I don't know it yet, but today will be my last day of freedom for a long time to come. It starts like any other day: light wakes me, chilled waters stab at my core as I move to the riverbank—and then, I bask!

  I'd love to spend more time here, laying on the warm mud, soaking up the sun, but the grim chorus of morning birdsong reminds me that this is no place to relax. Soon they'll stop singing. That's when they swoop down to snatch us.

  And... that should be enough. I can finally move properly.

  Next, as always, I search for food. Mosquito larva, mosquito larva... mosquito larva—oh, a tadpole! Not too long ago a single tadpole would have been a big meal. Things can't go on like this if I keep growing, but what else is there to eat?

  I dare not swim out in the open, not if it can be avoided. There are predators much larger than myself everywhere: some patrolling the deeper waters, some circling through the air, and some clinging to branches, perched just above the surface.

  No. I stay close to the mud. I use reeds for cover. Here in the shallow thickets, here is safe. Here is home.

  Good things don't last forever. The mosquito larvae are depleted. There's no food and I'm still hungry. Peeking out from my hiding place I spot my salvation. There, in the open waters, a chunk of carrion. What type of creature was it once part of? I have no idea—and I don't care. Meat is meat, and this'll be a whole day's meal all in one gulp.

  Before moving out, I check every direction and then check again. Can't let excitement compromise me. With a quick burst of energy, I dash forward, circle around, and return immediately. I learned this feint watching my older counterparts—it tricks ambush predators into revealing themselves.

  Nothing stirs... Alright! Time to move!

  In the future, I'll look back at this moment with shame and regret. I should have been more suspicious. That carrion was clearly too good to be true. Ignorance is only bliss until you're dead.

  I claim the morsel in one big gulp. Rotting flavors fill my mouth and I savor the taste. My joy is short-lived however—something's wrong. The chunk of meat feels much too heavy. I try to spit it out but fail. Something sharp digs into my throat.

  Panicked, I try to swim back for cover. A metal spike juts out of my neck. Stay calm! I will make it through this. The wound will heal, but that can wait. My biggest concern should be getting back under cover. All this noise will surely attracted even worse treats.

  I try to head back, but something stops me. Desperate to swim away, I put all my strength into my tail—but somehow, I'm not getting anywhere. A line protrudes from my mouth and it's pulling upwards.

  Panicked and abandoning all stealth, I thrash violently and without reason. It doesn't help. As my strength wanes, the unseen force grows.

  At this point, you might be wondering: why didn't I just bite that neck off and swim away? Well, you must understand, my mind is quite simple. I never stop to consider the range of actions available to me. I never weigh the pros and cons of potential outcomes. All my survival skills are either instinctive, or learned through rigid imitation.

  In the future I will become much more comfortable with the need to sacrifice the occasional head for a strategic advantage, but we are not there yet.

  Okay, getting back to the preset. The fisherman doesn't eat me immediately. I've seen him around before—he catches a lot of prey, but... I've never actually seen him eat anything. Really, until just now, I had no idea how he even got his prey out of the water.

  In retrospect, I maybe should have given it more thought. Maybe. But in my defense, if I had to pause to figure out every deadly mystery in my surroundings, well, nothing would ever get done.

  I watch the human continue his day's work from inside a metal cage. Next to me is a bucket filled with fish. Unlike me, they are not handling the lack of water well. The smell of death rises up from below the pile.

  Instead of removing the hook from my throat, the fisherman disrespectfully cuts that head off and uses it as bait. A new head slowly grows in its place, and while it's still small enough to fit between the cage's bars, I poke it out and try to bite a nearby catfish. It flops out of reach.

  Now, you might be thinking: My priorities are all wrong here. I should bite off the two larger heads and make my escape. Well... that hasn't occurred to me, okay! I'm about as big as a human fist and I'll let you guess my brain size.

  The sun is setting and I am being carried away. My cage dangles from the fisherman's right hand while the bucket of now-very-dead fish is strapped onto his back. I'm so hungry. Regrowing a head takes a lot out of you.

  We arrive at a hut where fish carcasses are bathed in salt and hung from hooks along the ceiling. I'm left in that same place, still locked in a cage.

