The castle gates groaned as they opened, and a gust of wind swept through the great hall, scattering parchment and unsettling the flames in the sconces. Dust fell from the rafters. A sound echoed behind it—like distant thunder—growing louder with each beat.

Sir Cedric of Goldenhill, who had once bested the Troll of Alderfen and kept the belt to prove it, gripped his sword and took two quick steps in front of the king’s throne.

From the courtyard came a voice, deep as a cavern and smooth as oiled stone. “I have come to correct the tale.”

Gasps rippled through the assembled court. The double doors burst open—no guards had dared close them again—and there, filling the entranceway like a living landslide, stood a dragon.

Scales the color of deep iron, ridged with coal-black seams, shimmered in the torchlight. His eyes were like twin embers, ancient and unreadable. His breath steamed from flared nostrils and set the rushes on the floor to curling.

A moment later, a goblin in a neatly patched cloak hurried in after him, clutching a small stack of scrolls and puffing. “M’lord, I did say the keep’d be uphill, I did, but you never listen when I mention terrain,” he muttered, wiping his brow with a handkerchief far too fine for his station.

The dragon exhaled—no fire, just warm air, like a smithy in summer—and regarded the room. “King Alric. Hero.”

His gaze settled on Cedric, who was tracking prints in a defensive arc around the throne. “You may lower your sword. I have not come for battle. Not this day.”

King Alric, whose face had gone a bit pale but whose posture remained commendably upright, cleared his throat. “And what… matter… brings you to my court, dread wyrm?”

The goblin scuttled forward with surprising confidence, holding one scroll high. “It be these tales, y’see, Your Majesticness. ‘Tales of Valor and Flame,’ Volume Five. Printed just last winter. Sold at three copper a copy, five at the fair, and yet riddled with falsehoods it is, m’lord.”

“Utter nonsense,” rumbled the dragon, smoke curling faintly from his nostrils. “Apparently I was ‘driven shrieking into the crags’ by a man in trousers made of boar hide.”

Cedric bristled. “They were elk hide. And you did shriek.”

“I howled. In amusement.” The dragon’s voice deepened, echoing against the vaulted ceiling. “It was a noise I make when your kind attempts to strike my underbelly with a stick.”

The goblin, who was now tugging open a scroll with a small silver clasp, added helpfully: “There be songs, m’lord, where you burn down an entire orphanage to make stew, and yet I’ve got records here—handwritten, mind ye—that you donated two barrels of charred chestnuts to the same orphans come Harvest.”

A maiden behind the king gave a muffled squeak and dropped her embroidery.

“Furthermore,” the goblin continued, squinting up at the court with one large, amber eye, “you said he kept piles of maiden bones in his hoard. Bones! I done catalogued the hoard myself, and I swear on my mother’s egg-ladle, it’s naught but sapphires and one very old rocking chair.”

“It was my grandmother’s,” said the dragon.

Cedric narrowed his eyes. “You did try to bite me.”

“You insulted my poetry.”

The court grew still. Cedric lowered his sword an inch. “…That was poetry?”

“Free verse,” the goblin muttered, clearly embarrassed.

King Alric coughed into his hand. “So then… you wish us to… revise the record?”

The dragon lowered his massive head, eyes glowing softly. “I wish truth. I will not have hatchlings hearing that I was bested by a man wearing fur trousers and a lopsided helm. I flew off because I was bored.”

“He was, m’lord. Said it lacked literary structure.”

The king stroked his beard. “We will… consider a redraft. A second edition, perhaps.”

The dragon exhaled again, this time in something not unlike relief. “That would be acceptable.”

With a rustle of wings and a creak of ancient joints, he turned. The goblin bowed low, scrolls clutched like holy relics. “Come now, Inkblot. I have no wish to linger among men who believe every rhyme they hear from a bard.”

“Aye, m’lord,” said Inkblot, already scribbling on a fresh sheet. “Shall I add this moment to the memoir?”

“No heroics. Just the facts.”

And with that, they were gone, leaving behind only a few scorch marks, a great deal of confused nobles, and a very thoughtful king.