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You had heard the news just like everyone else.
“The princess has been kidnapped by a dark sorcerer and locked in a high tower guarded by a fierce dragon!”
Of course, being a knight, it was your duty to rescue her and return her home. You don’t hesitate to set out on your new quest with your horse and best sword.
The tower is in the middle of a dark, dense forest that is full of traps. You end up leaving your horse in the nearest village and going the last of the way on foot since it isn’t safe for the poor animal. The forest is full of vicious beasts, but you slay them easily. Slaying such beasts is part of your job, after all, and you’re very good at your job.
You look up at the tower, black stone and overgrown with dark grey vines. The sky above is grey as well, the sun hidden behind thick cloud cover. There is an odd heaviness in the air that you associate with the presence of strong magic.
The dragon…
It was an odd one, that’s for sure. A strangely beautiful creature, golden like the princess’s fair locks and almost delicate-looking. It’s perhaps twice your size, a baby compared to other dragons you had slain. You feel it’s a shame to kill such a magnificent creature, but you have to do it. Who knows when the dark sorcerer will tire of playing with the princess and kill her?
So you unsheathe your sword and advance on the dragon, prepared for a fight.
Wait!
The sudden, unexpected voice in your head causes you to freeze, thankfully still a good distance away from the dragon, which might have taken advantage of your distraction.
‘Oh, please hear me! I’m the princess, not a dragon! I was turned into a dragon by the sorcerer! Please don’t kill me!’
Turned into a dragon? You consider the idea and conclude that it’s well within the realm of possibility when you think of all the things magic can do.
And it would be just like a dark sorcerer to do something like that. Cruel for the princess to be slain by her would-be rescuer, cruel to you when you realise what you’ve done and amusing for the sorcerer.
The dragon did not advance on you. It actually stayed as far away from you as it could, right up against the wall of the tower. Now that you’re looking, you can see a thin golden chain around one of its legs that leads to a ring at the base of the tower. There is enough length of chain coiled on the ground that the dragon could have closed the distance between you and attacked you if it wanted to.
She, you correct yourself, not it. This was looking more and more like the dragon was the princess.
“If you can understand me,” you say, “let me come closer.”
The dragon lies down, putting its head on its paws, looking at you with eyes you perceive as wary, absolutely miserable and a little hopeful.
The dragon doesn’t move as you step closer, sword still drawn. Any ordinary dragon would have reacted to the threat and attacked by now, trying to rip into you with sharp claws and teeth.
You pick up the length of chain and examine it. It looks ordinary enough, but your hand tingles where your skin touches the warm metal and you know there’s magic in this. Has to be if the dragon hasn’t already broken it.
You aren’t surprised when your sword cuts through it. The sage who gave you the blade did say that it could cut almost anything, even things reinforced by magic. It is a dragon-slaying sword, after all.
You had hoped that the chain was part of the spell that had transformed the princess and cutting it might return her to her true form. No such luck, though.
It's still just you and a golden dragon at the base of the tall black tower.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ you hear in your mind. ‘Though I don’t know what I’m going to do now, since I appear to be stuck as a dragon.’ The dragon stands up, raises her head and looks around with her bright green eyes. She looks, you think, lost.
As a knight, you think the next course of action should be rather obvious. “A quest,” you say. “To kill a dark sorcerer and break a spell.”
‘That’s easier said than done.’
“Oh, it won’t be that difficult to find the sorcerer.” You point at the bleak, forbidding tower with your blade. “They love this sort of thing. We just have to find some dark, dreary, miserable place and there’s a fair chance we’ll find that a dark sorcerer has set up shop there. Whether it’s the one we want will be another matter, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”
It’s raining now, fat drops hitting your helmet and armour. You wonder if you could shelter for the night inside the tower. There’s still a lot of daylight left, however, and if this doesn’t turn into a storm you think you can make it back to the village with plenty of time to spare. Faster if the princess decides to help.
The golden dragon might frighten the villagers, though. Probably not a good idea to tell everyone that this is the princess. Perhaps you can say that she is a light sorceress who prefers this form over a vulnerable human one.
Should you check the tower before you leave? Risky, but there might be something there that might give a clue, prove useful in your quest, or be just plain valuable.
‘You’d help me?’
“Of course.” Travelling with a dragon, seeking out a dark sorcerer, finding a way to break an enchantment, such a quest was the essence of why you became a knight in the first place. You couldn’t resist it, even if you hadn’t been bored out of your mind of the same old dragon-slaying, tournaments and escorting ladies safely to faraway cities.
“I should check the tower first before we leave. Then there’s a swamp a week or so north of here,” you muse. “We should probably start there. Then, if we go west of that, there’s an abandoned estate that might also be a possibility.”
‘A swamp?’ The disgust was palpable and the dragon’s tail lashed back and forth. ‘Must we?’
“What are you complaining about? You can fly. It’s me who’ll be walking through all that muck.”
‘Oh, yes. A swamp, then.’
“You could sound a little more sympathetic, princess.”
You’ve never seen a dragon look amused before, but the princess manages it.