Katal dozed peacefully. He dreamed of times not so long ago when he would fly around his mountain, setting fire to anything that displeased him with a mighty breath of flame.
He would stroll proudly through his forests; his natural red armour glowing as it caught the streams of sunlight that poked through the canopy above. A large belly hung down from his muscled frame, steadily growing as he happily gorged on any cattle offered to him from the local village of Askolov. At night he would hunt, although often more than sated from local offerings of cattle and other fine meats to keep him from attacking their peacefully little town, he was pushed on by a primal urge that simply could not be shaken. When Katal finally did arrive back at his cave, he lay proudly at the foot of his hoard of gold and jewels. Treasure of infinite value piled high with many items long forgotten in the world of men.
Rumours of wealth beyond imagining of course brought knights: men from far and wide searching for what they hoped would bring them fame and fortune. With coats of armour proudly glinting in the sunlight, they arrogantly strode around the lands on their noble steeds searching for good deeds to perform. These many knights of course would never be seen again, nor their prized horses; not while the ferocious Katal lay in wake, and all but one died without coming close to harming the great reptile.
One unfortunate morning Katal awoke from his deep slumber. With a bellowing yawn; completed by a deafening belch, he slowly lifted his great form from his hoard of treasure and waited for a moment to allow any gold that had become stuck in his soft underbelly to pop out and and fall to ground. He then walked at his own leisurely pace towards the morning light that poured through the small circular entrance to his cave. The entrance had become a bit of a squeeze in the last few months, especially with him eating more and more delicious meals than he could count. He walked up the small bank that led to the exit and as normal went straight on through the gap, and as normal (at least for the last few months) he came to a stop as the front of his stomach became wedged in the circular gap. Luckily enough for the dragon he was strong. Placing his front paws flat against the cavern walls he pushed hard, but instead of simply popping through the hole like he used to, he only slowly began to slide through at slow speed.
Although this was far from becoming a worry, it might have started becoming an irritant in the future as he got fatter from the villagers cattle. For now at least, he enjoying the feeling of the cave walls scraping against his belly, it helped remove any troublesome coins or other small pieces of treasure that might have gotten caught in his hide.
With a great heave he pushed against the his captors walls and began sliding his stomach through, cursing as he hit his horns on the ceiling. Finally after a mild struggle, he pulled him self through the gap and out the other end, almost stumbling to the ground as he came through.
It took a while for the dragons sensitive eyesight to adjust to the bright sunlight as he left the mouth of his cave, but he did not need his eyes to know something was amiss. His keen sense of smell let him know as soon as he left his cave that something was wrong. There was no smell of cattle or any other meats for that matter. The meat SHOULD have been left as an offering to him.
'Don't those villagers no better by now?' Katal said to himself. 'To feed me when I am hungry!'
“Oh I think you have had enough food for one decade foul beast!” Came a voice close to him.
What did hang in the air was not the smell of meat, but the smell of rusty armour, sweat and the meat that he loved the most, horse. When the 'beasts' eyesight did come in to focus and the bright blurry world around him came in to a steady state, he saw what was expected, a knight.
The knight stood arrogantly a mere 20 feet from the dragons maw, his sword was sheathed and he held a flag proudly in his right hand. Katal resisted the urge to kill the pompous thing instantly,
but these encounters were usually rather amusing and never ended well for the knights or their steeds.
'The cheek of it!' He thought. 'Standing within easy striking distance, he must carry even less intelligence than the rest. This should be good.'
Sir Frankworth stood bravely in the presence of the hulking demon, holding his homeland flag proudly. “I now proclaim this land in the name of...”
The beast interrupted rudely, not that a creature of such evil was expected to have any manners.
“Are you serious? Really?”
The knight looked puzzled.
“I mean, you all stride in here proudly and arrogantly on your rather obese horses; which by the way is never a good idea as I happen to have a taste for them, and you stand there in front of me, reading out some charter from a distant land that I really could not care less about! But it gets worse of course, you all start demanding that I hand over my hard earned treasure and lands, babbling on about your nations rights, unless I stop you of course. Seriously, do you expect me to listen? The best you are going to get from me is a quick death and all that means for me is another meal.”
“I can tell you get a lot of those.”
“I'm sorry excuse me?” The beast responded.
“The reason; Beast, that I am not afraid of you is that I believe you greatly over estimate your ability to fight. I have studied the way that you have attacked my fellow brothers in arms in the past and have convinced the villagers to give you far more food than usual for at least few months. Knowing that you are such a glutton, they agreed to my plan to make you fat and slow, and fat and slow you have become!”
