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The deer - Lord, Deernunnos - led him to the edge of a deep chasm. It was hot, and they were further down the hill, now, into heat that would have been unimaginable in the last forest. There had been no sign of bandits for some time, now, because they'd left the road behind.

The chasm seemed to constantly fall in on itself. A dozen huge waterfalls flowed down on either side, and every tree, as it spread further from the hillside, started to droop downwards. Between his point of the chasm and the too-green glade on the other side, there was a line of great stacks - pillars from what were once cliffs. Thick, woody vines bound them together into a sort of wall, or bridge, if you were a squirrel.

This was the part of a journey Raguel relished. No words, no confusion, just his own skill.

The ankh was good for climbing, not least because, as Raguel had been taught before leaving, it could form a good measure of magical 'rope' from its tip. He used this to grapple, swing, and crawl between the vine-wreathed pillars, in a fashion that would have made one of the spider-folk almost respect him.

When on the other side, Raguel looked back for the deer - gone. Or far away. It had taken him three hours to make the journey, so of course the deer was gone.

He turned, at last, and saw that the too-green foliage was still so now that he was right in front of it. The floor turned to moss, the air became humid, the trees were now wrapped in soft, green creepers instead of ivy and woodbine. The smell was fresher, though.

Raguel had not seen a church for four months.

He walked in.

-

There was a large and still swamp at the Western edge of the snake-provost's territory. Its waters were black, and the bright lime scum and foliage shone on top of it. Every now and then, Raguel saw a heron, or other wader-bird, poking around for fish. Left unfished, this lake had returned to nature.

Or it had seemed natural, before Raguel spotted a broken-down pier with many small boats in it. A sign near them asked whoever took one to take care of it. A few minutes of rowing later, Raguel was again lulled into a false sense of naturalness, when he saw a bright scaly hide curve in the water beside him. He reached for his ankh, and pointed at it, and the scaly body of the serpent whipped up -

No, that was its tail.

Raguel whipped around, and saw one serpent's head emerge from the water - it had black and white stripes, not red and black spots.

Another rose - and another - until Raguel found himself under eighteen unblinking, slit-lid eyes. The heads were around half the size of his, and long, and each had a different shape, and bright colouration - pointed or blunted snouts, greens and reds and yellows, stripes and speckles.

In unison, they fluidly approached him, as if growing from a plant.

One flicked out its tongue... No, they all were.

Raguel remembered Brother Thurm, in the nursery, explaining how a serpent will put poison in a man with its pronged tongue. Sure enough, they had two points, and seemed sharp, and -

One gingerly brushed the back of his ear, from behind. He fell backwards onto the boat, before realising the tongue had been too soft to do anything like that. (Thurm had lied about St. Nicholas, too.)

"Are you fellows of the serpent-folk? I mean, hello," Raguel said.

"That I am," said one, and the snakes all stopped their advances. "I am the guide to the correct shore," said another, in an identical voice. "I am Delf, the Hydra." So saying, the beast rose further from the water - and sure enough, all nine snakes converged onto a red, spotted 'root'. "Are you here to kill us?"

"No," Raguel said, thinking rapidly, "There is a plague of heart-worms," don't blame them, "and we wish to know more."

The Hydra stared at him. Well, one head did. That serpents could not blink meant that staring wasn't very clearly communicative of anything. The others looking out to the rest of the corners of the swamp, flicking their tongues slowly.

"That is reasonable. You will have to reach the East most part of the valley, so I will take you through." The boat shook - as a loop or three of the snake's trunk folded around the bottom of the boat and took hold. "This way."

-

Raguel attempted, three times, to talk with Delf, but it was no real use. Navigating the swamp seemed to take concentration for him. Or that was what he said when he shushed Raguel.

Eventually, they reached a section of the swamp too shallow for the boat, and Raguel - who had not put on more than his leggings to enter the serpent folk's lands, and was grateful not to have had to carry his great leather armours for a couple of hours - stripped further, held his bag above his head and stepped down into the thick mud. It was not too deep that he couldn't make his way to shore, which he could now see.

"Now that we know where we're going," Raguel said, lingeringly.

"The reason I do not talk with Man so often," Delf said, "is I have no skill for it. I would drive away trade if I was chattier."

"You can't be that bad," Raguel replied.

"I did not say it was a bad thing." If those eyes could just move a little, Raguel could have got a better feel for the conversation.

"I only mean --"

"I only found out I was a Hydra," Delf said, with a head further away from Raguel, "when your people lopped off my heads and I grew two where they were. My egg was kept by a wyvern instead. You know, I liked my colours. I like red. I like black. But now - now, I'm a mess! Look! Look at this! Look at all of this!"

