The Tales Of The Troublesome Three

How to Lull a Dragon

"You and Alexander seem to get along quite well." Alaya says to Tom. "What can I say, I've always wanted a brother figure." Alaya smiled. "Did you warn him about the affair?" Tom looked at Alaya and handed her a potato. "Ofcourse, I did."

"How 'bout the musical?" Tom smirked at Alaya. "That's a surprise he'll get to see when he's up there." Tom points at the sky. "Ya know, we keep on getting distracted." Hugo sighs. "But at least we got good beer from it."

"Yeah." Alaya sighed.

...

After a short break and a few minutes of walking, they finnaly arived at fools gold.

"Alright," Alaya clapped her hands. "No more distractions this time." The rest of the group noded and slowly entered the cave. Right before Alaya could pull out the boulder potion, Tom pulls out his cannon and aims it at the boulder.

He fires and a large chunk of rock fell out. Tom smiles. He's clearly satisfied on what he made. Alaya shrugged and poured a small drop of the grey liquid on the boulder. The boulder starts to melt a little. It looks like a disgusting grey goo.

Tom cringes. Hugo quite naturally puts his hand inside the gooey liquid and start working his way through it. He doesn't even flinch.

After a couple of minutes of digging through the goo they finaly reached another small room with a rock door. Alaya and Hugo clean themselves while a pristine, clean Tom stands by the door.

"Take your time, we have a dragon behind this door." Tom says sarcastically. Hugo smirks. He takes a handfull of the goo from the rock and flings it at Tom. Tom shrieks as the goo touches his face. "Not so pretty anymore, huh?"

Alaya reached in her bag and pulled out a napkin. "Before this escelates further," Alaya throws the napkin at Tom. "Clean yourself up."

"Hugo," Alaya faces hugo. "Yes ma'am?" Hugo responds. "Be a bard, would you and play us a song." Hugo sighs as he pulls out his lute. The lute is a beuatiful bronze colour. It's fire proof and practically unbreakable. "If that's what you want."

Hugo starts playing this beautiful melody and for a moment, everything feels content. The party felt like the world does not matter much to them. What matters is what they're experiencing and feeling.

The party goes quiet as Hugo plucks the string of the lute. The ring of the melody in the cave starts to slow to a stop as the song finishes.

"Remind me why Hugo doesn't play the lute more often." Alaya says to Tom. "Sheer laziness." Hugo places his lute behind his back in it's compartment. "That's not the reason, you idiot."

"Then, what is it, mister musician?" Hugo clicks his tounge. "Doesn't matter." Hugo opens the door and enters the inner section of the cave. Alaya gave Tom a worried look. Tom responds with a shrug and goes through the door. Alaya follows behind.

The cave is dark and damp, the walls are cold and smoothe. The party spots a shimmering light coming from deeper within the cave. Tom quickly hurries to the light, leaving the two behind. "You alright?" Alaya says worriedly to Hugo. "I'm ight."

They finally catch up with Tom to see a giant pile of gold and rubies. Tom is trying to get as much gold as possible and shoving them into his bag and pockets.  On top of the gold pile lies a giant, sleeping red dragon.

Alaya notices that if Tom makes too much noise or moves a wrong gold piece, the dragon might wake up. Alaya and Hugo start to panic. They both start gesturing Tom to stop but it's too late.

Tom moves a penny and the pile starts shifting downward. The dragon starts to wake up and the heroes stop in their tracks in fear.

The dragon looks at them angrily and proceeds to open it's mouth. Fire shoots out but barely touches the team. Arthur is sheilding them from the flames. Arthur, who is immune to fire, doesnt feel a thing but pressure on it's back.

Arthur is protecting them but that wont last long, for he is a small dragon.

Alaya starts to panic. She looks behind her and see Hugo jumping on Feta. She tries to stop him but Feta's wings are too hot.

Hugo flies over to the occupied dragon's side. Feta blows a fireball at it's neck. The dragon did'nt het damaged. It turned around and faced Hugo and Feta.

Hugo reached for his lute but then the dragon's wing hit them. Hugo takes little damage by the throw, but Feta, she acted as a cussion for Hugo so she took the full brunt of the blow. Feta is alive, but is seriously injured.

Alaya, seeing what happened, quickly rushed over to the two and healed them up.

Hugo stood up, a lute in his hand, a broken heart and a mission. Hugo stepped up on the gold pile and put on his dragon scale mask.

He slowly went up the pile of gold plucking the strings of his lute. Carefull, as to not fall off the pile. The melody rings in everyone's ears as the dragon stopped rampaging.

Hugo inched closer and closer to the dragon. The dragon stopped in its tracks and just stared at Hugo playing the song. The mighty dragon started to sway. Slowly and steadily, the dragon felt content and layed down.

As the song slowed to a stop, the dragon soundly drifted back to sleep.

Hugo calmly walks down to the party and sits down next to Feta. "You did great, bud. Rest up." Hugo says quietly to Feta. "He'll be fine. Just let 'em rest on Arthur." Alaya says reassuringly. Hugo nods and placed Feta on Arthur's back.

"D'you find the scroll?" Hugo asked. "Found it!" Tom says from behind the pile of gold. Tom tosses the scroll over to Alaya and they quickly and quietly leave.

They walked out and closed the door behind them. "How'd you know what to do? We would've died if it weren't for you." Alaya says. Arthur snorts. "And you." Alaya pets Arthur's snout. "Heh." Hugo packs his lute.

"When I was just a young lad, I was the best bard of my old village. I was nicknamed the 'Golden Bard'. I would play everyone songs in return for gold. One day, a man came to me and requested i play a song he made. The song was soothing and beautiful in it's own way. So I agreed. I played the song in the town centre. The crowd cheered wildly. As i continued the song, a dragon, came and killed everyone on sight. All except me. It killed my wife." Hugo explained.

"I'm.. I'm so sorry." Alaya says. "It's fine. I should be happy it spared me." Tom scratched the back of his head in guilt. "Wow. Look, Hugo, i'm sorry ." Tom frowned. "Ummm, jerky?" Tom handed Hugo a piece of jerky.

And for a moment, Hugo and Tom forgot how much they hated each other.

Hi. Author here! I originally wanted to make this chapter funnier and revolve around Tom bribing a dragon with jerky. But i felt that Hugo doesn't get much attention in this series. Hope you dont mind this more serious chapter! Btw, thanks for 100+ reads!