Through the steaming jungles of the Draqueen's back gardens, the intrepid girl walked, carefully winding through thorn bushes and picking her way under and around brambles. Occasionally she threw a comment over her shoulder, about how tricky the passage was, but she mostly kept her eyes on the ground immediately in front of her.
When she came to a clear patch of ground she whirled around, exposing the microphone in her hand.
"This is Verg-san, reporting live from Draqueen jungle, where we're trying to catch Tetheus in action. Hopefully, he won't be too upset that we've tracked him down."
A loud crash echoed through the glade and Verg-san looked away. Seconds later, a huge beast burst through several trees and nearly ploughed into Verg-san. It stopped mere paces away, and shook itself, its head darting left and right. The beast calmed down, then set eyes upon Verg-san and lowered its head for a charge, when something knocked it off its feet. It rolled over and sprang back up to face Tetheus.
"Tetheus, sir, Tetheus? Can I have a moment of your time, please?" asked Verg-san, scrambling toward him. "I only have a few questions to ask you."
"I'm kind of busy," he replied, before discarding his sword and bracing himself. The beast trumpeted and threw itself at Tetheus, who caught it by the cheeks and stopped it cold. They stood there, locked together and unmoving.
"I just wanted to know what your favourite desert is," said the girl, gamely.
"Ugh. Urgh. Umph. Coffee, black," he said, between heavy breaths.
"Ah and, do you know if Alfeegi fancies Ruwalk, or vice versa?" she continued.
"I never thought of that," replied Tetheus, letting go and stepping forward. The beast plunged into the forest and banged its head off a nearby rock.
"Could you hazard a guess?"
"Hmm, let me see," he said, sitting down and gesturing for Verg-san to do the same. "Alfeegi shouts at Ruwalk, a lot, which can be a sign of transferred emotion, but he shouts at Kai-Stern a lot more. Then again, Kai-Stern's hardly ever in the castle, so he made do it out of a feeling of guilt at the amount of abuse he hurls at Ruwalk. He never shouts at me, or the Dragonlord and it might be that he gives out to Ruwalk because he can't give out to Lykouleon, but that doesn't explain why I get no abuse."
Verg-san nodded while Tetheus took a deep breath.
"Now Ruwalk's good looking. He gets a marriage proposal almost every day, but he's still single. Raseleane spent six years trying to set him up and stopped after Ruwalk took her aside one night and talked to her for four hours. He goes out of his way to be in difficult situations with Alfeegi. He studies books and reports on every part of the kingdom and signed up for a correspondence course in charm and diplomacy, even though he moans about it bitterly. Alfeegi hates people and Ruwalk stops complaining whenever he sees Alfeegi, so you can draw your own conclusions."
Verg-san looked disappointed and Tetheus petted her arm. "There's very little evidence, I'm afraid, since they've done nothing about it. That's if they do fancy each other, of course."
"What's your gut feeling, sir?" asked Verg-san.
"Well, replied Tetheus, before a pair of stinky, moist jaws closed over his head. "Muffle harumph pergah."