He was fast, but so was I. If my condition wasn’t so poor, I could have taken him out in the first few seconds. Now, I had to fight defensively and use his own momentum against him.
"Come on, noodle boy, get it over with," I mocked, trying to goad him into making a mistake.
Whoever this figure before me was, I couldn’t ignore the basic instincts that might drive any male, especially in an abandoned place that looked lawless.
His tail whipped towards me again, and I dodged, slashing at it with my dagger. It dulled the blade a bit, but I still managed a sizable cut.
We were both bleeding from multiple wounds, the sand beneath us soaked with our blood. One of us had to go down soon.
The blood lured other predators out, much to my dismay. Growls came from the surrounding jungle, and things that looked like armored lizards began to close in.
The red worm also noticed and shifted his focus away from me as the creatures didn’t seem at all interested in him, or me, but in Nivi.
We both sprang into action to protect her. I slashed at the first creature, kicking its body away while the worm used his tail to swat at the others. He shifted into a full snake form, spitting some kind of venom at them, which made them writhe in pain and back off.
A few still insisted, so I grabbed a stone and cracked their skulls in. Maybe the gore sight would make the worm boy back off.
It only made him hiss in disgust. He flicked the blood off his tail as he shifted to his semi humanoid form.
I pulled the brain matter off the skull and threw it at him. He caught it in midair and used his long nail to pry it open, taking out a shining core before tossing the rest of the brain to the side.
He brought the core to his lips and swallowed it whole, his eyes glowing a faint blue, matching the core’s color, before turning back to red. The bleeding from his wounds slowed down.
I immediately made a grab for the other creatures’ bodies, not giving him any chance to take them. I cracked them open like coconuts against the stone and collected their cores, shoving them inside my pocket.
"Who are you, female?" he asked as I finished my harvesting. "You don’t belong here."
He had a point there. I was out of place, completely foreign to this weird world.
Nivi had yet to wake up. I looked at her, lying there on the sand, so peaceful, despite the blood and grime surrounding her.
I turned back to the red worm. "Where am I?"
He tilted his head as if trying to figure out if I was mocking him. "My territory."
He had answered my question literally, so I rephrased it. "What’s this place?"
He squinted at me, taking in my appearance and the blood covering me. I must have looked like someone stung by a nest of bees, all swollen and full of red and purple splotches.
"Crimson Sneika Shore," he answered finally, as if that explained anything.
That name sounded familiar. I gave the worm a second glance, from the top of his head, long red hair. To his shoulders, and the red scales running down to his hips. Red tail, red eyes, red lips...
"Kurus." I mumbled.
"How do you know my name, female?"
I had heard his name, alongside the name of this place. It was from Nivi’s latest obsession, a novel, where a character named Kurus was a snake beastman.
Snake beastmen were a cold-blooded species, which meant they lived a solitary life and didn’t rely on others for survival, except for the mating season. They would kidnap females from other tribes and take them back to their nest to breed.
’Oh hell no, that’s not happening.’
That guy had almost snatched Nivi for his breeding stock, and that was not going to happen under my watch. I had just got her away from one threat; I wasn’t about to let some fantasy red noodle ruin our newly acquired freedom.
"How many of you are here?" I asked, wanting to gauge my chances of defending Nivi from other red noodles.
He looked confused, then misunderstood my question, and answered literally again. "One. Only one Kurus."
It seemed his brain was hardwired to answer only what was directly asked, like he didn’t know how to lie, but also had no imagination, which made him sound almost... innocent?
"Why are you not trying to kill me now?" I asked, wondering what had changed.
He reached for his ear, where I had bitten him. His hand came back stained with blood. "You marked me. You are my mate now."
’Mate? What?’
He said it in such a disgusting way, as if I was the one who violated him, and he was left to deal with the consequences.
"Undo it," I ordered.
He looked even more confused. "How? The mark is your doing."
I had no answer to that. "Doesn’t your kind kill your mates after breeding?"
"Yes," he nodded, confirming my suspicion, "But I don’t want to breed with you. I want her."
He pointed at Nivi, who was still unconscious. Oh, for the love of all that was holy. Someone was really testing my patience today.
"Then why not kill me and take her?"
"If I kill you, I will die too."
He made it sound so simple that I felt stupid for not understanding the connection. This situation was messed up, but I was not about to complain about the perks.
"Go fetch us some food and water, mate," I ordered, hoping he would listen to me, since I was his so-called mate.
"I don’t take orders from females," he refused.
I grabbed the dulled dagger and pointed it at my throat. "Do you want to die?"
The red noodle looked like he was about to strangle me for the third time today. He probably would have tried if not for his self-preservation instincts. His red eyes squinted at me before he turned to leave.
"Don’t take too long, or I’ll just bleed myself to death," I warned.
He hissed at me one last time, before slithering his ass away towards the jungle, keeping me in his line of sight the whole time.
Good riddance. I plopped down beside Nivi, panting heavily. My body was screaming in pain, and I was pretty sure I had a few broken ribs from the snake’s tail.
I took the cores from my pocket and inspected them closely.