Adam Dragonhart: Hero For Hire
Chapter IV

This is the story I promised everyone.

It took me a little over ten hours to write it, so I really hope it doesn’t suck as much as I think it does. It was much, much harder than I thought it would be and I really want to thank everyone who sent in an entry. If I didn’t use your entry, please don’t be angry with me. It’s not because your sentence wasn’t good, it’s just that I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

Damn, this was REALLY hard.

Since it’s much longer than I thought it would be (10 pages as a Word doc) I’ve decided to use the extended entry format of MT to post it. Click the link at the bottom of this post to open it up to read, and please remember to leave me a comment about my lack of writing skilz.

What can I say; I’m a glutton for punishment.

Also, I’ll be gone for the next week on another job so I won’t be posting anything until Monday, May 12. I Hope everyone has a wonderful time while I’m away.

Play nice and remember to clean up after yourselves.

Enjoy.

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Adam Dragonhart: Hero For Hire
Chapter IV

Perpendicular thoughts fell through my window this morning and told me to go make a man of myself.

Actually, Miss Yeats had woken me up by pounding on my door and reminding me in her loudest and screechiest voice that I had only two days left to pay this month’s rent, but it certainly sounded more poetic when I said it the other way. Smiling at my burgeoning poetic ability, I once more cursed the financial difficulties that found me walking through the forest in the early morning light instead of sleeping in my bed back at my apartment. Luckily for me, Vinny had told me he had a job for me the night before, so when Miss Yeats started fumbling at the keys on her belt for the one that would unlock my door, I snuck out my window, ran to Vinny’s office and accepted the job without even asking why he seemed to find it so funny.

Of course, now that I knew, all I wanted to do was kill him.

To be fair, I think I had every right in the world to want to see him dead. I mean, who ever heard of a Hero going into battle without any armor, weapons or even a shield? Hell, according to ad Vinny showed me, I wasn’t allowed to have any metal on this job at all! It was all very peculiar.

I wonder what they expect me to fight with, a pointed stick?

So, there I was, walking through the forest in brand new pajamas and trying to find my contact when what do I come across but a bright green urinal attached to a giant oak tree.

Great, that meant this was a Faery job. Vinny was a dead man.

Just then, a yellow midget dressed in khakis and a shirt with a tiny alligator on it jumped out of the urinal and landed at my feet. Then, without any warning whatsoever, the little bastard kicked me square in the shin with his size two pointy boots.

“Ow! What the hell was that for, Shorty?”

“Just getting your attention and testing your mettle, Hero. And the name’s Ernie, not Shorty.”

“Yeah? Well why don’t you wait right here a minute, Ernie, and I’ll go back to town and get my sword. Then we’ll see if you’re still interested in testing my ‘metal’, you little prick.”

“Good! You’ve got a quick wit and a fighting spirit. That’ll really come in handy on your Great Quest!”

Crap. Anytime the client starts talking about ‘Great Quests’ or ‘Wondrous Adventures’ or ‘Holy Grails’ it usually means that what they want me to do is a whole lot more dangerous than they first let on. Either that or they’re trying to skimp on paying me what they promised.

Usually, it’s both.

“Yeah, uh… about this ‘Great Quest’ I’m going on. The ad said something about a reward…?”

“Right, 10,000 gold coins payable upon completion of the Adventure to my satisfaction.”

“Human-type gold, right? I don’t want any of that disappearing faery gold you guys are famous for leaving in pots at the end of rainbows, ok?”

That earned me a dirty look. But I thought I caught a hint of a smile on his lips before he turned away.

“And you’re smart, too. Good, you’re hired. And you’ll be paid in human-type gold if you survive. So tough guy, are you just going to sit there rubbing your leg, or are you going to get to work and save the Princess? She’s not getting any younger.”

I had no idea what the little bastard expected me to do just yet, so instead of giving him a smart answer and possibly loosing the 10,000 gold, I just sucked air through my teeth and rubbed my shin furiously to ease the pain. If I wasn’t so desperate for rent money, I would never have agreed to work for faeries no matter how much they were offering.

Faery work is always so… well, silly.

But a job is a job, as they say. And I sure could use that gold to pay my rent and get Miss Yeats off my back for a while. She might look old and frail and always be complaining about her health, but she sure was one tough old bird. It might have been the running joke around the inn that all her friends knew that there was only one instruction which mattered upon her death, to ensure that her tombstone said, “I told you I was sick.”, but even I didn’t want to get on her bad side by being late with the rent.

Especially not after what she did to that idiot Conan, the penniless barbarian.

