Pert vs Hydra

'We are poor,' said the shepherd. 'There are many beasts in these mountains that feast on our caprids. Some attack us and take our children, as you have seen. We cannot slay them. Can you?'

Perturabo waited. Encouraged by his silence, the man continued.

'A hydraka lairs not far from here.' He pointed to the north-west, where pinnacles of rock crowded out the sky. 'Three valleys over, near an outcrop like a horned head. We dare not graze in that territory, as the hydraka kills everything. There are many good pastures there, but we cannot use them.'

'It hurts you?'

'Yes.'

'Then I will kill it,' said Perturabo.

The shepherd looked almost regretful. Perhaps he did not expect such swift agreement; perhaps he had realised the strange boy might die on behalf of his greed. Whatever his misgivings, his attempts to dissuade Perturabo were halfhearted. 'The hydraka are powerful, and cunning. They are like the jalpidae, but with many heads. You must cut quickly to destroy it, for they heal blade wounds fast. It will disarm you. It will kill you.'

'It will not,' said Perturabo certainly.

He left the village. That night, he feasted on jalpida flesh, not knowing it was poisonous to mortal men. It did him no harm.

The next day he set out towards the outcrop. As he made his way down the path from the high peaks where he slept, he found a bundle wedged under a rock.

Curious, he opened it out, and discovered a suit of clothes like those the shepherds wore cut for his muscular youth's body. The workmanship was inadequate. Perturabo saw a myriad ways it could be bettered. He improved the suit before discarding his skins and donning it.

On the way to the valley of the hydraka, he stopped to cut himself a wooden club from the heartwood of a tree. The shepherd was right. The hydraka healed his sword cuts quickly, and it wrenched his blade from his hand with a venomous mouth and cast it aside, but when Perturabo crushed three of its five skulls with his club it died just the same.

The heads he delivered to the same farmstead, and the next day more gifts were left out for him. Food, and utensils - a bowl, spoon, knives and more. He had none of these things before, but the moment he saw them he knew what they were and he recognised their work as inferior. He abandoned the gifts, and made his own.

A week later, a storm of rising knowledge dislodged his memories, and he forgot that any of this had happened.

Six months after that, he found himself clinging to the Phrygean cliffs, and his life began in earnest."

Emperor's Architect