Twinkle Twinkle - Speaker to Dragons

Chapters

2. Diaspora
3. Cave Sweet Cave
4. Inflation
5. Credit Where Credit is Due
6. Pecking Order
7. Predestination
8. To Be Lunch Or Not
9. Sacrifice Fly
11. Love, War, and Family
1. Fire in the Promised Land
10. Honesty, Sincerity, and Compromise

2. Diaspora

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Diaspora

"The loss of a childhood is a terrible thing."
— Starswirl the Bearded

Twinkle Twinkle was a strange child, although in her mind, she was perfectly normal and it was the entire world which was strange. Ponies had so many odd rules and weird laws which made no sense at all to her, and it was difficult to separate them from the ones that did. Little rules like not having a cookie before dinner or before bedtime were perfectly rational, once they had been properly explained to her satisfaction, but other ponies lived by bigger rules that constantly baffled her.

The earth pony servants in the mansion were supposed to defer to her judgement, even as a foal, and call her ‘Lady Twinkle’ even when in private where no other ponies could see. They were below her, although taller than her small stature, despite the small height bump she received due to her stubby horn. Other unicorn foals were likewise above or below her ‘station’ in life, as explained by her mother, a soft-spoken mare of wisteria hues much like herself.

Life was all very confusing to Twinkle, like a maze without an exit or a question without an answer.

Books provided a refuge from the confusion and answers to her incessant questions which neither her impassive father Obsidian or aloof mother Peridot were comfortable discussing. The books were quiet, logical, and most of all, available at all hours of the day or night, quite unlike her parents. The best part of all was that once she had read a book, she could remember just exactly what it said no matter where she was. Even during the most tedious lectures, Twinkle could occupy her mind with treatises on obscure Minotauren culture or the history of cross-pollinating rosebushes while not missing a word of the droning lecturer, which was a great surprise to her teachers. When they would chastise the supposedly inattentive young unicorn only to have Twinkle repeat every word they had said to her, the teachers would always get a peculiar expression, then write a note to her parents.

Twinkle kept all of the notes in a scrapbook. Not that she needed to look at them more than once, but her parents seemed to enjoy it.

Notes were another thing she could not understand. It was natural to remember things, so having to write them down on valuable paper was a waste of time. The same went for tests, another waste. It seemed to disturb the other students whenever Twinkle would fill out the test and turn it back in, sometimes before the teacher had finished passing them out. It made the students angry, which was another thing Twinkle Twinkle did not understand.

She had never felt angry or afraid in her life.

The first time in school when several other unicorn students had gotten together on the playground and attempted to ‘teach her a lesson’ about making them look bad on a test, she had been terribly confused. They had struck her repeatedly, as if that was supposed to be some sort of educational experience, and when the teacher had come along and stopped the beating, he was absolutely baffled that Twinkle was not crying.

Afterward, her parents hired tutors to guide her education instead of exposing her to the violence of her peers. They taught her many things about magic, how to behave with other ponies, how to speak, and most of all, how to defend herself when attacked. The one thing they could not teach her and which Twinkle had no desire to learn was how to fear.

That was not to say Twinkle Twinkle was a fool who took unnecessary risks. Quite the contrary. Anything she attempted was exhaustively researched and examined until the actual act was almost routine. She learned to swim, to take long hikes in the mountains of Unicornia with her brothers, and the complicated steps to all the dances required for the balls and festivals her family attended. She learned how to do the complicated bookkeeping of Obsidian’s job and the proper way to arrange flowers from Peridot.

Most importantly of all, she learned about the night.

Twinkle Twinkle appreciated the night, even though she could not really love it in the way she did her family. She would sit out under the stars with none of the distractions of the day and just stare upwards at the distant lights while thinking. Even when she grew into a young mare and had responsibilities in the House, she appreciated her time in the evening spent under the cold and unchanging stars. It was a peaceful distraction away from the squabbling of older ponies, the constant wheedling of the unicorns to get food from the earth pony commoners, and the clashes against pegasi who thought they deserved more than all the rest.

Until it got colder.

The stars became more and more of a refuge for Twinkle, somewhere arguments and shouting did not interfere with her thinking. Then the clouds began to blow in, tall wispy things high in the sky that passed across her stars more every night until one evening, her refuge in the sky was gone.

And it got colder.

With the additional arguing between the older ponies, Twinkle retreated further into her own world. Food became scarce, even in their House, but Peridot refused to take food away from their servants for Twinkle’s brothers despite their protests and shouts. Her brothers claimed the earth ponies had more than enough food, although the eldest brother shouted the least, most likely due to the time he spent with the young upstairs maid.

The sound of distant howling began to fill the frozen night. Then the Windigo came by day.

The rest of the ponies had been frightened of the eerie white creatures and their constant screams of rage, but Twinkle had just sat and watched them course across the cloud-strewn sky. The pegasi rose to fight, as they always did, but their bravest warriors plunged to the ground afterwards, some even breaking into colorful chunks like shattered glass.

The arrival of the Windigo made all of the shouting stop inside the House, with certain rooms blocked off and the top floor abandoned totally to the weather. Wood was scarce too, even to the point where the furniture was broken up and wood from the walls salvaged. Other families were driven into vicious infighting by the incessant cold, but House Starlight came together far more than they ever had, with the family and servants alike eating in the same room in front of the meager flames of the fireplace, and gathering into the same bedroom to huddle for warmth through the icy night.

Once Peridot Brings The Dawn and Obsidian Brings The Night had finished their tasks for the evening and became simply Peridot and Obsidian, Twinkle found herself sleeping between them. It was both nice and uncomfortable, only made worse when the unceasing wind would blow small piles of snow under doors several layers of rooms inside the house or one of the servants would relay a tale about a citizen of the city being found frozen into ice by the Windigo.

Then her oldest brother left to confront the wind-beasts, and never returned.

Obsidian and Peridot held Twinkle even closer afterwards at night, while during the day, she read everything she could find on Windigo. It was not much, and what there was tended to be contradictory or seemingly invented by the authors, a type of fictional writing that frustrated her to no end. There was no reason for authors to write about things that did not exist when there were so many things in the world that did exist, and which had not been thoroughly written about for Twinkle to read.

When King Bullion called for the evacuation of the city, Twinkle Twinkle was prepared. She had written out a detailed instruction list for the entire household, along with what to pack and where their path would most likely take them. The one thing she could not prepare for was simple misfortune, and when the avalanche happened and she saw her last brother vanish beneath a wave of snow and loose stones, she felt the faintest stirring of fear.

All of her plans and preparation could not stop the destruction caused by a flake of snow or a loose rock.

Despite the memory of the disaster haunting her at night, the days which followed blurred together. Trudging through the snow in the cold and sleeping huddled together with the servants and any other pony nearby for warmth were more memories she did not want to remember.

The sight of that first first green blade of grass lifted a great metaphorical weight off Twinkle’s thin shoulders, and she could breathe freely again. The taste of the bitter weed against her tongue was intense and more real than even the most delicious meal prepared when her family still lived in Unicornia. Bitter and rare as they were, she still relished every scrap of green on their journey.

And still they walked.

The occasional strand of grass turned into clumps and then small bunches, not enough to fill empty bellies but barely sufficient to ward off starvation with the few supplies the refugees had remaining. The presence of fresh food was a gleam of light in a dismal future of certain death, but that gleam was a dangerous thing indeed.

The stars once again shone at night, but Twinkle Twinkle no longer had the luxury of staying up and watching them. It was far more important to rest, lying between her parents and feeling their cautious touches in the inky darkness as if to ensure she was still with them and had not died like her brothers. All around her, sleeping in collections of tents and rough shelters throughout the inky night were the tattered remainders of their kind, cast from their warm homes with blazing hearths and fluted towers. Battered and broken, the ponies of Unicornia had left their worst days behind them, and the flickers of hope for a better tomorrow began to rise while they slept.

They were wrong.

- ☾ - -

There had been never been any dragons in the snow which blanketed their former home, just the endless shrill screams of the Windigo growing ever louder with each passing day. When Twinkle awoke in the dark night, there were dragons now, immense beasts drifting through the sky and plunging to the ground in search of prey and treasure.

Ponies all around screamed and ran about in fear, but Twinkle stood and watched the sky while Obsidian and Peridot gave her orders. If Twinkle lost her will like the other panicked members of the herd, she would have been just as defenseless, and the lives she had been entrusted with would be lost too. The servants listened to their small and somewhat young Lady, huddling up next to the wagon and remaining still in order not to draw attention while the foals and pregnant mares were hidden underneath the wagon bed. Their family wagon became an island of relative calm in the chaos, with passing panicked ponies hesitating in their flight, then huddling up next to the ponies who looked like they knew what they were doing.

Twinkle did not.

She was in a situation she had never anticipated or planned for, and the screams of ponies and the roar of dragons made her normal thought processes jumbled. She had never seen dragons before, so she could not remember them, but Twinkle had read several rather self-contradictory books about them. They seemed so different in reality than the fanciful paintings and pictures in her books, which could not hold a weak candle to the sight of dozens of the mighty beasts soaring through the sky while illuminated by the burning wagons below.

They had a certain lethal beauty to their movements, the way they swooped and dove, which brought the reality of death to Twinkle’s senses. The cold and the snow had claimed many ponies, mostly the weak and the old, but those deaths were distant, as if they could only happen to others. Even the deaths of her own brothers had been indistinct things, with enough uncertainty about them to leave the smallest chance of having one of them just turn up one evening, with tales of their narrow escapes or rescue.

Here, death was quite near. It soared through the skies on membranous wings, rending and tearing at pony flesh even while pierced and bleeding dragons fell, never to rise up into the sky again. They fought by ones and twos, even fighting each other like the five or six dragons engaged in a ferocious battle over the burning remains of the Blueblood family wagon train on a distant hill. Two bloody dragons already lay sprawled and dead in the vicinity, with others darting down out of the sky to take up the empty spaces over their corpses. In their frenzy to loot the gold and jewels pouring out of the burning wagon, the beasts almost totally ignored the screaming servants running around in terror and the occasional family member who fired ineffective magic bolts up into the smoke-filled night.

Their magic only seemed to draw unwelcome attention to the brave defenders, and one passing dragon swept down to snatch up a taller pony dressed in the Blueblood livery and armor. Caught up in the jaws of the dragon, the unicorn bellowed defiance and fired a massive bolt of power right down the throat of the beast while they ascended. It was his last act when the dragon's jaws slammed shut and a single twitching leg fell down to the ground, but the dragon was staggered, allowing several pegasi and griffons to swarm over him. In flurry of driven spears and blood, the combatants vanished into the smoke and clouds, leaving Twinkle to think.

Remaining immobile while trying to look at everything around was the only thing she could do, but after a period of time when the crowd of ponies around her grew, something became abruptly obvious to her observations, and she had to act.

“All of you!” Twinkle spoke in the same stern tone her father used when addressing stubborn nobles, and the sudden attention the young mare received from all of the ponies gathered around startled her. “Take the foals and go down the hill, away from this wagon. Three groups. Over there, go that way. You there, go to that wagon. Willowbark, take the rest of the servants and any pony left over and go to the wagon over there. Move!” she snapped, finding that the stern voice her father used was quite effective.

