Prelude: Let me tell you a tail...
It was a slow Tuesday night—I know that probably doesn’t make you want to continue reading, but bear with me. Things didn’t stay slow for long—and I was watching the minutes tick by painfully slowly on the old grandfather clock in the corner. Time seems to slow down, literally, when you work in a clock shop, and the shifts can drag on for what feels like forever.
There was only a few minutes left before quitting time when she walked in.
I silently cursed, mentally berating myself about having to deal with another customer who would probably hound me about how her watch wasn’t keeping time the way she wanted it to well past the time I should’ve gotten home to my flat. News flash, everypony—time pieces do not adhere to your schedule, you have to adhere to theirs. That’s the way time works, and I of all ponies probably know best that time waits for nopony. Though in a clock shop, it does a pretty good imitation of standing still.
To be perfectly honest, the mare in front of me wasn’t half-bad looking, but I’d had a rough day and just gotten out of a rather troublesome relationship, so I wasn’t looking too keenly on the situation as an opportunity—just as more time spent cooped up in Clockwork’s Clock Works. The owner, Clockwork himself, had left some time ago and left me to close up shop as I always did. Despite her looks, I wished Clockwork and I could’ve swapped places right then, so that I could be the one snoozing at home and he would have to stay late to help a customer.
“Evening, ma’am,” I smiled, putting on my best attempt to appear friendly as Clockwork ordered me to be.
“Evening,” she replied, smiling pleasantly before taking off the very watch I had suspected would become my source of dread for the next few hours if she demanded that it be fixed right now. And I would have to stay there to fix it. “Could you take a look at this watch for me? It’s only right once a day.”
“Once a day?” I chuckled uncertainly. “That’s a new one. Even a broken clock has to be right twice a day.”
“Not this one.”
I looked at the watch and almost wet myself. Staring back at me from the golden frame of the watch was an eye. A living, blinking, pupil-dilating optic orb.
“What the buck—”
“How ya’ doin’ mate?” inquired the eye, splitting horizontally across the middle in a zigzag of teeth to form a mouth.
I backed up hastily, but ran into something hard. I whirled around to find that the rest of the clock shop had been blocked off by a brick wall.
“When did—” I stammered, but was cut off when the bricks shimmered and turned into a giant mirrored wall, reflecting the eye-watch, the customer, and the front of the store. Only the front windows had been bricked up just as my escape route had been. If something were to happen to me—and I didn’t need many more clues to come to the conclusion that it would—nopony would know. Buck, they wouldn’t even be able to get into the store at all without a sledgehammer.
Aside from that, the customer wasn’t exactly a pony anymore. Rearing up several times the length of a pony, head topped with mismatched horns to complement its differently sized eyes that looked down on my small form shaking in fear was what could only be described as the nightmare of all ponies. It looked just as the witnesses of the Discord fiasco had described the creatures as being—a hideous hodge-podge of parts from all kinds of different creatures. A lion paw, and eagle claw, a snake’s tail, a dragon leg, and a hoofed leg were all connected to its long, slender body of brown fur. A bat’s wing extended out next to that of a dove behind it.
“You’re—you’re—”
“A draconequus,” the thing finished for me. “And though I know it’s going to be hard for you to accept this, you have nothing to fear from me. I was sent by a friend to seek your assistance in something.”
Assistance? Assistance in what?! Helping her find her next meal, like maybe a certain clock shop employee pony?!
“And if you’re thinking that I want to eat you, then that’s your first lesson,” the draconequus smiled humorlessly. “Draconequui—that’s the plural of ‘draconequus’—don’t subsist off of physical food like you ponies do. We eat something rather more…vital.”
“Oh no, you’re going to suck my blood, aren’t you?!” I screamed, trying to back up but of course getting nowhere. I tried kicking the mirrored wall, only to find that it had turned to bricks again and that I had sprained both my legs. Oh, well—it’s not like I could’ve run anywhere anyway.
