Drawful the Awful is the ongoing series/novel in progress following the pursuits of the dragon, Drawful, who is awful at being a dragon, and his “kidnapee” the Princess Brooke. The full series can be found here.
To the south of the Alabaster Kingdom are fields and rolling green vales. Beyond these are forests and hamlet villages of the outer kingdom, among which Drawful calls home. Further south than this, is another Kingdom that is home to a Prince we have yet to meet, Hubrista. While to the north above Hubrista are the rich lands of the lands bordering the Alabaster kingdom, under Hubrista to the south is a festering land of bogs, swamps, the black lake, and finally a vast steppe of granite cut with labyrinthine gorges.
The maze that leads to the center is impossible to follow from above, as the various winding cuts in the granite will vanish underground for a time, weave and spin over one another before surfacing again. The eventual epicenter of the maze is a deep cavern under the maze itself. It is vast, and no sunlight has ever reached it, nor even the light of a man made flame.
The operative term there, is “man-made.”
In the pitch of the cavern, a different sort of flame kindled, stirred and spilled over the gold and treasures the occupant and owner of the cavern and its labyrinth had amassed. The labyrinth, treasure and this occupant had only been there as recently as the Duke Plebo’s imagination of him. However, since the Duke had imagined this occupant having always been there, said occupant had always been there.
Now, in the cavern’s depths, this occupant sought out a particular item in the inventory of his treasure. It was mounted at the crest of a hill of golden coin and other treasure that glistened at the flames produced by its protector: the Blade of the Unbidden.
The owner pinched it between its talons, as a grown man does a toothpick. As the flames subsided and the dark returned, which his eyes were more used to, he looked through the cavern to the exit from his keep. It was nighttime in the surface world. It would suit his eyes better and help him adjust for eventual daylight better. Now was the right time. It speaks, its voice flecked with flames, landing on the air and any ears that hear it like the granite of its very tomb:
Drawful.
The blade would be the thing to kill the dragon, Drawful the Awful. He knew this. He had always known it. Why was he acting now? Why leave the cavern now after all this time if he had always been there?
The Princess Brooke.
That dragon had kidnapped a Princess. She deserved a truly fearsome dragon to be her monster. A true villain capable of wreaking havoc, and burning whole cities to ash.
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