EMMA

  "Calen! Up!" Emma yelled from the ground

  He cursed and dropped the spear. The first viper, completely uninjured, had wrapped its coils around the shaft, and begun climbing along the wood towards him anyway.

  A pale, scaly rope the size of her arm dropped from the ceiling onto Emma's legs.

  She kicked herself free of the newest assailant in a blind panic. It rebounded and hissed, undeterred, and began shimmying itself across the wooden floor with wobbling motions.

  Towards her.

  Scrambling backwards, Emma felt her shoulder tip something over with a thunk. She grasped at it desperately, looking for something to put in the way.

  Her fingers curled around a wooden axe handle.

  Useless as a shield. Unless—

  She swung it in two hands like a baseball bat at the animal lunging for her face.

  The flatter back side of the axe head cracked against its skull just in time, tossing it away to be lost in the pandemonium.

  "What the— aw hell."

  A metallic clack announced that Mr. Isaacson had reached the top of the steps and drawn his revolver at the same time as the second oversized viper finished dropping from the rafters. Calen was—

  "Don't shoot the heads!" Calen screamed, standing on one of the bunks across the room to avoid the sudden flood of angry wildlife squirming on the floor

  Emma went partially deaf halfway through climbing to her feet.

  A tiny red dot appeared on the first viper's skull, and the wall behind it was splattered with red.

  "Not shootin em in the tails!" Mr. Isaacson roared.

  He still sounded like he was underwater, through the ringing in Emma's ears.

  Calen's ridiculous instructions were only proven more insane, as Emma watched the overgrown viper slump, its face now splitting open around the entry wound.

  The second overgrown viper, the monster with two heads, attracted to the sound or the blood or the something, clamped one set of its jaws over the corpse of its bretheren's bubbling flesh.

  The other head hissed angrily and failed to lunge at Calen, anchored by the first head's grip on its former nestmate.

  Mr. Isaacson fired again while Emma was busy sweeping the floor in front of her for threats, moving for the stairs.

  They had to get out of whatever nest this was, before someone got bitten.

  Another spray of gore painted the head that was busy attempting to swallow the first viper whole, one bite at a time, while the second head began to split and bubble almost immediately.

  Then the halves began to swell, and the splitting ran down the 'neck' of the snake.

  Calen was hopping from bed to bed to avoid the chasing swarm, bunny ears flopping around his feet, working his way towards safety.

  He was mostly ineffectually tossing the knives from the bandolier at the snakes on the ground, but it was something.

  Emma debated just climbing out the window to meet them outside, but a quick glance through the shutters showed the drop was too far. Twisting an ankle in the middle of the woods with their only shelter infested by venomous snakes would be one too many catastrophes.

  She also thought she might have seen people, moving outside the gate.

  She turned back to call a warning, but it froze on her lips.

  The second viper had three heads now, flesh still bubbling into place on two of them.

  Even as Emma watched, she could see the layers of muscle and scales mending themselves while dripping green blood smoked in contact with the floor.

  "What the hell is—"

  Mr. Isaacson had his gun leveled at the monster, but his eyes were darting around the room in confusion as he asked the question.

  "Hydra! Burn it!" Calen shouted over Mr. Isaacson's confused screaming.

  He had almost reached the last of the bunks. Emma unrooted her feet and moved, skirting the walls and trying not to stand in the way of the gun. The flickering forked tongues of the two 'free' heads seemed content to guard their newest meal for a moment, but the corpse of the first snake was rapidly disappearing down the gullet of the third.

  "Why would— actually yeah, screw it." Their neighbor said, lowering the gun a little. "Where's that oil?"

  "Downstai—"

  A flash of white lunged out from under the last bunk as Calen's feet finally thudded into the floor, and sunk its fangs into his leg.

  Emma forgot about not wanting to get in the way.

  She gripped the axe at the base and just below the head, and brought its blade down on the midsection of the offending snake.

  Green blood smoked on the floor, and she left the weapon to grab Calen under the arm from the floor.

  "Fine. I'm fine." He shouted through the ringing in her ears. "I just—"

  He stumbled a little the moment he tried to let go of her shoulder.

  She dragged him down the steps ahead of Mr. Isaacson. Calen was busy unwinding the useless bandage from his healed hand with his teeth.

  Mr. Isaacson's lips were moving as he helped jostle them both down the stairs, retreating from the monster in the rafters.

