Tales of the Snake Men: Book Three – Chapter 8
Chapter 8: Silence After The Screams
In Tales of the Snake Men: Book Three – Chapter 8, The purge reaches its breaking point—Khan faces the thing wearing his name and finally says no. But when the screams stop, the silence that follows might be the most dangerous part.
The Purge Peaks
The storm within the containment chamber reached its peak. The Havoc energy surged, bright as lightning, crashing into Khan in relentless surges, each wave stripping away layers of corruption. The remaining Slime shrieked in defiance—not with sound, but with pulses of pressure and rage that rippled through the chamber like thunder underwater.
Inside, Khan convulsed—caught between two worlds. His spine arced so violently it seemed it might snap. Claws—his own claws now, not the Slime’s—gouged the cylinder’s base, the screech of metal on stone cutting through the magical maelstrom. His muscles seized and released in violent spasms, each breath a desperate, rattling gasp torn from lungs that felt full of ground glass.
The Slime’s Final Offer
The Slime’s final voice slithered through his consciousness, now sharp and desperate:
“We can be strong again,” it whispered, the words caressing the edges of his mind like phantom fingers. “Together. Let me silence the pain—no more shame, no more weakness, just untouchable power…”
“They’ll never love you again. You belong to ME!”
But this time… Khan’s mental walls held. There was NO response and absolutely NO negotiation.
King Hiss pressed his palm against the barrier, voice steady but burning with urgency.
“Khan—look at me! I’m not leaving… but you must fight. Do not let it claim you. You are my Son, my General—” His voice broke slightly, raw with emotion he rarely allowed himself to show. “Remember who you were before any of this touched you!”
Inside the maelstrom, Khan’s eyes strobed between the Slime’s crimson red and his natural amber—two souls wrestling for control of the same vessel, the war playing out in the very color of his gaze.
Memory As Armor
Memories rose. Yes, he remembered the agony—every electric jolt of torment, every moment his will had been bent and twisted. He remembered the psychic shackles that had turned his own mind into a prison.
But stronger than all of that—he remembered the weight of Hiss’s hand on his shoulder, solid and reassuring as bedrock. The fierce pride that had colored Rattlor’s voice when he’d earned his first commendation. Viper’s booming laughter echoing through the temple corridors after a successful raid. The way his brothers’ eyes had lit up around the strategy table, plotting their next victory under flickering torchlight.
These weren’t just memories—they were armor. He seized them as weapons forged from his own history.
“No.” The word erupted from Khan’s throat, raw and defiant. His jaw clenched so hard his fangs nearly pierced his own lips. Tears cut clean tracks through the grime coating his scales, but he didn’t care. “I remember who I am beneath your lies… and you are not part of me.”
In Khan’s mind, the battle became a duel of recollections. For every poisoned image the Slime hurled at him—every moment of weakness it tried to claim as truth— the real Khan countered with something real, something his:
- The ritual words that had bound him not in servitude, but in brotherhood: “I serve the Snake Men.”
- The metallic taste of blood mixed with triumph. Rattlor’s claws dragging Khan from the blazing wreckage of a battlefield, both of them bleeding and grinning as they stumbled back toward Serpentis.
- Hiss’s palm warm against his shoulder as the ceremonial words made him General, then followed by the overwhelming warmth of being enveloped by his brothers—their scales brushing his as they pressed close, voices overlapping in congratulation. No longer an outsider—finally, truly family.
- The gentle chaos of dinner conversations—his brothers bantering like children around the dining table, their ridiculous jokes washing over Khan’s silence as they tried to coax him from his stoic shell, hoping to earn just one laugh.
Each memory struck like a sledgehammer against the Slime’s stranglehold, fracturing its grip one sacred recollection at a time.
Slime-Khan recoiled, the memories carving through its essence like white-hot steel through flesh.
“NO! You need me! You’re NOTHING without me!”
But the real Khan erupted from the depths of his own mind—no longer defending, but attacking. His claws raked through the Slime’s form, peeling away layers of corruption like diseased skin. Each strike tore another lie free, another chain broken.
