Devoured: A Dark Monster Romance Novella (Pythonissam Filia), page 13
I found Tiberius where Ysu and I had left him. Two weeks of captivity had carved away his imperial bearing. His toga hung in filthy tatters. His gray hair was matted with sweat and worse. When he heard my approach, his eyes rolled wildly before focusing on my transformed figure.
“Flavia?” The name came out cracked, uncertain. A name I had nearly forgotten. “Is that... gods, what have you become?”
I circled him slowly, taking in his degradation. His proud Roman features were sunken with hunger. The silk or perhaps some older magic, had preserved him like a living mummy, keeping him alive but weak. Part of me—some remnant of the broken girl I’d been—almost pitied him.
“Water,” he croaked. “Please. Just water.”
I found a pitcher, still half-full, and held it to his lips. He drank greedily, desperately, and for a moment I saw him as merely human. Old. Frightened. Pathetic.
Then he spoke again.
“There’s still time,” he gasped between swallows. “Cut me free. I have gold hidden. Connections in Rome. I can help you find healers, priests who can reverse this corruption.”
“Corruption?” I set the pitcher aside.
“This... curse. This demonic possession.” His voice grew stronger, falling into familiar patterns of authority. “You’re still Flavia beneath the scales. Still my wife that I tried to civilize. We can fix this.”
“Civilize.” The word tasted like ash. “Is that what you called it?”
“I gave you purpose! Structure! Without me, you’d have died in some pagan hovel, bearing savage children for savage men.” Spite crept into his tone, the Tiberius I knew emerging from beneath the fear. “I elevated you. Made you part of the Empire to pay off my debt to your father. And this is how you repay—”
“You tortured me.” My voice reverberated in my chest, and he flinched. “Systematically. Creatively. For years.”
“Discipline,” he corrected, falling back on old justifications. “Your father begged me to keep you from becoming... this. Every lesson, every correction, was to save you from the monster in your blood.” His eyes raked over my scaled form with disgust. “Clearly, I was too gentle.”
Too gentle. After everything—the burns, the cuts, the violations—he thought he’d been too gentle.
The last of my human pity evaporated.
“You know what my mother didn’t tell my father?” I moved closer, feeling my form beginning to shift. “The monster was always there. You didn’t prevent it. You just gave it rage to grow on. Fed it pain until it was strong enough to feed itself. Without you, I might have stayed human.”
“Barbarian whore,” he spat, fear making him vicious. “I should have killed you the first time you bled on my floors. Should have—”
His words cut off as my transformation accelerated. My spine elongated with sounds like breaking branches. Scales rippled across every inch of skin. My legs fused and stretched into a serpentine tail that coiled around the room. But it was my head that changed most dramatically—jaw unhinging, throat expanding into a vast tunnel lined with backward-curving teeth.
I became what the forest had been shaping me to be. Not human. Not snake. Something between and beyond both.
Tiberius screamed then, high and thin. “Monster! Demon! When Rome hears of this—when the legions come—”
I lowered my transformed head until we were eye to eye. When I spoke, my voice was not just my own. It was generations of women held down by weak men who feared us. It was a forest older than man who knew more of this world then we could ever comprehend. It was a god who would swallow everything that stood in its way.
“Let them come.”
“They will!” Even facing death, his Roman arrogance wouldn’t die. “More soldiers. More priests. More iron and fire than your barbarian magic can withstand. We are endless. We are order. We are—"
I wouldn’t bear it a moment longer.
“Silence.”
I locked my gaze with his and his jaw snapped shut, entranced by my command. “You are nothing. A speck in the timeline of humanity. Your legacy is gone, and soon you will be too. But I…the barbarian girl you sought to control, I am every woman your empire ground beneath its heel, given form and fang. We do not forget. We do not forgive. We become.”
I could feel him fighting my control. But I was stronger. I had always been stronger than him. My body just finally matched my soul. I wrapped my tail around his body, squeezing until his eyes bulged. “Time for you to be prey, my dear husband.”
