Noblesse

Chapters

Noblesse

Noblesse

To begin with, introductions.

You can imagine that in my years spent serving the royal court of unicornkind, I have seen every way to make an introduction. Some come trotting in proudly, as if seeking to woo their monarch with self-confidence and style. Others garb themselves in humility, holding their hats at their fronts and minding their manners scrupulously. Others yet, usually those unschooled in courtly custom, come barrelling in to make raw desperation do the work of a thousand flowery blessings in getting their princess’ attention. And sometimes, they even succeed.

Few have ever entered a scene so flushed and frantic and utterly unconcerned with any sort of grace as Smart Cookie when she came galloping up towards the unfinished hall in Canter Vale one cold dawn. I saw her come out of the western wood, kicking up frosted dew from the clearing’s grass in her wake, her hide and clothes spotted with mud and scratched by brambles, and as I came down the hall’s new steps to greet her, she skidded to a halt in front of me and breathlessly blurted out, “Clover? We’ve got a problem!”

“Problem?” I said with the groggy air of a royal aide who hadn’t yet had her third morning tisane. The hammering and sawing from the work going on all around in Canter Vale’s newly-sprung settlement had kept me awake into the small hours. Princess Platinum herself had slept like a particularly sleepy log.

“Yeah, problem,” said Smart Cookie, clipped and breathless. “You seen the west sky lately?”

“Sky?” I said, blinking blearily up at the culprit. Rainclouds that the pegasi had had whipped up for the last week so still hung there, fat and dark and threatening more moisture to come. A boon for the earth pony colonists amongst us and their new plots of land, if somewhat soul-destroying for anypony else who had to get soaked to the bone by it.

Nothing seemed untoward, but some nagging part of me thought that the sky looked a little darker than usual. And as I have learned to fully indulge my nagging parts, I gave that darkness hard attention. It seemed to suffuse the heavy layers of clouds from the base up, and was most concentrated around one point, like an ink drop spreading through water.

Cold suspicion hardened in me, and I teleported up to a bare patch of rafters in the hall’s roof to get a better look. I reappeared with a flash, and saw before me the full sweep of the forest canopy filling Canter Vale, pockmarked with clearings where the unicorn and earth pony settlers had laid their foundations. The rocky sides of the vale swept up to my left and right, framing the vale’s mouth. Past that mouth rose the most imposing landmark we had sighted thus far, Mount Canter.

And at the top of Mount Canter, there rose a steady plume of pitch-black smoke from the distant dot of a cave.

“A dragon?” I said, having as I do rare moments of quick uptake, even early in the morning. “Here? They weren’t there yesterday!”

“They weren’t,” Smart Cookie said grimly. “Settlers and farmers out clearing the western clearings only noticed it this morning. Came running straight from there to here soon as I saw it myself. Where’s Commander Hurricane? This needs her personal touch, I reckon.”

I winced. “Flew east just yesterday, and took most of our armsponies with her. There was a nuckelavee sighted around Dream Valley, and you know how urgent dealing with that can be. No idea when she’ll be back.”

“Shoot.” Smart Cookie seethed for a second. “How about the Chancellor? Puddinghead’s got some dangerous talents under all her goof, she might be able to—”

“Not here either. She’s still scouting out the southern ranges for more good settling land. Got a letter from her yesterday saying she was still well, everypony still had most of their limbs, she’d be about another month in returning, and that if anypony knew a quick and easy way to get hydras to regurgitate, could they send the details back with the messenger please.”

“Land’s sakes! This is urgent! Who’ve you got? Have you got anyone?”

She asked the question the second before she realised the answer, and the picture that was her face promptly spoke a thousand words. Most of them unrepeatable.

“A dragon in Mount Canter, you say?” exclaimed my rightful sovereign, Princess Platinum of Unicornkind. She considered the prospect for a moment and sipped spring water from a goblet. “Why, we don’t see the problem here. Frightfully docile creatures when slumbering, are they not? It’s hardly as if we had any real desire to make use of that mountaintop.” She paused. “Clover, were we planning to make use of that mountaintop? Your princess is very busy with many important affairs, and the fine details of any such plan may have temporarily eluded us.”

I suppressed a sigh. “We weren’t, Your Highness. But that’s not the main problem here.”

We were in the main central room of the hall, the only part as yet sealed tight against the elements. A panoply of hastily-made tapestries covered the new wooden walls, and the remains of a fire smoldered in a hearth at one side, gently tended by one old servant stallion. He was the only one around; most of the other servants were preoccupied with home-building. Princess Platinum herself reclined in her new throne. The important affair that had preoccupied her, at the moment Smart Cookie and I had entered, had consisted of trying to whittle extra floral patterns into its sides.

“The problem, Your Grace,” said Smart Cookie with poor grace, “is that the dragon’s slumbering up there and breathing out smoke all the while. That’ll cover the sky, clot up the clouds and stop ‘em shifting, and stop any crops being grown from here to Dream Valley.”

“Hmm.” Platinum looked thoughtful, which, if you’ll forgive me for sounding disrespectful to the royal person, is something I believe ponies would pay money to see. “That possibly is a problem. We rather need those, don’t we?”

Smart Cookie wore the somewhat hunted expression of a pony who’d just cast off a lifeboat to escape a burning ship and had watched it spontaneously turn into a flock of ducks and fly away. “I … yes, Your Grace.”

“There’s another problem as well,” I said. “If the dragon’s just settled there, then it might still be restless and prone to waking. It might fly down and terrorise the ponies here, or anywhere within flying distance. Tear open steadings, burn fields, ransack anything shiny, and more besides.”

Platinum shuddered, and seemed to reached up with one hoof to secure the jewel-studded silver crown on her head. “Oh, that is assuredly a problem. The thought of such a beast plundering the royal household...”

“That all being the case, we really, really ought to oust the beast as soon as equinely possible.” Smart Cookie turned to face me. “You’re a competent mare, Clover. Got any experience with dragon-wrangling?”

“A few instances back home, and I once had to fend off a small one during our travels here—”

“Very competently and swiftly you did it, too. We would have been hard-pressed to do much better,” said Platinum approvingly. “That brute wanted our crown. The nerve!”

“Thank you, Your Highness. I know a few ways to deal with dragons, yes, and I’m adept at battle-casting if the more subtle tricks fail us. I’ll need other ponies to help me if I’m going to deal with this one, though, and Hurricane took the other practised unicorns east with her.”

“You got me,” said Smart Cookie. She rapped the floor with her forehooves. “These survived the same trail yours did, and they blunted the enthusiasm of snow-leopards and mantaghasts and caprid scouts and suchlike things in the process. I’ll have your back.”

Anypony covering your back when danger threatened was a good thing, and having it be somepony you trusted was better yet. “Thank you,” I said. “Anypony else? What about Private Pansy? Hurricane left her behind to keep an eye on things.” Hurricane’s exact phrasing had been ‘make sure nopony cacks things up while I’m gone, soldier, and by nopony, I mean that log-brained excuse for a princess’, but the gist of the words seemed more important than their exactitude in that moment.

I had misgivings about the suggestion, and thankfully, Smart Cookie’s expression suggested she agreed. “Not so sure about that one. I’m sure she’d face up to it if we asked and it was needed, but I wouldn’t want to drag her in. Let her stay here, and if things go to the Hereafter in a handcart, she can fly to Hurricane and bring her back.”

“Alright. That sits easier with me,” I replied. “I think... I think we might be able to do it, just the two of us, if we’re stealthy and clever along the way. Maybe we can talk it down, maybe it’ll need a little bit of hoof-swinging and battle magic to resolve.”

“A lot, I’d have thought—” Smart Cookie started, just before there was a distinctly annoyed throat-clearing sound from the direction of the throne. I realised that in our planning, we’d turned our backs to Platinum.

“Clover,” Platinum said, in the icy tones she only ever deployed when she intended to use sarcasm, which she customarily wielded with all the grace and deftness of a maniac with a blunt instrument. “We offer our sincerest apologies. We had not realised that we were no longer Princess, and that you had assumed our station.”

“I… ah… apologies, Your Highness,” I said, turning back to her and bowing, somewhat confused. “What have I—”

“Certainly such must have transpired for you to decide upon and engage in such fine plans without even considering our input and necessities.”

Smart Cookie groaned in a heartfelt way, while I stammered out, “I… but… Princess Platinum, my apologies, but this has to be undertaken. If we don’t...”

“Of course it must be done! We had no doubts as to that!” Platinum snapped. “And it is precisely for that reason, for this undertaking’s necessity of success, for the sake of our subjects and newly-allied tribes, that we shall lead you in this.”

I paused. I stared. Next to me, Smart Cookie had adopted the same expression as before, with the addendum that the ducks had circled round and were coming back with fangs bared, thirsty for blood.

“Your Highness,” I choked out, “I really, truly, cannot advocate that you join in thi—”

“Pish-posh, Clover, you and Smart Cookie have amply illuminated your own spheres of competence.” Platinum rose from her throne and swished her purple cloak experimentally, as if gauging its weight and style. “Under our leadership, we shall ensure such competency will be directed and used to its utmost. There must be no chance-taking when ponykind’s position is so precarious in our new homeland. Does this cloak have sufficient gravitas for the occasion? Don’t actually offer up an opinion on that, just make noises in the background while we contemplate the answer ourselves.”

