Zecora and the Parasite

The ground shook with the force of the hydra's titanic footsteps. His survival instincts finally kicking in, Reek bolted towards Zecora. Inches behind him, one of the hydra's heads crashed into the frostbitten soil.

Reek looked over at Zecora with wide eyes as the hydra heaved itself out of the water to give chase. "What in Boiuna's name is that!?"

"It is a hydra, a beast of five heads,
it-"

"I know what a hydra is," Reek shouted. another slam from one of the hydra's heads caused Reek to trip over himself. two more heads followed quickly behind, and Reek was only barely able to slither out of the way of the beast's razor sharp teeth. "When did they get this freakin' big!?"

"It's been a long time since you were last here,
perhaps they grew when they had nothing to fear."

"OK that's fantastic and everything but what do I do now!?"

SLAM! Another shockwave jostled snow from the trees. Reek shrieked as the hydra raised one of its heads from the snow. The heads collectively glared at the slippery worm, who was as of now trying his best to reach a rather innocuous tree.

Zecora's heart hammered faster in her chest as she watched the great beast slowly turn towards the tree and follow closely behind Reek.

"No, no! Lead it away,
Give me some time and keep it at bay!"

"I really don't have a lot of space to slither here, Zecora," Reek shouted, but he followed her command and quickly braked to the left. Zecora whipped back behind the tree and waited as the hydra's footsteps began to quiet. She poked her head back out to see that Reek had led the hydra a hundred feet away, and was attempting to circle it around the lake.

Taking her chance, Zecora quickly got to work. The snow wasn't as piled as it was above the bowl, but there was still more than enough to suffocate any of the surrounding plant life. Without any other options, she dug at the snow. After sifting through inches of snow, finally, the brown, wet dirt showed itself. Zecora sighed, the winter had already taken many of the plants, and now it seemed the most she was likely to find was dried up roots and long dead sprouts.

Reek panted. He hadn't fled for a very long time, and it was clear now that he could have benefitted from a little exercise.
SLAM! Reek momentarily felt his foot separate from the ground, and so too did his heart skip a beat as the hydra's head slammed into the dirt just few feet from him.

He glared over towards Zecora and watched as she scampered from one dead tree to another, burrowing for something as if she were a desperate scavenger looking for scraps of food below the blanket of snow. Despite his panic, a low growl snaked through his serrated teeth. He had to distract the giant deadly hydra which may or may not bleed acid while she dug around in the frost for rocks and old roots?

Another SLAM from the hydra's heads knocked him out of this train of thought and steered it back towards a defensive panic. He could feel the hydra's breath on his back, and its rumbling growls shook his entire body. He needed to find a way out of this mess and fast before he ended up becoming an appetizer.

Meanwhile, Zecora pulled at the snow laden dirt. The frosted soil cracked as she pulled a pale yellow root from the ground. She held the root between her teeth and continued to scan the ground for signs of another when something caught her ear.

In addition to the pounding of the hydra's footsteps and Reek's panicked yelps, a new noise echoed along the edges of the bowl. It was quiet at first, but quickly became clearer. At first, Zecora thought it might have been Reek, but the quiet, high pitched ringing grew progressively louder with each moment. It was shrill at first, but as it continued and grew more cacophonous, it began to warble and distort. It quivered as it danced upon the wind like a snake.

And then, the single, shaky note became a harmony. Three other shrieks joined along to create a haunting melody which pierced through Zecora's heart like a spear. She poked her head out from behind the tree and watched as Reek circled the lake and began to approach her again.

Reek had yet to catch on to the quickly approaching choir of shrieks, as the hydra's low growling was all he could hear above his own pounding heartbeat. With one eye he focused on the snapping, growling heads of the hydra, and with the other, he watched the tree Zecora was hidden behind. He noticed as she poked her head out and shouted something to him, but the hydra's heavy breathing drowned her out.

Still, Zecora shouted and waved and pointed at nothing in particular. Reek watched as several of the hydra's heads perked up and stared off towards Zecora with a newfound hunger. Both of Reek's eyes swiveled forward to face her, and his teeth rattled with a mix of confusion and anxiety.

"What are you doing," he shouted as loud as he could muster between labored breaths.

Zecora threatened to dislocate her hoof with the force at which she pointed. "Look to the sky, the snakes, they fly!"

On instinct, Reek's eyes snapped upwards towards the sky. At that moment, finally, he noticed the piercing, shrieking whistling that filled the air. However, he didn't need to, not anymore.

From the skies, like a band of screaming ribbons, four peuchens descended upon the hydra. They slammed hard into the hydra's body, and the resulting crash sent an explosion of ice shooting in all directions. Reek tumbled over himself as chunks of ice split and shifted under his foot. A moment later, clouds of snow blanketed him and continued spreading outward, going so far as to reach Zecora's tree.

