StoryTellers’ Short Story Collection:
A young Wizard tries to fight off a dragon and win the princess’s hand, only to realize the dragon and princess are besties
By: Pratibaa Prabhakaran
Like all great stories big and old, this story starts with a young man, and a fair maiden. The young man was not an ordinary young man. Why, he was a wizard. Well practiced and well versed in the arts of magic. Be it spell casting or potion casting. He knew it all well and through.
But now, he stood before the king, one knee down on the floor and his head hung down. The king glared him down impassively.
“You are the man who thinks he can rescue my daughter?” he asked, not fully convinced.
“That I am your sire,” said the young wizard. “That I am. My name is known by the rivers and mountains. It echos across the swamps in the midlands. I am the one who will bring your daughter home safe and sound.”
“No man has come back from a mission like this young sir, what will make you different from all those men?” Asked the king. To this, the young wizard smirked.
“Because my sire, those men were not me.”
The horse’s hooves trampled upon the ground. Dirt was pressed and pushed, grass bent and squashed. And yet, the horse galloped on. Its rider had one and only one goal in mind after all. Rescue the princess, and wed her. Make her his bride. As the king had promised after all, to whomever saved his only child from the monstrous beast of a dragon.
See dear reader, like all fairy tales you have heard about a knight and a dragon, this one is not quite so different. Yet our plucky young man here is no knight. but a wizard instead. That is a difference you will see in this story. But only the first of many.
Settle in dear readers, this tale is not one commonly read to you. The wizard carried on his way. Through light and dark, through day and night, though filth and cleanliness, he rode onward to his destination.
And there he saw it, a castle black and tall, perched on top of a large mountain. From the distance our excited young wizard could not make out much of its details, so first, he must climb. He jumped off his horse and landed both feet firm on the ground. He looked at the mountain, so tall that from his puny stand point he could not see the top, the mountain was so tall that he could not even see the castle from his vantage point.
The young wizard smirked, and stretched his hands. From his robe, he pulled out a magic wand. He turned to his horse and scratched his nozzle.
“Ah young Betty, wait for me here and go no where else. When I return it will be with my wife to be…” With one flick of his wrist, the young wizard began to float upwards. He floated upwards like a balloon in the wind. Gliding gently and slowly past trees, rocks, and everything in between. The mountain was tall and fearsome.
Any other man would have turned around at that point, but our young man knew that no force of nature was an obstacle to his magic. And within a few minutes, he had reached the summit. He stood before the entrance of the dragon’s lair. So large and so vast. The entrance was for a dragon after all, it had to be big enough to fit a dragon.
The young wizard meandered forward, and pressed both hands to the slick metal of the door. But before he could open it up… He heard a loud roar. Company, it seemed, was present.
“WHO GOES THERE?” Cried out a loud voice.
“I!” answered the wizard. “Adroshun the Mighty!”
“Are you here for the princess too?” Asked the dragon. And reader believe me when I tell you, that dragon was no happy dragon.
“Of course I am,” answered Adroshun, boastfully. “I am here at her father’s request. To save her from your tyranny.“
The dragon made a sound Adroshun didn’t quite understand. But he perfectly understood the tail that came ramming into his side. The wizard fell with a grunt, slamming against the mountain’s side from the force of the dragon’s tail.
“BE GONE!” yelled the dragon. The dragon then finally showed its face. It was red and scaly. It had lack crooked horns on its head, and yellow eyes. Its red and white wings pressed tightly to its body.
“And miss my chance of saving a princess?” Adroshun pointed his wand at the dragon. “I think not!” He fired a few hexes at the dragon, purple, red, and blue lights flew out of the tip of his wand. It hit the dragon right in the face. He roared and fell onto his backside.
Adroshun smirked and ran forward. Throwing a few more hexes onto his face. The dragon screeched and screamed, but the young wizard did not relent. How did these other men never beat this foul beast? It was almost childsplay? Were the thoughts rolling in his head. He was about to throw one last hex at the dragon, when he felt something or someone attack him from the backside.
