Oops, I Was Accidentally Transported To A Fantasy World And Taught Dragons About Capitalism

Hey everyone! So on the ride back from DragonCon I was left alone with my own thoughts for too long and had an Idea. Terrible thing to have happen to me. 

Anyway I came up with this chapter and I'm looking for some impressions and feedback on the comedy and the landing of it all. Please let me know if anything just doesn't work with the tone, voice, silliness, anything!

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Chapter 1

So traditionally there are a few different ways a story like mine starts.

Getting hit by a truck and dying is probably the most common of them, cliche notwithstanding. Picking up a cursed item or book and getting whisked away is probably the next most trope, followed by magical caves, wardrobes, or rocks. After all that, I think getting summoned as a hero or villain is probably the next most common, I’m honestly not sure. But if I’m gonna be truthful here, I really don’t care about any of the other ways, because my way just straight up beats the pants out of all of them.

Which is to say that I was abducted by a trespassing sex fairy who wanted to crack me open like a cold beer on a hot day and drink me dry.

Yeah, I bet you’re all sitting up in your seats now with an excited, “Ooo, tell me more Dragon Daddy.” I know I would be too. That is if said sex fairy didn’t mean it literally when it came to drinking my blood down like the refreshing treat that it was.

But I probably should back up a bit before we get into that part of my story, let alone the whole ‘dragon daddy’ bit I just dropped on you all too. After all, what is a story without a little suspense?

Anyway, like any truly good tale, mine begins with a drink, specifically the one that my best friend Joshua handed to me, the golden amber liquid it contained being accompanied with, “so I see you’re still wearing your old ring Matt.”

“I am,” I replied as I took the drink, the movement perfect for me to catch a quick glimpse of the dark grey ring that entwined the forth finger on my right hand. “And before you say anything more, I’m not wearing it for the same reason anymore, haven’t for a while if I’m honest.”

“Oh?” Came the all too eager reply from right beside me, its speed telling me all I needed to know about who really had wanted to ask that question. “And what does it mean now?”

“That change is always possible, even if it hurts,” I replied with a smile as I looked over at Sandra, the thin brown haired woman looking back at me with a mix of expectation and worry, as if fearing the answer I’d give her. A reaction that I could fully understand, given that she had been the one who had introduced me to Felicia.

Boom. Yeah, that’s a namedrop, we’ll talk more about her later.

“Especially if it hurts,” I added after a second, using the pause to switch my drink to the other hand while using my thumb to spin the ring in place until it revealed a golden half of the band. “Plus, it’s also the first project I did that turned out really decently, uh, after I wrecked the other half.”

“Hold on, you made that ring?” Joshua asked, the man leaning in to look at the band alongside his wife who had taken my hand into hers, all while letting out appreciative sounds at the craftsmanship. “When did you learn to do that?”

“Shortly after I got bored of baking bread, and it no longer fit my fingers,” I said with a shrug, barely even remembering that phase of my life and all the chaos that it had entailed.

“You mean when you entered your villain phase and devoted yourself to becoming a literal tank,” Joshua corrected his attention going from my hand, to my arm. “Cause I mean, damn man, I know we chatted a hell of a lot online over these last few years, but now... now... uh, you’re—”

“A tasty tree waiting to be climbed?” Sandra helped finish as she let go of my hand, earning chuckle from me in the process.

“I’m not sure if I would go that far.” I said, feigning a not a little bit of modesty despite knowing they were both right. In the past…well in the past I was a huge fan of pizza, beer, and chicken wings, you know, like for every single meal and my body showed it. I still am a fan of all those things, but in much more moderation.

Much, much, more.

“You absolutely should,” she stated, completely ignoring her husband as he tried, and failed, to wrap both of his hands around my bicep, all while holding his beer cup in his teeth. “You most definitely should, Not only do you deserve it, but, let me tell you, it’s true too. Especially after—”

“Sandy, it’s okay.” I said, already knowing where she was going with her words, the woman’s expression becoming more and more unnerved with each word she spoke. “I don’t blame you at all for anything. Felica made her own choices, and while yes they hurt, they were hers, not yours. You’ve got nothing at all, ever, to worry about.”

