Uriel helped Ossythe swim by paddling with the walking stick, observing his surroundings carefully. The serpent's tail moved like it had a mind of its own.
He spotted an opening to the left, it's an narrow gap between two massive coils. "There!" He gently tapped Ossythe's side with his palm, and the creature began to turn. But before they could reach it, the tail slid across the gap like a closing door. And just like that, the opening vanished.
Uriel's heart sank. Then he saw another gap. To the right this time. "Okay, okay—maybe go right!" Ossythe pivoted. Despite being a couple of inches away from the exit, the tail moved again, closing the gap.
Another opened behind them. Then ahead. Then left again. Every time Uriel chose a direction, the serpent shifted, blocking his path and offering a new one somewhere else. It was like the maze was playing with him and taunting him.
He sighed and proceeded to brainstorm before making another move. The siren was definitely trying to keep them locked in this maze it had built, but why? That was Uriel's main question—whether it wanted something from them, or simply wanted to play around a bit with prey the snake had just found so suddenly on the water's surface.
But finding out the reason why the siren wanted to block them was Uriel's least priority. He knew he needed to focus on the main objective, and that was to find a way out of here quickly, before the siren singing in the background took control of their minds again.
Even Uriel noticed the sound of the moan was starting to forcefully penetrate its way inside the blonde boy's mind. If it weren't for Ossythe occasionally singing while swimming, Uriel would have already been hypnotized, and they could very well be stuck here forever.
He didn't want that possible path to become reality, so he shook his head and started to observe his surroundings again for an exit. While watching the tail shift and change direction, Uriel noticed something moving along the snake's body.
He lightly tapped Ossythe's head and pointed the walking stick toward the nearest tail around them. The war mount followed its commander's voice and started to swim toward the serpent's tail.
Getting just close enough, Ossythe halted, making Uriel lean forward to carefully analyze the serpent's body. It was pitch black, even darker than the void sky above them. He couldn't see any marks, ridges, scales, colors, or any special markings. It almost felt like an object rather than a siren's body.
To get a better view of the skin, he extended the arm holding the walking stick, wanting to light what he couldn't see. But maybe some things were better left unsolved. That was what went through Uriel's mind when he froze, staring at the things attached to the snake's skin.
They clung to the serpent like barnacles to a shipwreck. They were small, pale, and unsettlingly still. Each one was no bigger than a coin, their bodies shaped like peanut shells. Their heads were too large for their frames, while their limbs were thin and curled inward. They wore no clothes. They had no faces. Just smooth, featureless flesh, pressed against the darkness like parasites feeding on something unseen.
There were hundreds of them attached to the serpent's skin. Uriel couldn't see beyond the small circle of amber light since the darkness swallowed everything else. He slowly swayed the walking stick, and the lantern followed his movement, illuminating a new patch of flesh with each pass. To the left: more of them. To the right: even more. He kept swinging the light, and the creatures kept appearing, stretching into the darkness like an endless, rotting tapestry. There was no end to them.
"The fuck....Is this a new type of creature....?" Uriel's hands began trembling, making the small circle of lantern light shake and shudder across the serpent's skin. The amber glow bounced erratically to the left, then right, then back again, sweeping over the rows of pale, peanut-shaped bodies like a frantic heartbeat.
The light landed on one of them. Then away. Then back again. The tiny creature stretched its arms. The limbs were thin and almost translucent, it curled inward like a baby's fists. They unfurled slowly, trembling, reaching toward the flickering light. Its head tilted back, even though it had no mouth, no nose, no features at all. But the motion was unmistakable. It was yawning and it's about to wake up.
Uriel's blood turned to ice. Then suddenly its stomach opened.
A vertical seam split across its pale belly, revealing something dark and wet beneath. The skin pulled back like curtains, and there it was—a large and round single eye, filling most of its torso. The iris was black, blacker than the serpent's scales. But the pupil was a pinprick of amber light, reflecting the lantern's glow.
It blinked once slowly. Then it turned its head. The eye swiveled in its socket, tracking the trembling light. It followed the outline of the lantern light and finally came to the source of it.
It squinted its eye, seeing the bright lantern in front of it. But after the creature tilted its head a bit, that was when it saw a light yellow-haired boy holding the walking stick behind the lantern. The boy was trembling, unable to move.
Uriel noticed one of the peanut creatures had spotted him. He forced a frightened smile, then spoke with a very shaky tone. "Hey.....there.....are you.... nice?" That was all it took for the creature to think he was a predator. The fetus's eye opened wide, covering its whole torso.
Then it leaped forward toward Uriel. The fetus's hands were wide open while leaping in the air. Its eye looked to be burning with hatred toward the teenage boy. Uriel tried to make a run for it, even dropping the walking stick, but the peanut creature landed just on top of the blondie's head.
"ARGH! GET OFF MEEE!!!" Uriel started swaying his hair with his hand, which in response made the creature shriek and pull the boy's hair, trying to rip it away from the blondie's scalp. It even started clawing directly at his head, a vertical slit opened where its mouth should have been, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth. Thus began the peanut creature biting, it first sink it teeth in his flesh, making Uriel grunt.
Despite the boy best effort to get rid of the creature, the peanut fetus remained determined, biting his scalp directly, even making him bleed. This made Uriel drop onto the war mount's skin, while he rolled over to the nearest Ossythe outer bones, scraping his head against the hard structure.
Ossythe could feel that there was rustling beneath him. He wailed as if asking what was going on. In the midst of Uriel and the peanut creature's duel, the dandelion pouch fell alongside Uriel, making the water inside spill out as the glimmer fish tried to wiggle its way out of the bag.
Succeeding in escaping that tight space, the glimmer fish saw the wide, vast ocean around him with his hollow sockets. Wanting to escape from Uriel, it began flapping, each movement sending the fish closer to Ossythe's edge.
Just before it could finally be free and escape into its natural habitat, something fell from the sky and plopped down in front of the fish. It was the peanut fetus. Uriel had succeeded in getting rid of the creature from his hair. He hauled himself up with the help of Ossythe's bones, his outfit and hair all messy.
The fetus got up on its stubby feet and blinked its eye a few times. Meanwhile, from the glimmer fish's point of view, it was looking at something different. It didn't see an animal, creature, or any type of living being. It saw a delicious-looking peanut, waiting to get inside the fish's transparent body.
Uriel had regained his composure and was about to finish off the fetus-looking creature, until he heard a loud burp that startled him. It came from the glimmer fish's direction. Noticing his first vessel was out of his pouch, Uriel quickly grabbed the dandelion bag and rushed toward the fish, whose crescent-shaped body was facing away from the boy.
He carefully scooped up the golden fish and finally saw what it had done. Inside the shining glimmer body were a bunch of body parts oddly similar to the peanut creature. Uriel saw its leg next to the fish's liver, and its eyeball floating in the water close to the fish's heart.
Uriel's mouth gaped so wide it could reach Ossythe's skin. He looked at the pleased-looking glimmer fish, and the golden vessel only responded with a single burp.