((Ask and ye shall receive. Maybe. Sometimes. When the muse strikes me.))
Six kingdoms once bent a dragon to their will to serve them. The dragon was old and powerful and had been there since before the dawn of time, but that did not interest the kings, for they only saw the profit the dragon could bring. They chained him up in their deepest dungeons, where there was no sunlight or fresh air or life at all, and told him to breathe fire in order to melt gold out of the walls around him. The dragon decided to humour them for now, and did their bidding. And so the years went by. Time passed.
The six kingdoms grew prosperous and powerful, and soon expanded their territories further than ever before, annexing countries as they went. With the gold the dragon provided they could buy all the weapons, armour, and mercenaries they needed, a thousand times over. They made new laws, founded new cities, appointed new leaders. The world was theirs.
But once they had the world within the palm of their hands, the kings grew placid and bored, and soon began to bicker amongst themselves. They fought over the gold the dragon melted up for them, even though they had entire castles full of riches already. One king saw fit to call himself the leader of all the kingdoms, and said he would decide who got how much gold from now on. A second king folded easily, but complained as much as he could while never making good on the mild threats he made. A third king shrugged – he was not interested in ruling, all he wanted the gold for was to play around and build wondrous things for people to marvel at. A fourth and fifth spat bile and raged, and brought the legions of fighters under their control to avoid being cast out. And the sixth king…
The sixth king snuck down into the deepest dungeons, and bowed to the dragon. He asked the beast to help him bring down the other kings.
The dragon laughed and told him: “Don’t be a fool. You needn’t waste your energy fighting them – the doom is upon them, and soon they will pay. I have been breathing fire at these walls for many years to satisfy their unsatiable greed for gold, so much that the stone itself has started to fall apart. The castle above is held up by barely a thread, and soon, it will topple. Dance for their amusement, play their game, pretend to be on their side, and you will have your vengeance sooner than you thought. But you will not free me. Only I can do that.”
And so the sixth king waited for the dragon’s promise to come true, passing the time with building things for his own amusement, some of them alive and some of them dead. The first king saw use in this, and granted the sixth king more shares of the gold so he could continue what he was doing. This angered the other kings, but they had lost too much power by then to stand up against anyone.
One day, a terrible shudder went through the castle, right as the sixth king was putting the finishing touches on his newest creation. He abandoned his work and hurried down to the dungeons, where the dragon had breathed fire upon his own body and thus melted away the chains. Smoke rose from where he’d singed his own flesh, but the dragon seemed unperturbed and roared at the ceiling, making molten gold rain down upon them.
The sixth king called out, waved his hands – and jumped aside just in time to avoid being burned to a crisp. Realizing the dragon meant to kill them all, he fled. But as he was just about to escape, he remembered his latest creation, which he’d left behind so suddenly. He had spent years on its development, how could he betray it now? So he went back. The dragon found him lost in the intricasies of his work, and when fire came breathing down upon him, all the sixth king did was try to shield his creation with his own body. He failed, and the dragon burned them both.
When he had laid waste to the entire castle and burned every living soul he’d found, the dragon shook his body and spread his wings, and took off to return to his lair.
But far from the scene, at a safe distance, stood the second king, who had been off building some city or another, and stared in awe at the burning rubble where once the six kings had made their plans to shackle a power they couldn’t understand.