  "People outside!" Emma said.

  He just tapped the side of his head near an ear and pointed the gun up the stairs, waving them away towards the closet under the steps.

  "Stone wall!" He yelled, too loud.

  Emma saw the clay amphora they had left at the bottom of the stairs last night, and realized what the plan was.

  Calen held himself up with one palm on the wall, and fumbled with the low-burning lamp at the bottom of the stairs, dragging his bandage through the well of oil and wrapping it around the base of the wick before lifting the whole artifice, flame and all.

  The ringing in Emma's ears had started to subside a little by the time she got her hands around the half-empty clay pot, hoisting it to throw the moment Mr. Isaacson got out of the way.

  She didn't have long to wait.

  A mass of churning scales was piling down the steps, curling into a heap as the heads fought.

  Pottery shattered over the coiled mass of muscle and scales, creating an oozing mess on the landing at the base of the stairs. Calen tossed the burning wad of cloth and treated vegetation after it.

  Heat flared, and the first real sound Emma heard as the ringing began to fade from her ears was an unearthly screeching hiss.

  The monster wasn't dead.

  A terrible stench filled Emma's nostrils as she watched pale scales blacken, twist, and crackle. She had struck the center head of the hydra with the pot, and flames raced up the dripping oil, but not fast enough to save her if the monster charged.

  And Calen couldn't run.

  Mr. Isaacson was crossing the room backwards, leveling his gun towards the stairs.

  Emma grabbed Calen by the shoulder and dragged him into the closet for shelter.

  Three more gunshots rang out the moment they were behind the stone wall.

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  The screeching had stopped, but the acrid stench and crackle of flames continued with the burning monster writhing in the center of the room.

  Calen collapsed against the stone, one leg buckling first until he was sitting on the ground.

  "Believe me now?" Calen yelled, tugging at the leg of his sweatpants.

  Emma ignored him and checked the doorway one last time before she joined him in frantically pulling the cloth up past his swelling ankle to help examine the bite.

  "Weird animals aren't aliens!" Mr. Isaacson yelled back from behind his barricade across the room.

  Emma had never met anything that would regrow a new, extra head after its brains had been blown out on Earth.

  Calen's leg was already swelling around the twin puncture marks in the back of his calf, the angry redness visibly spreading. He was gulping air, and his pupils were unnaturally dilated already.

  Emma felt herself losing her grip.

  Calen was going to die in the middle of the woods, miles, maybe even light-years from the nearest hospital.

  "What do we do?" Emma asked.

  "Let me try something." Calen said, squeezing his eyes shut.

  Emma squinted just in time, and watched his entire calf fuzz with static.

  The dots of oozing blood bubbled, and some of the redness receded. Calen sighed with relief.

  He had just fixed his leg with magic, the same way his hand didn't even have a scar on it from the cut last night.

  "There's still going to be venom—" Emma started.

  A firm rapping on wood echoed through the first floor.

  Emma had forgotten about the people outside.

  She shot to her feet, sticking her head out of the closet as she heard scraping and some grunting. Her hearing was almost back to normal.

  "Hello?" She yelled.

  Mr. Isaacson was busy fiddling with his revolver on the other side of the smoky haze that was already filling the air. Emma heard an empty casing ping off the stone floor, followed by a curse.

  Flesh hissed and popped as the writhing mass in the center of the room slowed its struggles.

  The dragged slick of oil from the monster was in between Emma and the barricaded door.

  Someone grunted outside, and slammed into the door. It was now propped open almost an inch, and Emma could see something person-sized shifting around through the crack.

  "Friends? Emma yelled at their visitors.

  There was some odd, scratchy laughter. More than one voice was outside. Whoever was at the door seemed to press their face to the crack, peering through.

  The vertically slit pupil of their eyes pointed directly at Emma as they voiced their reply.

  The person outside wasn't speaking English, but even as the unfamiliar syllables echoed in Emma's ears nonsensically, the meaning crept through her brain like an intruder, forcing itself into her awareness in time with the speech.

  "No." The guttural, scratchy voice rasped through the gap. "Not friends."

  Even without the glimpse of yellowed, triangular teeth, Emma could practically hear the malicious grin in their voice.

  There were silver flecks dotting the amber pupil peering at them. Silver flecks the exact same shade as the eyes of the snakes from upstairs.

  Her body gave up on trying to control her breathing as the last word of the response slithered into her brain.