“Your Grace,” gritted out Smart Cookie, “I agree with Clover. This’ll… this’ll be a tricky situation to manage, there’ll be a lot of finesse and consideration of various factors to plan out and—”

“Perhaps the turquoise one would do instead. And do not harangue us with the complexities, good pony. We have Clover to do any heavy thinking required.”

Said heavy thinker sought about for another angle. “Your Highness, please. This’ll be about as perilous as undertakings get, it’s well within the bounds of possibility that we’ll end up in a mountainside fight with a dragon.”

“No, this suffices. It brings out our eyes. And fear not for your safety in the midst of peril, Clover, we shall keep you well-protected. We are well-acquainted with the theory of bladework, after all. One simply strikes at the foe with the pointy end, and if initial success is not achieved, one tries again.” She turned to face me. “We shall keep our current garb. Make whatever preparations you feel you must for yourselves while we retrieve a blade. Perhaps the one with the sapphires woven into the metal...”

“Your Highness, please stay here while we handle it!” I blurted out. “Your ponies are here! They need you here as well. Keep yourself safe and keep them safe if things go wrong for us! Please!”

“We shall not achieve the latter by remaining here. We shall prepare, and then we shall sally forth at the foe! We shall not be dissuaded.”

And regrettably, I knew that last sentence was true, and my heart had sunk and refused to rise ever since I’d heard the fateful resolution from Platinum’s mouth. I hope you understand that loyalty prohibits me from commenting on most of her mental faculties other than maintaining a diplomatic silence, but her will is powerful, in much the same way as an out-of-control wagon is powerful.

She moved gracefully off through a side door, still contemplating her choice of blade for the expedition aloud, leaving Smart Cookie and I standing stock-still before the throne. The old stallion who’d been tending the hearth looked up at us, and after a moment’s consideration, deigned not to pass comment.

“So,” said Smart Cookie, her voice strained. “If we were to, say, head out right now, we could probably get this all over and done with in a matter of hours.”

“Maybe,” I said resignedly. “If we go straight down through the vale, there’s a natural path down into the wetlands and foothills before Mount Canter. We shouldn’t have too much difficulty fording the river there, and if I teleport us up to any suitable ledges in the mountainside, we can—”

“Let me repeat myself and emphasise the part relevant to our immediate interests,” interrupted Smart Cookie. “If we were to head out right now—”

“No good,” I said, shaking my head. “If we left, she’d find out soon and try and come after us, and she’d either get hopelessly lost or be even more piqued and stubborn than usual when she found us. She’s got this in her head now. We’d have more luck trying to escape our own shadows.” Smart Cookie opened her mouth, as if to argue, and I cut her off. “Trust me. I’ve known her since we were both fetlock-high.”

Smart Cookie grumbled something profane under her breath, and then looked at me sideways. “How’d that work anyway? You nobleborn as well, or…?”

“The princes and princesses of unicornkind have a long custom of making sure their heirs are brought up and educated alongside a foal of lower birth,” I said. “Close advice from a friendly face with a different perspective on things helps keep the heirs closer to earth and more in tune with their subjects. Or so the theory goes.”

“Ah. Well, in your case, I reckon another foal patiently pointing out which bits of her wetnurse supplied the drinks didn’t go amiss either.”

“Please don’t disparage my friend and lawful sovereign,” I said wearily and sans much conviction in that moment. “Come on. Let’s go get Private Pansy.”

“… so if we’re not back by the close of day—which is, by the way, really unlikely to happen— then you fly east to Hurricane. Get her back here, and oust the dragon as soon as you can, alright?”

Private Pansy stood there in ill-fitting barding, and had looked increasingly uncertain and worried as the conversation had gone on, to the point where if you’d looked up either of these words in a dictionary, you’d have just seen her face staring out from the page. “I… I can do that, maybe? I think I already know what the Commander will say, though,” she said.

“What’s that?” I said.

Private Pansy hesitated for a moment, and then shook her forehoof and mimicked Hurricane’s rough tone. “Grr! You let Platinum go off and left nopony but yourself in charge? Dangit, Private, you’ve really earned your month’s latrine duty this time! Why didn’t you stop her?” She stopped then. “Um, please don’t let the Commander know I did an impression of her, or that’ll get me another week on latrines. If you see her before I do, that is.”

“Hurricane’ll know you couldn’t have stopped her,” I said. “Nothing short of hitting her round the head with a sack stuffed with drowseblossom could stop her now.”

Smart Cookie said, in a contemplative tone of voice, “Do we have a sack stuffed full of drowseblo—?”

“No.”

This seemed to do less than nothing to reassure Pansy, and a high, plaintive noise escaped her throat.

“Look here, don’t fret,” said Smart Cookie wearily. “We may be going out there with the Princess, but I’m sure no possible wrong could befa...” She paused and then shifted tack. “I mean to say, there’s no reason for you to be… I mean, even supposing things don’t go as planned, I’m sure you won’t run into any...”

She paused yet again and sighed while Pansy’s unsettled expression found new and exciting parts of her face to spread to. “Cookie, what’s the matter?” I demanded.

“I’m trying to think of a way to reassure without lying.”

Every part of Pansy’s countenance and body language suggested an internal three-way battle over whether to throw up, burst into tears, or faint. Regardless, she blinked, swallowed, stood straighter, and gave us a very valiant attempt at a brave expression. “I’ll do my best while you’re away,” she said tremblingly.

“We’ll be fine. And you’ll be fine in charge while we’re gone,” I said, taking mercy on the poor pegasus. “There’s an old unicorn proverb you might like. Prince Corundum the Great once said ‘Those peaceful souls who least want power are the best suited to wield it’.”

Pansy looked uncertain. More so, that is. “I… I’m sure that’s wrong. I mean… was he a good prince himself who didn’t want his power ?”

“Well… I...” Honesty kicked its spurs in at the least helpful time. “...no, Corundum was the most conquest-hungry and cheerful prince we’ve had in the last five hundred years, and used every bit of the kingdom’s resources to do whatever he wanted. If there wasn’t an enemy or another unicorn around to fight, he’d pick a fight with himself. But, um, he found the time to write some profound proverbs and that’s beside the point and… oh, shoot.”

“What the heck’s wrong with your royalty?” said Smart Cookie while Pansy fled outside to get some fresh air.

“They’re alright on aggregate!” I protested. “Some of the dynasties, at least. Old Prince Cobalt, Platinum’s father, he was lovely. And...and Princess Platinum is...look, she’s earned my loyalty.”

“Earned it? What sort of loyalty-earnin’ has she done in her life besides slide out from the right womb?” She looked disbelieving, and I couldn’t fault her.

She hadn’t seen the same things as me, after all.

But before I could elaborate, hoofsteps sounded on a wooden stairway a room away from the central hall, and we turned to see the princess herself glide back in. Her cloak now lay over a fine dress made out of chainmail and decorated with jewels, her crown had been polished to a mirror’s sheen, a jewelled scabbard ran across her left flank, and she enthusiastically swished a long, gleaming, and similarly jewel-studded hiltless blade around in the air with her magic. “Are we not marvellous?” she enthused.

“Rest assured, Your Grace, I’m having all my marvel provoked good and hard,” muttered Smart Cookie, taking a judicious step back away from potential decapitation as she took in the array of glitter before her.

I’d kept my customary cloak and cowl. Smart Cookie had divested herself of her usual clothes to put on something similar and currently had her iron shoes stowed away in her saddlebags, all in the name of stealth on our approach. I won’t say that my princess has no forethought, but I will say that whenever she applies what she had, it has a tendency to transmute into outright aftthought.

“It’s… certainly an exceedingly regal look, Your Highness,” I ventured. “If I could make a few suggestions, though?”

“Oh, Clover, dearest of all our confidants, you are always free to suggest,” said Platinum, admiring her own reflection in the blade

“If you were to perhaps leave the crown behind…?” I said, already recognising the lost cause that lay before me before I’d even started speaking. Tell a fish to climb a tree, tell a bear to not excrete in the woods, tell Platinum to take off her shiniest object. You’ll enjoy similar levels of success.

Platinum slowly looked away from her reflection and turned to regard me as if I’d suggested she regurgitate a whole walrus. “Clover, what are you saying?” she said. “Our status is not something to be diminished!”

“Your Highness, I truly do not think there is any conceivable risk of that happening whatsoever,” I said, eying her sumptuous cloak, jewelled dress, jewelled blade, and, inasmuch as they were something able to be eyed, her plurals.

“We are the Princess of Unicornkind! You would have us not properly represent ourselves and our station? The honour of all unicorns would be besmirched!” Smart Cookie very carefully didn’t make a disparaging noise then, but I suspect only for my sake. “We fail to see why this draconic expedition warrants its removal, Clover. Explain yourself.”

