Miser Dragon and the Foolhardy Knight

Upon ego, who persuades us to forget who we are.

The years had come and gone and come again for the old one, and he had learned to smell the stench of death where it passed. With his magnificent ochre head bowed he drank in the scent yet again, feeling the putrid future assault his senses and topple them magnificently to the ground. And even in the fervent haze of half-death, the death-to-be, the dragon did not succumb to fear.

He was old and he was creaky, despite his sweeping wings and millions of glittering scales like gold in the dark. He had known pain, known suffering, known the taste of blades and the feel of blood running from his skin. The green eyes had become weighted like stones, and his massive tail dragged behind him like an ogre’s cudgel.

Yet, he had no regrets. In his prime he had been fierce and cunning, a mad denizen of the sky dwarfed in size only by his own ego. And even then, when the men cowered in fear, and the Titans of the earth were but fledgling trees, he had amassed his wealth. Not of the material variety, for what use would a dragon have for gold or jewels but pitiful armor? No, what he had gathered was wealth of mind. His wellspring of knowledge surpassed that of the ancients, and surely that of mankind. Yes, even as time passed his ego had not faded. He knew that he was the finest dragon that could ever have lived, with his coveted silken wings and mad grin matched only by the abyss itself. To look upon him, he thought, would be awe-inspiring.

But, perhaps the putrid future was clouding his senses? Had he naught to show for his years but a braggart’s tale? Where had his wisdom gone, the bottomless cunning cultivated over time immeasurable? The thought was nonsense, of course. Failure, after all, was a human concept.

The sound of shaky footsteps extracted the dragon from his reverie, protruding from the gloom like an ancient monolith. Who but man could walk with such fear? The dragon’s head rose, as if a mountain snapping from the earth and floating to the sky, or a Titan being uprooted from the ground in which it once it stood. Surely, mankind would be no harbinger? Not even on this, the day of his death, a grand upheaval in the law of the world, would such a piteous race seize triumph.

And before him, there was the stench again. Compounded, maddeningly folded onto itself to produce a single being, clad in steel armor and equipped with a grim expression, holding a lance that could’ve been a toothpick for all the dragon cared. This was the challenger to defeat him? He was pitiful, a meatbag who would meet his demise within the passing time of a single century! Yet, even as he judged such, the death-scent washed over him in waves, an ocean of blood crashing upon his perception.

Then the pitiable knight spoke with a tone bitter and cracked by age (or perhaps suffering).  “You, who have killed amongst your own kind, amongst the humans, and on occasion amongst the Titans, your final hour approaches thusly. Miser Dragon, they call you. Amasser of Wealth, they say!” The meatbag spit on the floor in disgust. “What you have amassed is naught but suffering and decay within your own reptilian skin. And I...” He hesitated momentarily, licking his lips. “... I will slay you! Perish with your false god visage!”

And as the foolhardy knight charged recklessly, the dragon spoke. It was glory as always, a voice that wound around its host tongue like caramel ribbons. There was that raw moving beauty, likened to the open stars in the heavens above, that was contained within every word that he spoke; almost as if the sky itself had been pushed aside, a feeble curtain opening to reveal the tyrant beyond the veil. All had been building to this, the Miser Dragon reflected. All culminated in his next words.

“u dont evn no bro ill kick ur as”

The Miser Dragon, of course, was promptly slain.

Author's Note

Written for a school assignment within the span of 2 days. Harsh criticism requested.

Reviews

[Shannon Miller]

I like it but at the same time I don't.

Clean up the first two paragraphs. You almost totally lost me at "creaky."

I really like how you write the dragon's introspection and his thought process.

"the feel of blood running from his skin." - Dragons don't have skin. Plus it's in conflict with your previous descriptions.

I like the language you use, but shorten your sentences. It's a tad tedious.

The end seems so anticlimactic! I think it would be really awesome if you took it a little farther. The dragon seems so much smarter - maybe in a pious way - to be slain like that. It's your story, but an intellectual battle is kind of what I was expecting. If not an intellectual battle, maybe explain how the meatbag did kill him?