Dragon Quest: A Hero's Journey
Disclaimer: I do not own anything that is related, remotely related, or is in the game, Dragon Quest/Warrior I. It is owned by Enix, Nintendo, and all related companies. All Characters, Stories, and anything that is not in, related to, or remotely related to the game, was solely created for creative and entertainment purposes. Thank you for your time.
Author's Note: I have been toying with the idea of creating a Dragon Quest/Warrior novelization fan fic for some time, fan fiction novelization of games being one of the things that had originally drawn me to start writing fan fiction far too many years ago. One of my earliest fan fics attempts had, in fact, been a horrible attempt at doing a fan fic of one of the later games in this series and it had been when I was around the age of ten or so. Now that I'm a great number of years older, and a great deal better at writing, I think it is a good time to flesh out this idea but on a different game then I had originally intended. Granted I know others have done it much better than I but I figure here is my attempt.
I should point out that for the creative purpose of this story, I will take a bit of liberty with the canon of the first Dragon Quest/Warrior game and spinning it in a way that may or may not suit the story, as well as some of the actual places in the game to better suit my thoughts (and the fact that the game came out in the mid to late 1980's in the US and gaming technology wasn't as advanced as it is today, so adding extra things and places into a game wasn't as feasible as it is now). This is why I am writing this as "fan fiction", I do not imply that anything canon is going to be used properly or used in full. I am also going to have a few parts a bit darker here and there, if at all. If anyone has a problem with the way this fanfic is written, my writing in general, or any other reason, the back button is there for a reason - I suggest using it if you don't like the story instead of throwing insults at someone who most likely will start laughing like a maniac instead of being insulted. I've probably heard worse from people.
Although I am using, or at least trying to use, the original name for the series I am going by the North American NES version for the names of the towns, characters, and such. This is what I am the most familiar with and the version I grew up with. I realize that not everyone likes it, but here it is and this is how things are going to be with my version of this. Also, if there is anything that I might have gotten wrong at some point feel free to correct me, I much rather go back and correct something now rather then later.
Prologue - Tomas
He had spent most of his adult life on the run from whatever had decided to come after him, often on the open water where he couldn't be captured easily and finding places that didn't have a current bounty on his head or he hadn't angered a few dozen people or more, most of those being a Royal Family or two. Oh he had a higher risk of the ship he was on being sunk if he was on the ocean blue, thus increasing his chances of seeing the other side of death, yet he favored himself to be rather cunning to toe the all too familiar line of death and stay on the side of the living. He had spent a few months pf his life in a dungeon somewhere, often not the same one, getting out after a short time later, and told himself he would not like to be on the inside of a cell again only to see it a few years later and a week added to a sentence. He would do something worse, get thrown into that pitiful dungeon cell, be let out, and do the whole damn thing over again; such the way his life was. It was in his blood after all, something he didn't learn until well after he landed in a place that he shouldn't have been in.
However Tomas knew something was off the moment he stepped foot on the land of Alefgard the week before. The first thing he noticed was how dreary everything seemed to be in the port the ship had landed at, there wasn't even any scantly clad women prowling the edges of the wharf, looking for troubled sailors so that they could take the edge off of their perilous journeys on the sea. He had spent only a short amount of time by the wharf, so unlike the other port of calls he had been at, and tried to find the closest inn that was at least a quarter full so he wouldn't feel like every bar maid and inn keep was watching him. Even the inn he had finally chosen, The Gray Goose, only had four patrons and all four had been there for quite some time from what he had understood. The Gray Goose was the only name he managed to get out of anyone, the name of the town seemed to be even more elusive then the street walkers around the wharf.