“For… for discretion’s sake, Your Highness,” I said, a slight headache building up behind my horn, as always happens when Platinum’s intentions make the shadow of my mortality loom that little bit larger. “If the dragon sees us moving towards its lair, that could make it all the harder to—”

Platinum’s eye sported an unfamiliar glint, and with no small alarm, I recognised it as something like shrewdness. “Sees us? Clover, you and Smart Cookie have assured us that it slumbers. And even if it sees us, what of it? Let it tremble at our splendour! It would shame us to present the beast anything less.”

“Stone shield us, we’re actually going to die,” said Smart Cookie in a tone too low for anypony but myself to make out.

It would have taken a vastly more heroic pony than I to pursue this hopeless cause, and so I yielded. “As you say, Your Highness, and my apologies. I’m sure your splendour will astound.”

“Without a doubt! And now, enough dallying!” Platinum gestured towards the doorway with her blade, missing me by inches. “We have a dragon to drive out! Follow our lead, you two, and fear nought!”

Enough dallying indeed, and that was that as far as preparation went. We set forth from the hall, Princess Platinum confidently cantering forth, and we were only delayed a little by having to catch up and remind her what direction west was. Thus realigned, we went on our way.

Outside, we were greeted with a chill wind and a growl from the darkening sky. The heavy clouds that jostled for space from horizon to horizon had acquired a blacker hue in the while we’d spent talking and preparing. Mount Canter’s peak could just be glimpsed above the edge of the tree canopy, crowned with smoke.

The clearing itself held numerous other dwellings in varying states of construction, and various ponies taking a break from their initial morning labour. Several of these ponies greeted us as we moved across the clearing, common settlers by their garb, a mix of several earth ponies and unicorns with several pegasi flapping overhead. Those who had hats held them in a forehoof, and the old earth pony stallion at their front looked up at us from under a broad-brimmed straw hat. “Er, good day, Princess. You seen the smoke yonder?”

“Indeed, good pony, and that is why you behold us in our full martial regalia!” Platinum smoothly slid into an even more regal posture as she gestured dramatically with her blade, narrowly missing my ear. “The dragon that blackens our sky shall do so no longer. We shall vanquish the beast ourselves, with good Clover and Smart Cookie at our back!”

The odyssey of facial emotion this provoked in most of the settlers was something to behold. Curiosity that set in at the first sentence turned into fear at the mention of the word ‘dragon’, which in turn escalated and melded equally with confusion at Platinum’s stated involvement, collapsing at last into giddy relief when my and Cookie’s names came up.

For most of them, at least. Among several of the unicorns, the looks they gave me and Cookie were fraught with concern. Regardless, a general cheer and murmur of approval went through the gathering, and Platinum nodded serenely at them all as they bowed and hoof-stamped us through. At my back, however, one tired-looking unicorn mare swept in.

“You sure you can take the beast?” she hissed in my ear. I turned to give her my most reassuring smile and a nod. At my back, Platinum had stopped to graciously kiss the foreheads of the cleaner foals presented to her.

The mare looked over my wither right at Platinum, and then fervently hissed in my ear, “You keep her out of the line of fire! She’ll get all burnt up without you keeping your best eye on her.” She looked again at Platinum, and I saw worry creasing her features and tears threatening at the corner of her eyes. “We can’t have her getting all burnt up. We can’t.”

What was there to say to that sort of request? All I could do was murmur reassurance that I’d protect her with my life before Platinum called out, “Come, Clover! Do not delay us!” I pulled away, and off we embarked. We moved across the clearing and onto the rough earth path running under the cover of the canopy, the trees blotting out the wan light overhead and the cheers of the settlers at our backs receding as we moved on.

Serenity of a sort encompassed us there, in the muted hush of the forest. Primeval forest rose around us, the great trees rustling in a faint breeze. It was a space to think in, for which I was thankful.

Not for very long, though.

“Urrgh! Clover! This forest has mud everywhere! Lift up the back of our cloak so it doesn’t trail in it, would you?”

It was a very long walk through the woods.

Our march was slow, impeded by the thick undergrowth that intruded on parts of the earth path, the greetings from ponies in every settled clearing we passed through, and the perennial need for me to spread my cloak and cowl over every puddle or muddy patch we came upon so that Platinum could trot across.

“Really, Clover,” she said after one such incident, “you really must find the time to give your cloak a good clean. We are certain our hooves weren’t spared any sort of dirt there at all. Incidentally, are we nearly there yet? Our legs are positively aching.”

“We’ve covered a mile so far, Your Highness,” I said with perhaps less grace than is my wont. “We as yet have several more to go before we even reach the mountain’s base.”

“Ugh. It’s that ghastly migration all over again. We thought settling would spare us these sorts of indignities.”

“Rest assured, Your Grace, there’s plenty of things we all wish we were being spared right now,” muttered Smart Cookie.

“Oh, honestly, Smart Cookie, there’s little point in complaining about it. Whatever the deprivations this journey imposes, you shall simply have to grin and bear it. Anyway, we have cleared that puddle. Onwards!”

Onwards she went, with Smart Cookie delivering what could be described as a grin at her back, inasmuch that her teeth were bared. I just sighed internally and resumed mentally calculating the number of teleportations in sequence it would take to ascend the mountain. Taking two other ponies in tow would make that much more draining, though if one of them, say, could be persuaded to take up a vital guard position at the mountain’s base...

As I weighed thaum counts and levels of horn strain and suitable lines of persuasion, the forest ahead seemed to be thinning, and more and more grey light poked past the trunks and canopy. The vale’s ridges had narrowed, and I recognised the oncoming mouth of the vale. From there, we’d have a clear run at the mountain, relatively speaking.

Unfortunately, it’d mean that anything in the mountain would have a clear run at us, and the issue of Platinum currently being more noticeable than a peacock that had been set on fire raised its ugly head in my memory once again. One more thing to be managed, or at least mitigated.

Before I could give the issue much thought, we emerged from out of the forest, and found Mount Canter and its surrounding landscape spread forth for our attention. The vale’s ridges fell sharply down along with the vale mouth, down into a rough slope of rock that ran into a green patchwork of foothills and small forests. Folds between the hills held marshy patches, and the brook that had run down the length of the vale pattered down as a little waterfall over the rock. It flowed for a short stretch between the hills before feeding into a broad and sluggish river.

Over it all, the blackening sky growled, and Mount Canter loomed. Something seemed to be missing, however, and I scrutinised the sky for a long moment to gauge exactly what before Smart Cookie interrupted my train of thought. “Fine stretch of land, I reckon. Good wheat country. Once it’s all been tamed and turned over to cultivating, this’ll be as fine a breadbasket for the tribes as any you’d care to name.” Despite our circumstances, her voice was thick with scarcely-concealed joy at the prospect.

“I’ll take your word for that,” I said, turning to her and putting whatever may have been missing from mind. “I know my way around a spellbook and a court, but I couldn’t tell my pulses apart from my legumes. Earth pony lore’s so far been a closed book to me. I’ve only picked up a little pegasus lore from Pansy as well.”

Smart Cookie’s mouth flickered upwards at the edges for the first time that day. “Come out with me come next harvest. I’d be happy to school you.”

“And I’d be happy to be schooled.”

“Muck and hard labour and fussing over crops.” Platinum sniffed. “We suppose they are suitable subjects for those low enough to be obliged to deal with them. Much loftier things demand our consideration, though, and we count the court’s hitherto ignorance regarding them a sign of good fortune. Why mix wisdom’s diamonds with base coal?”

Smart Cookie turned on Platinum, a brief snarl on her features morphing smoothly into a toothy smile too wide and glassy for anypony’s comfort. “Oh, sure,” she bit out after a moment’s echoing silence. “All that base not starving must put a real crimp in your lofty considering.”

“Do not neglect your proper forms of address, good pony,” drawled Platinum, who couldn’t recognise a pointed tone or sarcasm if either had been betrothed to her. “You’d been doing tolerably well up until now, though ‘Your Grace’ and ‘Your Highness’ are not quite so interchangeable as many suppose. Enough delaying talk. We have a rock slope to descend. Clover, descend us.”

I thankfully seized the chance to bring this latest social wagon-wreck to a close. “Yes, Your Highness,” I replied, gathering magic about my horn, and with a vigorous extension of will, casting it over Platinum and Smart Cookie like a net. I focused and, with a flash and the sensation of briefly falling, we disappeared and reappeared at the bottom of the slope. By us, the little waterfall burbled onto sodden grass and meandered its way over a dozen metres into the broad river ahead.

Smart Cookie, clearly unused to the sensation, hiccuped with a sudden start. Platinum, who rarely teleported unless I did it for her, blinked and took a moment to regain her regal poise. I needed a little poise-regaining myself. I count myself passing skillful, but not especially strong in terms of magic, and teleporting three at a time had been more draining than I’d thought. My horn twinged. And something of that must have shown on my features. “Urgh. That was weird. You alright, Clover?” Smart Cookie asked.

“Do not fuss,” Platinum said. “Clover is capable in this regard and others. Now then…ah.” She eyed the river ahead with some disgruntlement. “Clover, would you be able to repeat that?”