“What the?” He cried. He fell face first onto the ground. He hopped right back at his feet and pointed the wand to whomever was behind him. But the same hands that had pushed him into the ground, now held a vice grip on his fingers. He looked up at the face of his second enemy, and was stunned to see a female face.
A pretty female face.
“Princess?” Asked the wizard in shock. The princess held one knee on his stomach, her body weight pushing down. Her hands held his, making sure he could make no move to harm her or the dragon.
“Who are you?” She asked, her eyes wide and fearful. Now that the shock of seeing the princess had worn off, Adroshun could feel her hands shaking against his. She did not know who he was after all.
“Who,” she gripped his hands tighter, Adroshun winced. It was a grip far to strong to be coming from such a petite little princess. “Are you?” She stared scornfully down at him, a poor excuse of a mask to hide the fear she held in her.
“The man sent me to save you your highness.” Adroshun croaked out. The princess softened for a second, she looked confused. Taking advatanged of this, Adroshun pulled his hands from her grip and pushed her off him. The princess fell backwards as he stood up, landing flat on the ground.
“He sent you?” Asked the princess.
“Yes m’lady, he sent me to this place. I am tasked with bringing you back to the kingdom. The king awaits your return. Please come now.”
Adroshun made a move to grab her hand. He did, but as soon as thier fingers touched, the princess yanked her hand away.
“And what if I didn’t want to come dear Sir?” Asked the princess. Adroshun looked confused.
“What?”
“What if,” enunciated the princess slowly. “I don’t want to come with you?”
“And why princess…would you not want to come with me?” Adroshun was very confused.
“I like it here.”
Now that elicited a response out of Adroshun. He laughed. Throwing his head backwards and laughing.
“You like it here princess??? How adorable.” He stopped laughing when he realized that she was serious. “How could you enjoy being with a dragon more than the kingdom?!”
“Here, the dragon takes care of me. I don’t have to worry about anything. He is a genuinely a genuinely good friend.” Began the princess.“Here with him, I have no expectations. He allows me to do as I wish to do. Back home, it is expected of me to wed, and to bear the future king. Here, I am treated well and kindly.”
Adroshun had nothing he could say to that, especially since the only reason he was here was that he would be able to marry her and become king himself (When the present king died of course). The princess turned to face him.
“I am sorry for making you come all this way sir. but nothing you can do will make me leave this place. please begone now. Tell my father that you failed to retrieve me. That the dragon was too mighty for you. Please sir,” begged the princess.
Adroshun looked at her panicked face, he was sure she would get on both knees and beg him if she had to. He winced. Coming back without the princess would mean nothing good for the him. He had seen what had happened to all those men before him who had come back empty handed. If he was lucky, he would just be sent into prison for life, if he were unlucky, he would be hanged at the gallows.
Situations he very much wanted to avoid. He put on his brave face, and looked the princess in the eye.
“I am sorry M’Lady, you have to come with me. I am under orders I cannot disobey.” Adroshun said. His voice was cold and stern. The princess took notice of his words, her eyes widened.
“Please good sir,” she asked. “What is the punishment awaiting you if you were to turn around go back home empty handed?” Adroshun sighed and answered.
“I do not know, nor do I want to know. For this reason, I must take you back myself.” The princess looked conflicted, she looked at Androshun, and she looked at the dragon behind her. The dragon’s nostrils were pushing out smoke. He breathed out, his eyebrows crunched and teeth baring. His eyes were on adroshun as he spoke.
“The newcomer tells lies princess. Do not trust his words. The words of a man like him should never be trusted. He has something to gain from your return, that is why he is so adamant in returning you back to your father.
“I know,” conceded the princess. she sighed before turning back to adroshun. “But I also know my father. He would give a punishment very severe to those who fail him…” she turned to look at the dragon. “Perhaps I should go myself. Return with him as to soothe my father’s temper. He would be showered with praise, and escape harm.”
