The white snake lunged at her, but she had foreseen this attack coming. After all, this was the typical behavior of a snake monster, and she had faced such beasts of similar build many times before, though none were as massive as this one.

Lyrhea slid just to the side of the lunging bite attack and with her left hand, she gripped the creature’s head and lifted herself onto it, slamming her pointer finger into the ‘forehead’ of the snake and holding on for dear life as the snake thrashed under the throes of the procedure. In fact, she wasn’t even able to do what she had done up till now and pull her finger free, instead being forced to wince in pain as her bones and joints in that finger snapped and popped, healing even as they broke due to her burning her reserves.

“Damn bastard!” Lyrhea yelled, trying to yank her finger free. “Let me go! Your head can’t be this tight on just one damn finger!”

The creature contorted and flailed about like a violently dying snake normally would until it went limp, this time failing to mutate into a massive tumor-like blob of meat and bone. A bit of dead air escaped the creature’s equally dead mouth and Lyrhea pulled her finger free and screamed in anger and frustration.

Again! Just like all the other times, she had failed due to her absolutely shit luck! At this rate, she really would have no choice but to-!

As she pounded the dead beast, the body began to suddenly start twitching again. At first, it was a slight shiver here and there, but soon enough the dead began to thrash about as though it were alive, knocking Lyrhea off and leaving her ducking for safety as the coils whipped around violently.

She held her breath as the Titanoboa-sized creature with pure-white scales began to bubble and boil, flesh bursting and reshaping like all the others had until suddenly it began to shrink instead of grow. The blob of meat and bone shrunk in size, eventually reaching the size of a mere fifteen-year-old human before shaping into something actually human-like in form.

The initial being looked like a pale, human-shaped being with no features, but soon after this form settled it began to shift again. The featureless face began to deform as a slit crawled from both sides of the face to meet up in the middle, lips appearing from the pale meat as a nose came into being above it.

Where should have been eyes there came two indents that swirled to eventually form eyelids and, eventually, eyes. Pure white hair grew from a bald head as ears unfurled from the head, all while stubby, fingerless hands deformed and morphed into true human-like hands and toes made themselves at home on the being’s feet.

Scales popped into being, dancing across the sickening skin as the remaining skin took a more natural tone and texture, and after what to Lyrhea felt like both an eternity and only a handful of insignificant moments, a new Lyrhean was formed from the combination of a dead snake and a devoured human.

There and then, quiet reigned, and Lyrhea took a single step towards the newly born being. The creature that bore a striking similarity to a mix between Mary and Lyrhea herself, slumped down, its fetal position that had it on its knees giving way as the body just kinda stopped holding that position.

“Fuck.” Lyrhea cursed. She had done it, and brought into being a new Lyrhean, only to have it die mere moments after being ‘born’.

Defeated, she sat down beside her dead ‘daughter’ and tried to think of what to do. Today was just not going well…

And as she dwelt on the negative, a loud, almost deafening gasp came from the seemingly dead newborn snake-human. Lyrhea scrambled to her feet as the newly created being’s eyes shot open and it itself rushed to its feet as well.

“I’m!” the new Lyrhean said, in a panic as it patted itself down. “I’m alive!” it looked up at Lyrhea and its eyes, already wide open, widened further. “You! What happened?! How am I alive?! Where is the snake?! What have I become?! Why do I love you so deeply?! WHAT! THE! FUCK! IS! GOING! ON?!”

Lyrhea tried to calm down the new Lyrhean but this seemingly only caused the new one to be even more erratic. Finally, Lyrhea had to call in the big guns.

“Oy, God! A little help, here?”

The other Lyrhean froze in place, its eyes both wide ad fully clear yet also seeing something very far away that ‘was not there’. After a few seconds, the new Lyrhean unfroze and fell to the ground, holding herself in her arms as tight as possible and rocking back and forth with a look of sheer terror and shock on her face.

Lyrhea decided now would be a good time to try and smooth things over, hopefully acquiring a new ally in the form of the second of her kind. She knelt down and hugged the nameless new Lyrhean and shushed her as she cried.

“She gets easier to deal with the more you deal with her. Exposure works wonders over a longer timeframe, and you do eventually grow on her. Take it slow, I’m here and I’m not going to leave you. Just take deep breaths, and take your time. I already had to deal with this shit myself, so I can help you through it a bit.”

Through the sniffles and occasional soft sob, the newborn asked a question.

“Does it get easier? Do you know how to live like this, under that thing?”

Lyrhea nodded, and then kind of shook her head.

“I do, but I don’t. I’m still new to this as well. I’m the first of our kind, and I guess that kind of makes me your mother, but I’m far from perfect. We’ll work through this, together, and we’ll learn exactly what we as a species can do.”

The newborn shivered and pulled something out of her clothes. She was wearing the same things she had worn before being swallowed whole, and that included all of her items.

Lyrhea looked won as the new one held a locket in her trembling hands.

“Someone precious?”

“Yes. Olga. My neighbor’s kid. They.. they…. I couldn’t stop them… they.. did things to me, and I didn’t want to be that way, but…”

Lyrhea scowled.

“She’s dead. I killed her.”

The new Lyrhea looked up with a mix of sorrow, rage, and also a bit of relief.

“Well, at least they can’t do much more to her now that she’s gone forever…” mumbled the new Lyrhean.

“I never said she would stay dead forever.” Lyrhea said softly.

“You… can you free her?”

Lyrhea nodded and lifted her ‘firstborn daughter’ up.

“We can free her. And we can do more than that.”

The new, white-scaled Lyrhean’s eyes widened and a look of manic emotion filled her face.

“Want to add another member to our family?” Lyrhea asked.

The nameless new one nodded aggressively.

“Then I hope you are still just as good of a healer as your party claimed you were.” Lyrhea said bluntly. “Oh, wait, not your party, I meant your victims.”

At that line, the face of the new one shifted from rage at being associated with that group of bastards to a glee not much unlike a kid at Christmas when told to open their presents.

“Let’s go, Mother.” the new one said, picking up her fallen staff. “They hated that I was a sadist of a healer, right? Well, by the time Olga and I are done with them, they’ll be even more upset.”

Lyrhea patted her daughter o the shoulder.

“Then let’s go. We’ve got pedo bastards to kill and a dead girl to revive and remake. Do you know where they’d regroup at?”