The Problem with Princesses Part 2

First a Disclaimer. Max is not actually Flynn Ryder, although despite what either of them say neither are as good looking as either of them claim. Well there is the smolder, but -that is another story altogether. Max is shaking his head a lot at this point. Also Max seems to think that we as a "couple" are just like Rap and Flynn, frankly I don't see it. Now Grimm is nodding his head. Wow the two of them in agreement. Who'd have thought that this was possible?

But I digress.
Imagine, if you will. a dark foyer, the pitched sounds of Dragons roaring and people screaming- well I mean Luke, Wilks and Alex screaming and yelling and Grimm shouting and cussing but off in the background as I come to realize that I am, in fact in the arms of a guy wearing a silky dress sprawled beneath me. Our faces are nearly touching as I huff in deep guffaws of breath in relief at not being a pancake or a dead body at the bottom of a bottomless chasm- although I have to admit that the chasm would then not actually be bottomless.
But I digress. He, the guy in the dress has big eyes or they are just really wide right now.

"Dude, are you going to get off me, say, anytime today?"

Ah there goes the whole romantic notion of rescuing the Princess Butterbuns....

"Anytime would be soon enough."

"What?" Yes, i am so enraptured at this moment where I have met and by met, I mean, finally met the love of my-"

"DUDE! Not cool. Stop trying to kiss me!"

Is that anger or fear?

"Crikey!!!"

Who says Crikey anymore?

"Coming master."

Well, that explains why he is not a quaint antiquated princess, and thus just an obnoxious bossy pants. instead.

I feel myself being lifted by the arms backwards and up from the scrabbling arms of the Princess Butterdrop.

Soon we are all standing in the darkened foyer peering at at other, I can still see a guy in a silky gown that is pretty tight on him, Next to him is a gnarly old guy whose name is Crikey- I think. I resolve to wait until the Princess Butterbins says his name again before making a fool of myself.

"Crikey, but we need better lighting out here."

Dammit. Talk about ambiguity.

"This way master, we will retire to the sitting room." and the old guy who may or may not be Crikey shambles off towards the left and what turns out to be a beaded curtain. Very girly, I have to say and that is saying a lot.

"After you" the Princess Buttercrunch grumbles and gestures towards the curtain door.

"Ladies before Knights." I say automatically and then feel like a fool as there is clearly no ladies or knights present.

"Suit yourself." Princess Butterfinger says and then strides off without even the hint of a sway. Although there is a manly strut.

I do have to say that the Princess Butternut is very manly, I mean butch for a "Rescue Princess," I guess that would explain why he/she is still trapped in the tower here.

The Sitting room is well lit and this is definitely a guy in a princess dress, something is definitely wrong....

"Great, a girl in a knight suit, something is definitely wrong" The guy in the princess dress says.

this is not going to end well.

The Problem with Princesses Part I.

So after I got Grimm untied and helped the boys out of the pot we agreed that the best plan was to beat feet and go back to Ankora and buy a Dragon's head and tell dad that we were successful and never talk about this again although I am fairly sure I wasn't convincing since I had this big silly grin on my face the whole time.

Escape proved to be a bit harder than everyone thought since the "kitchen' was in a maze of warrens within the ruined castle - you know I never appreciated what a warren was until then? I mean you hear people talk about them but until you are lost in one it's just not the same kind of thing.

"Would you please focus, Lassie?"

"Shut up Rabbit Stew."

"I am going to regret not kicking you off that cliff, Lassie."

I am guffawing at this point. Alone, since the gravy soaked guards are edging away from Grimm.
I only stop when we hear the Dragons coming.
Yep, I said Dragons.
We run. I actually am fast for my age and size.
"It's because yer a stinking girl!" Grimm yells from the back.
"You're just jealous!" I laugh.