I struck faster than lightning. My expanded jaw closed around his head and shoulders in one motion. He tried to speak when I began to swallow, his muffled words vibrating through me. I felt his struggles, weak after weeks of captivity. Felt his disbelief that this was truly happening. Felt the moment he understood there would be no last-minute rescue, no divine intervention.
The silk wrapping made him easier to consume—a smooth package that slid down my transformed throat. My body rippled with muscular contractions, drawing him deeper. His legs kicked frantically for a moment, then stilled as my venom began its work.
I took one last final swallow, and devoured him. Then he was gone, dissolved into the acidic darkness of my stomach. I felt his life force spreading through me, his truth dissolving into me. As I consumed him, I understood him.
He had been cruel, with crueler appetites. But the greater sin to his superiors had been his incompetence. Rather than deal with him, his superiors had kicked him out of Rome and given a post at the end of the world. Out of sight, out of mind. His inferiority had grown, and it had fed his cruelty.
He was everything I had thought myself to be. Weak, pathetic, worthless. A coward who needed to hurt those who couldn’t fight back to feel strong. But I had always been stronger, and now he was nothing at all.
Beyond his consumption, I felt completion. The circle my mother’s blood had started was finally closed.
Power flooded through me. Not just physical strength but understanding. I saw my grandmother’s memories, my great-grandmother’s, all the way back to that first binding. Understood fully what we were, what the forest had always intended.
My enormous tail whipped throughout the space, crashing into stone walls until they collapsed. This human structure was nothing, and I returned it to nothing. I slid out of the villa, bringing down everything behind me. The stone fortress crumbled around me, stones remembering they were earth, mortar returning to dust. All that remained was the mosaic on the foyer floor. Medusa’s azure eyes glinted up at me, and I swore she grinned.
I raced back towards the forest, towards my true home, when I felt Tiberius’ final thoughts.
The road... soldiers…they will destroy you all.
Through the chaos around me, I heard it—the steady tromp of Roman boots on stone. Many boots. An entire century at least, marching up the road.
Tiberius had been right about one thing. Rome would not accept the loss of a villa, the death of a citizen, the whispers of monsters in the wood. They would come with iron and fire. They would try to burn out the infection they thought we represented.
I contracted back to my mostly human form, though my skin kept its scales, my eyes their serpentine cast. I cast one last look back on the villa. It was almost completely gone. Let it crumble. Let the forest reclaim it stone by stone.
I ran through the woods, but still felt the vibration of the legion moving across the land. I scaled a tree in three breaths, breaking through the canopy to locate them. On the road below, a column of red and bronze stood in perfectly straight formation. At their head rode priests in white, carrying a staff that held the iron eagle of Rome at its head.
As Gysgod has said, the war would claim us all, no matter our allegiance. And it was no longer coming.
It was here.
I had to warn the others.
Chapter 22
The Serpent
Ifound them at the old boundary where Roman stone had once cut through ancient wood. But the road was gone—or rather, transformed. Massive roots erupted through the paving stones, and trees grew in impossible tangles. The forest had reclaimed its stolen ground overnight.
“Sister!” Rashka flowed from the shadows, her serpent form magnificent. Her serpentine tail was massive and covered in black and white striped scales that flowed up her abdomen, only partially disappearing as they transitioned to bare human breasts. “You did it. I can smell it on you.”
Gysgod emerged next, her pack surrounding us. “The Romans march into our trap. They expect a road. They’ll find only teeth.”
All around us, the transformed gathered. The bark-skinned man had sprouted branches from the top of his head, his face barely visible behind a curtain of leaves. The fox twins perched in branches, their amber eyes gleaming with anticipation. Others I hadn’t seen before—a woman whose face was dotted with raven’s feathers, a man with antlers spreading from his skull like a crown.
“Where is the spider?” Rashka asked, noting my solitary arrival.
