Five serpents broke the surface.
None of them lunged.
They emerged from the cracked ground in a wide ring around me and stopped. Their heads rose, reading the air, their bodies coiled loosely in the posture of things that had not yet committed to any actions. Their red eyes moved across the scene, the scattered corpses, the dark pools spreading across the pale soil, the separated sections of their pack lying in pieces around a single standing figure covered in dark liquid.
I stayed very still and let them look.
Even with their lower intelligence, they seemed to recognize when the ratio of dead to alive was not in their favor. Probably their survival instinct kicking in.
But their hesitation was a mistake.
The moment nothing was moving, Sense became clean and precise. Five coiled bodies at known positions, no chaotic overlap, no lunging snakes to account for. I could map each middle section clearly, one after another.
I pressed the rock I was holding.