“I...ah...I think it best to pace myself on that particular bit of spellwork, Your Highness,” I managed. “I’ll need to still be ready to teleport us when it’s time to ascend the mountain.”

“Hmm. It would be best if we could make quick progress.” Platinum frowned at me and at the river, and then just shrugged. “No matter. Just bear us on your back when you ford the river, that should suffice.”

From Smart Cookie, there came a sound normally only produced by angry kettles. “Excuse y— bear you on her back?”

“Oh, do not fret on our behalf,” Platinum said airily. “Clover is very comfortable, we assure you. Is that not true, Clover?”

“You have frequently commended that attribute of mine, Your Highness.”

“Indeed we have. Incidentally, Smart Cookie, you have neglected our proper terms of address once again. Should we have Clover write them down for you? You can read them to aid recollection.” Platinum frowned after saying that. “Beg pardon, we presume. You can read, we trust?”

Whatever sea of anger Smart Cookie was currently awash in, she seemingly found some calm lagoon within it. “Read,” she repeated to herself. “Read. Is that where you put one hoof in front of the other, or where you eat bits of chalk? My base mind has trouble keeping track, you see.”

“Oh? Well, we shall graciously not judge. Much. Though do try your utmost to fix the terms back in mind.” Platinum swept away from the seething Smart Cookie and back to me. She gestured down with a forehoof. “Hup hup.”

I suppressed a sigh for neither the first nor last time that day, bowed down, and let her get astride me. She was lighter than usual, yet to regain the weight she’d lost during the migration, but the chainmail dress made up amply for that. I rose to meet the eyes of Smart Cookie. She regarded me with a distinct reduction in her level of respect compared to previous occasions, and when she looked away and up at Platinum, you couldn’t have measured her level of respect with the smallest instruments in Creation.

“Onwards, you two!” called Platinum from atop my back, oblivious to everything below her. “And do endeavour to not let the cloak trail in the water, Clover.” As we waded into the water, at my back, I heard Smart Cookie spit.

Let me digress here, which is always a happy thing to do in order to distract from images of me bearing Platinum across the river on my back, water sloshing up to my withers. Likely you think less of me for letting that particular image be a reality. Understandable, if so. There’s not a loyal servant to the most gracious of kings who hasn’t at least entertained some regicidal thoughts on occasion, and if there was ever a circumstance to at least tempt one to sudden and eminently justifiable republicanism, this would be it.

But do not think of me as blindly servile, or spineless in my loyalty. For one thing, I’d consider my choices entirely pragmatic. There is such a thing as choosing the path of least resistance and tantrums and fuss, and this was it. Moreover, returning from a quest without one’s princess would compel other unicorns to ask awkward questions, and I could do without those as well. Social interaction can be enough of a trial without being a literal trial.

And besides, for all that my princess may often warrant a sudden plunge into cold water, my loyalty to her has been earned, for I have seen it cut both ways. Say what you will about her. Say that she combines the vanity of a canary with the tact of an avalanche, and the arrogance of a cat with all the forethought of a recently-neutered wolverine, and I would struggle to disagree. Say that she drinks from jewelled goblets and eats off silver dishes and sleeps under soft sheets in a gilded castle, and takes all of these utterly for granted as her and her station’s due, and you’d be correct.

But know that when the winter was at its harshest back in our homeland and the granaries were empty, unicorn foals and elders in the streets ate from full plates, while she drank snowmelt from her goblet and her silver plates went bare. And those same foals and elders slept under soft sheets whilst, on a bare bed away from anypony’s prying eyes alighting upon her and her reluctant impropriety, she was reduced to cuddling up to me for any body heat available.

Granted, she spent much of said cuddling alternating between rasping out snores and pointedly complaining about my personal hygiene. But under the circumstances, I found myself quite able to forgive her.

And so, forcing myself to refer back to these thoughts, Platinum reached the other side of the river alive and unsoaked, and I leaned down for her to alight off. “We distinctly felt a splash or two get on the fabric, Clover,” she said reprovingly.

“Apologies, Y—”

“Oh, go rut yourself.”

The statement hung in the air for an impossibly long moment. It had come from Smart Cookie, who stood on the river bank dripping water and glaring daggers at Platinum. Platinum herself slowly turned upon the earth pony, her countenance becoming by gradual degrees the very face of winter. In tones that jangled with ice, “Repeat that remark.”

“Oh, I do apologise. Did I get the terms of address wrong again? Go rut yourself, you high-hooved, sneering, milk-blooded excuse for a pony, Your Grace. Maybe Clover’s had her will beaten black and blue by your abuse over the years, but I haven’t, and I’ve never seen a pony with less excuse to dish it out!”

If you’ve ever seen a wagon crash, and had it play out again in glistening slowness across the eyes of your sleeping mind, perhaps you’ll understand the horrified fascination with which I observed these proceedings as they developed.

“What?” snarled Platinum. “What? What is this insolence? Has the water addled your wits? We are your princess!”

“You’re nothing of mine! I’m an earth pony, equal to and standing wither-to-wither with all my tribe, and the only pony I serve is our elected Chancellor! And let me tell you, even on her worst days, she leaves you in the dirt!”

“Dirt? What dirt? We are not dirty, you insolent mud-botherer!”

“Stars and stones! I’d call you stupid as well, but there’s a whole host of decent, stupid ponies out there who’ve done nothing to deserve being tarred by that association!”

“What? Explain that remark! We are almost certain it merited a flogging! Clover, explain that remark to us!”

The urge to either look away or intervene had mounted, and as the level of shouting rose, I’d already gone for the former. The blackening sky had seemed like a suitably serene sort of distraction, and my gaze had drifted up towards it.

But it was curious. It had scarcely seemed to darken at all since I’d last paid it attention. My gaze swept from side to side, trying to understand why. And as I sought, I realised what had been missing earlier.

There was no plume of smoke coming up from the mouth of the cave.

“Oh, no,” I said to myself, and turned back to the others. “Your Highness! Smart Cookie! The dragon’s not asleep! I don’t think it’s in the cave!”

“—And don’t even get me started on your prissiness! You’d damn well shame a peacock!”

“Well, don’t get us started on your… er, your... your smell, yes! What do you say to that?”

“Would you both listen?” I screeched. “The dragon isn’t in the cave! It’s woken up!”

Smart Cookie whirled around, looked up at the mountain top, and her eyes widened. “What? Horse apples,” she hissed as the full implications dawned, and she glanced up at the clouds and back up towards the vale. “Where’d it have gone?”

“The dragon? What?” Platinum blinked around, disoriented as she lurched from one line of thought to another. “You have not lost it, have you?”

“Where could it have gone?” said Smart Cookie, reaching one hoof back towards the saddlebag holding her iron shoes. “Hah, with this cloud cover, just about anywhere. It could be anywhere, lying in wait, or watching...”

She stopped, and muttered, “Watching,” back to herself. As one, we both turned to Princess Platinum, looking from side to side with an irate expression as if she thought the whole world had decided to start being insolent, glittering like a magpie’s dream all the while.

“Your Highness,” I hissed. “The crown! Take it off, please!”

“What?” She glowered at me. “Clover, not this nonsense again. We shall not divest ourself of our proper—”

“Divest yourself or be divested!” blazed Smart Cookie. “If the dragon’s out on the prowl, it could see you from a league away!”

“Let it see us!” yelled Platinum, stamping her hoof, and I realised with dawning horror that if getting her to remove her crown had been impossible before, it was now a prospect beyond the fantastical. Her blood was up. “Let it see an exemplar of unicornkind bearing down upon it! Goodness knows it ought to see something respectable coming its way!”

The wind came howling over the vale. The branches of the trees shivered and whispered urgently. Every hair pricked along the back of my neck.

Smart Cookie’s mouth set in a hard line. “Right,” she said. “I’ve never smacked the crown off of a princess’ head before, so you’ll forgive me if I neglect the proper form for that as well, Your Grace.”

“You take one step towards us and our person, you lowly reprobate, and we’ll have you whipped through the—!”

And as Smart Cookie lunged forward, and as Platinum reared back, and as I prepared to intervene, and before anypony found out what exactly Platinum intended to whip Smart Cookie through, that was when the whole of the sky came rushing in from over the tree-tops.

A black blur trailing smoke, a house-sized mass moving too fast to see, came scything in over the canopy and tearing down towards our position on the ground past the river. I looked up and got only the briefest of impressions — dark wings that eclipsed the sky, leg-long fangs and forward-curving horns arrayed, dark eyes gleaming in the pits of a long, skull-like face — before the dragon threw itself down at us with one controlled flap of its wings.

The hammer-like blow of air from above sent us sprawling, and I tumbled back into the river. I fell below the surface with an almighty splash, let all the water in said river flow into my mouth when I reflexively yelped, and spent the next prolonged moment trying to plouter free whilst simultaneously coughing up water and trying to wheeze breath back into myself. A matching series of coughs and wheezes by my side told me Smart Cookie was undertaking the same.

My eyes opened, and as I blinked water out of them and looked frantically around, the dragon was already a receding figure high up, making its way back up towards the mountain. Something glittered in its foreclaw’s grasp.

I looked around. “Smart Cookie, you alright? Your Highness, where are—?”

