downward momentum. The fact that the snake was taking the brunt of all the impact was probably all that saved us from a similar fate, albeit on much smaller branches.

And then we finally hit the ground. The snake was long dead, but the impact caused its body to crunch and kink up like a broken slinky before its tail slapped the ground with a dull thud that shook the birds from nearby trees. My body spun at an odd angle to my head, slapping into the remains of a moist ophidian eye and eliciting a surge of pain through me. If I were human, my neck would have almost certain snapped. Instead it just hurt. Alot. Slowly, I righted myself, tearing the hunk of snake flesh I had been hanging onto out and swallowing it whole.

Only two of us had survived that fall. Thing One and Two look as though they had caught some branches at a bad angle, and were stuck nearly as bad as the snake. Their jaws remained firmly clamped about its head though, like ticks hanging limply. I wanted to mourn but found I couldn’t bring myself to cry. I didn’t think Things could. I wanted to be angry, but the snake was already dead. The last few days had all been so surreal. I was happy I wasn’t dead, but at the same time, if every day was just going to be one continuous struggle to survive, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live anymore either.

My body, moving without my conscious instruction, lurched forward to begin devouring the Gyre Snake - as though the action was only an afterthought to all the insanity.

I don’t know how long I shut down after that. Just mindlessly satiating my hunger, slowly stripping every last edible piece from the snake. If I couldn't eat it, I discarded it. I came to greatly enjoy the tendons holding its spinning tail together. It was like… spaghetti made of meat.

Days passed. I wouldn’t say I’d gone entirely native - I’d simply lost hope. There were only the two of us left now, and I doubted things would get easier from here. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know how I got here. I didn’t know what I had to do. They say that the great torment of humanity is being smart enough to contemplate your own existence, and that is exactly the hell I found myself in. I couldn’t see the point in any of this.

But a small, still reasoning part of me knew that I couldn’t just do nothing. So I ate, and ate and ate and ate.

Until finally, something broke the monotony I had chained myself up in. The rustling of nearby brush, as something bigger than I moved through it. I hadn’t seen any animals in this forest smaller than I was. Not even a squirrel. Which meant that whatever was coming, was almost guaranteed to be a threat to my life.

I almost cheered at the prospect. Either I was going to die and be done with this shit hole, or I was going taste something new.

So, like an animal, I whirled around, unhinging my jaw to protect the snakes remains - and found myself staring straight at a very nonplussed looking old man.

An old, human, man.

***

I froze on the spot, slowly closing my raw to stare in rapt bewilderment at him. He looked old enough to have great grandkids. His face was weathered and tired looking, with several laugh lines to document what was probably a joyous life prior to this. His hair was short, and white. A pure white so bright it looked dyed more than the result of age. His thick beard twitched slightly as he pursed his lips and looked over my shoulder at the dead Gyre Snake’s remains.

He raised a single well manicured hand and pointed off to my right, his eyes flicking too and fro as though looking for something.

With a start the last of my brethren lunged forward, directly in line with the old geezers pointed finger. My eyes widened in panic and I jumped forward, slamming into the stupid creature sending both of us sprawling to the ground in a confused heap. I felt a flash of heat behind me, but put it out of my mind as I snapped at my brother, not sure how to convey to him that I’d rather kill and eat him than let him hurt the only human I’d yet encountered.

When I thought to look up and glance around, The old man had moved, stepping forward to peer down at me from a good five feet away. I looked around him to where he’d been standing before and saw a giant black scar in the earth tracing a path from his previous location to where my idiot brother had been before I tackled him.

The old man waved his right hand in the air again, and a ball of white hot fire appeared in the air next to him, slowly warping as though it were wrapped around an invisible arrow pointing straight at me.

Fuck me he was magic.

Fuck me, he was magic, and he was going to fucking kill us.

Whimpering I did the first thing I could think of. It wasn’t jump out of the way, or to roll to safety. I never even considered trying to fight back. No, the appearance of another person had made me revert to the most basic of instincts a human from earth was going to have when a gun is pointed at them.

I stuck my hands in the air in the universal sign of surrender, closed my eyes, and thanked god I wasn’t physically capable of crying or defecating myself.

When the searing heat of imminent death didn’t scorch me after a few seconds, I cracked an eye open, itself an extremely discomforting feeling owing to my lack of eyelids.

The old man was staring perplexed at me, the lance of flame he’d conjured hovering only a foot away from his head, but seemingly causing him no discomfort. He looked first to me, then to my brother, then back to me. Then slowly, he gestured to an area just to my right, as though telling me to move out of the way.

I raised one foot to comply, but my attention was still caught on the white hot flame the man had conjured, and I turned slowly to look down at the last living member of my cohort. He was a hungry little asshole, true, but he’d saved my life, along with all my other now dead brothers and sisters.

