[Persian Desert] Sands of Time

[Apollymi]

A hot desert from the extending from the shores of the Mediterraean sea all the way inland in the area previously known as the Persian Empire. It is east of Greece and in modern times seems to be full of hostilities and strife surrounded around the ideas of who is worshiping the right or wrong gods. Over all, it isn't much different from any other place, only the sands themselves seem to keep everything in perspective. The heat of the sun is distributed across the open quaking canyons and windblown rockformations. These are home to various creatures who borrow during the day to escape the desert heat and come out at night to hunt and absorb the cooler temperatures. These beast who survive despite modern technology are crafty and monstrous enough to swallow up any who tarry long. Beyond this desert is an oasis and in the oasis is a major city which was previously the seat of this empire.

[Bloodedge]

A rowboat containing only two people slid onto the shore of the Sands of Time. Athos, the white-haired son of Poseidon, stepped out onto the sands. This texture felt very strange beneath the heel of his boot, but he felt he could adjust to it. A red plastic cup was in his left hand, and since there was still liquid within, he drained it of its content. Interestingly, he spoke, albeit accidentally in snake tongue. "Land. I wonder where the Basilisk can be found," he said.

[Apollymi]

Deianira's feet hit the sand as well and she too still held a cup, until their previous trip she didn't intend to let it go, lest she be stuck without a way to hydrate herself while they traveled the wide expanse of the desert. In the same way that Athos though the sand was different beneath his feet, she felt it the same and found it to be a different kind of annoying. As she looked towards the craggy rock formations in the distance and all the shadows caused by the differing angles and protrusions. "In an area like this, assuming it's always this hot. I'd say it's probably underground somewhere, unless it needs to eat," she said the sand was a different kind of annoying. "And all this sand will make it hard to track," she took several steps forward and watched as a minor breeze erased her foot prints as she took a step forward. "This is a challenging hunt. Not to mention, I've never actually seen a legged Basilisk," she finished, also answering in the language of snakes if only because she found it funny that the young man had slipped back into use of this tongue when finally managing to speak a little.

[Bloodedge]

"Underground..." he repeated while taking several steps forward. He continued walking toward the more intense dunes of the immediate area, then began hissing much louder than normal. After a few moments, a snake emerged from beneath the sand. Its camouflage was superb; it had a grainy texture to its skin, which matched the sands in color as well. After a brief discussion with this snake, Athos sent it on its way and addressed Deianira once more. This time, he spoke in the tongue of humans. "He says they fear the Basilisk. Its hiss is the worst type of sound to snakes. It comes out every night, and they run. I'm going to find it," he stated. While he was fine with Deianira joining him on the journey, Athos seemed to greatly prefer the idea of facing the Basilisk alone. He wasn't the type to showcase his abilities in the presence of others, for reasons yet known to most living creatures.

[Apollymi]

Deianira accompanied the young man forward several steps wondering what it was he intended to do, soon enough a snake emerged from beneath the surface of the sand and it had blended into the sand so perfectly even the trained huntress was a bit surprised by its appearance. 'Wow, that's really cool!~' the young woman thought though she said nothing aloud while Athos did whatever it was he was going to do. Soon enough the young man stated the information he gathered, that the snakes around here didn't like the Basilisk, and that he intended to take it alone for whatever reason. Deianira's brow rose. Under normal circumstances she would have felt a bit slighted at being excluded from a hunt when she'd specifically come along to watch, she supposed she wasn't in much of a position to complain. "As you like, I suppose I can't really complain, since I killed all the Cyclopes~" she chimed finishing the contents of her cup and then moving forward to spin it around atop her finger as if she was amused. "So, are you going to hunt it at night fall, or are you gonna track it down while it sleeps?" she wondered simply wishing to get a handle on this young man's preferred tactics.

[Bloodedge]

Deianira wondered aloud how Athos intended to approach the Basilisk situation, but Athos had no answer for her. He knew what he would do; he would call the creature to him. Knowing that the local snakes feared the beast's hiss, he could equate it to some form of snake. As such, he would only have to speak its own language to reach it. For his own reasons, he could not explain this to another; this was why he continued walking. Athos knew he could likely reach the Basilisk from where they were, but he wished to create distance between himself and Deianira first... so he kept moving, not even sparing a glance in Deianira's direction to respond to the question she had.

