Mount Vulcan, Legendaria

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! I could have chosen basically any part of the world to find a dragon, because they are everywhere. They come in countless varieties, from the lean to the beefy, from kind and benevolent to downright demonic. Some are as tall as mountains, some are pocket sized for convenient travel. 

There are very few traits that dragons have universally in common, and even those are hotly debated in the scientific community. For example, you might think that dragons are all selfish hoarders, but the Eastern varieties don’t seem to exhibit this quality, and are often seen by locals as generous spirits that bring rain to crops. It is a controversial topic among dragonologists whether they do this out of the kindness of their hearts, or if they just happen to be hoarding clouds.

When it comes to getting the inside scoop my audience wants to hear I always deliver, so I knew exactly where to look to find the type of dragon I needed to get the inside scoop on. I journeyed deep into the mountains of Legendaria, through sealed magic doors created by lost civilizations, to ancient troves of treasure hidden away in caves underneath the earth. And reader, after searching for much longer than I care to remember, I finally managed to find one!

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SKYE: Since I made it all the way here, and you don’t seem to be doing anything other than laying on top of a pile of shiny stuff, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?

DRAGON: It will take more than that to get any answers from me, puny human. I don’t even know who you are. How can I know that you are worth my time?

SKYE: You have a point, I guess. My name is Skye Summers, and I’m a journalist who specializes in the current day stories of legendary beasts and beings.

DRAGON: That is a start. But it is not yet enough.

SKYE: What more do you want to know?

DRAGON: I want to be entertained, little one. I want you to impress me.

SKYE: Oh, I have impressive stories to tell, if that’s what you’re looking for.

DRAGON: Good, I like your confidence. Alright then, let’s make a game of it. For each feat you tell of that rouses my spirit, I will answer one of your questions. But be warned, human, I will be able to sense if you are lying.

SKYE: Good thing I won’t have to make anything up then. Shall we begin?

DRAGON: We shall. I am not a creature of much patience.

SKYE: Noted. First fact about me—I once exposed a major monster trafficking ring by going undercover as a dwarf. The height part was easy for me to pull off, but I had to wear a fake beard the entire time, and it was super itchy. It took all I had to keep myself from scratching it constantly.

DRAGON: Graw ha ha! That is an amusing story, if nothing else. I will accept it. Ask your first question, dwarf impersonator.

SKYE: It’s Skye. So, the fire breath. Does it hurt? It seems like it would be murder on your throat. And does it even serve a purpose when you spend most of your time sleeping in an empty cave? I can’t imagine it’s all that useful for hunting, unless you prefer your village sheep charbroiled.

DRAGON: I don’t appreciate the implied characterization of my eminent person as an unproductive shut-in. I get out of the cave whenever one of my peers is hosting a house party or a knight barbeque, every couple decades or so. At the last meet-up I was introduced to this lovely new device called an internet. Have you heard of it?

SKYE: …Once or twice.

DRAGON: It’s quite charming really. The concept of an endless supply of cat videos and “meme” jokes at one’s beck and call is very appealing. I wonder what it would take to install an internet here in my cave.

SKYE: Ehem, about my question…

DRAGON: Ah yes, I apologize for the distraction. Fire breath is useful for keeping our nests warm. No need for expensive air conditioning that way. The reason we use gold when constructing a nest is its high resistance to heat. You wouldn’t want your house to melt every time you turn up the A/C, would you?

SKYE: No, I wouldn’t. But isn’t gold a lot more expensive than A/C installation?

DRAGON: One question per feat, remember?

SKYE: Fine. Can you at least elaborate on how fire breathing feels first?

DRAGON: I suppose I’ll allow that as a part of the same discussion. There’s not much to tell though. Breathing fire doesn’t hurt, but it does get a little spicy. Sometimes I think I can taste a bit of jalapeno while I’m exhaling flames. But I’m sure that’s just my imagination.

SKYE: I see.

DRAGON: Now tell me more about your adventures as a dwarf imitator.

SKYE: I only did that once. Another time I met this group of kappa—Japanese turtle monkey spirits—living in the sewers in New York City and helped them defeat a real ninja clan… who were also in New York for some reason.

DRAGON: Graw ha ha ha ha! That is unusual! Even my Eastern cousins don’t often have dealings with the shinobi clans. You have managed to divert my interest yet again, ninja slayer.

SKYE: Well, technically I didn’t do much slaying. I was more like… backup.

DRAGON: Nevertheless, you may now ask your next question.

SKYE: Your kind have been known to spirit away princesses from their ivory towers and keep them locked up in your caves until a brave knight in shining armor comes to set them free. Any comments?

DRAGON: I’ve never seen the appeal, personally. I mean, what would she even do, sit around for decades while I get my beauty sleep? Human lives are too short to be worth the trouble. I’m sure to some dragons it’s a form of collecting—which is a hobby most of us have in common—but I only collect things that serve a practical purpose, like gold, or those little airplane model kits that you get to put together before you display them. That’s engaging. Much less of a time waster than a human girl who only knows how to be polite and look pretty.

SKYE: And what about their would-be rescuers?

DRAGON: The knight thing is a downside for me, too. I understand that using the princess as bait lets you reel in more of their potential suitors for barbecues, but it’s such a hassle having constant visitors, even the kind that you’re going to eat later.

SKYE: Not shaking the shut-in allegations so far.

DRAGON: Preferring to stay home most years doesn’t make me a shut-in! Knights don’t tend to make good company is all. You can’t hold a meaningful conversation with someone who’s trying to stick you with a magic sword. And as dinner they take too much preparation. They wear all that nasty platemail that you have to peel off before you can get to the juicy bits, and if you torch them too thoroughly it melts and fuses to the skin, which makes shelling them even harder. No thank you.

SKYE: Then what do you eat most of the time?

DRAGON: You know what you have to do to get an answer to that question.

SKYE: Yeah, yeah. How about this: there was this one time that I was going skydiving—strictly professionally of course, it’s the only way to get up to the crags that griffins live on—and my parachute didn’t open. Fortunately there was a flock of griffins flying by underneath me and I managed to grab hold of one of them. I held on long enough to land safely, then the flock flew off. I didn’t find out until later that the griffin I rode was friends with the one I had scheduled an interview with, and he didn’t appreciate me tagging along very much. It made for a very awkward pre-interview conversation.

DRAGON: Graw ha ha, graw ha ha ha, GRAW HA HA HA HA! You have an extraordinarily storied past for a human! Very  well, I shall answer one final question.

SKYE: As I was saying, what do you eat on a regular basis if you prefer not to leave your cave? There’s not a lot of life in here, at least not of a significant enough size to satisfy someone as huge as you, presumably.

DRAGON: I order in, usually. That used to be in the form of sacrifices, but these days it’s more convenient to just call up the nearest burger joint and demand a dragon-sized quantity of raw meat. I’ve never once had them say no, though growling at them a bit can help expedite the process.

SKYE: You have a phone?

DRAGON: I use telepathy. It’s a relatively common dragon ability.

SKYE: Well, since that was the last question, I’ll be on my way now.

DRAGON: Feel free to come by again in twenty years or so to ask more questions! It can get boring lying at the heart of a mountain by oneself for centuries.

SKYE [Aside]: Shut-in.

DRAGON: What was that?

SKYE: Nothing!

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