Steel.

by Petrichord

Rating: teen
Tags: Dragons, Ember, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Drama, Spike
Length: 5422

Ember was finally starting to get a handle on running an up-and-coming empire. Then Spike came along.

Shaping a loose collective of dragons into a formidable and regimented empire isn't the easiest task. But with the proper application of wit and willpower, she's started to chisel out edges in the previously dull kingdom, started to sculpt it into something powerful enough to stand the test of time.

Spike was only supposed to visit her as a diplomat, to help her hammer out a trade agreement between The New Dragon Empire and Equestria. But he's everything a dragon shouldn't be: conciliatory, spineless, peace-loving, friendly. He sees what she has to do - executions, browbeating, delegation - and balks, has the audacity to think he can help her.

And he's getting popular. Among them. They're supposed to hate him, but they're doing the opposite. And in a world where he's treated like royalty and could have been king, what room is there left for Ember? How's she supposed to govern when the mere presence of a foreigner is enough to shake the empire's principles to their roots?

**********************

This story is designed to be able to be read as a stand-alone long story. Similarly, Flint. is designed to be read as a stand-alone short story. For fullest reading experience, however, read the two of them together; chronologically, the events of Steel. come literally right after the events of Flint.

I'm gonna be honest, I haven't done multi-chapter stuff in a while, and I might have bitten off more than I can chew here. I've got it all plotted out, in my head and on paper, but actually making good on my promises feels daunting at best. "Bear with me" applies until I've published everything, I guess, and I'll try to release chapters on a semi-regular basis until it's done (and add a tag when it starts actually cropping up in the story proper.)

All of my thanks to Flashgen for helping me with this.

Published 2017-10-04 14:30:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-04-05 12:39:32 UTC

Fade into view

The crowd had begun to disperse, but not fast enough for Ember’s liking. The larger dragons, jaded from centuries of successions, took flight to their own business. But the teeming mass of adolescents and youth stayed, cheering her presence, revelling in the cutting edge of her sword and words alike.

It would have been nicer if they could have revelled somewhere else.

Pointedly, Ember reached down and hefted up the sword’s hilt again. It carved a shallow furrow into the ground as she walked, and Ember tried not to imagine it forming a makeshift gutter for blood. It wasn’t easy to forget what she had specifically done only a minute ago, and trying to push out even the concrete images - the blood, the head, the weight of the sword, the sound of shattering bone - felt utterly insurmountable. The images lingered in a visceral cocktail of justice and disgust, and Ember realized the only way to dismiss the thoughts was to supplant them with work.

For the first time in her life, Ember was profoundly thankful that she had plenty of work to do.

“Bookworm.” Ember said, tilting her head slightly towards a teenaged dragon waiting at the mouth of the cave. Clutching a grimy notepad and a blunt pencil - one of the luckier bits of post-warfare salvage they had recovered, Ember decided - the dragon tossed his head in a vain attempt to sweep his fringe from his eyes.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” He replied. There was something...different...about his voice, though Ember couldn’t place what it was. Maybe she had simply forgotten how reedy it was, back when his name was Fume and she was only her father’s impudent hatchling. She hadn’t bothered to pay attention to his voice’s timbre all that well when she changed his name: all she cared about was the quality of his work as her assistant, and he had certainly assisted her well enough.

It didn’t matter. She’d ponder that mystery after her work was done. With a jerk, she tossed her sword to the ground at Bookworm’s feet. “Take this to my hoard. Call a guard if you can’t lift it by yourself, but don’t let it drag on the ground.”

Bookworm looked at the sword, then looked at a guard who had detached himself from the riotous mob and was trudging back towards his post. The two of them made eye contact, and the guard nodded his head - but not before giving Bookworm a contemptuous stare and self-satisfied grin. “Of course, your majesty.” Bookworm replied, and Ember dearly wished that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“But before you do that, give me today’s itinerary. In full. I can’t afford to be indolent for even a second today. You understand, of course.”

“Of course.” Bookworm cleared his throat. “10:00 AM: Meeting with the Elders about our recent reclamation of rockland in the eastern quarter, in the Elder’s Caverns.”

