"So...my father's spear lies somewhere out there. I'll need it if I'm going to travel evn farther out." Kai scratched his head. He sighed. This is beginning to look like a wild goose chase. Kaias sat on the bank of the lake, leaning against a tree and staring out at the vast wilderness on the other side.

Maybe he didn't need the spear after all. He'd slain small dragons and wyverns with his trusty sword Kurana. He patted Kurama's hilt. The sword had been his grandfather's, a large two handed weapon that came with an ornate sheathe. Well no point questioning now. He shrugged and stood up. "Don't...move..." A reptilian voice hissed behind him. He felt a dagger poke him in the back. "Again with the robbing...get something new please..." Kai dropped to the ground and lashed out with a booted foot and knocked the would be thief over. "You're not to smart are you. Then again..your a lizard...I'm not surprise." He yanked the dagger away, then slit the creatures throat then stood up.

He left the creature's body there and headed for the trees.

"Such friendliness," a sardonic voice drawled from above.


Nestled comfortably in the crook of a rough-barked tree, its knobbly boughs sweeping low to the ground, Voluna sat midway up, with an unfinished arrow in her hands that she hadn't actually looked up from. She was hardly difficult to see once one got up above eye level; the dull-red tabard over her off-white tunic stood out as much as a cardinal's plumage in the snow. One leg was propped up on the bough itself, the other dangling idly. Her bow remained on her back, unstrung, while her quiver hung from the hip rather than from her back.

She sighted down the length of the ash wood shaft yet again; displeased with some detail of straightness, her little carving knife came out again to correct it. A small curl of wood fell away to join its fellows on the broad branch.

Now satisfied, she set the knife and shaft down and scooped up the shavings; they'd make decent tinder, if nothing else. She tucked them away, and took up the shaft and knife again.


Voluna kept one eye on the man below, her face dipped in a scowl--or was naturally tugged down by the pale scar on her face, it was difficult to tell.

Kai snorted. "Hardly. Of course I'm not one to kill without warrant." He twirled the knife then tossed it into the tree, where it stuck, quivering. He shrugged then folded his arms, looking slightly amused.

"Can I ask your name ma'am? I'm Kaias..." He said, a smile playing on his lips. The woman’s...attitude amused him. He'd traveled far and met many people. However, not many went out of their way to scowl at him. He scanned over her silently. She could fight. He could tell that much. By the way, they fiddled with the knife, she knew her way around the woods, not a kitchen.

He continued to observe her work. The bow she carried, where her quiver was, everything that he might need, incase she was hostile...or more hostile anyway.

"But you already asked me, so forming that into a question is redundant."

Her foot swung upwards to avoid the knife, though it didn't come near where it originally was. She poked it with the toe of her bood until it dropped back down into a dead fern bed.

"You missed."

Vol's knife had slipped sometime during the maneuver, and instead of carving a fletching slot a rather unsightly notch ended up in the otherwise perfectly straight shaft instead. She stared at it in irritation.


"...dammit."


Well, that was dumb.


With an annoyed twitch of the knife, she cut away the notched end and then put both of them away. The stick was too short to be a proper arrow now anyway, though it would make a decent...something.


"What do you want?" Voluna focused her full attention on the man standing below, arms folded behind her head. One hand lingered a bit to scratch at the scar on her face.


It itched.

Kai blinked...then shrugged. "I wasn't aiming for you." He picked up the knife and stuffed it in his belt. Maybe it'd come in handy.

He tilted his head to one side. "I don't want anything. Just being polite. When you meet someone you usually ask their name..." He shrugged.

His ears pricked to a new sound. He recognized that sound...he didn't like that sound. It was a low girgling growl, coming from the lake behind him.

"What the?" He turned slowly. His hand flew to his sword. The water churned and bubbled, the tranquility of the lake broken as a large reptilian head shot out. Kai backflipped onto the tree branch just in time.

"What in the name of the gods is a Hydra doing here?" The beast reared all three heads. "Wait a sec...it's too small...This one must be young. I guess it migrated to far or something."

He recalled what he knew about aquatic dragons, Hydras. "The center head has to die. If it die then the entire thing'll go with it." He crouched on the branch and glanced at Voluna. "Either get out of here or fight. I can't be responsible for you ma'am."

