Writing Prompt: The first boss of an RPG manages to accidentally kill the hero on their first try

Claudia had been having an exceedingly wonderful day, a high point in an otherwise unpleasant life.

She wasn't quite sure what she was, as a monster she'd hatched from an egg and thus had never known her parents. But she didn't fit in with the monster groups.

"Go away," said the dragons, "You walk on two legs and while you do have some scales, you don't have enough to count. Plus that whole being white as porcelain thing is kind of creepy."

"Go away," said the succubi, "Your boobs are way too small and your wings and tail are waaaaay too big. Plus that whole fanged skull over big red smile facial markings dealie you have going is totes hella creepy."

"Go away, honk honk," said the evil clowns' guild, "Wings and tails aren't funny, your deathly pallor and ominous facepaint aren't actually paint and pancake makeup, and you are showing far too much skin with your outfit. Cover up a bit and actually paint your face and maybe we'll see about taking you on as an apprentice clown."

Claudia had thoroughly humiliated the guildmaster by grabbing the bucket of whitewash from the top of the office door exit, dumping it down his over large pants, stealing the guildmaster's own mallet from hammerspace, walloping him with it, and then tying the fool up with his own string of endless handkerchiefs.

A few onlookers applauded, stating that they found the whole thing incredibly amusing and actually quite funny, but it didn't have quite the kind of sad, slightly ironic flavor that clowns sought in their performance.

So she'd went off to find a nice tower, cave, or ruin to inhabit for awhile and prey on adventurers. She'd managed to find herself a lovely cavern complex in a nice bit of the countryside with a lake and a rather lovely, undead-infested forest nearby that was just made for lovely, mist-filled brooding walks.

Of course it had been occupied by a rather vile-smelling were-rat bandit and his minions (both human and rodent alike), but they were rather flammable and easily dispatched by Claudia's lilac-hued (and lilac scented) flame breath.

She'd just gotten the place cleaned up, getting everything nice and organized. The idiots had chests scattered all over the place, had potions and magical plants galore just sitting in pots, barrels, bookcases, decorative suits of armor, or in the midst of weird looking rocks. The idiots had even left an incredibly powerful potion of healing sitting inside an old grandfather clock.

The armor was rather nice, and it was far superior than the ratty (tee hee) cloth and leather most of the bandits had been wearing.

The only metal to be found had been the leader's poison-enchanted dagger and his single pauldron.

So Claudia had gotten herself a nice scale mail skirt, some shiny new grieves and gauntlets, a snazzy breastplate with some pretty designs, a decent shield, and the aforementioned pauldron, which turned out to have a slight physical and magical strength enhancement on it once Claudia had scrubbed it hard enough to get the stink of unwashed bodies, rat wee, and cedar chips out of it.

And to top it all off she had a big lunch fly right into her cavern.

A huge talking owl had swooped right in, perched on top of a bookshelf, taken out a scroll and an ink pot from somewhere, and then plucked one of his own feathers to use as a quill and began muttering to himself and writing a speech.

Something about a destined hero whose mortal blood carried ancestry both draconic and divine. The daffy thing was trying to find a better turn of phrase than "Destined Hero of Destiny" when Claudia smacked the thing with her purloined clown hammer.

Being smacked with a huge mallet and ricocheting off the wall, ceiling, floor, wall, and ceiling again before ending up embedded beak first in a bookshelf hadn't done any favors for keeping the bones in place.

But having fresh roast owl and having to spit out the occasional bone fragment was infinities better than eating the ol long pork (sentients tended towards being a titch too greasy and gamy for Claudia's liking) and rat was... well... it was rat.

And to top off the welcome to the neighborhood party, the new wardrobe, and a nice dinner (with some leftovers for soup in the morning), Claudia had been visited by her first adventurer!

So of course Claudia had fired up the old succubus charming mind-whammy, and the poor under-equipped adventurer (all she'd had on her was a wooden sword, a leather dress that was sort of armored, and a rather fancy magical tiara) had her soul served for desert.

Claudia had never really had the opportunity to properly suck somebody's soul out before. Adventurers usually traveled in packs, and having a nice meal of mortal soul was a prolonged, personal, rather intimate affair that required focus, concentration, and a definite lack of maces and swords thwacking you across the back while men in dresses waved around golden symbols and screamed "CEASE YOUR VILE PREDATIONS, DEMON!"

Claudia was really wishing she hadn't had quite so much owl, as her tummy felt positively bloated from the whole experience.

But on the bright side she also had her first minion!

Carefully snipping the soul out of a sentient being made it rather easy to create undead, as all you had to do was stuff a little dark mana into the place where the soul used to be and the remaining lifeforce in the body eagerly shaped it into a rudimentary 100 percent real imitation soul-like analog product which was enough to get basic instincts and motor functions online.

Claudia had named her brand new wight "Chompy," and she was so terribly cute with her chalk white skin, huge slavering fangs, and adorable flesh-rending claws.

The adventurer had even had absolutely squee-inducing tiny little horns, and some rather pretty glowing glyphs in the shape of draconic wings on her back.

Claudia had the cutest little baby undead engine of destruction in the world, yes she did!

She'd taken her new pet out to the corpse heap to feed, then down to the lake for a wash, then back to the cave for a nap with her cutesy-wootsy henchcritter snuggled up against her snoring softly.

Today had been a very good day.

Of course that was the moment that the adventurer's restless ghost decided to pop up.

"Oh my goddess! I can't believe it! You ATE me! You friggin' ATE me! And now you're snuggling with my re-animated dead body! So gross!"

Claudia blinked sleepily at the glowing, translucent blue form of the spirit before her, grunted with annoyance, and got up from her nice comfy pile of bandit-pilfered bed linens and went to browse her meticulously organized shelves of potions looking for something to cure indigestion.

"Oi! Are you listening to me you bat-winged fruitcake? I'm the Legendary Destined Hero of Destiny, fated to save the world from the tyrannical demon king of monsters! The owl said that if I was defeated in battle, I ought to be waking up in the church I'd most recently prayed at. So de-animate my body at once so I can get on with things, get a bit more training in, come back, and defeat..."

Claudia rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes, trying to read the dosage label on the bottle of thick, pink potion. Finding it still blurry, she shrugged and took three big gulps.

"Hey! You're wearing my tiara! Put that back! That's one of the five Artifacts of the Sacred Dragon! It's the only thing I have from my birth parents and the only thing I could save from my slaughtered village! You put that back on my body and send me on my way right and proper this instant!"

Claudia flopped back into bed and wrapped a straw-filled pillow around her head, which was enough to drown out the noisy specter's protests. The mixed-breed monster hoped that the adventurer would digest properly overnight and leave her in peace.

Unfortunately she awoke the next morning to find that such was not the case, and even worse was the fact that her ethereal annoyance had become able to interact with physical objects.

The deceased heroine was hammering on her own animated corpse with what appeared to be a human femur. Chompy didn't seem phased in the slightest, and seemed to be happily engaged in what she perceived to be a game of "get the bone."

"No, quit! You need to die or de-animate or whatever! That's my body and I don't want it wandering around being all undead and such!"

Claudia sighed. Today most definitely was not going to be an exceedingly wonderful day.