Ember frowned and rubbed her eyes with one hand. “This again? We’re going to need the space for mining and gem production. Tell the Elders that if they’re so keen on wasting my time over expansion issues, they should probably go fly off to some other continent and grab all the sleeping space they want somewhere else.”

Bookworm smirked. “I’m sure they won’t find that insolent at all, Your Majesty. I’ll do my best to remember those words while they’re toasting me to cinders.”

“Good one.” Ember returned his smirk with a toothy grin. “One point.”

“Thank you, your Majesty.” Bookworm flipped to the back of his notebook and jotted down another tick mark, before tossing his head again and flipping the notebook back to the beginning. “11:00 AM: Meeting with His Former Majesty Torch about your cultivation research, in his personal quarters.”

An uncomfortable chill ran up Ember’s ribcage, and for a second Ember fought to regain control of her lungs. “That’s...understood. Message received. Anything else?”

“1:00 PM: Proposal from Lord Reginald about-”

“Dismiss him with prejudice. I’m not sending troops to help him raid a potential ally just to soothe his precious ego, and I’m way past the point of caring about his stupid hoard any more.” Ember rolled her eyes and snorted, puffs of smoke drifting out of her nostrils and dissipating into the air. “I don’t even care if he tries to attack me at this point. I don’t care how big he is, I’ll still claw out one of his eyes if I have to.”

“...Noted.” Bookworm’s arm jerked stiffly as he scribbled down Ember’s response, as if he was gripping the pencil tighter than was necessary. “One drake still out of commission from an arm injury. You said that you wanted to be updated on medical reports, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll pay Clump a visit. Least i could do.” Ember sighed in relief. Playing the “good guy” was dozens of times more pleasurable than actually administering anything. Of course, relaxing in her cave was dozens of times more pleasurable than administering anything, which was probably the reason why the dragon kingdom hadn’t gotten anywhere in the past few centuries. Luckily for her, she only had to burden herself with the fate of her subjects until she died. And if she was very, very lucky, that meant that she only had to burden herself for a few hundred years.

Bookworm cleared his throat. “One last thing. The diplomat from Ponyville arrived this morning.”

Silence.

A breeze kicked up two pebbles, which bounced on the ground as they rolled towards the cave.

Bookworm’s tail twitched. “Your Majesty?”

“When did he arrive?” Ember snarled.

“A-about ten minutes before the execution, Your Majesty.”

“Where. Is. He.”

Bookworm gulped. “Behind you.”

Ember spun around. Spike stood there, arms hanging limp at his sides and expression unreadable on his waist-height head. A flash of red caught Ember’s eye, and she tilted her gaze just enough to see the scarlet footprints left in Spike’s wake, and the errant splash of color that had washed up on his left ankle like seawater from the rising tide.

No headlights

Ember was aware that eye contact was supposed to be a battle of willpower. If you didn’t look a dragon straight in their eyes, you couldn’t get a gauge of what they were thinking, what they really meant they were saying, what their goals were. And that was fine: Without a little day-to-day deception, it’d be impossible to go for a single afternoon without being paralyzed with paranoia and self-disgust, so taking it for granted and moving on wasn’t so much acceptable as it was necessary.

Looking someone in the eyes threw all of that out a window. It was a challenge: I’m seeing you for exactly who you are. I know everything about you, and now your thoughts are mine. You’re my little thought-servant now, and you’re going to do exactly what I want. And if a dragon stared back, didn’t buckle instantly, it was a counter-challenge: Get out of my head. I’m stronger than you are. I know you better than you know me, and you should be grovelling at my feet for having the gall to make eye contact with me.

Older dragons did it to younger dragons all the time, to get them to fall back in line and listen to their elders. Bosses did it to their slaves and underlings, to get them back to doing their jobs and keep them from challenging authority. Two dragons on seemingly equal footing would need to figure out which one outranked the other. So it went.

But Spike didn’t get that. Wasn’t getting that. And the more Ember looked him in the eyes, the more he returned her stare with a blank and uncomprehending gaze. The longer their silent eye contact persisted, the more Ember was sure that he didn’t even know what eye contact was supposed to mean. He didn’t know the rules. The ponies had basically castrated him, and the thought of Spike not being able to-

Never mind. It didn’t matter.