There was no sign of Platinum.

Something glittered in the dragon’s grasp.

The wind howled, and with it came the sound of, “Put us down this second, you impudent bruaaaiiiee!”

“PRINCESS PLATINUM!” I yelled, mind afire with horror, and I scrambled up and out of the river. Of all the outcomes I’d grimly weighed ere we set out, this was about as far from the ideal set as it was possible to get. A concert of confusion and terror and shocked outrage screeched across my mind, past which developed thoughts had difficulty emerging. What emerged instead was. “Stars above, it … it stole the princess! It stole her! You … you flying horse apple! It peeving well stole her!”

“Oh, hells,” Smart Cookie groaned, giving voice to my own thoughts in a far more succinct manner as she looked up towards the retreating shapes of the dragon and Platinum.

No time to think, no time to plan, no time to do anything but try and get to the dragon’s den before it got there and save my princess however I could. I took a deep breath, gathered magic about my horn, and set my sights on the distant shape of the cave. I composed the teleportation spell in mind, and just as I was about to unleash it, that was when Smart Cookie smacked my horn, disrupting the magic there.

“Agh! What are you—?”

“Don’t be a fool!” snapped Smart Cookie. “Teleporting across all that way? You’ll just tire yourself out and that dragon’ll swat you like a fly!”

“I have to teleport there! I have to save the princess!” I tried to pull away and muster my magic again, and Smart Cookie snuck in another swipe at my horn.

“To everypony’s abiding regret, yes,” Smart Cookie said, disgruntlement plain on her features. “But you’re not teleporting straight up there to your death!”

I opened my mouth to object, and Smart Cookie promptly held her hoof up against it.

“We’re going to teleport and gallop up there to our deaths.” I stared, and she motioned me onwards, breaking into a swift trot. “Come on! And pace yourself. You’ll need your energy.”

When it came to hurtling across that expanse of boggy, hilly land between us and the mountain at a good speed, there was a knack to be acquired. We took it at a gallop, slowing down to a canter when the terrain got especially rough, and whenever it got roughest or whenever I got frantic to make up for time, that was when I teleported us both across a chunk of the distance.

It wasn’t easy going, and partway across, my legs threatened to drop off my body and trot away in protest at the exertion I was demanding of them. But Smart Cookie noticed and, without any prompting, swerved under me and hoisted me over her back like I was a saddle. She barely seemed to notice the extra weight, nor the array of breathless squawks this elicited from me. She galloped on, kicking up the muck from hills and bogs and scrub alike, and I aided our charge with several more teleportations yet before we reached the mountain’s base.

By the time we got there, my horn had gone past twinging and was now firmly aching, and I was sure it was producing a faint plume of smoke itself. That couldn’t be helped, though, and I looked up at the face of the mountain. It rose until it scraped the black clouds above, a vertical expanse of stone and crags and trees and descending streams. Several great ledges jutted out from it here and there, and natural paths in the face spiralled up about it. With a little effort and a lot of caution, it could have been scaled with hooves alone.

But we didn’t just have hooves alone, and I still had some power left. Smart Cookie nodded at me, and with one great mustering of my magic, I cast my gaze to the very summit, and in one sudden flash, teleported myself and Smart Cookie straight there.

We reappeared behind a wedge of rock just outside the cave, and the cold wind at this altitude hit us like a drop into icy water. My horn all but burned with the exertion of moving us both that distance, and as Smart Cookie set me down, I wobbled on my hooves and subsided. A certain black fuzziness was setting in around the edges of my vision.

“You alright?” Smart Cookie asked, her gaze radiating concern. “You need a moment?”

“A .. a moment. Yes.” I coughed and rubbed my horn. “Need to, to plan as well. Dragon in cave?” It had to have been. Even from behind the rock, there seemed to be a deep, cloying, smoky heat radiating from the cave’s mouth, and, though it might have just been my imagination, a deep heart beat that pulsed through the stone under our hooves.

Smart Cookie leaned around the edge of our rock wedge, and just as quickly leaned back. “I see something,” she murmured. “Hush.”

“Platinum?” I blearily enquired.

“Couldn’t see. Think the dragon’s got its back to us.” She leaned in close, pitching her voice ever lower. “We have to figure out how we’re tackling this.”

Past the black clouds of fatigue and hornache, I forced my mind into reluctant motion. “Stole her,” I muttered.

Smart Cookie regarded me carefully. “Mustn’t know her that well, then. Why? What’re you thinking?”

“Could have just smashed us all flat, or burned us up, and picked jewels out of whatever was left. That’s what they always want. Could have even come back to deal with us. Why didn’t it?” I said, my thoughts gradually gathering speed. “There’s some motive here. Not sure what, though—”

And right then, just as I was starting to get my mind in motion, the inevitable interruption. It came from the cave, a deep, low, rich tone that sent pebbles on the ground skittering. “Why don’t you come in and ask, pony?”

We both froze. Smart Cookie closed her eyes and mouthed something even my own rudimentary lipreading could identify as the rudest phrase known to Equish. My own brain briefly stopped working before resuming with all the frantic speed of a whirlwind.

“Come now, no introduction?” The dragon’s voice came again, suffused with smug amusement, while Smart Cookie and I tried to communicate our thoughts on this development with wide-eyed blinks and strangled noises alone. “How rude. I wouldn’t have expected a princess of your kind to keep such coarse company. Step where I can see you.”

On the tail of that, there came a strangled squeak from within the cave. Platinum.

I tottered upright and lurched forward past the rock, and Smart Cookie made no move to try and stop me this time. She instead reached for the saddlebag holding her shoes and pulled them out. “Princess Platinum!” I called out, the words coming out hoarse. “We’re here! Are you okay?”

“Your princess is alive and well for now,” said the dragon. “Albeit unable to answer you. Come a little closer, pony.”

I stepped closer, the high winds whipping at my cloak and cowl, and stared right into the cave mouth. I squinted in. The left side of it seemed to be taken up with an impenetrable mass of shadow, while something else glittered in the depths at the other side. Then the mass of shadows turned, and its tail flickered, and I realised what I was looking at.

The obsidian-scaled dragon had his building-sized bulk turned to us, revealing a length of silvery spines running up the great length of his tail and back. His huge wings were folded in against his sides, and as I watched, his sinuous neck turned, and I saw the profile of his head. Horns curved forward over a long, dark face, and his eyes gleamed like black diamonds in the pits of his skull. His serrated rows of teeth were bared in something approximating a smile.

A small pile of coins and jewels rested on the ground next to him, scarcely large enough to cover a mat. Small hoards are not reassuring sights. Dragons who have one generally want to make them bigger.

As it watched, the dragon’s smile sharpened. His right foreclaw rose. And in that foreclaw, held tight even as she struggled and as small as a doll in the dragon’s grasp, I saw Princess Platinum. One long claw was pressed gently against the front of her neck, and her face had acquired a distinctly purple tint. She saw me, and a breathless squeak was her acknowledgement.

“Salutations,” the dragon purred. “I do commend you for making it this far so quickly, without a pair of wings between any of you. What are your names?”

“Smart Cookie,” snapped Smart Cookie, trotting up at my back. Her iron shoes clacked on the stone. Her tone was hard, but the wideness of her eyes betrayed the sensible and expected reaction to seeing any dragon.

“Clover, aide to the Royal Court of Unicornkind,” I said, trying to sound much colder and firmer than I felt, and hoping the dragon didn’t know enough of unicorn horns to realise that a thin trail of smoke boded well for him. “Who are you?”

“Call me Thorn.” The dragon absently waggled Platinum, who choked out “Gchk!” by way of response. “I imagine you’re here about the smoke. And about this one here.”

Platinum’s eyes met mine. There was no sign of her customary arrogance, no bewilderment masquerading as glossy aloofness, nothing to suggest all was well with her. Fear, pure and unvarnished, shone out at me. Whatever terror lingered inside me hardened then into something more useful, and my aches and tiredness all became mere background detail. “Let go of her,” I growled, and this time the coldness and firmness didn’t have to be faked. “Now.”

“Or?” Thorn said. “There is usually an ‘or’, followed by an ‘else’, followed in turn by a threat. Do you have something to threaten me with?”

“You put that pony down,” said Smart Cookie. “Or you’ll learn that we make promises, not threats.”

Thorn laughed, the sound like a set of bellows roaring into a bonfire. “Oh, come now.” His claw around Platinum held her high, and his grip tightened. A pained and breathless whimper came from my princess as she turned increasingly purple. “Threaten me properly. Play a little.”

“What do you want?” I gritted out, even as I judged the space between me and her, how deft a teleportation might be in order, how close I could cut it lest the dragon cut her instead.

“Such seriousness.” Thorn’s head twisted around further to stare at us directly, his pitted, skull-like features mixing with his teeth and black eyes to make a nightmare. Smoke blasted out through his nostrils suddenly, and Smart Cookie and I flinched back. “Oh, very well. What do I want? I want you two to leave my cave the way you came in. I want you to return to your kin. I want you to tell them who and what has made their lair here, and what they have in their grasp. And I want you to impress upon them the sorrow that can be so easily averted with just a little tribute.”

