The Princess in My Tower

I am the dragon that guards the princess in the tower. The princess in my tower. I await the day her true love arrives and sets her free.

I snapped my tail over the flailing knight, and he ricocheted off the walls and onto the cobblestones, dust and gravel puffed up in the air and caked his now dull armor. I could hear the creak of iron and metal chains as the knight staggered to his knees, breath shaking, morale crumbling, doom looming. A soft whimper escaped the knight as his knees buckled and collapsed to the ground. Lying on the ground, he pulled his body arm after leg and propelled himself at a snail’s pace away from the castle—from me. I suppressed my grin.

I took no joy flinging him into the moat. Or weighing my tail on him in the water, watching the air bubbles slowly lessen as fewer and fewer reached the murky surface—

A pair of emerald eyes peered through the only window of the tower. Her hair, the color of corn silk, shimmered like gold underneath veils of ethereal sun beams that flowed over her milky white skin. She briskly leaned forward, eyes widened, mouth agape, a scream about to escape her lips.

I swiftly yanked the blubbering knight out of the water (Twas a mere bath and not a forced drowning experience. He was filthy. I was bored) and flung him onto his stead. I hissed fire and sent the horse galloping away. I craned my neck towards the tower, and saw the princess sigh in relief, hand pressed over her heart.

A heart shaped smoke cloud escaped from my nostrils and instantly swatted it away before she noticed.

….

Hellish fire broiled in my throat. Scales sizzled and burned bright all around my jagged and thorny jaw. I craned my neck back and released scorching flames towards the sunset rosette sky. Flames nicked and scaled the stone walls and by the time they reached the top of the tower window, they were the perfect temperature for the princess to roast her marshmallows. The princess pulled back her roasting stick and squished the toasted marshmallows between chocolate and honey coated crackers.

She sensed my impatience as I stamped my clawed feet against the ground. Bones, mementos, of previous meals rattled all over my den. A skull of the prince of Mosely, the scattered ribs of the duke of Onika, the patella of the earl of Knapp (this patella had a good bounce to it when flung to and fro on the walls)…and other nameless peasants. Noblemen were a peculiar kind of knights. Their huge armor hid the muscles they lacked deceptively making them plumper and stronger than they appeared. In reality, they were bony and brittle and withered away to nothing when roasted, nothing but insubstantial twigs to chew. Even though they were crunchy and good with ketchup, none could compare to freshly roasted s'mores. Especially made by the careful hands of the princess. My princess. If not for her and her kindness, I would surely starve of culinary flavor.

“One moment, one moment!” She did not hurry more when I stamped my feet or thrashed my wings through the warm, summer air. It was hard business preventing the knights from breeching the castle, nor withholding my pleasure in dismantling their manhood back to boyhood.

“You’re so fussy. Here.” A delectable s'more descended upon me and swiftly I caught the gooey chocolate treat in my mouth. Sweet, soft, toasty warm. Coated with an extra layer of chocolate syrup, just how I liked it. I rolled over in my den, cracking the bones of past knights under my back, savoring the sweet flavor.

The princess bit into her own s'mores, yet she did not sigh or squeal from its yumminess. There was only the crack of the cracker and the empty silence that followed.

A drop of water plummeted unto my cheek. I looked up, but there was no rain.

The princess wiped her sleeve across her eyes.

Her voice cracked, sniffling. “When will my prince come for me…”

The skull of the prince of Mosely stopped mid roll between my claws. I blinked up at my princess.

Her shoulders were shaking, “my prince will never come for me.”

I raised my head towards the sleepy sun and watched as shadows cast the tower into darkness, there were no words of comfort I could give my princess. I could only watch as she bared her window for the night, as she did for all the others before.

….

Stars burned white as I kept a careful watch of the midnight world above and snatched the wizard from the sky. His broom stick clattered to the ground as the man struggled in my tight grip.

The wizard’s eye bulged out of his head and without an ounce of decorum he bellowed an ear splintering scream that awakened the night.

I slapped my tail across his face.

He screamed harder.

I held up my claws towards his face. My claws gleamed under the starlight, accentuating their very, very sharp tips.

He fell silent, trembling. 

I huffed and spat an ember in relief.

He shuddered with quiet tears.

