This is a fictionalization of a DnD campaign. Find part 1 here.
The dragon’s grin didn’t bend, but his eyes dulled when Irwin answered his riddle—her riddle—correctly.
“Very good,” he growled.
Mar, the dwarf, hadn’t stopped staring at her from under his wretched hiding place. He was lying behind a tree, just past the dragon’s view, but if she could hear his breathing becoming more and more rapid, so could the dragon. Mar’s muscles tensed and just as he was about to shoot up and do something even more unbelievably stupid than she had, the dragon laughed, “tell the others to come out.”
Perhaps he didn’t like the taste of dwarves.
Mar—who had always been deaf to the graces that fate kept offering him—emerged snarling, axe bared; the hunter and the scholar came out slower, one erect, one cautious. The little one, though, still lurked somewhere in the darkness.
“Tell the dwarf to quit his squawking.”
“Oh ho ho ho… I’ll tell you—”
“Mar,” Irwin sighed. He was a caricature of a dwarf, hotheaded and stupid. She couldn’t believe she’d almost just died for him. The hunter put a hand on his shoulder, drew him back from the dragon, bade him lower his little axe, tinier and less sharp than even the littlest of the dragon’s claws, his heirloom axe and birthright, an artifact sacred and awesome to his family, not even suitable as the dragon’s toothpick.
“Now,” the dragon sneered, rolled his eyes, “tell me what brings four stupid adventurers blundering into the lands of Wutherhand?”
Irwin’s face got hot. They hadn’t blundered here. They had been careful, heeded the wizard’s advice, Witherfinger’s too; she was no fool, and however reckless the others were at times, she fancied, as their leader, she kept them from blundering anywhere.
“We seek Wutherhand.”
“Ah,” the dragon replied archly. “Don’t all who come so far north? All wish to witness the might of Wutherhand, do they not?”
Irwin swallowed. Dragons were fond of verbal traps. Hunting prey was so simple to them it was boring. They honed their time through wit and banter. This dragon was droll and judgmental. She chose her tack.
“Of course. He is, after all, the greatest dragon living, is he not?”
The dragon’s nostrils flared, his emerald eyes rubied.
“Is it not said in the many, many songs of Wutherhand that he can fell seven acres of forest in a single breath, and that his silver scales are made of moonstone? Pray, hear Daenos, scholar of Ruddon, expound on the marvels told of Wutherhand in far off and forgotten lands.”
Her eyes, harsh, met the scholar’s. He stood up taller. His mouth was dry, but he was the least a fool among them all, and a faster thinker than even a dragon. “Yes, yes. In the Fallanas homesteads at night every child titters with both terror and delight in their bed as mother recounts the— the time Wutherhand razed the Swan Mountains with only his tail. And in the gorges of Istan, I have heard, some even worship his likeness in hopes that when he comes to bring the Annihilation, they can have the privilege of being his servants. It’s said in—”
“Enough,” the dragon roared. He was drooling. His eyes were carmine. “Wutherhand is no great dragon— he is a fat, impotent fool! He— he besmirches the name of King and scrapes his belly on treetops wherever he flies. He is an indolent worm, no great dragon. Lies! Lies! Lies! All of it.”
As the dragon finished his tantrum, the tree Mar and Daenos has tried to hide in toppled over, crushing the spot where they had hid on the ground. All was dumb quiet.
“You will work for me know, you stupid, stinking adventurers. You will kill Wutherhand. As repayment for me not killing you— you annoyances. You will do it and I shall restore the title Keen to its meaning. I shall bring order back to the whole damned world.
“Swear on it.” He roared. The hunter drew a knife after a moment, after they all stared at one another, silently resigning that they really didn’t have much choice. Oaths are binding. To break one is to die, absolutely, or to live in agony worse than death.
So they each drew blood, spoke solemn, binding words of an oath to do something impossible, and the dragon rolled away, cleft the glade in which they stood, never noticing that the little one had hidden among the trees that entire time, swearing no such oath.
"...his emerald eyes rubied." Art!