“That’s another creature entirely,” the draconequus smiled again, and despite the rather large single fang of the creature in front of me I couldn’t detect any malice in her expression. She snapped her fingers, and I felt the pain in my legs vanish. I gasped when I saw and felt that they had healed. Why would a draconequus heal its food? Didn’t that defeat the purpose of killing it? But then again, she didn’t even look particularly hungry. “Though I can see by your expression that you don’t believe I’m not going to make you my dinner. Besides, it’s not like ALL draconequui are bad, you know”
I didn’t know, and right now I wished I didn’t know about this one in front of me either.
Gulping, but mustering up enough courage to speak, I asked “If you’re not here to eat me, then why ARE you here?”
“Like I said,” she repeated. “I was sent by a friend. You’re a freelance writer in your spare time, are you not?”
“What?!” I blurted out. “How did you know that?! Nopony knows I write anything! I’ve never even been published!”
“That’s because you’ve never had any stories that gripped ponies’ attention,” she smirked.
“Are you implying that I’m a bad writer?” I huffed, deeply offended despite how trivial a thing should’ve seemed to me when I was facing down a relative of one of the biggest threats to Equestria ever.
“No, I’m implying that your stories just need a little something extra you haven’t found yet,” she answered, softening up a bit. “And I’ve come here to give you that.”
“I don’t want anything you could give me!” I spat. If I was going to die at the claws of Equestria’s most hated enemy, then I was at least going to go down fighting. Not that it would do much good, but still…though I was getting the growing feeling my imminent death really wasn’t on the draconequus’ mind after all.
“Even a good story?”
I froze.
“What kind of ‘good story?’” I inquired carefully, still eyeing her suspiciously.
“It’s about your Princess,” the draconequus went on. “And how she saved Equestria from the most hated, most dangerous enemy it had ever faced—my species.”
That…certainly hadn’t been what I was expecting to hear from a draconequus. I mean, she sounded as if she LIKED the tale.
“In fact, Princess Celestia is the friend I mentioned earlier,” the draconequus finished. “I’d been begging her for ages to get her story published, and she finally agreed to it, on one condition: that I give the tale to a writer in need of a big break. Namely, you.”
“Princess Celestia sent a draconequus to tell me to write her memoirs?” I summed up what my disbelieving ears had just heard, for the sake of clarity.
“That’s about the long and the short of it,” the draconequus agreed. “That watch there will tell you everything you need to know. But be warned: this story is not for the faint of heart. Your precious Princess had a hard life growing up, and it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows even when she’d finished growing. There are still draconequui loose in this world, but their numbers are even now dwindling, all thanks to your Princess.”
“…And if I refuse?” I quavered.
“Then I’ll eat you.”
Seeing the stark-white look on my face—and my coat is black—she laughed “Just kidding. Seriously, if there IS one good thing to say about my people, it’s that they have a sense of humor you ponies seem to lack. But that’s beside the point. Will you do it? Will you write Celestia’s biography?
I turned to look at the watch, which winked at me.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t believe a word the draconequus had said, but I no longer thought she was going to eat me either. And, just to end this whole terrifying ordeal, I nodded my head.
“Good,” she smiled again, snapped her fingers, and vanished in a flash of light. The bricks covering the windows and the rest of the shop behind me left with her.
“All right!” announced the eye-watch. I turned to the counter to look at it, wondering how I could dispose of it, when I saw that it wasn’t there. Panicking only slightly, I looked around frantically for it only to find it strapped to my front hoof. I gasped, trying to get it off with my other hoof, but the watch refused to budge. Even a unicorn couldn’t undo draconequus magic, so it looked like the thing was stuck on there. Unless…could she have really meant it all? Would the watch come off if I wrote the story it would tell me, just as the draconequus had said? “Let’s get down to business! Grab a pencil and paper and let’s get this tale started!”
Complying, and only half-fearing what would happen if I didn’t and went back on my agreement with the draconequus, I snatched up some paper from under the counter and my pen from the book the shop used to keep track of sales and repairs.
“I’m ready,” I told the watch, and it winked again, smiling.
“Then here we go! This is the story of Princess Celestia: Draconequus Hunter!”
. . .