I pulled my wings back and set the wizard down in my den. He tripped over chewed bones and fell to his knees in a final prayer. Prayer for safety. Prayer for a quick death. It was hard to discern the two. I stalked closer towards him, my shadow entombing him like a hollow grave, until a surprise amount of courage swelled his being. He grabbed the femur of the prince of Selaw and furiously thrashed it towards me, perhaps he was trying to fight back. The femur hit my belly. It tickled.

“Stay back you savage beast—” The wizard’s complexion paled when I bit the bone and yanked it from his measly grip. The wizard fell to the ground and pleaded, sobering. “Please don’t kill me.”

I paid no attention to the man, or relished his tears, and more importantly started to ransack his bag.

The wizard did a double take. Theft? Over his dead body! “Hey hey hey hey stop that! That doesn’t belong to you!”

He smacked my snout.

I growled.

He jumped back, aghast. As if he was surprised to find out what happens after you slap a dragon.

A wide grin revealed row upon row of pointed teeth which stretched across my face as a bottle labeled ‘transformation potion’ rolled out of the bag. White hot phantom stars sloshed around lazily in the glass bottle. Before the wizard could snatch it away, I swallowed it whole, bottle and stars. My stomach gurgled and the wizard stepped back, hiding behind a pile of picked bones, a sight that once scared him was now his heavenly refuge.

The pain was dull at first and then an explosion deep within set me ablaze, the pain seared my insides from core to periphery, growing and tearing and thrashing my insides. I looked up, tears welling my eyes. The castle was growing taller—or I was shrinking. My claws retracted to stubby tips, my scales smoothed to soft flesh, my wings and tail disappeared altogether. Leaving me flightless and anchored to the earth.

The wizard gawked, fumbling for the receipt in his hands, “No, no, no. This possibly couldn’t be! The potion was ordered from this tower signed by the princess herself.” Realization burst across the wizard’s face. “YOU FORGED THE PRINCESS’S SIGNATURE!? THAT IS ILLEGAL, THAT IS A CRIME, THAT IS--” It amazed him that dragons were not only masters of deception, but also forgery. “HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!”

“I have no clothes.” The once dragon, now human said, marveling at how flexible his fingers and joints have become. He bent his thumb back towards his wrist and gawked in amusement. Bending, twisting, and waving these interesting joints in unnatural directions he could never have tried before. “I feel like water.” The wizard was gagging.

The wizard jostled when the now transformed human grabbed his tunic, eyeing the clothes. Human clothes were so…ugly. “Thank you. This will do.” The wizard was in his underpants before he could even refute.

A shrieking howl came from the castle. The wizard shuddered as he was hung up on a hook beside a bare skeleton, I left little chance of him or anyone else meddling tonight.

I unsheathed a sword of a fallen knight as I made my way into the castle.

…..

Shrieking. Howling. Yowling. Banging. Gnawing. Growling. All these heinous sounds grew louder as I traversed higher and higher up the steps of the cold, dark tower. As it being my first time inside the tower, my expectations were met as I stepped over the bones of all the failed knights littered across the stone steps. Dismembered, disfigured, and maimed. More and more accumulating in heaps and piles as I neared the princess’s chamber. Locked and bared from the inside, as she does every night. Shredded clothes, mutilated armor, splintered bones, lonesome teeth sporadically adorned her jail cell like a garden of madness and chaos. Each an armored knight. Each a meal delivered on a silver tray. Quiet were my steps, I heard something cracking bones and slurping marrow up ahead. Devouring the scraps of yesterday’s meal. The bones that were in my den were simply her leftovers she tossed out her tower window. Tasteless. Chewy. Scraps.

Empty helmets…all belonging to the knights I let inside the castle. Hoping that one would bestow my princess with true love’s kiss. Only no one’s love was true enough to break her curse to quell the hungry beast that awakens every night.

Snarling. Screaming. Scowling. My eyes met hers through the barred window of the door. Scleras black as dusty coal. Irises red as the bleeding sun. My princess slithered her clawed hand through the opening, bearing talons that could now easily shred my soft throat.

“My dear prince,” a voice of something wicked lulled to me. Voice entrancing me. “Take my hand. Set me free.”

“I am no prince.”

I lifted my hand.

And readied my blade.

Something twisted unraveled inside the princess as she bellowed a monstrous cry that shook her prison. Rattling her door and the hinges that trapped her inside. Wild. Monstrous. Wicked.

