The morning we left Nemea was bright and sunny, but nobody in town felt very happy. News about the Hydra had spread, and the same people who were celebrating our win over the Nemean Lion just days ago now came to say goodbye with sad faces.
"Take this," the town's main sword-maker said, giving me a beautifully made sword. "We worked all night to make it. We hope it works better against the Hydra than our weapons did against the lion." I looked at the sword carefully, though I was already thinking it probably wouldn't work very well against a monster that could grow new heads.
The town's medicine woman, a tiny lady with sharp eyes, brought us some carefully wrapped packages. "These are to fight against the Hydra's poison," she explained, "though none of us has ever fought such a monster before." I really wanted to ask about what was in the medicines and how they worked, but Iolaus gave me a look that told me not to turn this into a lesson about medicine.
