Snake sat before the embers of the fire that had long gone out.

He was staring into space, his one eye blinking rapidly, mind working furiously.

Stroking his ruined face, he grimaced, making him look even more grotesque. 

His face was a ruin, twisted by some old violence that had never healed clean. One eye was gone, the socket collapsed into a shadowed pit, while the other glared with a feverish brightness that made his ugliness more menacing. The left side of his ...