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The Coward and the Dragon
This is the story of how Rwen Yrille, the biggest coward ever to flee through Coeur d'Ennui, defeated the great gray dragon Anaranth. A lot of folk say this tale ain't true, as that rat would run from a lizard's shadow, and were it any other dragon they'd be right. Wouldn't be no more to the story then but "once there was a foul-smelling fool of a Yrille who wandered off and got hisself et," and that'd be that.
But it was Anaranth that Rwen met up against, and this is how it went.
Once there was a dragon that lived in an old Twinsie temple called Desplorin. This wasn't just any dragon, if such a thing can be said to exist. This was a dragon so twisted up with Twinsie magic that she wasn't half living no more. Her scales had more cracks than a Maolite's mind and her heart was harder than a Kliastan's mercy. She was older than sin and meaner besides, and her name was Anaranth Grayscale.
So ornery was Anaranth, so messed-up mean and tempersome, that when Old Man Death came by to claim her, she just laughed and blew him down. Old Man Death got up grumbling, brushed off his reaper-swords, and said he'd come back later to get her. But in the end it was a Yrille that laid the dragon low, and not just any Yrille but Rwen.
Now them as hail from Coeur d'Ennui already know the Yrilles like a dog knows his fleas, and Rwen was the worst of the lot. He was lazy, dirty and dishonest, and had never done an honest day's work in his life. How he got to Desplorin was, he'd passed out drunk outside a tavern, and a bunch of adventurers scooped him up and stuck him in a sack, figuring they'd roll him down the hallways to set off any traps. Well, they hauled him off to Desplorin, and then the lot of 'em got themselves kilt, so by the time Rwen sobered up enough to crawl out of his sack, there wasn't nobody left but a pile of dead bodies and an evil old dragon staring him in the eye.
Rwen wasn't that big a fool. He ran away. And when Rwen Yrille ran, a zephyr riding greased lightning couldn't catch him. He ran so fast, he left his shadow behind, and he had to come back and get it and he was still gone before the dragon could blink.
He ran and ran until his legs were near dropping off, but he couldn't find his way out of Desplorin. That old temple was a maze, and the Yrilles never were the kind of rats much good at mazes. Finally his laziness caught up with his cowardice, and Rwen sat down by a pillar, huffing and puffing and saying to himself: "Well hell, if it's going to be this much work, I might as well just go slay that dragon."
So he got himself up and walked back to the dragon, and he drew his little needle-sword and struck up a good hero's pose, because his first plan was to make the dragon choke to death laughing.
Too bad for him, Anaranth didn't have much of a sense of humor. She unhinged her jaw and unleashed her first deadly breath at him: a great cloud of stink, so bad it'd make your nose shrivel up and crawl into your skull to die, so bad it'd putrefy your lungs to slime right inside your chest. Half the dead bodies lying around her feet had perished from this breath.
Rwen just stuck his whiskery nose up into the air, took a good sniff, and said: "That the best you can do? I've smelled worse from my cousins after a dinner of beans and beer."
The dragon roared in rage, drew a deep inhale, and unleashed her second deadly breath at him: a steaming fog of disease, so foul it'd turn your blood to pus in your veins and rot the skin right off your bones and then raise cankerous boils on them. The other half of the dead bodies lying around her feet had perished from this breath.
Rwen yawned and leaned on his sword and said: "Guess you never met Mama Rum."
Now the dragon was real mad. She howled and she stamped the ground and she drew on her third breath, the deadliest of all, the one that was just pure oblivion and didn't even leave bodies on the ground. And Rwen didn't have any wisecrack for this. He knew there wasn't nothing he could do.
So he ran away, ran like he'd never run before. He dodged her first blow. He dodged her second one. But then he ran out of places to run, and there wasn't nowhere left to go, and the dragon was raring up with her third blow.
Well, Rwen didn't know what else to do, so he jumped right up on that dragon's nose and ran down her spine to her back, and when Anaranth twisted around to let loose her breath, she hit herself square between the wings with the deadliest breath of all.
And that was how Rwen Yrille defeated the dragon that Old Man Death couldn't humble, and slew Anaranth Grayscale. They say he took that dragon's hoard and spent it on a cathouse, but if that's so, it ain't there no more. Stands to reason, really: even a dragon couldn't have enough treasure to keep a Yrille brothel afloat.
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