Chapter 379: The Last Quiet Day V
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A thin line split across the upper ridge of the cocoon and crimson light leaked through it in a bright living thread. Another crack followed at the lower down part, it was wetter and harsher, like a shell resisting the command to break before finally yielding to the body inside.
The cocoon split wider. Pieces peeled away. A section fell to the dark ground with a thick wet stone sound.
And Mira emerged from the cocoon.
Slowly at first. It was not because she was weak.
Because new shapes always took one moment to understand themselves.
Her head rose first through the opening, and the first thing Bat Bat saw was the hair.
Not ordinary hair.
Long, heavy, dark crimson with brighter blood-red catching under the black sky of the Void Land. Woven through it were many snake-heads, they were real heads and they all were alive, mixed into the flowing hair mass as naturally as if the bloodline had decided beauty and threat should never again be separate things. They moved lazily at first, tongues tasting the air, eyes opening one by one.
Then Mira pushed farther out of the broken shell. Her face was still Mira’s. That was the strangest part.
She was still Mira and not Mira at the same time. The same sharp beauty. The same intelligent eyes. The same severe mouth that could turn colder than a blade when she disliked a person. But now everything had been sharpened into something darker and more predatory. Her skin carried a richer bloodline tone, no longer entirely human in the way light held it.
Her upper body remained humanoid. It was elegant and feminine, but touched by subtle new details. Feathered scale patterns marked parts of her arms. Crimson and black designs lay over her skin in natural bloodline shapes, like beauty had grown a set of quiet teeth.
Then her lower body unfolded. It was not a serpent body.
Bird like.
Crimson scaled legs, long and powerful, built with the predatory shape of an amphibious raptor. The joints bent differently from a human’s but with unmistakable elegance. Her feet found the ground one at a time, clawed and webbed, made equally for marsh, blood water, and sudden killing.
Behind her spread a fan of big dark tail feathers, layered and beautiful, shifting with the same dangerous grace of a peacock might envy if peacocks had been born in blood swamps and taught murder from birth.
Bat Bat forgot every promise and every lesson for one single heart beat.
"Oh, she is different."
Auri’s mouth moved faintly.
Sekhmet did not correct Bat Bat.
Not now.
Mira stood fully free of the cocoon then, naked and dripping faint streaks of red-black transformation residue that slid down the scaled parts of her body and disappeared into the dark ground. She looked down at her own hands first.
Then her arms. Then the lower body.
Then the snakes in her hair moved and one of them turned far enough that Mira actually saw it in the curtain of crimson beside her face.
She went very still.
Bat Bat chose wisely and said nothing.
Good for her.
Miracles did happen.
Mira lifted one hand toward her hair. Three of the snake-heads followed the motion as if they were curious what she planned to do with them. Her expression did not break into fear. It tightened into something much more Mira.
It was a calculation. It was an assessment.
Auri folded her arms slowly. "You woke up pretty."
Mira turned her head and looked at her first. Then at Bat Bat. Then at Sekhmet.
When she spoke, her voice had changed. It was still hers, but darker underneath. It was smoother. Something venomous now lived under the words even when the tone remained controlled.
"What," she asked, "did you turn me into?"
Sekhmet answered plainly. "A Crimson Gorgon. Something close to your mother’s race"
Mira repeated the name once under her breath, as if measuring whether it fit.
Then her gaze dropped again to her own body.
One of the snakes hissed softly. Another curled around the line of her shoulder and then settled back into her hair.
Bat Bat could no longer endure silence.
"Respectfully," she said, "you look like a blood librarian the moon itself would apologize to."
Mira looked at her.
Bat Bat lifted both hands. "That was praise?"
Auri gave up and laughed once under her breath.
Sekhmet called the system inwardly.
"Show me her status."
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Crimson Gorgon transformation complete.
Body type confirmed: Bipedal amphibious raptor form.
Secondary social concealment form available.
She may shift between normal appearance and Crimson form through intent.]
"Good."
Exactly as needed.
Sekhmet looked at Mira. "You can return to your normal form by thinking about it."
Mira’s eyes lifted to his. "Now?"
"Yes."
Bat Bat leaned forward. "Please do. Respectfully. For educational balance."
Mira ignored her and lowered her gaze once more to herself. For a second she seemed to listen inward, not with ears, but with blood. She thought about her human look. Then the change began.
The scales receded at first, flowing backward under skin like red-black liquid glass obeying an unseen command. The feathered tail fan drew inward and vanished into the line of her back. The raptor legs reshaped, lengthening and straightening into human form while the claws and webbing folded away. The snake-heads disappeared back into the normal hair, though the hair itself remained thick and alive-looking until the last second, when its color softened from deep crimson into her usual brown.
Moments later Mira stood there again in her normal human appearance.
The elegant brown-haired woman Sekhmet knew.
Only now there was more in the stillness around her. She looked exactly like the woman from before and also nothing like her. She now carried a hidden form under the skin, a second body waiting behind the first. The only thing that changed was her eyes. It was red. Her pupils were red.
Bat Bat clapped once.
Then immediately slapped both hands over her mouth.