Kithrin's Cerebral Flatulence
AN: this was inspired by Odd Ideas By: Rorschach's Blot Chapter 106
AN2: to anybody rereading these you'll notice the chapter order has changed, I found FF has an option to rearrange the chapters, so now chapters to a story are together instead of scattered.
AN3: you might notice some characters are light on descriptions, if I continue this as a real fic, I'll fix that.
Rival Princesses
Chapter One: the engagement
It was a dark day in the kingdom, the princess has been kidnapped by a dragon.
Truthfully? The peasants, soldiers, merchants, and knights would be celebrating the fact, and the king would be raising a glass to toast his long friend the dragon king who had done the deed, if not for the fact that it was a torrential downpour out with a cloud cover that made the city as dark as midnight.
So yes, it was a dark day in the kingdom, literally.
The reason why nobody was in a rush to save her, despite the fact that ancient laws would have the if male, rescuer marry into the family, was the same reason why they would be celebrating, and the reason why the eldest daughter of two had been passed over for the position of heir.
She was a complete and utter bitch, one with only a single apparent redeeming quality. She was slightly below-average intelligence, mean, cruel, mean-spirited, and a voice that makes people cringe from the first word.
Her sole redeeming feature was she was the most beautiful young woman in not only that kingdom, but in all the surrounding ones as well.
The king was irritated, not that his daughter had been kidnapped, that was honestly a relief, but the fact that he was expected to send somebody to rescue her, not only by his subjects, despite them being glad she was gone, but by the dragon king himself, so that he could be rid of her.
Pacing back and forth he considered his options, he could order his knights and troops to save her, although most would rather die than marry his daughter.
He could try and get one of the rare female nights to do so, but many would rather desert than help her...
or...
or...
He smirked.
Making sure his regal garb was immaculate, he strode out of his lavish rooms, only stopping to give an order to one of the servants he passed, "Get me the Court Wizard, tell him I have need of that ritual he mentioned to me in passing the other day. The one that I said I doubted I would ever use."
"Yes Sir," came the reply of the servant, as he went to find the wizard.
He just hoped that the wizard wouldn't invite him for tea. The guy was nice enough, just the tea was atrocious. The last person that had tea with the man was stuck on the john for twelve hours.
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The wizard had his bag packed quickly, he was excited, the ritual was power consuming, but he knew he'd be fine, and with a spring in his step, he had left his delicious tea behind, and was out the door, not even asking the servant to join him for once.
Half an hour later he was in the throne room and clutching his chest. The wizard was an old man, and a half an hour dash caring twenty pounds of material isn't easy.
The king was watching his most trusted friend and advisor catch his breath. The man was seemingly immortal and had served his great-great-great-great-grandfather, and the paintings of the wizard showed that he hadn't changed a bit.
According to rumor the man had screwed up a ritual, one involving a pair of mating platypuses, 3 drops of alcohol, half a turn of an hourglass, the broken hourglass, and twenty pounds of a rare overseas import called wasabi.
"Sir, did you mean what the message said? I can really try it?"
"Yes, yes you can."
"The wizard quickly started setting up, and he said, "exactly what parameters do you want? This summoning brings in people who meet the criteria set."
"Should be a hero able to rescue my daughter, which shouldn't be hard, the dragon king is most likely willing the play dead to get rid of her by this point, dumb enough to bring her back, and so stupendously stupid not to object to marrying her. Or just so ignorant of the rules that
Oh, and he must be willing to be summoned. I don't want to take the person from their home."
"Yes sir! Give me about five, no make it ten minutes and you'll have your hero!"
ten minutes later the man had completed the ritual, and with an unnecessary disco ball of light effects, and a blast of smoke, two figures could be seen, one had his shirt in the hand of the other, and a bloody nose, the second, much bigger one, had a bloody fist.
They were also both seven., although the first figure looked younger.
"Guards, separate them!"
The bigger child struggled while the smaller one couldn't stand anymore. The Court wizard started tending the boy with his very limited healing magic, it was fortunate that the boy was in decent shape, beyond some bruising and a broken nose.
