Kay Marigold sighs as she gazes at the clouded skies. This wasn't what she had planned to do in the early morning hours.
The problems had begun when her car had broken down in the dead of night on her way home from work at 2:00 AM. Frankly, the post-college graduate didn't know much about mechanics; that was for her engineer boyfriend, Jasper, to help her with. She had focused on what she considered finer skills in life; the intertwining relations of biology and mythology.
Unfortunately, standing just outside her car, no primeval deities that could fix her car or any tricks to hotwire it came to mind. She places a hand on the vehicle's roof and sighs softly, her dark jeans and black tank top blowing slightly in the wind on the small mountain road. Her dark red eyes gaze at the black abyss beyond the road's barrier as she speculates how long the walk home will take, or how long her boyfriend would take driving his tow truck here.
She usually took this route to get home later at night; her studies at the local historical archives and laboratory usually kept her active beyond regular working hours. With no one else on the road, she was free to drive at her own pace, which let her clear her mid from all the theories and stories she read and took notes on at work. Her car hadn't broken down like this before; it had felt like something was bumping around in the engine and causing a ruckus to the radiator, but when she had opened the hood, nothing unusual was inside.
She takes her phone out of her pocket to check the time; 2:30 AM. She had called Jasper ten times now and left at least twice as many messages; the local tow service was closed for the night, and wouldn't open until mid-morning. However, his phone was turned off, stupid bastard! Why wasn't he here when she most needed him?! Actually, this brought back stories of captive damsels held for years by monsters she had read. In those stories, the hero could have taken the effort to rescue his love when she had first been taken if he planned for a longer, more difficult battle...
She shakes her head to clear her thoughts; her work can't help her now. But, what can? She walks a bit up the road, her steps echoing slightly as she tries to remember any landmarks along this route. Granted, traveling along a road at night doesn't let you see many things, but she didn't have much else of a choice now. She puts her phone on sleep and places it back inside her jeans pocket; best not waste battery power when she's lost like this...
Things weren't getting better.
Kay now couldn't see her car, she had walked so far ahead of it down the road. She checked her phone's time; 3:00 AM. The sun still hadn't risen over the horizon, but her feet were starting to ache inside her sneakers because she wasn't used to this much walking. She brushes a strand of her black hair away from her eyes as she looks around for the umpteenth time. No other cars had appeared since she started walking, not that she would find any help that easily.
Wait, what's that?
She squints her eyes as she sees what looks like a small outhouse or shed at the far edge of the road, shielded from sight by a circle of trees. Joy courses through her body; at this point, any sort of shelter for the rest of the night is better than sleeping in a broken-down car. She runs towards the dwelling with a spring in her step.
As she gets closer, the house doubles in size; it now looks like a large tomb being choked by the trees around it. The stone walls and tiled roof echoes Japanese origin, but the closed door is curved like old European cathedrals. She raises an eyebrow at the contrast; how long ago was this place built, that it would be so overgrown? It's almost like the trees want it concealed, that whatever was inside here isn't supposed to be found. She looks back at the road, mentally judging how quickly people would be driving along in their cars, and if they would ever glance through the trees.
'They wouldn't do that,' she thinks with a grin. 'Most people are in it for themselves these days, not caring about the plights of others. The old mythological communities had it better, when the gods were on their side.'
She turns back to the tomb, stumbling over several hidden roots as she approaches the wooden door. The building's roof is now hidden among the trees, branches stretching along the tiles and aggressively pressing against them. She knocks on the door, and jumps back as the sound echoes back to her ears; the place probably has a high ceiling.
"Hello," she calls to the building. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I need a place to stay for the rest of the night. My car's busted further down the road, and I don't want to walk back home in the dark."
The air is silent around her, the trees dampening her voice more than she'd like. She worked in cramped rooms before, but this was a different feeling than a dusty space and being surrounded by texts. Here, the trees seem to reach out and constrict the land; Mother Nature destroying human history like the Hindu and Buddhist cycle of death and rebirth. She shivers as a brush of wind tickles her bare arms; she didn't like this place. But, where else was she to go?
She knocks twice, pounding on the door with more force. She thinks she feels the old door give way, so she keeps trying. At the sixth knock, the door suddenly bursts inward; Kay leans too far into the knock and falls into the doorway face-first. She doesn't see her phone fall out of her pocket and slide to a dark corner of the room.
Coughing dust from her lungs, Kay stands up and brushes her clothes off. She doesn't feel bruised from the fall, but did she have to fall so embarrassingly? There was no one else here, but what if there had been, like some creepy stalker with a video camera?
Her eyes widen as she realizes that could actually be happening right now. She whips her head from side to side, desperately wondering if anyone else is actually inside here. What she sees is a single circular room without windows, save a small circlet of light at the ceiling. The walls are old, the former grey covered with mold and a few courageous roots that pierced through the stonework. Kay's eyes adjust quickly to the darkness, but she still looks around very carefully; she notices a large square mirror, the glass shrouded by a thick layer of dust, hanging on one section of the wall.
The center of the room has a strange sort of coffin; it is curved upwards like an old trough, with a few stone slabs of varying size underneath it like a church altar has stairs to walk up. The top has a small, rectangular space within, somehow cleaner than the rest of the tomb. Kay slowly moves forward in curiosity, each step she makes echoing off the stone but not breaking the room's silence.
A few feet from the center coffin, Kay notices molded words carved in a script she doesn't recognize. Even if she could recognize the words, the amount of decay on the stonework makes them almost illegible. The coffin's space is empty as Kay approaches it, but she notices some kind of small wrapping rolled up within.