Ember crossed her arms. “You’re a week early.”

“Sorry about that.” Spike broke eye contact to stare vacantly at the ground and idly kicked a pebble. “I got my schedule mixed up, you know? Like I did that one time with you and Thorax.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ember rolled her eyes. “I hope you weren’t expecting to make any friends by showing up early, though.”

Spike continued to stare at the ground, claws latticed in front of his waist as he hung his arms half-limply in front of him. “I mean, isn’t part of being a diplomat making friends?”

“Being a diplomat is about having a job and doing it, just like any other job. Speaking of - Bookworm? Guard?” Ember snapped, turning her head back towards her civil servant and uncivil guardsdragon. “The sword?”

Murmuring apologies, Bookworm and the guard hoisted up the still-dribbling sword and began to haul it back inside the cave. With an irritated snort and an impatient flick of her tail, Ember fixed her attentions back on Spike. “Typical, right? It’s so easy for dragons to forget they’re doing their jobs unless they’re being constantly reminded. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor by reminding you.”

“If you say so,” Spike responded with barely any inflection. Ember reminded herself that slapping a diplomat for sounding pathetic was still a faux pas, and that if anyone needed to set a good example it had to be her.

“Look, Spike - if you wanted this to be a vacation, you should have said this was a vacation. You’re supposed to be here to help figure out a trade agreement between Equestria and the Dragon King-Empire. I shouldn’t really even be talking business with you, since we already know each other, but whatever. I’ll make laws about that later. Equestria has laws about that stuff too, right?”

Spike gulped. “Not really?”

“Oh for the love of - Okay, I give up. We’ll talk official business later, but I’m hungry. You’re probably hungry. Want to have breakfast?”

Spike blinked, then broke out into a smile - small, somewhat uncertain, but genuine enough for the moment. “Okay.”

**********************************************

The crystal practically dripped with flavour. As Ember squeezed her claws against its turquoise surface, she imagined what it might have done if it was a juicier bit of food, the sort of thing ponies ate. It wouldn’t have surprised her if that juicy food would have literally exploded in her grasp, literally dribbled its liquids all over her-

Ember shook her head, cleared the thought from her head and took a bite. It was delicious: sweet, but full-bodied and firm, with a satisfying crunch that echoed down the dining table. Ember chomped down on it again, then again, and it was only when she was halfway done with the crystal that she bothered to look back up at Spike. “Hey, how’s the meal?”

“Really good!” Spike replied, grinning as he grabbed at another crystal from a silvered platter. “They kind of taste like candy!”

“Dragonlands cuisine.” Ember smirked and took another bite. “Bet you can’t say that they have crystals half this good in Equestria.”

“I mean, ponies aren’t supposed to eat that sort of stuff. They build things with it. So if you built stuff with hay...”

“That’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve heard anyone say all day. How do you expect a cave made of hay to hold up under its own weight? Even for a dragon your size? And I mean, for a dragon Reginald’s size and crankiness-”

“Who’s Reginald?”

“Imagine perpetually having the world’s biggest burr up your butt. Now imagine the burr is green, dragon-shaped, and an insufferable twat. That’s Reginald.” Ember took another hungry bite of her crystal, but barely tasted it. “I might have to deal with him today. Dragon business.”

“Right! I should have figured that you might be busy. I know i shouldn’t have come early and…”

Spike lapsed into silence. Grunting in annoyance, Ember slapped the remnant of her crystal down on the table and stood up. “Look, Spike-”

“Spike?”

Ember and Spike turned to see Bookworm, standing to the side of the table, pencil and paper clenched loosely in one fist.

“Uh.” Spike replied. “You look kind of familiar, but-”

“You were the little dude!” Bookworm replied with a grin that almost split his face in half. “The baby dragon that wanted to hang out with us one year! You did the belly flop, remember?”

Spike blinked, then gasped - and his eyes lit up in happy recognition. “Yeah! You were one of the teenage dragons I wanted to hang out with! You and...there was the pale one, and the kind of…” Spike trailed off, gesturing as if highlighting a very large and invisible stomach.

