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Dressed in her chainmail, Queen Una crept as quietly as she could down a long hallway that surrounded the outer wall of the castle. When she reached an open door in the center of the corridor, she pushed the door inward and peeked her head around the corner. Inside, she found what appeared to be another torchlit corridor that led deeper into the interior of the castle. Following her instincts, she snuck inside and made her way down the empty hallway until she had reached a set of hanging tapestries that draped the entrance to another great room. Sneaking a quick look behind the curtain, she found a great room on the other side with a magnificent throne centered along the back wall. To her astonishment, a giant sat on the throne with his head uncomfortably propped on his hand, sleeping. With very little effort, she had found the king of the giants, and he was snoring on his throne, not so different from her own father. For a minute, she wondered if it would be morally right to turn the dragon loose upon someone with no clear defense.
“How fair would that be?” she asked herself with a wicked smile, and she let the curtain close as she turned to go back the way she had come. “A sleeping king of the giants is as fair game as the men that he ambushed and slaughtered,” she told herself as she bolted down the corridors and headed for the door. Her thirst for revenge outweighed her caution. She would have the king of the giants suffer as her realm had suffered, maybe even more so if she had it her way. When she reached the great door that separated the outside of the castle from the inner hallway, she tapped out the secret knock on the wooden door, and for the first time, she marveled at how easy this business of sneaking inside and locating the king of the giants had been. Perhaps, too easy . . . but no matter. Revenge would come swiftly and boldly, and then she would find her father in the dungeons.
With a quiver, the wooden door to the outside shook, and the dragon’s claws pierced the outer edges of the door as the hinge heated up to a white hot. Pulling away with a snap, the dragon carried the door away, and the serpent slipped stealthily into the hallway. Then he hung the damaged door back onto the gnarled hinge. Pointing in the direction of the throne room, Queen Una led the dragon down the corridor to the open doorway in the center of the hall. She pushed the door open and led him through the opening, but the dragon sniffed the air as if he caught a whiff of someone familiar.
“I smell him. King Payton,” he whispered to her, and she nodded.
“Yes, he is here, and we will find him,” she agreed. “But first we must take care of the king of the giants. He is waiting in the throne room ahead,” she said as she motioned for him to follow. The dragon shook his head as he whiffed the air again.
“I think you’re wrong,” he said with his nose up in the air. “You can’t smell like I do . . .” he continued, and she struck him in the snout with the flat of her blade.
“I think I smell a rat,” she said as she pointed the blade toward him a glare. “We are going into the throne room, and you are going to roast the king of the giants where he sits!” she ordered in her wrath. The dragon eyed her as if he were measuring how small the bitter morsel of Queen Una was in the grand scheme of things, and he considered snapping her up where she stood. His lips smacked as he thought of the chewy crumb in his mouth, and he salivated. Remembering where his loyalties lay, he thought of the Old Men of the Mountain, and he swallowed a mouthful of emptiness instead.
“This is your party, queen,” he said with disdain, and he followed her to the curtains. She quietly peeled the drapes back for him to pass, and the dragon slithered into the throne room where the king of the giants snored his dreams to life. Queen Una kept pace, and when they stood before the throne of the sleeping king, the dragon sniffed the air again with a look of doubt passing before his eyes.
“Does your order still stand?” he asked her doubtfully, and she sneered as she quietly pointed her sword at the slumbering monarch. She would have her revenge at any cost, and he understood her quiet command. The belly of the beast began to glow as he inhaled a deep breath, and the white hot fire smoldered its way through his long neck and out of his mouth as the dragon belched an inferno at the throne. The air before the throne shimmered, and just before the fire struck the throne, the king of the giants disappeared, leaving a tiny man in his place upon the throne. The man was bound in chains, and Una recognized him from where she stood. She screamed out in a mixture of terror and pain, but there was nothing that she could do to stop the command that she had set in place. Queen Una watched as the dragon roasted her father, King Payton, in his chains upon the giant’s throne. She was so quick for revenge that she had not considered the trap that lay before her. The dragon saw what he had done as well, and he hesitated as he watched the bones of Queen Una’s father turn to ash within the white-hot conflagration. There was no going back in time from here; what was done was done. Queen Una stood in shock at the results of her bloodlust, and she could find no words to express her sorrow.