Silence then, atop the world. “Tribute?” hissed Smart Cookie. “You want us to pay you tribute?”

“Just so. Let us call it weekly tribute, at least for the first while as you empty your saddlebags of whatever you’ve brought with you. Once you’ve established mines and workshops in those delicate little settlements of yours, why not make it daily?” Thorn’s teeth glistened. “Don’t call me ungenerous. The more I receive, the less smoke your skies will be burdened with. Sun and clean rain for jewels and gold. Is that not a fair offer?”

“You’re out of your mind,” hissed Smart Cookie. “You think we’re the only two ponykind’s got? Commander Hurricane has an army. The second she catches wind of what you’ve done, she’ll fly here and tear you and this whole mountain down into rubble.”

“Will she?” said Thorn innocently. “She’s certainly free to try. Perhaps I should reconsider and confer with a trusted source. Princess?” He turned his head upon Platinum. “If you are aware of at least one reason why the good commander shouldn’t come barrelling in to do just that, please say ‘Gchk’ when I jab your windpipe like so.”

“Gchk!”

“Ah. Well then.” Thorn’s smile sharpened at the edges as he turned back to us. “It seems I have some reason to believe myself to still be very much within my own mind, ponies. Anything else you wish to bring up?”

“A … a hostage won’t stop Hurricane,” I said, my mouth dry. Whatever part of my mind wasn’t rattling through spellwork swithered between whether it was true or not. Platinum’s fear-filled eyes didn’t help in the slightest.

“Perhaps it should,” purred Thorn. “If you value said hostage, then you should certainly turn around and see that it does stop her. I leave matters there in your capable hooves. I’m sure you’d prefer them to be there rather than in my claws.”

Time stood still as the words sank in. Beside me, I felt Smart Cookie shift her posture, her shoes rasping across the ground. She looked to me; I didn’t respond.

We wouldn’t accept. We couldn’t. We hadn’t crossed a continent to become some dragon’s slaves. We hadn’t conquered our own demons and evaded empires and monsters and forged a new nation together with string and hope and the sweat of our brows to become some thing’s chattel.

But if we were to not accept, I’d have to pick my moment perfectly.

“If you’re thinking about doing anything rash, I advise otherwise,” growled Thorn, an affable silkiness that had so far covered his tone wearing thin as the seconds ticked by. “Other dragons will come, and they will not make this offer. This way, we both benefit. I get the hoard that I am due, and you don’t have to see your homes laid to waste and your fields torched and your foals burned for me to get it! Accept, ponies.”

I took a breath, and closed my eyes. Frankly, I could have done without my life choosing to flash before them at that moment, but no use complaining. And when I opened them again, I said, “Very well. I see your strength. And I accept that we have no choice but to surrenownowCookienowgoforitNOW!”

“What? Agh!” Smart Cookie lurched into motion, lunging right at the dragon’s rear legs. The dragon blinked, and in that first frenetic moment as I galloped forwards as well, I let loose the first blast of hard magic that slipped into mind. A concussive wallop, the most basic of battle-magic short of levitating a rock into somepony’s face, but enough to do the job when aimed correctly. It slashed out in a blur of light and smacked into the wrist of the foreclaw holding Platinum. Thorn bellowed as his grip involuntarily loosened, and as my Princess fell down to the floor, that was all the window of opportunity I needed. One more spell slipped into mind and gathered about my horn with practised motions, and I teleported myself right through the air even as I ran. I reappeared in the air by Platinum, seized about her with my legs, and twisted around in the air as my momentum hurled us onwards away from Thorn. I crashed into the cavern wall back-first, keeping her shielded, and sprackled down atop Thorn’s hoard in a breathless, bruised heap, my horn singing a keen new song of agony.

But no matter. She was safe. Relatively speaking.

“Easy, Your Highness,” I wheezed out as I forced myself back to my hooves. Platinum sucked in breath after desperate breath on the hoard by me. From ahead, there came the sound that might be produced by iron horseshoes smacking into draconic ligaments, and the black shape of Thorn whirled on Smart Cookie. His tail whipped and sparked across the wall overhead, and a bellow of fury and flame knocked my eardrums out of use for a moment. Shaking my head back and forth in a vain attempt to scoop some sense back in through my ears, my gaze fell on the jewelled blade Platinum had brought with her, still hanging in its scabbard by her side.

“Stay here. Stay safe,” I mumbled, even as I pulled the blade out of her scabbard with my magic. The exertion made red-hot needles scrape up the inside of my horn, but I gritted my teeth and held it extended out from my body. “Might need to borrow this, Your Highness.”

“Whccht?” she quizzed me, between desperate breaths.

“Just so. We’ll deal with this,” I murmured, stepping over her and into the fray. And what a fray it was.

Before me, Smart Cookie and the dragon clashed in the confines of the cave. Smart Cookie may have never fought a dragon before, but she’d grasped the fundamental part quickly, which was ‘Don’t be where the dragon’s trying to be’. Thorn snapped out with his teeth, ripped down at the ground with his claws, and spat out flapping wreaths of flame to fill the air about him. But Smart Cookie wound and rolled and slid about the ground under his claws, always managing to be where his claws didn’t fall and savagely kicking out with any chance she got. She had the presence of mind to aim at his claw joints and softer underbelly, and every crack of iron off his scales was echoed in a snarl of pain and rage from Thorn.

It was an admirable means of keeping him distracted and hurt, but it required her to keep on being skilled and lucky. And even if she didn’t tire, the smoke of his fire in the confines of the cave would choke her sooner or later.

This would be where I came in with some impressive and conclusive arcane working, if I’d had the strength for one of those. As it was, I screamed my most inarticulate warcry in the hopes that if one part of my body showed enthusiasm my legs might be shamed into faster action, and plunged forwards. The blade raked through the air before me in swift, controlled, close-to-self flourishes, and as Thorn glanced in my direction, I jabbed right up at his face. He flinched back, and I pulled the thrust short and swept the blade down and around in a swipe at the front of his neck.

He thrust his head forward, and the blade bit into the thicker scales armouring the side of his neck. A volcanic snarl bubbled out from between his teeth, along with a flicker of flame, and that gave me just enough to time to drop the blade, fall to the ground, and weave as tight and hard and heat-absorbent an arcane shield in the air around me as I could before the torrent of flame came hammering down.

Even past my closed eyelids, the world glowed white, and my cloak and cowl clung to my hide with sweat. Heat and light filled the world, and my horn felt like a sadist was trying to slowly unscrew it as the pressure of the fire mounted and mounted and mounted…

And then iron drummed off some unseen draconic extremity, and the heat and light faded away as Thorn whirled away. I dropped the shield, sucked in a breath of oxygen-starved and super-heated air, and scrabbled blindly for the blade once more. Unseen shapes whirled and clashed in the haze before my eyes, and I stumbled forwards at them as I retrieved the blade. If I could muster up one good spell, something that could open up Thorn in an opportunity granted by Smart Cookie, then everything would be just fine.

My advice to you: never think the phrase ‘everything would be just fine’. The universe notices. The universe punishes. In the haze ahead, a black arc of a tail scythed down and around, and there was a pained cry from Smart Cookie. The tail rose and fell again, and something smacked into the stone of one wall.

“Smart Cookie!” I gabbled, stumbling onwards. The haze took shape before me, rising and twisting and darkening into the great shape of Thorn. He loomed overhead, and the expression on his skull-like face was only technically a smile. Smoke and flames flickered behind his teeth. I dropped once more and raised my shield for all the good it would do.

It snapped into life about me, and the second later, a great claw came smashing in from my right, going straight through the substance of the shield like a hammer through glass and punching into me. I was sent tumbling through the air of the cavern in one breathless, pained, inchoate moment. The moment after, I hit the wall.

Sense was slow in returning, and I begrudged every bit of it. Every part of my body sang with pain, particularly my horn and a cluster of ribs on my right side. My watering eyes creaked open where I lay on my side, and in the wan light the outside offered, I saw Thorn standing on all fours, panting and triumphant. I saw Smart Cookie lying at the other side, her eyes closed and her breaths only barely stirring her torso.

In essence, I saw no hope whatsoever. Though I heard the sound of something metal scraping across the floor.

“Aggravating,” growled Thorn, his voice like thunder. Then it dropped back down to mellow silkiness. “But dealt with.” Something appeared in my vision, and I realised it was the spike at the end of his tail held like a poised lance over me. “Maybe your bodies, or scorched portions thereof, will help your kin make up their minds. Now—”

“Here! On us! Us, you blaggard!”

The voice rang with all the casual imperiousness of somepony born into commanding, and though it was raspier than usual, I recognised it. Despite my own predicament, my gut found enough sympathy to all but drop out of me as realisation dawned. I twisted my head, and by the wall where I’d left her, I saw Princess Platinum. She tottered on her hooves and held the jewelled blade in a magical grasp. She stared right up at Thorn, and Thorn stared back.

“Oh, stars rut me sideways, no,” I gurgled to myself. I went ignored.

