Cassiopeia's Gold

Chapter 1

He didn't know who started it. He didn't know how it spread so quickly across all eight kingdoms like wildfire, nor did he particularly care when it became the most desirable dragon hoard of the century.

None of that mattered.

What really mattered was that two weeks ago the Crown Prince of Lakonia had been utterly and devastatingly defeated... and the poor, petty prince had walked home in a bout of spoiled fury after losing some fifty good men while taking on Cassiopeia's Gold, as it had come to be called. That, and the rumor that the blood-thirsty, evil, undefeated dragon guarding the infamous hoard was said to be no dragon at all, but actually a twelve-year-old girl.

"Or so the story goes...no one really knows for sure," Grant laughed nervously, while Spider chuckled loudly beside the bar.

"So what does she do? This girl? How does she defeat them?" Spider was immensely curious. The girl was, technically, only two years younger than him. Spider had a difficult time believing the story as it is.

"That's just the thing. They say she swoops from the shadows like a bat! She fights like a lion, and she plays-!

Grant didn't finish what he was saying because just then, the door to the inn burst open, and a man yelled out in a ferocious roar:

"IS THERE A SPIDER IN HERE?!"

Spider quickly ducked his head behind the counter, while some of the older guests in the bar laughed at the fact that there was probably quite a number of spiders down here. Grant looked down at him with a questionable look on his face.

"Is there something I don't know?"

"Don't ask. The man probably wants his stupid wallet back but-"

"Over here, sir!" Grant shouted as Spider look up, appalled that his friend had betrayed him, and so loudly too. Oh well. He may just be the city's most talentless thief, getting caught more times than he could count. He even had something of a reputation, down here in the gutter streets. He quickly stood up, giving the man a sheepish expression. He may be a poor thief, but he was gold at getting himself out of trouble.

"Did you happen to lose this, sir? I saw it on the ground in the marketplace, and as it was crowded, I didn't see where you had gone!"

Grant gave him an unimpressed look while the man in question grunted while grabbing back his wallet.

"Next time, Spider. Next time." He counted the coins in his purse, growling under his breath that it seemed to be correct. Spider waited until he had gone before sighing, lamenting the loss of the coin he had desperately needed. It wasn't as if he could exactly afford dinner tonight.

"You were saying?" Spider turned back to Grant. He still wanted to hear about what the girl could do. If she could defeat an army of the Prince's burly men, he could only imagine what else could she do.

"Oh, right. Apparently, she plays tricks with your mind, see, and that she loves the dark. They say, now that the Prince has been defeated, that the King's setting up his own men to capture the drag- sorry, I mean girl. But it's hard to say what's true and what isn't."

"Right, and what else is new?" Spider rolled his eyes, then thought of something made him grin. He still couldn't get the picture out of his mind-of Crown Prince Alexander marching down the road with no shoes on his feet, his clothes in tatters and his army a pittance of what it once was when he had first set out to claim Cassiopeia's Gold. Then, he had a thought.