8: My muse is a dragon and yours is the knight sent to slay them.
Every legend states that a dragon has a cave filled with its most prized possessions. None of these legends say that the cave is always filled with physical objects. Or that the cave is even a cave at all.
He guarded his knowledge, his wisdom. He guarded his emotions and he protected his ideals. And humans, Chaotic humans, were afraid. Every story plays out with a wicked dragon and a heroic knight. These roles, he thinks, should not be set in stone.
They aren’t. Humans can control Chaos if they are strong enough. Humans can also fall to their own greed. Humans kill dragons not for heroism, but for the ownership of that which a dragon guards.
No human would ever claim his most valued possessions. This heroine was no different.
No human could ever understand the values of a dragon.
This was it. Her moment. Years of training and preparation had all culminated to this. Ever since she was a child, raised in the shadow of Dragonspiral Tower, she had harbored visions of this event. She had grown up with stories, regal tales of treasure, fortune, and fame allotted to the one who could climb the mountain and defeat the monstrous dragon at its peak. The brunette had been eager in her childlike innocence to do her family proud.
When her father and then her brother had gone to seek their fortune and never returned, however, her eagerness had turned to bitter desperation. She would exact her revenge on the beast of the Tower for robbing her of her family. She would take its highly guarded treasure and come home victorious in their name.
And so she had spent the majority of her teen years fighting, scraping, sparring until she was strong. Stronger than her brother, quicker than her father. She traveled the whole region, testing her mettle against knights and warriors twice her size who boasted and carried on in their arrogant way. She’d shown them what true strength was like and then left without a word to the next village, the next town to prove her worth.
Now, nearly ten years after her journey had begun, she stood at the crest of the Tower. She couldn’t know how far her family had gone before falling, but she felt adrenaline in her veins like nothing she had ever experienced. She was here. This was it. The dragon couldn’t be far and she was only too happy to search every inch of the great structure for his sorry hide.
“DRAGON!! I am Kotone, daughter of Aki and sister of Aurum! I have come to carve from you the pound of flesh you stole from me! Come out and taste my wrath!”