Royal vs Dragon

Prologue

Devon:

There we were. We were going into the woods to go and do our weekly hunt. When, out of nowhere came fire reigning down both on and between the greenest trees that you ever did see.

"Augh!" I jumped up a little from the horse I was currently riding. My buddy and royal attendant, Darren, did pretty much the same as me. We were both pretty startled from that sudden burst of flames reigning down on us. "Are you okay?" I asked him. There were still flames reigning down from the sky. Darren looked pretty shaken up with all of his pale and sweaty skin. He looked terrible- like he might faint at any time now. That had me a bit worried. I was trying to get my horse under control from the surprise attack. Darren's horse was in a panic as well. I was hoping that I could calm my horse down soon, so that I could go and see if I could go over and help Darren regain control of his horse again. The horses were not calming down, and so they ended up turning around and running in the direction away from the forest fire as fast as they could. All the while, my good buddy and royal attendant, Darren, didn't answer my question. When I turned around to look over my shoulder to see if I could see Darren, he had this scared, blank look in his eyes, like he was seeing, but he wasn't at the same time. This was really starting to freak me out, now. We managed to stay on our horses, until we were out of the woods. The woods that my family owns, that is called the Royal Woods.

Once we got out of the woods-which we didn't go too far into to begin with, thankfully-our horses ended up causing us to fall off of their backs, and they ended up running for the shelter of their stables. Once I was able to get back up from my back to my feet, I went over to go and see if I could help Darren with getting him up to his feet too. When I got over there, he was already about half-way back up, so I just offered to help him up the rest of the way, and he decided to take my offered hand. When he finally got back up on his feet, we ended up running to go and warn my father. There was a dragon on the loose that was destroying our forest and boy was it angry!

Kaylee:

"Ugh!" I was complaining about all of the work that had to be done in the small wooden cottage that I lived in with my mother and father. My father was always at work, and my mother was on her death bed. I didn't know what to do since she was so sick and Father was gone all the time. Father ended up spending any money that we didn't use on the house and food for gambling, so I couldn't go out and buy her any medicine from the town herbalist. We had absolutely no money for that kind of stuff, and it was expensive too. I was deeply worried about Mother.

I am currently working on the laundry. If you can imagine how long and hard it takes to make the clothes all clean, it's a pain in the butt. It is extremely hard work. Especially if you are trying to make the soap that you need to use for the washing. And then, you have to hopefully get dry weather for when you are going to try and let them dry.

I decided to try humming and singing to try and distract myself from how much I hated doing the laundry. But, it was a relief when it was finally done. I continued to do this for the next two hours.

I was outside and had just finished hanging up the laundry on clothes liners with clothespins when I heard my mother calling for me from inside the house, lying on her death bed.

"Coming!" I called after her. I picked up the little basket that I had used to go and bring the clean, wet clothes out with. I opened the wooden door and went inside the little old cottage. I set the basket down on a table that sat on the middle of the floor in the little room where we all sleep. With that done, I went and knelt right beside my mother who was lying down on the couch that hardly felt soft at all. The couch felt all hard and itchy. The couch was a plain forest green color that ended up being around five foot eight inches the long way, and about two-thirds of that size in height. She laid her hand out for me to grab on to is what it seemed like to me, so that's what I did and she accepted it. She clasped my hand in hers, tugging it towards her with all her strength.

She turned her head in my direction and opened her mouth to say to me, "I have always, always loved you, you know? And I have another thing to tell you before I have to go..." She closed her eyes again. I waited for her to open her eyes back up and continue, but she never did. That's when it hit me! She had just died! Just to make sure, I pulled the blanket from her shoulders down to her waist, and I bent over her and turned my head so that I could rest my ear against where I thought her heart should be. I realized that her heart wasn't beating anymore, and probably hadn't for a while now. I sat back up as the reality of what had just happened sunk in.

It should have been obvious, now that I think about it. I haven't seen her breathing in a while now, I thought to myself. I brought my hands up to my face and started crying into them. This has really happened. I didn't want to believe it, but it's the truth, and I have just proven it to myself. I did everything that I could think of and it still wasn't enough! I kept on crying and crying for a good maybe about five to ten minutes. I mean, she was my mother, right?

I got up and got a good look at her. She was starting to turn that ashen color, and when I decided to try and touch her, she started to feel cold to the touch and a little bit stiff. I cupped a hand around my mouth and continued to look at her. She looked a bit like me. Blonde hair, and tall for a woman. She told me that she was around five foot seven. I was around five foot six or so. She was really skinny too. I think that that was from her time for when she was sick, though. I finally turned and walked away from her, but not before covering her up in the blanket, and saying good-bye to her and then blowing her a kiss. Tears started streaming down my face again as I turned and left her for dead.

I was about to open the door, when it suddenly opened, as if on its own. But low and behold, my father was standing on the other side of that door.

I was shocked! He never came home this early! Something must be wrong!

"Father," I asked, "What's wrong?" I was getting all worried, and thought that I was starting to feel the creeps coming on.

"Kaylee," He said, starting out slowly, and that's when I knew that something was wrong here. "I know that you aren't going to like this bumpkin, but I have gotten you a job at the palace. And you are set to leave tomorrow at dawn." This was all news to me, and I can't believe that he did that! Mother dies, and then right after, Father comes back to the house early with news like this! I couldn't stand this. I threw my arms up into the air and screamed at the top of my lungs. Father winced at this outburst of mine, then he seemed to notice my face for the first time since he came back to the house today. He started to reach out with this hand to touch my cheek, to try and wipe my tears away, but I moved away before he could do that. He dropped his arm and looked down at the ground as if ashamed about what he had just done.

"Mother's dead," I said flatly with as little emotion as I possibly could. His eyes widened with this new information, but he kept his head down. I decided to push him aside so that I could leave since he wasn't moving away from blocking our wooden door. Then I left, walking away like I had somewhere really important that I needed to be.