Author's Note

Alright folks. Here is the completed version of chapter three. I'm already working on number the fourth. For those of you curious, the exact words used for the spell or dear undead friend used are "Stone. Shape. Mold."

I've decided to sort of mix rules here for dragonic magic. Much like the D&D style dragons that were the inspiration for the northern dragons in this story, they are capable of casting spells much like any wizard or sorcerer. However, I couldn't really resist adding in a little Skyrim-esq touch. All verbal components to their spells consist of three words, much like a full dragon shout. Their breath weapons and spell-like abilities (such as ice walking in the case of white dragons) don't require these spell components due to them being abilities natural to the species.

All comments and feed back is of course welcome, but as always I ask that should you down vote this story you take the time to explain why in the comments. I, afterall, can't improve if I don't know what I've done wrong, now can I?

Squeak-a Squeak-a sque-THUNK!

It took me five minutes to catch my head, five minutes of that blue pony with the wings rolling about laughing. Five minutes of her apparent friends attempting to either foul me up and send me to the ground or scatter more of me. Five minutes of something worthy of the Benny Hill theme… Needless to say this was not doing anything good for my mood.

When I finally managed to get my head on straight and get my bearings I was treated to the all so wonderful sight of that blue menace laying there struggling to breath through the great bouts of laughter that rocked her to the core. Just there, all alone and vulnerable, her friends scattered about as they tried to find various ways of “dispelling” me… I couldn’t just let such an opportunity pass.

I reached out and plucked her up, holding her tightly as her laughter turned into a startled little ghasp. She wriggled and squirmed like a fish on a hook, but found my grip to be a bit too much to free herself from. Had I been able to I would have smiled at the look of complete and utter shock on her face. Shock that was slowly turning to horror and pain as I squeezed her tight enough to make her squeak… Like a dog toy.

I held her there for a few seconds before she turned a slight purple, then loosened my grip once more. She took in a massive breath, coughing and hacking for a few moments before, once again, I worked her like a squeaky toy. Squeeze. Relax. Squeeze. Relax. Squeak. Inhale. Squeak. Inhale… It was pretty damn therapeutic, let me tell ya. Especially after she’d made me have to chase down my own skull.

It should be noted that while I was enjoying my new toy the other mini-horses were kind of just sitting there, staring with what I’m sure were highly bewildered expressions… All but the pink one who had taken up my squeak toy’s old job of laughing fit to break something. Sadly, this cartoonish cliche of the “Villain” having the upper hand can never last long. Though I suppose a few minutes is longer than such things usually last so… Points to me?

Don’t ask me how in the world it worked, or what in the world possessed the pony I had in claw to try it… But she bit me… and it hurt. Not a lot, but still, I’d not felt much at all when she went and used my head for a soccer ball. As such I do hope you can understand that I was rather surprised at the sudden sharp pain in my hand. Surprised enough that I went and flung the little blue annoyance away with a dusty coughing cry of “Ouch!”

The impromptu pony projectile flew rather unerringly into the orange one, and tumbling and rolling they went, winding up in a heap of limbs, feathers, and a rather out of place stetson. Hats are not typically worn on one’s ass end after all.

“Consarn it Rainbow! Ya got wings, use ‘em girl… And get your hoof off mah face.” Said the pony who’d been made into a landing pad, her voice muffled by the aforementioned facefull of blue hoof.

“Well get your dock off my head and take your hat off mine!” came the rather much more so muffled reply from Rainbow, she of the hatted hind-end. Though to be fair I doubt even she could understand what she was saying exactly so you’ll have to pardon me if that wasn’t exactly right… She did indeed have a hat on her ass though.

Once again we were one and all subjected to one of those perfect cartoon moments. You know, where something amusing is going on and everyone there, no matter what, stops to stare at whatever it is? Yes, exactly one of those. You see, its kind of hard not to watch a pair of ponies attempt to wriggle their way free off a highly compromising position… Though to be dead honest this was the kind of thing that would have me blushing if I had the ability to do so… Two clearly female beings, rolling about on the ground all tangled up together and making some rather suggestive noises every now and again… Yep! Softcore porn, just add mini-horse.

Me staring like that however had nothing on the look on the purple one’s face. Now that was absolutely priceless. She’d gone beet red, her jaw hanging slack and eye’s wide as she watched her friends wrestle about like a pair of highly energetic lovers who fell into a vat of industrial strength adhesive. As I watched her wings slowly went stiff, though to be honest I had no idea what that was about.

The yellow one wasn’t much better, though she did do a spot on impression of a fainting goat, complete with the bleating sound and everything.

