Chapter 332: In a Piranha Pickle
She looked down at herself. She was covered in foul-smelling sludge, tangled swamp weeds, and dried leaves that had plastered to her wet silk dress. She felt gross. To make matters worse, she felt a strange, pinching sensation on her left calf.
Looking down, she spotted a fat, slimy black leech happily gorging itself on her blood.
"Ew! Ew!" Ren shrieked, furiously slapping her leg until the gross parasite detached and flew into the murky water. She rubbed her skin, shuddering violently.
The freezing night wind whipped across the open water, biting straight through her exposed skin. In her arms, the tiny cub let out a soft sneeze. His bare skin was covered in goosebumps, and he was shivering just as violently as she was.
Ren quickly pulled him closer, tucking him against her chest to share whatever meager body heat she had left.
"We are going to freeze out here," Ren whispered, her lips turning a faint shade of blue. She looked down at the sniffling baby. "Hey. Listen to me. Can you shift into your beast form? You will feel much warmer."
The little beastman just stared at her with his big, mismatched eyes.
Ren instantly swooned. He was so cute. He didn’t look like a feral monster at all; he just looked like a sweet, innocent baby. She thought Vara was being cruel and ridiculous for wanting to harm him.
Then, Ren shook her head, scolding herself. "What am I doing? You are like ten minutes old. You have no idea what I am saying. You probably don’t even know what a tiger is yet."
To her surprise, however...
Poof.
Sitting in her lap was the most adorable creature Ren had ever seen in her entire life. He had shifted into his beast form. He was a tiny, fluffy tiger cub. Just like his hair, his fur was split perfectly down the middle. His left side was striking, snowy white with faint silver stripes, and his right side was midnight black with dark charcoal stripes.
He let out a tiny, high-pitched mew, his fluffy ears twitching as his thick fur instantly insulated him against the cold.
"Oh, you are just a majestic little Oreo, aren’t you?" Ren cooed, burying her cold face into his soft, warm fur.
Suddenly, the dark water surrounding their tiny mud island began to rapidly bubble.
Ren snapped her head up. A massive, terrifying shadow was rising from the depths. It was a swamp monster. A gargantuan, very angry serpent with scales the size of dinner plates and fangs longer than Ren’s entire arm erupted from the water. It let out a deafening, bone-rattling hiss that sent a spray of foul water raining down on them.
Ren didn’t even think. She scooped the fluffy cub into her arms, tucked him tightly like a football, and ran.
"Nope! Not today!" Ren yelled.
She leaped off the edge of the sinking mud island just as the serpent’s massive jaws snapped shut exactly where she had been sitting a fraction of a second prior.
Ren splashed into the shallow water, her feet scrambling for purchase. She practically flew across the swamp, jumping from one precarious mud patch to the next. She moved with the frantic agility of a video game character, slipping on algae, leaping over rotting logs, and dodging snapping reeds.
"I am not fit enough for this!" Ren screamed to the empty night, launching herself over a submerged root.
The giant serpent was relentless. It slithered rapidly through the water behind her, its massive body creating a terrifying wake that threatened to knock her off her feet. It struck again, its jaws smashing a nearby mud island into a million flying pieces of sludge.
Ren scrambled onto the largest mud bank she could find, her lungs burning for air. She turned to run further, but skidded to a halt, her feet sinking deep into the muck.
It was a dead end.
The mud bank abruptly dropped off into a wide, bubbling pool of swamp water. But the water wasn’t just bubbling; it was almost...boiling?
Ren squinted into the gloom. The pool was swarming with millions of tiny, shimmering silver fish. They were the smallest piranhas she had ever seen, barely the size of her thumb, but there were so many of them that the water looked silver. They were clicking their microscopic, razor-sharp teeth together in a unified frenzy.
She was trapped.
Behind her, the giant serpent reared its massive, ugly head, preparing for a lethal strike. In front of her, the piranha swarm was edging closer, eager to strip the flesh from her bones if she dared step a single toe into the water.
Ren made her choice in an instant. She would protect the miraculous little cub, even if it meant giving up her own life.
She dropped to her knees in the mud and curled her body over the fluffy tiger cub, shielding him with her back and arms. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and braced for the bite of the giant fangs.
The attack never came.
Ren peeked open one eye just in time to see a glorious Golden Eagle dive-bomb from the sky at supersonic speed. Altair struck the giant serpent with the force of a falling meteor. His razor-sharp talons sank deep into the serpent’s scales. The snake roared in agony, thrashing wildly as the avian prince lifted it effortlessly into the air, engaging in a brutal, bloody clash of titans right above her head.
"Altair!" Ren cheered, tears of pure relief springing to her eyes.
But her celebration was premature.
While the eagle was busy dismantling the giant serpent in the sky, the mud bank beneath Ren’s knees was rapidly crumbling. The swarm of tiny, shimmering piranhas had reached the very edge of the island, and they were hungrily snapping at the muddy water just inches from her feet.
Altair had saved her from the giant monster, but she was still very much stuck in a pickle.