  "Food."

  The gray-scaled intruder retreated from the gap after their chilling declaration.

  Moments later, the door imploded, sending cracked and splintered furniture skidding across the room.

  A crude iron axe swung loosely from a clawed hand, and the horned monstrosity filling the doorway leered hungrily down its snout at her, lips curled back over yellowed teeth.

  Leather bands wrapped around mismatched, decorative fangs that might have belonged to animals or the open maw in front of her hung together against the slate-colored scales, stretched over rippling muscles that filled the doorway. Tattered and mismatched pelts hung loosely against the rest of the intruder's body, but made allowances for the squared tail that swung through the space behind it.

  Emma recognized the thick, clawed feet from some of the bloody footprints outside. The ones she had told Calen didn't belong to a bird.

  The axe lifted, and those feet took a step towards her.

  Across the room, Mr. Isaacson clicked the cylinder of his revolver home.

  Emma's hands climbed over her ears of their own accord.

  The much-muffled gunshot twinged in her head anyways, jabbing at her eardrums.

  The attacker's head jerked to the side, and they stopped advancing.

  A clawed hand reached up towards their long, predatory head snout.

  A mushroomed bullet was plucked out of the side of a grinning maw. The pointed head turned away from Emma.

  "Wasted your—" The monster began to growl, throat abuzz with with mana.

  Two more gunshots rang out, and red splattered across the room.

  The intruder collapsed in a spray of blood, choking and twitching on the floor.

  "Close that door and don't open it for anything!" Mr. Isaacson shouted.

  Emma tore her eyes away from the dying monster joining the pile of scaly flesh on the floor, and listened.

  The door slammed.

  Her gaze was locked on the wooden planks and banded iron for just a moment, before she felt a tug at her sleeve.

  Calen's leg was red again, and parts of it were starting to blacken.

  "Where's that leather thing?" Calen asked in between gasps.

  Emma's fingers found the maybe-magic device Calen had stolen from whoever had built this tower and let it get infested with snakes. Hydra-snakes.

  "Here." She said dully, reaching for her pocket. "Why does it matter? How did you know fire—"

  "Figured it couldn't hurt even if I was wrong. This is a watchtower, Em, I'm pretty sure they were soldiers. It was all like, weapons and armor." Calen babbled over her. "What are the odds that's for wound treatment?"

  Treatment. Calen was dying. She needed to stop Calen from dying.

  "I can't get it to work." She said shakily. "Calen there's... things with two legs, and scales, and weapons, outside. And they want to eat us."

  He tilted his head back and laughed at the ceiling. A deranged, breathy chuckle.

  "Well, I can't run. So try again." He said, as if it were that simple. "Stick it right on the bite mark, and just... pretend magic is real, and you can use it, dump a bunch of power into it until it's full."

  Emma turned the magical object in her hands over and over, watching redness creep up Calen's calf again.

  "What if it makes things worse?" She asked. "What if this isn't for fixing people at all?"

  Calen's leg fuzzed again, and the redness retreated, but not any of the blackened spots that were starting to form close to the bite mark.

  Those were swelling, as blood pooled and flesh started to—

  He got that stupid grin on his face, like when he knew he had solved a puzzle before her, or won a board game in a way she didn't see yet.

  "I don't have a better plan." Calen panted. "And we're running outta time. So do it anyway."

  Emma slapped the leather patch against his leg a little harder than she meant to, and tried to steady her breathing.

  This was easy. Calen had figured it out in like, a minute, with no idea magic existed.

  She could do this. She just needed to shove a bunch of theoretical power through an unknown object, and think about what she wanted.

  Stretching every ounce of mental energy she had, Emma drummed up everything she knew about cellular biology, down to the last, minute detail, grabbed the buzzing tingle she could almost imagine infusing her hands, and 'shoved' it through the coppery threads.

  "Fix him." She mumbled behind grit teeth.

  Every muscle in her hands pinched and pricked, suddenly enough that Emma's fingers curled, trying to flinch away from the sensation. The motion just wrapped her hands around Calen's leg, pressing the patch tighter.

  Her hands went numb right after, and something cracked against her palm.

  Emma yanked her hands away, and peeled the patch off Calen's leg. Fumbling the task didn't matter, but her fingers were still clumsy, prickling with every motion like they had lost blood flow and were just starting to regain it with pinches of pain.

