Chains rattled and the faint appearance of a figure seemingly in struggle flashed briefly from the darkness to the light before being swallowed by the darkness again.
Conan walked towards the dark area with a scrutinizing gaze, silently in the still and eerie darkness of the dungeon.
Soon, he got close enough to the figure and found himself standing in front of what startled even him. It wasn't what the creature was that startled him, but the state it was in.
"What in..."
Hysterically struggling in chains was a creature with a humanoid upper body. With narrow shoulders, small breasts, narrow waist, and wide hips.
From its wide hip, however, it was serpentine, its length ending in an approximately seven feet long tail. The majority of its skin was layered with protective translucent green and shimmering scales— Even in the darkness.
The scales are articulated with each segment aligning with the others in a wavy sequence. Except that the scales didn't cover all the parts of its body, parts such as its chest part down to its lower belly.
It was a female... with diamond shaped face and thin lips, which were wide open, revealing her sharp fangs and the depth of her mouth. Her earth-green serpentine eyes were wide as she relentlessly struggled to break free from the chains she was bound in.
The scales would have been incredibly cute—to Conan— if not for the chains hooked into them, so much the scales were brutally penetrated and crushed, tarnishing them with the blood of the creature.
Sticky and viscous substances were splattered all over its body, slicking its wavy and stringy shoulder-length hair with filth.
It was eerily silent or so it wanted to, but as it struggled, the hooks dug further into its body and drew more blood making the poor creature wince in pain.
'A Lamia...'
Conan's serpentine eyes narrowed as he looked at the chain, studying the Spirit Code Inscriptions that were inscribed on each segment of the chain.
Anytime the Lamia pulled on the chain, a crack would appear on them, but then, the inscriptions on the chains will shimmer briefly and mend the chains instantaneously.
If it weren't for the inscriptions, the Lamia would have long escaped and would have killed the priests. The monstrous creature was not what they could handle, this made him wonder how they managed to capture it in the first place.
The rattles of chains continued and the bleeding of the lamia became profuse and so did its wincing increase. It looked to be in a hysterical state especially after sensing him.
Conan's face wried in disgust for the men of kongieus and pity for the lamia, as it was of lower existence to the serpents... A mortal-level existence.
Still, it had the serpentine blood, and that was enough...
Conan raised his hands, his palm facing the lamia and the chains as it exuded misty spiritual energy, which slowly froze the chains even as they resisted.
Not long after, the chains broke due to the Lamia continuously pulling on it and Conan freezing it. The Lamia plopped to the ground with a resounding thud and wriggled on the floor hysterically.
It was then that he saw the gaping hole in her ventral area, oozing viscous and impure semen and dark blood. He felt even more pity for the poor essent, the assailant was brutal without regard for life.
And for a second there, he forgot that he had killed the Priest who treated her that way already. He had wanted to give the priests a slow death but they were too weak.
"How could they treat a such lovely creature this way?"Conan muttered, his disdain for the men of kongieus increasing by folds.
And yet again, what did he expect from people with the bloodline of the progenitor of Satyrs?
Her spirit and mental state had been destabilized from the trauma and distress. The unwillingness she showed being used to draw energy from her played a huge factor.
But amidst all these was her conatus—her will to live. Even though the suffering and agony she faced were undoubtedly traumatizing, her conatus never faded.
Conatus is the strive or endeavor of a being to keep existing in itself and keep improving. Or in other words "the will to keep living no matter the circumstances, and to improve."
Conan raised his hands and conjured a rain of water over the lamia to cleanse it of the filth. The lamia also seemed to recover a bit from feeling the shower of warm water on her body, it looked around in vigilance before its gaze finally fell on Conan.
On seeing his serpentine eyes and feeling his purer bloodline and higher existence, She struggled to rise on her tail but fell back, unable to withstand the pain caused by the devastating injuries on her body.
"It's okay, just stay down and be calm. Papa will set you free."Conan reassuringly said, but the lower serpent wasn't trying to run from him anyway.
The lamia bowed, resting her body on both hands, and let Conan shower her. But Conan didn't notice her bow, all he noticed was that her hair was so few that he could see her scalp.
'It must have been uprooted to make silk armor or strings for musical instruments.'He thought and looked to the side, there he saw strands of fine onyx black stringy and tough hair, bundled on the bar of a cell. Probably for the ugly priest to sell and will no doubt gain a lot from it, given the usefulness of the hair.