Given the fact that we are all about to die, i am deliriously happy for some reason. So happy that it takes me awhile to realize that I turned left and the men turned right. I am completely lost in this warren of caves, tunnels and stairs.
Wait, stairs means up.
So I race up stairs and come to admire that having long legs has some distinct advantages as Grimm yells
"Stairs! I hate bloody stairs!" from somewhere off to my left.
The stairs start to spiral upward and then I am on them as they run around the edge of a turreted wall going around a large hole that might be a tower. Well no where to go but up. the empty space is quite large but I spot a door going out at the top of the stairs going out. As I open it and step into the portal the air shivers around me and a large scaled shape rips up behind me soaring straight up through the space. The air blows my hair around and I stumble out onto a parapet above a courtyard.
"Dammit!" comes a yell from the opposite wall where there is a pallisade covering it. I catch a glimpse of Grimm moving very, very fast through it, a few steps ahead of Kreos who is in full charge.

"Fuke!" I hear this below and glance over down to the courtyard where three brown figures are running in several directions as a large shape plummets past me and slams into the cobble stones sending everything shaking as Mom the Dragon lands in their collective middle as they scatter away from her. She is the biggest Dragon I have ever seen.  Which only makes two now, but I have decided two is enough. I do what any noble prince would do in this case, I almost yell to catch the Dragon's attention, then think better of it and head back indoors to avoid embarrassing myself with a silly thing like heroics.
One small problem, can't find another door.
After a rather fruitless search, I stop place my hands on my hips and consider my options.
That is when I hear an audible chuckle behind me
I say audible like a bullhorn being blown right behind me.
I spin around to find Kreos glaring at me with a bandage on his chin which is to say Grimms cloak is tied in place over my knick in his cheek.
I figure I have about 20 yards and 4 seconds to do something amazing.
I wave and stick out my tongue.
Says this for Prince Charlie the Brave, Say she's spunky when the going gets rough.
By the time you do say it I will be make dust down a random parapet wall headed for what turns out to be a dead end which is to say the wall stops in a gaping hole and the door I was aiming for is about 30 feet out over the abyss leading into a very sturdy looking tower.
For the first time in my probably soon to be very short life I just run faster and accept that I will never make that jump no matter what. At least, I will be long dead before I hit the gully floor and die bouncing off the rocks. Unless the Dragon catches me mid jump and bites my head off, of course.
I am at full run and jump out into space in armor.


My understanding of physics is limited to how far an arrow will probably go and how many times I can poke a bullfrog with a stick before he hops away.
In other words I jump about 8 feet and plummet to my death.
I hate everyone at this point.

Save the Dragon does try to snatch me from the air and misses catching me but manages to hit me in such a way that I am propelled in a fairly graceful arch back up and over the abyss right to the door which opens right as I reach it and I am face to face with a pretty surprised guy as I slam into him and we fall into the interior of the tower safely away from the cursing Dragon.

A Difficulty with Dragons Part 7

I am running in the dark.
I mean I have been in the dark pretty much since I left Stonehaven.
And here I am pounding my way up a tunnel from a cave in near absolute darkness.
It's times like this I wonder things like- what was that with Mort? I thought he was a bad ass Dragonslayer? If Mort bit off more than he could chew, what chance did I have of slaying even one mostly immature Dragon?
I know what you are going to ask right now. Why do I keep capitalizing Dragon?
No?
Okay, that's what I thought you wanted to know.

I hate running into Dragons.
But that's exactly what I end up doing.
One minute I and in full sprint in the direction I hope is out then I hit something solid and very hard like a bumpy wall. I keel over like anyone who runs face first into a block wall.
Then there is light, a lot of light.
To my credit the Dragon Kreos did jump up at the moment of impact...well, that's what Grimm says anyway. Dwarves are pretty inedible as it turns out.
Kreos looks down at me lying flat on my back, stars spinning around the planets and stuff.
I feel my right foot grabbed and I am pulled out of the dark tunnel and slung up into the air and I see Grimm trussed up in a iron cage hanging upside down somehow suspended above this floor that is weirdly sloped and then I understand it is really the ceiling and I am upside down.
Alex and Luke and Wilks all scream my name from the large iron pot in the middle of the floor.
I wave at them.
They are Fuked. I mean they are stuffed in a steaming cauldron full of brownish fluid.
They keep screaming.

