The day was just like any other—wet, cold, and covered in alligators.

Bastien was in a foul mood. He had been up all night, thanks to those weird dreams he’d been having. Despite the fact that the recurring dream had been populated by only himself and a strange and unsettling (but beautiful; they were always beautiful) woman, he was beginning to get a bit irritated with it. It was the wrong kind of unsettling, that was the problem—that, and rainy mornings always gave him a headache.

It certainly didn’t help that he absolutely hated alligators.

Muttering under his breath, the hero dressed—sluggishly—and went to close the window so none of the damned beasts would get in. “After all,” his mother had told him when he was young, “you don’t want to wake up in the morning with an alligator in your bed.” This seemed a moot point to Bastien, as it was already the morning and he would have needed to have slept in order to awaken to the disgusting reptile in his bed, but the advice was worth remembering all the same.

The thin rug offered little protection from the cold stone castle floors, and the flowery patterns on it offered little comfort to the disgruntled warrior. But the windows were closed, now, and Bastien felt refreshed knowing he’d have a wonderful and totally alligator-free morning.

That lasted for a few moments. Then the door burst open.

For a moment, Bastien didn’t see anyone.

“Excuse me…milord. Milord?” a small stuffy voice called to the warrior. Bastien glanced down disdainfully at his small, dumpy looking goblin manservant.

“What is it now, Murg? I only woke up a moment ago,” he said, lying through his teeth. “I really hope it’s good news. Otherwise,” he said cheerfully, “I may have to throttle you.” Bastien turned away and began to pretend to be busy in hopes that the goblin might simply vanish from being ignored.

Murg looked up at his overwhelming master and gulped nervously. “It’s…the queen, milord.”

This stopped Bastien in mid-indignation. Murg could only see the hero’s back, but could tell from how the veins in his neck seemed clenched that Bastien was not happy to receive this kind of news upon awakening.

And indeed, no one would have been happy to receive that sort of news upon awakening. That unhappiness was only compounded by the fact that he hadn’t slept a wink in two days and was beginning to be irritated by…well, everything. But the queen…she was something else entirely.

Every time that Bastien came to the Castle Fentestock, he had been greeted with much pomp and circumstance and was usually accompanies by whatever fair maiden he had most recently rescued from the claws of a vicious dragon or ruthless tyrant. (Or even renegade mages, Bastien had also handled those rather well a few times.) But no matter how exhausted he was from his adventure, or how beautiful the girl alongside him happened to be, it was always the queen that demanded his attention.

Now, to most, being the object of a queen’s affections would seem an honor. But Bastien had initially been under the impression that queens, whether noble and good or wicked and twisted (though Bastien had to admit, the latter sure knew how to have a good time,) were supposed to be beautiful. They were supposed to have hair as beautiful as spring sunlight, or dark and glossy as a raven’s wing, or something equally as dumb and poetic.

Sadly, Queen Filiona was none of these things. She was ugly and shrewd, an upright woman, but one who wouldn’t hesitate to cut down the obstacles that stood in her path. She was neither wicked nor “good”—not in the conventional sense, at any rate—and, as such, was simply interested in keeping her kingdom running smoothly and keeping her husband, King Frederick, happily oblivious to the fact that he actually was as ineffectual as his opponents liked to suggest.

And she had a soft spot for heroes.

When the kingdom’s last hero, Lord Axus of Niffle, passed away quietly in his sleep while wrestling an errant alligator that had snuck into his quarters, the Honorable Association of Heroes and Adventurers decided it was time to switch things up a bit. First, the realm in which Castle Fentestock resided (the Kingdom of Eydis, known, strangely enough, for its exquisite glasswork and smoked sausages) was reclassified as a Type II Heroism Zone¹, having now brought about the untimely deaths of several of HAHA’s finest heroes (among them Ylva the Morose and Zoran of Lymph, both lost to the picturesque depths of the Bucolic Sea.) Secondly, as per the association’s alphabetical assignment policy, Bastien was the next unfortunate sap called to take the position.

Ever since, the queen was always sending him away on this quest or that—someone’s daughter (or the occasional son) was abducted by a dragon, or a crazed wizard, or even once enchanted by a wicked sorceress and needed to be rescued…always something along those lines. (To be honest, Bastien actually rather enjoyed encountering the aforementioned “wicked sorceress,” so the queen made certain that sort of quest never came his way again.) As of late, however, it was the dragons that had been popping up left and right—so dragons it was.

That the queen wished to speak with him only meant that there must have been another young lady (“Please, let it be a lady,” he begged silently) abducted by some ferocious draconic beast, and that he would have to go to her rescue. That was simply how things were done around here.

So Bastien quietly resigned himself to his fate and waved Murg away. The little goblin manservant huffed objectionably, but scuttled off to inform the queen that the warrior would be meeting with her shortly.

Bastien’s headache was worse, now. He hated dragons—smelly, brutish old beasts. They were almost as bad as the alligators.

---------------------

¹The different realms in Meregansserrett were rated by HAHA according to the frequency and magnitude of their Heroic Crises™ and placed in one of five categories: Type I Adventuring, Type I Heroism, Type II Adventuring, Type II Heroism, and Type Y. More information can be found in their brochure “What Can Heroes Do For Me?” which we have included in the appendix of this volume.

These classifications were made with special consideration towards the density of evil personages in the area, such as wicked queens, mad demigods, rogue sorcerers, and Republican congressmen.