A Difficulty with Dragons Part I

I don't know how to tell you this, but we all got eaten by the dragon.

"Stop."

What?

"We weren't eaten by any dragon."

"Dammit Grimm- this is my fairy tale- go get your own."

"Now yer just being ridiculous."

"So what if I am, were you the one changed into a toad."

"Stop laughing at me, it's not that funny."

Well, I guess I am busted, the dragon did not, in fact, eat us. 
It did come back twice that night to pick off two of the remaining horses (which had come back), I only hope that the last never comes back.
Luke wandered in shortly before dark. Well, actually he stumbled into the gully where we had retreated and began cussing.
As he ranted, I gathered that he had thought he had put some real distance between himself, us and the dragon.

"Luke, shaddup already!" Grimm bellowed and cuffed the babbling man who sat down and complied, looking truly baffled at how unlucky he was.

(pictures partially unrelated)

The gully in which we have hidden, ironically is at the foot of the hill upon which the castle resides- well tower and ruin anyway. The dragon is back on top of the tower and from the noise of crunching and snapping has just cleaned off the last horse.

I don't know about the rest of my meery little band, but I am pretty miserable right now.

"Don't cheer up just yet." Grimm says plopping down besides me.

"Why not?" I say, glumly looking at my fingers which are muddy.

"It's going to rain." Grimm sighs, then he lies back and pulls his camp blanket over his head and soon the snores come ripping out of him. 

"I hate you." I say as the ran begins to fall.

Then the thunder clap.

I jump to my feet- but its a false alarm, the dragon just burped. 

and a leg bone slams down about 30 feet away from where it had been ejected from the dragon's maw.

Luke and Wilks and Alex look at me, like this is all my fault.

"I hate you all as well." I say. 

Just for that they won't let me share their umbrellas.

I think I hear a chortle, but I can't be sure, since my guilt is not going to be assuaged by my own misery and lack of mercy upon my companion's parts.

Did I mention that I hate dragons?

The trouble with treks Part 4

FUKE!!!!

The dragon in question is flying towards us.

The horses catch its scent and start screaming.

Yes, screaming. No wait, that's me.

I am screaming like a page boy at his first battle.

Grimm is yelling something, but I can't hear him because of all that screaming.

Wilks dives into the tent as if that is going to be sufficient shelter- although Alexander seems to think it is, since he runs towards it.

The tent collapses on Wilks who begins screaming.

Alexander skids to a halt and whips his head around looking for something to hide behind spots the wagon and then runs towards it. Grimm beats him there.

I stand there looking at them and the tent and not at the dragon.

Although I can guess by the looks of abject horror on their faces that I should have run. I can't run- my feet won't move.

The Horses, on the other hand, scatter as the black shadow and reek of old blood washes over me. Luke's horse makes it to full gallop before it is air born.

The dragon whisks it away like a hawk takes a field mouse. The Dragon glides away across the barrens. 

I can see that it is Black with red spines and is wearing a heavy gold collar made of interwoven links.

Wow.

Dragons like jewelry.

So, at least, I did not pee my pants.

Actually, I have no idea why people pee when they're afraid. Hilda once peed her kilt when she laughed too hard, but she said that she had to go but didn't so I guess that was- no, that was also unfathomable.

Taking stock of our predicament, the good news is we still have our wagon, tack, harness, tent and camping gear.

The bad news is that the horses are gone (although if they don't get eaten, they might come back- although if I was the horse, I'd go home), Luke ran off and might come back if he doesn't get lost, which he does in the castle where we grew up. I screamed like a page boy proving that I am an idiot. No one is as brave as we all hoped we would be. There's a really big dragon.

The really good news is I am going to kill my father, should I ever see him again.

The worse news should be obvious.

I will have to walk all the way home in order to do it.

The Trouble with Treks Part 3

So the Dragon Barrens looked pretty barren.

"Well no one's here, or around." I said to my 4 compatriots, "let's head over to Coventry and buy a Dragon's head and tell King Dev that it was a hard and..."

