Chapter 9: Why You Have To Be Mad?

“Look, Pepin,” Kai said as they got closer to the cave that was letting out the now overpowering smell of sulfur, “you don’t have to come with me. Just wait here.”

He dismounted the horse and pulled out his sword. Like everything else so far, he would wing it and be fine. When holding court, everything had gone smoothly, right? Getting a dragon to cry his heart out couldn’t be that much a problem.

“No,” the servant replied stubbornly. “I didn’t ride with you all this way to abandon you here.”

“That sounded almost like a joke. There,” Kai pointed at the cave’s entrance, “lies a dragon. A fire-spitting angry mofo.”

“Mofo?”

Kai waved impatiently. “That’s a creature that could turn you into way too crispy steak in a second. Like this.” He snapped his fingers to get Pepin’s attention, who was busy tending to the horse. The animal had sensed the smell, too, and he was showing signs of impatience.

Pepin finally turned to face him. “No. You brought me with you.” He crossed his arms. “You always enjoy these things on your own. It’s not fair.”

Kai could see the other’s bottom lip quivering. It had to be so boring to be a servant, albeit a royal one. All the other boys got to play with swords and fight dragons, while Pepin had to do the laundry and cook eggs Benedict or whatever. Yeah, he could sympathize with that. Nonetheless, he had a hunch now that Prince Sebastian wanted to keep Pepin safe, and in the off-chance that they ever switched back – the cold royal must be in his body right now if the rules of body swap logic were obeyed – he would get pretty pissed if anything happened to his precious manservant.

“All right,” he said. “Just take the horse ... wait, what’s his name?”

“Thunder,” Pepin replied and grabbed the reins.

“Cool name. Take him somewhere out of the way. I don’t want him to get scared.”

“He should get used to the smell of monsters. He’s not a young colt anymore,” Pepin argued.

“Well, he’ll get plenty of other opportunities to get used to that. Maybe start with something easier, like goblins and such.”

“But you hate going against goblins. You always say that their smell is disgusting and you need to throw your sword away because nothing takes their stench out of the blade.”

“All right, so not goblins. Trolls?” he offered.

Pepin made a sour face.

“Hey, I’m the royal dude here,” Kai said. “Take Thunder somewhere he cannot smell the dragon so much and make sure to secure him well so that we don’t have to return by feet. That if you want to come with me, after all.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Pepin said primly.

It was a bit of fun to pull Pepin’s leg and also great that he was easy to fool. Kai waited until Pepin was at a fair distance from him and hurried toward the mouth of the cave, his sword drawn.

The moment he was inside, he started coughing. No wonder dragons were so pissed off all the time. They had to live in a dank, smelly place, and heroes and adventurers wanted to hunt them down all the time.

That was, however, the highest sympathy he could muster for that kind of creature. After all, they were a pain to go against, and they were high-level enemies. That meant that he needed to tread carefully and keep his eyes open.

He walked slowly until he reached the edge of an abyss opening up under his feet. He didn’t need any light because there was plenty of it coming out. First, he thought it was some sort of a giant forge, but looking down, he realized that the orange light came from clusters of fiery crystals. Wow, now that was some epic loot right there, only if he could figure out a way to pull them out. Plus, he didn’t have an inventory, and his trousers didn’t have any pockets.

“What right have you to stir my wrath, human?” a booming voice asked, coming somewhere from behind.

“Shit,” Kai said and turned on his heels. For a few moments, he lost all ability to speak. Before him, a giant dragon stood blocking the way he had come from. His scales were red, and the eyes staring him down were orange like the fire coming from within the crystals below. “Glad I found you,” he said, finally gaining back his voice.

The dragon loomed above him, and Kai expected to become scared shitless any moment now. Well, it looked like Prince Sebastian’s cold blood helped a lot because he couldn’t feel anything like that.

“Look,” he said, raising his arms, “I just need a little something from you.”

The dragon rose high above him, so he had to tilt his head back to keep him in sight.

“You need something from me?” the dragon boomed and lunged, fire coming out his nostrils – or mouth, Kai couldn’t be sure.

He stepped out of the way just in time. “Hey, is this really the way you treat a guest? No wonder nobody ever comes to visit.”

“You’re brandishing your sword at me and yet, you speak of that?” The dragon launched another attack, and Kai deftly avoided it just in time.

Oh, right, he had entered with his sword drawn. Of course, anyone, let alone a dragon, would have thought he had some not so pure intentions while walking in there. He sheathed his sword. “Look, I put it away. Can we talk like normal people now?”

He briefly wondered if Prince Sebastian had any skill in his set regarding high-level speech because this looked like a quest requiring him to be clever enough to convince a dragon to surrender a tear to him.

Like, what was a tear, to begin with? Practically nothing.

“Normal people? I know who you are, Prince Sebastian, and I know why you are here.”

“Oh, are we playing riddles? Try me. I’m telling you; you have no idea why I’m here.”

He could dance around the dragon like that all night, but he was starting to worry about how well those walls could hold while the creature spat fire.

