If anypony had asked Twilight the answer she'd been expecting when she asked Smolder what the leading causes of death were for dragons, she wouldn't have said “Eaten by predators”.
It was a more morbid topic than she usually liked to get into, but finally having a dragon around long enough to actually get some useful information was an opportunity she couldn't pass up. She'd waited, of course. She hadn't wanted to bombard her very first dragon student with an interrogation right off the mark. Well, truth be told she had wanted to do exactly that, but what kind of impression would that have made? The school was, first and foremost, about promoting friendship, and that mission had to take priority over everything else. Now that Smolder and Spike had become friends she could take the time to finally get the answers she'd needed for YEARS. So she'd sat Smolder down in the castle dining room with a heaping bowl of gems and a list of questions ready for answers.
Even if some of those answers were… unsettling.
“Eaten?” she asked with a mixture of horror and incredulity. “What kind of predator can eat a dragon?”
“Oh, y'know, rocs, hydras, ursas, chimeras,” Smolder casually ticked them off on her fingers then shrugged. “The usual.”
Twilight's eyes darted back and forth as she tried to process the idea of a chimera taking down a dragon. It didn't add up. By all accounts dragons were at the top of the food chain pretty much everywhere except the depths of the oceans. Even an Ursa Major, for all its size, was at a disadvantage against their flight and fire. To say nothing of the fact that dragons weren't simple beasts, they were intelligent creatures on par with any other race intellectually, if not technologically. A chimera was an extremely dangerous threat to a pony but a dragon?
“How does a chimera eat a dragon?”
“When we're little, duh.” Smolder tossed a fist sized emerald into her mouth and chewed noisily. “That pretty mush goesh fur mosht uf the tohp fifve caushes uf deahf.” She swallowed and licked her scaly lips clean of glittering dust while she reached out for the bowl again. “Average life expectancy for a dragon is about… a hundred.” She took a bite out of a large, rounded ruby too big to cram into her jaws whole and still be able to talk. “Giffur tahke.”
“But-- But I've read that dragons can live for millennia! Ember told me that the whole reason the Dragon Lord steps down is because if they ruled for life they'd almost never get a new one! We once had to chase a dragon out of the mountains before he could settle in for a hundred year nap and block out the sun with his snoring! To have an average lifespan that low your juvenile mortality rates would have to be incredibly high!”
Smolder shrugged. “Eh, pretty much. If you make it past your first couple of molts you're probably gonna make it long term but most of us don't. Predators really like that molt smell.”
Twilight swallowed hard. The idea of being caught and eaten… To Tartarus with that, the idea of kicking out your children and letting them get caught and eaten! What kind of cultural mindset lead to thinking THAT was okay!?
“Trust me, you'll like that one better than the second cause of death.”
Twilight gave her student a disbelieving look. “What could I like less than children getting eaten being your leading cause of death?”
She shrugged. “Dragon slayers.”
Twilight felt the blood drain from her face. “Dragon… slayers?”
“It's a distant second but, yeah, the number two cause of death for dragons is dragon slayers. That one is pretty much only for young dragons, too. Heh, I once saw a pack of slayers go after this kid who hadn't molted yet. Can you believe they were dumb enough to keep chasing him right to his parent's cave?” She grinned fiercely, the effect punctuated by the glints of red gem lingering on her teeth. “Those harpoons just made his mom mad.”
“Harpoons?” Twilight's voice was rather weak at this point, perhaps explaining why Smolder didn't hear her distress and kept on going.
“Number three is cavern collapses, and number four is avalanches and landslides. Those can get you no matter how old you get if you're not careful. A big enough mountain will crush just about anyone, so we're pretty picky about what caves we move into long term. Not to mention where we dig for gems. You learn where not to dig or...” She let the implication hang either for dramatic effect or so she could eat a small, lumpy sapphire.
A sense of claustrophobic dread crept up Twilight's spine and helpfully lifted her eyes to the vaulted crystal ceilings. The very solid, very heavy crystal ceilings. Ceilings that Spike slept under every night.
“And at number five is drowning. Cave getting flooded or just some kid with bad luck, either way.”
Twilight looked back down at her guest, but her eyes were looking straight through the young dragon to her mental list of large bodies of water in and around Ponyville. Streams, rivers, creeks, you name it. Spike had fallen into a cold lake once and nearly gotten hypothermia. If he ever decided to go swimming on his own--
“I asked Professor Fluttershy and she told me you guys mostly die from heart problems and 'old age'? I don't think a dragon has ever died of old age.”
Twilight tried to swallow but found her throat dry as a bone. “Never?”
“Never.”
A full day had passed since Twilight had Smolder over for lunch for their little dragon lesson when Smolder finally had to throw up her claws and visit the friendship tutors. The latest sections in several of her courses required a lot of putting names to faces and, when it came to ponies, Smolder had about as much luck with that as Ember did.
