Once upon a time there was an ambitious young knight. Sure, he had saved some damsels from ogres and had vanquished some monsters, but it all felt small-time. He was ready for the big leagues now. Dragons. That’s where the big money was, the real glory, not to mention the babes. He always watched in envy when the legit dragon-slaying knights would ride by on their fast horses and in their shiny armor. They were the heroes of the realm, adored by all, except for the ambitious young knight who always peered at them with disdain. He would be better than all of them, he swore. He would have an even faster horse and even shinier armor. Nobody would look twice at those other knights once he killed a dragon.
The knight was foolish (as you will come to know) but he was not stupid, and he knew that a dragon’s fiery breath would roast a man in seconds flat, and that an incinerated man’s ambitions are worth less than smoke. Certainly it was possible to slay a dragon - people did it - but it really didn’t seem safe. The young knight knew this would take some serious thinking, so he went home and put together a vision board.
His vision board included drawings of himself as a bonafide knight with his ideal armor and weapons. He had written the words fireproof potions? and crossed them out. But the best thing to come out of his vision boarding was a list of ten behaviors of successful knights, and item #7 was to consult arcane wisdom. All the best knights took their advice from wizards and old hermits - he just had to find one for himself.
The young knight found an old ugly witch in the swamps of Ganfir, and she said she knew of a magic secret to protect knights from dragonfire. However, she would only share this secret if the young knight served her humbly for a full month, gathering potion ingredients from the swamps, cleaning her cabin, chopping firewood, and preparing her meals. The knight hated to do these tasks, he felt they were far beneath him. “You wouldn’t ask a dragon slaying knight to clean your fireplace,” he would mutter under his breath. Still, he worked hard, motivated by the dream of his triumph over a dragon.
When a month had passed, he approached the witch and asked to know the secret to surviving a dragon encounter.
The old witch cackled. “The secret is an enchanted armor.”
“Where can I find the armor, witch?” the knight said disdainfully.
“I can cast the enchantment for you,” the witch said.
The knight was excited.
“Then craft it!” he said. “I must have it to slay a dragon.”
“I will cast the spell, but only if you serve me for six months more,” the witch wheezed.
The knight was enraged. He had humiliated himself doing the crone’s chores for an entire month, and now the greedy witch wanted more! And yet, as badly as he wanted to spit at the witch’s offer, he knew that if he declined this new bargain his month of labor would have been for nought. Trapped, the knight hid his anger and accepted - he started the new span of service that very day. He carried the firewood, he cleaned the outhouse, he fed the ducks. He did anything the witch asked of him, but in his mind was always a buzzing fury.
He lasted two months. Finally, his temper broke as he chopped firewood under the heavy humid swamp air. This was ridiculous. What if the witch was conning him? What if she knew of no secret and was tricking him into labor? He couldn’t take it anymore. He stopped chopping the wood and took the axe into the cabin.
“Are you done with the wood already?” the witch asked. “Good, I need my feet washed.”
“I will wash your feet,” said the knight, hiding the axe behind his back. The witch was already sitting with her feet in the basin.
“Good, scrub them already,” the witch said.
The knight chopped off her right leg at the knee and the witch screamed.
“Tell me the secret!” the knight shouted over her wails.
The witch’s blood filled the foot basin.
“Tell me the secret to the enchanted armor that will protect me from dragons! Or I will chop off the other leg, and your arms as well!”
“Why are you doing this?” the witch screamed, writhing and bleeding in the knight’s grasp.
The knight reached into the basin and painted the witch’s lips with her own blood, for it is known that a witch cannot tell a lie with blood in her mouth.
“How do I make the enchanted armor?” the knight asked again.
“You must be given a pangolin’s scale, and weave it into your armor,” the witch wailed. “It will be fireproof after that. Please!”
The knight kept his promise and did not chop off her arms, he was a knight after all.
He chopped off her head instead.
Many pangolins lived in the swamps, small clawed beasts covered with scales. The witch had said he only needed a single scale, but the knight wondered how much more potent the spell would be if he used more. He hunted many pangolins in the swamps for those two weeks. He had learned to sew while mending the witch’s socks, and so he knew how to sew the leathery scales together onto his shirt, and soon his entire shirt was scales.
Finally, the knight left the accursed cabin in the swamp, which smelled of death, and rode out to find a dragon to vanquish. He could feel the power of his new shirt tingling over his skin. He felt golden. He felt fireproof. He knew the witch’s magic had worked. When he passed other knights they avoided him and the putrid stench of his bloodsoaked armor, but he didn’t even care. He knew that soon he would be elevated above them all, an unstoppable dragon-slaying machine.
The young knight heard of a great green dragon that lived at the top of a high mountain. Many adventurers had tried to slay it, but so far, all had perished. Nobody would expect him to be able to vanquish it on a first try, he thought, and so they would be all the more appreciative and impressed when he returned with the dragon’s head. The perfect start to a meteoric rise.
He arrived at foot of the mountain, which loomed above him up into the clouds. It was a steep and treacherous climb, and on the second day, his horse fell and died. The knight would not be deterred. He cured the horse’s meat to eat on his trek and continued on foot. The back of his neck and his upper arms were incredibly itchy from the pangolin scales rubbing. Whenever he made camp, he scratched and scratched at the irritated skin and barely slept.
As he continued to climb, the horse jerky became distasteful. At first he thought it had spoilt, but it didn’t taste rotten, it simply didn’t satisfy. Same with the loaves of bread he had brought, and the nuts and the dried mango from Trader Joe’s. Impulsively, he tossed all his food into a river. He didn’t need it anyway.
The next morning he slept in late. The sun was already high when he began to hike again, and the angry rashes on his arms had spread all the way to his wrists - he scratched as he walked. Just as his hunger for food had diminished, so had his hunger for glory. He still hiked because he knew it was what he had to do, but he didn’t feel the same drive propelling him. He had to convince himself every laborious step that he wanted to kill this dragon because he wanted to be admired because he wanted the fame and the riches. And that for some reason, all of that mattered, even with the many buzzing bugs circling his head.
Finally, he reached the peak of the mountain, and there was a cave. He snuck into the cave and found where the great dragon slept. It was sound asleep! So easy! And yet, when the knight reached for his sword to slay the beast, he realized he didn’t have his sword. Where was it? How long had he been walking without it? He tried to remember where it had gone.
The dragon didn’t wake, but the knight crept carefully back out of the cave, searching for his weapon. He began to walk back down the weapon, retracing his steps and scanning the ground. Wouldn’t he have noticed the sword coming loose? Had he left it on his horse’s saddle so long ago? He tried to ignore the growling of his stomach. He tried to ignore the hard scabs covering his scratchy arms.
The knight did not find his sword as he walked down the mountain, but he did notice an incredibly long train of ants. He followed the ants, curious, and found that they were swarming his old washed up food supplies which he had let the river sweep away. His stomach roared, and the knight couldn’t help but kneel to the ground and lap up the delicious ants with his long pink tongue. He crawled around the pile of food and feasted on the insects.
The ants tasted so good! He followed them to their nest, still on all fours, and devoured the entire colony. Then he went out in search of more. He snacked on some crickets and soon he found a termite mound, where he ate in decadence for days. He was so blissfully happy eating the bugs that he never even realized that he had become a pangolin. He forgot his sword, he forgot his quest and his ambitions, and he happily ate ants and termites for the rest of his life.
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