By a lone dragonslayer with something to prove

Dragons are known for their senses; in both sight and smell they outstrip humans vastly, even able to see the warmth emitted by objects to orient themselves in complete darkness. But their hearing and touch are interlinked tightly together - as smell and taste in humans. They can feel sounds as much as hear them, as vibrations through the ground or air - our water, in your case.

As you rest in your wet caverns, devouring a particularly large pike that you fished out of the swamp a few days ago, you feel the vibrations of a two-legged creature gently splashing through the swamp above. It's moving slowly, almost as if it was trying to be stealthy, and seems to be making a rough beeline for the craggy entrance to your lair.

Letting your meal fall from your jaws, you noiselessly dive into a nearby pool of water, barely a ripple betraying your egress. You let the air bubble up from your lungs, replaced with brackish water, as you breathe deeply of the swamp. Striving deeper, you crawl and swim your way through a crack in the rocks beneath your lair, before carefully and quietly ascending to the surface of the swamp, only your eyes and nostrils above the water as you spy your erstwhile hunter from a safe distance.

The interloper was a human, that was of no doubt, and heavily armored in metal plates, clutching a spear glowing faintly with magical energies - definitely the kind of weapon to bring if a human was foolish enough to challenge a dragon. Not wanting to waste time, you summon forth the elemental energies within yourself, letting loose a concentrated spray of burning acid from your open mouth, before diving beneath the water of the swamp once more. Pausing a moment, feeling the vibrations of the human's movements echoing through the water, perceptible to your superior draconic senses, you can tell that, despite what you would have suspected, the torrent of corrosive fluid had not killed, or at least incapacitated your foe, but rather merely staggered the human momentarily.

Taking a moment to grip the bottom of the swamp firmly, you push off the bottom, leaving subtlety aside for now, powering yourself forward with your muscular tail, until your head breaches the water close to the human warrior. In a split second you can see her face - her face, she was a female, you were close enough to tell that now - eyes wide open in surprise as she tries to bring her spear to bear. You seize her around the midsection, your teeth scraping on her armor, and toss her bodily into a nearby pool. Her wheeling arms manage to nick your snout with the tip of her spear as she careens through the air, more of a nuisance than anything else, but the cut on your lip reminds you that her weapon can and will penetrate your hardened scales.

The armored woman sinks rapidly, though you can feel the dull bass impact of her feet on the soft swamp bottom, as she apparently managed to right herself, using the spear as a crutch. You crouch and wait, as the weighed-down woman walks slowly towards the surface. A minute passes by. Two. Three. Improbably, water falling off of her gleaming armor, the warrior woman manages to surface, breathing hard from exertion but not the near-**** that would be expected, coughing up water. It had to have been magic to help her breathe underwater, you think. It had to be.

"I'm ready for your tricks and traps, beast - *cough* In the name of Pelor, I shall pierce your heart!" intoned the interloper, her voice fierce. Not quite believing her earlier resistance to your corrosive breath, you flap your wings, giving yourself that boost to get into the air, and spit at her again, before circling above the trees. While she tries to avoid your attack, perhaps on reflex, her reflexes aren't particularly fast, and though the pale green liquid impacts her, it fails to corrode either her skin or her armor. Your quick-thinking mind realizes that either her armor is magic, or she's under some sort of alchemical protection... and given the level of preparedness she seems to display, likely both. Of course, you *could* just fly away... but this is your home. If dragons are anything, it's prideful. But if you stay and fight, it looks like you're going to have to do it up close.