Serpent's Embrace

Here's a little game for you all. How many paragraphs in this chapter start with "the"?

An unlikely pair made their way through the forest clearing.

One was the personification of death itself. Longer than the tallest of trees, the basilisk's presence sparked a flurry of activity throughout the forest. Docile deer and contentious guivres alike, scrambled to get out of her path. Those that lingered within reach of her strike were injected with venom so corrosive it liquefied their insides. A swarm of insects, that believed that their small size would save them, paid gravely for their assumptions. A mild toxic gas was released from her open maw, snuffing the life out of them. Her glowing white, pupil less eyes showed no remorse as she systematically killed nearly everything within reach.

The other was her exact opposite. Small, pudgy, and utterly defenseless; the orphaned pony sleeping atop her head drew much attention to himself as well. Hungry aerial predators from above eyed him hungrily. Circling around the two from a safe distance, the opportunists waited for the helpless youngster's protector to drop her guard. When the basilisk occupied her jaws with the barely struggling form of a giant armadillo; a juvenile roc swooped down, believing that her attention had been sufficiently diverted.

It wasn't. With a single glare, the goat-sized eagle was instantly stripped to the bone. Its rapidly descending remains crashed into the basilisk's scaly skull. Its bones split apart, revealing the succulent marrow within them; evoking raucous cheers from the surviving scavengers. A single wishbone bounced of the basilisks head and onto the foals, rousing him from his slumber. His response to the unwelcome awakening was to bawl unrelentingly. The sounds of the foal's wailing froze the basilisk in her place.

The entire forest seemed to hold its breath as she cautiously checked on her adopted child. Like a crocodile carrying her hatching's within her bone crushing jaws, the basilisk mustered a tenderness previously unknown to her and gently cradled him within the coils of her tail. When he didn't stop crying after several more minutes, she carefully inspected his body for any signs of injury. She found none. Narrowing down the possible cause of his outburst; she hesitantly removed his diaper and prayed that there was nothing there. Thankfully there wasn't a single trace of anything brown and unpleasant, which could only mean that he was hungry.

Unable to produce any milk of her own, or locate a nearby lactating animal that she could "persuade" into nursing her son, she searched for an alternative. Knowing that his single barely developed tooth wasn't strong enough to chew through plant matter, she attempted to grind a nearby shrub into a consumable mush while accidentally crushing an unfortunate family of skunks in the process. When she stopped to check on her work, she huffed in annoyance. Even if her child would be able to ignore the taste of bloody stinking mustelids; not even she was be able to reduce the shrubs into a swallow-able pulpy mass with her titanic weight alone.

The incessant blubbering of her son was driving her mad to the point where she was seriously considering raiding the nearest farm for its livestock of cows. Luckily for the still growing Apple Family business, the solution to her problems came from a brave raven that dared to venture on her to head to snatch a piece of marrow. Relieved, the basilisk spared the plucky carrion bird for its service. Fishing a roc finger bone from the top of her head, she popped it into the youngster's mouth. Her cursed gaze having erased any trace of blood and flesh on the bone, the foal greedily suckled it, extracting the tasty marrow within. The foal giggled happily, no longer ravaged by the pangs of hunger.

She too allowed a rare smile to grace her scaled snout, glad that the crisis had been dealt with. Later when she had the chance, she would track down a suitable wet nurse and have him revert back to his proper diet but for now she would allow him to enjoy the essence of animals.

Essence, she liked the way that word rang off her forked tongue.

"What does thou think?" she asked her son. "Doth the name Essence not sit well with thee?"

The foal burped in reply.

The basilisk in turn smirked. 'Mayhaps I shall ask once again when he can speak?' She thought to herself. Looking to the sky, she saw the sun retreat into the horizon, the solar body quickly being replaced by the moon.

It was about time to retire for the day. Slithering towards an extensive series of burrows in the ground, excavated by her the day after her birth, she called these underground tunnels home. Sliding in, snug as a worm, she let out an earthshaking yawn, eager to let sweet unconsciousness take her.

But then she realized her son wasn't breathing.

A startled robin took flight as the ground beneath it erupted. The basilisk's tail ripped through the soil with the limp foal's body in tow. Luckily, the foal quickly recovered from his near suffocation once he was exposed to fresh air again.

She sighed in relief, which soon became an annoyed grunt. She needed to find a new home.

The creation of her new home was as long and arduous as it had been six hundred years ago. While she no longer had to fear cunning coyotes and other predators attacking her while her deadly gaze and fangs were underground, she now did battle with a troop of trolls for control over their cavern of caves.

