Swept Into Pythons' Lair

Rain hammered the Xylos grasslands in a relentless, deafening roar, turning the world outside into a violent haze of water. Inside the luxury tent hotel, the illusion of safety was already gone. Muddy water surged past the zippered entrance, rapidly swallowing the floorboards and lapping against the metal legs of the single bed.

Cora Vance sat in the center of the mattress, her knees pulled tightly to her chest, clutching her hard-shell pink suitcase like a life raft. The screen of her phone cast a harsh, pale glow over her face. Her thumb frantically tapped the redial button for the emergency hotline. She pressed the phone to her ear, praying for a voice, but all that greeted her was the same relentless, mocking busy signal.

"Come on, come on, pick up," she muttered, her voice trembling in the dark.

She had booked this overpriced glamping experience to give her twenty-third birthday a perfect ending. She was a beauty blogger, used to curating beautiful, flawless moments for her followers, but right now, there was no one to call. Her parents were gone. She barely spoke to her distant relatives. Her contact list was packed with brand reps and PR managers—nobody who could send a rescue team to pull her out of a flash flood. She was entirely alone.

The muddy water kept rising, breaching the mattress and soaking into the pristine white bedding. The power grid had failed hours ago. In the suffocating darkness, the heavy canvas walls of the tent began to groan under the sheer pressure of the storm and the rising current.

With a terrifying, ear-splitting creak, the metal support poles buckled.

"Ah!" Cora screamed as the entire structure collapsed.

The surging floodwaters smashed through the ruined canvas, sweeping Cora and her suitcase straight out into the raging storm. Freezing rain pelted her face, blurring her glasses instantly. She plunged underwater, tumbling blindly in the churning mud before breaking the surface with a desperate, choking gasp.

"HELP!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. The wind ripped the word from her mouth, swallowing her cries into the deafening roar of the tempest.

Pure survival instinct took over. Her hands clamped down tightly on the handle of her pricey, waterproof pink suitcase. It bobbed stubbornly to the surface, fighting the violent current, becoming the absolute only thing keeping her head above the deadly water.

The night was pitch black. The raging torrent carried her forward at a sickening speed. Debris scraped past her legs in the thick, muddy water. As a sudden flash of lightning split the sky, a large shape thrashed in the water right beside her.

It was a zebra. Its head was thrown back, hooves kicking wildly against the current, its dark eyes blown wide with the exact same panic tearing through Cora’s chest. A human from Oakhaven and a wild beast from Xylos, thrown together in a desperate fight for survival.

The freezing water rapidly leeched the heat from her body. Her fingers locked up, turning stiff and numb against the plastic handle. Just as her chin dipped below the choppy surface, a deafening roar echoed ahead. A massive, abyssal whirlpool materialized in the center of the flood, swirling like a black hole.

Cora’s heart slammed against her ribs. She kicked her legs frantically, paddling with one free arm to steer the suitcase away. Getting sucked into that vortex meant certain death. Beside her, the panicked zebra thrashed harder, its hooves kicking blindly in the chaos. One heavy hoof slammed right into her side, using her body as a springboard to push away from the suction.

Pissed off and terrified, Cora reached out, grabbing the animal's striped leg. But no matter how hard they fought the current, the vortex was simply too strong. The massive whirlpool swallowed them both whole, dragging human, beast, and suitcase down into the crushing, lightless depths.

Suffocating pressure crushed her chest. Cora squeezed her eyes shut, convinced her life was over.

But the violent spinning stopped. The roaring flood went dead silent.

Cora opened her eyes. She was still submerged, but the muddy chaos was gone. The water around her was crystal clear and serene, glowing with a shimmering, deep blue light that drifted down from the surface above.

Through her water-spotted glasses, massive, dark shapes drifted silently through the blue. She squinted, and her breath hitched in her throat.

Dozens of gigantic pythons glided through the water. They were so enormous that her heart skipped a beat, stalling painfully in her chest. She could clearly see the distinct, intricate markings on their massive scales from thirty feet away. These monsters dwarfed the biggest snakes she had ever seen in documentaries. They moved in slow, menacing loops, circling her and the zebra like predators calculating the perfect strike.

She thought her brain was breaking. Her lungs screamed for oxygen. She was running out of air.

Pure survival instinct wiped out her awe. She clamped her hands back onto the pink suitcase and kicked her legs fiercely, paddling with everything she had to fight her way toward the shimmering light above. The buoyancy of the luggage dragged her upward.

The zebra thrashed beside her, just as desperate for air. As it struggled to surface, its back hooves kicked out blindly, striking Cora squarely on the top of her head for leverage.