While the court wizard was tending to the other boy, the king was speaking to the bigger one after ordering some snacks for them. "So, you're saying that that that boy is a good for nothing freak and that he deserved to get beat by you?" the king said while leaning back on his throne. The boy looked rather dull, and greedy based on how he was scarfing down the plate of cookies.
Not to mention he really didn't think the other boy deserved to be beaten by someone that out-massed him by nearly double his mass.
He smirked, and motioned a guard to him, and whispered a message. Then turning to the boy he said with a smirk, "how would you like to be a prince? A dragon has captured my eldest daughter, and since nobody in my realm deems themselves worthy of her, you can have the chance to marry her when you get older and be a prince!"
He managed to say that last sentence with a straight face, inside he was cackling.
"How would I beat a dragon?" the boy asked with a greedy gleam in his eyes.
"The dragon sleeps from high noon to sundown, so you could sneak in without trouble and bring her out. I will provide you with something to keep her quiet until you return so as not to wake the dragon."
"Yes sir!" the boy shouted and when the king motioned a guard they left to outfit the boy with something as dignified as they could get with his rolls of fat.
"Wizard, how is the other boy?"
"Bad sir, I've seen beggars that were in better shape, the good news is I can have an apprentice! If that's okay with you that is."
"He has the talent?" the kings asked.
"Oh, lots of it! I got him awake and talking, I think he might have been brought here with the 'hero' part of the summoning. According to the magics I used he is credited with destroying a warlock."
"And the other boy is from the stupid part?"
"Yes, I think since they were touching when it happened the spell considered them one person, that fit the criteria."
"Very good, I will have you and your apprentice accompany that other boy while he seals his fate. I also need you to create something to silence my daughter and perhaps make her a tad more obedient until she's back at the castle, it would ruin my plan if she caused a ruckus too early."
"As you wish," the magic-user left with a smile, helping the boy up as he passed, and bringing him to his new quarters.
"Guard," the king started. "If that other fool of a boy brings my daughter back, he will have as much authority as my daughter, almost none, spread the word.
"Yes sir!"
"I love it when a good plan comes together."
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A week later the boy came back with his eldest daughter and missing the other boy. The wizard had an odd look on his face, he looked like he was caught between laughing his ass off and bashing his head into the nearest wall.
"What happened?" the king asked his friend.
"Well the rescue of your eldest went without a hitch, the problem was your youngest snuck in as an extra stable hand. And that's when things got... complicated."
"Complicated?"
"I need to look at the records, but I don't think this situation has come up before, so I'm heading there now, and you can expect a visit from the Dragon king. An apprentice for two days and he's already in trouble!"
"Well... crap," the king muttered.
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A day later, a massive dragon flew over the castle, the guards were warned that he was coming so that they didn't attack, the dragon was followed by a much smaller one, with two passengers.
As the massive dragon approached the king's personal balcony its form changed becoming a well-built dragon-man hybrid wearing a crown, a pair of pants, and nothing else. Using his wings he maneuvered himself to the balcony, before becoming fully human-looking. He helped the passengers off the smaller dragon, which then shifted to what looked like a seventeen-year-old dragon-girl wearing what looked like a kilt and breast band she landed herself and unlike the other dragon, didn't change, because she lacked the fine control needed to go fully human.
She had fiery red hair and scaled, violet eyes, and a figure that screamed tomboy.
The other girl was his daughter and was well... physically plain not ugly, not beautiful, and couldn't even be called fairly cute. brown shoulder-length hair, brown eyes, large glasses, and below-average curves for even a ten-year-old.
He mind though, she was sharp, and the worst someone could say about her attitude was that she was coolly distant, unfailingly polite, but distant with a soft, but uncaring voice.
This is why the king was wondering why she was glaring at the dragon girl.
Well good, at least she has some fire in her.
The dragon king in human form, unusually, walked past the king and grabbed the strongest bottle the other king had and drank half of it.
"What happened? You normally don't start chugging the hard alcohol."
"Your daughter decided to try and rescue your other daughter, something about not trapping a poor boy in marriage with her sister. Long story short... she took a wrong turn and ended up in my daughter's branch of the caverns, and my daughter thought she was a prince and tried to capture her, and well..."