The dragon began to circle the knight at a distance. “You may be right Knight. I do enjoy a good meal, but this is exactly what I wanted. My body is now glorious!” He bellowed while grabbing a chunk of fat from his hideously overgrown belly. “I am afraid that you are very wrong, I have not become slow, only more powerful!”
And with that the huge beast belched out a flame of searing heat. Sir Frankworth quickly dived behind a large boulder that he had been slowly edging towards. The roar of the flames was almost unbearable but the knight knew that the creature could only maintain its terrible fire for so long and before long the flames stopped. He waited a moment until he could hear the terrible beings breath on the other side of the rock.
“Oh knighty... Come to me” The creature hissed.
With that he leaped up over the rocks and plunged his sword deep in to the beasts mouth. The dragon released a deafening roar and flung the knight and his sword through the air. Landing with a clatter on the ground he had only moment before Katal came charging towards him. The beasts terrible maw snapped at him, hundreds of sharp gleaming teeth came so close to ripping his head off that he swore he could see part of his broken sword stuck in the bottom of its mouth.
Despite such a near miss, he was right. Although the creature seemed for some reason proud of his fattened hide, it had slowed him down enough to give the knight an advantage.
As the dragons huge form came crashing down to the ground Frankworth swung his sword, successfully slicing through part of the dragon belly and cleaving open its rear leg. It roared and thrashed in pain. No time was to be lost and doing as planned, Frankworth dived and plunged what remained of his sword through the beasts wing, tearing through it like a knife through paper, this would disable the creatures ability to launch an aerial attack on the local village should something happen to him. With a sudden surge the dragon threw the knight from its back.
He broke an ankle in his fall, but wasted no time pulling himself and limped towards the dragons head. It seemed unconscious, but Even disabled the creature could still easily kill the knight if it got lucky. He hopped towards the side of the creatures great head and raised his sword to strike.
Katal opened his eyes and seized the knight in his jaws before he could strike, throwing him in to a tree.
Frankworth lay on the ground struggling for breath, his body was broken and death was now certain, but he had gravely injured the terrible being and in doing so had served a noble cause. His name would be remembered in his home land, a home that seemed so far away now, so out of reach.
The dragon struggled on to its feet and flashed an evil glare from its horrid amber eyes before slowly limping towards him. The creature loomed over the Sir Frankworth, but he was not afraid any more, and the dragon was visibly shaking from its injuries.
“So little knight” Katal croaked. “It looks like I have won again.”
It had been years since the day Sir Frankworth had injured Katal so, but the injuries were severe. He had survived for months on fat reserves while his wounds healed. He lay in the dark corners of his cave, hungry and alone. His great belly shrunk down to nothing and his muscles dissipated. For fear of starving he finally decided to leave his cave, weak and hungry he found his leg injury to still affect his balance, driven on by hunger he limped from his cave and with his wing wound taking away any possibility of flight, he slowly took to his woods hoping that with luck he would stumble across a meal.
On an off chance he came upon a drowned sheep in the river that ran through his valley, the thought of sheep would usually have repulsed him, but in his time of desperate need he was thankful and cooked the sheep with a dull flame before swallowing it whole.
Slowly his leg wound healed and once able to hunt again, he found his food supply to be plentiful. With the valley overflowing with creatures, he was able to gorge himself on creatures that had prospered while he simply had to much food available to bother hunting and fish that seemed to jump out of the water and in to his waiting maw.
Over time his wounds healed, but he grew to lazy to attempt to try flying again or to exercise constantly like he used to, this caused his previously muscled frame to fade away, leaving behind a soft and pudgy exterior.
Katal woke with a gasp. It had been many years since the knight wounded him so, and while he told himself that the man had merely gotten lucky, the many weeks of pain he suffered lying in his cave still haunted his dreams. The fear was so real, it was a fear that he had never felt before or since. The fear of being so helpless, that another knight could come strolling in to his cave while he could not defend himself.
He gazed around his cavern ceiling, reminding himself that he was no longer defenceless. His wounds had almost completely healed, but his spirit had not. While he was now a capable hunter once more, he had grown to lazy and afraid to once more attack and demand food from the local town of Askolov, though he denied the latter.
'No need to start all that business with the town again, those creatures are too much hassle. After all, I am doing all right for myself.' He mused, giving his pot belly a slap.
His belly wobbled and growled back at him. 'Guess its time you to feed you then.'
He rolled on to his front, bounced up and padded out towards the daylight. The gap in his cave was now far from restricting as he ducked through, only his round rump made brief contact with the roof as he ducked to get through the hole. He had lost a lot of mass, especially muscle, leaving him with a far less intimidating figure than before. A pot belly bulged out slightly and bounced about and his once thick and powerful back limbs now wobbled as he trotted out in to the open.
