In a different part of the area, a person awoke from a restful sleep. He stretched and went through his usual morning routine before donning his clothes and his armor and running down the dirt road leading from his home to a place far into the forbidden lands that no one dared enter.

He didn’t care for such rules, as they were meant to be broken. He was the Hero, after all, and he was destined to save the world from the tyranny of the dragons and their kind. But, more than that, right now he had to meet someone he cared very deeply for, and he was sure cared very deeply for him.

As he ran, countless other girls called out to him, asking him all manner of questions. He was glad that he had so many friends.

“Axis, please stop by my house later on! I’ll show you how nice I can be!”

He could never wrap his head around some of them, though. For some reason, they seemed to like showing off their bodies to him, but he couldn’t understand why they did. They were all friends, after all, so why would they feel the need to show him something like that?

“Axis-oy, I’ll let you have a bite of my ‘pie’ later on! So ignore the rest of those hussies and come by the Inn later on!”

Oh, he liked pie! However, whenever he went to the Inn as she suggested, there was never any pie. That made him sad.

Heedless to the countless other attempts to catcall him or offer their hands in matrimony, Axis Wode, the Hero, ran towards the dark forest, on his own personal quest to meet his girlfriend.

…

“Axis. You’ve come.” Said a woman who was dressed in regal finery.

“Yes, Monarcia, I have! What was that big thing you needed to tell me about?”

She looked him up and down and could tell that the number of brain cells operating in that simian brain of his were only about five, maybe six at most. She had never appeared before him dressed like this, so of course he should be suspicious, but he wasn’t.

In fact, his mind did not even seem to register the fact that there were numerous Draconid beings around her, waiting on her, hand and foot. She had to give herself credit, as this was her densest creation yet. A perfectly generic, denser-than-Adamantite plaything that believed itself to be a ‘Divinely Chosen Hero’.

She smiled, not in happiness that this utter simpleton was concerned about her, but out of malicious and cruel joy that this toy was doing exactly what she wanted. She had been forced to abort several times beforehand, as the other ‘Heroes’ had not played by her rules. But why cry over spilled milk, or in this case, erased carbon-copy civilizations?

“Can’t you figure it out, ‘Hero’?” she asked sarcastically as she kicked the face of a kobold that dared to look up at her. “Is it not obvious?”

There was a pause that lasted a good few minutes as the ‘Chosen Hero’ stared blankly ahead, the hamster wheel in his head spinning as the few mental faculties beyond the most basic generic Hero bullshit tried desperately to be creative. Alas, it seemed as though she would have to fill in the blank head of this utter moron herself, just as she had always done.

She sighed audibly with a tone and motion that showed her utter disgust for the situation and the people involved, but the dopey little human seemed to take this as a sign that he needed to say something.

“I don’t know. I can only assume it is bad! I can help! I’m the Hero!”

She narrowed her eyes and then rolled them.

“Sure you are.” She wanted her toy to be controllable, but this was getting painful. She had half a mind to simply wipe the slate clean again and start over one more time.

“Yep, I am!”

Vaile damn it, he was soooooooooooooooooo stupid! Could he not pick up even the most basic of context clues?! Just what kind of toy had she actually created?

“I have to inform you that I am being taken to the lair of Monarkea the Dragon-Lord.” She said as she filed her nail and looked away. “We won’t see each other again until the final battle to decide your fate. Now, if you would, go on your dumb little ‘Quest’ and gather the sacred bullshit relics that can grant you an attempt at fighting the Dragon-Lord. Until then.”

With that, she got up from her seat and walked away, leaving the ‘Hero’ to stand there motionless as the cogs in his dumb little head began to turn ever so slowly. If he acted now, he might be able to grab her, but she had made this ‘Hero’ a bit too dependent on outside influence, as he began to spout moronic and utterly generic lines about ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘hope’ and ‘heroism’ even as she literally was just walking away.

Eventually, though, the programming in his tiny little brain began to work its magic, and he turned around and ran off back the way he had come.

“My Lady, may I speak my mind freely and without risk of destruction?” asked a colossal, black-scaled dragon that had been standing in plain sight even as the ‘Hero’ spoke with his master’s heir.

“I already have a good idea of what you want to say, but I shall permit it.” Said Monarcia, or rather, Monarkea the Dragon-Lord as she shed her human disguise and took flight from the depths of the forest, scaring the ever-loving shit out of everyone nearby except for the dumb-as-dirt Hero who did not even notice.

“That one is dumb. And I mean, really, really dumb. So dumb in fact that calling him dumb is a massive disservice to other dumb people. But, to be fair, there are few words that can express how utterly, totally, tremendously dumb that human is.”

“Your point, An’akzar?” Asked the dragon with scales like diamonds that made the other dragons around it look like a bunch of Chihuahuas alongside a Tibetan Mastiff.

“My point is,” said the black dragon, “that you did an amazing job.”

“Really?” asked the flying colossus. “Are you attempting to flatter me?”

“Yes, and also no.” said the black dragon. “I’m just honestly impressed and think that this round of ‘Hero vs. Dragons’ will be a bit more… interesting? I suppose that’s the right word. I could tell, that fool was well-made, and he will, unlike a few others, more than likely follow his in-built directive far more faithfully than the others. So long as nothing unexpected happens, everything should proceed more or less as expected, and this time we’ll have an entire basin full of people to kill, maim, burn, and/ or turn into treasure.”

“Does Lord Vaile’s arrival in my father and I’s domain count as ‘something unexpected’?” asked the diamond behemoth.

“Well, that would certainly change things, but why do you ask?”

“Because.” Said Monarkea as a grin formed on her reptilian face. “Father has risen, and he’s on his way to meet Lord Vaile right now. And I think he’d like to meet me as well.”