Chapter 47

  Hydra vomit coursed through the air on the wings of Yesui’s storm, glistening in the rays of the afternoon sun. Dalex stared at it in equal parts awe and disgust, feeling as if he might join the monster in its purge at any moment. Luckily, the creature was a good hundred yards away, so Dalex wasn’t caught in the splash zone. Seventh continued to hunker down with her tree root and the {adamantine}, the hydra momentarily unaware of her presence.

  “What ungodly nonsense is this?” Arnaut shouted, struggling to be heard over the gale.

  Yesui gave him a curious look and mouthed, “Ungodly?” Then she shrugged and walked toward the hydra, still undeterred by the raging winds.

  The hydra upped the last of its chuck and the sick head shook itself out, angry-eyed and orange around the mouth. The creature let out a hissing roar from all three of its heads, each with its own tone and pitch, creating a bone-chillingly melodic chorus. Scarred over wounds covered its body, some still bleeding where harpoons remained embedded in its hide.

  Three thick and muscular necks kept the hydra’s heads upright in the storm. They searched the surrounding area, the creature getting its bearings. After being trapped in the anomaly—likely for at least several days, if not weeks—the hydra was probably seeing and hearing the real world for the first time in a while. It roared again, and Dalex could feel the rage in its three voices. It did not make any attempt to flee. Dalex noted one hungry set of eyes take note of the houses of the nearby town.

  The hydra was pissed, and its stomach was empty.

  Then three pairs of eyes landed on Yesui casually strolling across the blasted landscape toward the creature. The hydra detached a clawed foot from the ground, taking a single step toward her, holding fast against the whirlwind.

  Dalex could not move without pulling his axe from the ground, at which point he would risk being blown away. Even with all of the strength given to him by his armor, it did not lend him more mass. He could move his arms and legs easily through the wind, but would slide away and be borne into the sky the moment he let go of his handhold.

  And he was certain {fly} would not be useful in this extreme weather.

  But the chains still dangling off of the hydra’s body and the wreckage of the harpoon traps littered around the area gave him an idea. While Yesui and the hydra faced off, Dalex let go of {Skull Anchor} with his right hand and cast, “{Ice climber’s friend}.”

  The {astral mortar} flowed over the back of his hand to form a small device that launched a grapple hook into the ground several feet away. It left behind a chain connected to Dalex’s wrist. The hook extended metal barbs into the dirt and rock around it to keep it in place, giving him a new anchor point. He let go of his axe, allowing the weapon to dissolve, and pulled toward his new anchor before summoning a second grapple launcher on his left wrist. Dalex shot this grapple into the earth, rooting him to the ground just as surely as the hydra’s claws kept it fixed in place.

  From there, he began an awkward march through the storm to reach the hydra. He would retract one of the hooks and then shoot it into the ground a little farther ahead, allowing him to inch closer to the action before repeating the same process with the other hook. The two grapples helped him move across the flat terrain the same way a pair of ice picks allowed an ice climber to pull himself up a sheer cliff. It was slow going, but the more he practiced, the faster he moved. He was not fast enough to catch up to Yesui, who appeared unhurried. Dalex studied her as he progressed, waiting for her to engage with the hydra. The storm she had summoned was impressive, maybe more so than the mountain Arnaut had built. She was far more powerful than Dalex had expected, and he realized for the first time that she did not carry a weapon.

  She walked within striking range of the hydra’s heads. All three reared back and then streaked forward, mouths agape to bite Yesui in half or swallow her whole. Just before they reached her, she hopped into the air and landed on top of the middle head as its teeth clamped down on the space where she had been. If she uttered any kind of spell definition, Dalex could not hear it over the wind.

  The churning air above her coalesced into three smaller vortexes of swirling leaves, dirt, and leftover paint. Like spinning sawblades, they hung over the necks of the hydra for a brief second and then chopped down, partially cutting the throat of the middle head and completely slicing off the two heads flanking it. The wind picked up the two severed heads and carried them away while their long necks flailed about, throwing great gouts of blood in every direction.

  The wounded middle head twisted to bite at Yesui, but she jumped clear. The wind finally seemed to catch her, but it only carried her a dozen yards away before settling her gently down to the ground.

  The hydra took two big steps back from her, its limbs slow as it continued to fight the wind. The gash on the middle head closed quickly. The exposed innards of the two necks adjacent to it began to bulge, new growth exploding upwards into a fresh pair of heads. Not only did the creature heal quickly, but it grew new heads far faster than Dalex had expected. Upon seeing the hydra in its full glory, he had guessed it functioned the same as the beast from Earth mythology, but this variation seemed even harder to kill.

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  Within moments, the hydra was back to full fighting strength, even pushing a few harpoons out of its hide. Dalex realized he probably never could have finished it off with just {Skull Anchor}. Still, if the hydras of Gaia Eta healed in the same way as the mythological hydras of Earth, they probably died the same way too. The middle head, more resistant to Yesui’s wind blades, almost confirmed it. That head would be its Achilles Heel.

  But the two secondary heads would get in the way. They needed to be cut and cauterized. Did Yesui have any fire-based attacks? So far, the only people Dalex had seen use fire magic were the Wolf Brigade and other servants of the dragons. It might be up to him to fill the role of the fire mage.

  Yesui continued to fight the hydra, cutting off secondary heads and attempting unsuccessfully to deal a final blow to the central head. Dalex inched closer and closer to the battle, picking up speed as he became more familiar with his grapple system.