Bookworm sniggered. “Did he have brown scales?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Clump that the thing you remembered about him was that he’s fat. And look.” Bookworm continued, holding up a talon to shush Spike’s incoming apology, “If I don’t tell him he’s a lardball at least once a day, he’d think there was something wrong with me, okay? It’d be like him not telling me to cut off my fringe.”

“I guess that’s just another dragon thing I don’t know about, huh?” Spike replied, looking a bit sheepish.

“You’re worrying too much, little dude. You were one of us, remember? Like, except for the thing with the phoenix eggs aside, everything’s cool. And that was only bogus because your pony friends stepped in, but I’m guessing you didn’t make them do that, right?”

“I-I didn’t even know they were there! Really!”

“Like I said, then. One of us.” Bookworm yawned, stretching his arms in an almost exaggerated display of relaxation. “And hey, there’s stuff I’d rather do than smash a bunch of eggs. Doing stuff with friends is always fun, but I honestly wouldn’t have gone out and done it if…”

Bookworm froze mid-stretch. The silence that followed was palpable, filling Ember’s dining quarters with overbearing silence. Irritating silence.

“Right.” Ember snapped, setting her crystal down. “Bookworm, I’m going to need a list of exportable commodities that the Dragonlands can provide. Raw materials, manufactured goods, labor, whatever - as long as you think it could turn a profit for us, I want it written down. Do you want me to send out an expedition for more writing supplies?”

“No, your majesty.” Bookworm replied, before turning on his heel and scrabbling out of the room, slightly faster than was necessary. Ember waited until he had left the room before groaning and rubbing her eyes.

“Um…” Spike started.

“You don’t need to tell me. Of course he was one of Garble’s friends. I’m an idiot, okay?” Ember snorted in aggravation, twin puffs of smoke drifting out of her nostrils as she grabbed her crystal again. “Look, did you have any diplomatic stuff you needed to do today?”

“I...don’t know?” Spike replied with a shrug.

“Good. Your new business is to go help Bookworm, okay? Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. And if you can figure out what’s going on in his brain - while being subtle about it, okay? - then so much the better. The last thing I need at the moment is another dragon trying to get me killed.” Ember stood up, popped the last of her breakfast in her mouth and stalked out of the room.

Disappointingly, it tasted sour.

I should just tell you

It was amazing, Ember decided, how it was possible for a dragon’s body to feel a decade older from only an hour of conversation.

Then again, it was amazing how she could explain the same dozen points until her face was purple, and evidently still fail to get anydragon to actually listen to her. Appealing to their greed and pride apparently went far when the only concern was the prettiness of her words, but all their attention evaporated like a puddle in summer as soon as actual legislature got brought to the table.

Ember knew that greed, self-assurance and time let a dragon grow from a teenager into an adult, but at this point it wouldn’t have surprised her if vapid stupidity was also necessary. Was she going to end up like that when she grew up? A lazy dullard with an IQ somewhere in the single digits? Being an adult might have helped her get other dragons to listen to her, but part of Ember wondered whether or not she actually wanted to be an adult anymore. A dull headache tapped the front of her skull like a small but tireless hammer, not painful so much as aggravating, and she briefly hoped that the next thing on her itinerary wouldn’t be relentlessly irritating.

Then she remembered what the next thing on her itinerary was, and all the irritation drained out of her. There wasn’t much room left for it after trepidation slammed its way into her skull like a bowling ball into a set of candlepins. The deftness of her stride gave way to an awkward gait, and she slumped as she turned towards an unlit staircase and walked down.

Dragons didn’t believe in secrecy. But Ember knew that discretion was a different thing entirely. Discretion wasn’t exactly lying, per se, and it made things easier for everydragon else. If anything, her discretion about this whole affair was for the betterment of the entire empire, and Ember wanted to believe that dragons who thought otherwise were fools. Unfortunately...

Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Ember took a step forward into the darkness. Two steps. But before her foot had lifted off the ground for the third time, the center of the cave exploded into flame: A colossal jet of fire billowed down onto an unseen pit in the floor, which roared to life with the scope of a dragon-sized campfire and the intensity of an active volcano.

