The Dragon's Jewels; A Short Story

The Venture.

     The lad had done it! He had acquired a full suit of shining armor! With a complementary sword and shield thrown in with it. The lad, his venture predetermined for the tunnel that many went for, and none came back.
     He set out on the flattened trail, flattened by the many in armor that had tread upon it. He was admittedly a bit worried. For as was known, none had come back, but, he shoved aside that worry and set himself straight. He would be the first to come back, and laden with the riches he had plundered!
     He was approaching the tunnel now, the gaping entrance blackened by some mysterious flame of a time ago. As he got closer, he could've sworn he could hear the sound of jovial laughter and comraderie coming from the tunnel.
     When he stood in the entrance, he saw something. In the tunnel, a gigantic skeletonized dragon corpse. Long dead. When he looked around for the source of the sound, he saw a door in the stone wall.
     He walked up to it, and the sounds all stopped. A slit on the door opened, eyes squinting at him through it. "Ah hello there laddie! Care to join us? Bah! Of course ye would!" The man yanked open the door and pulled him in.
      The sounds immediately started up again. The lad decided he liked the place, and would stay a little while. Unbeknownst to the lad, that place was the reason none ever came back, for it ensnared all who came to hunt the dragon, and to find it dead. As that trap was the dragon's last bit of magic it could cast, ensnaring its slayer as it died.
     This bit of magic extended the lifespan of those it captured tenfold, and forced them to realize they couldn't leave by their third year there, bringing full hopelessness onto them, eventually dulling into jovial, hapless laughing resigned people. Thus was the trap the lad was in, such would be his life.