within her snapped; twenty more before her mind lost track of itself, her consciousness stretched thin until finally it tore beneath the strain. She knew she had found a snake inscribed in gold along the edges of one side to her cage, its whole length one long bar that supported the ceiling and her imprisonment, a latch to hold her in. She ended up talking to it for hours in sibilant tones and odd diction, gibberish more than actual sentences or thoughts. The metal serpent wasn’t sapient, not truly, but it was able to converse in riddles and backtalk with enough convincing falsehood that her magic addled mind took all its sounds for truth.