Chapter Four- The Boy Raised by Snakes
My birth mother’s execution was inevitable after her dealings in a very messy Savorium operation.
I was ten and she’d been back in my life for about two years.
Her name was Eliza Darkbloom and all she left me was a name, three good memories, and a nasty Savorium dependency that I got off of by sheer force of will… a little murder, and lots of thievery.
It was the Venomwoods that truly raised me.
A forest deep in a chasm at the base of the Ruinspire Peaks that possesses one of the Kingdom of Dark Magic’s best kept secrets: the resting place of the Titan Xeusis.
He held his beloved serpents of the woods in the highest regard, blessed by his own hand.
They have protected the sleeping Titan’s final home for hundreds of years.
The dense forest is cradled within the chasm, spanning many acres.
The canopy claws for the Ruinspire Peaks, never reaching far enough.
The enormity of it is hard to reflect on, even now.
The forest boasts dense Moonling trees, weeping willows, Luminaria flowers, flowing red streams, and a delicate food chain that placed me smack at the bottom of it when I first arrived as a newborn.
At but a few days old, I was thrown from the cliff into the chasm, landing upon the canopy of trees.
I know nothing of how or why I was thrown, but as with many things that are treacherous in this world, I attribute it to the innate cruelty of a man.
The same cruelty that I, too, possess. .
When I was returned to my mother eight years later, the short time I had with her before her execution offered no clarity on how I ended up in the Venomwoods.
The matriarch of the serpents, Sylvithria, gave the order to bring me down from where I landed and accept me into her woods.
I grew mentally tethered to the serpents, learning from their memories that a coil of glorious luminescent-scaled snakes had carried me from the tops of the trees to the matriarch.
I was simply riding upon their slithering forms, floating with ease.
They often carried me this way, even after I could walk.
I didn’t much care for the feeling of their smooth scales gliding beneath me at first, but I got used to it.
Sylvithria wiped my tears and quieted my wailing, for there are far worse things in the Venomwoods than the snakes who call it home.
Sylvithria was a sentient Diamondblood Constrictor who could loosely take the form of a person.
As I grew up, she appeared to me as an elderly woman, silver and green scales smattering her skin.
Her primary silver scales turned to equally silver hair that was longer than she was tall.
I suspect she took this form to offer me maternal comfort.
My first personal memory of her involved stealth training and fishing when I was probably three.
“Focusss now, Harrow,” she always elongated the sound an S makes. I did too, until I received some odd looks upon reuniting with people at eight years old.
My siblings—or so I referred to them as—were all of the snakes but especially two younglings who took the form of boys my age.
Jacks and Cain preferred my form over their native snake forms so we spent days playing in the river when we weren’t with the others in the pit, the writhing heart of our home where we slept.
It was quite literally a pit and the hundreds of snakes kept me warm, the largest of them curling around me and cradling me until I dozed off most nights.
Even now, I tend to sleep in a nest-like arrangement of pillows.
It was because of my time in the Venomwoods that I earned the moniker ‘Serpent of Netherhelm.’ Mostly, it had to do with my rapid, precise, and calculated kills—I never killed anybody unless I was sure that I wouldn’t fail.
By learning to move and exist amongst the Venomwood’s serpents, in many ways, I became one.
The matriarch insisted that I start ingesting the venom of her serpents, bestowing upon me the forbidden magical ability to produce my own venom.
My magic gives me hypnotic control of my victims and my blades are spelled with my venom, imbued into the metal when I lick it with my forked tongue.
Sylvithria began the grueling process of forking my tongue just as I was learning to speak.
That, and my rare affinity for Serpent magic, has practically made me a myth. No one who faces me lives.
My first kill wasn’t meant to happen, but once I got a taste of the thrill, I knew it wouldn’t be my last. Sylvithria had allowed my birth mother to have me at eight, a decision that would change the trajectory of my life forever.
When I lost her two years later, I was fighting to come off of my Savorium addiction and desperate for food.
I had gotten quite good at stealing but on this night, the withdrawal and hunger mixed just enough to make me reckless.