Ponies scattered in the directions she indicated, but while the older servants were pulling the last foals out from under the wagon, Willowbark hesitatingly asked, “Lady Twinkle. Have we displeased you?”

“Our wagon has some gold in it,” said Twinkle while looking up into the smoke-filled sky. “Not much, but the dragons must be able to smell it on the wind. One of them is circling around now. Go, and I will distract it from following you.”

“Got him!” called out the older servant before pulling the squalling foal out from under the wagon where he was hiding. “Come on, Willowbark! Do as Lady Twinkle ordered.”

“Come with us,” said Willowbark as the rest of the servants began to gallop down the hill. “Let the dragon have whatever gold it wants.”

“If I go with you, the dragon will attack us and kill us all before searching for the gold. I will stay behind so the dragon will have to come here first. Go,” added Twinkle before doing something she had never done before. She used her magic to push the older mare in the direction of the rest of her servant family, then watched silently while Willowbark galloped away.

It left Twinkle alone again, but she had always been various degrees of alone, even when surrounded by other ponies. The pattern being flown by the dragon she had spotted left no doubt which wagon it was targeting for an attack, but if she had gone with the servants, the wagon would have been left unguarded, and the dragon could easily cut a bloody swath through the nearby ponies before making its way here.

Twinkle Twinkle was going to die.

Willowbark would live through her sacrifice, and so would the unborn foal she carried. Her family would survive.

The gold in her family wagon was only a pittance compared to the fairly large pile that had been concealed in the Blueblood family wagons, most likely smuggled in direct disobedience to the orders of Princess Platinum. The circling dragon seemed as transfixed by the smaller amount of potential loot much like a cat circling around a wounded baby mouse. Twinkle charged her horn with magic, weak as it was, and prepared for the dragon’s inevitable descent. She dared not actually hit the dragon or it would realize how weak she was and potentially rampage through the nearby defenseless servants, but she had to make her bolts pass as close as possible to the dragon so she would be considered a threat and attacked first.

The faintest stirrings of an emotion Twinkle had never felt before rose up in her chest when the dragon tucked up its wings and began to descend in her direction. It still was not fear, but the multitude of rapid actions around her came very close to what she considered excitement or joy might possibly feel like. The huge beast was fascinating, and since Twinkle only had a few minutes to live, she was determined to learn as much about it as possible before the end. It was a responsibility, and Twinkle took her responsibilities very seriously.

When the dragon got close enough through the smoke to make out details, Twinkle was ready. She fired a bolt of magic to its left to distract its path, then a second time to make her defiance look more authentic, although it was difficult to get the concentration to fire a third time.

The dragon was beautiful. She, and Twinkle was positive of the gender, glittered in the smoky night air with the reflection of the stars above and the flames below in a radiant ruby red that just cried out for the proper amount of light so she could be seen in her full glory.

As the magnificent dragon drew closer, those broad wings, a somewhat darker shade and far more different than the pegasus wings Twinkle was used to, extended in one long, powerful stroke to brake her descent, making a gust of wind sweep over Twinkle. The huge beast should have been ungainly in the air, but the dragon held herself in balance, alert and ready to dart in any direction at the slightest sign of an attack.

When the dragon landed in front of Twinkle, all that she could think about was that she had never been eaten by a dragon. It most likely would hurt, but it was not anything she could prevent. It would have been possible to use a spell to suicide, but when her family started on their trip away from the frozen wasteland of their former home, Twinkle's mother had been very insistent about the survival of every pony in her family, no matter what happened on the journey.

Besides, Twinkle Twinkle found herself far too busy soaking in the sight of the dragon looming over her. Even when the dragon opened her mouth, Twinkle remained stationary, taking one last moment to study the dragon's teeth and throat structure. It reminded her of a lizard, except for the long, sharp teeth where most lizards had a lesser denture, more of a bony jaw with rough edges. The dragon actually had three types of pointed teeth, which Twinkle really did not expect, and since the light was dim, she lit her horn up to get a better look.

“What are you doing?” The dragon pulled her head back, closed her mouth with a snap, and gave Twinkle Twinkle a nasty look, which was really saying something since the dragon’s head was several times the size of the young pony, and there was a lot of space for nasty on that face. “Why aren't you running around screaming like the rest of them?”

“It wouldn't help,” explained Twinkle. “You're much larger and faster than I am.”

“Of course it wouldn't help!” growled the dragon. “Do it anyway. Go on. I'll give you a head start.”

“Why?” It was Twinkle’s favorite word, and since she did not think she was going to use it much more, she saw no reason not to use it now.

“Because I can’t eat you if you keep looking at me. Now go on. Run.” The dragon snorted, and little wisps of flame crisped the dry grass stubble around Twinkle’s hooves.

“That makes no sense at all,” said Twinkle. “I don’t want you to eat me, so logically I should stay here and keep looking at you.”

“Fine! We'll do this the easy way,” snarled the dragon, opening her mouth and inhaling.

With the additional light from her horn, Twinkle could see the fascinating way the dragon's throat shifted while she prepared to breathe fire. There was a strange double-flap to her epiglottis that sealed the esophagus and trachea away from the upcoming flame, while a set of four glands opened in the back of the dragon’s throat, which was completely different than the way the books had said dragonfire was produced.

It made her curious, so Twinkle sat there and watched, trying to figure out the real way in which the dragon’s ability to breathe fire actually worked. Was it was just one substance like some of the books said, or was it was a combination of two or more different substances that was mixed inside the dragon's mouth before being exhaled? Finally, the dragon closed her mouth and took a step backwards.

“Will you STOP that!”

“What?” It was, after all, Twinkle's second-favorite word.

“Stop looking at me!” The dragon huffed and puffed, giving off little bursts of flames that skittered against the blackened ground.

“But then you'll eat me.” Twinkle considered her words, and added honestly, “Besides, you’re fascinating. I've never seen a dragon before.”

“Well… I haven’t ever seen a pony before, either. That doesn't mean I can't eat you!”

“Why?”

The red dragon seemed to be working herself up into a frothing fit when a gust of wind from the beating of large wings blew dust and ash up around them in a choking cloud. A second dragon, larger and more of a bronze in color and with a natural bladed fin of some sort on the bridge of its nose, landed next to the red dragon and began chattering in a deep, booming voice.

“Sis, we gotta get out of here! A bunch of ponies put together a huge cloud a few soars away and used it to throw a bolt of lightning at that dragon with the big bottom jaw. Killed him dead right there, on top of a wagon. There’s six or seven claws of dragons dead that I've seen so far! It's not worth it tonight! We need… what’s this?”

“I’m Twinkle Twinkle,” said Twinkle while wiping some ashes off of her forehead. “What's your name?”

The bigger dragon just chuckled, reaching for her with a claw instead of introducing himself as requested. “At least we get something to eat out of— Ow!”

The red dragon lifted her tail up, ready to slam it down over the male dragon’s arms again if he made another attempt to reach for Twinkle. “She’s mine!” growled the dragon. “I saw her first!”

The bronze dragon had pulled his injured arm back and was nursing it with a surprisingly pony-like motion. “Well, eat it and let's get out of here, Sis.”

“I’m trying!” The red dragon turned back toward Twinkle with a fierce scowl. Green dragon eyes and violet pony eyes matched gazes for a long moment, then the red dragon turned her head with a snap and growled at the other dragon. “What are you looking at, rocks for brains?”

“Is he your brother?” asked Twinkle. “Because he called you ‘Sis.’ I don’t have any brothers anymore, but I know you're not supposed to treat them like that.”

“Shut up, Food!” snapped the red dragon, fending off another attempt by the other dragon to grab Twinkle and eventually just grabbing the young unicorn herself. The dragon's claws were hot and sticky, with a damp redness to them that Twinkle did not want to think about, but they held onto her with a firm grip instead of the crushing pressure she was expecting. The dragon made one more abortive attempt to eat Twinkle before giving a scream of frustration and stomping against the ground in a thunderous rumble. “Grab one of those wagons and let's get out of here before we get killed!”

There were at least a dozen wagons within sight of Twinkle, but only one that she knew for certain did not have a family of terrified unicorns or earth ponies hiding under it. “That one,” she declared with a pointing hoof. “My family has some gold and gems hidden under the floorboards. We weren’t allowed to take much,” she added. “It was more important to bring food through the snow, but now that we're out in the plains where we can graze—”

“Grab that wagon before she talks any more!” bellowed the red dragon. “Come on!”

The red dragon extended her huge wings and swooped into the sky, followed by the larger bronze dragon with the family wagon clutched firmly in his claws. Twinkle had never been flying, particularly in this fashion, and she would have rather not been given the experience now, but she was still alive despite her expectations so she settled down to soak in the experience. The patches of fire and lights on the ground faded once the dragons ascended above the scattered clouds with powerful wingbeats, leaving Twinkle with the comfortable sensation of being alone again, despite the dragons. Flying was so peaceful when compared to the chaotic fighting and death below the clouds and smoke. Up here with the stars, Twinkle was at home again.

The close grip of the dragon’s claws shielded her from the strong wind of their progress and comforted Twinkle, much as if she had closed the cover on a good book and was about to open another. Her family and the other ponies were now her past, and her future, as short as it could become, lay elsewhere.

Sacrificing herself to save the others had been the logical decision, and even if her sacrifice occurred in a fashion she had never expected, her life as she knew it was over. Still, there was something inside her heart that made her think this was only another step on a long journey that no other unicorn had ever experienced, and she found herself looking forward to what was to come.

3. Cave Sweet Cave

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Cave Sweet Cave

“Second banana is still a banana.”
— Smart Cookie

The huge red dragon kept her claws firmly wrapped around Twinkle Twinkle’s barrel, but carefully, as if she were trying not to break an expensive piece of fragile treasure. It made the flight uncomfortable, but Twinkle had not been eaten yet, so she really did not want to complain. It was not that bad. Despite the stress and excitement of the night, Twinkle Twinkle even found herself nodding off at times during the long flight. She could only see the stars in brief glimpses and estimate their speed in the air, so she did not know exactly where they were when the two dragons slowed their wingbeats and began to descend into a narrow mountain pass. A green valley on the other side spread out in the moonlight, bordered by sharp cliffs, which seemed to be where the dragons called home. They banked into a smooth turn and headed for a solid cliff wall, but at the last minute, gave an additional sweep of their wings to enter a large passage concealed by the shadows.

Since she was only able to see vague moonlit patches of ground, she could not even properly brace herself for the landing, which was remarkably soft on what sounded like sand or loose pebbles. Little glints of light from all around the vast cavern made Twinkle feel as if she were outside, surrounded by stars with a low cool breeze barely stirring her mane. In the center, moonlight shone down from a hole in the cave roof, much like a skylight in a magnificent natural mansion with the sound of running water somewhere making a pleasing burble of background noise.

It was all so beautiful in a subdued fashion that Twinkle did not even notice the dragon setting her down after landing, much as she might place some inanimate object when something more important had caught her attention. In all, it would have been a very pretty place for a tired young unicorn to rest if not for the two dragons arguing over the wagon in the pool of moonlight.

