text: That’s the spirit!
  
  
  Emissaries arrive at the capital from the neighboring kingdom of Irelandshire pleading for assistance with a dragon problem. It seems the fiend has been soaring around the country, torching towns, devouring livestock, looting treasuries and snatching young ladies from their bedchambers. Naturally, you don your shining armor and volunteer to help rid them of the menace once and for all. Princess Anne kisses you goodbye as you ride off to hunt down the winged beast.
  
  
  Finding the dragon’s lair – a cave high up a tall mountain with half the forest burnt to ashes – proves easier than you anticipated. No one ever said dragons were discreet. The march up the mountain presents more of a challenge. Far too steep for your steed, you hike up on foot. You soon learn hiking in full plate armor is not easy. Every step requires sheer willpower and brute strength. Sweat pores off you so fast you fear you are going to rust, so you strip down to your leathers and continue to the top light as feather, just like the old days when you first practiced with Jon in the yard. 
  
  
  “Well at least you aren’t a knight in shining armor,” says the dragon as you enter his cave. The behemoth is resting on a hoard of gold, jewels, swords, cups, and other valuable crap because of course he is.
  
  
  “Pardon me?”
  
  
  “Do you have any idea how annoying it is fighting knights in shining armor? I just fry them with a nice blast of fire. They’re too heavy and clunky to dodge. No challenge at all. You should see the nice collection of armor I have though. I could outfit an entire empire.”
  
  
  “Actually, I stripped my armor coming up. I got sweaty.”
  
  
  The dragon sighs. “Well you’re smarter than most at least.”
  
  
  “Your days are done dragon!” You prepare to make a heroic speech, but cut it off. “Wait, where are the noble ladies?”
  
  
  “Didn’t you see all the dung piles on the mountainside?”
  
  
  “You ate them!?”
  
  
  “What did you think I do with them? Keep them as company?”
  
  
  “You bastard!”
  
  
  You draw your sword. Fate has finally arrived. Are you up to the task?
  > You attack his belly.
  Everyone knows the underbelly of a dragon is vulnerable. If you get in close, your sword can rip through him like hot crocodile shears through flesh.
  
  
  You charge the dragon with sword in hand. The dragon blasts fire. You have too much forward momentum; there is no way to dodge this one. The world slows to crawl and your entire life flashes before your eyes: all that time spent mucking shit and selling cabbages, long hours training in the yard with Jon, your sexless courting of Princess Anne. Wow, your life sucked.
  
  
  Well, maybe you can take the dragon with you: go out a hero and all that.
  
  
  You grit your teeth and shut your eyes as you barrel into the firestorm. The stink of charred flesh and burning hair cloak you. Your blood boils, lips sear off, eyes burst and brain tingles as it begins to melt inside your skull. Somehow, you are still conscious as you storm through and plunge your sword through the dragon’s soft underbelly bounce your sword off the dragon’s rigid scales. Turns out those underbelly scales are just as tough as the rest of them. Who knew?
  
  
  The dragon chuckles as you collapse to the cave floor in a smoldering heap. “Foolish bravery, mortal, is foolishness all the same.” The dragon admires you a moment longer before he devours you as a midday snack.
  
  
  If it serves as any consolation, your remains go on to fertilize several small trees… which promptly get burnt down.