“Queen Una. We must . . .” the dragon started to say to her when a sword struck at his side. Roaring in anger, the dragon swung his body around and faced the king of the giants and a small army that had filled the room. The king returned his own wicked smile and struck out at the dragon’s long neck with his sword. Sparks flew as the blade grazed the rock hard scales, but the dragon’s skin held strong with the blow, and the king of the giants reared back for another swing. Before the giant could draw the sword back, the dragon snipped a bite of the king’s midsection, and the king of the giants died instantly as the dragon drew back his mouth with a chunk of king still in it. Seeing the danger ahead, the dragon lowered his head to the floor by Queen Una, and she mounted the saddle scales as the small army of giants then collapsed on them in the throne room. Covered from tail to neck in giants, the dragon’s body disappeared beneath the struggling mass of armor and sweat, and all might have been lost if not for the dragon’s breath. With a mighty shout, the dragon unleashed a ball of fiery spit upon his own body that bounced across the armor of the belligerent giants, and they each let go of him as the pain of their burns overwhelmed them. Then the dragon raised his head and blew flames straight up into the ceiling, and the floors of the castle above melted away in a ring of dripping fire. Crawling upward, the dragon scaled the many floors of the castle until his head popped out of the roof. Queen Una peered around in the dark to get her bearings, and when she noticed a great keep within the armored walls of the castle, she commanded the dragon to climb the tower of the keep to the windows at the top. The dragon leaped across the courtyard, and then followed Una’s command and climbed to the top of the tower where stain glass windows protected the inhabitants from being seen. Queen Una shattered the windows with her own sword, and she laughed as she saw the two lady giants that were huddled in fear inside the tower.
“You! You are the Queen of the giants, are you not?!” Queen Una barked at the two giants who were clothed in beautiful robes of jewels. She knew very little of the giants, but she knew the ways of royalty, and Queen Una would not be fooled by these women. From their appearance, it was easy to tell that they were sisters. One of the women was clearly older than the other, and she wore a tiara of gold on her forehead. Neither lady spoke as the dragon drew in heavy breaths from the exertion of climbing, but the younger giantess began to wave her hands in the air as if she were a magic user. A green glow emanated from her hands to form a sphere of emerald radiance around the two giantesses, and the older giantess began to laugh at the ranting of the tiny Queen Una.
“You think I fear you and your dragon, little one. It was my idea to disguise your father,” the queen of the giants laughed with a devious smile. The younger sister’s eyes turned and stared at the elder monarch as if she were herself a monster, yet she kept the spell that protected them intact. Queen Una ordered the dragon to lash out at the sisters, and the dragon gushed a river of flame from his gullet. The room burned in hot red flames as the broken glass melted and the draper
ies charred, but when the blaze died down, the queen of the giants and her sister stood strong within the confines of the magical orb. Queen Una cursed them for their defiance, and she laid out a decree that would stand the test of time.
“Queen Dowager, as you shall be known in my realm, your husband is dead, and your giants now serve the Queen of the Mountain,” she said as she pointed to herself. “I will destroy your castle and your army, but I shall let you rebuild so that you may pay homage to me. You will capture and transport humans to the mountain as payment of the debt which you have created. And I will never release you from the bondage that is heretofore set forth, as long as you live.” Then Queen Una bade the dragon to destroy the castle and the army of the giants that evening. The night burned bright with the kindling of destruction, and when the dragon had finished, only the glowing green ball of magic that protected Queen Dowager and her sister stood above the ground. Once Queen Una was satisfied with her vengeance, she ordered the dragon to fly home with her at dawn.