“Open it up and let's see what's inside.” The red dragon reached for the wagon the larger bronze dragon was holding out of reach. “Food said there was gold and some gems in there.”

"My loot," growled the larger bronze dragon, wrapping his forelegs and wings around Twinkle's family wagon. “Get your own!”

“We agreed!” snapped the red dragon. “Now gimmie!”

“We agreed to split what we got from the raid,” he snarled. “I got the wagon, you get the pony.”

“Hey!” The red dragon whirled around and glared, obviously ready to chase Twinkle to wherever she had fled. It took her several long searching glances around the cavern before she looked down at where she had first put Twinkle, and the dragon seemed flummoxed by the sight of the pale unicorn still sitting there on the pebbles and looking back at her. "Stop staring at me, Food!"

“Your home is beautiful in the moonlight,” said Twinkle Twinkle. “So are you and your brother. I like the way the light sparkles off your wings. Is that natural or do you use some sort of crystalline powder on them?”

"You like it?" said the bronze dragon, spreading out his wings until they filled most of the moonlit space. "It's just a dusting of talc from my cave, but there's this little seam of mica that I've considered—"

"Idiot!" snapped the red dragon, smacking the bigger dragon with one wing. "If you like the pony so much, you take him."

“I’m a mare,” said Twinkle.

“Her,” corrected the red dragon. “She’s all yours. I’ll just take this wagon.”

“My wagon!” declared the bronze dragon while picking the wagon up and holding it up to his chest.

“Actually, it’s my family’s wagon,” said Twinkle. “But I’ll give you each a fair share because you didn't eat my family. What’s left of it, that is.”

The two dragons with the wagon between them paused and regarded the little unicorn sitting there, looking back at them as if she were in charge instead of just being a fresh morsel. “See!” declared the red dragon with a sharp tug to the wagon. “Let her divide it up between us. You’re going to give me the biggest piece, aren't you, Food?” The red dragon’s grin had very little amusement in it, and a considerable number of sharp teeth.

“I’ll divide it fairly, Missus Dragon,” declared Twinkle, then paused. “You never did tell me your name.”

“So?” The red dragon frowned, which made her upper fangs stick out over her lower jaw. “Names are Power. Only a fool would give away their Name.”

“How do other dragons call you then?” asked Twinkle.

“They don’t.”

“Oh.” Twinkle blinked. “You’re all red and beautiful like a ruby, so do you mind if I call you Ruby?”

The bronze dragon chuckled and punched his sister in the shoulder. “Ruby. Nice. It’s kind of pretty.”

“Shut up, numbskull,” growled Ruby, although without some of her previous venom.

“And you’re all golden and brown across your chest,” continued Twinkle, turning to the larger dragon. “And you’ve got a beautiful deep voice, like a tuba. Can I call you Brass?”

“Sounds like Ass,” grumbled the newly named Ruby. “It fits him.”

“Ruby. Brass. My name is Twinkle Twinkle of House Starshine,” said Twinkle very solemnly. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ruby elbowed her brother in the ribs. “Put the wagon down so she can split the treasure up into two piles. Then I’m eating her.”

“Wait just a minute,” said Brass. “What if I pick the pile that has the pony in it? That means I could eat her all by myself, right? Right?” he added, looking at Twinkle.

Twinkle nodded. “Or you could save me for later. It’s your choice.”

- ☾ - -

The two dragons backed off a little in order to allow Twinkle space to work, and since she was going to get eaten afterward, she really did not want to rush. The coins and gems were easy enough to split into two piles, but the rest of the wagon’s contents and the wagon itself were more difficult. After all, she did not know how much a used wagon was worth to a dragon, or if they could trade it for something they wanted more, so she left it for last.

In the end, she was left with a small collection of wrinkled and bitter turnips that nopony in the family had been able to get up the nerve to eat even when they were near starvation. Her father had attempted to make light of the situation by declaring them to be heirlooms, and that they should be kept until the family was settled in their new home so future generations would know just how terrible they were, but there were an odd number of them, and she did not have a knife to split one in half.

“Do dragons like to eat turnips?” she asked.

Brass grunted and moved up closer to give the proffered vegetable a sniff. “Are you sure that thing’s good to eat?”

“They’re better when they’re fresh,” admitted Twinkle. “Although not by much.”

“Let me try one,” said Ruby, who had moved up to Twinkle’s other side and was suspiciously eyeing her brother, as if she did not trust him to keep his teeth off Twinkle until their loot was divided up. Twinkle took the turnip she was holding in her magic, tossed it gently into Ruby’s mouth, and watched in fascination while the dragon chewed.

Then Ruby made a face and started licking pebbles off the dirt floor of the cave. “Yuch!”

“Let me try one,” begged Brass. “No, two!”

Apparently turnips had much the same appeal to dragons as they did ponies, due to Brass’s similar reaction. What was more puzzling was the way the dragons laughed with each turnip they ate and the sheer quantity of dirt and pebbles they gobbled up in order to wash the taste out of their mouths.

“I didn’t think you liked turnips,” said Twinkle, tossing the last two vegetables into waiting muddy mouths.

“You have to be kidding,” said Ruby through splatters of half-chewed food. “They’re vile.”

“Worse than Toadwart mushrooms,” agreed Brass. “Are you out already? Where did they all go?”

Twinkle held up the empty basket. “You had twenty of them and your sister had nineteen.”

“Yes!” declared Brass with a vigorous fist-pump into the air. “The winner!”

“Hey! You had one more than I did,” complained Ruby. “That means I get the pile with the pony in it.” She turned and looked down at Twinkle before examining the two piles of family goods.

“That’s not how it is supposed to work. I’m not certain how to value some of our possessions,” said Twinkle. “If you can read, the books would be more valuable than the painting, and the wagon…” She shook her head. “There’s too many variables.”

“We can read,” insisted Ruby. “Well, I can read. I don’t know how much dung for brains there was paying attention when my mother taught us.”

“I can read too,” protested Brass. “Here, give me one of those books and I’ll show you.”

“I’ll let you look at the book,” cautioned Twinkle. “But when you’re done, it goes back in the pile.”

“Or I’ll thump you,” added Ruby.

Grumbling, the larger dragon picked up the book with the tips of his claws and displaying far more agility than Twinkle expected, opened it up. Then, after a few minutes of examination, flipped a few more pages over and tried to read some more, with his huge lips moving while he tried to sound out the words, then finally closed the book with a growl. “What is this?”

“It’s a spellbook for unicorns,” explained Twinkle. “That one has the spell my parents use to raise the sun and the moon.”

Both dragons stared at Twinkle, then simultaneously broke out in laughter. “Raise the sun!” Ruby managed to choke out between guffaws. “You’re just making that up so we don’t eat you.”

“I don’t lie,” said Twinkle. “It takes a lot of unicorns to raise the sun, and the strain can make them lose their magic for days, sometimes forever.”

Brass finished laughing and wiped away his tears with one claw. “Silly ponies think they control the sun and moon. Everydragon knows the Dragonlord commands them to rise and set by bellowing at them.”

“Yeah,” added Ruby. “Now finish splitting up the loot.”

“So the books have no value to you,” said Twinkle, placing the short stack back into the wagon’s safe compartment. “What do you think about the wagon?”

“It’s worthless,” said Ruby.

“I think it’s fun,” said Brass, lifting up the wagon with a huge claw and spinning one of the wheels.

“It's a Henweigh and Strighold Model 107 Spring-Loaded Traveler,” said Twinkle. “It seats four ponies while still being light enough to be pulled by two, has an active suspension system to take the jolt out of most bumps, and can still carry several hundredweight of cargo.”

“Maybe it is worth something after all,” mused Ruby.

Twinkle nodded. “Put it in this pile with the gold, please, Mister Brass. That and other items should make up the value of the gems and the painting in the second pile. They should match in value, if not in volume.”

“Painting?” The red dragon nudged the wooden-framed oilcloth with one claw. “Doesn't seem to be worth much.”

“Father paid over two hundred bits for our portraits,” said Twinkle. “It has the only images my parents have left of my brothers. And me too, once I’m eaten. When the ponies get to the warm lands that Princess Platinum promised and have some time to rebuild, my parents will be willing to buy it back from you for a good sum. That is if they escaped your attack without being injured.”

“Buy?” Ruby blinked and took a step backwards with her long neck oscillating back and forth in what Twinkle was beginning to recognize as a sign of bemusement. “What’s mine is mine. No pony is going to take it away from me without a fight. That’s the dragon way.”

“Then they’ll kill you and take it,” said Twinkle flatly. “You’re an obvious threat to ponies. If dragons do not leave ponies alone, you’ll be hunted down and killed until there are no dragons left.”

Ruby stopped moving and gave Twinkle a very intense look, locking eyes with the little unicorn for a long time before turning back to her brother.

“She’s serious.”

“She’s a pony,” scoffed Brass while licking his lips. “Now get into a pile. I’m hungry.”

Twinkle obediently went and stood between the two piles, picked up a bit, and spun it in her magic. “Since we’re in Ruby’s cave, Brass gets to call the coin flip. Heads or tails?”

“Heads,” they both called at the same time, then glared at each other.

“I always get the tail end,” grumbled Brass. “It tastes like shit! I want the head end for a change.”

“No!” Ruby laid back her ear frills and glared. “I want the head end.” She turned and looked at Twinkle for a moment, then turned back to her brother. “Never mind,” she added. “Those blasted eyes are in the front. Still, there’s not even enough meat on her to make a good mouthful. If we split her in half, we won’t get to taste anything.”

“I wouldn’t be able to split myself evenly,” said Twinkle.

“Just get into one of the piles.” Ruby thrashed her tail in the rough gravel of the open area of the cave while Twinkle trudged over to a pile and tossed the spinning bit up into the air with her magic. Both dragons started forward to grab the glittering golden coin, but by the time they shifted positions, Twinkle was holding it on the frog of her hoof.

“Heads,” she declared. “Brass gets first pick.”

“Hey!” Ruby lifted her long tail as if she were going slam it down on her brother’s nose, then after a short grumble, dropped it back down onto the gravel. Her bright rose-colored eyes darted back and forth between the pile of belongings Twinkle was in and the wagon with its own pile before the dragon settled down and glared at her brother. “Go ahead. You wanted the pony.”

“But if I take the pony, you get the wagon,” he whined in a plaintive voice that belied his huge size.

“The pony has an extra coin,” urged Ruby.

“Actually, I took that into consideration when I was balancing the coins and—”

“Hush, Food!” hissed Ruby. “Well? Come on. You want to eat her while she’s fresh.”

“I want the wagon!” declared Brass. “You can have the pony and her pile.”

“What!” Ruby huffed with the smell of fire filling the cave, although with little actual smoke.

“Would you like me to help you pack the wagon up?” asked Twinkle.

“No, I got a cramp in my claws carrying it here,” said Brass, lowering himself to the ground and moving his nose up close to the pile. He breathed in, very slowly and carefully, then breathed out with his eyes closed, and a glowing green fire covered the entire pile of household goods, including the wagon. It all seemed to vanish into smoke, which he then breathed in with his eyes still closed and a look of intense concentration until it was all gone, and the only thing remaining was the pebbled floor of the cave.

