Chp.31: A new hope

Haku dodged for the umpteenth time one of the hydra's heads, which fell instead on the tree where it was. The beast roared in fury as it eluded him once more.

Haku didn't know what to do. He kept racking his brain, but he couldn't find a way to break the hydra's impenetrable skin. Everything he had was useless. The only thing that had been able to split the hydra's skin… was the hydra itself, when it tried to bite Darbi. Maybe they could try a similar thing? After all, the hydra had rather slow reaction times. Using their agility, the seventeen dragons (well... a little less since Darbi was now unconscious and Kotaru and Keita were carrying him away) could they have made the hydra kill itself?

Unlikely. The hydra's regeneration was too fast. Even if they knew how to block it, which was to use fire, it would have been impossible to leap on it again and burn the wound before it healed. Also, even if they broke through, there would still be layers and layers of flesh that even if they weren't as hard as leather would surely be very dense. The hydra would have had to bite the same spot dozens of times before getting to the brain. And any objects dragons had, from spears to arrows, would lodge in the flesh before reaching the organs.

Haku couldn't find a solution. Even if they had opened a wound using the hydra's poor coordination, they would not have been able to reach the internal organs. To do this would require something that quickly melted the flesh and worked its way up to the brain…

Wait... melt the flesh?

A flash shot through Haku's mind like an arrow. He had something that could melt the flesh... Very quickly, he began rummaging through his dimensional pouch, until he found what he was looking for: the great basilisk's poison sacs. The creature's venom could corrode living tissue at an astonishing rate. Haku doubted he would do anything to the hydra's skin... but maybe he could do something to the flesh. Hope rekindled in his heart: maybe there was a way out of that horrible situation!

He had to test his theory before drawing any conclusions. So, he took a pose in a tree and cried out loud. The hydra noticed him immediately and one of its heads lunged at him. Haku waited for its mouth to open wide, then threw some great basilisk's venom into it.

As usual, the hydra didn't notice what had happened for a few seconds, but Haku could see it clearly instead: the beast's tongue, palate and throat immediately began to melt. The regenerative power kicked in immediately, but it took a while to rebuild the damaged tissue. Meanwhile, the great basilisk's poison entered the esophagus and began to travel down it, causing serious damage to the neck. Haku hoped it would reach the stomach, but by the time it got halfway the venom had dissolved the hydra's interior so much that the neck succumbed to its own weight and snapped at the base, leaving only a stump behind it.

Haku couldn't suppress a smile: he finally managed to hurt the hydra! If he had thrown the great basilisk's venom into the other heads as well, the animal would have been left without its sense organs. At that point, they could have walked away without it chasing them!

But his happiness was short-lived. After just a second, the stump began to bubble up and not one, but two new necks began to grow back from it, forming as many as two new heads. From six, the number of heads then increased to seven.

"Haku! You have to burn the wounds!" Rhaegal reminded him. "If you don't, two heads grow back!"

Right, he forgot about it. Burning the wounds… he had to think about it. There had to be a way, right? If he found it, then they would win! He had already found a way to destroy its heads, he could also burn them, right?

The problem that the regeneration speed was too fast. Even if they tried to coordinate, they couldn't burn the wound in time. Haku didn't know if such a speed of regeneration was due to the mysterious mutation that the hydra had undergone or if it was natural, but in any case it seemed that the wound must have been burned at the very moment it was created. Even though he and his siblings were many and very fast, they were unlikely to be able to use the fire runes in time. They only risked increasing the number of heads they had to contend with.

Wait a damn minute. They didn't just have runes that could generate fire. Haku also had many potions with him that ignited living tissue upon contact with it. It would have been enough to spread both they and the poison on an object, and then throw it down the monster's throat.

The problem was, what object could be strong enough not to melt in contact with the great basilisk's venom? The answer was... obviously the great basilisk itself! The poison was contained within that creature, so it had to be immune to it, right?

Haku and Darbi had ripped off all of the great basilisk's armor and turned it into protections; however, Haku could also use them in another way. He dug his paw into his dimensional bag and pulled out one of the great basilisk's bone spines, and sprinkled some incendiary potion on it; after which he also let the poison drip. As he had expected, the poison didn't corrode the spine. Haku then caught the hydra's attention again and threw it into its mouth.

This time the result was different: as before, the great basilisk's venom rapidly began to corrode the hydra's flesh, but this time there was another consequence as well. Wherever the great basilisk's venom passed, the flesh also caught fire. Very soon, the seventh head and neck of the hydra were on fire. Eventually they detached as before, but the stump that formed was engulfed in flames, preventing it from regenerating.

"Haku! You did it!" Rhaegal exclaimed enthusiastically, jumping up on his tree.

Haku nodded. "Yes. If we use the same trick, we can do it!" he said triumphantly. "Rhaegal, the hydra is likely to be more wary now. We'll all have to coordinate to..."