“You will not harm them!” Platinum blazed, her mane ruffled and her crown askew on her head. “Yield or flee while we grant you the opportunity! You will not get another!”

Thorn’s teeth glistened. “Ah. A touch of comedy to round off the drama. Wonderful. How exactly will you succeed where they failed, little princess?”

“Little princess?” hissed Platinum. “We shall make you regret that remark.”

Thorn laughed. “You’ll do nothing. Spoiled, helpless, cowardly little entities with all the glitter and all of the utility of the jewels they wear rarely cause me sleepless nights. And they rarely stop me stealing whatever I wish and killing anything I please. Or insulting anything I please, for that matter.”

Wrath flared up in Platinum like fire touched to paper, all but gouting out in flames through her eyes. “Spoiled? Helpless? Coward? We are the Princess of Unicornkind, beast!”

“Oh? Entailing what, exactly?” purred Thorn, leaning down towards her.

He drew closer to her, the full horror that was his head looming over her. But Platinum kept staring right up at him, unblinking, with not a scrap of fear to be seen in her countenance whatsoever. If there was any risk to her person, she didn’t seem to be aware of it. Or she didn’t care about it.

When I’d seen fear in her eyes earlier, when we’d arrived in the cave to confront Thorn, I’d not actually considered who she might be afraid for.

“Do you know what ‘princess’ means?” Platinum said. “It means ‘first’. First in station. First in terms of adulation and luxuries due. First in prestige. First in place, and first in valour. And first to go hungry when the lean times come. First in line to keep the stars in motion! First in the charge, and first in responsibility! And if you propose to harm those good ponies we have brought with us, even the insolent one, you shall go through us first!”

In that moment, if I hadn’t already been leaking water from my eyes on account of the searing pain in every bit of me, rest assured, I’d have done so from sheer pride. Hopeless, conflicted, surprised, and deservedly loyal pride. My princess flourished the blade wildly, held it aloft in the exact stance used by every novice blade-fighter shortly before a master walloped respect for the form into their hides, trilled, “En garde!” and slashed up at Thorn’s face.

Thorn casually swept up the talon of one foreclaw to bat the blade aside with a ting noise. Undeterred, Platinum whirled the blade back around in a manner that could have been purposely made to leave her exposed and off-balance. “Have at you!” she yelled, slashing in from the other side. Ting.

Coughing wretchedly, I let my gaze drift to Smart Cookie. The earth pony’s eyes had cracked open, and she seemed to be regarding the world where she lay with all the same happiness and serenity I was. She glanced in the direction of Platinum and Thorn, watched events play out for a moment — “We can do this all day!” Ting. — and then looked back to me, confused bleariness on full display.

What do we do?, she mouthed.

No idea, I mouthed back.

“Cease blocking, you cheat!” Ting.

With a heartfelt groan, I rolled feebly onto my belly to try and rise to my hooves once more. Every part of the motion failed to be fun in any way. But Platinum had bought us a few moments, and they had to be used. If there was some last trick I could whip out of thin air, if there was something in this cavern I could use … but little offered hope. There was plenty of thin air, but little I could see to whip out from it. And a dragon’s hoard as well.

Ideas flickered through my tired mind like fronds of fire as I stared at the pile of gold and jewels and at the thin air alike. Mad and desperate ideas that would cause me no end of aching even if they didn’t outright fail. Happily, I’m especially good at those. “Smart Cookie?” I wheezed as I regarded the hoard. She grunted as she hobbled to her own hooves. “I need a few minutes. And if you can get any vulnerable bits of him facing this way...”

Smart Cookie nodded. “Few minutes, vulnerable bits. They’re a’coming.” Iron shoes scuffed on the stone as she turned back on Platinum and Thorn.

That particular fight, if such is the term, was still in full swing. “Is this the best you can do?” yelled Platinum, raining blow after blow into a talon that absently interposed itself every time, striking up a refrain of ting ting ting ting ting.

Thorn, who’d been regarding her with an expression of amiable interest all the while, let that sharp smile slither back onto his features. “Ah. My cue.” His eyes gleamed and he drew back suddenly, all claws poised on the floor. He spun on the spot, tail lashing round like the fist of a whirlwind, and I barely had time to duck as it came whistling overhead. I heard Smart Cookie grunt as she did the same. From the direction of Platinum, there came a great metallic clang, followed by a great metallic crunch. I spun round with horror.

To my relief, Platinum had ducked just in time, lying prone against the ground. But the blade had been knocked from her grasp and lay against one wall, next to her crown. Or at least, what had been her crown. Now a sad heap of pulped silver and scattered jewels lay there instead, and as Platinum mutely turned to stare at it, I heard one of them sadly drop from its socket.

Thorn snarled briefly. “That was a choice piece.”

“A choice piece,” Platinum repeated, her tone leaden. She rose to her hooves. “A choice piece?” she said, her tone flecked with fire. The magic around her horn blazed like the heart of an inferno, and she wrenched the blade and the shattered crown back to her, where they lazily orbited over her head. “A choice piece?! That was our crown! That was the crown of unicornkind itself!”

I looked into her eyes, and immediately regretted it. I hadn’t really seen proper wrath from Platinum earlier. This was proper wrath. If you’d looked up the word in a dictionary, you’d barely have time to see the picture of her in this moment before the page reached up and ripped your head off.

Even Thorn looked surprised. “My word. Is this actual fire I see befo—?”

“NO WORDS! YOU’RE GETTING CUT!” And before I or Smart Cookie or Thorn or any being who has or ever will live in this world could do anything about it, she upped her metal and crashed upon the dragon like a tidal wave.

A cacophony of steel and bellowing began at my back, and I hurriedly turned my attention back to the hoard in the chance I’d been given. I urged magic back around my protesting horn, slipping below the surface of the pain as if it were an ocean. Nothing to do but accept it, if I wanted to pull this off. With one part of my will, I gathered up the small hoard in my grasp, holding it together and packing it into a tight sphere in the air. And with another, splitting off a strand of my aura, I turned my attention to the air around the suspended hoard.

Earth pony lore may have been yet beyond my ken. But Private Pansy had told me something of pegasus weathercrafting, and though much of it was simply beyond my spellworking means, I could work with it to an extent. I seized hold of the air, tweaked it, grasped it, folded it and compressed it, moulding a semi-solid cylinder of sorts around the hoard. A murky, white-lined channel, made empty at the end that pointed straight towards Thorn.

At the other end, I nestled the hoard-sphere. To see it enclosed, I took hold of yet more air, and compressed it. I folded it inwards and compressed it some more, and seized more and compressed it as well, and though my horn threatened to make me scream with pain, I forced my concentration to hold. I kept compressing and compressing and compressing yet more in as if my life depended on it, which it most assuredly did.

My watering eyes drifted back to the full-on battle between Platinum and Thorn, in which Smart Cookie, to my surprise and her evident own, was a bewildered and faintly terrified bystander for the most part. Platinum drove at Thorn with a wall of flickering metal, her blade and broken crown seemingly trying to occupy every point in space at once so long as that space could be used to inflict pain on the dragon. She screeched a long, continuous battle-cry as she relentlessly advanced, and Thorn was firmly on the back-claw. He batted incoming blows aside with his foreclaws, took what he could on his thickest scales, and snapped up at the blade and crown as they came whistling past. With a good technique, he could have shrugged off what Platinum threw at him. But it is notoriously difficult to develop a good technique when trying to fend off a shrieking berserker using a blade and a jaggy piece of ex-headwear to attack you three times each second from every possible direction, and every time a blow snagged on and ripped open a softer section of scaling, his bellows became increasingly furious and frantic. All that would have been bad enough without Smart Cookie also occasionally diving in wherever accidental decapitation seemed least likely in order to kick him in the joints.

My princess made a dragon bleed that day. You may safely assume that she was utterly insufferable about that for decades after the fact.

“ENOUGH!” roared Thorn, abruptly rearing back and flapping forwards with his wings. Smart Cookie was braced and dug her hooves in against the force of wind that came hammering down. Platinum was buffeted back, snarl though she might in the face of an irresistible force, and struggled to keep her balance. A foreclaw swept around and backhanded her with whip-crack speed, and that put paid to her balance. She was thrown several yards back across the floor, sneezing out a spray of blood, but with barely a hitch in her battle-cry.

Thorn rose and rose until his head scraped the cavern roof. His teeth laid bare, and behind them, an inferno churned. Ready to be spat down and to make an end of things.

I gritted my teeth as my eyes streamed. My whole world was narrowing down to one point of boiling agony on my forehead. If there was ever going to be a time, it would have to be now. “Smart Cookie!” I gasped. “Both of you aside! Now!”

As Platinum scrabbled on the ground, and as Thorn’s mouth opened, Smart Cookie came flying in from the side and grabbed the scruff of Platinum’s neck, bodily bundling her over to one wall in a tangle of legs and muffled curses. There was my cue. In one instant, one great shuddering release that almost made my legs collapse from underneath me with pure relief, I released my hold on the hoard. And I released my hold on the compressed air enfolding it.