“Wow,” said Twinkle. “I didn’t know dragons could do that. It wasn’t in any of the books.”

Brass puffed up until he looked twice his already considerable size. “Of course. How do you think dragons move our hoards?” His silver eyes shifted sideways to look in a seemingly cross-eyed fashion at his sister again. “Are you sure I can’t eat her?”

“You don’t talk with food,” grumbled Ruby. “Particularly, my food. Now get out of here before I whump you. I’ve got treasure to put in my hoard and a pony to eat.”

The threat must have been serious because Brass was in the air before Ruby had finished speaking, and flicked out of the narrow cave entrance with a practiced sweep and tuck of his immense wings. Left alone in the cavern with the other hungry dragon, Twinkle turned to Ruby and awaited her inevitable fate.

“That’s a good pony,” purred Ruby, leaning forward and opening her mouth. “I’ll make this quick.”

With the yawning chasm of sharp teeth and dripping drool over her, Twinkle looked up into the dragon’s throat and tried to make the best of her last moments. Well, her most current last moments, since the last last moments had turned out to be not quite as last as she expected. She stood quietly and looked up into the curved arc of teeth, taking in all the details she had missed the last time, including one extra that had not been there last time.

“Hey!” Ruby yanked back with a loud snap of closing jaws and glared at Twinkle. “What did you do?”

“You had some turnip stuck between your sixty-third and sixty-fourth teeth,” explained Twinkle, holding the remnants of the mangled vegetable floating in front of her. “There’s a gap there which you probably should brush more often to keep—”

“Enough!” bellowed Ruby before darting forward with her mouth open.

Then, after a few minutes, she took a step backwards and regarded the little unicorn, who was slightly drippy with drool.

“You got a lot further that time,” said Twinkle. “I could see your epiglottis start on the swallowing reflex, and—”

With a subdued huff of frustration, Ruby stomped away, headed for the dark opening deeper into the cave. “I should have taken the wagon away from him,” she grumbled. “You’re useless. Useless!”

“Are you going to eat me later?” asked Twinkle, trotting along behind the dragon with the painting and other items in the pile floating behind her.

“Yes!” Ruby turned the corner, then looked behind her at the little unicorn, who waited patiently for her next words. “This is the first treasure I’ve put into my hoard that moved itself,” she admitted. “Put the painting over there, and bring the gems over to… hmm…”

There was indeed a lot to ‘hmm’ about. Ruby’s hoard was in a cavernous room with a sparkling stream fairly spraying high out of one side, running down to the floor by way of a number of craftily carved ledges, where it formed into a pool about Ruby-sized. The pool’s overflow made a thin trail of water travel down a pale white streambed that meandered into the other room The burbling noise of the water was relaxing, and felt cool against her throat when Twinkle took a long drink. The minerals in the water had left a bright white sheen of calcite wherever it touched as well as brilliant sparkles of siliceous deposits against the ceiling and other walls that glittered in Twinkle’s hornlight like familiar stars. Even darker sparks of light formed underwater from knobs of blackened minerals spread across the bottom of the pool.

If Twinkle were forced to restrain herself to a single word to describe the dragon’s lair, it would have been ‘beautiful.’ Thankfully, she was not limited in words, and spent quite some time praising Ruby’s home.

It seemed to make the dragon happy, so Twinkle detailed out how the aesthetics of the chambers brought the eye’s focus to the wet gemstones scattered out on the waterfall ledges with the gold coins being used to hold them in place, and the rest of the magnificent cave. Even a unicorn sculptor could not have designed around the natural features better, and Twinkle had seen all of the artistic rooms of the Unicornia castle complex, which she compared and contrasted with this glittering cavern.

That triggered a number of questions from Ruby, a long string of them about her beautiful home and their exodus due to the howling Windigo. They talked and talked, far more than Twinkle had ever spoken in one day to any pony before, until something became clear.

“You want to fly to Unicornia and collect the unguarded treasure, don’t you?” Twinkle cocked her head to one side and regarded the glossy red dragon. “You’ll die. The Windigos will kill you.”

“So you say,” countered Ruby. “For all I know, you could be lying.”

“I don’t lie. Ever. If I wanted you dead, all I would have needed to do is not warn you about the Windigos, but that would be a lie by omission.”

Twinkle regarded the dragon and decided that something more was needed. “I could make an oath that I’m telling the truth, if you wish. My father claims that swearing upon the Sun and Moon makes an oath unbreakable, but I’ve never seen any real proof.”

The dragon puffed up in her pond, looking a little like a swelled-up duck. “We dragons swear by the First Egg. Anydragon who breaks an oath based on it will forever be unable to clutch.”

“I don’t see what is so bad about not being able to have foals,” said Twinkle. “I’ll never have foals. Since I’m being eaten, that is. Even when we were living in Unicornia, I knew I’d never be allowed to breed.”

“What, are you defective?” Ruby brought her head around and sniffed the small unicorn, nearly sucking her up into a nostril and giving a brief, flaming sneeze afterwards due to a tickle from Twinkle’s unkempt mane.

“My brain doesn’t work right. No House would allow their precious breeding stock to touch a defective breeder. The risk of producing a defective heir is too great.”

Ruby shook her head. “Yeah, there’s been a few real winners in Dragonkind like that. Defective dragons can’t build a hoard, so they never get the really choice mates. Not like me, of course.” She swept one massive clawed hand across the wall of glittering water and wet gemstones, looking shadowed and far too small in the light of Twinkle’s dim horn. “I’ve got a pretty good hoard, even though I’m still young. Just don’t want to put up with a male yet. They get all possessive, like you’re part of their hoard, and when you lay eggs, you have to keep a sharp eye on them or they’ll sneak back into the nest and break them all.”

After a long time contemplating, Twinkle gave a short nod. “So only the fiercest and alert dragons breed to pass those characteristics on to their offspring. Very productive for future generations.”

“We dragons are the best,” insisted Ruby, holding out one clawed fist next to Twinkle. “Anything we take, we keep.”

Twinkle nodded again. “And when all of the dragons who try to eat ponies are slaughtered, the remainder will make peace with the ponies, and pass that characteristic on to their offspring.”

* * *

Ruby was beginning… no, not just beginning. She was far along the path of tolerance for Food, and she lunged forward with her jaws open to snap up the annoying little morsel.

She still could not close her mouth, and Ruby curled back up in her grotto with a final acidic glare aimed at the damp unicorn. Then again, Food had been entertaining this evening, and it would be impossible for her to be entertaining while being digested, so there was an important task remaining before taking a nap for a few days. She moved her gaze over to the mismatched collection of miscellaneous treasure — that her brother called ‘junk’ — occupying the back corner of her cave. There should be something useful for the situation hidden in there, and she occupied herself during the search by chewing on one of the pony-gemstones, a granular ruby with hints of a tantalizing flavor she had not tasted before.

“There ought to be something here I can use to keep you out of the way and quiet,” she grumbled, holding up a birdcage and comparing the size before tossing it back into the pile.

“So you’re not going to eat me?”

“Maybe later,” grumbled Ruby, keeping her back turned so she would not have to see those big, dark eyes.

“I don’t think I’d fit into your hoard anywhere.” The annoying little unicorn lit her horn up and touched Ruby’s collection of amethysts, moving them to the sides and making a pony-sized spot on the shelf. “I suppose I could sit on your shelf there, but the water is from a spring. I’d catch cold.”

“Don’t touch my hoard,” growled Ruby. She moved over to the shelf and rearranged the gemstones back into proper order, popping one of them into her mouth for a snack. “They’re not arranged by color, anyway. And why do I have a painting, anyway! It’ll just get wet and ruined.”

“I can put a waterproofing spell on it,” said Twinkle. “It doesn’t work on ponies, though.”

“Just… sit over there or something,” snapped Ruby with a waved claw. “Stay out of my stuff.”

She curled back up in the pool while the little unicorn took her place a short distance away. The unicorn spell she cast on the painting was intriguing, and Ruby watched the interplay of magic until Food gave out a yawn and sat the finished painting to one side.

Of course, she had to turn and watch Ruby afterward.

Ruby closed her eyes and got comfortable, then after a period of time, opened one eye a crack.

The little unicorn was in exactly the same position.

“Stop looking at me,” grumbled Ruby.

“Then you will eat me, because it’s later,” responded the unicorn without even a pause.

“By the First Egg!” Ruby lifted her head and glared down at her unwelcome guest. “Look, what if I promise not to eat you for a few days. Will you stop looking at me then and let me get some sleep?”

Food kept up her impassive stare in return. “How can I be sure you’ll keep your promise?”

Ruby gave an explosive snort that sent a short blast of fire in front of her. “I swear by the First Egg, by the Dragonlord’s Name, and by my Fire that I shall not eat you until… a couple of days have gone by. Satisfied?”

The gullible unicorn seemed to consider the idea, nodded, and put her head down on the gravel, followed by Ruby curling up in the pool.

She still could not sleep, and opened one eye just a crack to look at the silent unicorn, her skinny sides rising and falling to the sound of her rhythmic breathing.

She’s not a dragon, so the oath isn’t binding. I could just eat her up while she’s sleeping and her eyes are closed. Blasted eyes.

Ruby dipped her head underwater and slurped up one of her new Emergency Bedtime Don’t Want To Get Up gems, munching as silently as she could afterward while watching Food.

Not bad. Not as good as a pony would probably taste, but… Still, she might know where more of these gems are without having to face Windigos. And they are pretty good. Meh, can’t un-eat a pony.

Ruby closed her eyes and went to sleep.

4. Inflation

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Inflation

“The Future is just history that has not happened yet.”
— Starswirl the Bearded

A sliver of golden sunshine had just begun to slice across the green valley when Ruby slipped out of her inner lair and moved with great care to sneak up behind Twinkle Twinkle. The little unicorn was sitting on the edge of the sharp dropoff at the cave entrance between the two ‘doorway’ slabs of stone that provided some privacy, but it did not look as if she were attempting to escape. Instead, she had her horn lit up with a faint glow of magic and was looking at the distant rising sun.

“Good morning, Ruby.” The little unicorn did not even turn around to look at the cavern of teeth and dragon breath directly behind her, but remained facing out across the valley. Ruby craned her neck to look over Twinkle, then turned to look at the valley.

“Blasted eyes,” grumbled Ruby. “They’re bigger in the sunlight. What’re you doing?”

“Helping raise the sun.” Her horn went out, and Twinkle Twinkle slumped at the edge of the cliff with a short gasp for air. “A little. I’m not very strong.”

“Well, stop messing around and get out of the entrance.” Ruby reached out with one wing and moved the unicorn further back into the pebbled floor of the main cave. “The fight was last night, so the braggarts will be along shortly.”

“Braggarts?”

“Yeah.” Ruby scanned the sky through the narrow slot of the cave entrance. “Bunch of stupid males who think they can show off and get me to mate with them. Happens every time dragons raid. The stupid males come by with their gems and gold and act all huffy and bigger than they are.”