“Y-you’re sure?” The small woman asked, her voice breaking.

“Super sure,” I said with the most genuine smile I could muster, one made all the easier because my friend had stopped trying to measure my arm with a note of defeat. “Now, enough of the past, that’s not what we’re here for. Unless Josh here has completely been lying to me, this is both your first night out since the kids, isn’t it?”

“You better believe it is man,” Joshua said as he took his cup out from his mouth. “If it wasn’t for this drink I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands, as it is, this other one feels wrong being empty.”

“Well then use it to hold me down instead of admiring all of Matt’s new muscles,” Sandra said as she leaned in close to her husband and took his free hand in hers. “Because two sips in I’m suddenly realizing how much of a lightweight I’ve become. By the end of this glass I’ll be ready to float away.”

“Woof, then that means we should see about getting some food into you,” I said before going onto motion further down the path whose intersection we were standing in. “If I remember right, there should be a nice, secluded bench just down that way where you two can sit. I’ll see if I can’t track down one of those plates of food I saw those satyrs carrying. Any requests?”

“Something with meat and bread,” Sandra replied without a second’s hesitation. “Oh and cheese too.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I replied with a chuckle, giving the pair a wave as they turned to follow my directions, very clearly enjoying their night already. Which was a good thing, after all that was one of the reasons why I’d invited them out here tonight. Smiling at their backs as they shuffled away, I moved to uphold my promise, searching for one of those very aforementioned satyrs.

Here is probably a good place as any for me to mention at this point that what I was actually looking for was not in fact a satyr, which to my knowledge I haven’t actually met yet. A good thing I think given everything I’ve heard about their temperaments and, uh, general all around behavior. Which I will absolutely allow you to research yourself should you want to.

No, instead what I was looking for, was the all too underpaid waiters that had been hired to not only go shirtless for the entire ‘Enchanted Garden’ theme going on tonight, but to also get dressed in heavy faux fur pants with matching cloven hoof booties. I’m sure I would have found one too, had I been allowed to actually go searching. But instead of being able to handle such a mundane task myself I had barely taken more than five steps before an elf holding a glowing tablet stepped out from a partially hidden gazebo on the path’s edge.

And in case you were wondering, no he wasn’t actually an elf either.

“I’ve already informed the kitchen Mr. Cross,” He said without any prompting. “And a platter is on its way. Until then however, there is a matter that your advice has been requested on.”

“Already David?” I answered, despite not at all being surprised to see the man appear practically out of nowhere. That was what I paid him for after all. “We haven’t even really started yet. It’s been like twenty minutes since people started arriving.”

“Indeed, and well, it seems that some of them are just clicking faster than we expected. Faster and in unexpected ways at that too, Jennifer and Connor have already met and hit it off well enough that they’ve sucked in Shelia, Anshil, and Patty.”

“Really?” I said, easily recalling the faces behind each of the names, along with each of their respective talents. It was an odd combination, but potentially a good one. A really, really good one. “Do they know about the grant yet?”

“No, we’re fairly certain they don’t,” the customed man replied with a shake of his head. “However given, how well they’re hitting it off, Lissa is wondering if they should somehow find out early. It’ll give them some extra time to cook and put forth a better proposal.”

“Do it,” I said, unable to help but feel curious as to what they might come up with. “Was there anything else?”

“Nope, nothing that we can’t sort ourselves at least,” the elf answered back, his fingers swiping at the tablet. “Oh, and your food should be arriving…now.”

Appearing as if on cue a bare chested satyr bounded out from a path adjacent from ours, carrying a silver platter in his hand while maintaining a rather decent pace all things considered.

“Here you are sir,” was all he said a few seconds later as he handed me the platter before turning on a hoof and making just as efficient as an exit, freeing me to do the exact same but towards Joshua and Sandra.

Now I’m sure by this point you’re all starting to wonder just where exactly this is all going, and likely too when that sex fairy is about to show up. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that, what’s important right now is that we lay the groundwork as to not only why she showed up, but why she picked me instead of literally anyone else at the gala.

And to do that, we have to talk about Felicia. A little bit at least.