I look around and then I see the dragon with his mouth open and tongue coming out to lick me?
(this is very weird)
I don't think about it too long I just stab at it with my sword.
poke!
There's a yowl of pain and the room spins as I am thrown head over heals across the room before bouncing into a wall like a sack of potatoes.
Whoof!
You know that sound makes sense to me now that I have been thrown into a wall. I mean when I saw it in the picture books it never made much sense until now.
I land in Mort's lap, just for the record, Mort the Merciless, Scourge of the Dragon Barrens is very dead but reasonably preserved, I mean I can still see the surprise in his dead face like he was stunned at whatever killed him.
I would scream but my three guards have that covered.
Instead I grab the sword in Mort's cold dead hands and swing it with all my considerable might and cut the Dragon's-
(head off?)
Uhm, well no.
I cut a knick in it's cheek. I mean that's almost the same thing, right?

Kreos give a blood curdling scream and flees the room howling in agony.

I look at the sword, which glowing, and shrug.

There is silence in the kitchen until Grimm says.

"Will someone climb out of the blasted gravy and get me down from here?

A Difficulty with Dragons Part 6

Imagine if you will what it would like to find yourself in a messy house with a "teenage' Dragon storming into it yelling that "it wasn't fair" and "They are being mean to me again Mom!"
Well, suddenly I am bathed in light and find that I am not actually sitting on a pile of coins but stuff- like cloth, bones, some copper coins, a few metal vases, some broken pots, scraps of plate armor, a couple of bent weapons and what could only pass of something Ralph calls Beer "cans" thought they don't look like any can I have ever seen. Sometimes, I just don't know what Ralph is talking about.
I am sitting on a pile of refuse in a messy dungeon/cave with inadequate lighting and there is an enormous Dragon not 25 feet from me with a migraine while another much smaller but still gigantic Dragon struts around flapping its wings as it complains about the princess and her entourage not cooperating with what the dragon wants and that they are now calling it names.

Hi, I am Prince Charlie of Stonehaven and I have fallen into a domestic parody of life as I have never even dared to imagine it.

The younger dragon stops dead in mid-strut and stares at me.
I wave with one hand as the other gropes around for my sword which is almost in reach but not quite.

"You have company!" the Dragon says to the other.

"Is that a problem?" The Mama? Dragon says.

"No, but its a human." the younger Dragon says

"Is that a problem?"

"I can leave? I'll just see my way out-" I volunteer hopping up and trying to brush of the debris.

"We eat humans." The younger Dragon retorts.

"I don't eat humans, you might but they give me terrible gas." says the Moma Dragon.

"I like horses better." The younger dragon says then flounces over to a large round shape thing in a corner, sweeps off a pile of armor and saddles, then flops onto it and rolls onto it's back.
"I'm bored!"

I actually get to my sword, before I see both dragons eyeing me suspiciously.

I shrug and sit down on a barrel.

"You wanted to live in the Dragon Lands, Kreos, I want to move to the Tropics, but no, nothing would please you but to move here."

"Mom, puleeze, not in front of the food, I know I said that but I really thought that there would be Dragons in the Dragon Lands."

"Kreos, if you had listened to me, you'd know that the food have a habit of hunting us down and slaying us- so much that the Dragon Lands have no more Dragons. Frankly after Sendova called it quits and moved to the TROPICS, I figured you'd get a clue. Now look at us!"

"You are always blaming me for everything!" and the Dragon Kreos jumped up and stormed for the door, then stopped.

"Well look what happened with Mort the Mean."

I just saw a Dragon rolls its eyes.

"This is all your fault! Just for that I am going to eat your friends!"

"Kreos! Go to your lair, this instant young lady!"

"Mom! But-"

"Now!"

Do Dragons cry?