The second thing that Tomas found to be odd, was the lack of activity not only in the docks but also the town itself. Even the small ports on the other side of the world, the kind that saw, at most, three merchant-class ships in six years or longer, had more activity then this one did; the sailors that he had sailed with didn't even disembark to get a taste of dry land before their next destination. He was barely two steps on solid land before he heard the yells to bring the anchor up, the ship hadn't even bothered to unload any of it's cargo before it sailed away and left Tomas high and dry on this land. At least he had been paid for his troubles and a little bit more for good faith; if he had known what kind of trouble lay ahead he wouldn't have gotten off, either. The townsfolk hadn't even bothered to even look at the stranger who had come into their land, they kept about their business and ignored him unless they had to. At the time Tomas thought it had to do with them not taking kindly to strangers, oh wrong he was.
The third thing that was out of place was the fact that he hadn't even gotten his worth out of his five gold coin - five! - a night room. By the time Tomas had gotten settled in and was about to call down for a tub of hot water, the screams from the streets below startled him so much that he nearly tripped over his own two feet to open the window to see what the commotion was. His first thought was that his mind was playing tricks on him, there was no possible way that slimes were swarming the streets of the town. His knowledge of the various shades and strength of slime was limited to the few outings he had as a child and that they weren't exactly strong or hardy but put them together in a swarm? It was better to run away then to try and fight the hoard of these simple-minded creatures.
He also knew that slimes sometimes proceeded something much more fierce if they were driven to do something much worse then wreck havoc on crops or make a traveler's journey that much harder. Which was why as soon as he slammed the wooden panes to his window closed, he gathered the few items he had with him and found the quickest, and safest, way out of there. It didn't take long for that "something much more fierce" to follow the wave of slimes; by the time Tomas had gotten down to the common area of The Gray Goose the slimes had all but vanished completely and there was this eerie silence that followed. He stood at the entrance of the inn, listening to the silence that proceeded the invasion, then heard one of the most terrible, gut wrenching sounds he would eventually learn to despise.
It was the roar of a dragon.
Tomas had heard of dragons before, they had been the tales drunken sailors spoke of and the kind of bedtime stories mother's told their children at night. He had always scoffed at the idea that dragons existed, they didn't exist as no one had proven their existence and only the most bookish scholars knew which dusty tomes to look in for sketches of the different kinds. There were creatures that looked similar to dragons, he had seen those up close and personal during his travels, but they weren't actual dragons or had any actual relations to them. However he had always brushed the notion off that dragons were real and that there were few places in this world where they had made their home as a tale of those who had seen too many mugs of ale in some out of the way tavern. Had he known that dragons existed on Alefgard, and he was the sole reason why the green-scaled dragon was circling overhead, he wouldn't have bothered to disembark off of that ship and would've kept going to parts unknown. He would've stayed on the ship, went anywhere but there, and stayed as far away as possible.
By the time Tomas and the remaining villagers who had managed to find shelter in the wharf, the entire town had been burned off of Alefgard's already small map. There they stayed for the night, listening to the screams of the town folk that hadn't been able to escape, the rush of the dragon's wings as it beat down on the wharf, and the flames of the dragon's fire hitting against the building. When Tomas asked why the wharf hadn't gone up in flames one of the town folk said that the wharf was protected against dragon fire, or so an old wizard once claimed to be able to enchant objects to be nearly dragon-proof. He didn't ask why this so-called 'wizard' hadn't bothered to do so with the rest of the village, he kept the rest of his opinions to himself as he and the remaining folk settled into a uncomfortable and nearly sleepless night holed up in some forsaken wharf with a dragon on the outside.
When morning came, with the sounds of the dragon having disappeared some hours before, the villagers took to the streets to see what had become of their town and what they could salvage. Tomas had been the last one out and the destruction of the village was a sight he hadn't seen before: the wharf notwithstanding, every single building in the town had burned straight to the ground. What hadn't would soon fall in heaps of charred remains, blackened bodies laid where they had been scorched, everything had been destroyed by one winged beast; this was not the image he had wanted to wake up to. He hadn't even gotten ten steps out of the wharf when he stepped on something, looking down he saw he had accidentally stepped on the remains of someone's child; he managed to find a place out of the way so he could empty what little contents of his stomach held into the burned brush. That was not something he would be able to get out of his mind for a long time coming.
