General Graten walked into the kitchen to find the two rabbits drinking from a gourd filled with wine. “Where did you find that?” he asked. “I thought the castle was out of wine?”
“We found a casket in the basement,” said Klangor.
“Give me that,” General Graten said.
“Stay away human,” Klangor said. He tried to bar his teeth, but being a cute fluffy white rabbit, he wasn’t able to. It just looked like his nose was twitching, and his mouth opened briefly. “This is our wine.”
“Rabbits can’t drink wine,” said General Graten. “You’ll make yourselves sick. Haven’t you learned to live on a rabbit’s stomach yet? You can’t go around drinking the same stuff you used to.”
“Leave us be, human. This is no concern of yours,” said Starrof.
“No concern of mine! I haven’t had good wine in weeks, and you’re going to waste it on your little rabbit bodies? Give it to me!” General Graten reached to grab it. The rabbits roared in protest. (The one thing Talon had left them with was their original voices, so they could still roar like dragons, even if they could do little else.)
General Graten grabbed the wine away from them. They tried to bite him, but it only resulted in some small nibbling on his hand. General Graten flicked his backhand and knocked Starrof over. Then he started drinking the wine from the gourd.
He had guzzled half the gourd down before he noticed the rabbits were crying. “Don’t think that crying is going to make me give back this wine,” said General Graten. “First of all, I don’t care about you at all. And if I did care about you, then I definitely wouldn’t give you this wine back because you can’t handle it on your little rabbit stomachs. You’d get sick and die.”
“We know,” sobbed Starrof. “We know. But we are proud. We are ancient dragons. We cannot keep on eating water and grass.”
“You can,” said Graten. “I ate nothing but berries and water for days on end when I led my army through this forest. I certainly never tasted wine as fine as this.” Graten stopped to relish the swig of wine in his mouth. “This is particularly good wine,” he said to himself as he rolled it around on his tongue.
This only made the rabbits cry even louder. “Give it back to us,” they yelled.
“I will not. And if you ask me again, I’ll bop you on the head,” Graten growled.
“Mortal man,” growled Klangor, “When we are restored to our rightful dragon bodies, we will tear you limb from limb, slowly. Though we be but feeble rabbits now, you have made a mistake to make enemies of us.”
“Have I?” said Graten, as he took his sword out of his sheath. “Then I guess the smartest thing for me to do would be to kill you right now.” Before Klangor could run, Graten’s sword was under his neck. “I could kill you right now,” said Graten. But then, Graten returned his sword back to his sheath. “But I have chosen to spare your life. You know what that means, don’t you? I’ve learned a thing or two about dragon customs in my years. It means that you owe me a life-debt.”
Klangor howled with rage. “You cheated.”
“How did I cheat?”
“You were never going to kill me.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know me at all. I’m a real scoundrel. Ask around. Ask Henry or Grace or John. I’ve killed men for less. I could have easily killed you and not lost any sleep over it.”
“Curse you,” Klangor howled. “We’ll get you for this.”
“But you can’t. You owe me a life debt now.
“Only Klangor does,” said Starrof.
Graten unsheathed his sword a second time, but the rabbits bounded away as fast as they could before he had time to attempt anything. They were still learning how to run quickly in their rabbit bodies, and as they were rounding a corner out of the room, Starrof misjudged how far his hind legs would take him and leaped right into the wall. Graten laughed and laughed as he drank the rest of the wine.
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