“He will not come.” The words hurt as they fell from my mouth.
Rashka’s expression softened slightly. “Then we fight without him. The forest will—”
The sound of horns cut through the morning air. Roman horns, calling formations, signaling the advance. Through the trees, we could see them—three hundred soldiers in perfect rows, their shields locked together, their priests chanting words that made the air burn.
“Spread out,” Gysgod commanded. “Use the forest. Be the shadows between leaves, the roots that trip, the branches that strike. This is our domain.”
The battle began with no fanfare, only a whisper.
A soldier stepped off what he thought was road and sank to his waist in earth that hadn’t been soft moments before. Branches swung down with crushing force where no wind blew. Roots erupted to tangle feet and pierce armor gaps. The forest itself had become a weapon.
I moved through the chaos, still learning my new form. My body flowed between human and serpent, sometimes running on legs, sometimes sliding on scales. When soldiers broke formation, I was there—fangs finding arteries, venom turning their blood to fire. But I was clumsy compared to the others, still learning my gift.
That’s when I saw him—the high priest, standing untouched in a circle of blessed salt. His staff glowed with light that burned away reaching vines and sent the transformed reeling. They called it holy light, but what is light without the darkness? Around him, lesser priests maintained a protective chant that held the forest at bay.
Our eyes met across the battlefield. He was young for a high priest, perhaps forty, with the rough hands of one who had seen many battles. When he grinned, it held the same certainty Tiberius had worn—the absolute faith that Rome would endure.
“Demon,” he called, his voice carrying despite the screams and clash of metal. “Face me.”
I should have stayed with the others, used the forest’s advantage. But pride—new and sharp as my fangs—drove me forward. I slithered through the melee, dodging sword strikes and pilum throws, until I stood just outside his circle.
“I am a demon created by your own hubris. Something your empire woke when it tried to tame the wild.”
“All savagery falls before civilization.” He raised his staff, and the eagle atop it blazed with light that made my scales burn. “Your kind is a disease. We are the cure.”
I struck, but he was ready. The staff swung to meet me, its blessed metal searing through my scales. Pain, burning hot pain flared across my arm. I reeled back, my form stuttering between shapes as my heart raced, my chest tight.
He advanced.
“Did you think you were powerful?” He struck again, driving me to my knees. “I have killed dozens of your kind. Burned their sacred groves. Salted their ritual grounds. You are nothing but another beast to be put down.”
He struck me again and I fell to the ground. My skin burned where the iron had touched me, and it was all too familiar. The scent of burning flesh, the deep throbbing. It was pain I should have been immune to, but instead it froze me, years of memories holding me down better than any chain.
He raised the staff for a killing blow, and I saw my death in its divine light. The forest screamed around us, but could not breach his protections. This was how it ended—gasping in the dirt while Rome’s faith crushed the old ways once again.
The staff never fell.
A massive form descended from the trees above, eight spider limbs thrown between me and the deadly assault. He took the blow meant for me, the blessed iron sinking deep into his spider thorax. Light and darkness warred where metal met chitin, and his scream shook the very earth beneath us.
But he didn’t fall. Instead, his additional arms closed around the priest like a cage. The blessed circle shattered as he skewered priest after priest on his serrated claws. As the protective chants were silenced, the forest rushed in with all its hunger.
Ysu’s mouth opened to that terrible width, and his mandibles grasped the priest’s head, yanking it free of his body. Ysu stuffed the skull into his mouth and it crunched between his rows of teeth. Red human blood mixed with the green ichor that flowed out of Ysu, coating the forest floor.
The battle turned in an instant—Romans fleeing as their holy protection crumbled, the forest pursuing with root and fang.
But I only had eyes for Ysu as he collapsed, the ground shaking with his weight. I ran up beside him, cradling his head in my arms.
“Why did you do that?” I screamed at him. “Why did you come?”