Grimm was shaking his head.

Alexander, captain of my personal guard, was pointing out to the west (opposite direction of Coventry).

Luke and Wilks were nodding with me- particularly since they had just seen what Alex had pointed at. Luke and Wilks are my personal guard. Yes, this makes Alex a Captain of two men. No, the irony is not lost on me although Alex pretends that it doesn't bother him.

I turned to the west to gaze at the looming hill jutting out of the Barrens like a dark tower of ultimate evil and my mouth fell open.

"I say we run for it- in that direction." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder.

Luke and Wilks looked and me, then Grimm and their collective heads slumped.

Dammit.

Alexander clapped his hands together (yes clapped) and strode to the wagon and began unpacking armor and gear. After a moment of dread silence, Wilks and Luke plodded over and half-heartedly began to help unpack the gear.

Atop this foreboding hill squatted a ruined castle with only one turret tower sticking out above the plains like a giant's fist clutching at the fading sun. It was a sight that will forever be etched in my memory as "what the hell was my father thinking."

"Thar she blows lassie, the Keep of Eir Noch Dor!" Grimm said, trying and failing to sound ominous.

"That's it?"

"Yes, the Keep of Eir Noch Dor!" except Grimm was actually saying "ear nock duuuuuur."

"I dunno, it sounds kind of dumb." I said.

Alexander and the other two men whirled around to stare at me as if I had said "Hey look, it's that idiot, my father" and I had said it right in earshot.
Right now, I felt like saying that next.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Alexander said and then added "shhhhhhhhh."

"What?" I said looking around, yep no one to ever side of me for miles and miles, unless you count Grimm and I wasn't.

"The dragon will hear you." Luke exclaimed in a whisper which was actually more like a squeak.

"What dragon." I said. "I don't see any dragon." It was true, as far as I could see- other than the ruined castle there was no sign of a dragon unless you counted that claw like thing on top of the castle that- well dammit there was the dragon. I did actually feel like it was now staring at me. Silently, I thank Cronos, I had not said Stupid dragon like I had intended.

"Oh, that dragon." I finished.

"Uh oh." Grimm said behind me.

"What do you mean Uh Oh?" I said still looking a the dragon who did not look as small as he had been described to me not 10 counts past.

"I mean, Castle Eir Noch Dor is supposed to be in a gully, hence the Eir." Grimm said.

I whirled around to find him looking over a folded up map that he must have had and forgotten to mention so far.

"It that is not Noch Dor, then what is it?" I wanted to say a cuss word but Princes are not taught any. Ralph the Semi Awesome had once yelled a word that sounded like Fuke and when I asked him what it meant, he had stopped yelling it, patted me on the head- I was eight, then said it meant bad luck and quickly closed the door to his study which was on fire at the time. Still Fuke didn't feel appropriate right now.

Grimm looked his map, cursed in unpronounceable Dwarvish- well at least I think it was Dwarvish and spat. Grimm only spits when he is very upset.
Then he proceeded to tear up the map.
I heard some guy yell "Noooooooooooooooooo." (yes, it was that long).
Grimm stopped what he was doing, looked down at the tattered remains of the map and said "Oopsy" then proceeded to stomp on the tattered remains pretty enthusiastically.
I turned back to see that Alexander had fainted and Luke was running away to the east in the coming darkness still yelling "Nooooooooooooooo! (yes, it was that long).
I looked at Wilks who just shrugged and went back to unrolling the tent.

I looked back to Grimm, who stood now to one side, pipe in hand with a thoughtful expression.
"Grimm?"

"The good news is that we have no idea where Eir Noch Door is or was."

Gulp.
"And the bad news?"

Grimm clicked the pipe stem against his teeth before answering.

"I would say we are probably fuked."

I suddenly realized a few things.