The other two had fallen against one another, laughing like loons… Though the marshmallow pony managed to do so in a manner approaching elegance, what with the hoof over her mouth and the crystal bell tones of her laughter… The other one was a laugh track from a studio audience to say the least.

As for myself… Well, with a shake of my head and a facepalm that sounded a lot like a bone chime going off I excused myself and went looking for an exit. Things had gotten far too awkward in there for me. Much much too awkward.

I was lost. No two ways about it. One would think that, being in what looking to be some kind of grand hall it would have been easy to find an exit I could fit through… One would of course be wrong as could be. So wrong in fact I’d consider twatting them over the head with a giant rolled up newspaper and yelling exactly what they were in their face… Wrong, just to be clear… They’re wrong.

At the moment I found myself in what I think might have been a side passage for some kind of royal palace. The walls were stone, but sized for beings the size of those skeletons that I’d been curled up with when I awoke… It should be noted then that the decorations were simply breath taking and that they made me feel almost tiny next to the scenes the depicted in stunning bas relief.

Carved into the solid stone walls were hundreds and hundreds of tiny little runes that, taken altogether, formed a great sweeping epic made up of the very words that told the tale they showed. A massive dragon, one I could not help but recognize from that vision I was treated to back in the main hall, was chief among the images here. Ignis, the high king of the North. These were his deeds and feats of strength. Here he was, carving the great hall with his own claws and flame. There, meeting his mate and, in the tradition then, doing battle with her. A wrestling match that cracked the very earth beneath them. And there! There he was, standing atop his mountain, holding fast and fighting to his last breath against a swarm of small creatures with wings and spears while massive crystal spires rose around him. There he lay, curled with his fallen mate and son as his world went dark and that last breath left him.

This was his life on display before me. This was the life of my fa- Holy shit what was that?!

I’d been so lost in the wall art I’d been taken completely by surprise as a rather large boom seemed to give its best college try at shaking the world to pieces. Dust and ice chips rained down from above me, coating my bones and grinding in between my joints in a manner most irritating. Of course it was made all the more so as I scrambled like mad to get to where that sound had seemed to come from. I didn’t make it another fifty feet before once again…

BOOM!

That one took me clean off my paws, sending me to the floor in a great rattling pile of bones… That thankfully didn’t scatter. Even so, it took me a moment or two to get upright again, and no sooner had I done so than

BOOM!

that earth shaking concussive noise went off again, though it seemed to be slightly quieter to be honest.

Shaking myself off, and wishing I could frown, I started off again in a slightly less mad scramble to discover the source of that simply frightening sound. After all, if it sounds like it might bring down who knows how many tons of rock atop your head, it just might and it’s probably best to put a stop to it as soon as one can… Or to get the fuck out of there. Seeing as to how that last one was beyond me currently, going to see if I could stop it had just become the number one thing on my to do list.

Back in the main hall Twilight Sparkle was busy applying her hoof to her face again and again and again. “Dang it Pinkie… When a sign in an ancient ruin says not to touch something… Don’t touch it.” Though of course it was far too late for that… Pinkie had already found and pulled that damned lever. One clearly marked as “Dangerous.” and that one “Should not touch.”

No one told her Pinkie couldn’t read old draconic though, and Pinkie was of the school of thought that one must always activate buttons, switches, levers, and the like to see what it is they do… No one had told Pinkie that this was a bad idea though.

It wasn’t as if anyone could hear her words though, because not fifty feet away a pair of large statues in the shape of dragons were now rather animate. Their wings were slowly drawing back for yet another beat that would of course stir up a great gale of a wind and set the very air to thrumming with the force behind the motion. It had only been her quick thinking and overly powerful shield spell that kept her and her friends from being blown away… Though it had the unfortunate effect of amplifying the sound for those under the bubble… A curiously bell shaped bubble at that. Oh well, that’s what one gets for casting in haste, and what’s some minor hearing loss between friends? At least it couldn’t get any wor- ...She just had to think that didn’t she?

Once again face meet hoof with force as that big animated dragon skeleton rounded a corner and came skidding a halt right in front of her shield spell… Just in time to be sent crashing down atop it by that damned gale the statues stirred up. ...She really hoped that it didn’t weigh too much, she was already getting a humdinger of a headache. She really did not want to have to hold up some kind of heavy object too. Newly made princess with much enhanced magical stamina or no, she really didn’t want that.

She didn’t really get a say in it though.