The dragon paused to down half of what was left in the bottle... he wasn't even buzzed but he could pretend. "they ended up in a fight, somehow chains, that weren't even in the room happened, and they were bound together with a single lock holding the chains shit, and the key out of reach. Every scrying spell I tried to use just gets a massive dust cloud when I look at the event with random limbs, heads, and pieces of chain emerging at random and apparently inconsistent points."
He paused to laugh in a semi-hysterical manner, "my daughter was in dragon form you see, and so the dust could was big enough to hide her completely, and your daughter's head appears out of one end, and her hand holding a length of chain at the other.
Anyway, they were magic binding chains so she couldn't change form to get out. Then the boy there waltzes in and frees them both at the exact same time since all the chains simply vanished when he used the key."
"And tradition dictates that only the first princess rescue counts, but he had two at the same time," the human king replied with a groan.
"Precisely, not to mention when we set this whole system up, we didn't think of a human saving a dragon princess."
"My friend, why don't we make a new precedent?"
"Oh? Like?" the dragon king replied intrigued.
"If a man rescues multiple princesses at the exact same time, or so close that it can't be called he marries both, if a woman does the same to princes, she gets both as well. And if a dragon rescues opposite gender royalty or nobility, and the dragon can transform into close enough to a human shape they bound by the tradition and vice versa."
The dragon king paused, it did neatly cover the bases and set rules up for future possibilities, but he added in "The multiple rescues must be unavoidable."
"Agreed," said the human king.
The two looked over to the three younger ones and blinked.
The human girl was glaring daggers at the dragon-girl, and the dragon-girl looked like she wanted to freeze the human with her angry glare, and both were holding one of the boy's hands.
Harry had learned in the short time he had been around the dragon girl that she was almost passion personified. She loved, hated, and/or cared for things with all of her being.
She had taken an instant liking to him for some reason... and an instant hatred for the other girl, but it was odd that her anger was so cold and controlled.
The other girl seemed to not care about him at all, and only the dragon-girl could get a rise out of her, but she stayed near him even when it was obvious she didn't need to.
And now it looked like the only reason why they haven't leapt for each other's throats was the fact that he had sat between them and let each take a hand.
He had no idea of why the two were fighting, or why they wanted to be near him, but he was doing his best to keep the peace.
Of course being a stranger to this world he really had no idea of the odd good friendship between the king and the king of dragons, or the strange, to him, traditions that have run rampant in the world for over a thousand years.
The fact that the first male that rescues a woman of noble of higher birth, or female that rescues a man of noble of higher birth, admittingly a rarer occurrence, from a hostage situation involving nonhumans, most often dragons, bur ogre's, trolls, and other beings are possible, but most of those are more likely to eat the hostage than hold it.
With dragons, according to tradition, they can ransom the noble or royal back … after six months.
The human king wasn't cruel enough to leave his daughter with the dragon king for that long, well cruel to the dragon king that is.
Shaking his head he turned to the other king and said, "so... how soon after they are sixteen should we plan the wedding.?"
"Che, let's have it a week after the boy's since he's the younger one. That way he can have a royal birthday party and then marry without delay... I'm not looking forward to explaining this to my mate," the dragon king finished with a sigh.
"Better you than me my friend, better you than me," the human king replied while patting his friend on the shoulder,/. "Do you want me to house the three for now? You can take them for a while once you have appropriate places fr them, as I don't think you want to put them in your hostage holding cell, as I can attest, that place is bloody uncomfortable, at least my wife had rescued me within the week."
The dragon king snorted in amusement. "that's true, although you were a much better conversationalist than most hostages, I'll have something sorted out in a couple of months, have your people bring appropriate furnishings, and take it out of what I'll be swiping in next months raid."
"See you then! Give the knight that will be there in gold and red an extra smacking around, will you? He was looking towards my youngest daughter, and he's hitting fifty."
The dragon-man let loose a burst of riotous laughter as he turned to leave. "With pleasure my friend, with pleasure."
As he watched his friend go, he looked towards the two children and teen dragon-girl, and facepalmed while saying, "What a goddamn mess."
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End chapter.