[ WP ] Dragon . Wanted Alive . No bounty paid for a corpse .

What do you want with it alive? 
 
 That was the question he should have asked. 
 
 These kinds of curiosities do no good to the dead. Only makes them restless. 
 
 The knight wondered in the dark on the dry cavern floor. What was to be done with the menace, the leviathan, once it was chained? 
 
 He tried to remember what the man had looked like, the man who had placed the parchment on the town's square, the man who wanted a very special bounty. 
 
 He thought for a while, in the growing heat - the man wore a cloak, had mysterious shifting eyes, and spoke in a low mumbling voice. 
 
 That ca n't be it. That could n't be all he remembered. He wracked his brain, his brow sweating. 
 
 The man's voice was always calm, confident. Not like the other kinds of men who traded bounties, the boisterous and weighty voices attached to armour and steel. He remembered the awe the man inspired - in him, in the others who he had come across. 
 
 His back ached, his strength sapped by each throb in his spine. He distracted himself. 
 
 The man was rich. A king from a foreign land? Or an exiled prince or some sort of regality. Someone desiring a pet? 
 
 No, too simple - the men of such reverence and wealth owe more to a cause. Perhaps to study the creature? Maybe the man desired a living weapon? In which case, why, would n't the man who tamed such a beast be more formidable than the beast itself? 
 
 As the cavern walls shook, the knight gazed around in the dim. 
 
 Do n't dwell. 
 
 He sighed, now knowing the regret in his hubris and cockiness. Who was he to question the motives of such a man? 
 
 He'd thought, perhaps he would be granted an answer when he brought the blasted thing back - perhaps then he'd deserve to know. Deserve to *see*. 
 
 Maybe it was as simple as a man wanting to experience a fresh, exotic delicacy; or a complicated urge, both cheap and expensive, fulfilled; or even the unique honour of killing the subdued thing himself. What was his game? 
 
 A thousand feet from his sword, his shield splintered and ashen, his body nearly broken and quite definitely bruised. The knight turned from behind the rock, towards the sound of approaching footsteps. 
 
 One-two. One-two. Front legs, then back. Quickening. No more than a few gigantic steps away now. 
 
 As he braced for the inevitable, the impact, a crash upon his body - he tried to recollect anything else about the man, anything that might have given away his intentions. 
 
 There was a gust of wind and an eerie stillness. Silence. 
 
 He turned once more and saw nothing before him on the cavern floor. 
 
 Then, the shadow from above caught his eye. The shadow of the beast. 
 
 And as it roared and fell towards the cavern floor, the knight gave up on the riddle, his mind blank as the memories faded through his consciousness. 
 
 With a deafening THUD, he would never know.
