Fern and Thor

Chapter V

Fern jumped up, alerted. Picking up her knapsack, she ran towards the shrieks were coming from, and stopped in her tracks, stunned. Nine heads turned her way, dripping strings of saliva. It was the hydra. Side-tracked by Fern’s sudden arrival, there was a moment of distraction. The monstrous beast still staring silently at her, an average-sized boy wearing a fur jacket, its collar sticking out and with what looked like homemade pockets, cut into the leather with a knife, crept up behind it. He also wore black cotton trousers, scratched and tattered. On his feet he had on glossy black boots. A section of leather was torn out of the coat, revealing a birthmark strangely shaped like an eagle. His uncouth hair reached just above shoulder height. He snarled and lunged at the hydra, unsheathing a small dagger and barely making a dent in it. But the dragon felt it all the same and turned to him, eyes flashing angrily. Then it turned away to face Fern. The hydra tried to claw her and she nimbly dodged, crying in surprise and pulling out her bow. Slotting in an arrow, she pulled the bowstring and fired. The arrow flew with surprising speed and made more of a result than Fern had thought, deeply engraving it. This just enraged the hydra further. Hurriedly, Fern mounted another, hoping to hit its eye, but before she could, it burst upwards and blew orange-yellow fire up into the sky, camouflaging into the sunset. Then it spread its wings and flew off in a hurricane of wind. The force of it drove Fern to the ground. As soon as it was out of sight, the boy hurried over to Fern and helped her up. “Thanks for helping me.” He started awkwardly. Fern just shook her head at him. “Are you crazy?” she sighed intensely. “Why would you go that close to it??”
“I thought I could handle it!” he said, giving an annoyed grin.
“Yeah, right!” Fern answered. “Whatever. I got to get going.”
“Where are you going?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I want to know!” The boy whined.
“Fine, whatever. I’m going into the Tetra Mountains.” Fern replied dully.
The boy stood still, processing this. Then he shook his head in disbelief.  “But that’s suicide! That place is more dangerous than hell!”
“Why does that concern you?” Fern retorted.
“Look, I’m coming with you, whether you like it or not, okay? I just can’t let you go so unprotected!” The boy declared.
Fern was slightly taken aback. “What? But you’ll just stuff everything up!”
“No, I won’t. Plus, this is technically the whole reason I’m out here. I wanted to explore the world. I’m coming.” He insisted.
Fern stifled a groan. “Fine! Whatever! But don’t blame me if you drop dead.”
“Why would I blame you?”
For some reason, his coolly nonchalant tone just made Fern angrier. “Come on!” she almost shouted. Then she inhaled and said calmer, “By the way, what’s your name?”
“What’s yours?”
“Fern.”
“Mine’s Thor.” He answered.
“Bit of a weird name.” Fern muttered, then added “No offence.”
“Yeah, I know. My parents were great believers in Norse mythology. My dad wanted me to grow up as strong and brave as the famous warrior. ‘Course, you can see it didn’t work.” Thor gave a playful wink and pointed to his small dagger.
“Okay, well then I guess I better tell you what we’re doing.” Fern sighed. “I’ve been sent on a mission to slay the hydra that just attacked us. It keeps attacking our village and I need to hunt it down.”
“What? Do you even know who that hydra belongs to?”
“Nope.”
Thor lowered his voice to a whisper. “He belongs to the ruler of the mountains. They say he is strongly associated with dark magic. His name is Thord.”