from
On The Subject Of Dragons
a sequel to
On The Subject Of Trolls
as told by
Aelfraed of Cirneceaster
Dragons. People always ask me about dragons. They always seem to be far more interested in dragons than they are in trolls, but I think dragons are the much less interesting beings. Dragons are very annoying, of course — not annoying in the various ways that trolls can be, but still annoying.
Most of the dragons that are found in Wessex or Mercia are smaller. They can still breathe fire, of course, and their teeth and claws are deadly, but…
Also called ‘Othoral and Hiadmath’
There were once two people, by the names of Othoral and Hiadmath, who lived in a small house in the countryside. The house stood on a slight rise in the land, and was surrounded on all sides by field after field of tall crops grown by Othoral and Hiadmath.
Every day, Othoral made a cake for Hiadmath.
‘I am looking forward to this.’ Hiadmath would say as the cake was in the oven. ‘I do so like cake. I could happily eat the whole thing in one go.’
Once the cake had been baked, Othoral…
There was once a great empire.
This great empire was vast — reaching from the pine-covered mountains of Arennia in the west, to the golden beaches and azure reefs of Marcanne in the east, from the freshwater lakes of Belgamon in the north, to the apple orchards and apiaries of Arganza in the south. It was so vast that evening on one side of the empire was morning on the other. And at its centre stood its Capital — a limestone and marble metropolis that was the seat of power for a hemisphere.
This great empire was also extraordinarily wealthy…
There was once a great city.
Hundreds of thousands of people lived in this city. But the people were divided into two groups: the Many, and the Few.
For the Few, life in this great city was wonderful, for the Few were very wealthy. They lived in grand houses on the banks of the river that meandered through the city. Each marble mansion was filled with drawing rooms and dining rooms and more than forty bedrooms. Each grand hallway was filled with gold-framed oil paintings and fine china vases. The baths were made of burnished bronze and the toilet seats…
The Emperor had an enormous penis.
That’s what he said, at least. Only the Empress and the Emperor’s concubines — all eighty-eight of them — had ever actually seen it, and they dutifully repeated the Emperor’s own claims about it. And the Emperor himself repeated his claims every chance he had — he would shout it from the walls of his palace — sometimes three, four, five times in a day. He claimed that it was twenty-four and a half inches long — longer than that of any emperor ever before — longer than that of anyone else in the…
Benjamin T. Milnes
Author of On The Subject Of Trolls and Zolantis