A blinding jolt of agonizing pain shot through her skull. Her vision flashed white. She nearly opened her mouth to scream, which would have filled her lungs with water, but she forced her jaw shut, swallowing a mouthful of lake water instead.

Breaking the surface, Cora gasped heavily, sucking in massive lungfuls of air to ease the burning in her chest. The sharp pain in her head spiked her adrenaline into pure, unadulterated rage.

She spun around, glaring at the gasping zebra, and threw two solid punches right at its thick neck.

"Stupid thing!" she yelled, her voice cracking over the silent lake. "How many times are you gonna step on me? Think I won't hit you just because you're some protected animal or something?"

The moment the angry words left her mouth, she froze.

The water around them erupted. Dozens of massive pythons breached the pitch-black surface of the lake, water cascading off their slick heads. They completely encircled her and the zebra, forming a towering, inescapable wall of scales and muscle.

A smooth, icy body brushed against Cora’s submerged leg. The freezing friction of those massive scales sent a violent chill straight through her spine. The raw reality of the touch shattered any hope that this was a hallucination.

Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her chest locked up in sheer terror. She screamed for help inside her head, her heart pounding against her ribs like a jackhammer.

Panic hijacking her brain, Cora abandoned the pink suitcase entirely. She lunged forward, throwing her arms around the zebra’s neck, trembling uncontrollably against its wet mane. The beast was just as petrified. It stood frozen stiff in the water, utterly paralyzed by the top-tier predators surrounding them, letting the shaking human cling to it for dear life.

A 170-pound girl and a 650-pound zebra were nothing but tiny morsels to these giants. They looked like helpless leaves caught in a nest of monsters, waiting to be gulped down in a single bite.

Another icy, scaly body brushed directly against her feet. Cora finally lost her grip on her sanity and let out a blood-curdling scream.

But jaws didn't clamp down on her waist. Instead, a massive python covered in dark, geometric patterns glided beneath her. Its thick, muscular body hoisted her straight up into the air, lifting her clear out of the water.

The slick, cold scales offered zero grip. Cora tumbled over, sliding rapidly down the curve of its massive back like she was on a twisted water slide. She hit the surface with a loud splash, only for another massive python to pop its head up right behind her, nudging her hard in the back to keep her moving.

They were toying with her. She was being batted around like a fragile beach ball, tossed helplessly between the giant beasts.

Her heart hammered wildly, adrenaline flooding her veins, but it was completely useless. Every time she was bumped closer to the center, she desperately lunged and latched back onto the zebra’s neck, only to be nudged away again.

"AHHHHHHH!" she screamed non-stop, her voice hoarse and frantic.

Her sheer terror only seemed to excite the predators more. The water churned violently as the snakes grew agitated. Suddenly, a bright green python lunged out of the deep blue water, its massive snout slamming into her side and aggressively knocking her right off the patterned python’s back.

Cora plunged underwater, thrashing blindly in the bubbles. Before she could orient herself, the green python dove beneath her, scooped her up on its broad head, and forcefully shoved her back onto the surface.

She popped up, gasping and sputtering, her glasses knocked askew on her face. "AHHHH! HEEEEEELP!" she shrieked, slapping the water frantically.

To the giant snakes, her screams were a dinner bell of entertainment. The lake erupted into a chaotic frenzy. Another massive python whipped its head around, aggressively smacking the green one out of the way, sending a tidal wave of water crashing over Cora. Even more pythons rushed the center of the circle, bodies colliding and sliding over one another as they fought for a turn to freak out the tiny human.

The sheer volume of their moving bodies turned the lake into a turbulent washing machine.

Caught totally off guard by a surging wave, Cora lost her footing in the water. A heavy swell knocked her backward, flipping her over. She landed flat on her back and instantly sank beneath the churning surface.

For a split second, the frantic splashing above was silenced, replaced by the muffled, gurgling rush of water filling her ears. Water shot straight up her nose. She gagged, flailing her arms wildly in the dark.

Her vision blurred, the edges of her sight growing dark, but through the deep blue water, she saw it.

A colossal black python.

It was terrifyingly huge, far larger than the others, gliding straight toward her through the depths like the very shadow of death. Its cold, reptilian eyes seemed locked onto her sinking form. Cora couldn't move. She couldn't fight. She just watched the monster close the distance.

Suddenly, a soft, ethereal white light began to shimmer from the black python’s sleek body.

The light flared, illuminating the deep blue water. Right before Cora's blurring eyes, the terrifying, massive serpent twisted in the glow, its shape morphing and shifting until it miraculously transformed into a tall, broad-shouldered man.