“Oh, that make sense.” The annoying little unicorn peered past the bulk of the dragon with her head angled up to catch the sight of wings. “My bigger brother used to do that. When my parents found a prospect, he would dress in his best clothes and take flowers to the female unicorn they had identified.”

“Flowers?” Ruby wrinkled up her nose. “So they would mate with him?”

“No, he was having sex with Willowbark, the oldest daughter of our upstairs maid. They were…”

Twinkle Twinkle paused with a look of intent concentration as she thought. After talking to her yesterday, Ruby knew she was weird, but suspected she was weirder to the other ponies than she admitted. She had no natural social cues, could not be frightened even by a dragon, and occasionally stopped cold just like this when she was having trouble coming up with words to describe her own kind, who she obviously viewed as something even weirder than being captured and eaten. As Ruby expected, after a minute or two the little unicorn found whatever she was looking for inside that strange pointed head and started talking again.

“Many unicorns have a mate and have somepony to have sex with. Although the stallions are expected to have sex with their mates in order to have foals, at least once. And sometimes they have sex with other stallions’ mates, but they’re careful not to have foals then. And mares do that too, but they keep it quiet and only tell other mares while giggling about it. I tried to graph it out once, but my parents found out about it and made me burn the graph and all the tables.”

Ruby listened to all of it, but she made sure her expression showed that she did not believe a single word. “Dragons mate for life, and any dragon who mates with me and tries to mate with another dragon is going to die. Horribly.” She eyed Twinkle. “Are you sure you haven’t mated?”

“No. My parents were trying to find a suitable spouse for me in one of the lesser Houses, but I’m defective, and none of the other noble houses wanted to contaminate their bloodline. Even the lesser Houses turned them down, which I thought was fine, but my parents did not like it.”

“Your parents?” Ruby wrinkled up her nose again. “Why would you want your parents to pick out your mate? How are they supposed to tell if you like back ridges with spikes, or if he can beat you in tail wrestling?”

“They choose desirable matches for their children as early as our Marking. We don’t get a choice.”

“Well, you’re mine now, so I’m giving you that choice. You can mate with whatever other pony you want.” Ruby gave her a glance over the shoulder and licked her lips. “Then I’ll eat you.”

There was a pause, then Ruby rolled her eyes. “That was supposed to be a joke.”

“It was?” Twinkle seemed to be seriously considering the odd concept, but Ruby just turned back to the outside air with a sigh.

“Forget it, hatchling. You sucked all the fun out of it.” Ruby squinted into the light. “Wait. Here comes one of the idiots now. Just stand there and shut up.”

The ruffling blast of dragon wings blew a gust of wind through the cavern, scattering small bits of sand. The dragon responsible landed on the edge of the ledge with his wings spread wide to keep from falling backwards, teetered for a moment, then got his balance. He was — to say the least — less of a dragon than Twinkle probably expected, barely a quarter the size of Ruby with his scrawny chest stuck out so far he was in danger of falling backwards off the ledge. He was a long-necked type, much like Ruby, but with a shorter spiked tail and a pebbled chrysoprase coat of thin scales and big googly eyes, although his teeth were just as sharp as any of the other dragons who had ever attempted to mate with her before.

Just as Ruby had promised to Twinkle, the new dragon launched into a grandiose explanation of his latest exploits against the swarm of ponies sweeping across the northern plain and his own role in fighting them, along with the wealth that he could barely carry away. His stream of lies had been obviously practiced for some time with the ponies wedged into the story where they would fit, but his hissing and whistling voice abruptly cut off when he spotted Twinkle peeking around the bulk of Ruby.

“Hey! What’s that?” The dragon’s long neck darted to one side only to meet Ruby’s face blocking his line of sight. “Is that a pony?”

“No,” said Ruby, but only a fraction of a second after Twinkle had said “Yes.”

“How did you get a pony from the raid too?” The smaller dragon leaned the other way to try to get a look at where Ruby had scooted Twinkle, then took a brief step backward to the edge of the sharp dropoff when Ruby took a snap at his face.

“None of your nose,” she growled, then paused. “What do you mean, too?”

Taking a moment to balance himself so he would not fall, the smaller dragon fluffed himself up again and said, “Some of the other dragons got ponies too during the raid. I didn’t. There were more gems there than I could carry back—”

“No,” said Twinkle from behind Ruby. “He’s lying.”

“I know that,” huffed Ruby. “I was there, remember? We just haven’t gotten to the point where he shows off a section of his hoard yet. Then I chase him away and he drops some so I don’t kill him. It’s traditional.”

“Oh,” said Twinkle. “Does he have a name?”

Ruby let out a fierce growl. “Of course he has a name! We all have names! We just don’t let other dragons know them! Names have power!”

“Oh,” said Twinkle again. “So can I call him Teakettle, since he whistles when he talks?”

“Whatever!” Ruby turned back to the newly named Teakettle, who was looking more than a little baffled. “Yeah, I got an annoying one,” she huffed. “My brother and I split our takings. He got a whole wagon for this one.”

Teakettle let out a low tweeting whistle through his nose. “Whoa. Maybe I should get one next raid.”

“They’ll kill you. If you attack the ponies, they will be ready, and you will die.” The little unicorn came the rest of the way around Ruby so she could use those infernal big eyes on the stupid male and continued just as plainly as if she were saying the sun was bright. The way she spoke in such a casual manner about killing brought a cold chill up Ruby’s spine in a way that Twinkle’s mention of the Windigo’s had not even come close to. Dragons would at least put some emotion into their voice to discourage the action she was describing. Twinkle sounded ever so slightly as if she were looking forward to it.

Teakettle puffed up as if he were about to breathe. “Did she just threaten me? I think she just threatened me.”

“You touch her and I’ll kill you,” huffed Ruby. “That’s a threat. What she told you was a prediction.”

After a short period of careful examination of the small creature, Teakettle asked, “She’s serious?”

“Dead serious. Which you would have known if you were anywhere around that last raid.” Ruby cuffed the other dragon around the head solidly. “Stop looking at her like that or your big eyes will burn out.”

“He doesn’t believe me,” said Twinkle. “He’s stupid, and shouldn’t breed.”

“Hey!” snapped Ruby, turning her head to glare at the unicorn. “No pony tells me who I can breed with.”

She turned back around and looked at the suddenly alert and wide-eyed Teakettle.

“Okay, maybe she has a point.” Ruby glared at the obstinate male. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see how many dragons got killed in the last raid. They’ll be ready next time, and kill even more of us.”

The little unicorn poked her head around Ruby’s flank and added, “If you get killed, you won’t be able to mate with anydragon.”

Teakettle was flummoxed. Ruby rolled her eyes. “Try getting any of the treasure you own to mouth off like that,” she muttered.

Later, after Teakettle had been properly chased away, Ruby fluttered back down to a landing in her cave entrance with a laugh. “You know, I may keep you around for a few more days if you keep that up.”

“Promise?” Twinkle was using those big, dark eyes again, which were easier to ignore since Ruby had been serious. She nodded.

“Swear to it?” asked the little unicorn.

There was being cute and aggressive, and there was getting too pushy. Ruby snaked her head down to look directly into the little pony’s eyes from nose-touching distance. “Do you actually think I would keep a promise to food?”

“Yes.”

Ruby blinked first. “Why? You’re not that stupid, even for a pony.”

“You obviously keep promises to some creatures,” said Twinkle. “You promised to split my family’s goods with your brother. You have an oath that you promise to. You have traditions between other dragons that keep you from just killing each other until only the strongest remain. You have rules that all of you follow.”

“Rules. Ha!” Ruby ruffled the little unicorn’s mane with one claw. “Rules don’t apply to food.”

“Your brother could be food too, if you killed him.”

Despite her best efforts, Ruby recoiled. “We’re not little whelplings any more,” she spluttered. “We don’t try to kill each other, and we certainly wouldn’t eat each other.”

“You did at one time,” said the little annoying pest. “And now you don’t. What changed?”

“We got older and smarter,” snapped Ruby.

“And now you’re even older and smarter because you’re not eating me.”

That was too much. Ruby lunged forward with her jaws open…

And did not close them.

She drew back and regarded the little unicorn, who had her eyes closed. Twinkle finally opened one eye, took a long look at Ruby, and nodded. “See, you’re keeping your promise.”

“I’m arguing with food,” grumbled Ruby.

“And losing,” added Twinkle.

Ruby hunched her neck to bring her head down directly in front of Twinkle again. “Tell anydragon and I’ll mash you into a pulp.” She paused for a breath as something twinged in her treasure-sensitive mind. “How much treasure will your sire and dam give me to get you back?”

“Well, they don’t have any now,” answered Twinkle, which made Ruby drool a little despite herself from the taste of pony still on her tongue. “But once they get settled in the green valley Princess Platinum talked about, they’ll be able to earn bits again. My father is a banker, and does a very good job managing money, so he will regain his net worth at a fairly rapid rate. By my best estimate, when he can afford to buy me back I’ll be well within my prime breeding age. Since so many ponies died during the journey and from the dragon attack, I would actually be an asset to his house instead of a liability. That means another household would actually pay for me so I can be bred to one of their lesser sons despite my flawed blood,” she explained. “Once the ponies settle down and start to built homes again, they’ll want foals, even ones as weird as me. Since I’m a unicorn, that would make me worth more.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ruby, scowling as she tried to absorb the sheer weirdness of pony mating. “Before, you said there weren’t any other male ponies who would mate with you… Or would be permitted to mate with you,” she corrected. “Now, you say you’ll be worth more later when you can clutch?”

Twinkle nodded.

“Humph.” Ruby snorted out a cloud of smoke and considered the value of her mobile horned treasure. “So you’re not worth much now, because the ponies would have to feed and take care of you until they settle down and they don’t have any treasure now, but you’ll be worth more later. So… a year or two?”

Twinkle nodded again.

The idea of a treasure that became more valuable as time went on appealed to Ruby. “So you’re not worth much now, but you’ll be worth a lot more in a few years. If your parents would surrender a few hundred pieces of gold for a piece of cloth with some paint on it, you’re worth what, a few thousand?”

Twinkle nodded again, but this time she talked afterward. “If they’re still alive, and they know about me. And the rest of the ponies survive. And if they find deposits of gold and gems to mine in the new home.”

Now that was something to think about. “All those ponies gathering up gold and gems—”

“And building crossbows and spears and preparing combat spells,” added Twinkle.

It irritated Ruby to have reality breathe fire all over her nice dreams of a gemstone bath. “You make them sound more dangerous than minotaurs.”

Twinkle nodded. “Some of the weapons our artisans put together were made from their designs.”

Ruby grunted, but she was saved from having to come up with a clever response by the sight of another male dragon gliding toward the cave entrance. This one carried a wooden chest under one arm and engaged in the same chest-fluffing, ego-bellowing display of dragonkind before she chased him away and recovered the chest he left behind.

“Pony clothes. Couple of gems. Some gold. Goblet of some sort.” Ruby held up the golden vessel and admired her reflection in it before scowling at a very silent and obedient Twinkle. “What, did you run out of words?”

“No,” said Twinkle, but did not utter another word other than her breathing while watching her captor.