  Just as he was close enough to accurately cast the spell he had in mind, Yesui jumped over the hydra to land on its opposite side. The creature spun around to face her, staggering in the wind as it took new claw-holds in the ground. Its tail whipped around and caught Dalex across his stomach.

  The blow threw him back, but he managed to fire one of his grapples into the soft flesh of the hydra’s tail. It dragged him across the ground as it lashed angrily back and forth. For several seconds, it was all Dalex could do to keep himself attached to the thing. Eventually, he took control of his senses and fired the second grapple farther up toward the base of the tail.

  Rather than hobble across the wind-scoured ground, he now pulled himself along the tail, coming closer and closer to the main body. Yesui kept the hydra distracted for another minute, allowing Dalex to reach the hydra’s hindquarters, where he set to climbing toward the bases of its three necks.

  Head after head fell free from the hydra’s more vulnerable necks. Torrents of blood fell down on Dalex as he climbed, making the creature’s skin slick and difficult to traverse.

  Abruptly, a sword planted itself point first several feet up from Dalex in the side of the creature’s body. It vanished in a cloud of smoke and then a moment later a second sword appeared to stab the hydra again. This one vanished too, and Dalex glanced over to see it reappear in Arnaut’s hand. He was still hiding out of the wind in the shadow of his boulder. Rather than just cowering, doing nothing, he was throwing his sword at the hydra and then calling it back to himself through some magical means, to be thrown again. Dalex remembered using a laser to melt that same sword down to its hilt, only for the hero to reappear with it fully intact a few minutes later. That was how he had done it.

  Neat.

  But why had he said he needed to retrieve it from the hydra's body earlier? Had he just wanted to say something cool?

  Dalex reached the base of the hydra’s right-most neck. He made sure one of his grapples was secure in the creature’s flesh and then shouted to Yesui, “Keep decapitating! It won’t grow back this time!”

  As if on command, one of her wind saws chopped through the neck just above Dalex. The head toppled free and Dalex pointed at the fresh stump, casting, “{Sticky fire}!”

  The grapple hook device on his free hand formed into a nozzle that immediately spit a stream of flaming liquid over the stump. The liquid clung to the hydra’s neck, burning and sizzling while the creature let out a screaming hiss of anguish.

  The freshly cauterized stump did not grow a new head.

  Dalex smelled cooking flesh as he shimmied his way across the hydra’s back to the opposite neck. As soon as he reached its base, Yesui cut its head free, and Dalex spread a liberal amount of {sticky fire} over the stump. With both secondary heads cauterized, only the primary head remained.

  Still, Yesui couldn’t sever it on her own. Dalex summoned {Skull Anchor}, ready to test the {adamantine} blade against the hydra’s stiff neck.

  The creature twisted and bucked. The chunk of flesh holding Dalex’s only grapple hook pulled free. He was thrown from the hydra’s back and crashed into the ground.

  Before he could be blown away in the storm, he fired the grapple back into the ground to secure himself. But as Dalex got to his feet, he realized the wind had died down significantly. He released the grapple hook and was not immediately bowled over by a gust of wind.

  Arnaut seemed to be figuring this out as well. He stepped out of the cover of his boulder and started trotting toward the fight, a fresh sword in his hand. Dalex exchanged a look with both the hero and Yesui. All three instinctively knew what to do next.

  Yesui kept the hydra busy while Dalex and Arnaut took up opposite flanking positions behind the creature. Once they were in place, Arnaut shouted, “Voxmagna casts my voice over mountains,” and then, “NOW!”

  His voice boomed out unnaturally loud, carrying over both the dying storm and the raging of the hydra. Dalex, Yesui, and Arnaut moved at the same time. Dalex {flew} with his axe at the hydra’s main neck. Yesui cast one of her wind saws. Arnaut leaped into the air with his sword.

  All three blows connected at once at three different points on the hydra’s primary neck. The blades met in the middle, slicing through skin, flesh, cartilage, and bone until the hydra’s head fell free, toppling to the ground with a gruesome FPLOP!.

  Its body went rigid. Arnaut dropped back to the surface while Dalex remained in the sky, hovering over the headless monster. For a moment, it stood frozen in place, and then it finally slumped toward Yesui. She jumped out of the way as it slammed into the ground and stopped, never to move again.

  For good measure, Dalex floated around to the stump of its primary neck and gave it a shot of {sticky fire}. He didn’t think the hydra could regrow its true head, but he wasn’t about to leave that to chance.

  Yesui and Arnaut walked around the corpse to stand beneath Dalex, and he descended to join them on the ground. They stared at the creature for several seconds, perhaps wondering if it would surprise them and get up again.

  It did not.

  Finally, Seventh strolled up to the trio, holding what Dalex assumed was the {adamantine} deposit. Rendered inert, it looked like any old lump of unrefined metal.

  Seventh looked over the hydra’s corpse with a curious expression. “That seemed like a lot of work for such a fragile creature.”

  Arnaut scoffed. “Fragile?”

  Yesui shrugged. “She has a point.”

  Dalex let {Skull Anchor} dissolve and then raised both hands toward his companions. “High fives, anyone?”

  Yesui gave him a cold look and brushed at the drying purple paint on her clothes, only managing to transfer some of the paint to her hand. “If that is some human form of celebration, I’m not interested. You two have some cleaning up to do.”

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