He stopped rinsing her and held her chin up, signing her to open her mouth, which she did, revealing her fangs which were encased in glass capsules to harvest the venom that was secreted from them.
He sighed and removed the capsules and tossed them away without regard for the precious venom secreted.
The priest was resourceful, drawing power continuously from the Lamia and draining it of its life force and spiritual energy. And at the same time, earning money by selling the fibrous and stringy hair to seamsters, and extracting her venom to sell to the alchemists to make deadly poison, vertigo toxin gas, or even studied to make cures to rare, monster-borne diseases.
"It's okay..."He caressed the hair of the poor essent, the Lamia lowered her head in sadness, but now is not the time to be sad, is it?
"Do you want to live?"Conan asked, his expression soft and contemplating.
She raised her head to look up to Conan who was on a knee to caress her hair with a fatherly smile. A ray of hope could be seen in her eyes. She nodded, her resolve to live had never been shaken, even during the agonizing times in which she suffered at the hands of the real monsters.
"Good... I'd be disappointed if you don't want to..."Even as a monster-kin with little to no intelligence, What the lamia went through had shaped its mentality in ways unimaginable, as it suffered, it strived to improve and break free, thus improving its intelligence, albeit in twisted ways that not even Conan could imagine.
He didn't know that the serpent was seeing him as a god of vengeance, who sat on a throne, a bright and enormous wispy white star rising in the background such that it formed a crown on his head and clouds of darkness, from the midst of which crispy white lightning crackled at his feet.
She even heard things that he didn't say, such as "Do you want to have revenge?" To which she nodded, then he continued, "Do you want vengeance on the Satyrs?"
He stretched out his benevolent hand—which appeared hazy to her— and gave her a blue semi-solid orb, and sprinkled his blood and it. To her it seemed like something greater and exquisite than divine ambrosia had been offered to her, saying "Evolve, and rise to live, never let the flame of vengeance be extinguished in you!"
The Sapphire blue orb entered her mouth and everything turned dark, followed by excruciating pain, feeling her bones shrinking and resizing, tendons and muscles changing forms, and her internal organs churned and changed in forms and positions.
But she knew the pain was for the better, so she endured till the process was over albeit it felt like forever.
But a God Of Vengeance can't give her something just to watch her writhe in pain to his heart's content right?
[Narr:Okay let's switch POV]
Conan brought out the Orange semi-solid orb made out of condensed spirits, the one he made out of the sentient spirits—the weepers— with the spirit cyclone.
The apparel on him shifted and revealed his hands, he created a dagger of ice and cut his palm, making his blood drop on the orb.
He put it in the opened mouth of the lamia who was drooling already on smelling his blood "This will help nourish your exhausted spirit and my blood will increase the purity of your bloodline. That way, it won't take you long to evolve."
Conan said to reassure her and boost her morale, but unlike his expectations, the evolution started as soon the orb of condensed spirits and his pure serpentine blood was digested as soon as they entered her mouth.
She winced in pain as her face deformed, the same as every other part of her body. Her scales detached from her skin and cocooned her in a husk, letting new and healthy ones take their place. New bones formed from the old ones and new muscles were created to support the new bones.
Her tail split Into two halves and started reshaping, the bones in each halves crunching and reforming into new structures. Her flesh tore and took new shapes.
The few left of her hair withered and her scalp was left naked for a while before new, healthy, sharp stringy hair rapidly sprouted from her bald scalp.
Throughout this process, she was writhing uncontrollably on the floor in excruciating pain but didn't make any noise than to wince loudly and agonizingly.
Meanwhile, during the process of the evolution, Conan took out a comfortable chair from his spatial ring and sat, turning his back on the evolution, refusing to see the process because it reminded him of her—Phiona, his phoenix wife.
Everything reminds him of her.
"Is my blood that powerful in this mortal form? So unexpected."He muttered, he thought his bloodline would have lost its purity after regressing into a mortal form.
He waited, thinking in the dark dimensional dungeon that was full of dried-up corpses with an evolving lamia, and him, a melancholic serpent lord.
He looked back at the Lamia and a sudden glint appeared in his slitted eyes. Did he smile because why not? A great idea has been conceived.