Groaning inwardly, I slowly pointed backward at Thing Two, and met the old man's eyes, shaking my head. Contrary to my expectations, this didn’t seem to bother him. Infact, an odd glint appeared in his eyes, and his previously dour expression showed the hint of a smile. He lowered his pointing finger then turned his head back towards the cover of the brush.

“Nadeen, come here!” he yelled in the gravelly voice of someone who smoked a pack a day and didn’t regret a moment of it. He kept me in the corner of his eye the entire time, and the glowing blaze of fire beside him cast a sinister shadow over his face.

I suddenly didn’t feel so good about stopping my brother from killing him. Not that he needed it. He was walking around the murder forests of wherever the fuck this is like they were his backyard.

My suspicions that he feared nothing in these woods were confirmed when young girl poked her head out of the bushed, shoving her way into the small area we were in and making aggrieved sounds as she picked twigs and leaves out of her long chestnut colored hair. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen, but she was covered in equipment. Where the old man wore only grey pants tied at the waist with rope, simple leather boots, and a white linen shirt covered by a blue vest, she wore polished leather armor that looked like it had never seen real use. She moved jerkily in it, as though unnaccustomed to the weight, and fussed noisily with the short sword and hilt attached to her belt.

Thing Two hissed meanly at her as she entered the clearing and I snapped my jaws at it urgently to make it shut the hell up.

“I told you, so long as you are with me such mundane precautions would only be a hindrance…” chortled the old man. The girl glared at him as she continued to comb bits of forest debris out of her bobbed hair. Instead of directly answering him, she turned her glare on me.

“What this then?” she said, petulantly ignoring the man’s comment. The old man pondered the question for a moment before gesturing at me and my brother, his floating spear of flame dissipating as he did so.

“These” he said grandiosely, “are Gremlins. They aren’t well known for their intelligence. If I had to describe them in a single breath, they mostly just exist as a fast breeding food source for the bigger creatures in the forest. Although…” He glanced at the Gyre Snake corpse behind us.

“They have a propensity for using overwhelming numbers to occasionally defeat enemies far larger than they are.”

“So?” the girl snapped, obviously annoyed by his lecturing tone.

“So, there are only two Gremlins here my dear Nadeen - and one of them is patiently waiting for us to finish talking so it can take its kin and run away. What does that tell you?”

Shit. That was a good question. I really wasn’t sure if the level of intelligence I was showing them was normal in… Gremlins… or not, but I doubted it. Part of me hoped this old guy was about to answer the great mystery of what the hell was going on to me, but I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“It means, my dear, given that it seems be relatively young, that one or both of its parents has been eating humans for a very long time. It’s the only way a monster could develop such intelligence.” the old man said, clearly proud of his deduction.

“Then why is it smart Bastok.” the girl seethed, clearly wishing he would get to the point. The old man - Bastok - deflated immediately, turning a tired eye on Nadeen with seemingly no care for me or Thing Two still on the ground behind me.

“Maneaters, are dangerous. They have the natural advantages all monsters have over humans, in addition to an almost human intelligence. Some have been known to develop strange and unique abilities.” he flicked his head towards me and a chill shot down my spine.

“By contrast, their offspring have a high chance of bearing intelligence, but lack the strength to defend themselves without the care of their parents. - in short, this beast would make an excellent first monster for any aspiring Binder.”

“But you said Gremlins were weak. I don’t want a weak monster - I want something big and dangerous that I can show off when I go to school!” whined the young girl.

“Nadeen, this is a rare opportunity for you to-”

Yeah, that didn’t sound good. Slowly now that the old man was paying direct attention to me, I nudged Thing Two and began sliding towards the brush, hoping to get out of Bastok’s line of sight and then make a run for it. Thing Two caught my intent, and together, we slowly faded away from the argument the two humans were having over my fitness to serve.

I’ve read cultivation novels. I’m no dummy. They were going to kill me and use me as material for some bullshit powerup ritual. Nu uh. No way.

Unfortunately, before I could quite reach cover, there was a blinding flash of light, and a minivan sized tiger stood menacingly between me and the relative safety of the murder forest. It had fluorescent red fur, and on closer inspection, was more akin to a sabertooth than your standard zoo quality tiger. Flames wafted up from its body following the black stripes covering it, giving it an intimidating mien beyond the mundane reasons to be afraid of a giant fucking sabretooth tiger.

How the fuck does something like this even EVOLVE? Who’s idea was this?

Belatedly I noticed Thing Two slip around the monster completely unmolested and I started hopefully after him before being stopped by the shifting of one massive clawed paw.

A shadow passed over me and I turned to see Bastok staring smugly down at me. I glanced between him and the tiger, noticing a glow in his eyes that matched that of the tigers.

And that was when it all clicked.

Impossible to understand biology? Check.

Ridiculously dangerous magical wild life? Check.

Casual disregard for ‘mundane’ weapons? Check.

I was a fucking pokemon.