By all accounts, the human should have backed away. Should have taken the hiss as warning enough to move out of his space, give him room to breathe. But as the human so bluntly observed, this was not the naga's space. It may have become a makeshift haven, but it was by no means K'qalikh's personal territory. If anything, the human may well have been within his rights to threaten him with bodily harm. Had the tables been turned, the naga might have done the same.<br/><br/>This did not, however, give him cause enough to back off immediately. He maintained his posture, making the same shrill sound as before, only at a lower decibel, hoping that he would appear firm enough in his convictions to pose a significant threat if his warning was ignored. But still the human stood his ground and K'qalikh, exhausted, had little left to give. If he wasn't intimidating, he blamed it on general fatigue and the building sensation of nausea in the pit of his stomach. He knew he was sick. In truth, there would have been nothing stopping the smaller male from picking up his weapon again and causing him more harm.<br/><br/>So why didn't he? K'qalikh was no mindless brute, but his survival instincts were more akin to that of an animal than a man, and he could not for the life of him understand why the human didn't advance. The naga was an intruder. A potential threat to his property, perhaps his kin, if he had such inside. That he didn't attack, or even allow the hunter inside, baffled him. Instead, he indicated that he had sent the hunter away, even hinted at the possibility of offering him a place to hide. A sanctuary.<br/><br/>That finally prompted K'qalikh to calm in the slightest. His fangs retreated, his tail began winding into coils to take him down a bit in height, and bit by bit the rage began to leave his face, leaving behind a thinly veiled expression of unease. Everything hurt, his head had begun to spin, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could maintain a threatening facade with his stomach twisting into so many knots.<br/><br/>"... I understand," he affirmed at length, though he did so in a tone heavy with accent and roughened by dehydration. Stringing words together in a language he uttered so irregularly required far more concentration than he was capable of. "The Man... He is gone...?"