Jadis reacted immediately to the hydra’s continued aggression. Syd swapped positions with Jay, letting the maul and mallet take the forefront while the lance struck from behind with its greater reach. The three heads with no salamander corpse to distract them snapped hungrily at Jay and Dys, their lightning-fast lunges blocked by Jadis’ even faster deflections. The crack of her weapons striking against gray scales echoed in the tunnel as she focused on keeping the voracious beast at bay.
“Aila!” Syd shouted as the three of her continued to give ground.
“On it!” she shouted back, glowing runic circles already forming on the cave floor between Jadis’ bodies and the reptilian monster.
One giant scaly paw inevitably made contact with one of the traps and a three-foot-tall force spike sprung into existence with the intent to impale the monster’s foot. Unfortunately, the magic attack didn’t fully pierce the resistant scales of the hydra, the spike knocking the foot up more than anything else.
A sudden ripping sound heralded the gory split of the yellow salamander, the two heads wolfing down their halves of the large body. As lumps visibly travelled down the two necks that had swallowed the poor beast, Jadis noticed more lumps that travelled up the necks of the heads that had yet to eat anything at all. Uncertain of what the strange sight foretold, Jadis called out a warning to her companions behind her, just in time for the three dripping hydra maws to open wide and vomit gooey projectiles at them.
Black balls of viscous slime hurtled through the short span of air, a horrendous stench emanating from them. One had been aimed at Jay and, with a baseball bat swing, she knocked it out of the air to splatter against the stone wall. Long strands of sticky black slime stretched between the ball of goo and her mallet, a sure indication that anything the viscid substance touched would have a hard time getting free of it.
The other two projectiles hurtled past Jadis, to her surprise. The hydra had targeted the people behind her, a tactic Jadis wouldn’t have expected from what was essentially an oversized lizard. Then again, it was a magical beast, and it had five heads to boot. More heads meant more brain power, Jadis had to assume, especially considering the hydra had very nearly succeeded in sneaking up on her via use of a clever illusion.
Syd spared a glance over her shoulder to make sure the others were alright and saw that Aila’s new force shield had worked well at blocking one of the sticky black orbs from hitting Kerr. With a wave of her hand, Aila promptly shifted the translucent magical shield to the side and smeared the gunk on the tunnel wall. The other ball had met with Thea’s shield, the guardswoman having taken up a defensive position in front of Eir to keep the cleric from coming to any harm. The noxious orb stuck to Thea’s shield like a giant, disgusting limpet, but since it wasn’t sticking to anything else, it was at least not getting in the way.
The scant seconds it took Jadis to assess what her companions were doing behind her could not be counted as a distraction, not when Jadis could focus on multiple things at once due to her multiple bodies and skills. Still, the hydra saw Syd’s momentary shift of attention as a weak spot and one of its viperous heads shot forward, seeking to bite down on distracted Nephilim flesh.
Without looking, Syd thrust her lance up and into the open mouth of the Hydra. With two other sets of eyes to pay attention, Jadis didn’t need Syd’s eyes to see where to put her weapon for best effect.
The lance pierced deep into the monster’s vulnerable mouth flesh, a glancing blow from Dys’ maul against a different head at the same time allowing Mirrored Strikes to proc. The lance sunk deep, gouging all the way through the back of hydra’s throat and punching through to the other side. Sharp steel protruded from the back of the beast’s neck as the head briefly gagged, then reared back as blood poured out from both the gapping wound in its neck and from between its sharp, clenched teeth.
A deafening hiss of pain and anger drowned out all other sounds as the hydra recoiled. Before Jadis could take even a second to revel in her moment of success, the hydra unleashed a new trick.
Five scaly heads multiplied into ten, each one indistinguishable from the others except for a single head still gurgling out copious amounts of blood. Suddenly, Jadis had twice as many slavering serpentine maws trying to devour her as before. Clearly, five of them had to be illusions, she recognized right away. But how was she supposed to tell the fakes from the real ones? Even looking at the base of the necks where they connected to the body of the beast offered no help. The illusion made the cluster of necks look like a shifting, writhing mass of snakes. Some of the necks were clearly clipping through the others like a graphical glitch in reality, but which was which was impossible to distinguish.
Seven heads snapped forward at the same time, aiming for different parts of Jay and Dys. With no other recourse, Jadis was forced to swing at the heads she guessed were real in a desperate attempt at blocking the hydra’s attack.
Syd’s lance struck true against solid scales, repelling one fanged maw that had been aiming for Dys’ head. Dys’ maul swung through another head that turned out to be an illusion, dispelling the magical deception. Fortunately, as part of the same arcing swing, her giant maul struck another head that was real, knocking it off course from snapping its jaws around Jay’s right leg. Unfortunately, Jay’s mallet met nothing but air as it passed through its own illusionary hydra head, the force of her swing unbalancing her as she stumbled slightly. Another illusion was destroyed as a force bolt from Aila passed through it only to burst against the cave wall in the distance, while a hand axe from Kerr also sliced harmlessly into the eye of another phantom, breaking that illusion as well.
