Prologue: The legends say…

  They say a dragon’s scales can withstand a lance blow from a galloping charger, and their breath can boil a knight inside their armour. They say their claws can rend the very rock from the inside of their mountain lairs, and their wings can create a gale strong enough to blow ships off course.

  In short, dragons are very dangerous.

  Higby had heard all this and decided it couldn’t be true. Such creatures, if truly that powerful, would have taken over the world by now. The fact they hid away in remote mountain lairs, like the one he was currently traversing, only proved what he thought:

  They’re scared, weak, and feeble, and the gold they hoard is easy pickings.

  He inched his way through the darkness, his torch at arm’s length, and hacked away the sticky spider silk in his path with his enchanted sword; Dawnbreaker. Passed down from father to son for generations, countless legends told of its glory and power.

  With this sword, I shall slay the dragon and take its hoard. Its riches will save my family from destitution.

  The promise of such a future drove him forward. If he could pay off the debts owed by his father, perhaps his family name could be restored to its former esteem. Then, maybe, she would notice him…

  He pushed on, forcing himself through the tight space around the rockfall in his path. It was difficult in his plate armour; it added at least four inches to his waistline, and the back of it scraped against some of the longer stalactites descending from the cavern roof. He made one last push forward when his foot slipped on a patch of silt and he fell onto the rocks.

  He gasped. They were not rocks.

  Eye sockets stared back at him from a grisly collection of skulls he’d fallen on. So many. The dragon couldn’t have killed this many people, surely?

  He stood on shaky legs. There must be hundreds of bodies here…

  No, they were sacrifices, not warriors. They had to be. No armour or weapons lay nearby. The villagers must have offered up their own to appease the dragon. That way, the creature wouldn’t eat their cattle and burn their fields. A grisly trade.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “So ignorant and fearful. I shall rid them of this heinous practice.”

  He held up his sword. The unblemished blade, a mirror in the torchlight, reflected his determined face. A single scar, a badge of honour from his youth, cut through his left eyebrow.

  I shall not fail.

  Creeping through passages and caverns, Higby travelled deeper beneath the mountain. Ahead, a low rumbling shook the very rock around him, as if a sleeping giant lay on the other side of the cavern wall. A light, dim, but enough to illuminate an opening a few yards ahead, was coming from the space beyond.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  This is it. The dragon waits ahead.

  Steeling himself, he squeezed through the narrow fissure and entered the cavern beyond.

  Piles of gold and jewels filled this inner sanctum. Some rose many feet high, towering over him like huge, glittering stalagmites, while others lay flat like expensive sand dunes. The light he’d seen came from an enormous brazier hung on thick chains fifty feet above. It pushed the darkness back like an underground sun.

  Higby tightened his grip on his sword and removed the heater shield from his back, fastening it to his forearm with a thick leather strap. The dragon was said to be quite large. One villager had likened it to the size of a house, while another had said its head rose higher than the trees in the forest. Such a creature would have difficulty hiding even in the darkness beyond the light of the brazier.

  But there was no sign of it. Nothing stirred in the shadows beyond.

  Out hunting?

  Higby tucked his sword under his arm and scooped up a handful of coins. Marks and denominations from kingdoms far and wide lay in his hand. The Queen of Lairan, the King of Eyorra… they all stared back at him from the light of the brazier. This dragon had been everywhere.

  “Did you come to gawk at my hoard, or to steal it?” A low, rumbling voice echoed around him.

  Higby whirled around and pointed his blade into the cavern. “Show yourself, lizard!”

  “Lizard? I am as far away from a lizard as you are from a gibbon,” chuckled the voice.

  “I see no difference.”

  “That goes both ways.”

  One of the huge mounds of coin shifted and slid apart like sand cascading down a dune. The bright red scales of an enormous dragon appeared from beneath, shaking the last few coins from its body. Yawning, it settled itself atop its hoard like a cat watching a mouse.

  Higby pointed his sword at the beast. “I shall slay you, dragon. I shall free the people of this land from their bondage and return to my home in glory.”

  “You shall, shall you?” said the dragon. “Many have tried. What makes you believe you will fare any better?”

  Higby slashed his sword through the air dramatically. “Dawnbreaker; my family’s legendary blade. I shall run it through your monstrous heart.”

  “Legendary blade?” asked the dragon, the hint of a mocking tone had entered its voice. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “How fortunate for you, then, that your last moments shall not be filled with fear and terror. For it has felled mightier beasts than you.”

  “Indeed? Like whom?”

  “What?”

  “Whom has it felled? Surely, I would have heard of some of them. Come now, fill my heart with fear and terror.”

  “I do not need to list its triumphs,” rallied Higby. “I shall simply add your name to its list of victories.”

  “How?”

  “What?”

  The dragon rolled its great emerald eyes. “How will you add my name to the list if you don’t know it?”

  “I uh… very well. What is your name, fiend? So that I may record it in my deeds and victories.”

  “Vxtrolacxtrix.”

  “Uh, I, what?” Higby scratched his chin. “Could you spell that for me?”

  The dragon laughed. “I don’t imagine it will matter how you spell it once you’ve slain me. Who will know if you spell it wrong?”

  “Ah, yes. Good point,” said Higby. He readjusted the straps on his pauldrons. “Alright then. Avaunt, foul lizard! Today, you breathe your last!”

  He charged forward, sword held high, while the dragon watched him with a look of amusement.

  When he bleeds his last at my feet, he will not be so smug.

  Higby gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands and brought it down in a powerful slash, raking the blade across the dragon’s scales and sending sparks flying into the gloom. A crack, a clink, and a snap echoed through the darkness, and Dawnbreaker… broke.

  It snapped right above the cross-guard, and the blade whirled end-over-end through the air before planting itself in the ground at the foot of a gold pile.

  “Oh dear,” said the dragon, flames licking at its lips. “It seems your ‘legendary’ sword has broken.”

  “I, but the legends said…”

  “Ah, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” The flames grew brighter and hotter as the dragon spoke. “You can’t always believe what legends say.”