Princess Rescues Dragon -- Gallifreya
Sir Kevin the Persistent lived up to his name. He did not, alas, live up to some of the more important laws of chivalry. He had studied up on Dragons and knew the best time to attack Trillwhistle.
The fact that he waited for her next shedding season was telling indeed. He would strike when his opponent was weak. He would arm himself with everything he needed to use to destroy one in its strength, so he would be assured of victory.
Princess Amanda knew very well how low he could go. He had rescued her from the Trolls, only to turn out to be worse than her original captors.
What Sir Kevin didn't know was that Amanda had been growing outside the rigid borders of her own society. She had Dwarf-forged armour, now. And fighting lessons from the Berzerker Orcs of Fangspire. She'd learned magic from the Fae of Tanglebriar and picked up potion-making from the Alchemists of Anunnkai. She had sold her hair for the secrets of summoning to the Witch of Soulsuck Swamp.
She was, in short, a changed woman. And she was prepared for most things.
It had been a busy pair of years, with little in the way of travel time, because Dragons have a way of overcoming most obstacles in the world.
So when she found Sir Kevin fighting a weakened and blinded Trillwhistle, she launched herself at him without a further thought. She downed a potion of strength in quick gulps as he reeled from the shock of her attack. Waited for him to strike the one he claimed to love.
She did not have to wait long.
Amanda fought fiercely. Not like a lion, as the poets might write, but worse. She fought like a honey-badger. Dangerous, unstoppable, indomitable, and with hardly a care for herself beyond making certain she could land the next blow.
Sir Kevin had equipped himself with the best that his people could make. Amanda had the best in the entire world. It should have been no surprise that she won.
But he did not submit until he could no longer pull himself and his battered and ruined armour upright one more time.
"How dare you," he panted. "You are mine by right of conquest. I won you!"
"You talk of me like I'm a prize in a county fair. I am no thing for you to add to your list of chattels, Sir Kevin. Learn that of all women, or pay the consequences."
"You've unmanned me. What more could I lose but my life?"
She laughed at him. And cursed him in the True Tongue of the Fae. "May you speak the unbounded truth whenever you talk to a woman." And she let him live with that.
He would learn, in time, what a curse that was.
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