Kreos definitely made a sound as she flounced off to her lair slamming the door.

"Kids" Mom said and the Dragon rolled over and put her hands (I mean legs or claws over her face).

This presents me with Good news and Bad news.

The Bad News:
1) Dragons are a lot like humans. If I need to explain why this is a bad thing then you don't know any teenagers.
2) Kreos is a girl's name in Dragon speak. If you don't understand the irony, you have never heard the legend of the God of War 1 2 or 3.
3) Kreos is going to eat Alex and Luke and Wilks out of spite. No one eats dwarves I think.
4) Mom is having control issues with her child, well that could be a good thing.
5) I knew this was all going to come back to that jerk Mort the Merciless.

The Good News:
1) the others are still alive. Probably.
2) I still have my sword, not sure what I am going to do with it.
3) There is a princess, although it doesn't sound like she needs rescued?
4) There is a door out of here.
5) At least one Dragon gets migraines.

Did I mention the door?

"Now, what am I going to do with you, Prince Charlie?'

Dragons can actually scream and whimper at the same time, but I am long gone.

A Difficulty with Dragons Part 5

"My life is a mess. My father wants me to be a boy so bad he named me Charles and made me a prince!"

The Dragon looks on.

"I love my father and I hate him."

The Dragon looks on.

"And now I am expected to slay a dragon! No offense."

The Dragon chuckles.

"Yeah, I sound like a whiny boy."

The Dragon grimaces.

Can dragon's grimace?
Well, I am going to say it was a grimace.

I waited, trying to think of something to say.

The Dragon waited.

"Wow, you got a lot of stuff, I mean, I assume that you must have a lot of stuff since it's so dark in here." I laugh nervously.

"I get migraines. I need it dark."

"What is a migraine?"

"Pain, intense pain in your head."

"I understand that, my mother gets that's look with my father."

"I get it with my son."

Wow. 2 dragons.

"Uh does he eat horses?"

"Well that explains where he went yesterday."

This could get complicated.

A Difficulty with Dragons part 4

What the hell just happened?

Oh right I just fell into a sewer.
No. That's not it.
I means it's cold and smells worse that the latrines in the fish quarter of Dad's city, Pewghast.

Yeah, that's the name of the city now. Dad renamed it.
He is king after all.

Damn but it is cold down here.
I am currently upside down on a slope of very cold loose rocks that clink
No wait, rocks don't clink.
Do they?

I have a bad feeling about this.

Carefully I try to sit up and only end up rolling sliding down the rest of the slope until I plant my head inside of something round and concave but definitely metal- dull clunk,

I had better be alone down here.
That's all I have to say.
It's black as night or darker than night though slowly starless nights are really dark.
I carefully remove my head from the pot thing and lie back and wait for the darkness to adjust.
I mean my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
It doesn't.
I want to cuss.

I hate being cold and in the dark.
Then.


I let out a scream that is like a banshee who get her finger stuck in a cookie jar filled with scorpions who are really pissed off for being shaken up being some ignoramus.
Let's just saying it was a once in a life time scream that to this day I am glad only the
Dragon and I had to endure.

The Dragon for his part was not amused.
He looked at me out from under all those coins and treasure.
And I looked at him (and I am assuming at this point it's a he) and screamed my scream.




I finally run out of scream and lie back and gasp for a time, when I look back the dragon's eye is still there. unblinking and as big as I am.
It strikes me this dragon is bigger than the one who ate our horses.
I feel like screaming all over again. I even suck in the wind to began again.
Instead I am covered in a sudden downpour of coins.

When it stops the Dragon has removed it's head from the pile and is now considering me.
I open my mouth.

"Please don't scream again."

A deep voice says in a distinctly Morovian accent (Ralph says Morovians remind him of Vulcans- Ralph was not clear what that means however)

"O-okay."

"Thank you ever so much." The Dragon replies.

"Please don't eat me." I, Prince Charlie of the Mighty Kingdom of Stonehaven, Defendor of the Realm and blah, blah, blah- squeaks out.