With a roar that shattered the mental landscape around them, Khan drove both claws deep into the creature’s chest, piercing through to whatever passed for its heart.
Slime-Khan convulsed, its body fracturing like ice under pressure. Green ooze hemorrhaged from the spreading cracks, hissing as it met the light of Khan’s memories—corruption fleeing purification like oil from water.
“No.” Khan’s defiant whisper carried more finality than any scream.
His face was inches from the thing that had worn his identity like stolen clothes.
“I don’t need you. I never did. I need them.”
The words landed the final blow.
A supernova of light exploded between them. The Slime’s shrieking cut off mid-syllable—not serpents severed mid-strike, but a record player suddenly unplugged. Slime-Khan’s face twisted in one last spasm of desperate fury before the purging energy consumed it completely, dissolving the abomination into wisps of fading nightmare.
And then… nothing.
Not the oppressive quiet of suppression, but the clean emptiness of a storm finally passing. The mindscape around Khan stabilized—no longer a battlefield, but simply… space. His space.
Kobra Khan stood alone in the clearing darkness, chest rising and falling in ragged gasps, shoulders trembling after a survivor crawled from wreckage. He flexed his fingers—his fingers, unmarked by the Slime’s touch. His hand rose to his face, half-expecting to find the corruption still lurking beneath, ready to resurface. But his scales were clean. His reflection, finally, was his own.
The silence crashed over him like a physical force. No whispers threading through his skull. No phantom commands puppeting his limbs. No corruption wearing his face like a mask. For the first time in days, his thoughts belonged entirely to him—raw, unfiltered, and terrifyingly quiet.
From somewhere deeper than thought, deeper than memory, a single word rose like a prayer answered:
“Free…”
His knees hit the ground hard. The word broke something inside him—not destructively, but like a dam finally releasing pressure that had built for far too long. And for the first time since the Pit had claimed him… he wept.
Not tears of pain or despair, but of release. Of coming home to himself.
I Choose Who I Serve
In the Chamber of Renewal, reality caught up with Khan’s mental victory. The remaining Slime ignited—not with flame, but with searing radiance that turned the air itself luminous. The Havoc Staff’s energy erupted in one final, overwhelming surge, flooding every corner of the chamber with purifying light.
The Slime’s death scream tore through the air—raw, primal, defeated. It peeled away from Khan’s body in smoking ribbons of green corruption, each strand burning to ash before it could touch the ground. Similar to a dying parasite finally losing its grip as the last tendrils tried desperately to burrow back into his flesh. Khan’s claws carved through empty air, severing every desperate attempt at reconnection. His voice exploded from his chest—not a roar of rage, but a declaration of sovereignty:
“I AM KOBRA KHAN – I CHOOSE WHO I SERVE!”
The words hit the chamber walls like a physical force, sending tremors through ancient stone. The darkness that had clung to him for so long recoiled as if burned, finally severed from its host.
And then—there was only Kobra Khan.
Kobra Khan’s eyes opened—clear yellow now, no trace of red corruption — and swept the chamber with the bewildered gaze of someone waking in a strange place.
Then, his legs buckled—
He collapsed to his knees at the chamber’s heart, no longer fighting gravity or corruption. His scales gleamed with their natural luster, unmarked by the Slime’s touch. Each breath came easier than the last. The Horde sigil was gone—only old battle scars remained, honest marks of wars he’d chosen to fight.
The containment field flickered and died, its purpose fulfilled. King Hiss stepped forward with the reverence of approaching something sacred—not just his General, but his son, returned from the dead.
Khan lifted his head slowly, amber eyes clear for the first time in days. With trembling fingers, he pressed his palm against the cylinder’s inner wall.
Hiss matched the gesture from outside, their hands separated by enchanted glass but aligned perfectly—a bridge across trauma, an unspoken promise kept.
Khan’s voice emerged as barely more than a whisper, rough with exhaustion and wonder:
“You… stayed.”
Hiss nodded, moisture gathering in eyes that had remained dry through wars and betrayals.