With a great rattling crash (that did nothing at all for her headache) she found herself indeed being made to hold up the… Not so great weight of a large draconic skeleton. One that, somehow, looked less than amused… Discounting that toothy grin on its skull of course. Damn bone heads, always smiling at the most inappropriate times.

For its part in all the the dragonic bone pile in question could really only offer what looked like a helpless shrug. What was it supposed to do after all? Not as if it had any sort of say in what the laws of inertia happened to be doing to it. After all, it just didn’t have the mass required to resist being moved by the force applied to it by the wind. As such, movement was bound to happen.

Shaking her head sharply, both to force herself to focus and to bring her attention back to her spell work, Twilight hunkered down and tried to pointedly ignore the annoyance that was the dragon… She was partially successful, and would have enjoyed her usual level of obliviousness (usual only when focusing on a project, or so she’d tell it) had Rarity not poked her in the ribs with a rather loud call of “What is that BEAST doing?!”

Looking up, again, Twilight just couldn’t believe her eyes at all.

You know, I can honestly say that before today hearing an odd voice in my head (it echoed by the way… Not surprising, my skull is hollow after all) would have disturbed me, and possibly sent me seeking professional help. However, after waking up as the ultimate aspiration of many a runway model… Err, not that I assume most models WANT to be the size of a house and made entirely out of bones, mind you. Just meant thinner than is strictly healthy… Anyways, after something like that, I suppose I can be forgiven for listening to random voices in my head.

Between the gale that threw me against that wanna-be bubble shield and the next to come I got back to my paws and put the shield at my back. On that little voices directions I slowly worked one of my forepaws through a series of little gestures, muttering the words it fed me all the while.

“Terram. Conferam. Fingunt…” over and over again. Slowly, the light in my chest brightened by a few degrees of magnitude before that glow spread to my wriggling digits. As I watched, unsure of exactly what it was I was doing, the earth and stone in front of me began to twitch and move, rising up with a mounting speed. When I finished, and that voice went silent, a good hundred feet of stone, dirt, and bits of loose earth had formed itself into a huge angled wall before me, just high enough to provide me with ample cover from the oncoming winds.

Needless to say I was dumbfounded. I mean, finding myself to suddenly be a dragon, and an undead one at that, was one thing… To actually have performed magic? That was something else entirely. What else besides magic could it have been though? I mean… It sure as hell is hot wasn’t some stage trick. That wall was far too solid for that… And I’d felt it. Felt the fabric of the world warp itself in response to what I’d asked of it. Felt a force far greater than myself leap to obey my commands… Or were they mine? I stared down at the paw I’d used for the somatic part of whatever spell I’d just cast and had to wonder… Was it really me who did this, or that voice in my skull that fed me the instructions.

I wasn’t going to get an answer any time soon most likely. Mostly because while I was busy puzzling out of I did that, the purple pony princess had apparently taken offence at being shown up… Or at least I would assume so considering she threw her pith helmet at me.

Twilight couldn’t believe what she’d just seen at all. Not. At. All. It went against everything she happened to know about magic, dragons, and (surprisingly) guardian constructs set to watch tombs. Dragons couldn’t do magic, at least not the sort of active spell work it would take to raise a wall like that. Magic didn’t require silly words, most of the time anyways, and certainly no foolish hoof waving… At least so her mentor had always told her. But the biggest insult of all in her opinion, was that someone had gone and made a tomb guardian with more common sense than herself! Really, she couldn;t believe she’d not though to do that within seconds of the first gust of wind. It was an obvious solution, and one for more comfortable than the shield she’d thrown up… The same shield that she was sure would be contributing to some hearing loss for her and her friends.

Due in part to all this, and partially because she had one killer headache, Twilight did the first thing that came to mind. Undoing the chin strap on her helmet she lifted it off her head, took careful aim, and let it fly. Now, Twilight had never been the best of shots when it came to physical projectiles… But this time her aim was true. She watched her helmet fly unerringly and impact that (in her opinion) smug looking skull hard enough to dent it… Dent the helmet that is. Much to her annoyance the skull seemed just fine… Though it did slowly turn her way. The twin points of azure fire that were the things eyes looked more than a bit confused, though how unnatural flames could look anything other than eerie and… Well… Unnatural was completely beyond her at the moment. And so was what happened next.

In a polite, if dusty sounding, voice that paradoxical pile of vulture pickings opened its maw and spoke. “...Would you mind terribly turning those statue things off? Sounds as if they’re about to shake the whole mountain down.”

Twilight could take no more and promptly keeled over in a dead faint. As was a common quote from pinkie when she did this… Twilight.exe had crashed and required a reboot.