"Why would I eat you?"

Can dragons look offended?
Will have to ask Ralph, should I live through this one, although he probably will just grumble about having to cast his google spell again.

"Be-because that's what dragons do?"

"Who told you this lie?"

"My Grandmother?" A total lie, not having a grandmother (which is a whole other story).

"This is why dragons and humans don't mix." The dragon says and looks "disgusted."

"Well, that's a relief." I say and then regret it.

"You are human. you do look a bit like a knight."

"I am a knight- prince-uh well Prince knight, although I haven't been knighted yet but as soon as I slay a dragon I will be- oh I mean - well that's a bad choice of words... i'll just shut up now."

"You talk like a girl human though."

"Well, I am a girl persay...I mean I am."

"You just said you were a prince? have things changed a lot in the last 100 years or so?"

"No- I mean yes, no I mean- I don't know, it's a long convoluted story."

"I feel dizzy."

Yep, Prince Charlie has confused a dragon without even getting up off her butt.



notice: Ralph would like to thank Peter Jackson and the Hobbit movies for use of the Smaug pictures. we are liberally using them to describe a dragon that has no direct relation to the dragon in the picture nor the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch, Also New Line pictures and their lawyers please don't sue us since we like living in fairy tales or something.

A Difficulty with Dragons part 3

"Wasn't there supposed to a dragon slaying sword?" I ask for the fifth time this morning.

"It's the sixth bloody time you asked Girly!" Grimm shouts up at me. Who's counting you dumb dwarf. "Look here, it's not my fault that Ralph down there took us to the wrong fuking castle!!!"

"My name is not Ralph." Alex says as he shoves Grimm up to the ledge I am squashed on.

"I was blaming the flaming mage!" Grimm yells as he climbs over me onto a slightly wider ledge.

"So, I have to take on the flaming dragon without a dragon slaying sword?" I say. This sucks, I hate everyone right now.

"Ah bloody Heckle, Girlie! Every bloody swords is a dragon slaying sword once you have slain the dragon with it!" Grimm grumbles as he slumps against the cliff face.

"Can I get a hand up my Prince?" Alex asks.

"Fine, all I am saying is-" I throw my hand down to Alex who grabs it and I slump against the stone of the ledge since this idiot had to wear his armor up the cliff face.

"I hear what you are saying girlie, but there's nought to be done fer it." Grimm sighs. "We have no idea where that sword it or was."

"Where's Luke?" I ask

Alex looks chagrined.

"Where's Wilks?" I almost yell.

Grimm makes a shushing noise.

"Where!!!" I yell.

somewhere below I hear the two cowards scrambling off into the brush.

"Where do you think you fuking idiot!" Grimm bellows.

"That's it, we're all dead." Alex says and slumps down onto the ledge next to Grimm.

"I hate both of you." I say as I clamber up to the ledge where the two sit, I take notice of a crack in the cliff face.

"That's obvious." Grimm retorts but I can tell he no longer has a dog in this fight. He takes a long pull on his wine flask before handing it to Alex who does the same.

"Oh no, you don't." I say indignantly, "I AM NOT going in there!"

"Do you want to keep climbing?" Grimm says gesturing with the wine flask.

I look up at the crumbling wall above. I probably gulp.

"No."

"Do you want to go back down?" Alex asks hopefully.

I look back down, kick a pebble off and watch it fall.

"No."

"Well, then." Grimm says pointing at the crack. "in ye go."

"What about you two?"

Grimm and Alex look at each other and then Grimm says:

"We're too big to fit in the crack."

Fuke!

Of course they are right. I hate both of them more, if that is possible.

"Dammit. Fine!" I walk over and began a belabored squirming into to hole. I swear I hear them chuckling as I get father inside.

I hate my father for this and if I happen to survive this I am going to-
crap, the ground just vanished and
"Fuke!"

I plunge into darkness and it smells horrible.