  There's an intense smell of decay stunted by too much salt here. It lacks the pleasant richness of swamp rot. My skin is getting dry and itchy and I may go insane soon. The one silver lining here is that the floor is littered with patches of offal and crawling with insects. I snatch them up as they creep by.

  It's been two days and the fisherman has passed me and my cage off to another human, who then passed me on again. This third human puts me on a cart and actually feeds me. Definitely my favorite human so far, though... the bar is low.

  The merchant pulls his cart by hand and it emits a low resonant creak with each step. Sometimes, larger carts and carriages pass us by. My meals consist mostly of worms that he digs up in the early mornings. The cuisine is quite good, so at least I still have some daily thing to look forward to.

  It's been more than a week. The shock of being captured has worn off. Sure, I still believed I'll end up being eaten at some point—but, I now understand that humans sometimes hold on to food to eat later. Eventually, I will be eaten.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Day after day, tree trunks line up on my left and on my right. They flow steadily by, replacing the watery rhythms of the swamp as the new backdrop of my existence.

  By the time our journey ends, the human world has become more predictable. It consists mostly of long roads surrounded by trees. Along these roads humans take shelter inside carefully balanced piles of dead trees—much like beavers. These buildings are often bunched together into settlements, which is where they gather to exchange things.

  We reach a settlement that dwarfs all previous ones, and here the merchant finally sells me.

  My new owner is the Master. The Master has wrinkly skin and a long mat of gray hair protrudes from his chin. He lives in a tall stone building and I've been moved into the basement along with many others. We captives are almost all hydra.

  My cage is a bit bigger now, but the food is terrible. All I get is chunks of sickly gray mystery meat. The texture is spongy and I never knew anything could be this bland. Clean water has more flavor than this.

  Every other day, a funnel is forced down my throat and a glowing blue liquid is poured in. If I spit it out later, they simply repeat the process. I'm pretty sure it's poison. Drinking this stuff makes your whole body hurt and gives you a brief episode of uncontrollable shivers—and that's just the immediate side effects. At least that part fades. The sharp aftertaste it leaves in your mouth lingers for days.

  I hate this place. It stinks. It's dark. The food is terrible. And my skin, won't, stop, itching!

  Our cages are grouped into different sections, each with a unique diet. Some diets are undoubtedly worse than mine—I can smell it.

  Only my own group remains relatively healthy. The others have wasted away at varying rates. Not that the Master will ever run out of victims. When one group nears expiration, he simply exterminates them and brings in new hatchlings.

  I'm losing my sense of time. What is the point of this? You don't eat us. And surely there are faster ways to kill us? Why must these humans over-complicate things?

  Somewhere in the back of my mind there's a faint voice screaming at me: Think! You must learn if you want to survive. But can I really adapt to this?

  Humans associate specific sounds with specifics things: the nasty gray meat is called ‘feed’, the cursed blue liquid is ‘primer’, the woman who takes care of the older hydra is ‘Julie’, and the mean old man is ‘Master’. Words are not just for things and people—they can also be commands: ‘no!’, ‘down!’, ‘let go!’ ‘eat up!’, ‘stop hissing!’, and so on. These all mean the same thing.

  Little ones continue to arrive faster than older ones die out. There are so many hydra now. How many swamps did they have to clear out?

  At some point, simply by surviving, I've become one of the largest subjects. With a bit of stretching, I can reach as high as the Master's knees. Not everyone makes it to this size, so I feel a little accomplished.

  There are others of my generation still alive too. As the basement becomes more crowded, we the first generation survivors, are moved to a different room and given larger cages. The smell is better here because Julie is here. Julie keeps everything and everyone clean.

  Our diets have changed again—we now get rats! The rats are cold and stiff but win hands down on taste compared to the nasty sponge meat.

  My fourth and fifth heads have sprouted. They connect more to the back of my trunk than the others, and while numbers two and three face mostly forward, four and five point slightly to the rear.

  It's a big development, but there's something even more significant happening today. The last of us first-generation subjects have reached the same growth milestone, and now a naming ceremony is being held.