Ruby paused before asking, “You sure?”

Twinkle nodded. Ruby huffed out a cloud of smoke, then gauged the non-expression of the little unicorn with suspicion. “Was that a joke?”

“No,” said Twinkle.

“I should have eaten you,” grumbled Ruby before she caught sight of another male dragon gliding in her direction. “Oh, joy. Here, take this and put it in my hoard.”

Twinkle used her magic to float the chest down to the ground with a thump, but she did not scurry off for the back room of the cave as ordered. Instead, she watched the incoming male dragon and the object it had clutched in one claw. “You don’t sound happy.”

“Wheezy is annoying,” growled Ruby. “Even more than you. Watch.”

The blueish-grey dragon, who was actually larger than Ruby in bulk if not in length, flapped awkwardly down to a landing on the ledge in front of her cave. He was a rounder type with a shorter neck and stubby wings, and made a wheezing noise much like he had just flown at top speed from the other side of the country rather than just the other side of the river valley. His constant rasping for breath was why Ruby had stuck that nickname him, and used it in front of the pony. After all if she had not, Twinkle would have probably picked something even more annoying to call him.

“Hey, good looking,” gasped the male dragon. He braced himself against the ground with his unencumbered clawed hand and gasped for breath, seeming to be exhausted by the flight and his few words so far. With every breath, a set of frilly orange spines down his neck waved in sequence, giving him an impressive exterior even if the interior gasped and wheezed.

“What do you want, you old windbag?” grumbled Ruby. “I’ve told you before, you’re not getting any emeralds out of my hoard, and I don’t want any of that purple trash amethyst you keep trying to tempt me with.”

“What fine spines you have today,” wheezed the old dragon regardless. “That was one heck of a fight last night. Good to see you’re not hurt.”

“I asked you what—” Ruby caught a glimpse of the grey legs with hooves sticking out from between Wheezy’s fingers and gave a snort of intense derision. “Oh, no. Another one? Does it talk as much as mine?”

Wheezy held up the limp pony in his clawed hand and gave it a shake, causing its head to lol around. Most of the fur had been burned off of the pony’s body, but enough was left to identify it as such, and the unicorn horn showed what kind it was. “No, mine just groans. I thought you might want to eat if fresh, and then we could—”

“Yes,” said a small voice to Ruby’s side.

Wheezy looked down, then back up again.

“NO!” snapped Ruby. She glared down at the little unicorn, who was just ignoring her.

“Do you like emeralds?” asked Twinkle.

Wheezy lit up with bright eyes and half-spread wings before nodding so fast all of his neck spines wobbled.

“I’ll give you five emeralds, each as big as a hooftip, in exchange for your pony. Alive.”

“Yeah! Gimmie!” Wheezy held out an open clawed hand, which Twinkle only looked at.

“If I give you the emeralds, you’ll keep them and the pony,” said Twinkle.

“Yeah,” said Wheezy, looking a little conflicted. “So?”

“I want the pony,” said Twinkle.

“I want the pony too,” said Wheezy, holding the limp unicorn to his chest. “It’s mine. Gimmie the emeralds!”

“Do you want the pony more than five emeralds?” asked Twinkle very calmly, ignoring the grasping clawed hand less than a body length away from her. Ruby did not say anything despite the male intrusion into her cave, because she was trying to figure out just where the little purple unicorn had managed to hide that many gems, when she did not even smell the least bit like a gem at all.

“Yeah!” Wheezy nodded vigorously, and the pony in his grasp bobbed in response.

“I swear by the First Egg, by the Dragonlord’s Name, and by my Magic that I will give you five emeralds after you give me the pony. Alive,” added Twinkle. “And you must swear the same in return, and not to hurt any more ponies.”

After considering the odd statement for a few breaths, Wheezy looked up at Ruby, who scowled back and snapped, “Only the emeralds.”

Licking his lips first and taking a short, asthmatic breath, Wheezy looked down at the little unicorn and said, “I swear by the First Egg—”

“Swear to her,” said Twinkle, pointing up at Ruby.

Wheezy, who looked obviously disappointed, slowly picked his way through the oath with only one or two brief hesitations. Then he allowed the limp unicorn to be gently floated out of his grasp to Twinkle, who promptly began to walk deeper into the cave to where Ruby’s hoard was stored.

Ruby followed, of course, and growled once Twinkle had placed the unconscious unicorn down just out of sight from the front of the cave and in one of the drier spots. “Do you have five emeralds?”

“No, but you do.” Twinkle rearranged the injured unicorn to be more comfortable, and draped his half-burnt cloak over him.

“I should eat you,” grumbled Ruby.

“I’m worth more to you alive than eaten,” countered Twinkle, seemingly oblivious to Ruby’s presence directly behind her. “So is he.”

That gave Ruby reason to pause. “How much more?”

“I don’t know yet.” Twinkle turned around and looked up at Ruby with those dangerous dark eyes. “You know I’m right.”

“Where’s my emeralds!” bellowed Wheezy from the front of the cave.

“Keep your fire in!” bellowed Ruby straight back. “I’m talking to Food!” She lowered her voice and returned to her most withering stare against the little unicorn, along with a grim grumble. “I’ll pick them out.”

“You’ll pick the worst ones, with rock still stuck to them,” said Twinkle.

“So?”

Twinkle put on an expression that was probably supposed to mean something to a pony, but Ruby only thought it made her look like she was about to sneeze. “If he gets good emeralds, he will tell other dragons. They will bring any ponies they captured because they are greedy. They do not know how much their ponies are worth, so you will be able to buy—”

“Don’t use that word,” snapped Ruby.

After a moment to think, Twinkle continued, “I will be able to exchange smaller, less valuable portions of your treasure for them. The value of your treasure will be greater afterward, and since you are considering keeping me alive for a few years in order to claim your profit, it will be actually easier for you to keep several ponies because we can help care for each other. The ponies will not see you as a threat if you… exchange your captive ponies later for a larger amount of treasure, particularly if you did not capture most of them, treated them well, and did not eat any of them.”

“Well, what if I just go capture a bunch of ponies myself?” asked Ruby. “Wait a minute. I know what you’re going to say. They’ll kill me.” She blew out a puff of smoke from one nostril while thinking. “Are any of the other ponies as annoying as you are?”

“No,” said Twinkle.

Ruby gave the burned unicorn a brief sniff. “If he dies, I’m eating him.”

“If he lives, he is worth far more,” said Twinkle.

“Humph.” Ruby scowled in the direction of the cave’s front entrance and the impatient dragon waiting there. “Mother always complained that I thought too much. Go get five emeralds, small ones, and I’ll look them over before we g-g-give…” She swallowed and scowled some more. “Yeah.”

Twinkle was smart enough to pick out a collection of emeralds that Ruby had not considered sparkly enough to keep at the front of her hoard, and cautious enough to stay out of swiping range when she floated the collection over to Wheezy. He gobbled down one of the gemstones, complained a token amount, then promptly stuffed the rest in his face. It looked for a moment as if he was going to ask about mating, but after a good, long look at Ruby, he thought better of it and flew out the cave entrance and back into the valley.

Since there were no more male dragons within easy eyeshot, Ruby gave a snort of disgust and followed back into the cave. Twinkle was tearing the pony clothes from the chest into long strips, then wrapping them around the worst of the burns, which seemed like a waste of time and would just stick in Ruby’s teeth when the pony eventually died. She looked at Twinkle’s impassive face, then the burned pony, whose head had been wrapped up enough so that only his horn and nose stuck out.

“How much more is this one worth?”

Twinkle did not stop her work, but answered, “I don’t know, but he’s a unicorn, and from a wealthy house due to the quality of his cloak.”

“Is he going to die?” asked Ruby, just in case the little unicorn knew something she did not.

“I don’t know,” said Twinkle again while tearing what was left of the cloak into thin strips.

“Well, at least this one has more meat on him,” grumbled Ruby before turning and stomping in the direction of the cave entrance where the growing sound of wings could be heard. “Hey! What do you want!”

5. Credit Where Credit is Due

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Credit Where Credit is Due

“History is just the future that has already happened.”
— Starswirl the Bearded

Her new home was not quite as quiet when dawn arrived again, although Twinkle Twinkle was the only unicorn at the mouth of the cave with her horn lit, struggling to do her part and raise the sun. There were six other ponies in the cave now, all mares except for the burnt unicorn stallion and a small colt who seemed to get into everything. All of the ponies in the cave had an improved prospect for survival compared to when they had been captured by other dragons, but their situation was still not improved sufficiently for Twinkle. There had to be some way to get all of the ponies to safety and still keep the dragons from being slaughtered.

Ruby had grudgingly spared a few chunks of stuff from her junk pile to make bowls for water, and grabbed several dragon-hands of grass from the river valley so they had something to eat. Even the course grass was a feast for the starving ponies and after being thanked, Ruby had sulked back into her inner cave, looking disgusted.

Once the sun was up in the sky, it was a short walk for Twinkle back to where the wounded unicorn was sleeping. Before she could get there, the young earth pony colt came galloping up to her and blurted out, “Hi, I’m Rootworm, but everypony calls me Root. What’s your name?”

“My name is Twinkle Twinkle of House Starshine,” she replied. “Daughter of Peridot Brings the Sun and Obsidian Brings the Moon. Most likely I am the last heir of our House, and should be addressed as Lady Twinkle unless you are granted special dispensation by us.”

“Oooo.” The little colt’s eyes got even bigger. “I’ve never talked to a real Lady before. Mostly they just pass by on the road in their fancy carriages while we’re out mucking around in the field. Did you ever see me out in the fields, Lady Twinkle?”

“Actually, I had never left the mountain before the diaspora,” admitted Twinkle.

“Oh. Do you know the name of the dragon?” asked Rootworm in a whisper. “She’s awesome, like in the storybook we had at home. Did she catch you during the attack? Did you fight her like a knight?”

“We are not in a book,” said Twinkle. “She caught me, and I did not fight. Dragon names are a secret that only they know, but you can call her Ruby.”

“Uh…” The little earth pony seemed to have more difficulty dealing with receiving multiple bits of information than asking for them. “Is the dragon named Ruby because she’s all red and pretty like a ruby?”

Twinkle nodded.

“You’re so brave!” gushed the colt. “All of the rest of the big ponies are so scared, but I saw you face right up to the dragon and talk to it like it’s your sister or something. I mean I had three sisters, and I couldn't talk like that to them or they’d swat my behind.”

“No, I’m not brave,” said Twinkle. “I’m defective. I don’t feel fear or anger like other ponies do, so I can’t be brave.”

“You are too brave,” protested the the little earth pony colt. “You’re big and strong—”

“I’m small and weak,” countered Twinkle as she settled down next to the sleeping injured unicorn. “I could not fight the dragons or protect the other ponies. I can not even help this pony.”

The unconscious stallion shifted his position, brushing his cheek against the fresh grass that had been laid under his head and letting out a low moan until Twinkle held a crude cup up to his lips and let him have a few sips of cold water.

“Is he your husband?” whispered Rootworm.

“I do not even know his name,” admitted Twinkle. “And he is not my mate.”