He froze. Something was wrong: the burning stump was continuing to burn... but a new neck was still forming, albeit very slowly.

Rhaegal grit his teeth at seeing him. "It shouldn't be like this! The fire should stop it from regenerating!"

"This hydra is different from the one the old hunter described to you" Haku replied. "I assume its regeneration speed exceeds the destructive speed of the fire"

This wasn't good. If that was the case, then what he had discovered so far was completely useless. If the hydra could still regenerate, then destroying the heads was useless: the dragons couldn't escape, and would only continue to increase the number of heads.

Rhaegal also seemed to have come to the same conclusion, but unlike him he didn't seem dejected. "Maybe we can use the same trick, but in a different spot!" he said. "Haku, let's destroy the brain!"

Haku looked at him. "How?" he asked him.

"Remember what Darbi did? He made the hydra bite itself. We can do the same thing" Rhaegal explained. "I will attract one of its heads onto its back and make it open a hole. As soon as that's done, you will throw another one of those spines filled with… whatever you put on it. The spine will dig its way to the brain, burning and corroding everything in its path"

Haku's eyes widened. Rhaegal was right! That idea could work! "But the hydra will definitely try to remove the foreign body from the flesh. With its long tongue and such a wound, it will be easy for it to remove..."

"Then let's eliminate the tongues!" Rhaegal replied, then he pointed to the burning stump: "That head is taking a long time to regenerate, isn't it? We can use this at our advantage. Here's what we have to do: first, we will destroy all but one of the heads; then, we will use that head to create a wound where we will launch your lethal weapon; in the end, we will also destroy the last head to stop it from taking that stuff off itself. The heads will regenerate, but very slowly, not enough to prevent your weapon from reaching the brain"

Haku's brain started working at full speed. "We can use the hydra's poor coordination to get this plan to work" he said reflecting as he spoke. "There are seventeen of us... well, considering that Darbi is passed out and Keita and Kotaru are taking care of him, we are just fourteen, but that's still enough. There are still six heads we need to take care of, we can ignore the seventh for now, since it doesn't seem like it will regenerate for at least ten minutes..."

"We are enough. By splitting into groups of two, one of us can distract one of the heads and the other can throw your weapon into its mouth" Rhaegal said.

"Yes, exactly. You and I will take care of opening an opening, our sisters will take care of the heads. We will divide them in pairs, so they can manage five heads at the same time. In the meantime, you and I will attract the attention of the last one" Haku said continuing to formulate the plan. "After the last head will have opened a wound, we will destroy it with the same method"

Rhaegal made a quick calculation. "If the two of us take care of the sixth head, and our sisters take care of the other five in sets of two, technically only twelve of us will be busy. What will the last two do?"

"They'll take care of them" Haku said pointing down. Below them the hydra minions were still trying to climb the trees; many of them had already died due to the constant attacks of the hydra, which had completely disintegrated them, but still a few dozen remained. "When the hydra will be unable to defend itself, surely its minions will come to help it. The connection it has with them seems to be very strong. Therefore, we must kill as many of them as possible. While twelve of us will be concerned with killing this monster, the others two will have to make sure his minions are kept at bay. They have to use arrows, spears, javelins… anything in their possession that can completely destroy the heads of those corpses. It's the only way to kill them"

"We know, we saw him with a wolf attacking us" Rhaegal replied, then he reflected. "Serengal and Finiar are the ones among us who have the best aim. We'll let them do it"

Haku nodded. He fully shared his brother's choice. "We will divide our other sisters according to how fast they can move. We will pair the slowest ones with the fastest ones, so they will balance each other out and none of them will risk getting hurt. The hydra is quite slow due to of its poor coordination, so by cooperating they can avoid its attacks easily and throw the thorns or the bones of the great basilisk in its mouth". A beaming smile formed on the dragon's face. "It can work! We can kill this monster!"

But his enthusiasm faded almost immediately. "Wait... we still have a problem"

"And that would be?" Rhaegal asked.

"The neck of the hydra" Haku replied. "The brain is in the ribcage, so the head would have to bite into the upper back for our little weapon to hit it. But to do that the hydra's neck would have to snap in half. When it tried to bite Darbi the hydra hit its lower back, and it must already have been having a hard time twisting its neck enough. It's impossible for it to open a gap for us in the right place"

Rhaegal understood his reasoning. Actually, to move like that the neck of the hydra should have been boneless. "If our weapon moved diagonally though, it could reach the brain!" he said. "Couldn't we spread that substance on a spear and hurl it through flesh?"

"The great basilisk's venom doesn't work that fast. It takes a few moments for it to corrode the flesh. Any spear or arrow we throw will surely lodge itself in the flesh, and then the venom will dig its way ever downwards" Haku replied, then the his gaze darkened. "Unless..."

Rhaegal didn't like that look. "Unless...?"

"Unless our weapon has a mind and can decide where to go" Haku concluded in a broken voice. His claws lightly scraped the bark of the tree he was clinging to.