And there, looming above the conflagration, was Torch. Torch, who called mountains his equal in size; Torch, whose unbreakable scales called diamonds their brethren. If his sorrow was great, his tears would drown a valley, and were there music in his heart the gaiety of his song would outshine even the purest vein of gold. But he never wept, for naught could threaten him so greatly that he would be tempted to despair; and he never sang, for singing was for silly dragons, and his mind was too sharp to burgeon even a sliver of mirth.

Torch, who could crush her with one talon as easily as she could crush an ant, and if the expression on his face was anything to go by, he was very, very tempted to do so.

“WHAT. ARE. YOU. DOING?” The former dragonlord boomed down at her.

Part of Ember wanted to respond with the obvious rebuttal: “Talking to you, clearly. Or being shouted at by you, anyway.” The other parts of Ember weren’t quite so keen on being crushed into paste, and instead she opted for silence.

“WHAT IS THIS?” Torch clarified, as one massive arm thrusted out of the firelight to brandish a small object at her. It was round and about fist-sized, and it glimmered in the firelight like a violet wisp. And, at least at first blush, it seemed to be everything she had hoped for.

“A crystapple, da- Your Resplendence,” Ember corrected herself.

“AND WHAT, EXACTLY, IS THAT?”

“A fusion. Between an organic plant and minerals. I’ve got a research team working on developing crystals that will be able to quickly self-replicate.”

“WHY.”

“Food. I want to have a reliable and renewable food source for when our empire expands. I know that finding crystals we can eat is slightly less difficult than taking a bath, but that’s not going to be the case when the empire grows. We need sustainable sources of food-”

“WE NEED TO BE SLAVES TO DIRT.”

“That’s not what I said.” Ember frowned, crossing her arms.

“IT’S WHAT YOU MEANT. YOU WANT US TO BE WRIGGLY LITTLE WORMS.” Torch jabbed a talon into the stone floor, ignoring the sharp crack of the rock splintering beneath it, and wriggled his talon in a grotesque pantomime of a nightcrawler. “WRIGGLING IN THE GROUND UNTIL WE DIE.”

“I’m not asking us to be worms. I’m asking us to take responsibility.” Ember hadn’t expected her voice to waver, not near the end of that sentence. She wasn’t sure if she could keep it from coming back. She needed to do something.

“RESPONSIBILITIES WE DON’T NEED.”

As Torch turned back to face her, Ember stared directly into his eyes. It felt like looking into the sun. But she couldn’t give up now. Couldn’t blink. She had to do this.

“Responsibilities that we’re going to need if we want to embrace our undaunted heritage. You think dragons are powerful enough as is, D-Your Resplendence? You think we should just settle for things being “good enough” as they are?”

Torch glared down at Ember. Ember was almost positive that the rock behind her was liquefying from the force of his gaze. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she was liquefying from his gaze, and even having his undivided attention for a few seconds was making her want to claw her eyes out.

“WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING?” Torch boomed, after far too many seconds of silence.

“I’m implying that we can take the world for ourselves if we want it. I’m implying that it’s in our grasp, and always has been. But I’m also recognizing that it takes work to do that, and whether or not we’re willing to exert ourselves to claim our birthright is within our control. You see this as wriggling like worms?”

“I DO.”

“I see it as waving a paintbrush. I see every arm we flex and every claw that clenches as another stroke on the tapestry of our legacy. I see a vision of us growing from isolated beacons of power into a million glorious spires, so omnipresent and mighty that our majesty blots out the sun. And that vision is painted with the brushes of every muscle strained in the service of dragonkind. Would you turn your gaze from that?”

Silence reigned once more.

Abruptly, Torch dropped his gaze and turned around. There was a small clunk as he dropped the crystapple in front of her, and his voice echoed as he retreated back into the shadows.

“DO WHAT YOU WANT. COMMANDER.”

Ember waited until his footsteps had been swallowed by the darkness before collapsing to the floor. Her chest heaved as she gulped down unsteady breaths, and for a few shuddering minutes she sat there, in the dark, relief washing over her like an unexpected cloudburst.

Until she realized how utterly frustrated she was supposed to be.

Round and Round

Spike and Bookworm were having lunch when Ember demonstrated how it is possible, without an imposing build or a bulky outfit, to barge into a dining room with all of the elegance of an enraged manticore.