Now there’s a lot I can say about her. Happy things. Sad things. Really, really angry things. But truthfully none of that matters because everything that you guys need to know about her and how she affected my life right now can be summed up in a few sentences.

She told me we were having a baby.

We made plans to get married.

She told me that the baby wasn’t mine.

We broke up.

The pandemic started.

My parents got sick and died.

Yeah, that’s pretty heavy and specific stuff as protagonist, or even villain, backstories go. Normally I’m told they just wake up in another world with a suitably vague outline of their past history, and then get right on living without their past ever making a difference.

I wish I could say that my situation was the same, but I’d be lying.

In any case, it was that whole sequence of events that sent my life on a trajectory that I couldn’t have ever imagined. Now as I’m sure you can imagine that trajectory was down. Straight, bullet right into the earth kind of down. So much in fact that if it wasn’t for Joshua and Sandra I don’t know what would have happened. But they stepped in enough to keep me sane, long enough for me to start eating again and start talking to therapist while at the same time throwing myself in more work than I ever thought was possible.

Which again, in its own way contributed to putting me to where I was today.

Now if it wasn’t clear by the way I talk, I used to be a programmer. A really good one that just happened to be working for the right telehealth company as the pandemic truly got under way and just happened to be the one to crack a particularly difficult problem before anyone else in the industry. A move that earned me a bonus larger than I’d ever seen before. Hell, that bonus it was larger than the market value of my parent’s house that I’d moved into, and if any of you remember prices then, that was saying something.

Anyway it was that windfall, plus everything that they had left me that I decided to learn what to do with my money. So naturally of course I joined a community of highly regarded investors, downloaded a stock trading app on my phone, moved my money in, and started trading. Now, in any other situation such a course of action was almost certainly doomed for failure. I barely knew anything about investing, let alone stuff about options, contracts for difference, and all those other fancy trading terms that stock brokers use to take your money.

Not that not knowing it stopped me from getting rich. Like insanely rich.

You guys remember that whole meme stock craze, right? Yeah, well, that was me. Not all of it mind, but pretty much every single stock that took off I had an early stake in, often times an insanely large one. So large in fact that by the time I finally clued into what I was doing I had three comma’s worth of money in my bank account.

Oh, and before you ask, no, this isn’t that kind of story either, though I have met a pack of insanely rich werewolves once. They were all pretty good people, so long as you never showed your teeth to them and always had a nice raw steak nearby. Oh and booze too. Lots of lots of booze.

Right, we’re digressing again and we still have more back story to chew through, so let’s get back to it. Once I’d realized what I’d done, I sobered up in every sense of the word. I got even more therapy. I started exercising, enough to lose well over a hundred pounds. Along the way, I also picked up a ton of hobbies that kept me away from my computer as much as possible, sure they were still nerdy, but without them I’d be dead by now. Probably. If not worse. Oh and I also moved my money into the kind of broker that only the Ultra-mega rich could afford. Yeah, the super-secret double reverse handshake kind that just calls you up on your cellphone out of the blue once they realize you’re One of Them now.

And that’s the long and short of how got here, at this very gala that I was secretly hosting with the intention of giving away millions of dollars in startup grants to people whose companies hadn’t managed to survive the pandemic intact. One thing that I learned early on as I pieced myself back together was that I truly loved helping people, and I saw no better way of doing that than giving away as much as I could of the fortune that I’d essentially gambled my way into.

And if I could happen to help a pair of friends that were quite literally responsible for saving my life in the process, well that was just gravy.

“And here’s one cheesy, meaty, bread platter as ordered,” I said upon my return to Joshua and Sandra who had found the aforementioned bench I’d pointed out to them and were peacefully leaning into one another.

“About perfect timing Matt!” Joshua said the moment that I showed them the food. “Sandy, here was a minute or two away from starting to snore.”

“As if you wouldn’t have been right behind me,” the woman countered with a good natured elbow as she snatched up a collection cheese to start with.

“Pff, like anything could keep me from that steak dinner waiting for me,” Joshua stated, his words ruined somewhat by the big yawn that chose that moment to erupt.

“Looks you need a coffee to chase that beer with there, Josh,” I said unable to help but smile at my friend. “I heard that they were starting to serve some bad at the main hall if you’re interested.”