So, no matter how embarrassing it was for me to go on an adventure wearing only my pajamas and sandals, it wouldn’t be nearly as humiliating as being thrown out of my apartment in front of the whole city by an arthritic old lady with a runny nose. And if getting that gold meant I had to put up with Shorty McPrick the annoying leprechaun here, then so be it.

But just wait till I got my hands on Vinny…

“Well? Are you ready to make with the Hero-ing, or do you want to continue rubbing your leg? By the way, I just love the PJs. Not many people would be able to pull off looking tough in a pair of sky blue pajamas with little, yellow duck’s on them. But somehow, it works on you. Very studly.”

“Very funny, Ernie. For your information, they’re all I could find on such short notice.”

“At least they look comfortable. Are they cotton?”

“I think so.”

“You know, most people underestimate the importance of a really nice pair of soft cotton pajamas, and a broken-in deck of playing cards. You did remember to bring a deck of cards, right?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Well then, are you ready to begin?”

“Sure. What’s the job?”

Ernie pulled a fishing rod and a bottle out of thin air and handed them to me.

“Take these and catch yourself a penguin over there in the Portinal. Once you’ve done that, the penguin will lead you to the entryway of Faeryland where you’ll have to figure out a way past the Gatekeeper. Once in Faeryland, you should find your way to the Castle of Moderate Scariness, defeat the evil Wizardette and save the Princess.”

“Wizardette?”

“He failed the final exam at HogWarts but managed to get a GED in the Shire at the School of Magic and Home Economics.”

“Ah.”

“So, if that’s all you need from me, I think I’ll be going.”

“What? So soon? And I was just beginning to like you.”

“Oh, you’re a regular laugh riot, Hero. The truth is that I’m allergic to human hair, it gives me horrible gas, and if I stay near you any longer I’m going to start farting up a storm.”

“Really?”

“Truly.”

“You know, Ernie? You really are different for a little, yellow faery.”

“Don’t get all sentimental on me now, you big schmuck. I doubt you’ll even make it to the entryway alive, let alone live long enough to collect your reward.”

I let a lazy smile play across my face.

“Well then, I guess this is goodbye.”

“Yeah whatever, Hero.”

Dropping the fishing rod and the bottle Ernie had just given me; I pulled my hair out of its ponytail and pulled off my shirt to expose my hair covered chest. Taking a quick step in his direction, I spread my arms wide and gave him my broadest grin.

“Come here Ernie! Let Uncle Adam give you a big hug goodbye!”

“AAAAAAHHHHH!”

Surprised by my hirsute appearance, the flatulent pygmy scampered away in a trail of noxious vapor. Laughing to myself, I put my shirt back on, picked up the rod and bottle and walked over to the urinal/portal. Looking within, I could still see tiny creatures that looked almost like frogs with human female faces swimming in the water. As I watched, a small trapdoor opened up on the lip of the Portal/Urinal and a group of tiny penguins climbed out. They all lined up on the edge and stared at me as if they were waiting for me to do something.

Sighing, I made myself comfortable and began to fish for penguins.

Later, as I was fishing in the toilet, contemplating why I had put a bottle of water in my pocket when I knew it would probably leak, the penguins were still staring at me as if I were an idiot.

“Don’t look at me like that, you stupid penguins. I have no idea how I’m supposed to catch you with a fishing pole and no bait.”

“Who said you had to use the fishing pole?”

“What?”

The penguin who had spoken closed his eyes and gave his head a little shake as if to say, ‘I can’t believe he’s this stupid.’

“No one told you that you had to use the fishing pole to catch one of us, did they?”

“Uh, well, now that I think about it, no.”

“See?”

“Ok, smarty-pants. How am I supposed to catch one of you then?”

“Have you thought about just jumping in here and grabbing one of us?”

I thought about that for a moment, cursed Vinny once again for getting me into this stupidity, and lacking anything better to do, I leapt into the hole, grabbing a penguin on the way down.

Son of a bitch, if it didn’t work.

Holding the penguin close to my chest I realized that the water, which now looked as large as an ocean, complete with tiny islands, was speeding towards me at a rate I would define as ‘painfully fast’.

Come to think on it, I might even have called it ‘terminally fast’.

“Mister?”

“Yes Penguin?”

“My names Wendel. I just thought you should know so we wouldn’t die as strangers when we hit the water.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you Wendel. My name’s Adam Drangonhart, pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise. By the way, that’s a great name for a Hero.”

“Thanks.”

“‘Adam Dragonhart’, hmmm? Does it have a meaning?”

“Well, discussing the origin of my name isn’t something I ever thought I’d be doing as I plummeted towards my death, but what the hell. You see, my father had the notion that everything in the world was made of smaller things, which were made of even smaller things until the things got so small that they became the building blocks of everything else in the world. He named these tiny things ‘Adams’ and he wrote a paper for the University about how these Adams could even be whole new worlds, but just be so small that we would never be able to see them. I think some wizards gave him a grant to try to contact these Adam worlds. He never did.”