[Apollymi]

'Ugh, I am never going to properly be used to people ignoring me...' the girl thought as she instead of following the young man reached a craggy outcropping outside of the line of the sun. It was higher up and required a quick bit of climbing which she did while biting on the side of her cup to keep it within her grasp while she made said climb. Once she reached the desired height, she settled herself into the shadowed hole and generally set her gaze upon the area which the lad was walking to. Her own vision could be enhanced greatly so she used it to see at a distance what would be taking place for the lad. While she did this, she created for herself another drink which tasted exclusively nectar-like in taste. 'Progress... making progress though...'

[Bloodedge]

Athos continued walking for a few minutes before coming to a stop. When he did stop moving, he scanned the area with his eye while taking a very deep breath. What came next was something Athos had never personally done. A hiss came from the young man, but it was not at all that of an ordinary snake. This hiss was louder than anything a serpent of any sort should be capable of, and it was also somehow sinister in nature. The snakes themselves would, and did, describe it as the sound of a thousand deaths occurring simultaneously among their kind. This was what Athos understood to be the voice of the Basilisk, which he mimicked as a way of baiting out the beast by pretending to be a Basilisk himself; one which invaded the territory of another.

[Apollymi]

Athos came to a stop after a few moments of walking, once he was he let out a sound the likes of which frightened all of the wildlife. Snakes began a mass exodus, sliding across the sands away from the lad and back towards were Deianira was perched. She watched all of this from a distance and heard the sound which she couldn't really equate to the type of languages normally spoken by animals. She assumed it to be some sort of call meant to rouse the suspicions of the Basilisk which in turn made the black haired young woman smile as she sipped from her cup. 'Ah, that makes sense, bait. Pretty good tactic... not bad Athos.' she thought remembering to file that particular thought away for later as she may or may not need it.

A few moments after the call was made the sands began to stir at large moving and shifting about in a way that Deianira had never witnessed before. And then the sands themselves seemed to open up, a giant head emerged from within the grains as they fell away. Glowing blue eyes happened first and then a set of legs merged as a large body began to be pulled up onto the surface. More and more legs came out as well and this creature towered over a person, even a building. Each of its claws would make dents in the ground bigger than a small pool and its teeth would be large enough to split a full grown adult giant in half. As she watched this spiny creature was brightly colored with eight legs and bright red spines against blue skin. Venomous fluid leaked from its mouth onto the ground before those glowing blue eyes shifted to glare towards the young lad, looking directly into its face would cause death.

[Bloodedge]

The emergence of the Basilisk shook the ground in a way Athos could hardly believe, considering how much sand was beneath them. This beast was truly massive, dwarfing any concept he previously had of Basilisks. Luckily, Athos knew the basic dangers of Basilisks, including their infamous "death stare." This was the reason he could not have another individual present during this time. Before looking toward the monster, Athos reached for the patch over his left eye, removing it and slipping it into his satchel. When his left eye opened thereafter, both of his eyes gained slit pupils the likes of a serpent. At the same time, his curly white hair became a mass of white snakes. Now that he was like this, he looked directly into the face of the Basilisk, yet nothing happened to him as a result. The standoff had officially begun, with constant hissing sounds coming from Athos and the snakes on his head. His own hissing came from a slightly opened mouth that boasted razor sharp fangs. Just the same, his nails had grown and sharpened to points. "You're ugly. That fang better be worth it."

[Apollymi]

The Basilisk's hiss became even deeper. It'd expected the immediate death of the boy but instead it continued to stand before him eventually changing some so that he was able to stare back. What should have been an instant win became something more than a standoff. "GORGON!!!~~~~~" came a disgruntled hiss from the large beast. It seemed that Athos thought this creature ugly and it understood enough of what he said to scoff at the comment. "You look like a tasty little morsel!~" and with that the Basilisk would immediately try to snap up the young man within its jaws aiming to eat the young man, even if it didn't succeed in this, contact with anything in its mouth would lead to a toxic venom being introduced to his person. Regardless of this situation, it seemed that the Basilisk wasn't at all concerned, many had come to kill it and none had succeeded.

