“Well, if you don’t do something, they’ll get us anyway, won’t they?” Mary pointed out.
“Very well, then you must retreat behind me best you can and I will try to protect you with my one good wing, at least. I just hope, by the eternal fires of my ancestral sky-spirits, I can summon enough attack-flame to take out all three at once.”
“S-s-so d-d-do I!” Roger exclaimed.
Roger and Mary then quickly scuttled behind Mavis and sheltered as best they could, underneath her one golden wing. They lay as flat as they could and peered out from under the wing’s bony edge. Mavis quickly positioning it just in time, as the three Trydra came within a dozen feet of her blue-flame shield.
The three deadly creatures loomed and swayed menacingly above them, like three gigantic cobras, but each with three heads and each head with its three glinting red eyes.
But they stayed there, now no longer moving forward at all, but just swaying side to side, hissing and repeatedly flicking out their forked tongues from their gaping, scaly mouths. Their venom-loaded fangs drooling and glistening with their own potent concoction of acids.
“The weakness of the Trydra is that it is invulnerable, but only if it at least retains one head!” Mavis telepathed to them urgently, "I must therefore blast them and take out all heads at once and so utterly destroy ‘nine heads for three beasts’ and it must be done quickly and without one head left to function; or the Trydra will just regrow its head and fight on!”
“O.K. We’re ready, Mavis, do your best!” Mary told her, sounding braver than she felt.
“Or your worst—for them!” Roger added.
The leader of the triad of Trydra, flared his cobra-like hood and then raised the very end of his coiling tail and pointed it at Mavis, violently and noisily rattling it at her in an obvious show of hostility. Stony, ophidian eyes glinted coldly at the patiently waiting Dragon Queen; and then with a harsh, hissing sound as of a thousand pebbles, skittering over slippery rocks, the lead Trydra suddenly spoke:
“I am Trinimicusss and thessse two are my brothersss, Masterssss Trimorbisss and Tridissipantisss. Sssso, dear Missstresss Sssivad, we hear you are sssickly; we are ssso sssorry to hear thissss!”
“I am well enough, you Snake-worm!” Mavis retorted loudly. “And I know you have come but to do your Core Master’s bidding. But be warned; no foul fiend of the slime-spawned, such as you, can defeat me and keep me from my goal!”
The rearing Trydra leader hissed at this and lunged forward, momentarily stung to the quick by Mavis’s taunting insults but then seemed to quickly hold himself in check.
Trinimicusss had pulled his head back with a jerk; As if some invisible rider was on his back and controlling him through invisible reins. Which was in fact very close to the case.
“Oh, ssso prrroud, are we not, eh? Oh, ssso very Queeenly! Then, very well, Missstresss Sssivad, my Massster asksss only thisss one sssimple requessst of you; Give usss your Egg!”
“Never!” cried Mavis. “So, return to your sniveling, fat snake of a Master, or die!”
At this, the triad of what Erf humans would more usually know of as the mythical Hydra, but known in the realms of Under-Erf, as The Trydra, all gathered in their snaking coils and reared their evil heads up even higher. Mavis could see they were intending to surround her; They knew that she couldn’t attack in three different directions at once.
Trinimicusss took the lead, suddenly lunging forward and lashing at Mavis directly ahead. As he did so, Trimorbisss snaked to the left, while Tridissipantisss did likewise to the right. Splatters of foaming acid-venom struck at Mavis’s protective dome of blue-flame, all at once. The blue, fire bubble rippled and blistered; soon showing patches of ashen-brown blotching, as the blue-flame shield was infected simultaneously by the three Trydra’s foul spitballs.
Mavis saw that it was time to act, before the two flanking monsters had time to maneuver any further around and get behind her. She had to catch all three at once, directly in her blast.
She watched and judged for the exact right time to move, just as the foul Trydra spat their bombardment of venom and before they had any chance to recover and so repeat their attack; Thus, with deadly aim, she reared up and struck!
As she did, the dome of blue flame rapidly shrank away to nothingness, and in the split second of it doing so, she opened her jaws wide and let forth a tremendous blast of searing, orange flame. A gigantic burst of boiling fire enveloped the Trydra. All three of the hideous creatures were instantly set alight, shrieking out their agony; as twisting, living candles.
The three Trydra were now hissing and howling and spitting and spluttering as the ruby red Dragon flames ravaged up and down their writhing, lizard-like bodies.
Roger could see that over to his left, Trimorbisss had collapsed onto the cavern floor, and was thrashing about amongst the corpses of the crushed Fire-worm Minions there. And all three of his heads were burning brighter than Lucifer!
Meanwhile, out to Mary’s right, Tridissipantisss was also in trouble, but unfortunately not all of his heads were alight. He was now desperately attacking two of his own burning heads! There was one burning head held tight in the jaws of his unharmed head, and as she watched in horror, he ripped the head from its neck and then did the same for the other flaming head, knowing that new heads would soon replace the burnt and damaged ones.
“Quick, Mavis, to your right, quickly, or it’ll just grow new heads!” Mary screamed out.
Mavis reared to her right and saw Tridissipantisss was indeed already growing a second head and the third would follow fast. She filled her fire-lungs with attack flame and fired a great gout of sizzling flame. This one was a blast of yellow and orange and not quite as hot as her first rock-melting blast had been. But it was hot enough to do the job required.
Tridissipantisss crashed to the ground with all three of its heads now fully aflame.
Soon there was nothing but three smoking stumps, clogged with ash and smoke and all dribbling congealing venom. And so, the second of the three Trydra had been dealt with.
“But wha-wha-what about Trinimicusss?” Roger shouted to her in alarm.
The cavern was rapidly filling with smoke from the violent and heated battle and Roger could no longer see Trinimicusss, the evil leader of the Trydra.
“Where’s it gone?” he yelled, scanning the billowing murk of the fog-filled cavern for any sign of the monstrous creature.
But then, the awful answer came.
Trinimicusss was behind them! He had managed to fling his scorched and flame-ravaged body away and had coiled and rolled himself behind Mavis. And he still proudly held high, three hooded cobra-like heads, still dripping venom and still intent on their total destruction.
“I am growing weaker, Egg-bearers, I don’t know how long I can hold Trinimicusss off!” Mavis mind-cast to them. “I have just enough attack-flame for one burst, but if that fails…”
“Ssso, my ssso called Queeen, Ssssivam Sssivad, Oh, Mighty Missstresss of the so-called True Dragonsss, you and your lassst egg will sssoon be nothing but puddlesss of ssslime!” Trinimicusss hissed vengefully.
Roger saw that Mavis hadn’t had time to turn and adequately defend her rear. So now, both Roger and Mary were dangerously exposed to the last Trydra’s venomous attack.
“Quick Mary,” he shouted to her, “get on the other side of the wing, before he spots us.”