The seventh head that Jadis and her companions had not been able to block bit down onto Jay’s right shoulder, massive jaws clamping down hard as it tried to devour the Nephilim.
Jay’s thick steel breastplate and pauldrons blocked many of the foot-long teeth from piercing into her vitals, but with the way the hydra had struck her right arm had been pinned and impaled, her blood flowing freely around the jagged teeth stabbing into her upper arm. Horrible pain shook Jay in the moment of being bit, a ragged cry escaping her lips as she was suddenly hoisted into the air as the head that had her reared back, taking her with it.
In a panic, Syd tossed aside her lance and jumped onto the head that had her other self, landing across its face where she began punching violently into the wretched monster’s blood red eye. Her first punch squished against soft eyeball flesh as Syd struck over and over again with an almost machine-like pace, pounding her knuckles into the vulnerable weak spot. Within a matter of seconds her rapid punches were penetrating up to her elbow.
Jay slammed against the left cave wall as the hydra violently shook its head, its jaw releasing its grip on her as it let out a hissing shriek. Syd was tossed to the side too, her tumble through the air turned into a wild fling as another one of the heads caught her leg and whipped her hard and away to crash hard against the ground dozens of feet behind Aila and the others.
Two more heads launched themselves down at Jay as she struggled to her feet, but Dys’ maul was there for them. One of the heads turned out to be another illusion, its false fangs biting into Jay to no effect other than giving Jadis a lurch in her stomach. The other head was struck by Dys and, thanks to Syd’s repeated punching attacks, the blow’s power was massively increased. Scales shattered as the hydra’s head was knocked to the side. It slammed against the cave wall in an echoing bang, rock literally cracking under the force of the impact as the hydra’s skull rebounded. Dys whipped around a moment later and slammed her maul into the stunned head again, this time from above, sending it smashing down into the cave floor to the sound of both stone and bone breaking.
As Dys reared back for another strike against the head, Jadis saw through Jay’s eyes that another Hydra maw was lunging at Dys, maw stretched open wide. There was no time for Dys to dodge as she was mid swing and Jay’s mallet was still on the ground somewhere from when she’d dropped it while being tossed around. Syd was still yards away, recovering from her own collision with the cave floor.
There was nothing Jadis could do in that moment to stop the hydra’s jagged teeth from clamping down around Dys’ head.
Suddenly, an armored figure leapt past Jay and Dys, large round shield held before her. Thea launched herself into the path of the hydra’s open jaws, first her shield and then her whole body entering the gaping maw. Curling her legs up, she matched her profile to that of the shield, turning into a ball of armor as the hydra snapped its jaws down on her. Or at least, it tried to.
The monster’s vicious bite couldn’t break Thea’s shield, the steel rim of the wooden shield instead wedging itself firmly in the gaps of its massive teeth. The head reeled back, shaking and hissing as it had something stuck in its mouth that was too big to swallow in one gulp and too tough to crunch in its jaws.
“Holy fuck!” Jay cried out in alarm, Thea’s reckless maneuver no doubt saving Jadis from a devastating, if not mortal, wound but also putting herself into an absolutely insane position.
The Hydra reared back then, three of its five heads badly injured. Thea held on for dear life as she was shaken around while inside the mouth of the enraged beast. Jay took up her discarded mallet as she and Dys ran forward to help, but as Syd stood, she found that her weapon was nowhere to be seen on the ground. Instead, it was held firmly in Kerr’s grasp.
“Let go now!” Kerr shouted as she ran forward.
Like an Olympian with an oversized javelin, Kerr hurled Syd’s lance with all the prodigious strength she had. The sharp piece of steel flew through the air with unerring accuracy and struck one of the hydra heads in an eye. The whole beast reared back as it flailed wildly and in the same moment, Thea released her grip on her shield and was sent hurtling out of the beast’s mouth by its violent convulsions.
Jay caught the brave guard before she could hit the ground, clutching the armored woman tightly to her chest.
At the same time as Kerr was tossing Syd’s lance and Jay was catching Thea, Eir had her hands on Syd and was pumping her with healing magic, removing all the wounds her bodies had suffered as Jadis was restored to full health.
“Back up to here!” Aila urgently ordered as she stood on Syd’s other side. “Get everyone past this line!”
Glancing to where Aila indicated, Jadis saw that Aila had laid down dozens of force spike traps all along the sides of the tunnel just a little further back from where they were, leaving a narrow path clear down the middle. Nodding in confirmation, Syd quickly swept Eir and Aila up as she turned and carried both of them back past the minefield Aila had created.
Kerr was already running back but as she fled, Jay picked up the surprised therion as well as she ran by her, still carrying Thea in her arms as well. Dys ran backwards, keeping her eyes on the hydra as they retreated, depending on the sight of her other selves to know where she was going.
