Jonson the innkeeper did not see the dragon, but he did hear the screams. It all went by so quickly. Just a normal day tending the inn, except for those two pairs of perverts with their boys; that’s always a bad sign. The omen must have been spot-on, considering only seconds later the inn was filled to the brim with magical flame, killing everyone inside… except him.

All he really remembers about this moment, his the weird feeling of being pulled back, falling through a hole torn in reality, saving him from a painful, cindering death the second before the flames sweep into the inn, and then across the street.

He finds himself upon one of Eizerith Castle’s great spires. His savior is a tall, cloaked figure with great shining eyes, and an angled, relaxed smile. Off the cuff Jonson assumes it to be some demon or great, evil spirit, but it’s a bit worse than that.

“Good day,” the figure says, releasing Jonson as the portal closes.

“Wh-… I…” Jonson bumbles a moment cluelessly as he looks about. “What happe-whoa.” Jonson just laid eyes on the inn, or better yet, what was the inn, along with the dragon flying off with the little princess in its terrible claws. “Huh!?”

The figure enjoys a well-meaning chuckle. “I saved you.”

“Well, thanks, but what is going on?!”

“Just as I said, I saved you, and now you have a choice to make.”

“Wh- why would…” Jonson sighs as he leans into the spire’s wall. He looks over the balcony, a thousand feet below to the city, and then back to the spire wall. “Okay, what do you want?”

“Pardon?”

“My soul, I’m guessing? Give me your soul and I’ll help you out sort of things?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The figure tilts its head to the side just an inch. “Not particularly.”

“Then why me?” Jonson asks, with a tone as if he were complaining to his late dad.

The figure smiles in response, its angular jaws curling up like a living jack-o-lantern. “Because I chose you. Sometimes that’s just how fate works.”

Jonson sighs. “That inn was all I had… That’s it, then.”

“Surely, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“All my family’s passed away, they left the inn to me, and now I have nothing.” Jonson turns from the wall and instead leans on the railing, overlooking a thousand miles of wild forest and great plain beyond past the city.

“Then you have nothing to lose, yes?”

Jonson looks down wearily, though wide eyed, at once shocked, and yet exhausted. “…I guess I don’t. So what now?”

“You can live on the streets, begging for bread, or you can join the campaign against the dragon, and become a true hero.”

Jonson smirks as if he’s heard it all before. “I’m no fighter. I’ve never hurt a person in my entire life. I’m about the farthest thing from a hero.”

The figure smiles. “To be a hero is a choice: a daily, stoic decision centered on right priorities and a clear mind. You have breath in your lungs, so you are fit to be a hero.”

Jonson scoffs. “You got some nerve, spirit… I’m not strong, or fast, or particularly smart. I just wanted to… find a nice girl and… have nice kids, in a nice home.”

The figure hums. “I believe you have been chosen for more. I believe you have the spark of magic within you.”

Jonson shrugs. “You think so? Why?”

“Because deep inside of you, Jonson Wildegaard, is a person that cares, and only people that care can learn magic.”

Jonson scoffs. “Okay, so if I said yes, what then?”

The figure moves slowly as he assumes a position looming over Jonson’s shoulders and points down to the mountains.

“I suppose you and I will go on a quest, slay what we must slay, and free whoever there is to free. We’ll be heroes.”

Jonson looks back to the inn, now a cindering pile of memories and old dreams; the dream of his father and mother. “I don’t really have anything to fight for.”

“You do.”

Jonson scoffs. “Do I?”

“You can fight for no object now, as you’ve lost all you own. If you’re willing, though, you can fight for yourself, and your own goals. Do you believe society should be safe?”

Jonson takes another look back at the inn. “Yes.”

“Is that enough of a reason to go on a perilous quest, in your mind?”

“…Yeah, it is.”

The figure nods. “So what is your answer?”

Jonson looks to the figure to look it in its great, white eyes. “Let’s do it. To hell with being scared of dragons.”