The Hydra tangled his necks around each other, and truth be told, it was a rather chaotic sight. The muscles and body of the snake were fascinating and beautiful, but the nine different colours and patterns did not fit together at all.

Raguel tried to be diplomatic. This was the first impression, after all.

"Your people poison us, and we don't --"

"Your people kill snakes whenever you see them. You're convinced we all secretly want to poison you!" Raguel realised Delf had been angry with him for a while now. "You weave these tales about serpents tricking you into eating things, and you kill us on sight, on the sole basis of a story you made up, so you can blame your women for everything! You're probably thinking about cutting off one of my heads, now. You're probably going to leave me with some -- some -- some new, chartreuse one."

The way Delf said 'chartreuse' was the way one might say the worst slur one knows.

Raguel clenched his teeth.

They reached the shore.

"I didn't have to be so charitable, either," Raguel said, measuredly, as he set his pack down on a dry rock to fetch his particulars from it. "I could have attacked you when I saw y-"

"I told you you were violent!" Delf yelled. "Taste my wrath!"

You would think that the whole sentence, 'taste my wrath', would allow a seasoned warrior to fetch his weapon and have at his opponent. However, Hydrae are famously swift. All nine heads hooked in the air to surround Raguel, and opened their great maws at him, and fired jets of lukewarm, acrid liquid at him.

"Oh, God!" cried Raguel, who had no idea what was happening, or why. "Oh, God, no!"

One of Delf's heads (the one with red, yellow, and black stripes) shot a stream of the liquid straight down Raguel's throat.

-

Raguel had been thinking about poison almost constantly while in the snake-folk's territory, so it did not take him long to realise he had been poisoned. It took him several hours, however, to realise he was drunk. It had begun to rain heavily in that time.

He spent the first hour firing rope after useless magical rope from the ankh into the swamp, which Delf had slid back into after shooting him, convinced the Hydra was still there. Then, he fell to his knees, and despaired for two hours over Magdalene about how loveless and alone his life would now be now.

Then, his mood swapped to anger again, and he gathered his things - he was still naked, but the mud and scum had washed off - and headed into the forest. He sobered up - a little - before he came upon a large oak, wreathed in fat green vines -

Oh, no, another serpent.

It was huge, and looking at him. It was a dull grey-green across most of its body, with large black patches, and its big black eyes were perfectly round. Its head was one-and-a-third times the size of Raguel's own, as was its thick middle one-and-a-third times as wide as Raguel. Its enormous coils corkscrewed up into the tree, and on them, as comfortable as if he was sat on a set of stairs, was a dark-skinned young boy.

The boy said something in a language Raguel didn't speak. He had a very deep voice.

The snake replied, in the same rolling accent. Raguel looked between them, trying to work out what was going on - if he had perhaps been given the curse of Babel by the Hydra, and could no longer understand anyone's speech. It mumbled. The wyrm's tapering tail drooped down to set its tip on Raguel's scalp, steadying him.

"Hello," said the boy, in a language Raguel spoke. "I'm Spencer."

"I'm Raguel," he replied.

"I'm Ghum," said the serpent. "Are you all right?"

"I am -- I am unsafe," said Raguel. "A snake got me drunk. The sun is setting. Is this wild forest, or can I rest out here?"

"Oh, no, this is quite wild," Ghum said, every 's' a little too short. He raised his head up. "There are a few bears around here, too. Let's talk in the morning, when you're sober. I know a place you can stay."

Spencer hopped down and, with some effort, took Raguel's effects.

"That's very kind," said Raguel, who was dazed. Only Ghum's tail held him up. He did not know this, but it was the secondary phase of the Hydra's venom. Depending on his constitution, the stupor may never have quite gone away. Ghum had a solution for this, however.

"Close your eyes," said Ghum.

Ghum slid his head through the air to look straight down at the man. He opened his mouth.

Raguel then experienced the best sensation he ever had felt, across all of himself at once: wet, and warm, and soft. First, a flowery breath over his sweat-soaked body, then a soft and warm wetness enclosing his shoulders, down his elbows, along his entire body - down so that Spencer could only see his thick feet on the loosely bricked ground.

Spencer clambered up that neck, wrapping his arms and legs around the trunk.

"He's not even struggling," Spencer said. "It was Delf, all right. Goodnight, Raguel."

Muscles wrapped the walls of Ghum's throat around Raguel, and pulled - his feet went up into Ghum, too.

"We'll see you in the morning."