“Stupid... little serpent.” His voice was weak, but fond. “Of course I came. You think…anything in this world would stop me… when I felt you in danger?”
Tears I didn’t know I could still cry streaked down my scaled cheeks. “I ran. I denied you. I—”
“Doesn’t matter.” One of his human hands found my face, claws gentle against my scales. “Even if you never chose me... I would always choose you. I would always protect you. That’s what it means... to truly claim someone. To love someone. I had forgotten that.”
His chest shook as he took deep breaths. “I’m sorry, my neidr. You were right. I was afraid. Afraid that the most beautiful creature who has ever come into my life would leave me to my hunger. I knew it would devour me, if I didn’t have you by my side. But I hurt you in a way you did not wish to be hurt, and for that I should not be forgiven.”
Around us, Roman survivors fled down paths that twisted back on themselves, their screams filling the air, but I barely noticed, focused only on the ancient creature dying in my arms.
“Don’t,” I begged. “You arrogant arachnid. Don’t talk like…like you are leaving me.”
“The forest has you now.” His multiple eyes began to close one by one. “And you... you have yourself. That’s all I ever wanted... for you to know your own strength.”
“Ysu—”
“Though if you wanted... to choose me now…” His mandibles clicked weakly in what might have been humor. “I wouldn’t… object.”
I pressed my forehead to his. “I choose you. Not from obligation or gratitude or broken need. I choose you as you chose me—to guard, to keep, to stand beside.”
“Pretty words... for a pretty serpent.” But his eyes brightened slightly, then dimmed again. One by one, his eight eyes began to close, the light fading from each like stars winking out at dawn.
“No.” The word tore from me with force that shook the trees. “You don’t get to die now.” I refused. I refused. I cried out in anguish, holding him so tight a normal man would have been crushed. He was mine! I refused to let him go.
The memories of my ancestors returned to me. That fateful night when they had given hunger earthly form through an arrogant war lord. The spirit consumed him as the priestess chanted, “Take this vessel, be bound to mortal form, but know this—as we give, so must you. Blood for blood, venom for venom.”
Ysu’s breathing grew shallow, the wound from the blessed iron spreading corruption through his ancient form. Green ichor pooled beneath us, soaking into earth.
“Some things... even monsters... cannot survive,” he whispered.
“You’re wrong.” I shifted him in my arms, leaning over him. “You claimed me with venom. Made me yours.”
“Yes…” His voice was fading.
“But I never claimed you.” I leaned closer, feeling my fangs extend, venom sacs swelling with purpose. “You marked me, transformed me, saved me. Now it’s my turn.”
His eyes widened slightly as understanding dawned.
I pressed my hand to his chest, feeling his ancient heart stuttering. “You are mine, Ysu. My guardian, my chosen. And I will not let you die.”
He was weak, but he nodded. My fangs found the soft flesh where his human neck met spider armor, sinking deep.
He convulsed, all eight legs thrashing as my venom met his. Where the blessed iron had poisoned, my gift purified. Where the priest’s faith had wounded, my claim mended. I felt the connection between us shift and complete—no longer one-sided possession but mutual choosing.
The creatures of the forest held their breath as I poured everything into him—my rage, my venom, my love. Yes, love. I could name it now, this feeling that transcended hunger or need. The venom carried it all, rewriting his wounds into wholeness.
When I finally pulled back, dizzy from the effort, his eyes were open again. All eight of them, brighter than before, with flecks of gold that matched mine.
“You bit me,” he said, a wicked smile on his face.
“I claimed you.” I helped him up, marveling at how the terrible wound had closed, leaving only a scar that mimicked the pattern of my scales. “The spider and the serpent, bound by venom, but together by choice.”
He touched the mark my fangs had left, and I saw something I’d never seen in his ancient features—surprise. “I can feel it. Your venom, not changing me, but…”
“Completing you. As yours completed me. Helped me become my true self.” I smiled, tasting his ichor on my fangs.