Meanwhile, Deianira continued to watch from a great distance as the large beast rose, but beyond this point, it seemed that she now knew what Athos had been busy hiding and why he preferred to be alone. 'Oh, he's a Gorgon probably mixed with some sort of water nymph... that makes sense. Probably has a petrifying stare... so much sense is made by this.' she thought as she refilled her now empty cup, again it was just nectar, which she seemed to be enjoying like nothing else. This lonely boy was likely a strange mix of things, but by Deianira's approximation it still didn't really account for his lack of social skills.

[Bloodedge]

"I probably taste like fish," Athos replied. The Basilisk attacked him, and while Athos had few methods of responding to something so massive, he did not seem worried. His positioning was quite bothersome for one who wished to avoid being split by such large fangs. With the beast's open mouth closing in on him, Athos moved forward and mystically transformed his legs into a long, serpentine tail. This allowed him to slither around and between the teeth while swiping at its gums and inner mouth with his claws. Athos seemed unfazed by the monster's venom, but his own fangs and claws carried an incredibly potent neurotoxin that he intended to test on this enemy. "I'm taking this fang."

[Apollymi]

"A rare delicacy!~" it seemed like this was just another meal to be consumed by this monster. Of course, this didn't turn out the way that the Basilisk thought it was, and instead, it was stuck with a slippery snake boy slicing into its gums and leaving behind a substance which began to cause it pain in its mouth, which loosened a tooth and would within a moment allow a large fang to simply fall from its mouth. "My fang, you tsssok my fasssngss..." the beast had never felt a pain like this before and aimed to spit out the meal it had so recently tried to devour. But soon enough its nerves would begin dying and given the proximity of its teeth to its brain, it would begin finding speech and other such functions rather difficult. Its mouth wouldn't function the way it was used to, and its tongue wouldn't even work.

'Oh a snake tail too!~' it seemed that by the end of her second cup Deianira was at the edge of her seat watching the young man work in the distance. Though she didn't interfere she was at least assured by what she was witnessing that this young man was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Meanwhile she wondered what manner of poison the Basilisk possessed as it was obviously too brightly colored to be a normal creature.

[Bloodedge]

Athos' own venom seemed potent enough to remove one of the monster's fangs for him. Just like that, the first part of the task was done. However, he now had to finish dealing with the Basilisk itself. It aimed to spit him out, and though there was nothing he could do about this, he made use of the time window by aiming his claws at the gums around another fang. Upon being forcibly ejected from his confines in the Basilisk's mouth, Athos landed near the fallen fang. He wrapped his tail around it, wondering if this Basilisk would be able to resist its own toxins. Athos' tail was powerful, even for a Gorgon's. With that in mind, he whipped himself around to launch the Basilisk's own fang at it, intending to pierce its flesh and fell it with its own ability.

[Apollymi]

Another of the beasts fangs fell out of its face as Athos aimed more of his corrosive poison around the gums of the creature before being spit out. Though his meal was currently out of his mouth, the Basilisk seemed to just be waiting for a better opportunity to injure and devour the boy but this was not to be. The Basilisk's fallen fang was soon its own undoing as it was launched at a speed to quick to dodge at its own face. The tooth soon protruded from its mouth and blood poured from the wound. Beyond the blood pouring it would also be affected by its own poison which finished the job the neurotoxin started. The light drained from this creatures eyes and it soon fell dead to the white Gorgon boy, without another sentence to be uttered.

Deianira watched the rest of this bout and clicked her teeth with her tongue as she settled back into place seemingly happy with her snug spot. 'He's really awesome~' she thought. Her cup resting in place beside her as she leaned into the crevice and stopped watching the lad as he'd finished his work. 'Strong tails, that's interesting... not necessarily an orthodox hunt but... a good one nonetheless,' she thought lifting her cup to the boy's success