The digging continues and I have long since grown weary of watching it. My Blueclad seems to as well as he has spent the majority of time recently loitering about in the Dining Hall. This is a blessing as I get an eerie feeling when descending down into the depths even if it does mean that I have to spend the bulk of my time in the company of digbeards.
As I have so often in the past, I spent the greater part of many an afternoon speaking to some of my old comrades. The thought of it amuses me so allow me to recreate for you, as best as I am able, some of the stories I heard. I begin with the Distinguished Luto.
"- of the Council of Apes? Yes, my friends, I have seen a lot in my thousand years, but..." began Luto on grayer than usual afternoon. "Thousand" interrupted Sam the Eagle, "thousand years? But the world is only six hundred and eleven years old, anybody knows that." "Irrelevant! A dragon does not achieve his full growth until he lives a millenium everybody knows that!" "Which does call into question how one does know that with any certainty. Wouldn't somebody have had to see a hatchling take a thousand years to grow first?" That was Solon. "I AM ONE THOUSAND YEARS OLD AND I WILL DEVOUR THE NEXT ONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE!"
I decided to tempt fate. "So what was it like before the world began?" The remark apparently went over Luto's head, which is impressive for a creature that size. "Dark mostly with bits of white here and there. Then the world rose from the waters, the mountains rose and fell, the rain began to fall, rivers and lakes formed, and then came the other animals." "Yer puttin' us on." That was said low and from in the midst of a large cluster of animals so the identity of the speaker remains uncertain. "No, that's how it was. I remember it too." That came from Eydri's fourth head. Two of them objected and said that it wasn't, two more couldn't recall, and the other two sided with number four.
"It was dark, it was light, and I remember hearing something about stupidity." "There were a bunch of others as well. Titans, dragons, hydras, and them shiny things what they have in the corner there." That was the seventh head. "Who's telling this story, anyway?" and a puff of smoke brought everybody's attention back to Luto.
"Anyway, the world exists now. We can all agree on this one." "I don" began one of Eydri's heads. A stern "WE CAN ALL AGREE ON THAT PARTICULAR POINT!" put paid to that though. "Being a dragon, things come naturally to me. Eating smaller things, collecting smaller things' shinies, burning smaller things, crashing through smaller things' houses. Those were the good days and were packed to the brim with excitement.
I remember this one Adventurer that showed up and began reciting a long list of my so-called crimes. CRIMES. A dragon being a dragon is supposed to be a crime. He got roughly a fourth of the way through a recital of the previous year's dinner menu when I grew tired of listening to him and set him on fire. There's not a problem in the world that can't be fixed with the proper application of dragonfire I always say.
Time went on and as many dragons do, I turned my attention towards building my hoard. No self-respecting dragon can attract a mate w-" "Dragons have mates?" The speaker remained wisely anonymous. "HOW THE BLAZES DO YOU THINK DRAGONS COME ABOUT? SPORES?" "Well," continued the hidden voice "that would require that there be at least two other dragons that were born at least fourteen hundred years and change before the world even began. And they'd have need dragons a thousand years before that." "He does a point" ventured Solon quietly. "We're looking at infinite regress otherwise, which seems a bi-" "QUIET." "Turtles all the way down" muttered a voice, possibly a dog. "SHUT IT!" was the response along with a challenging glare that no one present could bring themselves to meet.
"Now, as I saying before I was so rudely interrupted before, and SHAN'T BE AGAIN IF SAID INTERUPTEES KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR THEM, there are times when a dragon's fancy turns to settling down and finding a nice mate to while away the rest of eternity with. There's only one proper way of doing that and that's amassing a hoard large enough to have a scent that a dragon can pick up from the next cave over.
Gold's best for that; it has a nice effusive blend of scents that can easily turn the head of any dragon of the opposite gender after a good role in it. I spent decades constructing a hoard with little success in finding any gold. Plenty of rock items, which can set off a room nicely when arranged tastefully, but lacking in the smell department. One day I venture out to the nearest settlement that I think I detect that faint scent of gold from, but the scent is gone by the time I arrive.
So I content myself with eating the Mayor and bellowing out that I wanted gold items before going home. I get back to the lair and find, to my evelasting dismay, that some fiend had carried off my entire hoard. FIRE! MURDER! THIEVES IN MY LAIR! THE VERY THOUGHT!" The circle of listeners that had crept closer as the story progressed expanded greatly during this explosion of wrath, but it soon passed. "I set out to find the thief and expand my hoard in the process, wound up here, and you know the rest."
I replied that this was nice, but that he was supposed to be telling us the story of the time he killed the Ash Brute Lord of whatever the Council of Apes was. He responded with a very hurtful comment directed at my heritage. Uncivilized, the lot.
Next time: Flashback Sidetrack or Olm is Where the Heart Is.
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Topic: The Life and Times of Reginald Goblinstomper, Elephant at Large. (Read 51121 times)