At this suggestion, the dragon looked even more furious. He roared, and Adroshun’s face was slapped with dragon breath. It smelt like dead meat and carcass. He was beginning to really wonder how the princess had accepted him as a “friend”. Perhaps there was something under the surface, Adroshun did not know. And he did not plan on learning either.
“I will return back to you,” said the princess, she then turned to her dragon friend. “You can save me can you not?”
The dragon looked unconvinced still. “Yes I can save you, but that would require me coming to your kingdom and killing numerous people. Would you like that?”
Adroshun was stunned that the cruel dragon in front of him would consider such a thing like “innocent bystanders.” the beast was meant to kill, it was his only goal. Kill, kill and kill. And yet the princess was still friends with the dragon. His deep manipulation of the princess was horrifying.
Adroshun knew he had to force her out, because talking her out of the idea that she could be friends with a dragon was clearly not going to work. He decided to play along. They were playing the same game after all. But with very different goals and motives. he of course would not let them know that.
“That sounds like a good plan.” Adroshun said, feigning fear. “I shall bring you back, and after a while, the dragon will come and get you if you really ever so please. I will stand to the side and watch you whisked away. I walk away with my life, and you walk away from your duties.”
Adroshun gave what he hoped to be a kind, warm smile. But warmness was not a characteristic he was familiar with. Especially in his profession.
“I do not agree with this plan princess. I refuse to be a part of it. I will not allow you to leave.” the dragon said. The dragon extended his claw towards the princess.
Fearing for his future-bride’s safety, Adroshun stepped in front of the dragon, wand in his hand. He was about to send a hex its way when the princess stopped him again. She grabbed his arm and pulled it down. His eyes widened as the hex he had been meaning to send to the dragon, instead hit the ground near his feet. He managed to move his foot in time, and lower the power of the hex, before it could hit him.
“Princess!” yelled Adroshun. “He is a beast, a monster! He tells you lies himself to manipulate you away from your father and duties! He cares for no one but himself.” The princess looked angry herself.
“This dragon is the only friend I have. I trust him with my life. I will not allow you to go around hurting him like so! I have already agreed with your plan, do not make me rescind my offer and allow you to deal with my father alone!” Yelled the princess in a very un-regal like manner.
Androshun was at a crossroads. The princess was right, getting on the dragon’s wrong side would take away the one “ally” he had in this operation. But still, the dragon was a threat to be dealt with.
He figures he could deal with the beast later.
“My apologies princess,” said Androshun, putting his want into his wand pocket, effectively unarming him. “I am ready to go now if it pleases you.”
“The princess,” said the dragon slowly. “Will be going absolutely nowhere.”
“You will get her back my good sir,” feigned Androshun. “You have my word.”
The beast most certainly did not.
“Oh let’s just help him,” begged the princess. “My father may kill the poor man, and I can’t just let that happen.”
The dragon looked unconvinced still, but the princess’s begging face seemed to sway him in the end.
“Alright princess,” the dragon bowed his head. “Just this once I will allow you to take the risk.”
The dragon then turned to Androshun.
“If anything happened to the princess, I am tearing you apart limb from limb.”
Androshun just bowed back.
“Well then, we better get going, come princess allow me to take you down the mountain.”
The dragon huffed. “I can do that myself….”
Words that were not heard as Androshun picked up the princess bridal style and carried her down using his magic.
Part of his job was done, now, he had to fool the both of them. It was still a long way to go.
Allison Lee
Kamu thrusts out his hand and a tornado of flame looses from his palm, like a living beast, lashing and roaring as if the whole sky were its prey. From here it is already closing in on the edges of his vision. It burns everything away.
The sky looks so small now. He could almost hold it in his hand. Within it, too, the dragon, that monster, that thing. He can see its eyes widening in an animalistic, monstrous surprise, he hears it screech; he imagines the heat driving itself into its scales until all that precious armor of deformed silver, mangled obsidian, burns away.
