[Persian Desert] Sands of Time

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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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

'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...'

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.

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.

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."

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.

"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."

"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.

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.

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

A sigh escaped Athos as the Basilisk fell. In truth, he'd hoped the beast would have been turned to stone after his eye patch was removed, but he figured it was snake-like enough to be unaffected by the Gorgon's stare. With the monster out of his way for good, Athos reached into his satchel to retrieve his eye patch and don it again. Doing so returned his form to its previous state. He approached the Basilisk thereafter, channeling a bit of his Gorgon self into his hand to regain his claws. These were used to trace long lines of his neurotoxin along the Basilisk's side. He did this to peel off strips that he would then use to create a holster for not one, but both fangs. This required him to remove one from the Basilisk's face, but gravity aided him in this. Soon enough, Athos was walking toward the location he'd left Deianira at, dragging two massive fangs along the sand behind him by straps made of Basilisk hide.

By the time Deianira had drained the contents of her cup, the young man was once again approaching. Though his return had taken a bit longer than the girl thought was necessary she soon realized why this was the case, considering he was dragging behind him two of these large fangs wrapped in what had to be the beasts hide. "Nice hunt, Athos~" she complimented. She'd been told not to look for him but still couldn't help but have a gander at his approach. "Why do you have two?" she wondered aloud, as she dropped from where she was. Her intent to help the lad lest he have to carry multiples of these around all by himself. She wouldn't speak again because she had clamped between her own teeth the top of her cup which is how she chose to carry it when her hands were otherwise occupied.

Athos' return was met by congratulations from Deianira. He had nothing to say in response to this, but she went on to question why he had two of the Basilisk's fangs in tow. Looking behind himself at the fangs, he gave a reply to at least this subject. "Because I took two out of its mouth," he said. He was apparently to have some relief from the weight of the fangs thereafter, which was not something he could or would complain about. "We have to go north. Is land or sea best?"

A few seconds after she'd landed she took control of one of these giant fangs. Having wrapped the hide of the beast around both hands she began dragging it along as well. It seemed the young man wasn't really capable of taking compliments which she apparently expected but when he went on to explain why he had two of these a light chuckle could be heard from the young woman. "Funny..." she said speaking technically into the cup clamped between her teeth. As they began to move she thought about the direction they could or would take to head further north. With that in mind she frowned a little and stopped.

"I actually don't know," she said as a desert eagle flew over head with tawny feathers and huge talons. She let out a sound which was a bit like a whistle which called the bird down to her. She looked at it for a while and after a bit she tossed the bird with the wing span larger than her body back into the sky so it could continue its hunting. "The eagle says, that there is a huge city built in an oasis against the mountains which lead to the north across the desert, getting there would take a few hours flight for him so about a half a day of walking or night of walking." she said about it. "The city apparently has a pretty easy route straight north out of its back end... but if you wanted to go by sea, it would take a few days because you'd have to go all the way around the landmass to get to the north," she finished as they'd stopped she went on to begin to make some minor adjustments to the hide of the beast so that she could carry the large fang on her back thus saving her arms a bit of unneeded strain. "That's what it is, your choice of course~" she said, looking towards the other fang. "Want me to fix up that one so you can carry it on your back too? It should make it easier~" she said having done her own she picked it up slipping straps onto her shoulders and allowing her to keep her general movement without too much strain, though even for a demigod this particular tooth was quite heavy.

Athos awaited Deianira's answer, and while he did, she spoke with an eagle about the potential trip. Shortly after the eagle's release, the lass expressed her thoughts regarding both land travel and sea travel. Athos was not at all fond of the idea of traveling through a city, and frankly, he disagreed with the times Deianira claimed the trip by sea would take. He began walking toward the boat, pulling the straps holding his fang up to wear his on his back as well. Apparently, he did not need assistance to accomplish this either. "I'll just move the boat faster."

Deianira listened to the young man who didn't seem to like the times listed about the travel options. She'd known he wouldn't like the idea of traveling through the city, but she'd decided to throw it out as an option. A chuckle ensued and the girl snapped her fingers. "Baby steps~" she chimed, fine with this outcome she also moved towards the boat. "Alright move the boat faster, if you like... just don't forget to enjoy the views~" she said. "Oh and watch out for icebergs..." the young woman said of the area closer to their target, she wasn't really happy with the idea that she might be forced into a cold swim. It seemed that Athos was also able to pick up the fang he needed to carry. "So, question, is the Gorgon thing up for conversation or will that get me the silent treatment for the next leg of this trip?"

With his decision made, Athos returned to the boat in a matter of moments. Even at a slightly slower pace due to the weight of the fang on his back, his return hardly took longer than the initial departure. As he was climbing aboard, while forcing the water's surface to a higher pressure so the boat would remain floating with the added weight, Deianira posed another question. This one involved his status as a Gorgon, which she had to be watching to know about. Athos' eye widened the moment the word "Gorgon" was spoken. Afterwards, his brow furrowed, and he let loose his Basilisk fang in the boat. Athos would then go about moving the boat at roughly five times the speed it boasted on the previous trips.

Athos made the boat stay afloat even with the extensive extra weight of two of the fangs of the giant Basilisk he'd already slain. Deianira's question though, didn't seem to garner an immediate answer from the young man which made her sigh ever so slightly, but she didn't get much chance to pout about this, because the boat soon took off at a speed it hadn't reached previously. The girl stumbled just a bit and fell into the seated position. "Whoa, that's really fast~" she said seeming to have found a comfortable way to sit without much thought, her legs crossing at the ankle she stared up at the sky and continued speaking. "I totally understand if I am getting the silent treatment and all, but I was just curious," she stated. "I think it's cool, and I've never met a half-Gorgon kid before~" she said, this boy's level of secrecy was something very extreme, and she could understand it only a little but not nearly enough to make sense of his present mood.

The boat continued moving away from the desert known as the Sands of Time. It seemed he was having little to no issue moving the vessel in different directions while maintaining this speed, but he was having an issue with the words still being spoken by Deianira. She mentioned never having met a half-Gorgon before, which triggered the lad in a way that made him tremble ever so briefly and slightly. Still, he said nothing at all, and simply kept the boat moving.