1. Ralph either was wrong or lying about the meaning of the word Fuke.
2. Grimm and Alexander had no real sense of direction.
3. Luke was a yellow bellied coward and could run faster than any of us
4. We still had some horses.
5. Although, I doubt they could outrun the dragon that was now extending a wingspan larger than Dad's Flag ship which was 250 feet long.
6. I was not going to be know as Dame Charles the Tame Dragon Slayer
7. because we were fuked, which I now think means cooked.

also, I would like to request that I get a transfer to a different fairy tale.

The Trouble with Treks Part 2

The Dragon Barrens are where Dragons are supposed to live. In magical Kingdoms and fairytale lands this basically means that if a Dragon, say, decides to move in, property values plummet as fast as those who are smart enough to run, walk or crawl depart from the immediate area. This is in part because Dragons are not much for real estate prices unless it involves fire breathing, general chaos or lots and lots of easy to get treasure.
Thus, most of the Nine Kingdoms do not hoard piles of treasure.
Dad's kingdoms wealth is in Antiques and Neo-modern extremely flammable furniture. He also lets everyone- especially Dragons (not that we have any idea if the Dragons even hear or care about it) know that is where whatever gold and jewels he gets are.
Most of the other Kings and Queens have followed suit and reinvested their treasure stockpiles into easily flammable or hard to hoard investments.
I have heard that the 6 Outland Kingdoms have taken to burying their treasures in extremely tight and cramped underground or underseas vaults in an effort to make Dragons ignore them since it is commonly held that Dragons get exceedingly lazy after acquiring their real estate.
So, the Dragon Barrens are actually overgrown brushlands where gardening and cultivation no longer exists since Dragons are know to having extremely flammable housewarming partings where the aforementioned shrubbery and such is turned to ash in the matter of an evening. Then the brushlands grow up on the formerly scorched earth.
Also, no one of the former residents ever return to their former homes (also burned out hulks) and the Barrens spread out.
Also, Dragon homes do have an abundance of treasure that the dragons somehow move into them from kingdoms and other sources who did not get the Imperial memo in time- or, at least, that is what Grimm tells me as we meander our way into the Barrens in search of our dragon.

Yes, you read that right. We have a dragon.
One that Mort the Merciless failed to slay last year. Ralph picked this dragon since it was too tame for Mort to kill.
Lucky me. Sir Charlie the Tame Dragon Slayer.

"Dame Charlie the Tame Dragon Slayer." Grimm says and there is laughter from the 3 other escorts in my band.

I hate them all.

The Trouble with Treks Part I

"Wake up!"

The first thing I notice is that we are moving.

"Dragon?" My mouth feels very dry. So it's more of a croak.

"No."

"Rock?"

"That was yesterday, we decided that rock pitching is not your strong suit."

I think we are in a carriage. No, this one does not smell good.

"Where?'

"We decided maybe you would be better off training on the road, lassie" Grimm says.

"Ugh." So prolific am I.

"No worries, we are well enough away from home to keep you from getting distracted."

"Great." I open my eyes to see what I have feared. Yep, it's a wagon. I hate wagons.

"I know you hate wagons." Grimm chuckles.

So I said that aloud then. My head feels better than it should although my mouth feels stuffed with cotton. I hope that its because I am thirsty and not because I needed dental work. I like my face as it was.

"Water?"

"Eh, well yes, alright, sit up there lassie." Grimm holds out a waterskin. I drink too fast and end up coughing and hacking in a very unprincess-like manner.

"Where are we?" I ask once I have regained my composure.

"Gwenodyn Road, east of T'narky, about half a day." Grimm says settling back in the hay that fills the wagon, which is covered by a tarp.

"T'narky!" Oh My Goddess! "How long have I been out?"

'Three and half days, as I figure it, Lassie."

"Damn." I still feel like Harm warmed over.

"Where are we going?" As if I don't already know.

"Dragon Barrens...of course." Grimm says with a lopsided grin.

"Fine!" I say. "No more rocks, okay?"

"Alright, lassie, no more rocks."