It was raining. And 3AM. And I was being eaten by a dragon. I don't know how it happened; one second I was sleeping peacefully (in a tent outside it's nest) and the next thing you know I'm being crushed between a huge set of jaws like a nut in a nutcracker. I don't usually wake up like this in case you were wondering. No, usually I wake up at a reasonable time in a comfortable bed with my limbs fully intact not screaming in any way at all. It was going to be one of *those* mornings, then.
I blindly reached for the knife I usually have tucked inside my belt which, unsurprisingly, was missing. Fabulous. I decided to do the only thing my half-alseep brain could think of: punch the dragon on the nose. As I did so, it let out a deafening roar which woke up the rest of me almost immediately. I punched the dragon again, forcing it to drop me on the floor. I noticed my knife lying about 5 metres away from my left leg so I scrambled to my feet to go and get it.
The dragon saw me and tried to bite me again. I rolled out of the way and stood up near the entrance of whatever cave I had found myself in. I stared at the dragon, knife in hand, ready to face whatever trials it threw at me, ready to take down this formidable foe and become a hero across the kingdom. It was at that point when I realised that dragons can breathe fire.
Ten minutes of screaming an running later, I had arrived at the Pinebridge village hall. I had absolutley no idea where Pinebridge even was but, being the kind hearted and generous elf I was, I figured it would be a nice thing to do warning their mayor that an angry fire-breathing monster lizard had probably followed me to their village and was going to eat them all and burn their posessions. I tried my best not to sound like the complete coward I knew I was but, come on. If you woke up really early in the morning to the sound of your bones being shattered by a huge, gaping mouth then you would probably be a little scared too. The mayor, despite me explaining (truthfully or not) just how deadly dragons are and how lucky I was to survive, seemed somewhat dissapointed in me.
It turned out that Pinebridge was well known for having the largest amount of dragon slayers in the whole kingdom. The people there regularly went out hunting the huge beasts and the particular specimen I had faced was just an elderly dragon who couldn't breathe fire at all. They were planning on using said dragon to help train the Pinebridge children in hunting and such but it was deemed too weak even for that. The dragon that I believed had nearly killed me was too weak for children to fight,
Watching my self-esteem vanish into thin air like that must have made the mayor feel sorry for me because he offered me a place in this hunting party. Apparently they were going after a 'red ninewood dragon' or something. Whatever it was, it sounded dangerous and not fun in the slightest but, being the kind-hearted and generous elf I was, I accepted the mayor's offer to go on this adventure. All that remained was for me to meet the hunting party and then I woukd be off. I wondered how they would greet me. Evidently, they did so with gratuitous amounts of sarcasm.