“You know, I might be,” he replied glancing down at his now mostly empty beer. “After three years and two kids this is enough to put me on my back, what do you think Sandy?”

“I think that if you play your cards right tonight, you’ll end up on your back anyway,” she replied with a giggle before very clearly remembering that I was still there. “Oh my, I said that out loud, didn’t I? Um, yes, coffee please.”

Chuckling all good naturedly, the three of us then quickly ate the remainder of our snacks before moving to journey in search of said caffeinated beverage back at the main hall, which fortunately for the all too tipsy pair wasn’t all that far away.

“Two coffees, extra strong,” I announced a short while later as I brought them both a cup as they lounged side by side once again, save this time on a couch just outside the dinner hall where dozens of other guests were all mingling and chatting. “That should get you both right back into it for the night.”

“Oh, if it tastes as good as it smells, I have no doubt,” Joshua said as he took the cup from me.

Yet before he could say anything more to follow up with, his face abruptly took on a vaguely stunned look as his eyes shifted just past me.

In retrospect that should have been my first warning that something was wrong given that Joshua had only ever had eyes for Sandra.

“There you are!” A woman’s voice announced triumphantly, followed by a hand touching down on my shoulder. “I have been looking for someone like you everywhere!”

Now as pick up lines went, that wasn’t exactly A grade material, even from a man’s perspective. But When paired with certain, undeniable, natural advantages that the speaker had, such as bountiful tracts of land, long slender legs, and bright red hair, well, anything they said was bound to sound alluring.

Oh, and I did I mention that she was naked?

Well, not naked, naked, but covered in what looked like iridescent electrical tape kind of naked that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. If you have no idea as to what any of that means... well, I’m gonna leave you again to do some research on your own. Ah, right, before I forget, she also had wings that looked like shimmering glass that fluttered out behind her.

There was more, but I’m pretty sure that you all get the picture I’m painting here by now and because of that I’m sure none of you would at all be surprised if I told you that I was completely caught off guard by her presence. So far off guard in fact, that my reply was simply.

“What?”

Smooth I know, but you guys try getting a surprise point blank blast of Fae sex magic when don’t even know it exists and see how you do. I’m lucky I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke.

Now I’m afraid it’s because of said sex magic that I don’t really much of what happened before things cleared up again. Looking back I’m pretty sure I heard Joshua say, “Hell yeah man!” followed by Sandra adding something I could swear sounded like ‘show us the video after’ but to this day I’m not actually sure.

Actually no, I’m very sure that is exactly what she said, but I’m lying to myself so that I don’t think about what kind of sex life my two best friends share.

Getting back to my abduction, I remember pretty much losing all sense of self as I was led outside, my arm nestled in the crook of the fairy’s grasp. Once outside, I remember us walking through the paths of the arboretum that the event was taking place in, going further and further away from the central park and building. We went so far in fact that I eventually realized we’d gone off the beaten path to a clearing who knows where in the surrounding wood, far away from anyone and everyone who could possibly hear us.

Oh, around then I figured out that I was now flat on my back on some sort of stone surface with the fairy straddled right on top of me. To my dismay too, at first at least, I also discovered that my pants were very much still on. Regardless of that though, my mind had cleared enough so that I was able to make sense of what my abductor was saying as she ground herself into me.

“Long have I yearned for the forbidden fruit that this realm has to offer,” She said in a husky tone as her hands raced across my chest with enough force that I felt her nails scratch me almost painfully. “And no longer will I be denied. I will take what I want from the kings of this place, the rules of the heavens be damned!”

And then, before I could start forming the thought to ask her exactly what the hell she was going on about, she suddenly lunged forward and bit me on my neck.

No, not in a sexy way, but rather in a you-are-a-juicy-steak-and-I-am-hungry-way.

As you can imagine, I took offense to this, especially seeing as it broke her spell on me, snapping me back into perfect clarity.

“Ah! What the hell are you doing?” I shouted as her teeth tore through my skin, my first instinct being to shove her off me. Yet before I could even try, she grabbed hold of my hands and pinned them down with an incredible amount of strength, for more than her size should have ever been capable of. Especially when compared against my brawny physique that I’d spent the last two years building.