The hulking brutes desperately tried to evict the scaled intruder from their home. Their natural blindness and affinity for wielding giant bludgeons allowed them to ward her off initially. But as strong as they were, practiced fighters they were not. The giant proboscis monkeys were bullies over those weaker than them and were accustomed to driving their smaller cousins, the orcs, off their kills. They never engaged in conflict with beings that reached passed the height of their knees, much less a serpent that dwarfed them. Though they were much more nimble than she was, their lack of sight was as much as a hindrance as it was a defense against her. In the relatively narrow corridors of the network of caves it was almost impossible for the blind monkeys to avoid her lethal fangs. The scent of rapidly dissolving innards assaulted the troll's sensitive sense of smell. Their instinct to flee into the night was barely overridden by the commands of their blue skinned leader, who howled orders in the safety of the back of his den.

The basilisk clicked her tongue in annoyance. She had underestimated the troll's will to defend their territory. She had expected them to fold as easily as their close relatives, the ogres, had when she invaded their jungle. While this was only a minor setback, she wanted to be done with this task quickly, having left her son in a hollowed out tree. Having sprayed the surrounding area with her scent, it was unlikely any predator would dare approach his hiding place. Even so, as a senior denizen of the harsh wilderness, she wisely refrained from taking risks. With the stakes high, she locked eyes on the troll's mohawked chieftain. Once he was felled, so too would his authority. Crashing towards him a train forged from muscle and sinew, the basilisk plowed through the vanguard of trolls guarding their leader. She ignored the painful thuds of clubs smashing into her sides; and swiftly wrapped her body around the alpha's.

The alpha male of the troop shrieked in mindless agony, the coils of the basilisk rupturing every blood vessel in his body. Scarcely an eighth of her size, she could have easily crushed the squealing primate's spine instantly. The basilisk, however, deliberately prolonged his death. Not out of malice, but so that the rest would gather around them, all within earshot of his imminent death. As she expected, his distressed groans brings his troop towards them. She allowed the furious trolls to slash and bite into her thick scaly hide. Victory well worth the price of a couple of scars.

Squeeze.

The basilisk's grip on the troll grew slightly tighter.

Squeeze.

Air was forcefully expelled from the troll's lungs, silencing his pained cries.

Squeeze.

The cracking of the alpha's ribs echoed throughout the halls of his home.

Release

The basilisk's grip on the troll abruptly slackened. The troll took the opportunity to refill his empty lungs with oxygen, gasping weakly in pain as he did so.

Whoosh.

The troll screamed as he was suddenly tossed into the air. Gravity soon returned him to the ground, his falling body followed by a sickening wet crunch. He was dead. His neck twisted in an irregular angle. The realization of his death spread like wild fire among the trolls. Intelligible grunts were apparently a coherent language when heard by demented ears. The trolls fled from their home, fates uncertain.

The basilisk watched them go, their retreating forms rapidly becoming smaller the further they ran. Once she was certain the trolls would not return, she raced to retrieve her son.

"Basilisk."

"Bah."

"Basilisk."

"Bah."

"Bas-uh-lisk."

Pbbbbt

The basilisk blanched in disgust as the odor of the foal's flatulence wafted throughout the stuffy caverns. She frowned at the foal’s inability to speak. Unlike ponies, young basilisks were born nearly fully developed. The only real differences between an adult and an adolescent being size and experience. Once their mothers were killed by them; fragments of the deceased parent's memories would be absorbed by the hatchling, providing her daughter the intelligence needed to survive.

Nudging the foal with the very tip of her tail, the basilisk wondered what drove her to raise him. He certainly didn't aid in her survival. His physical and mental weakness was a nuisance to her presently and could very well become a liability in the near future.

She peered down at the foal, watching him play with her tail as if it were a toy. Puny and frail as he was, the foal was nonetheless the bravest creature she had ever encountered. She had seen fearsome packs of wags tuck their tails between their legs at the sight of her. Witnessed sounders of notoriously devoted fanged-boar mother's forsake their litters when the threat of being impaled on her toxic fangs loomed over them. And she had once even dispersed a coalition of sub adult flying drakes from their hoard. But here was a tiny foal, nuzzling her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He was a strange one; that she was sure of. His bizarre behavior could quite possibly have been the explanation as to why she adopted him. She would be lying if she denied the amusement that the foal provided her, serving as a welcome break in her once monotonous lifestyle.

Her relationship with him, she realized, was not only that of a foster mother and son but a symbiotic one as well. In return for her protection, he would serve as a source of entertainment. It was heavily skewed in his favor, but it mattered not to her.

Satisfied that she now understood the nature of her attachment to her son; she laid her head to the ground in preparation for a well deserved rest. A milky translucent nictitating membrane slid over her glowing eyes, escorting her to the realm of dreams.
...
Tap.
...
Tap.
...
Tap

The basilisk's eyes reopened to glare at whatever was stupid enough to disturb her slumber. They were greeted by a tiny hoof, apparently the owner of them finding her reptilian eyelids so fascinating he had to touch them.

Grunting wearily, the basilisk's eyes were poked at by the giggling foal for the better half of the night.

My sister edited this chapter, so if there are any grammar/punctuation errors blame her. XD