A line of gold and jewels thundered forth across the room, cutting white-hot streaks through the air and hammering into Thorn’s towering and unsteady form with the force of mangonel-shot. The fire died in the dragon’s mouth as he was bowled backwards with an almighty bellow of pain, crashing and rolling back across the stone floor and out of the cave. Through misty vision, I saw his dark form careen across the ledge outside the front of the cave, in something between a uncontrolled tumble and a desperate retreat.

That last part rung alarm-bells in my mind as something deliberate. I’d hoped for something conclusive and decidedly deliberation-ending. But his wings still flapped, even if their membrane was somewhat more hole-ridden than before, and although rents in his soft scales wept and one eye seemed to have the business end of a tiara embedded in it, the other eye still blazed in its socket. He wasn’t dead. He could still come back to fight.

At least the theory of the idea had been sound, I thought to myself, releasing my hold on the air-cylinder and crumpling to the ground, utterly spent.

“No!” Platinum all but exploded out of Smart Cookie’s grip and whirled her blade and crown in her grasp, galloping straight at the bedraggled shape of Thorn. “No retreating! No quarter! Come back here, you craven! We’ll cut your cloaca off!”

Thorn watched her blearily with his one good eye as she charged. And then he drew back, flapping backwards off the edge of the ledge. I looked closer into that one good eye, and I realised it was alarm I saw in there. He sprung back into the air, clearing himself of the ledge altogether, and Platinum kept galloping, her blade alive in the murky light of day.

With one bound, she sprung right at the front of Thorn’s torso, and before the dragon could twist away or spit flames, she collided with his torso, scrabbled for a hold with her hooves, and sunk her blade deep into the joint connecting his left wing to his body. Thorn screamed and flapped like a creature possessed, his left wing now unresponsive, and his mad twisting knocked Platinum free of her brief position. She landed just on the edge of the ledge, hooves kicking, and for a dreadful moment, teetered on the very edge.

Then she fell.

“Princess!” I screamed, fighting my way vertical once more, preparing to hobble in her direction for all the good it would do. I couldn’t have teleported my way to her, I couldn’t seize her mid-air, I couldn’t do anything if I tried after what I’d already done.

But I didn’t have to. As Platinum all but vanished below the edge, somepony else came hurtling in from the direction of the cave. Smart Cookie dipped her head down and champed down on something just out of sight. Her hooves dug into the rock, and inch by inch, she stepped backwards, lifting her head. In her teeth, she had Platinum by the scruff of her neck.

Platinum seemed entirely unaware of her salvation, and seemed to be preoccupied screaming at Thorn. “Come on! Come on!” She hurled her crown in the direction of the fleeing dragon. “You yellow-bellied cur! We’re not finished with you!”

Thorn looked to be finished with us, though. He whimpered as he flew, one wing slow and forcing his entire body to tilt at an angle. He had his back to us, and although he was still flying, just about, he wasn’t rising. Nothing with a wing wound like that could hope to rise again any time soon. It would be a long, slow, painful descent for him.

“Come on!” Platinum struggled, but she already seemed to be subsiding and losing breath as Smart Cookie hauled her up onto the ledge, and as some part of her hindbrain told her that following the dragon across empty air probably wouldn’t be feasible at this stage. “Come on, we’ll … we’ll, er … we’ll cut … something.”

“You shush,” said Smart Cookie, without any rancour, and somewhat muffled. She dragged the befuddled princess a few yards away from the edge, and spat her free. “You’re done. All’s fine, Your Grace. We’ve won.”

Platinum looked befuddled momentarily. “Oh. We have?” She swayed. “Very good.” And then she fell over onto her side.

I limped up to her side, joining her and Smart Cookie on the ledge overlooking the world. “Princess?” I said. “Are you alright?” A thin trail of blood still trickled from one of her nostrils, and a lot of her front had become one solid mass of bruising, but otherwise she didn’t seem harmed.

“Clover?” she replied vaguely. “Clover, Clover, Clover. We, ah … may have had a bit of a funny turn there.”

“It was a good sort of funny turn, Your Highness,” I said, letting myself collapse next to her. “The best sort.” Beside us, Smart Cookie stood, as weary and tired but not showing it, and wearing a faint, rueful smile on her face.

And for a long moment, as Thorn became an ever-descending black speck in the distance, it was peaceful there atop the world. The clouds hung still above the patchwork of our new land, over its rivers and rolling hills and snarled patches of deep forest. More mountains scraped the sky in the distance, where it was much lighter, less clotted up with smoke.

And here and there, amidst the vale and in distant plains, our first fields. Our first buildings. Secured, at least for now.

“Clover,” said Platinum, her tone still vague and faraway, “we would have you take a note.”

“Regarding, Your Highness?” I replied, still looking out at the view.

“This would be a superb place for a palace.”

Once we were all approximately compos mentis and able to contemplate trotting without weeping too much, we went home. The march back was marginally more painful than the march there, but it had the decency to be a different sort of pain. Novelty is a wonderful spice.

It was early evening by the time we’d spiralled our way down the mountain, sans any teleportation or other shortcuts, and late evening was well underway by the time we made it back to the river past the vale. That was an obstacle deserving of a little rest before attempting it, even if the rest took up a whole night, and we all subsided again by its banks, letting it burble by us.

As it burbled, Platinum cleared her throat. “Smart Cookie?”

“Yes, Your Grace?”

“In light of … events, we are quite prepared to forgive and forget any breaches of proper decorum that may have taken place en-route.”

Smart Cookie glanced round at her, that rueful smile returning. “Very gracious of you, Your Grace.”

“It was a hard trail, and it is understandable that tempers may fray on such a journey. Besides, you have presumably not undergone much of the upbringing in courtesy that we and other unicorns of the court have received. Lapses are to be expected.” She paused, and seemed to pick her way carefully through the next words, as if rehearsing something she’d learned in a different tongue. “If we addressed you in such ways that suggested we expected you to implicitly know such courtesies, we apologise for our misguided presumption, and shall endeavour to educate you for future occasions.”

The smile didn’t quite reach Smart Cookie’s eyes then, but regardless, she said, “Apology … sort of … accepted, Your Grace.”

“We are glad.”

Goodness knows what awkward depths this could have found to sound, had a flurry of wingbeats not come from the forest in the vale then. Private Pansy flew into view over the trees, holding a lance in her trembling hooves and looking nervously up at the skies. Her gaze flicked down, and she almost dropped her lance when she saw us.

And one flight to get help from the settlers and a lift home from said settlers later, that was that. We were home.

Convalescence passed, and during that time, Commander Hurricane returned and refused to believe a word until she flew up to the cave and inspected it for herself. When she seemed as though she’d assign Private Pansy to latrine duty for the next century for not getting her immediately, I quietly informed her about Pansy coming for us with a lance despite her hooves trembling, and no latrine duty was forthcoming.

And one sunny day, once the pegasi had heaved aside the last of the clouds and Platinum felt her bruising had diminished to a presentable level, she held court. I stood by her throne, watching her wear a makeshift tiara with bad grace. It was bad grace she smoothly covered over when Smart Cookie entered. And when she entered, she’d brought somepony new to introduce themselves.

“Approach, good Smart Cookie,” said Princess Platinum. She smiled down at the colt by Smart Cookie’s side. “You may approach also, young one. May we know your name?”

The colt seemed to have been stricken mute with shyness, and Smart Cookie gently nudged him forward. “May I introduce Whittle to you, Your Grace? The farmers here’ve got a present for you, to be delivered from his hooves. On account of the whole ‘giving them back sunlight’ business. Come on, Whittle, say hello to the princess.”

The colt trotted forward with some trepidation, and I saw he had a parcel laced against his side. “Um, hullo, er, Your Grace,” he said. “Er, present. Because of what Cookie said there.” His forehooves pushed the parcel free and he slid it forwards across the floor.

Platinum clapped her hooves and stood up off her throne. “How delightful! May we open it now?”

Whittle nodded, and Platinum breezed forward to open the parcel with her magic.

“I, um,” Whittle started. “I ...Da says that you being a princess, you probably need a crown like a farmer needs a plough. And since you lost your crown, um, and because Da says you turned out not to be quite so much of a prissy twit as you seemed, and because you lost the crown on account of helping us, er, it was only right if we made you a replacement. I, er, I helped with some of the carving. Da says I’ve got a knack.”

Platinum opened the parcel, the shadow of a frown passing only briefly across her face at the ‘twit’ part, and she levitated out the object within. It was a crown, loving carved and whittled entirely from wood. Floral patterns flowed across its smooth surface, and a frontpiece like a sunburst rose from its front like the dawn. It seemed almost to still be living and growing, as if the mere act of being whittled had brought out the wood’s vitality rather than impede it.

And it just wasn’t Platinum’s style, I knew. She liked shiny metal. She liked jewels. She didn’t do subtle and graceful when she could declare her status in a way that could blind ponies in other countries nearby. She wanted objects that put the ‘regal’ into ‘regalia’.

But she nestled it down atop her mane with only a second’s hesitation, and leaned down to kiss the blushing Whittle on his forehead. “We accept it in the spirit in which it was given,” she said, “and we are grateful beyond words for the concern of good ponies.”

And do you know, it’s even possible that she meant it.