Head bowed, I kneeled in front of the beast, sword held gallantly in front of me. Promising a vow. I sucked in a breath and breathed the words I dared to breath. Words I could never have spoken before. Given the voice, the mechanisms to finally speak, the words my heart longed to say, I unleashed it all to my princess.

Even still, kneeling in my human form before her barred gate, I was still looking up to my princess.

Still, she was looking down at me with those emerald eyes.

“I am the dragon that guards your tower.” I looked up. “Guards you from leaving. Guards foolish knights from entering. Eyes of a dragon can see through the hearts of any human, and see their truest desires, no matter how evil or good.” My eyes glimmered with specks of gold, seeing through darkness into the princess’s heart. I saw a warring battle, two hearts fighting to take control of her. The princess and the monster. Both fighting, both wanting to survive.

“I don’t care what you see,” the monster growled. “I would only like to know how you taste.”

I continued on, “and by order of the King, I am only allowed to sanction knights with pure hearts to enter the castle. For true love can only be born from good, pure hearts,” rats scurried through the bones, eyes peeping through the skull’s barren holes. What was the last thing these knights saw before they died? Was it my kind hearted princess or a monster that needed to be slain? “but I betrayed the king and let more in than I should have. Desperate to have your curse lifted.”

The princess’ ragged breathing slowed. Taking in the man’s words. The princess strained to speak against the beast that battled for control. A soft voice cried, “did…did I hurt that knight?” Pleading eyes met mine.

I thought of the knight with the untrue love that I tossed into the moat, the one that luckily escaped her wrath. “He left unharmed, princess. I scared him well enough that he won’t return. Though I can’t say too sure about his dignity.” 

“However,” my voice grew somber. I peered into her heart and saw her two hearts, becoming more indiscernible. Morphing into one. “Your curse is progressing quickly, no knight has been able to lift the curse yet…and the king ordered if no one can lift your curse, then I would be the one to slay the beast.” The grains of sand were falling. True love or not, her time waiting in the tower was not indefinite and even kings were not everlastingly patient. 

This was a fairy tale, after all. In the end, someone has to die. Surrounded by all the knights that came before me, broken and battered and dead, many already have. And so shall more if the curse is never to be lifted.

I rose, our eyes meeting at the same level. “I love you. The fire in your heart, none is more brilliant than yours.”

Princess or beast, I could not tell, laughed at my confession. She hunched over cackling wildly. Tears brimming the corners of her eyes. “Your love cannot save me.”

I looked down. “Yes. I can never offer you true love, because I do not have a heart of my own to offer.”

“Because dragons don’t have hearts. Dragons are flames in empty shells that can only sustain one. You are the embodiment of fire. You can grow with a gust of wind or be snuffed out by the slightest breath. Unpredictable. Unstable. While the burning of a human heart is everlasting and can sustain many. And yet you love.” She looked at the fallen knights around her, those in the corridor and the bones she picked apart at her feet, “but not enough. Just like all the others.”

“You should die tonight.”

The beast violently reemerged and thrashed in her chamber. Screaming unintelligible curses.

“But—” I gasped. My hand was bleeding. I punctured my palm with my own claws. Claws. Sharp and deadly. Advanced through my fingers. Scales became more defined and roughened my skin. The transformation potion was wearing off, they are short-lived. “I betray my King! I will find your knight, whatever it takes! One day your prince will come, and true love will set you free.” Even if your true love will never be me. “I will be here until that day arrives. Protecting you from king and country. R-rest assu-red princ—”

My tongue tangled and twisted. Words became like rocks in my mouth. Unable to move or crawl or take flight.

On the ledge where the princess can reach. I left the patella that once belonged to a knight. If not a heart, I offered a bone that sealed my pledge. The princess took it in her hand.

She closed her fingers around it. Her expression softening.

Pain burst through me and I screamed in agony.

The princess whipped her head up, eyes wide in surprise.

I sprinted into the night, as the castle shrunk—or I grew. My wings ripped from my back. Talons shredded my flesh. Pointed teeth punctured my lips. My claws protracted and my irises yellowed to gold.

I am the dragon that guards the princess in the tower. My princess. I await the day her true love arrives and sets her free. That is my vow I pledge to my princess.