Rootworm crept closer, as if the injured stallion was going to jump him. “Is he going to die?”

“Yes, unless we can find some medicine. Castorflax bean pods or butterfly flower stamens would help make a potion to fight the infection.”

The little earth pony’s eyes lit up. “I know what those are.”

“Do you have any of them?” Twinkle watched the little colt’s ears fall flat, which spoke louder than words. “Ruby will not let us search for either of the components, therefore this pony is going to die.”

The injured stallion seemed to wake slightly from her words and moved one hoof to brush against Twinkle Twinkle’s fetlock. “Nova,” he rasped.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Twinkle. “My name is Twinkle Twinkle, and this colt is Rootworm.”

“Pleased to meet you, kind lady,” wheezed Nova. “I take it we have not escaped from the dragon somehow?”

“No.” Nova did not move other than to breathe, and after a moment, Twinkle added, “No, we have not escaped from the dragons. I purchased you from the dragon who captured you.”

The injured stallion let out a brief sigh and relaxed back against Twinkle’s knee. “I’ve always wanted to be sold into slavery under the hooves of a beautiful mare.”

“She’s not that pretty,” said Rootworm, but after getting no response from the sleeping unicorn, he looked up at Twinkle. “Beg pardon, M’lady. My ma, she’d say you were a stick, and needed to be fed all that grass we got, but that’s not really very polite, I suppose.”

“Truth is more important than posturing,” said Twinkle. “It is important that all of you survive, so whatever grass Ruby provides for us should be split evenly. I shall see to Nova’s needs as much as possible as to maximize his chance of survival.”

“Or I’m eating him,” rumbled out of the back of the cave.

* * ✹ * *

It had been difficult for Ruby to sleep, what with the ponies in the outer cave shuffling around and murmuring to themselves in voices low enough they probably thought they could not be overheard. Far too much treasure had been expended to… buy them, and any minute she expected one of them to plummet off the edge of her cave entrance into the valley below, or another dragon to slip in and grab one. Treasure should stay put, and not wander around on its own.

She had just managed to slip into a comfortable doze at the same time the ponies had gathered together for a nap, when a gust of wing-driven air blew into her cave. She darted up out of her pool and rounded out into the main cavern just as the huge form of her brother backwinged to a halt at the cave ledge.

The ponies went berserk, first fleeing away from Brass into the back cave, then bolting back out into the cave entrance due to Ruby’s abrupt appearance, and eventually after several darts back and forth, clustering around Twinkle Twinkle so tightly that even her pale purple horn was just barely visible.

“What are you doing, nitwit!” bellowed Ruby.

Brass had a baffled look to him — much worse than his normal clueless expression — as he looked around the cave floor at the huddling herd of ponies.

“Where did you get all the ponies?” he asked while obviously trying to count them from the way he was moving his lips.

“I asked myself the same question,” growled Ruby. “Now what are you doing here?”

“Oh. Um.” The big lug looked down at the pebbled ground, then out the front cave entrance, anywhere but at Ruby as he mumbled a few more words.

“What?” asked Ruby levelly.

“My ass hurts,” admitted Brass while shifting from one leg to another. “A lot. I tried soaking in the swamp and breathed fire over it and everything, but I can’t turn around enough to see it.”

“Your. Ass. Hurts.”

“Yeah,” said Brass, brightening up and looking at the small herd of ponies. “Maybe eating one of your ponies would— Ouch!” He rubbed his nose where Ruby had wacked it with her tail. “Or not. Ouch!”

Giving the big lug one last wack over the head with her tail, Ruby shoved him in the direction of where the sun was beaming down through the hole in the roof of the main cave. “Let me see your ass so I can kick you down the cliff.”

“Can I look too?” The little unicorn had managed to get herself freed from the small huddle of frightened ponies and walked in their direction slowly, as if she did not want to get stepped on by accident.

“Why would you want to look at my brother’s fat ass?” growled Ruby.

“I’ve never seen a dragon before yesterday. It would be a learning experience.”

“But that doesn’t—” Ruby stopped with a fierce scowl. “Fine. Turn around, stupid.”

Her brother turned slowly with his tail held low. Twinkle had to make a short hop to clear it and the clump of nervous ponies giggled at the sight, then giggled a little more when Twinkle tried to get Brass to raise his tail.

“Couple of spots of blood,” mused Ruby. “Nothing serious.”

“What made the blood?’ asked Twinkle. “It’s been over a day since the raid.”

“How should I know why he’s bleeding,” snapped Ruby. “Arrows or spears, I suppose.”

“Are they still stuck in there?”

Ruby was getting tired of the little pony’s questions, even though this was a fairly good one. She bent closer to her brother’s rear with a grumbled, “If you pass gas, I’m ripping your tail off.”

Even with the sunbeam coming down from the roof of the cave, it was still difficult to to see inside the small holes in Brass’ rear, or at least until Twinkle lit up her horn to help. Using the tip of one claw, Ruby cautiously poked in one of the larger holes until she felt something grate inside and Brass let out an agonized howl of pain.

“Yeah, there’s something stuck in a couple of these holes!” she bellowed over his protests. “Didn’t think anything could get through your thick hide.”

“Enchanted blades,” said Twinkle.

“Pull them out!” howled Brass. “Stop poking them and pull them out!”

“There’s nothing sticking out to grab, you moron!” She gave the larger hole an additional poke with a matching screech from the big dragon. “They’re buried deep.”

Twinkle moved closer to the hole and peered into it. “The wound is getting infected from the swamp water he soaked it in. If the infection spreads to his blood stream, he’ll die.”

“Die?” Brass howled and beat his fists against the wall of the cave, knocking down small bits of dirt and rock. “I don’t want to die!”

“He’s too dumb to die,” scoffed Ruby.

Twinkle Twinkle shook her head. “How smart he is has nothing to do with how well he fights off an infection. If it gets into his bloodstream, his temperature will go up, he’ll become delusional, and when it reaches his brain and shuts down his body, he will die.”

Brass whimpered. “I don’t want to die.”

Twinkle took a step back from inspecting Brass’ rear. “The ponies you attacked did not want to die either. That’s why they defended themselves.”

“Fix it,” growled Ruby, snaking her head down to glare right at Twinkle to the point where they bumped noses.

“Why?” asked Twinkle.

Ruby growled louder and snapped, “Fix it or I’ll eat you.”

“Then I’ll be dead and he will be dead.” The little unicorn just stood there without moving a muscle until Ruby was forced to blink. “I can try to remove the metal speartips and cure his infection, but I want something in exchange,” continued Twinkle.

After a lower growl that she could not put as much venom into, Ruby muttered, “What?”

“I want his promise that he will no longer hurt ponies.”

“I’ll promise!” wailed Brass.

“Shut up, stupid.”

Brass lowered his voice to an occasional sniff, but Ruby winced when Twinkle opened her mouth again. “And once he swears an oath that he will no longer hurt any ponies, ever again, I’ll need your help to go look for the herbs we’ll need to treat his wounds. Your brother should recover, and the wounded ponies will have a better chance of surviving too.”

Brass had been reduced to slobbery tears, crying, “Do it, sis! Please! I don’t want to die!”

* * ✹ * *

It was humiliating. Although she could blame most of this on Brass, a great amount of the shame was completely her own. Being pushed around by a tiny slip of a pony who was more bones than muscle in her cave was one thing. Doing it outside where any dragon could see was a whole different claw.

There was a little pocket of swampy ground under her cave where the thin stream of spring water sprayed out from the cliff face, which made a number of roots, berries, and flowers that the ponies loved grow all over the place. The ponies picked and plucked and pruned, uprooting some of the plants and spreading others around into new plantings. And eating? Oh, they ate like a dragon in a gem pocket, and what they did not eat, they tried to pack into the two baskets and few bits of cloth they had saved back for this.

Ruby could not see what was so exciting about grass, of all things. Grass was grass. She had scooped up a few claws of the stringy stuff earlier for her captive ponies and not really cared about what she had in her grasp. Still, if the ponies could gather it instead of her having to get green stains all over her claws, that was a good thing, right?

It all boiled down to that annoying little purple unicorn, who said she never lied. If Ruby had eaten her like she wanted, her brother would have died over the next few days in unspeakable agony. A dragon would have lied and watched Brass die instead of making a deal, even if the other burned pony died too. The pony, however…

Still, the little purple one had never lied to her before, quite unlike nearly every dragon she had ever known. If she said her brother was going to die if he did not get some sort of pony medicine on his ass, he just might. Dragons died from a lot of things — mostly other dragons — but getting sick had always had only two possible ends: die or get better on your own. The idea of having ponies come up with a way of keeping her brother from dying because of a bunch of pony spearpoints in his ass was… bizarre. Anyway, it didn’t cost her anything other than the embarrassment, and as long as no other dragon saw her—

“Hey! Ponies!” A greenish-blue male she recognized from a few years ago curved across the sky and folded up his wings to plummet down on the unsuspecting pony female who was digging something out of the streambank. The pony looked up and shrieked in panic just about the same time Ruby collided with the diving dragon, knocking him to one side and into the muddy pond with a gigantic splash.

This was more like it. Ruby clawed and bit the unfortunate male with great enthusiasm, taking out some of the frustration she was feeling and hammering him across the face several times whenever she got the opportunity. He struggled and fought for a while, and once she got him in the proper grip and stuffed his face into the pond mud, he was just slowing his motions to something controllable when that blasted pale purple pony appeared at the streambank and called out.

“Ruby. Is he drowning?”

“Yeah.” She gauged the decreasing struggle the male was putting up and added, “Just a couple of minutes and he’ll be out of your hair. Wuss.”

She muscled through one last spasm he made in order to break free while considering just how far away the worthless waste of scales had made his lair, and the extremely unlikely prospect that after she killed him, she would be able to make it there to get any of the free loot. That, and the possibility that another dragon would sneak into her own cave while she was gone and make off with some of her valuable ponies.

“Oh.” For a moment, it looked as if the pony were going to do the sensible thing and return to hunting herbs for Brass’s punctured rear, but after considering the two dragons, Twinkle called out, “Can you please not kill him?”

“What, are you going to buy… I mean exchange some of my treasure for him too?” snapped Ruby.

“If you want me to.” The pony looked at the struggling male dragon from snout to tail as if measuring to see if he would fit in Ruby’s cave, but did not say anything else. It went against everything Ruby had learned about survival amidst her kind, but she yanked the male dragon’s head out of the mud and held it up while he gasped for a limited amount of air.

“Listen here, Fish. These are my ponies. Got that?”

“Your ponies,” gasped the other dragon. “Yes.”

“The only reason I’m not dragging you back into the river and holding your head underwater until you grow gills is because of this one,” snapped Ruby, pointing the unfortunate male dragon’s head at the little defenseless pony and regretting that enough water had gone down his gullet that his fire was going to be out for a few weeks. “Do you understand?”

“Yes!” gasped the male dragon, although Ruby did not believe him for a moment.

“Are you going to attack her again?”

“Yes. I mean no! No!” gasped the dragon through the chokehold Ruby intensified against his scrawny neck.