My hatred was festering after the crown ordered my mother’s death, and I had just spotted the perfect target in a shadowed alleyway.
Her name was Delilah Blanche, a musician with an angelic voice– making her way home far too late at night.
Her heels tapping a beat on the cobblestones, echoing off the alley walls.
She thought she was alone, no doubt intent on getting back to her family.
Her husband? The King’s public executioner who ended my own mother.
I decided then and there that Delilah was going to die.
She was so oblivious to what lurked in the shadows.
Click, click, click, went her heels.
“Glyndra,” I whispered the stealth spell to silence my movements. I slipped closer, silent, calculating. Hesitation was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Even now, I can’t afford to let myself feel anything at all. Empathy makes you weak.
My eyes trailed over my target, her elegant dress exposing her tan skin, still warm with life. As she walked, her hips swayed gently, her spine such a fragile and breakable thing.
I knew once I killed someone who was no direct threat to me, I would become a pariah amongst my family in the Venomwoods.
Even the snakes have more honor than to kill something with its back turned, when it poses no threat to them.
I was really planning to get clean and run home.
I wanted to go home to the Venomwoods so badly.
As I watched Delilah Blanche saunter towards the home she shared with my mother’s killer, I feared the Venomwoods, Sylvithria, Jacks, and Cain would remain in my past. Fortunately, Sylvithria forgave me and the life I chose.
People often underestimate the strength it takes to stab someone, to break flesh and bone.
I don’t recall it being hard, but I did notice the strength it took, the focus, and precision.
Delilah gasped as I drove the blade into the base of her spine, dropping to her knees as she bellowed a scream.
Her flesh gripped the knife, yanking me forward and nearly on top of her.
I remember gritting my teeth until they hurt and fighting against the weight of her struggling frame.
Her scream cut through the tranquility of the night. “Nirath,” I trapped her within a silencing spell. My magic crept into her windpipe and stole away her last breaths.
She died in my arms, twitching, her eyes full of tears. Those wide, desperate eyes searched for answers in her killer’s face. But she didn’t know me. She died with only an unknown child’s face to behold.
There was no regret, only a moment where I wondered if the emptiness in her gaze would do anything to put life back into my mother’s. It didn’t; it never would. Not even in my memory. The fear in Delilah’s eyes mirrored my own mother’s. Was justice served?
I let her limp body slide from my small hands. No more than a child and they were already coated in blood.
I left no calling card. I later heard that her death was attributed to a random mugging. Not wrong. I lifted enough gold off of her to medicate me through the last of my withdrawals, feed me, and house me until I was twelve.
At twelve, I began training with Toleus. He taught me that there was an art to death, a signature to killing.
Toleus was a ruthless mentor, but a thorough one. My education for the next four years was in depth. I learned the ways of the upper class, I became skilled at mimicking accents from the other Kingdoms, and I learned of our Blessed Fallen Titans, becoming closely acquainted with each one.
Reading and writing came easily to me; the few others who trained with me only managing to pick up the basics. I leaned into journaling for some time, though of course, my musings are kept in a disappearing journal only accessible by my magic.
I learned six different fighting styles, along with spells not native to this kingdom, spells that I can’t use because I was born with Xeusis’s gift of dark magic. Still, if I needed to know a spell to aid someone in earth, ice, or light magic—I could.
It was a gruelling education, one built on lack of sleep, high demands, and little social or free time.
Toleus delighted in punishing us, knew we would never challenge him as he did.
He demanded respect, he demanded discipline.
He got it. He kept proof of our kills, from my first one under his eye to the last, so he had the ability to blackmail and turn us in.
Our lives were in his hands. No one dared test if it was a bluff. I certainly didn’t.
I finished his six-year training program in only four years, served him until it suited me, and then bailed at age twenty, once I made enough money to earn my freedom.
From there, I trained with the Ruinspire Peak’s mage, Frovia, in Shadow Walking. As I grew, I strengthened and trained; I killed for pleasure and I killed for money.