Twisty Dick
Further adventures, with even more Fire Breathing, a Forgotten Bacchanalia, another Warning concerning Blacksmithies, Hot Tail in the Dark, and yet another Member of Unusual Size. Also tuna.
Frank was Laying a little Waste when the message came.
Just to keep his hand in, really. After harvest time, he would fly over the fields around his castle home looking for the signs. Specifically, he looked for red handkerchiefs tacked up on sticks, which the local farmers used to mark the fields where they wanted the stubble burned off. Then, WHOOSH - more satisfyingly scorched earth.
The packet pigeon that found him had obviously flown from a long way off, but it would be uncool for a dragon to seem curious, so he flew over to a nearby ledge near the base of his mountain. Beside his perch, a spectacular waterfall plunged into a deep pool, before one last sixty-foot cascade. He fished into the icy water and pulled out a small barrel and a stoneware crock. After a long, cinder-quenching swallow of beer from the keg, he pulled the lid off the crock.
It was his favourite. "Tuna casserole?" he asked the pigeon, politely.
"Thanks, I'll pass," said the bird, who was perched on the tip of the monster's huge erect wang, so as to be able to converse without shouting.
"Ale?"
"Not while I'm on duty, thank you."
Frank scooped some tuna into his jaws. The snackage was provided (along with many other perks) by the valley residents, who had discovered that a contented dragon - that is to say, a well fed and well fucked dragon - left their livestock and their nubile young daughters alone. (He also tended to keep the area clear of thieves - both the regular brigands and King Al's taxmen.) So they kept the groceries coming, while Frank's wife Trixie (and a few of her friends) took care of the fuckage.
After sating himself, the appeased dragon said, "Well then. What's the message?"
"Ahem. 'From The Pyrotechnical Lord Richard Ribbontongue of the Enchanting Forest of Dryadia...'"
"Old Twisty Dick! How the devil is he?"
In spite of herself, the pigeon asked, "As in, 'the only fellow with a corkscrew prick'?"
"Eh, what? Ah yes, the bawdy poem. No, not our Dick - close enough, I suppose, but not corkscrewed exactly. Just has a few bends in it - the ladies quite enjoy it, or so I'm told."
Too much information,
thought the pigeon. "I see. Well then - I shall continue. 'To Flaming Lord Francis Brassballs of Erewon Valley in the Outreaches of Guilder. Sent at Ten-oh-five o'clock of the morning, on the Twenty-third of September in the Third Year of the Dingbat ...'"
"Yes, yes, go on!"
"Erm. Right. Text begins: 'Sorry Frankie, but we got Trouble with a capital T out here, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.'"
The gist of Dick's message was this: over the past few months, refugees from the neighbouring kingdom of Gridiron had begun to turn up at the menacing oaken gate of his walled forest stronghold, far to the west of Erewon (as Frank had permitted Queen Cindy to rename his valley home). Given its cultivated reputation for danger (hence the gargoyles hired to perch on the arch above), Dryadia was hardly anyone's first choice. Unfortunately for all concerned, Alaric - the Baleful Tyrant of Gridiron - had closed his other borders. Stragglers, whole families, and even a few of Alaric's troops had begged for passage through the dreaded faerie forest. For the sake of appearances, Dick had arranged for charred uniform fragments from the latter to be tossed back out the doorway.
Those admitted were immediately inspected by psychic werewolves, and any who stank of evil were also tossed - with a growled suggestion that they were being treated to a running start. The majority, having passed the sniff test, soon found themselves guests at one of a series of bacchanals in their honour.
As the feasting progressed, the newcomers consumed great quantities of ale ... along with Granny Gorn's Over-proof Forgetting Formula. By and by, they found themselves frolicking with both each other and their hosts. There was wild music and continuous dancing all around them, to the relentless, primal, hypnotic beat of drums: bumtittiebumtittiebumbumbum ... .
From there, these ceremonies always devolved into your traditional drunken orgy. Over the course of the night, each and every one of them coupled repeatedly, in ways they had never dreamt of, with every other guest present - including with a number of creatures they may never have even heard of, far less seen in the flesh (as it were). Satyrs and nymphs abounded, naturally; but there were, for example, also a number of frog-lasses who were quite arousing (if slippery) once enough ale had gone down. And it should be said that gargoyle gentlemen sport impressive (and permanent) stiffies. Faeries, gnomes and elves were also present, romping with much stranger beings. Flying Phalluses also fluttered in to join the fun - they were considered lucky, although they were terrible opportunists, and any orifice not otherwise engaged would soon be pounded by one of these madly fluttering beasties.
By dawn they were all of them fucked to exhaustion; but some of the more resilient Faerie-folk were still up to the chore of carrying their unconscious guests to the high pass and over into the allied lands of Earl Anchovy the Mellow. There they woke the next afternoon with shocking hangovers, lying together naked in a lovely flowered meadow. They would soon discover that they had forgotten virtually everything of their past lives, including their names ... and, it followed, who was related to whom.
Most particularly they'd forgotten their inhibitions, given that the few memories they retained were fragments of the previous night's delectable celebrations: images of heaving rumps and writhing limbs; of flushed and busy genitalia of all descriptions and sizes; and of skin, fur and feathers all sprinkled with pearly beads of cum that glistened red in the flickering torchlight. And of a leathery-winged creature sporting an extraordinary prehensile tongue.
Eventually, they would further discover that every female present was pregnant - such are the effects of fooling about with faeries and their friends.
Luckily for them, the Stickleback Mountains isolated the Earl's territory from not only Gridiron but pretty much everyone else. They were always warmly welcomed there, and joined the seriously unrestrained locals in frolicking, fucking, and cultivating hops and hemp - the excess of which was traded for various goods (particularly munchies) from Erewon to the east and Portia to the south.
The actual Trouble reported by the pigeon arrived along with the last three refuges from Gridiron to pass under the carved arch that pierced Dryadia's protective wall. These particular guests the Tyrant was very determined to retrieve.
Of course, the full story was much more complicated.
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Although ruled by a Tyrant, Gridiron was in fact a kingdom. However, King Gustav the Twenty Third was presently no more than a figurehead: the possessor of the face they put on stamps and sovereigns. He was kept locked in a drafty tower in his own capital - Grid. Until Gustav had become king upon the unexpected demise of his father (it turns out even kings must be wary of cuckolding the blacksmith), he had been busy following family tradition as a wastrel devoted to wine, women and song - not necessarily in that order. Although in many ways thick as a brick (and this too did not differentiate him from his ancestors), Gustav had managed the rare insight to be aware of that particular shortcoming. He'd decreed that his kingdom would be run - in his name - by citizens who would be chosen by their fellows.
This worked marvellously ... for a time. But the arrangement required a civil sort of servant to explain the workings of state to each newly elected leader. Recently the current such servant - Chancellor Alaric - perceived that he knew far more about wielding power than anyone else in the kingdom, and so he seized it.
The final part of his plan was to marry the Princess Rose. The fact that the king's daughter and sole heir was shockingly beautiful was, to Alaric, a relatively minor detail ... although he had actually fantasized about fucking her for almost too long a time (even by Gridiron standards).
She, on the other hand, was having unreasonable objections. "Not over your dead body" had certainly sounded definitive - if illogical.
A more serious difficulty for Alaric was that most of the army was ambivalent about this part of his scheme, although the bits about marching into the neighbouring kingdoms and looting them sounded just fine. Accordingly, he had gathered together a personal guard of the usual brown-shirted, ex-school-bully sort, and stationed them within the inner castle.
