"I'm going to be an adventurer!"
- The Priestess, Goblin Slayer
"AH."
- Michael Payton, Viper
"That's no way to get ahead in life."
- Johnny Depp, Sleepy Hollow
An underground waterfall rushed over the sounds of fighting as the living clashed with the unliving. Angela zigzagged through the air with long white tassels flailing behind her hips, springing off of the corners of ancient marble columns with the speed of a dove and the weightlessness of a flower petal. Death launched swarms of tiny sickles her way and just barely missed her ankles every time she jumped.
When the combatants were in closer range, Angela tried to topple Death with a rhythmic chain of palm strikes and high kicks. Death stood on guard with his scythe held behind his cloak and carefully stepped backwards through the ankle high water. He took one deadly slash with his scythe that should have cleaved Angela in half across the belly, but her reflexes were faster than his and she dodged the attack with a long backwards flip. Her boots splashed back into the water when she was a safe thirty paces away.
The two opposing enemies came to a standstill, each holding their fighting stance and trying to predict the other's next move. They were both drenched with spring water, and Angela had to brush away the tangles of wavy blonde hair that kept sticking to her eyes. Death may have had some samurai-like aspects, but she was seven tenths ballerina-ninja.
Death held his scythe across the tattered damp cloak covering his ribcage. His fleshless white teeth gave him only one expression: A perpetual sinister grin.
"Mortality is an endless game of betting and bargaining," Death said toward his opponent, raising his voice over the surging waterfall beside them. "But for you, the wheel of fortune will always stop on the same spoke."
"Huh?" Angela blinked, failing to catch the casino-inspired lingo in his cryptic speech.
"Go Fish," Death answered with a low chuckle. The blade of his scythe flashed with an aura of hellfire.
A magic whirlpool appeared in the silt under Angela's feet. Clouds of steam sizzled around her and the water boiled at her ankles as heat from the River Styx wafted up through the portal. Out of all the cruel things Death cover have summoned on her, out of all the barbaric horrors that could be sent to attack her, only one emerged from the portal in the brief moment in was opened:
A tadpole the size of a behemoth.
The aquatic monstrosity spawned out of the riverbed under Angela and flopped over her faster than she could move. Its entire underbelly was a long gaping mouth, allowing the creature to engulf its prey rather crush it.
Death hid his grin under his hood. He had scored a jackpot this round.
The outline of Angela was visible through the tadpole's bioluminescent skin after it closed around her. The sudden lack of oxygen combined with the powerful sleeping agents in the demon's vital fluids robbed her of her strength and made her float limply in its vacuous insides. With most of its body sitting above the shallow spring water, the tadpole quickly dried out and changed into a semi-crystallized state, triggering the next stage of its immortal life cycle.
Angela flinched inside of her bubbling jewel prison as dark forces worked around her. Her silhouette separated into two nearly identical forms in the gloomy, murky shadow play: Her original solid outline dressed with draping dance gauntlets and belt tassels that her look vaguely like she had fins, and a second transparent outline that exposed her natural body contours. The lighter figure floated above her solid twin for a moment, before dissolving into sea foam and fueling the demon's metamorphosis into something even more terrible, leaving just the lifeless solid figure intact. The tadpole was purging its victim's soul and incorporating her physical being with its own.
The water demon turned to solid rock in the final stages of its transformation. The shell began to crack and crumble apart, and the creature's new form crawled out from its own fossilized corpse.
It was massive and walked on all fours like a salamander. Its body was covered with a slippery green hide and its giant fang-filled mouth took up most of its head. It had a tail divided into segments like a scorpion's, but in place of a retractable stinger, a more complex body organ had formed.
Angela's mortal likeness grew from the end of the creature's tail. Most of her already scant clothing had been destroyed in the transformation. Her upper half would have been naked if it weren't for the twisted scraps of the blue and white bustier clinging to her chest by a few laces, threatening to unravel at any moment and thereby render her properly naked. Her human qualities ended just below her waistline, where her legs disappeared and her body features blended into the damp leathery skin of the creature's tail.
The union of Angela and the demon tadpole had given birth to a deadly Amphisbaena. Its squat four-legged front half was adapted for hunting and attacking, while the human mimic growing on its tail functioned like a second brain that could attract fresh prey and cast healing magic. If the creature kept its front half submerged and raised its tail above the tide, all an unsuspecting victim would see was a beautiful golden-haired sea maiden waiting for them out in the water.
For all intents and purposes, Angela's body had been turned into the butt of a horrendous joke.
The Angela end of the monster glanced toward Death with swirling aquamarine eyes and smiled a suggestive and devious little smile. Death acknowledged her with empty black sockets and a never ending sneer. Neither said a word, but they understand each other's vile intentions perfectly. Death gave little more than a slight nod before crossing his scythe and disappearing back into a black void.
The Amphisbaena slithered out of the shallow water and followed the trail of ancient stone columns leading out of the caverns. The front portion kept its teeth bare and its long narrow nostrils pointed toward the ground, while the Angela portion slowly waved high in the air on alert. The creature's hybrid instincts drove it to leave its nest in the underground spring and start hunting for prey in the dry marble corridors in the castle above.
Author's note: If you played Portrait of Ruin you'd understand the samurai thing.
Author's note 2: If you played Castlevania 64 you'd understand the fish thing.