To Begin a Story - HS alt.

Heavenshine - The Alternate
Prologue - To Begin a Story

Normally, a story such as this would begin with something as utterly cliché as 'once upon a time in a faraway land', and I indeed would have used this had I known precisely when and where the heck it even took place.  No, I - the author - am not going to pretend that I know this, because...well...I don't.

This story does, however, take place in a peaceful kingdom - possibly in the past, or perhaps in the future but on a less developed planet than our own, or maybe even in an entirely separate universe that has no concept of time whatsoever - which goes by the name of Alteartha.  No one quite knows how it got its name, and most believe that some strange higher power with limited creativity bestowed it upon the land (while the rest believe that they're total crackpots), but if there was one thing they did know about their kingdom, it was that it was a really great place and in all honesty they could just never ever leave.  

In truth, they simply wouldn't leave - they loved their kingdom so much that they would refuse to go even if they were under constant threat of attack from an immensely powerful fire-breathing monster!

Which they were, in fact.

To the dismay of Alteartha's loyal and friendly citizens, and especially to the dismay of the king and queen (or more accurately, the prince and princess, seeing as their royal parents were always traveling and could thus never be bothered to actually run the kingdom that they'd been so blessed to rule), a nearby mountain range was discovered to be the resting place of an enormous - and very cruel - dragon.  The finding had been entirely accidental, and had ended in tragedy for the group of explorers who had so foolishly discovered the dragon by trodding upon his tail - three separate times.  

Fifteen, actually, if one took into consideration the fact that there had been five explorers.

In his defense, the dragon had an amount of patience about as immense as his girth.  

Regardless of patience, however, it didn't excuse the fact that upon being awakened, the creature had barbecued and devoured the intruders before taking to swooping across the sky on a daily basis, moving closer and closer to the expanse of cottages with every passing week.  Every once in a while he would perch at the town's edge, blocking out the sun across miles of streets and alleys - all because some pretty human girl had caught his eye.

For you see, not unlike many others of his kind, the dragon found something undeniably interesting about some human girls; pretty and influential human girls in particular.  Virgins were a curiosity to him as well - they had a peculiar scent around them that few creatures would notice (or care about, for that matter).

And not unlike many others of their kind, the royalty of Alteartha couldn't help but be unnerved by the dragon's close proximity (and his attraction to human girls in the first place - that was honestly kind of weird).

It was especially unnerving when a passing flight had the creature taking a great liking to the princess herself; unsurprisingly, the castle guard doubled overnight, a useless gesture considering the dragon's sheer sense of cunning, not to mention his (no pun intended) firepower.  ...Okay, pun intended - the author admits it and feels appropriately ridiculous for making such a terrible joke.

Princess Etoile, of course, was not amused by the whole affair; both in regards to having dozens of soldiers stationed every other foot to make sure she was safe, and the fact that the dragon found her interesting in the first place.  Not only was the creature an entirely different species from herself, but as her brother was next in line for the throne, she'd resigned herself to a completely carefree and single (meaning relationship-less) existence.  She couldn't - wouldn't - have it any other way, so the young princess did the first thing that came to mind.

And as she was lifted into the air, the dragon's strong claws curled about her, Etoile figured that trying to reason with the beast might have been a pretty stupid idea.  And by the time she was plopped down onto a pile of treasure (one that bore a suspicious resemblance to a pile that had gone missing from the royal vault), face to enormous sharp-toothed grinning face, she was entirely certain that trying to reason with the beast had been a pretty stupid idea.

Her brother, Prince Benjamin, would most certainly have agreed had he even known that she thought of her idea as such.  But alas, he didn't know - all he knew was that his darling sister had been kidnapped and was in the clutches of a horrid monster, knew that he had no idea if she was safe or even alive, and knew that at this point, what else could he do but rush to her rescue?

Well, hire a dragon-slayer, obviously - he was an immense wimp, he couldn't take on a dragon!  Goodness.

And so, my (hopefully entertained) readers, this is how our story begins - once upon some kind of time in a place that may or may not be far away.