Mistletoe Bagman and the Hydra

 When Mistletoe Bagman said he wanted to go on a quest, this wasn't what he had in mind.

For one thing, the renowned councilman hadn't been expecting his questing partner to be so... He couldn't find the words he needed.

It was hard to describe Lakelet. He had seen plenty of adventurers in his time as a part of the City Council, and they were always a weird collection of individuals-- especially the younger ones-- but it was different talking to her.

More concerning than Lakelet Dalael, though, was the monster in front of them. It was large, larger than anything he had ever seen. Sure, he may have never left the city in his one-hundred-twenty-four years, but that didn't change anything about the absolute stature of this thing. It was some sort of hydra, he thought, with five heads and a writhing, serpentine body. Some parts of it were scaly, as one would expect, but the rest of it was covered in collected animal pelts and bones from the surrounding lake and community. There, in between the fourth and fifth heads, was a sheep, dripping gore from its severed heads and exposed ribs. There were bits of wolf, bear, and (Mistletoe Bagman didn't want to think about it) person on it. The way that it whipped up the water around it didn't make it any cleaner.

"Miss Dalael," he said, his voice trembling pathetically as he handed her the binoculars he borrowed, "you didn't mention that we would be slaying a hydra."

She grinned. "Didn't I, Bagman?"

"You didn't."

"Could have sworn I did. Doesn't matter, anyway, we're here already." Lakelet put the binoculars back into their pouch and pulled out her sword and hammer. "And we're not slaying it, so don't go getting any ideas."

She set the hammer, which was gigantic in its own right, on the ground and pulled out a small vial of a powerful sleeping potion. The potion was an odd magenta color, and in a spherical bottle with a cork to seal it. Mistletoe knew this one; when ingested or introduced to the blood, it would put a creature to sleep for at least a week, if not more. She checked it, to make sure it was sealed, then moved it to a front pocket of her vest so she could reach it more easily.

Lakelet Dalael was a young half-orc woman with blue-tinted skin, small tusks jutting out of her bottom lip, and an affinity for knocking the lights out of whatever disagreed with her. She tended to wear clothes with many pockets so she could hide whatever she needed on her person. That meant she wore a fishing-style vest and cargo shorts. The only bright side to being around her was that, thanks to her status as a descendant of some water elemental, you never went without something to drink. While Mistletoe didn't think that it was morally correct, it was better to stay on her good side than to display his personal prejudices.

Mistletoe, on the other hand, was slight, elven, and entirely unprepared for this. He also had many moles on his dry skin, and was wearing the most anti-adventuring clothing one could think of: a pair of dark gray trousers, a light gray vest, and once-clean dress shirt. The few spells he knew didn't seem as powerful as they needed to be when he looked at the hydra.

"We'll leave our stuff here," Lakelet said. "Then we'll go around to the other side of it, where it can't quite see us. You'll drive it into the cave, and I'll seal it in. Then we'll take care of it."

It didn't seem like a good plan to Mistletoe. He didn't want to be the bait. Still, he supposed that she knew more about this than he did. She was, after all, more acclimated to this kind of thing. His preferred form of strategy leaned more toward diplomacy.

"What's the vial for?" he asked. "Are we putting it to sleep?"

"That would be the easiest way to get the scales."