Where Are My Dragons?

"Where are my dragons?", shrieked the fetching blonde in polished milf-il cocktail dress armor, for the third time in the last minute.

"Where are ...."

"Do shut up", I interrupted the ... Secret Princess? I didn't know for sure.

Not five minutes earlier I'd been in the Adventurers' Tavern quaffing a root beer when the Dungeon Master waved me over to join a departing Company in immediate need of a 57th Level Devilishly Handsome Yet Morally Compromised Cad. I was standing in for a 56th Level who couldn't hold his lemonade. The DM gestured with his ashen wand*, there was a flash of green light and ...

... The next moment we were somewhere else, but somewhere definitely wrong. The air reeked of sulfur and unwashed humanity and people dressed like high school marching bands that had been performing in the mud were tittering in a foreign language I recognized as French. Windblown snow swirled and blanketed the ground, the sky was starving wolf grey; icy wind gusted out of the north. Then I knew where and when we were intellectually but either psychic shock or the mind-numbing chill of the Russian steppe winter said, no this can't possibly be happening. I snatched a sheaf of faux-parchment from one of my "Companions", some kind of RenFaire Reject in a forest green coverall with U.S. Army Ranger tabs on his shoulders.

"You're a ... Ranger?

"Fifth Level", the bright-eyed Dork said proudly, showing me a light saber handle, "it's green!".

I thumbed through the paperwork, skipping over the Player Sheets because I didn't really want to know more about "Billiam the Barbarian" or "Klangon the Blave" (sp?). When I got to "Adventure Description" I knew immediately how it had gone sideways. Someone, almost certainly the blonde, had written blocky letters in colored pencil, "HEIRESS TO THE THRONE OF WISTERIA SEEKS HER LOST DRAGO ... ."

"Do you know," I asked the still screeching blonde, "the difference between a 'Dragon' and a 'Dragoon'?"

"Where are my dragons?", she mindlessly shrieked again, about to fall out of her cocktail dress armor, blonde hair flying free in the icy breeze.

"All around you", I was tempted to say. Because I was fluent in high school French, I knew we were in the camp of the 13e Régiment de Dragoons, or what was left of them, on the Russian steppe, on Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. In winter. It was late in the retreat, since dragoons, on paper, nominally, in fact anywhere but at this moment in time, were mounted troops and now there there were only a few scrawny horses left uneaten. No one looked like he'd had a full ration in months.

They all watched the blonde, many stood up. Gauging by their awkward gait, they looked like they hadn't seen a woman in just as long.

A good 20, maybe 50 huge, bearded, desperate men (one actually dragging a sawhorse) closed in on the blonde when, as if on cue, she squealed,

"Where are my dragons?"

_____________

* I know what you're thinking, you perverts, and you're wrong.

© 2017 The Last Dragoon

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Patrick Jinks

I get a very 'D&D' feel here (although without ever having played it, I'm not certain that's what you were going for) and genuinely love the idea of of turning such a fantastical, random game such as that into a story. There's so much potential, so many avenues to explore (such as your disappearing from the tavern and appearing in the Dragoon Regiment).

...although a sequel would be nice to find out what happens to Miss Blonde.