“Bookworm.” Ember spat. A spiderweb of tiny cracks blossomed over the half-eaten crystapple in her hand.

Bookworm jerked his arm back from a bowl of gems as he spun to face her. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

Ember’s shoulders slumped as she exhaled like a deflating balloon. “Nothing, it’s...nothing. Don’t worry about it. How many points do you have?”

“Oh!” Bookworm grabbed his notepad off of the table, flicked it open and began rummaging through the pages. “...Twenty-three, Your Majesty.”

Ember’s shoulders slumped a little further down. “Good. Did you make a list of our commodities?”

“Yeah. It should be finished soon. Spike’s been helping me with the estimates. You wanted numbers to go along with the list, right? Because he’s been really good at those.”

“I didn’t-”

Ember turned towards Spike, who grinned at her. He probably didn’t even realize that he was jeopardizing her authority, again. Maybe it was “A Pony Thing” to have an utter disregard of tact while trying to help out others, or maybe Spike really was that dense. Quietly, Ember hoped that it was the former.

“Didn’t what?” Spike interrupted.

“...I didn’t ask for number estimates, but I probably should have. Thanks for reminding us, Spike. Bookworm?” Ember nodded at the skinnier drake. “Finish the estimates, then you can have the rest of the day off. I’ll take care of any bookkeeping stuff if I have to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Are you done with lunch?”

“Yes!” Bookworm stumbled slightly as he rose from his dining chair. “I’ll get right on that, but…”

“But?”

“Can I use the bathroom first?”

“Sure. Go for it.” Ember sloughed into a chair next to the one Bookworm had vacated, and held out a limp arm towards him. “Your notepad? I want to look this over.”

“Oh! Uh...sure!” Bookworm replied, awkwardly thrusting the notepad into her paw before skittering out of the room. Ember waited until he had turned a corner and disappeared from view before groaning and slamming her head against the table.

“Um...is everything okay?” Spike asked.

“No. Everything isn’t.” Ember lifted her head, rubbed her eyes and stared at a nondescript patch of wall. “So. You guys have princesses, right?”

“Yeah! Princess Celestia, Princess Luna-”

“I get it. So, if instead of calling her “Princess Celestia” or whatever, if you called her, uh…’Ugly Fartsniffer Celestia,’ that wouldn’t be really polite, right?”

The question hung in the air for a couple of seconds, stale and unappetizing.

“...Do you not like Princess Celestia for some reason?” Spike replied.

Ember groaned and turned towards Spike. “Your princesses are fine. I’m not talking about them. But that wouldn’t be a nice thing to call them, right?”

Once again, the question hung. A fly buzzed out of the mouth of the chamber, towards where the two of them sat. An irrational wave of spite surged up Ember’s spine, and she spat a gout of flame at the insect, then returned her gaze to the wall as the fly’s ashes drifted slowly to the ground.

“Why did your dad say something mean to you?”

Ember’s gaze snapped back to Spike. “Who said it was my dad?”

“Bookworm said it was on your schedule. R-right?” Spike wavered.

“Oh. Right. I guess.” Ember sighed. “Spike, what does the word “commander” mean to you?”

“Um.” Spike furrowed his brow and rested his chin between his thumb and index finger, as if he was thinking really, really hard about the question. Given that it was Spike, Ember found it impossible to tell how hard that really was.

“It’s not supposed to be a hard question, Spike.”

“I guess like a general? Like, of a huge army? The one guy at the top that everybody trusts, who’s got a strong bearing and a fancy hat and everything?”

Ember chewed on her lip. “You know, that actually sounds kind of cool.”

“It’s supposed to be cool! It’s a really big honor!” Spike puffed out his chest, saw Ember’s expression and promptly deflated. “But I’m guessing that’s not what it means to a dragon, huh.”

“It means “One who commands.” Like, that’s it. The dragon that gives orders.” Ember sighed and laid her head on the table. “It doesn’t mean you’re worthy of respect, it doesn’t mean you’re awesome, it doesn’t mean that anydragon looks up to you. It means they do what you say because they have to, but all things considered they’d rather you just dropped dead.” Ember turned to catch Spike’s gaze, and her throat hitched. “It...it isn’t what I wanted to be.”