The morning chorus was in full flow as Katal reached his river, he always enjoyed bird song, it was there the first time he arrived in the mountain forests and would always welcome him back after returning from long journeys, when he would gather treasure for his cave from distant lands, nothing daring to stand in his way. Now all that was gone, but the song still reminded him of those glorious days when he would return home in triumph.
Water rushed around him at he plodded up to the small waterfall that provided him with the most fish. While bears would usually stand at the top of the cascading water, waiting for a fish to jump up
at them, Katal found it far more effective to lie quietly and patiently while the fish swam past him. Then he would await any falling salmon that did not quite make it up the waterfall.
Lying like this for a few hours, he caught many a juicy salmon and happily ate until his paunch could take no more.
Feeling rather seized up from lying still for so long, he rose to his feet and slowly plodded back down the river to find somewhere to rest. Finding a shallow spot of water in the sun, he lay down on his back, bulging belly to the sky and fell in to a deep slumber.
Katal awoke to a change in the air, something was out there in the woods that should not be.
The birds had stopped singing. All manner of things fell in to a deathly silence, they were hiding from something. A smell of rusty metal hung in the air, a smell that Katal would once have accepted the arrival of, but not now. Now he was afraid after what had happened to him last time, he feared that he was not ready, but there was no escaping it now.
There at the river bank stood a knight on his brilliant white horse. The knight pulled up the visor on his helmet and looked the dragon up and down.
“I almost don't believe the stories that I have been told dragon.” The knight said.
Katal still lying on his back felt caught of guard, but tried not to sound it. “What stories would you have come to believe knight?”
“That you are a ferocious beast that fears nothing, devouring every knight that sets foot in this valley!”
“And what say you knight, choose your words carefully for they may be your last!” (Katal enjoyed playing along with humans overly dramatic drivel).
“All I see is an overgrown and overfed reptile! You are no more immune to my lance than the next forest dwelling creature that I chance upon. Back up Fray, we must charge this foul beast from afar!”
And with that the knight galloped back in to the forest, Katal was sure he saw the horse roll its eyes and let out a sigh. The knight should have attacked him while he had his vulnerable belly exposed, but if knights could do one thing, it was talk. Now he had the chance to prepare a defence. He rolled himself on to his front, groaning as his still bulging paunch squashed under his weight against the river bed and lay low.
There was a few seconds of silence, similar to what you would expect in the eye of a hurricane or the few seconds before your partner has realised that you have just spilled red wine on the new carpet (if you are not one of those people that have ventured willingly in to a hurricane). After which came a shout and a galloping from somewhere in the dense forest, slowly it got louder until finally the knight burst through the tree line and down the river bank, helmet down and lance lowered.
While some cultures may have taken gesture as a friendly and rather high velocity hand shake, Katal was not having any of it. He reared up and caught the knight with a mighty blow of his tail, sending him flying through the air and knocking his steed unconscious.
The knight pulled himself up and threw off his helmet and drew his sword. “You draw your last breath demon!”
And with that Katal forced out a blistering inferno, instantly atomising the knight. All that was left was a rather lordly looking shadow on a rock behind where he was standing. Truth be told Katal was a little surprise at how easy it had been, considering the last time he was attacked. He hardly knew how to react after all this time, should he feel proud? Victorious? Or... Hungry? Just then it hit him. The knights stallion. He had not eaten horse in years, and it was his absolute favourite meal.
The horse lay on his side where he fell on the riverbank. Katal loomed over its body curiously, it was definitely not dead, just out cold. “Well this is no good.” He thought to himself. “Where is the fun if he doesn't put up a struggle first.” (He could be rather cruel when it came to situations like this, apparently his mother never told him not to play with his food.)
It certainly looked tasty, it was a white Andalusian horse with a fat belly and a rump to match. Steeds were always the tastiest things around, knights liked to keep them very well fed for long journeys and it was ever so fun to tease them about it. Drooling, Katal could wait no more, he walked to the rivers edge and using his tail, soaked the horse with water.
The second the water hit the horse its useless limbs spasmed in to life, before the helpless thing could jump to its hooves Katal placed a paw on its belly and pinned it down. The horse looked up in horror at what was looming over it.
“Urm... Hello...” The horse said nervously. “You're... hurting me!”
“Oh I'm sorry.” Katal said, attempting to sound sympathetic (it did not work). He lifted his paw off the horses belly and began stroking it gently instead.
His maw widened in to a sinister grin “You and me are going to have some fun.”
