Chapter One, Part Two

     “Long live the bloody King!” he bellowed clashing his mighty glass against his friends. The beer over flowed and foam sprayed everywhere.

     “In bloody hell is where he should long live!” his friend cackled with laughter. “That’s udda be the sayin now!”

     Dill Gibbs smiled slamming is drink down on the table. “I hear ya on that one, brother. Most of this town would agree with you.”

     John Murts bared his ‘win a fair lady’ smile of his. “Too bad an’ rebellion that tooken place in this fair ole’ city of ours resulted in bloody deaths an more fear. So much fear it went up all our wazzoos!”

     “It might not always be like that, John,” Dill smirked. “Who knows, maybe someone will come into the Hulls and put an end to it all. I mean, we’re getting close. Some demon chick with crazy white hair came close to defeating our Royal’s army of dragons.”

     John laughed hard breathing in the tobacco and the smell of beer. “She nearly got em, tis true. But she rots in jail awaitin death like the rest of us damn rebels.”

     Dill considered this taking a big swig out of his glass. “Who knows, John, who knows? All I reckon is maybe one day we’ll have a chance is all. I mean a demon came! A demon! Out of that there Dragon Forest! We all thought that no magical being lived up there anymore but a demon came out of there!”

     John raised a brow. “Whatcha point Dilly?”

     Dill’s green eyes lit up. “We all heard the tales of the Dragon People. Humans gifted to be half dragon but was then banished by the dragons themselves to live in Dragon Forest! Now, those tales were legends and we heard that no magical creature lived there now! But they were wrong! Which means that the dragon people exist too!”

     “I don’t understand Dilly….”John frown, his face red from the liquor but he wasn’t too far gone to understand crazy talk when he heard it.

     “Dragon people speak dragon! The king has dragons protecting his oh-so-royal regime! So we, you and me John, go up that forest and snag us a dragon person and see if he or she can get rid of those dragons. Who better than a human with dragon powers! And then we can take that bloody king down to the core!”

     “Even if wad you say is true, Dilly-boy,” John said taking another swig of beer. “How do we knows that this dragon chick or dragon lad will help us? Wad if they savages? May be a reason for they bein banished to Dragon Forest. Fools go in tha forest! Fools, Dilly-boy! Demon could ‘av been travelin through Dragon Forest so goin in there would be a waste o’ time!”

     Dilly sunk back in his chair. The drunken men around the two ignored their talk completely as beer glasses flung and men began to sing horrible show tunes in curdling cries. “We could always go to Brutus and Bob to ask the demon girl if she lived there or was travelling. I mean, all the rebels die to the dragons, or they go to jail to be starved to death and then be killed by the dragons. The dragons then terrorize our people, take our kids to the King’s ‘so-called-school’ to train them to be killers, and just goddamn too much more! I want to end it! I’m sick of it! If there’s a chance, a small slim chance, that we can grab a dragon girl or dragon boy that might help us, then I want to take it, John. I want to grab it and hold it as hard as I can, until my fingers bleed!”

     “This isn’ just what the king did to your youngin, Billy, Dilly-boy?”John’s face no longer held a happy thought but was stone serious. Dill had never seen his friend’s face like that ever in his life. “This isn’ retaliation? This is straight out of the heart and the means of savin everyone? Not retaliation for your boy, Billy?”

     Dill closed his eyes biting his lip firm for a moment, or maybe it was a minute, but to him it felt like an eternity. “It isn’t retaliation. I just don’t want another parent to go through what I damn saw and have a kid go through what my boy did. Our mad hatter king’s gone too far, we have to stand up and be men.”

     “Bein men by standin behind a dragon kid? How manly is that, Dilly-boy?”

     “Next to that dragon kid,” Dill said firmly. “We get that hope and spread it around town and this time the king can live long in hell with Satan!”

     John’s smile returned. Dill could always count on John Murt’s smile to know he was in it until the end. “Fine, you n’ me will go to the insane forest and chase us down your imaginary dragon people. We fin’ one n’ we’re in da business. If not, then it was a fun hike, dontcha say?”

     John Murts took his hand away from his beer glass and spit in it. He held it out firmly waiting for Dilly-boy to do the same. Dill grinned spitting in his own hand. The two laughed shaking.

     “People aught to think we’re queer, Dilly-boy. An I may be crazier than the wazoos for doin this but I got big faith on ya boy.”

     “I got a wife,” Dill laughed. “So don’t you.”

     John shrugged. “Queers have wives too, if they don’ then they don’ hide very well.”

     “You better not scare off our dragon boy or girl with that dry sense of humor of yours!”

     John bellowed with laughter clutching onto his gut. “Maybe all we need to en’ our dragins is my dry sense o’ humor!”

     John and Dill continued to laugh picking up their beers and drank to Dragon Forest and in hopes of finding the imaginary dragon people. The sad thing was, the two forgot that the walls had ears.

     This was something that the dragon girl travelling out of Dragon Forest knew all too well.

Author's Note

Snaps and Craps

Reviews

[Danny J.H.]

I like the Dill character great job