[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/eE6lcKb.png[/img]

[h3]Carrie's apartment building, Eastern Lost Haven[/h3]
After sundown[/center]

[hr]

The sun had long since set on Lost Haven, and now a storm had rolled in from the sea, bringing with it cool winds and spattering rain. While Carrie had said she could stay inside if she wanted, Berenice didn't really feel too comfortable indoors, so they had moved her meager belongings on to the rooftop. Here, with the help of some of the Clan, she had rigged up a set of tarps to ward off rain and the harsh sunlight, and was settling in to sleep. Around her, Sunheart and a few other Clanfolk nestled into her plumage, apparently satisfied with her performance, or just appreciating the softness of her underfeathers.

The fight had been swift and brutal, but no animal nor tiny person had been injured. Fortunately, whatever magics Sebastian had used to reanimate the creatures left them with little in the way of creativity or instinct, and thus they were no match at all for the tactics of experienced hunters. The sheer number of corpses needing purification, however, had alarmed everyone present. A full score of undead rats and mice, four crows, one of which had escaped for several minutes until Berenice had spotted it and brought it down.

Now, with peace settling over the cool summer night's air, Berenice stared out across the nearby buildings. Thumps and flashes sounded in the distance, but earlier conversations, knowing how dangerous she could be and how inexperienced she was, kept her from investigating. One day, perhaps, she would be able to help fight against the monsters, but tonight was not the night for it. Reluctantly, she settled down deeper into her nest, made from old blankets and duvets and a few bits of wire and branches for structure, and closed her great golden eyes. Listening to the tinkling of her new treasure lines strung along the roof, it was not long before she joined the rest of the Clan in slumber.

[hr]

[h3]Elsewhere[/h3]

Abaristus scampered back as magic energy formed miniature lightning bolts around the extra-long work table Sebastian had assembled. The necromancer, for his part, sat back in the gloom of the cave, busily sketching notes into his journal. The actual top of the table, and thus his latest project, was invisible due to the energies pouring into the cave and around the surface. The entire interiour of this lair was aglow with blues, greens, and reds, flashing in different patterns as his laboriously placed, intricate layers of spells went off in the order he had prescribed. It had taken almost a week, straight, with no sleep, to design these spells, back when he had created the siren. Thankfully, his disgustingly traitorous familiar had managed to save enough of his journal for him to recover it.

Now, with some edits, the same spells had been placed carefully around his new subject, who had been, if anything, so much [i]simpler[/i] to take. He had realised that his first mistake with the siren was that he had used too old a subject, with too strong a mind and personality. The younger, more supple mind was needed. In addition, something as flighty as a bird was too chaotic to truly control, so he had procured a different set of subjects for modification this time. With dwindling funds and a false address, he had procured specimens of [i]Eunectes murinus[/i], [i]Hydrophus platurus[/i], [i]Dendroaspis polylepis[/i], [i]Oxyuranus microlepidotus[/i], [i]Ophiophagus hannah[/i], [i]Bitis arietans[/i], and [i]Deinagkistrodon acutus[/i]. Along with these were various other reptile species, including a saltwater crocodile, two types of geckos, and at greater expense than anything but the sea snake, a Komodo dragon.

The tiny Japanese girl, whose name he had never bothered to learn, had been kept unconscious during the whole of the 'editing', not because of any sense of lingering compassion in Sebastian's heart, but because the screaming may have drawn attention. That and the shock may have killed her had he not magically anesthetised her. At any rate, he had done [i]extensive[/i] surgery, taking well over forty-eight hours, and that was with Abaristus and two zombies aiding him [i]and[/i] magical time acceleration where appropriate. 

The girls lower half was the most obvious feature changed. In place of the normal flesh and limbs, from the sternum down began a serpent body, fully eight times the length of the torso. Inside were all the normal snake organs, scaled up and/or modified to his purposes. Additions included a swim bladder, a [i]massive[/i] prestomach that allowed the creature to digest almost anything organic it came across, and a modified reproductive track that he [i]hoped[/i] would allow him to breed it. To help with that he had stored the girl's normal ovaries, safely sealed inside a magical container. The musculature of the entire body had been reinforced, as had the skelton, making the whole of the thing almost as tough as some metahumans, though nowhere near the likes of Icon or Blacklight, who he had found had apparently appeared out of retirement to fight the foolish monkeys on the surface.

The girl's mouth had also been extensively redesigned. The tongue, and her nostrils, were now equipped with all the normal sensory apparatus of a pit viper, accelerated to supernormal levels by careful modification. Just behind where the canines would be were a set of two pair, top and bottom, fangs, capable of delivering one of the deadliest venoms on the planet. At very small volumes, far below a tenth of what she was capable of injecting with the venom gland now between her palate and sinus cavity, it would swiftly paralyze the entre adult human body, begin dissolving skeletal muscle tissue, nearly [i]vapourise[/i] nerve connections, and cause intense nausea, haemorrhaging from mucous membranes, and seziures within just a few [i]minutes[/i]. He knew, he had tested samples on several indigent citizens of the city of fools above him.

The creature was also built for speed. He had yet to test it, but he felt confident it could move faster than normal humans could track, and was especially designed for both land and water. As a precaution, he had given it amphibian characteristics and a set of gills located just behind the human ears. The brain had been modified for all of these new senses, and he had also carefully erased all vestiges of humanity from the thing, saving the desire for a parent figure, a role he would of course fill. The scales, which ran up along the spine to the nape of the neck, were coloured to be nearly invisible either in fall foliage or in a river, being a dull brown and green striping along the top and pale yellow-ish brown along the belly. The end of the tail resembled a sea snakes, vertically flattened into a swimming fin.

As for toughness, the scales themselves, and the underlayer of skin on the human torso, he had molecularly strengthened almost to the level of kevlar, and in fact the scales were hard as forged steel. A massive, additional set of kidneys filtered out most toxins he could think of, along with a secondary liver, and the lungs he had adapted to filter out even some caustic substances. He was determined not to repeat his errors with the siren, so nothing was magically powered or reinforced, excepting the creation of the thing itself. Once completed, it would require no magical powering, as long as it could eat. It [i]would[/i] require far more sustenance than a snake of its size otherwise would, but that was easily found.

Now, the only thing left was allowing all the spell to finish, inside the cocoon of a time slip he had constructed. This also allowed the creature to age naturally. The child had only been five, and while he needed a fresh mind, waiting for it to grow to its full size would take an irritatingly long time. This accelerated the process from years to mere hours. Even now, it was nearly twenty feet long, and nearing completion.

What he did not notice was the tiny crack in the final spell, a fatal flaw, the same one Abaristus had installed into the siren's conjuring and construction. As the last spell triggered and the time slip fell away, there was a thunderous boom, a crackle of released energy, and the last thing Sebastian knew was that the cave was collapsing in on him, but the creature and his familiar had both vanished.