“So, your father really believed that there might be teeny-tiny creatures living on teeny-tiny worlds he called Adams?”

“Yeah.”

“And he gave you the name Adam because…?”

“He convinced my mother it sounded cool.”

“No offense, but your father was crazy.”

“Maybe, but think of all the worlds he would believe we’d be destroying when we hit the water.”

Whereupon Wendel wondered whether wicked worms were working wildly within wayward worlds with whichever wistful works we would willingly wreck while water-wards we wildly went.

As for me, I was busy staring at the frogs.

Well, frogs might be a little misleading since these creatures were light purple in color with the faces and breasts of beautiful women and the bodies of large, wart-covered frogs. They also didn’t seem as tiny as they did when I was standing outside of the Portal/Urinal instead of plummeting into it at a thousand miles a minute.

In fact, they were positively enormous and getting bigger, and closer, by the second.

“Hey, Wendel. Any idea what we can do to survive this?”

“Uh, well. Since you’re asking, you might want to drink that water you’ve got in your pocket. I think it might help.”

“Good plan. Let’s go with it.”

“Uh, Adam. You might want to do it now, since the ocean’s getting awfully close and I don’t think we have much longer before we hit.”

“Right. I’m with you 100%.”

“Adam, you’re not doing anything.”

“Sure I am.”

“Yeah? What are you doing, then?”

“I’m hyperventilating and going into a blind panic. In a second or two, I’m planning on blacking out from fright.”

“Ah.”

“Just kidding.”

“Funny. Not.”

“…”

“Uh, Wendel?”

“Yes Adam?”

“Would you do us both a big favor and reach into my pocket and get me the bottle of water? I don’t think I can do that and keep hold of you at the same time.”

“Ah. Yes. Holding on to me is a good idea. I like it. Why don’t you do that while I get this bottle for you?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Wendel managed to get the bottle out of my pajamas in short order and with his help I managed to take a drink. This was a good thing because less than a second later we hit the water.

Miraculously, we only got wet, and not dead.

“Wendel! We made it! We’re alive!”

“Llama?”

“Wendel? Are you ok?”

“Blue flowers?”

“Wendel, you’re scaring me.”

“Blue flowers – elephants that do their thing in a bright pink nightgown, bats fly around baseballs?”

“Hey! Wendel! Snap out of it!”

I gave the little penguin a smack on the face.

“Hey! Stop that you muscle-bound idiot! I’m fine. Didn’t you understand what I said?”

“You weren’t making sense for a second there.”

“I wasn’t? Really? You don’t think that a 40,000 foot fall might have had something to do with it, do you?”

“Nah. That’s nothing. What really sucks is when it’s rush hour.”

“You’re a very strange Hero, Adam. Very strange indeed.”

“Thanks.”

Looking around I noticed that some of the frog creatures had noticed our fall and were making their way towards us.

“Wendel?”

“Yes?”

“Please tell me those frog creatures coming towards us aren’t dangerous.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them. They’re harmless.”

The azure frogs floated by merrily, their breasts reverberating from the gentlest breeze. If it weren’t for the fact that they were big enough to swallow a small house in one bite, they might even have been cute.

“So Wendel, what do we do now?”

“We hitch a rid on one of these baby Prince Frogs and find the Gatekeeper.”

“Prince Frogs?”

“Yeah. Every time a girl kisses a frog thinking it’ll turn into a prince one of these things is born. Sad, really.”

“Then what?”

“Well Adam, then you’ll meet the Gatekeeper and win your way through to Faeryland where you can rescue the Princess and save the world, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“And this Gatekeeper, what’s he like?”

“Well, if you must know, he’s a giant polar bear.”

“A polar bear?”

“Yeah, why? Something wrong?”

“Allergies.”

“Pardon? Are you trying to tell me you’re allergic to polar bears?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not. I’m allergic to polar bears because they make me break out in teeth marks. Especially when I have to fight them without any armor, or weapons and while wearing these stupid pajamas!”

Wendel looked at me as if I were insane.

“Adam, you’re not going to fight him; you’re going to play poker with him. What do you think the cards are for?”

“Oh. Well, that’s different then.”

“Right. Well, I hope you’re good with that fishing rod, Adam. It’s a long way to his island and all we’ve got to eat is whatever you can catch. And we need to save the heads and tails; they’re what you bet with during the game.”

“Interesting. And what happens if I loose this game?”

“If you must know, he eats you. But don’t worry; he’s a horrible poker player. Can’t bluff to save his life.”

Perfect. Just bloody perfect.