“I never left you, Khan. I couldn’t.”
“You are my son.”
A single tear carved a path down Khan’s scaled cheek. For once, he didn’t hide it. His breathing steadied, the tremors in his shoulders finally stilling. The invisible weight he’d carried—shame, corruption, self-hatred—began to lift. His heart found its natural rhythm again, strong and steady.
For the first time since the Pit had claimed him, Kobra Khan was at peace. But peace, like victory, could be fragile.
The storm within Khan had quieted, but not passed. Deep beneath the surface, memories flickered like dying embers, waiting to reignite.
The Echo Remains
Deep in the recesses of his consciousness, something stirred—not the Slime, but its echo. A whisper from damaged neural pathways, from memories scarred by days of violation:
“You may have burned me out… but you’ll never forget what it felt like.”
Despite the words, a small smirk tugged at the corner of Khan’s mouth—defiant and relieved. His breathing remained steady. But a barely perceptible shiver traced his spine—the body’s acknowledgment of wounds that might never fully heal.
Around him, were the ones who refused to give up:
Hiss, remained at the glass barrier, one hand maintaining contact, the other clenched in barely controlled emotion.
Dr. Ophidian, approached with clinical precision, but his normally detached gaze held something warmer now—hope wrestling with professional caution.
Rattlor, Tung Lashor, Scales, and Viper, flanked the chamber like honor guards, but their faces bore the strain of those who’d watched their strongest brother shatter.
None of them spoke. They had witnessed something that transcended their experience as warriors—the complete destruction and painstaking reconstruction of a soul. They’d watched their unbreakable General—the one who’d never retreated, never yielded—fragment like glass under pressure, each crack spreading until there was nothing left but sharp edges and empty spaces. They had seen him twist in torment, strike at his own kin, scream through the sheer, soul-rendering agony of the purge, his confusion as he fought them in the Throne room and emerge on the other side fundamentally changed. Each phase a kind of death.
Each warrior had been scarred by the experience, marked not by violence but by helplessness.
Beneath their relief simmered anger—at Hordak for turning a warrior into weapon, at the Horde for their cruelty, at fate for choosing Khan over anyone else, at Skeletor for knowing too much and saying too little, and perhaps most painfully, at themselves for being unable to prevent any of it.
Questions lingered in the silence: What had truly been cleansed, and what had merely been buried deeper? Which parts of their brother had returned, and which had been left behind in that cursed Pit? Skeletor had warned them—recovery would take time. And time, like memory, was a fragile thing.
The dawn light began to filter through Serpentis’s towers, painting the chamber in soft gold. King Hiss remained still, his eyes never leaving the figure within the containment chamber. Inside, Khan’s eyelids grew heavy. The ordeal had drained everything from him—every reserve, every fragment of strength. His head tilted back against the chamber wall, and sleep claimed him with the gentle inevitability of dawn following the longest night. A survivor resting between battles, knowing the war might not be over.
In the aftermath’s quiet, they came forward:
Rattlor arrived first, his usual swagger replaced by uncertain reverence.
Tung Lashor followed, his forked tongue testing the air not for threats, but for some sign that his brother was truly free.
Scales materialized from shadow, his perpetual silence now charged with protective intensity.
Young Viper came last, gripping his spear like a talisman against hope deferred too long.
Dr. Ophidian joined them without his charts or instruments—approaching not as a physician, but as someone who’d witnessed miracles and tragedies in equal measure.
They formed a semicircle behind their King, footsteps echoing softly in the sacred space. No words were needed. They stood not as soldiers or subjects, but as brothers keeping vigil over one of their own.
Hiss pressed both palms against the barrier now, leaning close enough that his breath fogged the glass.
“Come back to us…” he whispered —not commanding, not pleading, but promising.
After a moment, softer still, meant only for Khan’s ears and his own conscience:
“I should have chosen differently… and should never have listened to him.”
The words hung in the air like absolution sought, a King’s admission that even the weight of crowns couldn’t prevent the failures that mattered most.