He drew his sword from it's back mounted sheathe and dropped to the ground, waiting in a defensive stance.

"Scalies just love you, don't they?" Voluna's voice dribbled sarcasm.


However, her demeanor changed drastically when Kaias decided to jump up to her level. Quite literally, in this case.


"...excuse me."

Her arms came back down from behind her head, and her sardonic smile turned into a scowl again.


"That is MY personal space."

And without further ado kicked Kaias squarely in the ass to knock him off the branch.


"Thank you, sir."


She stood up and leaned against the tree briefly to string her bow--no use having an unstrung bow in a fight--and then stooped down into a crouch again so she herself wouldn't fall out of the tree. Vol didn't pull any arrows out yet, though.


Does it have a breath weapon, I wonder? she mused, staring at the young hydra with a fixed gaze.

And Kai faceplanted. Completely. "Ow! Whadidjoo! THAT WAS UNCALLED FOR!" He spit leaves out of his mouth and pulled his sword up. "Meh I guess you're stuck with me then." The Hydra hissed and two of it's head's lunged forward, surging out of the water like scaly whips.

Kai jumped, and the heads tasted dirt. He kicked off one of the necks and landed several feet away. He swung with the flat of the blade. The blw was aimed to stun.

The creature snapped it's jaws, annoyed at the sting it had recieved.

"Hey...if you can distract the two side heads, then I can cut the main one down." The far left head snapped it's jaws and tried to bite. He swung the blade and struck it's teeth, preventing it from biting. Several of them cracked. He brought the flat crashing down on in between the left head's eyes, dazing it before leaping back to avoid the right and middle heads.

"No, in fact it was completely called for."

Voluna watched Kaias, but wasn't too impressed.

"...if you're going to kill it, you don't want to use the non-lethal part of the blade, genius. If you kill the two side heads they'll at least stop trying to bite you long enough to stab the one in the middle."

She slung her bow over her shoulder--not so much that the string would break--and instead propped her head up with her left hand, arm resting on her knee. The other hand hung off the opposite knee like a dying, idly twitching squid.

"Now why would I want do that?"

Vol did not move to attack the hydra as requested. In fact, all she did was cross her arms in front of her chest and look down at the would-be dragonslayer. Or hydra-slayer, to be specific. She rather liked her position as a back-seat something-slayer, thank you.

"Fat chance of that. With my luck they'd grow back at a REALLY bad time." He sighed. Well at least she was out of the way. He ducked another lunge from the center head, but the right shot in. He barely had enough time to block the blow. The force sent him skidding backwards.

"Hmm..." He flourished and took an exerimental swing. The black cut the edge of the beast's jaw. "I guess I have no choice!" He ducked, then sliced a long, horizonal but shallow gash in the right head's neck. Blood sprayed from the wound briefly. The young sea creature reared in pain and flailed about.

"Heh...not so tough are you?" He made another lunge at the center head, but the left blocked his way. "Sh--" One of the jaws lashed out. He dodged, but it was narrow. A tooth raked his clothes. With a free hand he whipped out the thief's knife and stabbed the nearest thing he could. The eye. More blood.

He stepped back and prepared for the beast's third charge. Two heads were wounded...one was fine.

"Because...if I die, you'll have to kill it on your own. And good luck with that. So far I haven't seen your mettle yet." Kai snorted.

"Then don't cut them off and be quick about getting rid of the last one."

Voluna took the bow back down again and plucked at the string experimentally. It hadn't suffered from the damp, which was nice.

She pulled an arrow out of her quiver and hooked it to the string; almost nonchalantly, Vol drew a bead on the hydra's central head and took a potshot at it.

It actually managed to hit something.

Astonishing!


In fact, the shaft was now sticking out of the beast's left nostril, quite to its dismay.

Vol turned back to the swordsman.


"...or I could, yanno, move away from the water. I don't think that thing gets along with trees or hills too well."

Kai snorted. "Then I can't hit it can I?" He welcomed her asistance though. He darted in, closing the gap quickly. He leapt from the back, just as the other two heads reared to strike. They moved to bar his path. He swung and slashed, this time cleaving off the right head, before kicking off it's stump and landing again.