It took a while for the remaining town folk to shift through what remained of their village before they decided it would be too much trouble to rebuild the town and would split to go to different towns along the land. What they could salvage would be taken with them to go north to Garinham or to the south-east to Brecconary; those that wished to trek further east to Kol, or try their luck to head even further south-east to Cantlin, could do so. Tomas froze at the mention of Cantlin, he had heard that name many times in his childhood and had once vowed to see the path to that town; was it pure luck he had landed on Alefgard where this town was located? It had to be, but he made a decision right then and there not to head in that direction, not because no one seemed to want to head in that direction, but because he didn't feel it was necessary to do so yet. Besides, how did he know it was the right town he needed to go to?
So it was two days later that he found himself walking at a slow pace with the townsfolk that was heading towards Brecconary, after the tearful goodbyes with those that were heading up the shoreline to Garinham was over and done with. Tomas had managed to pocket some gold, a few vials of what the villagers called fairy water (although they claimed it's a rare commodity in Alefgard), and a rather battered sword, before he took up the rear in the small group of seven. Despite what the others claimed, they didn't encounter too many creatures on the road to Brecconary - at the most they encountered a few Drakee's, some red slimes, and what appeared to be a pink ghost. Tomas had made sure that he hadn't been seeing things when they had crossed paths with that ghost, what it was doing out in daylight one displaced villager wondered was anyone's guess. Tomas just made sure to remain quiet, again, about the strangeness of the land. Dragons were one thing, but ghosts?
On the fourth night of his first week on the land, Tomas was finally asked what his story was and how his path found its way back to Alefgard. He had scoffed at the idea he was returning to Alefgard, as this was the first time he had even been there; it was merely a question, the villagers said, as he had the features of one who had a long line of Alefgard stock. His face, although rough and weather worn, had the look of someone around Kol but his blue eyes reminded one of those who lived in Rimuldar; a couple of the villagers said his accent was of Brecconary and had they not seen his face they would've assumed he was from the small village east of Tantegel. Had he kept his dark brown hair shorter then shoulder length then he could easily have passed for someone who grew up in this very land!
Tomas considered the questions towards him for a moment, pondered what he could say, then started his tale of how he came to Alefgard. He had been born somewhere in the world, he didn't know where exactly since, as a child, his parents often wandered from village to village when he was still a small child until the age of five. His father had been a guard to some merchant in the area and would sometimes be gone for a few weeks at a time and his mother - well, his mother he didn't know exactly. Out of the blue she had left him and his father to fend for themselves when he had been only six, leaving behind a few apologizing words and an old ring that had been in her family for quite a few generations. That had been the last time Tomas had heard his father speak of his mother until ten years later, right before he, too, disappeared but Tomas's father had a different reason for his disappearance: he had an old bounty on his head and he figured it was high time to turn it in. The ring his mother left behind was in a pouch with the words 'find me in Cantlin town', his father had said right before he left that his mother had reasons for her leaving and that he, Tomas, would one day find that reason. That had been seven years ago and he had yet to find his mother or the reason.
The villagers hadn't quite believed him on his tale, they laughed at him and only when Tomas produced the ring his mother left behind did they stop laughing and begin to shift nervously where they sat around the fire. Their sudden nervousness startled Tomas, he asked what was wrong but the villagers remained silent and instead muttered that it was time to try and get some sleep. Suddenly they didn't seem so interested in the stranger that came by ship only days prior, shuffling to where they would sleep for the night. When Tomas awoke the next morning he found himself alone in the wilderness with only the clothes he had slept in, his mother's ring, a few gold pieces, and a single vial of fairy water to see him through until he reached Brecconary. How long the villagers had been gone or if they decided to change their direction north he did not know, his anger shimmering just below the surface at the mere thought that he had, once again, been abandoned in a strange land. It wasn't the first time he had been, nor would it likely be the last, but at least the past experiences had been entirely his fault.
Less then a day later he found himself within the confines of Brecconary.
Until Next Time