Tales of the Snake Men: Book Three – Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The General Turned
The ancient braziers guttered in their sconces, casting shadows that writhed across the throne room’s scaled walls like living things. Flame-light danced across carved murals of serpent victories, the stone still bearing the sweet-sharp scent of burned snake oil from evening rituals. But tonight, even the familiar incense couldn’t mask the staleness of a throne room where no counsel had been held, no strategies debated—not since his General’s chair had sat empty.
King Hiss stood motionless before the war table, its magical surface pulsing with phantom battle plans, but his yellow eyes saw none of it. His eyes weren’t on the glowing glyphs, they were on the empty space beside him. Hiss’s clawed finger traced the empty chair where Khan used to sit.
The weight in his chest—hollow, aching—had been growing for four days now. That’s how long it had been since Kobra Khan was captured by the Horde.
The tension in the room shifted.
The pain struck without warning—not in his body, but deeper. Hiss gasped, one clawed hand flying to his chest as his knees buckled. The Serpent Staff clattered to the marble floor, its echo sharp in the sudden silence.
This wasn’t physical injury. This was the severing of something sacred—the warrior’s bond he’d shared with Khan since the day he’d raised him to General. A living thread woven from trust, forged in a dozen campaigns, strengthened by blood spilled side by side.
And now it snapped like a bowstring under too much tension. Through the dying connection came a whisper, thin as smoke, and heavy as chains:
“Forgive me, my King…”
The voice was Khan’s, but wrong—drained of defiance, thick with a surrender that made Hiss’s scales crawl. Not the surrender of death, which would have been clean. This was something fouler. Submission to corruption itself
And in that moment—Hiss felt it all.
Searing white-hot pain. As if Khan’s own nerves had been dragged across fire. But pleasure too—dark and twisted, creeping like the coils of something unnatural. It slithered along the edges of his mind, wrapping around loyalty and strangling it with sick delight.
Hiss fell to both knees, clutching his chest — not from weakness, but from something deeper.
Something stolen.
He had always shared a bond with his warriors. But with Khan—it had been more.
A living thread forged in fire and trust, loyalty and blood. And now—cut like a lifeline in freefall. The pain disappeared. The warmth vanished. The presence of Khan within him—gone. And all that remained was silence… and the crushing weight of certainty:
Kobra Khan had surrendered.
Not to death…
But to the Slime’s insidious control.
A cold shiver gripped the throne room.
Ssslash and Toxin, his personal guard, lunged forward with trained precision—Ssslash’s powerful coils ready to catch the King while Toxin’s head swiveled, scanning for threats that weren’t there. They had seen battlefield wounds, poison, exhaustion. But this was something else entirely.
“My King!”
Their hands steadied him, but he didn’t acknowledge them at first. His hands trembled, not from injury—but from rage. He pressed his hands to the floor and pushed himself up from the stone. He straightened slowly, breath hissing between clenched fangs. The fire in his eyes returned—not grief now… but resolve. His serpentine frame straightened into its full towering height, a King reborn in fury. His guards stepped back instinctively.
The war table flared to life with full brightness as his staff returned to his hand in a burst of green magic.
“Sound the horns,” Hiss commanded, his voice sharp as a blade drawn in silence.
The guards exchanged glances.
“Now!” he commanded.
They moved.
“Summon the High Command. Lock the inner gates. Prepare the Temple’s defenses.”
The throne room erupted into motion as Snake Men sprang into action, but Hiss remained still. He looked up at the ceiling as if staring beyond stone and sky—beyond time itself.
“He’s not gone,” he whispered to no one.
“But he will be… if we don’t act now.”
The war chamber pulsed with green light as magical projectors flared to life above the circular table. Serpentine banners fluttered from the stone columns, but the usual formality of the chamber was gone—replaced by urgency and dread.
King Hiss stood at the head of the table, arms folded, his voice the only thing holding the room steady. Around him, the high-ranking Snake Men—Rattlor, Tung Lashor, Scales, and Viper —gathered in silence. All had been summoned within minutes of the signal.
None dared to speak first.
Rattlor’s tail rattled in broken intervals, the sound cycling from controlled warning beats to erratic, high-pitched chattering.
“My King, the scouts are talking. They’re saying—” He stopped, unable to voice it.
“That Kobra Khan has fallen to the Horde.“ Hiss’s words cut through the chamber like a blade.
“Yes, Rattlor. It’s true.”
Viper’s hand found the spear at his side, fingers instinctively seeking the worn grip where Khan had once guided his stance, tracing the inscription he’d memorized but never expected to question.
“Fallen… or taken?”
The King’s eyes hardened.
“Worse. Transformed.”
He raised his staff, and with a gesture, the projection flared to life above the table: an image of Kobra Khan, still recognizable, but changed. His eyes glowed red. Slime shimmered across his body. A predator reborn in the image of the Horde.
Gasps echoed in the Chamber.
“Serpos help us…” whispered Scales. “What did they do to him?”
“They didn’t just torture him,” Hiss said, voice grim.
“They weaponized him.”
“That’s not possible—Khan would never—” Rattlor started.
“He surrendered,” Hiss cut in. “I felt it. I heard his final prayer. The Slime devoured his mind… and buried everything else.”
The room fell silent and cold.
Tung Lashor looked from face to face.
“So what do we do? Fight him?”
Silence.
A low hum from the projection crystal flickered across the chamber floor, casting green shadows against the stone. The image of Khan—twisted, altered, covered in glistening slime—marched forward through a wasteland, eyes burning red. Not aimless, not wandering, but purposeful and direct.
Scales shifted closer to the projection, his voice barely above a whisper.
“The way he’s moving… he knows these paths. Our paths.”
His sword and shield trembled in his grip – both gifts from the very warrior now hunting them, their weight suddenly feeling like accusations.
“He’s coming home, isn’t he?”
The word ‘home’ hung in the air like poison. Hiss watched the image of his corrupted General moving with predatory purpose through jungle that had once sheltered him.
“No,” the King said, his voice granite-hard. “Home is what we’ll defend. What approaches us now…”
He gestured to the twisted figure in the projection, slime glistening on familiar scales.
“That is our enemy wearing our brother’s face.”
He looked at each of them—his Warriors, his kin.
“And when he arrives… we must be ready to face the one warrior none of us ever wanted to fight: Our own.”
He let that hang—then added quietly:
“We can’t save him with force alone,” Hiss said. “The Slime devoured his mind… and buried his soul in shadow.”
They looked at him.
“We fight him here,” he said, touching his temple. “And if there’s any part of our Khan left… that’s where we’ll reach him.”
Rattlor shifted uncomfortably. His tail thumped once against the stone floor.
“But how do you know he’s coming for us?” he asked. “Why here? Why now?”
There was a long pause. But Hiss did not answer. His gaze lingered on the projection as Khan raised his head, as if he’d heard the question spoken through the void.
The Slime rippled across his body — something alive that didn’t belong. Something pulsed beneath it, sentient and seething. A mockery of the warrior they once knew.
Khan was not searching.
He was tracking.
Hiss’s jaw clenched, fangs pressing against his lower lip hard enough to draw a drop of blood. He knew exactly why Khan was coming—knew what the Slime would demand of its newest puppet. But voicing that knowledge would only feed the fear already wrapping around his warriors’ hearts.
Tung Lashor took a step back.
“By the first breath of Serpos…” he whispered. “Look at his eyes.”
The silence returned.
But this time… it felt hunted.