“Yes! Yes! Struggle!” She hissed while pulling her mouth free of my neck, leaning back far enough so that I could see her blood covered mouth. “I love it when you mortal’s struggle, it makes it all the more—Ah! What are you doing?”

Flinching mid-sentence as she was speaking the fairy abruptly let go of my right hand as if she’d been branded, drawing it back towards her chest protectively and then glancing down at it.

“The burn of iron!” She exclaimed angrily, whatever beauty her face might have held a moment earlier instantly turning ugly as it contorted itself in a way no human’s face ever could. “How dare you—”

It was a sentence she never got a chance to finish as my now freed hand launched itself upwards to slap her, catching the now angry creature directly across the face. More importantly it caught her with enough force that it knocked her completely off of me, the incredible strength she’d pinned me down with vanishing as if it had never been there. Not one to waste opportunity, it was a split second from there before I was back on my feet and ready to run anywhere but here. I probably would have made it too had my opponent been human, but alas she wasn’t. So before I could take so much as two steps, she was there in front of me, her arms spread hide to cut me off.

“You think that you can escape, mortal?” She demanded angrily as she glared back at me, a glowing scar of red written across her face from where I’d hit her. Where my ring had hit her. “You really think that you can escape after I’ve laid claim to you? Let alone after you’ve dared touch me with iron?”

“What I think, lady is that you’re absolutely batshit crazy!” I exclaimed only half processing what she had said. Already my hand was deep in my pocket pulling out my phone. “And I’m calling both the police and security. If you don’t want this to get—”

“Oh, please, as if your weak mortal enforcers can do anything to save—” the fairy started to say in a derisive tone before abruptly catching herself, a look of pure terror then suddenly crossing her fine, followed by her head snapping to the side as if she heard something. “W-what did... h-how did you? Wait! The iron! You broke my veil!”

Of course none of that made even a lick of sense to me contextually, or at least it didn’t right then when I had one hand clamped down on a freely bleeding neck, a phone in my other hand calling the police, and the lingering dregs of fairy magic making my pants painfully tight. That was simply just too much for a regular man to take in and process all at once. That’s why when the fairy lunged towards me once again I fumbled my phone and dropped it, leaving me completely exposed for her shove me straight in the chest, her earlier incredible strength returning with enough force to practically take me off my feet.

“If they find no victim, they cannot hold me accountable for anything more than trespassing,” I heard her mutter to myself as I staggered backwards, my heels catching on something hard and causing me to finally lose my balance and land on my rear.

Well, eventually land on it. There just happened to be a long fall before it. One that was also unexpectedly accompanied by a gust super-hot of air all around me. Oh and magma, there was a lot of magma every which way my increasingly panicked eyes looked.

You know, except for the shining silver window hanging in the at six feet above me with the blood covered, iron burned fairy staring back at me.

“You shouldn’t have resisted,” she said simply, no trace of any emotion on her face as he stared back at me. “I would have given you a much better and then the creature in here will.”

And with those words hanging in the air, she then shut the portal she’d pushed me through, the silver lines coming together in the blink of an eye before winking out of existence. Leaving me all alone in the middle of the volcanic lava flow with my heart thundering in my chest.

Or perhaps even worst, leaving me notalone in the middle of a volcanic flow with my heart thundering in my chest.

“Who…who dares step foot in my lair!” An omnipresent voice demanded before I could so much a form a thought, its rasping sibilant tone accompanied by an immense shaking of the ground all around me, one so strong in fact that the lava around me began to roil and bubble.

Given the size of my little island that development understandably unnerved me and overcame my shock just enough to cause me to leap up to my feet, lest I get splashed. A move that I apparently looked funny in doing, judging by the rasping laughter that I heard erupt from above me. That was enough for me to reflexively look up, instantly spotting the colossal draconic face leering down at me.

And that’s how I met Xylera the Terrible, the Bringer of a Thousand Dooms, the Sorrow of the Waking Land, the Bleakbringer, the Life Ender, the Skybreaker, and the Matriarch of the Shadow Wing Flight. Or more specifically, for one of you who are likely reading this story long after your bed time when you should in fact be sleeping…

That’s how I met your mother.