"Dammit...We gotta end this quickly..." He charged again, staying low to avoid being shot.

Voluna took her own sweet time with her next shot.

Not because she was taking painstaking care over her aim, but because watching Kaias jump about like a monkey with a sword was highly entertaining.


That prospect of death or injury? She was out of range; why should she care?


He's not listening to meeee.


Vol lined up her next shot in the general direction of the hydra's stump of a right head, wondering idly just how fast it would regenerate.


Such a fascinating little beastie.


The arrow made a peculiar schlock noise. It took her a moment to realize it was now sticking out of the beast's spinal chord, right where the neural tissue would normally be.


"...that is cool. Let's do it again!"


She hooked a third arrow to her string, taking her time before lining up on the central head again. A direct shot to the skull probably wouldn't work; this little shortbow didn't have the power to punch through the bone for a fatal shot.

So instead she shot at its snapping mouth.

The arrow went through its tongue and lower jaw, where it protruded, dripping red-black, through the chin.

The healer squinted at the unusually dark blood thoughtfully.

Hm. Like a bird's, perhaps?

Kai skidded to a hault. A grin flickered on his face briefly. "Good shot." He crouched, holding the sword in front of his face then jumped, the central head distracted. He spun and swung, cleaving through the flesh of the beasts head. The move half worked. The Hydra had about half a second to cry out before it's head was severed. The falling chunk struck Kai mid leap and he fell with a splash into the water.

A moment later he surfaced. "Refreshing..." He swam back ot shore and hoisted himself back onto the bank. "I knew I needed a bath... but still." He sighed.

"So are you going to tell me your name?" He emptied water from his sheath then replaced his sword.

"Maybe."

Vol did not move to put her bow away.

In fact, there was already a fourth arrow hooked to the string, though the bow remained undrawn for the moment.


"Go pull that thing out of the water and I might tell you." She gestured with the bow, now an elaborate speaking prop. "I wish to dissect."


For the moment, at least, she did not make further hostile movement.


From what Voluna remembered of hydras--which admittedly wasn't much--at least some of the organs would command a decent price.

The gall-bladder, for example, was loaded with deadly poison, though this specimen was a bit young.

Would that make the toxin less potent? Or do they start out with so much poison and gradually use it up?

Probably the former. It would seem like the poisons the dragon absorbed throughout its long life would be concentrated there, instead of used up. Hydras didn't have a breath weapon that she remembered, though Vol had heard of a hydra with poisonous fangs like a viper.


...or it was just a giant snake.


While her mind pondered the potential scientific implications of the beast's innards, she didn't move her bow off of the man below.

Kai blinked, then shrugged. "Uh-huh..." He shrugged. I'm not strong enough to do it alone." He folded his arms. "Put that thing away before you hurt yourself." He moved to wring water out of his cloak. He sighed and waded into the shallows, and grabbed and fin, then pulled the dead beastie close enough so that the wierd lady could fish around with it herself.

"Wonderful...and now I have Hydra blood in my boots." He smacked his forehead with an open palm. "Knock yerself out...I've got to get going..." He waded back to shore.

Voluna frowned again, abruptly drew the arrow back and loosed. The string made a satisfying snap; it hadn't taken the damp, which was a good thing.


This arrow, however, was an unlit and entirely ineffective "fire" arrow that she had tried her hand at making. It had a wadded up rag instead of an arrowhead, but she aimed for the man's face anyway.

"...for some reason I don't think I'll hurt myself if I 'accidentally' let go."

The healer had about five of these arrows. She pulled out another one, though the cloth got stuck on some of the real broadheads in the quiver.


The bow became a speaking prop again when Vol started waggling it around.


"Ruuuun, Mr. Dragonslayer, ruuun."


Her voice was entirely unenthused and sarcastic. She pointed her next arrow at his face as well.


"Shoo."


Being an ass is so much fun sometimes.

Some unknown fire lite in Kai's eyes and he ducked. "You seem to think...." He rolled aside. "That you can just order people..." He backflipped. "Around..." He folded his arms. "I have no intention of sticking around." He shrugged and turned his back. "Then farewell." He began walking into the trees.
"May our pathes never cross again..."