She glowered at the flashcards floating in the green aura of one of the friendship tutors, whose name she couldn't be sure of at the moment. She knew all three of their names, of course, but was less sure which one belonged to which pony. She was pretty sure Scootaloo was the pegasus, but the other two could go either way. It hardly seemed to matter since they were… what was that pony term? A “packaged deal”? Ever since the trio had started as tutors she hadn't seen them apart for even a second. It was honestly starting to get a little weird. They even had the same marks, something that Sandbar had told her wasn't supposed to happen as far as he knew.
The figure on the card was just as hard to sort out as the tutors. Dark, lots of gray and black, and he had a long, smooth, reddish-orange horn. Truth be told, it was mostly a pony head on a dark cloud of smoke.
“...The Pony of Shadows?”
“Um,” the little white unicorn lowered the card sheepishly. “No, sorry. That was King Sombra.”
Smolder folded her arms. “What is it with Equestria and dark smoke monsters? First that Tantabus thing, then Sombra, then the Shadow Pony.”
The yellow earth pony scratched her head. “Uh, maybe that's just what dark magic looks like? It is called 'dark' 'n all.”
“Fighting the Tantabus was awesome!” Scootaloo said. “It was all in a dream and we could do anything! It was like being in a living Power Ponies comic.”
“Oh, yeah, the living Power Ponies comic is in chapter twelve, by the way,” the earth pony added. “Ain't on this test though. This one's all about overcomin' fears 'n stuff with friendship and harmony.”
The unicorn lifted up a bigger sheet of paper covered in notes and picture of a dark unicorn wearing a red cloak with the same head as the one on the smoke cloud. “Which is why Sombra is on it! He had this creepy magic door that--”
Smolder jumped when the unicorn's lecture was cut off by the tutor's office door slamming open behind her. She twisted on the spot, expecting either Yona or an overstimulated Silverstream to greet her. Instead a small figure clumsily waddled through the door, made clumsy by the fact that he was covered, head to toe, in safety gear.
“What did you tell her?”
“Er, Spike?” The earth pony took a tentative step forward. “That you in there? What happened?”
Spike took an awkward step forward that might have been menacing if he could walk properly. It looked as though he'd been cornered by a deranged sports coach and made to put on all of the gear. Bulky hoofball shoulder pads, a hockey helmet with a slot cut for his spikes, a catchers chest protector with pillows strapped on the front and back, oversized leg guards, elbow pads, there was probably even an ill-fitting cup buried somewhere under the insulated suit that all the other gear was strapped on top of.
“What. Did you. Tell her?” he repeated.
“Uhh,” Smolder looked him up and down, “what happened to you?”
“Spiiiiiike!” Headmare Twilight rounded the doorframe, eyes lighting up when she caught sight of her assistant. “Spike! There you are! Why did you run off like that? You didn't even grab your innertube!” A blue and pink innertube floated into view in the grip of her magic along with a pair of bright orange floaties. The same raspberry aura lifted Spike off the floor and swept him away down the hall.
“I've also bought you a life jacket and some flippers! I'm also gonna talk to Rainbow Dash about adding a cloud wing to the castle! It's high time I learned how to build with clouds. Nice, soft, fluffy clooouuuds!”
Smolder and the tutors stayed quiet for a few moments as Twilight's slightly unhinged voice faded away down the halls. The dragon turned to her tutors but they looked as bewildered as she felt, except for the earth pony. She just sighed and lowered her head.
“Don't worry, girls, I've seen this before. Reckon I oughta go get Applejack.”
Smolder raised a brow. “Uh, seen what before? Apple Bloom?” she added as an afterthought. In hindsight she probably should have remembered that the weird accent meant she would be the one with “Apple” in her name.
Apple Bloom started walking to the door. “Somethin' must'a got Twilight feeling a mite overprotective. My sister got the same way once.” Apple Bloom paused and shot Smolder a look. “Spike said ya told her somethin'?”
Smolder shrugged. “She brought me over to her castle for lunch yesterday so I could tell her about dragons.”
The unicorn (Sweetie Belle by process of elimination) made to follow Apple Bloom to the door. “What did you talk about?”
“She wanted to know what our leading causes of death were.”
Sweetie tripped over her own hooves. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo both gasped.
“And you told her!?”
“Aw, ponyfeathers, this ain't gonna go well. Sweetie, y'all better go get Rarity, too. Scoots--”
In a blur of orange and purple, Scootaloo was on her scooter and had her helmet jammed on her head. “I'll grab Rainbow Dash and Pinkie. We're gonna need all hooves on this one!”
“Good call, I'll go 'n grab Fluttershy, too. Sweetie, maybe ya better get Starlight.”
“Don't bother,” a rather tired voice said from the hall. “I already know.” Starlight slowly plodded past. “And I told Fluttershy already. Just get the others. We'll try to corner her in the teacher's lounge. Oh, and you,” Starlight stuck her head around the door frame to glare at Smolder.
“What did you tell her!?”
Author's Note
Just a little something that popped into my head the other day after re-watching "Father Knows Beast". Sooner or later, Twilight will have to take advantage of having a living, breathing, dragon who was raised by dragons to ask the important questions. Given what we know about dragon culture from the implications in "Molt Down" the answers might not be pleasant.
Also an attempt at a story primarily meant to be funny. I have no idea how well that went.
Now with sequel: Growing Up Dragon