Zecora tried to look through the fog to see if she could spot Reek out towards the lake, but all she could make out were blurry, thrashing shapes. Just then, a loud crunch shook her tree, and a moment later, two dazed, twisted eyestalks stared at her.

"Come, come, over here,
It does us good to not stay near."

Another loud CRUNCH from the hydra's direction caused Reek to slither behind Zecora and curl himself into a tight ball. Zecora watched with surprise as he curled himself so tightly that he now only reached as high as her shoulder.

"An impressive display,
Does it help in some way?"

"It's a defense mechanism," a muffled sentence escaped from within the ball, "quiet, or they'll notice you!"

A morbid, wet SNAP startled Zecora to attention. From within the fading cloud of snow, the hydra stirred. For a moment, one of its heads escaped the cloud and let out a loud roar. There was a hiss from within the cloud, then a harsh, wavy whistle. A streak of green and pink lunged out of the snow in a blur and fastened itself to the hydra's neck. The peuchen, as long and wide as the hydra's, neck, wrapped itself around its throat and began to squeeze while its fangs dug deeper into its chin. The hydra tried to roar again, but the only thing that came out was a quiet gurgling. A thin, lime green liquid bubbled in the hydra's mouth and dripped onto the shattered ice. After another moment of struggling against the hydra's thrashing, the peuchen released its grip on the hydra's throat and watched with a sickening glee as the venom began to spread.

Its voice was smooth and sickly sweet, a stark contrast to its wide, eerie smile. "That's it... Keep screaming, big guy. Let it spread."

A choir of laughs erupted from atop the hydra's back. As the cloud finally faded, Zecora saw the scope of the attack. The hydra's body was covered in bite marks. Its back, once a dark orange, was now a sickly green. Where there once were veins, there were now spiderwebs of dark emerald, pulsing with untold amounts of venom.

Three of the peuchens laughed as they watched the hydra's eyes turned a horrid shade of olive. The biggest of them unwound itself from from one of the hydra's necks, which immediately fell limp with a series of small pops.

"Ain't we lucky, girls? Who'da guessed the hydras would end up getting this big, huh?"

A smaller, bright purple peuchen stopped biting her respective neck to join her larger sister in laughter. Her voice was thin and squeaky. "You think their heads still grow back?"

The green and pink peuchen hissed with glee as her hydra's head fell to the ground. "I sure hope so. I forgot how fun it was to hunt!"

"Well then maybe you should learn how to do it properly."

The green-pink peuchen frowned. "You wanna repeat that?"

From under the hydra's chest, another peuchen snapped at the green-pink serpent's neck. It recoiled, flapping it's great green wings.

The fourth peuchen, which was a good deal smaller than the others and covered in rows of dull orange scales, bared her teeth at her compatriot. "Is your brain still frozen?! Only their heads grow back! Look at this thing! There's more bite marks on this thing's back then on its neck!"

The largest peuchen cowered a small bit. "...Sorry Isadora. I would've stopped if I'd known."

"That was why we asked those ponies! But no, you ate them before they could finish talking!"

"We were hungry, Isadora," the green-pink snaked hissed. "Give us a break."

"We would've had more than enough to eat if you idiots held back for two seconds. Now where are we supposed to find another hydra?"

The squeaky purple peuchen spoke up. " I saw what looked like a shack not too far from here. Maybe there's someone there who knows."

Zecora gasped. She tried to cover her mouth with her hoof, but one of the peuchens noticed, and snapped her head on Zecora's direction.

Isadora's head remained locked on to the distant tree, even as the largest peuchen slithered beside her.

"What is it, my lady?" The dark blue peuchen asked.

"I'm not sure... I thought I saw a slug around here when we landed. I think it might still be here."

"Like a mulilo slug?" The purple peuchen squeaked. "If there's a mulilo slug here..."

"Then Melo Milo won't be far behind," the green-pink peuchen smiled widely. "Sammakött will like that."

"Yes... But we still have important matters to attend to, namely finding a safe place to eat this corpse you all made."

The other snakes huffed at Isadora's biting remark. The green-pink peuchen spoke up again. "Aren't you worried Melo Milo might get away?"

Surprisingly, Isadora smiled. "I am the right hand of king Sammakött. Where can they go where I will not find them?"

The peuchens laughed. Together, the four of them wrapped themselves around the hydra, and with their massive feathered wings, began to ascend out of the bowl and into the sky.

Zecora and Reek waited patiently for the whistling of their wings to subside before they left the safety of their hiding spot. As Reek unfurled himself from his ball, Zecora stared blankly at the crater the peuchens had left.

"I've gotten what I have come to collect,
And you have something to tell me... Correct?"