  The stone had cracked, and was crumbling to dust. Even the leather had dried to the point of cracking, and begun to flake apart. The coppery threads had melted into it, which explained why the back side had none of them. Melting metal into someone's flesh would have been the opposite of helpful, if you were trying to fix them.

  But Calen's leg was more fixed than it had been, and Emma's hands had staticky 'threads' on them when she squinted.

  She dragged her worries away from herself.

  "Feel better? Calen?" Emma asked.

  "Whooo boy yes but also no." Calen hissed. "Wow that was weird. It still hurts, but that was... Em you used the stuff in your forearms too, how did you do—"

  His leg was starting to turn red again, while he babbled. Near-endlessly, apparently. His eyes were darting around way too fast too.

  The venom was still hurting him, and the leather had just finished falling apart in Emma's hands.

  "—and yours are like, way denser." He was still going, barely pausing to breathe. "Em I'm pretty sure it's doing something to our veins, when we—"

  "Where are the rest of them?" Emma demanded over him. "The other ones you found. We're doing it again."

  Smoke crept under the door, but there had been no more gunshots, no scrape of wood or rasping taunts.

  "Upstairs. In the boxes at the ends of the beds." Calen said. "I can... probably keep my leg okay, if you're fast. I'm starting to figure it out, I can slow it down a little. That helped a lot. Don't get bit, though. That would be bad."

  "Okay. Yeah. Got it." Emma muttered.

  That was easy too. She just needed to go upstairs, into the snake pit in a still-burning building.

  She covered her mouth and nose with a sleeve, hoping it would help filter out some of the smoke, and opened the door.

  A long pink tongue lolled out of the gray-scaled corpse strewn across the floor in front of her.

  There was no malice left in the dull, silver-flecked eyes. They were just as dead as the rest of the... person on the floor.

  Because it was a person. It had worn clothes, and talked, and threatened to eat her.

  Tried to eat her.

  "Get back in there kid, they're—"

  Emma's head turned just in time to catch the indigo flash of light flying through the front door.

  Thicker than her arm, the glowing projectile looked like an arrow wreathed in a purple halo, crossing the space in an instant to smash into the door at the back of the space.

  A deafening crash pulverized the door, and the stone frame housing it in equal measure, sending fragments of stone and wood everywhere, tossing Emma to the ground. Her shoulder slammed painfully against the outer wall of the closet.

  Breathing in caught her a mouthful of smoke, and she coughed, but it was drowned out in the rest of the noise that followed.

  Something massive shifted in the dusty haze mixing with the smoke, and a deep, guttural screech echoed from above. The whole building vibrated against Emma's knees where she was knelt on the floor.

  Coughing emanated from the other side of the room.

  "Get down in cover kid."

  Mr. Isaacson was still standing, gun trained on the shattered front door from his protected alcove at the back of the room. Calen would be fine, as long as she got back with more magic.

  Emma silently shook her head, and began to crawl up the stairs, weaving around the hissing puddles of oil on the landing.

  The handle of her axe jutted up, still stuck in the floorboards between two halves of a dead snake.

  Her palms stuck to the bloodstained steps, but every one put her closer to the weapon.

  She had almost worked it out of the wood when she felt the building shake again, and the inner wall of the tower began to topple across the beds.

  Splinters of wood and clay tiles rained as something heavy crushed the roof. Emma caught a glimpse of massive white scales twisting their way up the now-exposed stairwell that had just partially crumbled under the pressure.

  Emma lifted her prize, and saw the blade had been pitted and melted to sludge. The weapon was useless.

  She hefted it anyway. It was better than her hands.

  At least now she knew what had been keeping the door to the tower shut.

  Through one of the open windows, Emma saw the massive viper's underbelly begin to slide off the roof. It was almost as wide as a car. The snake was an impossibility of nature that must have barely fit through the doors, before someone locked it inside the tower.

  Too numb to care, she turned back to the room, and began her frantic search through the rubble of the second floor, determined to check every box.

  "Not my problem. Need to save Calen." She muttered. "Let the monsters kill each other."

  First Contact is an anthropological term describing a meeting of cultures who had previously not interacted. Its use was adapted for science fiction by Murray Leinster, in 1935. While Leinster borrowed the term first, the narrative idea itself was popularized nearly 40 years earlier by H.G. Wells, in the book The War of the Worlds. The story was published in 1897, and famously adapted into a radio play presented as a public news broadcast in 1938.