“Wait, your dad said that about you?”

“I mean, what should have I expected? A medal and a solid gold statue? That’d be stupid. This is stupid. Emotions are stupid.” Ember pushed herself off of the table, sat up straight and flicked the notepad open with her thumb. It was easier to avoid looking Spike in the eyes when she was pouring through rows of objects and numbers, sorted with the care of an amateur and written with the neatness of a practiced scribe.

Perhaps she was a terrible ruler, but at least she was decent at giving a lukewarm shoulder. Spike didn’t interrupt her for fifteen seconds, and his reiterated question was phrased at least slightly less childishly this time.

“...What did you do? To make him angry, I mean. What happened?”

Barely tilting her head upwards, Ember tossed him the cracked half of the crystapple. “Take a bite.”

Spike sunk his teeth into the crystapple.Then he bit into it again, and again, and in a matter of seconds he had utterly devoured the crystal, cracks and all.

“That, uh...did you like it?” Ember probed.

“Yeah!” Spike beamed. “That was amazing! Like, it was juicy, but still really crystal-y. But really sweet! It was like the best kind of-”

“Like pony food and dragon food mixed together?” Ember arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah, but in the best possible way! Like, I dunno, I think even Twilight might like this! And Rarity! And Everypony!”

“They might need better teeth for that. And stronger stomachs.”

“It could still work! Like, maybe if you made it a little softer and more pony-like, I bet it’d be the most popular thing ever! Come on, Ember, I know you like this idea!”

“I do?”

“Yeah! I mean, why else would you be smiling?”

“I’m…” Ember reached up with her now crystapple-free hand and touched her jaw. Huh. She was smiling. How had that happened? “I...I’m still not as optimistic as you, I guess. Like, what if trying to give some to your friends in Ponyville made them sick?”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t try it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Ember sighed. “I poison them by accident. They think it was on purpose, and try and make some sort of “sanctions” against us. Whatever it is ponies do.” Ember set the notepad down and arched her hand against the table’s surface, crudely imitating a four-legged creature. “So then they come over to us and say“oh! Poppycock! I’m a pretty pastel princess and, um, and we’re not going to allow you over anymore! In fact, you have to move far, far away, because I’m a pretty princess and all of you are a bunch of filthy, animalistic, rock-dwelling-”

Ember’s other hand bunched up in a fist and crushed her first hand against the table. Pain shot up Ember’s arm, and she did her best not to wince. Spike gasped and recoiled, and a small, perverse part of Ember took pride in getting her point across.

“...Yeah. Then they fight, and then everyone loses, some more than others, the end.” Ember unfolded her hands and stared at her palms, as if expecting to see a set of instructions written on them. “So that’s the worst possible thing. Not saying it’ll happen, but.”

“I mean...It won’t happen. It couldn’t.” Spike mumbled.

“Why not?”

“Because we’d understand that it was an accident. That you weren’t trying to do anything bad to us, and that you wanted to do something good. Because you’re you, right? You’re my friend. That’s how friendships work.”

“Yeah, but that’s not how dragons work. You’re not a pony, Spike. You’re one of us.” Ember stood up and stretched, wings splayed in an alular yawn. “And not understanding accidents and doing bad things is what dragons do. Sorry to burst your bubble.”

Spike’s face fell. Ember stared at Spike, blinked, then reached across the table to pat his shoulder.

“Hey, Spike? You’re not a bad guy, okay?”

Face unchanging, Spike nodded.

“...Uh. Okay. I’m gonna head over to my cave and check over the figures again. Just to make sure everything adds up, so...you can hang around with Bookworm or whatever, okay? I’ll probably be done in an hour, and I’m gonna check up on Clump after that. You can tag along for that visit if you want, too.”

Pivoting on her heel and trying to ignore the faint throbbing in her hand, Ember walked out. Images of Clump and Clump’s ruined hand snuck into her brain, and right behind them were images of Garble’s-

No. No, she wasn’t thinking of that. She was thinking of statistics and figures, that was all. That, and being a good dragon later. And helping Spike, and helping Equestria, and helping all of dragonkind. Good things.

Because she would be a good leader, and do the things that had to be done.