Soon everything will be right again. Soon it will fall and he will receive that blessing of divine light, the one he’s been promised, the one that dangles itself before his eyes every day when another sun rises and nothing has changed— finally finally finally he won’t be—
“Stop!” A weight thuds into his outstretched arm and knocks it into his chest with a whirl of curled dark hair who — The flame dies. Almost pathetically, curdling into itself, a maelstrom shriveled to a single weak wisp that fizzles out into the wind. He watches it fade in dumb silence. A whimper keens from his throat, cracking mid-sound.
Out of habit, he winces, deepens his voice just to erase the reminder of it from his ears. But that voice belongs to one of the king’s knights, bulky and steel-clad. It belongs to someone who could wrestle a dragon with his bare hands instead of having to resort to a flimsy light show, these women’s arts. His voice warbles when it finally comes to him.
“No…” Something impacts his leg and he slams into the ground face first chest second (it impacts his binder and it stings even more to feel that pain and be reminded that it’s still there). He tastes rust and copper on his tongue, opens his eyes and lifts his head as far as he can. (It’ll hurt later, but he can’t take it off. He’s let the blood dry before.)
Squinting up an impossible distance: there’s a girl standing over him. Sepia skin, dark frizzy hair. He knows that face.
“You— your, uh, your majesty?”
“Highness,” she corrects, all frost. “Technically. Not anymore. I assume my father didn’t get the message?”
“Um, well, it was actually your mother who—”
“Of course she did,” the princess groans. “What a bitch.”
He strains to hold his neck above the dirt. “You shouldn’t be talking about Her Ladyship like—”
“She’s my mother, I’ll call her whatever the hell I like,” the princess (he wonders if she might be a shape-changer, like one from the old fairytales; he’s long stopped believing in them, but part of him still likes the fantasy of it) says offhandedly, playing with the sleeve of her dress.
“You don’t look like much of anyone anyway — but you’re walking around like you’re some kind of— well, you’re lying around, actually,” she backtracks, snickering, and now he wants to sink into the floor. “Who are you to tell me what to do?”
Kamu cringes. “…sorry, I—” “Tried to kill my friend.”
“Your friend.” He drops his head into the dirt and mumbles to the torn roots and ash.
“She’s poisoned.” Or a shape-changer, but he might alert the shape-changer to that if he even breathes the words.
“What was that?” A pause. “Okay, come on, you look pathetic lying there. Well— yeah, come on, get up.”
Before he can move a muscle, he feels a pair of hands grab him and drag him up like some kind of rag doll. His vision swings up and the sky sears itself into his vision. He thinks he sees the dragon still circling above, horribly unfelled, a vulture waiting for the kill.
The sun burns just behind its wings. Every time it moves away, its light digs into his eyes, branding itself on his mind — The princess drops him down with his back to a stone wall, surprisingly smooth with the texture of paint, and throws a thick silk handkerchief over his eyes. He exhales a sigh of relief, blinks rapidly against the fabric and feels water well up over his eyelashes. She won’t see the tears; he’s grateful for that.
“Don’t move, or that dragon up there — you saw it, scary, right? — will come down and gouge your intestines out with one claw.” He can’t quite stop the squeak from his throat. She snorts.
“Really? I suppose I should be grateful you’re such a wimp, took a while to get rid of the last guy’s armor. Still…” She makes a ruminatory noise and shouts. “Hey! You can eat him now!”
The blackness of the blindfold yawns like the Abyss, roaring in his ears. Something is crawling up his spine. He’s going to die and it won’t even be something they could sing songs about — A hand jostles his shoulder, then smacks him in the face.
“Aknasi, you’re anxious. I didn’t even call xem. Don’t you know a joke when you hear one?” He can’t muster up a response; the terror hasn’t quite left him and the shame, too, is burrowing in. “Probably not, you seem more like a poet than a warrior. So—”
Her voice chills abruptly. “I have a few questions. You’re going to answer them, or I really will ask my friend up there to eat you, and xe doesn’t mind the taste of humans.” Kamu trembles violently. She probably understands this as a nod. “How many did my mother send?”
