It was a good sort of way to make a living. Saving damsels, slaying dragons. Once you got the knack of it, it was almost like a performance. Sometimes there needn’t even be any dragons. On the memorable occasion that the townsfolk of Little-Piddlington convinced themselves a dragon was living in their well, three and a half damsels were sacrificed before Sir Benedict came along.
After fifteen minutes of shouting and bashing his sword against the walls of the well, he climbed triumphant back out to the village with all three damsels that had made it the full way down. Gratitude and a general sense that contradicting a large man with a sharp sword would be a bad idea convinced the damsels the ‘dragon’ had indeed been terrible, and the pay had been quite generous.
Of course that was before the damsels unionised. Refused, every last one of them, to be sacrificed any longer and learned defensive magic. These days a dragon slayer couldn’t get an honest day’s work. That’s what led to the change in career, really. Lack of work. Sir Benedict moved into a much more productive area, easier too. Sir Benedict became a witch hunter.
Spitfire Words 