Bruce’s heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest as he tied his trusty steed, Bastille, to an oak tree and turned to face the cave at the base of the massive mountain.

He was ready for this. He was! He’d been preparing for this his whole life, to become a knight, and his first big test to earn the respect of the kingdom was to slay the dragon on the edge of the city.

It was an easy enough quest for a knight. Or at least it should have been.

Really, though, Bruce had never slain a dragon before. It was uncharted territory, for him, but with his new mantle as the Dark Knight, serving the people of the Kingdom of Gotham, he sort of had to slay dragons.

It didn’t matter if he wanted to or not. It didn’t matter if he thought the dragon who nested outside the Gotham city limits did anything wrong or not. No, this was a matter of duty, he didn’t have a choice.

Especially not if he wanted to continue honoring his father. Which, he absolutely did.

So, naturally, he prepared.

He’d studied beastology for years, and as such could tell someone every anatomical name for every little part on any dragon species, hibernation data, weaknesses in battle, effects of their attacks, anything.

But theory was very, very different from fighting a dragon in practice.

Bruce could do all the research on dragons in the world, and still be completely lost once he was in the heat of battle. He still had no idea if he’d know what to do.

His father would have known what to do, though.

Thomas Wayne slayed dragons in his sleep. He was the best knight Gotham had ever known, known and adored across the land for his prowess, for his strength, for the way he protected the people from the most dangerous of beasts.

Until, well… Until he died. Stabbed in an alleyway by a common thief along with his wife, Bruce watching helplessly by the side, and then… nothing.

That was it. No more mother, no more father, just Bruce and his parents’ old butler, left to pick up the pieces and carry on their legacy. Leaving Bruce with no choice but to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a knight at the young age of eight.

Bruce had always felt like his father was… impervious. Maybe it was the fact that he’d never seen his father with anything but childlike, adoring wonder, or maybe it was that his father really was just that powerful, but to see him get killed like that, not brought down heroically in battle…

Aside from hurting, it just felt sort of wrong. It felt like watching a god be hit by a mortal, like the mountain of a man he’d always looked up to had been reduced to nothing.

Bruce takes a confident stride into the cave, nerves and all.

“Hello..?” He tries, a little hesitant, voice echoing around the massive cavern. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, and he tried to steady his nerves as he stepped in deeper.

Still, he couldn’t see any dragon to speak of. Bones, sure, of the human and animal variety, scattered all across the stone ground, and a few lingering coins, and, at the end of the cavernous hall, the nest itself.

Terrifying. Intimidating, more than Bruce had been expecting it to be. His hand trembled slightly on his sword as he called out into the emptiness.

“Uh. I’m here to… slay you.”