The hydra was a mess. Its far left head was covered in cracked, broken scales and looked like a watermelon that had been dropped on the ground, red blood leaking through the many cracks in its damaged hide. The inner left head was missing its left eye, a stream of thick blood and eyeball fluid pouring down the side of its face. The middle head still had Thea’s shield in its mouth. Without the guard's shield-based skills to reinforce it, the shield had broken under the strength of the hydra’s powerful jaws but had turned into a sticky mess of black goo and wooden splinters as the hydra’s own black phlegm ball had been returned to it, served on a platter. The inner right head flopped on the ground, lying limply and barely moving as it twitched and spasmed randomly, Syd’s lance buried halfway into the monster’s eye. The rightmost head was the only one uninjured and it stared at Dys with murderous rage.
Jadis had no doubt that the monster had thought it would be getting an easy meal and had not expected to be so brutally repelled by prey so much smaller than it.
As they all withdrew further back down the tunnel, the hydra charged forward, once again hissing loud enough to pop eardrums as it gave chase. Its one limp head dragged along the ground under its body as it ran after them. As Jay and Dys passed through the field of traps Aila had created, the hydra revealed one more trick.
Dozens of spectral hydra heads burst out of the walls, floor, and ceiling of the tunnel, swarming the group of them as they ran. They were all illusions, lacking substance and unable to do any damage. That knowledge still could only temper, not eliminate, the visceral reaction Jadis had to dozens of entirely real looking monster heads suddenly lunging at her from all directions.
Jay and Dys startled and lost their footing as the illusions temporarily blocked their vision before dissipating. Carrying both Kerr and Thea, Jay turned her stumble into a rolling fall as she crashed to the ground on the far side of the force traps in a clatter of metal on stone. Dys wasn’t so lucky.
As Dys fell, she twisted awkwardly, having been running backwards. As she hit the ground, two force traps were triggered by her side and hip. Fortunately, the magical spikes glanced off of her body, though her hip was torn open in a bloody rent by the power of Aila’s spell. Not so fortunately, the force spikes sent her rolling and before Dys could get back up, the hydra was upon her.
Many things happened at the same time in that moment. As the ravenous, enraged hydra bore down on Dys’ prone form, its front legs triggered the first few of Aila’s spike traps. The monster’s lunge was turned into an uncontrolled fall as the force spikes pierced up into its scaly feet and its momentum carried it forward, triggering more and more of the magical traps that fouled the beast’s footing even if they couldn’t fully pierce its armored hide. A force bolt from Aila’s hand also struck the unwounded hydra head, knocking it back and up as the monster fell forward, triggering more and more of the dozens of traps, the beast thrown completely off balance. The huge monster’s body slid over Dys’ fallen form and collapsed on top of her since she was unable to roll out of the way.
Dys grunted in strained effort as thousands upon thousands of pounds of weight attempted to crush her. Her immense strength was only barely able to keep the hydra from flattening her like a worm, and even then Jadis was certain that it was only because the hydra’s one dead head had wedged itself under its body too, giving her some room to breathe as it landed on a lopsided angle.
At the same time, Syd ran forward, catching Jay’s mallet as she tossed it up to her. Leaping through the air with the mallet in hand, Syd flew past the writhing heads of the struggling hydra to land on its scaly back. As she raised the weapon overhead, Dys used her position under the beast to slam her head into its belly, headbutting it in what would be for anyone else a futile act.
But for Jadis, it was enough to trigger Mirrored Strikes.
Scales and bones alike shattered under the powerful strike Syd delivered to the Hydra’s back. The thing had five necks, but it only had one spine once it went past the shoulders. The hydra hissed in pain as Syd broke its back in the middle of its body. Instantly its back legs and long tail went limp as the nerve connections were severed by the brutal blow.
“Fuck you,” Syd hissed back at the hydra as several of its heads turned to snap at her fruitlessly. Robbed of its mobility, it couldn’t turn back far enough to reach her as she moved further down its body. “You should have just taken the fucking salamander and left.”
Dys repeatedly knocked her head into the hydra’s chest to keep triggering Mirrored Strikes as Syd used the mallet to crush the hydra’s back feet. She didn’t have a cutting weapon, so instead she pulverized the scales, flesh, and bones until they were a slurry of gore, a literal flood of blood pouring out of the horrid stumps as Jadis bled the monster out.
The hydra tried to turn away or pull itself forward, but its efforts were countered as Aila placed more force traps in the way of its front feet, shredding them and keeping the beast from moving much, and Jay hurled rocks weighing hundreds of pounds she picked up from the tunnel ground at the monster’s still thrashing heads. It took several agonizing minutes, but eventually the hydra’s flailing weakened, slowed, and went still as the life blood was drained from its body. The omnipresent hiss of the ferocious magic beast faded as it took its last breath, the cave going quiet except for the heavy breathing of the victorious women.
“Holy shit we lived,” Kerr stated incredulously.
“Yes,” Aila nodded, looking stunned herself. “Yes, we did.”
“Yes! We killed a motherfucking Hydra!” Kerr shouted a little louder, grabbing Aila, Eir, and Thea in a hug as she spun the three of them around.
“Before you celebrate,” Jay said, looking down at the joyful expressions on her companions. “I’m still stuck under several tons worth of lizard.”
“So help me get out!” Dys shouted from under the body, her voice muffled.
478