A.C.Franklin Fiction

We climbed into the mountains, up to where the hydra was, armed with swords and buckets of cement. Up into the cold, misty air, where the rivers of Van Udaos began. It had lived there for centuries, rampaged for centuries. Others had tried to kill it in the past, but they had tried to use fire to seal its necks. Fire didn’t work. Fire assumed that the hydra had mortal blood and mortal flesh to cauterize. That was not the case. Its murky, greenish blood welled up like a spring when a head was cut off, quenching the fire before it could even scorch its white, clammy flesh.

It would cost us lives to destroy it, but it had to be done. In its rampages down the rivers, it had caused enormous floods through cropland and village alike. It tore up houses and barns in the valley, swept away livestock, and devoured children whole. We could not stand it. Its rages would come to an end by our hands. We would not stop until it could harm us no longer.

It was at the very head of one of the river’s branches that we found it, the third that we’d checked. Or, more truthfully, where it found us. It burst from the ground like a geyser, all five heads swirling round to snap at us with rows of gleaming, needle-sharp teeth. One of them landed a hit, slicing Gregor’s arm to ribbons with those backward pointing razors. As he screamed, the monster reared back with a bubbling hiss of rage. Milky eyes shone dimly in the sunlight like damp pebbles, bulbous and expressionless as yellowed membranes flicked over them. Its scales glimmered, toxic spines flexing upright as we arrayed ourselves against it. We caught one final glimpse of its white underbelly before it pressed itself close to the ground, the sickly greens and greys almost blending into the muddy slope but for their slimy sheen. We backed away as its heads weaved, trying to recover our courage after being caught so off guard. That awful hiss persisted, overlaid occasionally with a stuttered growl. Long, flattened snouts nipped forward, trying to catch us in striking distance and almost succeeding.

It was Gregor’s fate to once again be the catalyst to the beast. It must have caught scent of his freshly oozing blood as he was attended to at the back of our company. Next thing we knew, it had lunged through our line as if we were only a fence of twigs and rushes. Then it was on him, tearing chunks of flesh from him with jabbing strikes while he screamed in agony. With curses and shouts of alarm, we rushed forward to strike it. Heads were beaten back but moments too late. What had once been Gregor’s neck was gulped down just before the head responsible for the murder was cut off.

Even with our best efforts and sharpest swords, scales like maille turned them far too easily. Only one head was fully severed. Another dangled from a strip of flesh, its watery blood pouring forth over Gregor’s body both from the wound and from its shuddering, red-stained teeth. Gouges in its body seemed to phase it not at all as the remaining heads struck out, taking more of our boldest down. A thin layer of cement had barely been placed over its severed neck when smaller heads began to punch through it, oozing its milky blood all the while. Its other wounds stitched themselves closed with nary a mark, leaving us now with eight heads to face instead of five.

We kept up the assault as best we could. We couldn’t afford to give ground. All the while it escaped us with ease, its four new heads growing sizeably before fusing into a grotesque of teeth and eyes. The revulsion alone would have been enough to unhinge us, but even a touch from that head would bring with it the scrape of its evil teeth. Blood both white-green and red flew between us, and more of our warriors fell before another head could be dispatched. Sturn, Katan, Laz, all torn by those teeth beyond recognition, infected with venomous spines besides. But with Laz’s fall, we had an opening. A head was downed and cement slathered on. Its hissing built into an unearthly roar, as if it had come from something much bigger than the hydra. Heads burst through the layer as fast as it could be put on, even coated in hardening cement and struggling as they were. The other heads twisted round to come to the aid of the growing ones, needing to be forced back with vicious strikes. More cement was piled on as the heads broke through, aided with the stabbing of blades through those that protruded before they could make much progress. Only when that first, sticky cement began to dull and dry could we turn our attentions fully to the other heads.

Still, they were tearing through our ranks. As one head was sealed off, others had been multiplied. A horde of vacant eyes and gaping, hissing maws awaited us. We had committed to this course. We had to follow through.

It was brutal, and bloody. It did not seem to end. Just as one neck was cut clean, the others struck forward to attack. It got Brant that way. Tore straight through his spine, nearly knocked his head off. But the ground was soaked in its watery blood, scales scattered around on strips of flesh. It wove drunkenly as we fought, beginning to move in sluggish spirals. Even as it gorged on us, we were making progress against it. Its healing slowed, its barbs broke, its eyes split. Conviction swept through us all—or all that remained. We could defeat it. We would defeat it. This great monster would fall to our cement sooner or later. We only had to persevere. Though the sealed heads still managed to break free, they did so slower and slower. Its cement coated necks bowed under the weight of hardening rock. Even with the amount of blood spilled, the heat of afternoon seemed to dry out the mud, letting us gain better footing and better strikes.

Finally, the last head was struck down. The sounds of its rage disappeared as it slumped, spasming against the ground. Its blood flowed away from the unsealed neck in pulses, interspersed with bubbles. The remaining buckets of cement were poured over it wholesale, scraped out before it finished hardening. The neck drooped at the weight—all of them did. The ragged form went fully limp, to our relief.

There lay the withered body of the Hydra Van Udaos, dead.

You have to understand, we didn’t know. We never realized what the creature truly was, what it did. We didn’t understand why the old peoples worshipped it as a god. We didn’t know.

Oh, but we should have.

With each head sealed off, cemented away, another branch of the River fell silent. It flows no more. Our villages receive no water, our crops no nourishing floods. It seems so foolish now to dream that we could bring down Van Udaos and suffer no consequences, to consider its rampages evil without thinking what they truly did. The Hydra was never meant to be killed, certainly not by the likes of man.

That is why I am going back to the body to poke its heads free. If live it might, its blood will wash down each branch of the River, a furious torrent to wash us away.

Those who survive will respect the River.