She reaches for the wrapping, but quickly draws her hand back as common sense says she shouldn't just grab things from strange places. Then again, there's no one else here to stop her; the place looks long abandoned from human care from the layer of trees around it. Besides, she had nothing better to do to pass the time.
So thinking to herself, she picks up the wrapping... and almost instantly drops it in disgust as she feels its dry, scaly surface. Now that she can fully see the wrapping, she realizes it is actually a snake's shed skin. She can barely see a shade of blue on the skin, as well as two black marks that stretch along where the head would be.
'Didn't expect a snake to make this place its home,' she thinks as she drops the wrapping back into the coffin. 'But, I've never seen a blue snake before; I wonder where it—'
A loud hiss makes Kay's heart jump in her throat. She whirls around, and screams as she sees a blue cobra with shimmering scales, blazing red eyes, and two curved black lines that stretch along the back of its scaly hood. Its head bobs back and forth, its mouth open to reveal white fangs and a long, white tongue. It reaches her waist in height, its body stretching about a foot across the floor.
Before Kira can move, the cobra leaps forward and sinks its fangs into her left arm. The snake's fangs pierce her skin with ease; Kay grabs its tail with a surprised cry and tries to pull it off, or even tear its body in two to kill it, but the creature's grip is unbreakable.
Kira's anger quickly turns to shock as the cobra's tail whips itself out of her hands and slinks over her nose. However, her vision locks on the cobra's head and how its entire body melts into her arm like water; the limb starts turning the same color blue as the snake's skin. Choked gasps leave Kira's gaping mouth as she notices her other arm turning the same color.
The thought comes that she should scratch her arms, that she can claw the affected skin away. However, every passing millisecond has more of her body change before her eyes, and she is too terrified to stop it. Her eyes widen to the largest degree possible as she feels an itching sensation course through her body, like her current skin is too tight for her muscles and bones.
A loud rip makes Kay cry out as her tank top and bra rip into shards of fabric. Her exposed breasts have dark blue scales covering them that weren't there before. She feels her hair strands start to clump together into shifting masses of blue scales; one brushes along her forehead as wisps of black-colored energy fill the corners of her vision. She glances at her arms again, and now notices a group of dark blue scales along each of her shoulders.
Her chest constricts slightly as a circular mark carves itself into the nape of her neck, along with several smaller black holes along her neck bones. Kay looks down at her legs just in time to see her jeans rip apart like her top, her legs the same blue as her arms and chest and close together. She has the briefest flash of confusion that she hasn't fallen over yet.
Kay's back emits several cracks as she feels her bones shifting, changing. She feels some kind of second skin stretch over her lower body and back, her legs fusing together as muscles she didn't know she had ripple with new-found power. Her legs feel like one massive organ that she can move with ease; almost like it's becoming—
A tail. That's what it is; a snake's tail. Horror makes her close her eyes and scream out as she realizes she's turning into a massive snake!
No, wait; something doesn't feel right about that thought. She still has her intelligence, right? The snakes she had seen in zoos were just animals, right? So, what was she becoming?
Kay's hands and upper arms stiffen and harden as a blue layer of scales grows over them. She flexes her fingers as her back hardens in similar fashion, like fingers are caressing each skin cell and molding it into a new, improved form.
Her fused legs grow a pink and purple layer of scales, muscle and skin, grooves marking where each muscle connects to the inner body. Kira's cries turn to growls and moans of pleasure as she feels her body stretch out and pulse with energy. She feels so... alive!
Her eyes flash open as she emits a cry of pleasure, her snake-like lower body flexing and thrashing the ground as her scaly hair whips around her face in the throes of passion...
Several hours later, or what feels like that long, Kay's rational thought returns. Her first emotion is horror as to what she's become. The second is curiosity on the same subject. She decides to solve both matters and heads over to the mirror, her lower body slithering along the ground without problems.
Brushing the dust off with her hands, and trying not to breathe as she does so, the new day's light comes through the tomb's upper circlet to reveal a creature Kay finds both fascinating and terrifying. Her lower body has turned into a purple and blue snake's tail and stomach, her hair is now a mass of blue scales, but her upper body is still human; she's got her arms, breasts, and face, albeit all colored different shades of blue, or covered by hard scales.
Her face is especially interesting; her eyes are the same shade of red as before, but the pupils have turned to slits, her nose has shrunk slightly, and her mouth curves into a smile that belies power. She opens her mouth to see two pairs of white fangs replacing her former rows of teeth.
Her chest has seven holes above her ribcage; the three on either side are black, but the center one holds a gemstone the same color as her eyes. Her breasts are mostly protected by hard blue scales, but her stretched navel shows a natural curve that radiates sexuality. A golden ring rests on each of her wrists; she doesn't know how they got there, and she doesn't really care.
"What am I?" The voice that asks this question isn't Kay's; it's much more sensual, exaggerating each tone with a strange tongue. Kay unconsciously flexes her tail as she tries to figure out what's happened to her, what that cobra turned her into. What creature, biological or mythological, had a half-human, half-snake body?
The answer comes to her along with a growl of her stomach.
"Lamia... I'm a lamia."
Her reflection shows pure shock. "I'm a lamia." Then, she cracks a grin. "I'm a lamia!"
Yes, Kay Marigold realizes, she is now a lamia, a creature of myth come to life. The body of a human and a snake combined with the skills of both species. As her stomach growls a second time, she realizes just how she can celebrate this occasion.
She slithers out of the tomb's broken doorway, not noticing her cell phone beep and vibrate several times before turning dark from battery loss...