“You are here to destroy my legacy,” the dragon said. “To finish my race.”

“Well, that was yesterday,” Kai said. “Today, it’s a totally different thing. And really, stop spitting fire all the time. Why you have to be mad?”

“Mad? Why am I mad?”

Kai put one finger into his ear and pulled it out quickly. “I think I’m going to be deaf in one ear if you keep shouting like this.”

“I will not go down without a fight. I see that you came on your own. How arrogant of you,” the dragon hissed. “You will meet your end here.”

“Not if I can help it.” Kai hoped he wouldn’t get a cramp from all that hopping around. Things were getting nowhere, and his speech abilities didn’t appear to work on dragons. “Hey, let’s just talk.”

“Talk about what? How you want to destroy my kind?”

“Well, I have nothing against you personally, but you’re a giant bird that terrorizes entire villages, burning them down, destroying crops, and all that.”

“Is that what you think? I only hunt when I’m hungry,” the dragon replied.

Kai wondered briefly how no one had ever thought of using dragons’ fire breathing as a renewable energy source. That would solve a thing or two. “Well, humans shouldn’t be on your menu.”

The dragon roared. “I only ate their goats!”

Goats. Right. Unfortunately, not the wandering herd, Kai thought. “You ate their goats, all right. All of them?”

“I was hungry!”

“Man, you have quite the appetite. Aren’t you afraid of getting too fat to get out of this cave? And I thought dragons ate crystals.”

“Crystals? What kind of nonsense are you spewing, human?”

“Never mind. Now, about my quest --”

“Your quest to finish me off?”

“No, if you just let me talk, you’d know. I’m talking about my real quest, which is to get a tear from you.”

“Ha! You’ll never see me cry! Cut me with your sword, froze me with your magic, drain the last drop of life out of me, and you won’t get a tear from me!”

Kai sighed. “Exactly what I was worried about. This quest is way too high-level for where I am in the story.”

For a moment, he forgot to get out of the dragon’s way and jumped back at the last moment. That had been a bad choice because the next thing he knew, he was falling. He extended one arm in a futile gesture, and vines of ice shot from his hand, wrapping around the crest of a tall crystal and helping him swing through the air like Tarzan. “Yippee,” he shouted. “I’m so friggin’ awesome!”

He wasn’t so awesome at landing because he began rolling down the crystal cave floor, incapable of stopping.

When he did stop, he found himself in front of a giant nest, in which a large egg lay. “Wow, you’re going to have a baby!”

“Stay out!” the dragon ordered and fired another shot at him.

Kai barely managed to roll out of the way. “Hey, stop being like this! Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to hit the egg by mistake?”

“You humans came in here and hurt my egg! And you dare to say that I’m the one to blame for all the bad blood between us!”

Kai had climbed a cluster of crystals and could look at the egg. Indeed, there was a long crack going from the crown to the middle. “Oh, no,” he said, “is it cracked?”

“Did you come to finish what the others started?”

“No! How many times,” Kai jumped from one cluster of crystals to another, “do I have to tell you? I’m not here for that! I just want your tear! A single little tear!”

“You can have it only you give back to my egg the life you stole!”

Kai stopped and put one hand up. The dragon stopped, as well. They stared at each other. “Wait, do we have a deal?”

The dragon huffed through his nostrils, readying for another attack. “The egg is dying. I won’t believe your lies!”

“Hey, stop spitting fire already! We can work something! It’s just cracked a little ... well, a little more, but it can be fixed.”

“How?” the dragon roared while chasing him.

“I know how!” someone shouted from above their heads.

Both Kai and the dragon looked up. Pepin was there.

“Hey, I told you to stay put!” Kai yelled at him.

“No, you fooled me! Get me down there, and I’ll take care of the egg!”

He saw the column of fire shooting from the dragon’s throat one moment too late. Without thinking, he began shooting arrows of ice from his eyes, pinning the dragon’s wings to the wall.

“Pepin! Pepin!” he began shouting. “If you killed my favorite servant, I’m going to turn you into steak, and your egg into dragon omelet!”

The dragon was whining and struggling against the ice arrows keeping him in place.

“I’m here,” Pepin called from above.

“Oh, great.” Kai turned toward the dragon. “Forget what I said about steaks and omelets. We’re going to save your egg.”

“Don’t you dare touch my egg,” the dragon boomed. He started shooting fire again.

That was a problem. Prince Sebastian’s cold blood helped him a great deal, and he wasn’t even slightly hot, but for an average person like Pepin, the heat inside the cave had to feel hellish.

“I need to come down to you,” Pepin shouted.

“Yeah, but it’s not that easy,” Kai shouted back.

First, he needed to put the dragon’s shooting fire abilities out of commission for a bit. He focused on his ice magic. So, he practically thought of something, and...

“A-ha!” he said, full of himself. In mere seconds, a vine of ice was wrapped around the dragon’s muzzle.

The dragon pulled back and smashed his head against the wall. Kai watched in horror as Pepin, who stood on the edge, lost his balance and fell.