-Interlopers....-

Enoch wheeled with the lantern in his hand, turning the knob to let the flame burn high.

They could see it then, a glint of light on sharp, beaked mouths and a tangling roil of motion as the thing recoiled into shadow with a hiss. Enoch placed himself between the creature and Sumira, an arm out as if to bar her from danger, but as they backed along the corridor he didn't know what that instinct was likely to avail either of them.

The darkness beyond their lantern light was thickening, somehow. It rippled, shivered like boiling tar.

-These depths are not for the likes of you to tread. You were warned.- The Hydra's voice was both heard and somehow not, like tinnitus ringing through an impenetrable silence.

"Enoch," Sumira whispered, her arms around the grub swaddled across her chest. "We should run."

The darkness surged forward. Enoch screamed.

The pair of them turned and began to sprint, and the corridor behind them was eerily, menacingly silent. The sounds of their own footfalls, their ragged breathing, their panic, was so loud by contrast that it felt like a profanity. They rushed past a branching corridor only for Enoch to skid to a halt, grab Sumira by the arm, and dodge into it. She saw what he had: ahead of them, a light. The darkness still on their heels, they ran again.

A heartbeat later, they realized light wasn't an exit. There was a figure, looming tall and broad-shouldered in silhouette. As their lamplight reached him, they saw it glint across warmly brazen armor.

The man turned sideways to give the two of them room to pass.

"Cover your eyes!"

They did. And even that didn't hide the flash.

There was a cracking pop of an explosion and a blaze of white light, followed by an acrid smell carried on pale smoke. It brought the Hydra to a halt. From the tunnel behind them came a sound like a deep, hollow cough. And then that horrible, ghostly sigh. Sumira and Enoch stumbled and stopped, turning to stare at their rescuer as he faced the churning darkness that pursued them.

The armored man hefted a massive maul from his shoulder and planted his feet. "I don't know what you think you're doing here, but you should've thought harder."

Sumira was fairly sure he wasn't talking to the Hydra.

The darkness rolled back to reveal clawed limbs, sharp jaws. A dozen sleek heads, all of them eyeless.

-Defender. You promised none would follow.-

"I don't know who they are, or what they're here for."

-Then leave them to their fate.-

"Just let them pass. They're almost out of your territory already."

-My territory remains so only if I enforce its borders. I have given you respect. It has not been returned in kind.-

The strange hollowness of the Hydra's voice deepened somehow, sinking like dread into the pit of Enoch's stomach. He saw Sumira shudder with the chill that settled on them. If their rescuer had brokered a truce with the Hydra, it was clearly ending now.

The stranger took a step towards the Hydra. He banged a gauntletted fist against his breastplate; the low ringing of True Bronze made the creature shudder.

"You're the Red Smith!" Enoch exclaimed when he had the breath to do so. The Red Smith pounded his breastplate again, but the Hydra didn't retreat. It lowered its heads, necks stretching towards him with thousands of bared needle-teeth.

"This is a mistake. You don't want us as your enemies."

"'Us?' 'Us?! ' I have a boot knife and a moderately heavy book, I don't think we have much--"

The smith gave Enoch a flat look over his shoulder.

The Hydra surged forward, darkness in its wake like a shuddering echo of the space its twisting body filled, and it was eerily, wrongly silent as it moved. The Red Smith gave ground and Enoch and Sumira scrambled backwards while he fended off snapping jaws with the haft of his hammer. The weapon was True Bronze, as his armor was, but even as he parried against each serpentine head the smith seemed unwilling to strike with it.

The Hydra turned, gracile body doubling back on itself and crowding the narrow passageway. But just as it gave a glimmer of hope that it might have decided to leave off the attack, its tail swept around, faster than a coachwhip.

The smith grunted as he landed hard on his back, then yelped as the tail wrapped his ankle and wrenched him hard enough to fling him against the passage wall.

Then there was a keening sound and another light, cold and sharp as the Hydra's sighing calls. A beam of white sliced through the corridor, severing the Hydra's tail bloodlessly.

For a horrible moment, silence cloaked their world. The creature surged around again, mouths gaping in a piercing scream that consumed all sound. It wheeled fully then, and dove back into the darkness of the passageway.

When Sumira turned to find whatever had created that lancing light, she saw a tall, attenuated figure cloaked in an ethereal glow.