—
“Okay, dragon,” said Owen, as he went into the cave to slay the dragon and rescue the princess. He’d been expecting a giant dragon an epic battle that someone would turn into a picture on a carpet someday, and also that he’d get to have sex with the princess in an epic sex scene that might also get turned into a carpet, but like the horny kind.
And there was a huge dragon, but as soon as Owen had drawn his sword, three more dragons flew at him and they were much smaller, maybe the size of like, cows. Cows were kind of big, but Owen had never thought of them as scary, and the cow-dragons weren’t doing anything, just kind of flying around him and being annoying. Like flies. That were the size of cows.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that these were the dragon’s kids, and Owen didn’t really want to kill kids and nor did he want to orphan kids, so he just kind of punched one into a wall, kicked another one to the ground and headbutted the third so they stopped swarming him. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I won’t stab anyone, God.”
“Great!”
Owen blinked. The dragon he’d kicked to the ground had turned into a naked little boy. “Hi?” he asked the boy, who had horns and wings and shit, just like the dragon he’d just pummeled. “Uh, did you get kidnapped by the dragon too?”
“No, stupid!” said the boy. “I live here! You can’t hurt my sire, I won’t let you!”
The other dragons had also turned into naked little boys and were nodding. The big dragon was just watching them warily. Owen put his sword away to demonstrate that he wasn’t going to kill its kids. “Okay look,” he said to the naked boys. Owen had a lot of experience talking to naked boys. “I’m not interested in hurting your king or whatever. I just want to kill the dragon who kidnapped the princess so I can rescue her.”
“What’s a princess?” asked one boy.
“What’s a kidnapped?” asked another.
“What’s a king?” asked the third.
Owen sighed. “Okay let’s start a little easier. You guys are dragons, who look like humans, right?”
“Actually we’re dragons who look like dragons!” insisted the boy under Owen’s boot.
“Sure. There’s another human here, like me but prettier.”
“Oh, our sire’s treasure!” said boot-dragon.
“Yeah, you can’t have him!” said wall-dragon.
Headbutt-dragon turned to big-dragon and started growling. Big-dragon growled back. There was a lot of growling. Then headbutt-dragon ran into the cave. “Don’t worry,” said boot-dragon. “He explained that we don’t need to fight! You can just come live here with the other treasure!”
“You’re not as pretty as him but you’ll be a nice accent piece!”
“What’s an accent piece?” Owen asked. He only knew one accent and it was kind of racist.
Headbutt-dragon came out with a human in tow, and… “Oh,” Owen said.
“Oh?” asked the human.
Owen cleared his throat. “Um. I’m here to rescue you, your…Highness.” he said. To the prince.
This wasn’t going quite the way Owen had thought, but as the prince smiled at him, he wondered if maybe they’d be able to put this on a carpet someday anyway. It was a hell of a story.
—
How Best to Use a Sword 