By the way, if you're enjoying the work I've commissioned or made myself, I'd love to be able to produce more of it for you. Purely if you have the luxury to do so, any and all donations would be greatly appreciated. You can do so using my Ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/J3J8LAG8

💛💚💙 If you are able to do so, I really appreciate it! Please comment below with what you'd like to see more of (and so I can thank you personally!) and I'll do my best to bring that content to you 💙💚💛

🎆🐱With that said, let's get on with the show! 🐭🎆

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A late upload but one that deserves it! This is a beautiful piece of art that came from the most unlikely of places.

Brought to life by the amazing Lil  ScreamQueen1991 (I adore her so much and can't wait to see the new version!)

Originally designed as a concept art that didn't quite match the character intended, I swiftly swept up the sketch after catching that glorious sass face she'd designed for my partner's serpent character.

Zerrah is a character I've brought with me from my earliest days of role-playing. A villain, sometimes anti-hero that's evolved through many forms, yet always retains her deadly edge (and serpent form!)

For detailed lore on the sorceress, look below:

From the earliest days as a hatchling, Zerrah had always believed that she was born for a life of greatness. The inheritance of her mother's lucrative oil harvesting company, which had helped to nurture the girl into a confident young woman, who'd thrived on the finest of foods, drinks and delights that the world had to offer, all the way through to her years as a keen minded student, pursuing the academic fields of psychology and sciences, with a particular focus on biology and physics, two areas that fascinated her to no end and would later grant her a tremendous advantage to the study of mysticism and magic, when the young woman would have a surprise encounter with the former, Sorceress of the Seven Sands, who had saved Zerrah when a dark stranger had ventured into her palace like abode, slaying her mother and threatening to do the same to the young serpent, were it not for the interventions of this curious, small bat...

In the wake of tragedy, Zerrah's attentions deviated from the running of the company she now owned at twelve years of age and instead fully towards the mastery of the mystical arts, training alongside a student only a few years her senior, who she'd come to develop a great deal of admiration for, but also envy... where she struggled at times, he seemed practically gifted in the manipulation of magic. It was as if he was born for it... But through his excellence and the constant praise he received from the Sorceress of the Seven Sands, Zerrah found her motivation. She would surpass him... for there could only ever be one Guardian of the Seven Sands at any one point and it would be Zerrah.

... At least, had darkness not once more transpired to drive Zerrah's fate down a darker path. When word came to the serpent that her mother's killer was present within Cairo, Zerrah could not resist the temptation to seek out revenge for the one that had stolen her mother from her. Using the knowledge she had gathered across four years of training, Zerrah, now sixteen, confronted the warlock with the intention of putting her demons to rest once and for all.

During a violent struggle between both powers. The young sorceress held her own against the fiend, countering and assaulting with a flurry of mystical strikes and even seeming to best the villain, knocking him down beside the edge of a cliff... where he produced to laugh in a mocking tone.

With her fangs bared, Zerrah prepared to bite down upon her foe and end his life once and for all, but instead of fear, begging or desperate pleas for the young serpent to spare his life... instead a dark and ominous laughter was produced from the many heads of the dark hydra. "I'm very... very proud of you... my daughter..." Her murderous father had cursed her. Not with anything of an a true mystical nature, but rather her dark heritage. The lust she had for power was a part of her and one she had resisted for so very long... He taunted her to take his life, to destroy him and take his place and she listened... she considered that oh so very tempting offer.

His words stunned her long enough to pause, though in that moment, she knew he spoke the truth. During her hunt to find him, she couldn't help but sense a familiarity with the aura she chased and in this revelation, her heart and her mind, were left broken. She lashed out in a furious strike, cleaving the cliff he laid upon and cast him down to the depths of the crushing sea below, before shrieking with a sorrowful scream in the night, met with the ominous crashing of lightning and the booming of thunder.

Upon returning back to the college where both she and the young Razeen trained, Zerrah demanded to know if the Sorceress knew the truth all along. That her father murdered her mother and that she had always possessed the magical potential to become just like him... A truth that the Sorceress admitted to knowing, from the very first day Zerrah laid eyes upon her.

The young serpent's rage upon discovering this revelation drove her to assault her mentor and her fellow student in Razeen, though the combined might of the small bats proved too much for the already weakened serpent... And she fled, promising that one day, she would return to seize what was rightfully hers and that no one would ever control her destiny again, but she alone.