  There's ‘Mangler’, ‘Dopey’, ‘Blackbite’, ‘Booboo’, ‘Widowmaker’, ‘Pokadot’, ‘Bloodthorn’, ‘Blondie’, ‘Deathgrip’, ‘Cuddles’, ‘Cataclysm’, ‘Avocado’ and so on as Julie and the Master take turns naming us.

  Finally comes my turn. How do I know these are to be our names? Well...

  Congratulations! you have been named. Henceforth, you shall be known as ‘Deluge’. For becoming a named monster, you have been granted the passive ability: understanding +1. Your base class has been adjusted to level 2.

  I know immediately what the name means—it means me, I am Deluge!

  I was named by the one person I hate the most. Why am I so quick to accept it? Well, allow me to explain: it's not about him, it's not even about having a sound to associate myself with.

  My whole life, System has has spoken to me only twice: the first time to announce that I'd reached level 1 and to give me a choice of abilities. I knew instinctively back then what abilities are and how they would help me. They let me do things better. Now, after years of silence, System suddenly shows up to confirm my name and give me another ability.

  Am I excited? Am I thrilled? Am I so easy to please?... Hell yeah!

  Sure, it might seem like a small thing to you who doesn't need to spend all day locked in a cage with nothing to do but eat and defecate. You probably get a new ability every other day. But please, consider things from my perspective. To me it means a lot. System gave me an ability. Some force greater than even these lunatic humans still believes my abilities matter.

  The humans are over-complicating my impending death again. Is it because I have five heads now? Maybe it's the name thing or perhaps the intelligence +1 thing. Well, I really don't know, and I guess it would make no difference if I did.

  The petty arena is a bowl of hard dirt surrounded by a wall of spectators. I can smell so many delicious foods from here, but none of that is for me it seems.

  Clive (named beast), level 4

  base class: cutter monkey (motion->agility#1, biology->adaptation#1), level 4

  It's not hard to figure out what's supposed to happen here. I'm starving, it looks hungry... the handlers put us together and left, so... someone's getting eaten.

  Well, it won't be me!

  Our fight commences. My opponent launches straight at me. It leaps, but then circles to the side at the last moment, attempting to attack my flank. It fails, and I land a shallow bite on the offending arm.

  THAT'S RIGHT YOU HAIRY HUMAN LOOKALIKE!

  I HAVE NO FLANKS!

  COUNT MY HEADS!

  Wait, huff... why am I, huff... struggling to breathe? It's been so long since I've been out and moving. I'm too worked up. That's no good. I need to calm down.

  Clive has long sharp nails and moves much faster than me. I haven't landed a single hit since that first bite. My opponent is more cautious now.

  With a mix of whistles and guttural clicks, the cutter monkey darts in and out, fainting attacks over and over. It throws just enough real attacks in the mix to force me to react each time. These shallow cutting wounds heal quickly, so I'm not getting overwhelmed just yet, but I am getting tired. My healing capacity isn't limitless you know—it comes from consuming fat reserves. I will surely die if nothing changes.

  Clive is getting bolder as I slow down. Fewer faints, stronger attacks. It can sense that I'm weakening.

  It occurs to me, what if I make it believe I'm more tired than I actually am? My only chance at dealing damage is it making a mistake. Can I encourage that?

  I deliberately slow my movements even further. As expected, my opponent becomes more confident, claws cutting deeper and deeper each time. The me from back in my swamp days would have lacked the resolve needed for a plan like this. But that was a long time ago. I'm a different hydra now.

  For years now I've had nothing to do but think. Every day, locked in my cage, I think about how easy it would have been to escape that fisherman. If only I had the resolve to push through the pain and chew my heads off. That regret has pestered me for years, but today is different.

  I hold back and let that monkey mangle me until I'm nothing but a stain of gore smeared along the dirt. Those in the audience not familiar with hydra have probably written me off by now. However, I am a hydra. My healing only stopped because I willed it.

  The assault stops. It must think the fight is over. The cutter monkey closes in to feed, and just as its teeth make contact with my skin, I leapt and coil my whole body around its neck. Its eyes bulge in terror as my wounds close up.

  My first day at the arena ends with me at level 3 and my belly stuffed with fresh meat.