“More.” The words spill out of his mouth like deadweight, like his body from his mother’s arms. “Two— three, one of them wields a Holy Blade. One, a different one, he left before I did.”
“He’s dead. How near are the other two?”
“The paladin is six days behind. The other is three.” The princess pauses momentarily, humming as if in thought.
“That one. What are they?”
“Th—? He’s a mercenary, an exiled knight. Strong. Has a crossbow.”
“Crossbow… it won’t touch Itlåj.” A note of fondness enters into her voice at the name, deftly shaped in spite of the strangeness of the syllables, and Kamu feels like an intruder suddenly, trodding on some delicate work of art and ruining it beneath his boot.
“Anything else?” He scrabbles for the same sense of mindless control he’d felt before, the words simply exiting his mouth without any input or stain from himself, but it fled with that name. The dragon. Now it is as intangible as the sun, empty as the stars.
“He has a, uh, an ax. Greataxe. Made from titan bone.” Kamu had seen him training with it once, as he was making provisions. He’d spied through a painted window, admiring the brace of his muscles, the power in his swing, cleaving a tree’s trunk as if it were paper — then he’d fled. Fled as the man set his ax-blade to the cobblestones and turned to stride away, barely a drop of sweat on his skin.
He hadn’t even been trying to train, only to display his prowess.
Kamu envied the man horribly, mind-gnawingly for it. Impossibly — was that even what he wanted to be, himself? He was a sorcerer, not a warrior, and there were places of respect to be earned by some sorcerers. But it wore down on him all the same. The princess’ voice jolts him back to the darkness of the blindfold.
“Tell me about the paladin.”
He was worse. Kamu knows of only one other person cursed to be like him, and he needed the power of the gods to purge him of the stain he’d borne since childhood. The paladin, Calhar, he can call a flare of the gods from beyond the sun with a single word. And he flaunted it. Night hadn’t come, the day he rode into the castle. Even his hair is golden — it shines in daylight like ten thousand rays of the sun from his head.
“He’s… talented,” Kamu says slowly. It’s not that the image of the man isn’t seared into his memory, just that he never tried to put any of it into words. It would be like catching fire with paper. “His name is Calhar. He uses incantations, he channels power into his sword, mostly — broadsword, and a shield. He can teleport by sight.”
“Shit,” the princess says, crassly. “Well. Annoying. Is that it?”
“Is that— you don’t understand, he’s… it’s like he’s hallowed. He drew his sword in Acramost, they say he’s chosen of Khelais Himself, he slew—”
“Itlåj,” she interrupts, splintering his words into nothings, “is a dragon.”
“He’s slain dragons,” Kamu snaps back before he can even think. “You don’t understand, I’ve seen him call the gods. He’s more powerful than your little pet up there.”
“Oh?” And without warning, in a single deft motion the blindfold is torn from his face and the light falls upon his eyes. High, high above, the dragon — Itlåj — it circles the heavens, crowns the sun — Its wings part once more, beating the sky beneath them, and lift. They bring shadow with them. The sky darkens. (a cleansing flood swelling, rushing from the cracks in the earth, from the last dregs of fading light above, a wellspring from deep hidden places, bleeding in and into veins, the heart swallows body and heaven and sun and awful incandescence and yet from far below something is shining he can feel—) Oh, Kamu thinks, dazed, his vision blurring. It’s not there.
“He won’t be taking me back,” the princess says coldly. There is something regal in the way she looks at him, like her father’s eyes of flint. He does not doubt that she is Princess Hielaer, not anymore.
“Neither will you.” He trembles. Tears well from his eyes and cut into them, scalding. She tips her face to the sky and calls the dragon’s name. It roars in response. Kamu is not afraid. He is not afraid. He is not afraid. He is not afraid. He is not—
Table Of Contents
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