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"What do you want?"

Torin waited for claws to slash down at him, then realized that he had heard a voice. Slowly he opened his eyes; he hadn't realized that he had closed them. Did… did that dragon just speak? "W-what?"

A booming roar. "What do you want!? Why are you here!?"

Great Spirits, it did speak. "Uh…"

"ANSWER ME!"

Torin cringed and looked up at the dragon. Okay, so it wasn't quite as big as a house, and its scales weren't exactly fiery, although they were a bright yellow-orange. The wings were red, that part was true, and he didn't really want to test if its fire could really melt boulders. It didn't quite match the advisors descriptions, but still. It was a dragon.

"Well… er… I'm supposed to come rescue a princess you captured." Immediately he realized that he shouldn't have said that.

To his surprise, the dragon lowered its claws, and dropped down to stand on four feet instead of just two. "Oh, well, you can have her."

"What?"

The dragon glared at him. "I said, you can have her. Really, are you deaf or something?"

I'm talking to a dragon. Talking to one. Torin searched for something to say. "But… but… you kidnapped her! Don't you want to keep her?" Some part of his brain told him to be quiet and just to free the princess and leave without having to battle the dragon, but he couldn't resist asking.

"Kidnapped her? What are you talking about? No, I found her outside of my cave. She was babbling about a giant creature picking her up and carrying her away from her castle."

"So… you didn't attack the castle?" Doubt flickered in his mind like a candle flame. Still, Torin found this idea hard to grasp.

"Of course not! What would I want with a princess? Any human is bad enough, but royal ones are the worse! All they get you is an army of knights charging up to your cave and coming to fight! Do you really think I want that?" The dragon growled and Torin flinched. "Humans don't do anything useful, either. They just moan and complain about being captured."

"Not useful? Don't you eat them?"

"Eat them? Why in Flainon's name would I do that?"

"Well… I just assumed – "

"You humans assume too many things." The dragon snorted. "You can take the girl and leave, I don't care." Then it narrowed its eyes. "You're a knight, then?" It sounded doubtful.

"Yes." Torin blinked.

"You don't have any armor."

"I have a sword!"

At that the dragon seemed to grin. "Not anymore." Torin remembered that the weapon was trapped under the creature's foot. "Give me back my sword!"

"Why? So you can stab me with it?" It inspected the blade. "Not that it could do much."

"Give it back!" Torin lunged for his sword, forgetting that the dragon was much larger than him. It carelessly slammed down its scaled tail in front of him. The man crashed into it and was thrown back.

"You're feisty, aren't you? It's not going to work. I can stop anything you do easily, so don't try to move."

"I thought you said I could bring the princess back." Torin stood painfully. His side ached where he had hit the tail and the stone floor. "Why don't you let me go?"

"Oh sure, I will, and you can take the princess. But I'm not going to give you back your sword, am I? Why should I take an unnecessary risk?" The dragon kicked the weapon across the cave. Torin flinched as his blade clattered against the wall loudly. "Don't whimper or anything. I'm not going to kill you!"

"You're not?" ventured Torin. Had everything he'd heard about dragons been wrong?

"No. What's the point? Killing you would just mean more knights coming, and anyway, you're not that big of a threat right now." The dragon flicked its tail back and forth lazily.

"Then why don't you give me back my sword?"

The dragon breathed a wisp of bright flame into the air. "I told you that already!" It sighed in an irritated manner. "You humans are so strange."

"Oh, right," snapped Torin. "Well, the King ordered me to rescue the princess from you, so it's not my fault that I had to come here just to have a dragon take my sword and then hear that it won't give me back my only weapon."

"Why do you think I had anything to do with her being captured?"

Torin blinked; he hadn't been expecting that as a question. "Because you're the closest to the castle, I guess."

"And there you go again, always assuming things." The dragon scraped the ground angrily with its claws, and Torin winced at the grating noise. "That's exactly the reason I wouldn't want to do anything to your castle. I get blamed even when it's not my fault. It's very unfair."

"Even when it's not your fault?"

"Well, I might have attacked it once or twice, but only because some knights kept coming up to my cave, challenging me. I wanted to scare them away, but now I've learned just to ignore them." It grinned again, this time at Torin's shocked stare. "You're amusing for a human, especially one who's a knight. What's your name?"

"Um… why do you want to know?"

"Because you're one of the only people who has actually spoken to me without screaming and running away. It's surprising how few people ever actually talk to a dragon."

"I can guess why," Torin muttered.

The dragon tapped its talons on the stone. "Well, leave, then. Do you want to rescue the princess or not?"

"Yes," said Torin defiantly.

"Then follow me." It turned away and walked toward a large tunnel carved into the side of the cave. Torin hesitated; he could run while it wasn't looking, grab his sword, and-

"Are you coming?" The dragon was staring at him, its eyes glinting.

The knight glanced at his blade again. "Why are you letting the princess go so quickly?"

"Well I don't want a human messing around in my caves, and I'm not going to fight you and destroy my chance of making her leave."

"Making her leave?"

"Yes, I don't think she'll be too happy about you coming." It turned away.

Not happy? Everything seemed to be going wrong; this wasn't how encounters with dragons that had captured princesses usually went. Well, it's lucky for me, then, he mused, and was surprised at the thought. Before he could stop himself, he spoke. "My name's Torin."

The dragon looked back at him, shifted its wings. "Terascythe." It turned away. "Come on."

Torin's gaze flickered around the cavern, then to his sword, and finally to the tunnel. Suspicions flooded through him, and he watched the yellow-orange shape of the dragon disappear into the channel. The young man cursed himself. How could I let a dragon trick me like this? I must be crazy! But… he was curious, too. Suddenly a faint glimmer of courage flared up in his mind and he grasped it.

Taking a deep breath, Torin ran after the dragon.