The little pony was doing that staring thing again at Ruby, which made little prickles of chilled scales run up and down her neck when she spoke in that far too calm tone like ice. “I don’t trust him.”

“Hear that?” snapped Ruby, who was finding the act of strangling another dragon to be highly cathartic. “She doesn’t trust you.”

“If he swears an oath not to harm ponies like your brother did, I would trust him.”

Ruby was startled enough to relax her stranglehold on the male dragon, which was not as bad as she thought, because Fish was startled too, and they both stared at the little pony for a while. Finally, the male turned to Ruby and said, “I didn’t know ponies were stupid like that.”

“They aren’t,” snapped Ruby. “This one’s defective. Like you. Now…” She tightened her grip around the dragon’s neck and he resumed gasping for air. “Are you going to swear an oath on the First Egg like she said or do you want to go swimming again?”

* * ✹ * *

“I should have just left him in the pond to rot. He would have stunk up the water, but that’s life,” grumbled Ruby while trying to figure out how to carry three ponies and the bundle of weeds they had dug up. It was not that far back to her cave, but she had gone through a lot of work for this, and really did not want to have to come back. Treasure was far better than ponies. Treasure stayed where you put it, and did not need to be fed or medicated. Then again, treasure did not grow in value, like these ponies were supposed to within a year or two. They certainly were growing more annoying, particularly with their need to build things. “What are you trying to do with those sticks?”

“Making a way to transport what we gathered,” explained Twinkle, who did not even look up at Ruby’s gruff voice like the other two trembling ponies. “Fresh cattail reeds for making baskets, while the roots are good sources of vitamins and minerals. We’ll need to make several trips over the next few weeks while your brother heals, and having baskets will make the gathering easier. Also, willow branches for making larger baskets so you can carry us more safely.” She paused, as if considering something she had not thought of before. “Ruby, can you use your fire to carry the branches back to the cave like your brother did with the wagon?”

“Yeah.” Ruby looked around to make sure no other dragon was watching, particularly Fish, who had bolted away just as soon as he had been properly sworn to the Oath of the First Egg. She leaned down to the pile of branches and concentrated, breathing out gently to allow her fire to gently swirl around the tree limbs until they were consumed, then breathing it back into her second belly where it would be safe.

The strangest hoard any dragon had ever carried in their magic. Branches.

By the time Ruby had flown the ponies back into the cave, branches had begun to appear normal. The ponies in the cave had cowered away from her during the landing, but the sight of the small unicorn being placed down on the pebbly ground had given them unusual courage. They clustered around Ruby, helping to unload the medical herbs and pony foods, then proceeded to go right over to her idiot brother, who was sprawled out on the gravel with his rump sticking up in the air.

The weirdness of yesterday still remained, like the taste of Toadwort mushrooms on the back of the tongue. Twinkle was certainly the cause. Ruby could still remember loaning the small unicorn a sharp steel knife out of her treasure, watching her cast several spells on it until the knife glowed a brilliant blue, then her using the blade on Brass’ rump in a gruesome display of magical dexterity. One at a time, she cut out arrowheads or spear blades without a single pause until she was soaked from horn to tail in dragon blood and foul-smelling ichor.

All of the rest of the ponies had fainted during the procedure, including the tiny curious one. Twinkle seemed to think of the bloody task as a lesson, and had talked about it while working. The bloody holes had been stuffed with the rest of the pony clothes that had not been sacrificed to bandage the injured stallion or reserved to be made into bags, and in the end, she had declared the operation a success.

Now, all of the adult ponies fairly swarmed over the resting fathead with bundles of herbs and wads of gooey sap to treat his injuries, which had already stopped bleeding, at least.

“Hi, sis.” Brass looked intensely embarrassed, mostly because of the small pony foal climbing up on his nose, checking for notches in his scales or any missed arrowheads. “Any luck back there?”

“Who knows.” Ruby bent down and concentrated, feeling more awkward than her brother as she released the smoke from her second belly, allowing it to coalesce into the bundle of thick branches, only dry and fragile instead of green as before. “That’s… good, right?”

“No.” Twinkle nosed about in the branches, taking one in her magic and breaking it in half. “They can’t be woven into baskets if they’re dead. We’ll have to get more later.”

That was something Ruby had not known before. She had always used her inner fire to keep her most precious bits of her hoard where they could not be stolen, but had never considered what might happen to a living creature — or plant as it seemed — to be turned into smoke and stored in her second belly. Still, her idiot brother was the problem at claw anyway, and worthless little tidbits of information about dragon’s fire were not—

“When we get your brother and Nova healed, will you show me how you transported the branches in your fire?” asked the bothersome little pony, even while she had her back turned to Ruby and was sorting through the collection of picked plants with the others.

“No,” snapped Ruby.

“Please?”

“No!” Ruby huffed, particularly when the other ponies did not scream and run away, but just looked back at her, then at the purple pest before resuming their plant sorting. “What, are you going to pay me to see how my fire works?” she added with a spiteful snap.

“Yes, of course,” came the answer Ruby had expected since the moment she had asked the question.

“How much?” Ruby had not been about to ask the asinine question, but Brass apparently had fewer scruples. His eyes were lit up with greed and he almost got up, except for the startled cry from the tiny pony checking the scales on his head, which made him settle back down in his original undignified position.

“We’re not making you pay for treating your injuries,” pointed out Twinkle. “We exchanged that for a promise that you would never hurt ponies again.”

“And you don’t have any treasure to pay him for anything else!” Ruby felt a little better about herself when one of the ponies tried to hide behind Twinkle, which would have worked better if their sizes were reversed.

Twinkle nodded and returned to an intense study of Brass’ rear. “You wouldn’t understand the concept anyway.”

The casual words burned in the back of Ruby’s mind all the while the ponies examined and prodded her brother. She had thought all of the blades had been removed, but Twinkle’s close inspection resulted in her pulling several more long, thin slivers of steel out of his rear and putting them in a pile to one side. The other ponies regarded them with horrified looks that made them seem more terrified of the bloody inert metal than the live dragons sharing their cave. Late in the evening after all of the ponies had gathered together in a pile to sleep and Brass was quietly snoring with his head under one wing, Ruby was still keeping the small purple pony under observation.

Or perhaps Twinkle was keeping her under observation. It was getting difficult to tell the difference.

Most of the herbal paste had gone onto her brother’s butt, but enough had been left over for Twinkle to smear carefully over the crispy burns on the other unconscious pony’s exposed skin. It did seem to relax the pony and make him more comfortable, much the same as it had done for Brass.

Ruby scowled. Now she was using the pony names for her brother and herself. It was not like they had not used informal names for each other before, but they were dragon names, all properly sharp and nasty like dragons. Ruby was not a good dragon name. It was soft, and pretty, sounding like delicious… rubies. Not as bad as Twinkle, for the First Egg’s sake. A dragon known by that name might as well bury their head in the sand and let all of the other dragons kick them in the butt.

…which was all she could see of the scrawny pony. She was strolling in the direction of the cave entrance at a leisurely pace, much as if she had all the time in the world to make her escape into the darkness of night, despite the sharp drop at the cave entrance and her lack of wings.

But when Ruby caught up with the pony, she was showing no signs of attempting to escape. Instead, she was sitting on her rump, looking out the narrow slit of rock that led to the outside. It threw Ruby for a moment, because she had a whole rant all prepared to use against the attempted escapee and no target.

“Do you watch the stars?” The little pony scooted a little to one side, and then a little more, leaving enough space for Ruby to sit beside her and look at the few dozen or so stars that were visible through the narrow crack in the rock. Checking over her shoulder to make sure Brass was still sleeping, Ruby reluctantly sat down next to the pony and said nothing.

After all, she really had nothing to say, and it had been a long and frustrating day.

“I’m sorry,” said the little pony.

Traditionally, dragon apologies included rolling over on the back and exposing their throat, although displays like that were rare because it generally only gave the angry dragon an easier way to tear the vitals out of somedragon who deserved it. The strong dominated the weak, and did not need apologies. Accepting an apology included a demand for treasure out of the miserable wretch’s hoard, which was the only good reason for not killing the offending dragon, because once they were dead, their hoard became a free-for-all, and the killer was often out of luck by the time they arrived for any loot. Since Ruby already owned the apologizing pony, there was nothing else she could demand out of her except—

“What is this concept you said I would not understand?” Ruby reached down and ran the tips of her claws through the little pony’s mane to straighten it, because the tangled curls were starting to get annoying, and she wanted her treasure to look its best.

“Credit,” said Twinkle.

And for many hours afterward, the dragon and the pony sat side by side, watching the stars and talking of strange and unknown things, or at least things previously unknown to dragonkind.

6. Pecking Order

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Pecking Order

“How are we going to have branches of government without a tree?”
— Chancellor Puddinghead

Several days of the situation had made the odd into the new normal. Ponies, except for one, were exceedingly obedient creatures and did not cause as many problems in Ruby’s lair as she expected. The troublesome creature was named Rootworm, a long name for a very small colt, who constantly crept up next to the line Ruby had drawn in the pebbly dirt of the cave floor designating the Do Not Cross Or I Will Eat You boundry. He would stand up on the tips of his hooves, ears perked as far as they would go and squint into the dark corner where Ruby’s treasure was kept, as if the little glints and glimmers of light were fascinating to him.

It irked her, and constantly made Ruby consider just how many gems the little pony was worth. All it would take was one quick snap of the jaws to rid herself of the nuisance, but Rootworm was ‘collateral’ or an ‘investment property’ depending on how one looked at his increased value in a year or two when the ponies got situated in their new homes. And he was staying on the other side of the line, which was something dragons would not do.

At least Brass was recovering the way the ponies had claimed he would. He was only running a minor fever, not even enough to melt lead, and continued to snooze with his tail draped into the stream that ran through Ruby’s lair. It had disturbed the ponies at first, but then they discovered how warm the resulting water was and had all gathered in the stream to scrub each other until the water trickling out the front of the cave was fairly brown with dirt. It did make them all look more valuable with the knots and tangles out of their furry coats and manes brushed back, so she could not complain.

Well, Ruby still complained, but did not put as much of her energy into it as she wanted to.

“Ahem.”

She had just gotten comfortable, but the voice was persistent, and most likely would repeat over and over until Ruby looked up from her sulk at the edge of her pool. Two pairs of pony eyes looked back, one small and one somewhat larger, and both (unfortunately) on the other side of the line.

“Ruby, before we go dump the… necessities today, Rootworm was wondering if he could look at your treasure. He found several colorful pebbles in the outer cave that he would be willing to exchange for the privilege.”

She wanted to say no. She would have said no, except for the way the tiny little pony was holding his hoof up against his chest and concealing the pebbles he had stolen from her outer cave like they were some sort of precious gems.

“Very well,” she grumbled. “But if you steal any of my treasure—”

“You’ll eat me,” said Rootworm with a happy chirp to his voice instead of the expected quaking in terror. He trotted forward in what should have been an awkward three-legged pace, since he was still holding one hoof to his chest, but stopped a respectful distance away and bowed, then moved his hoof forward. “They’re brighter in the light,” he said, squinting down at the rocks in the dim shadows.

“May I enter too?” asked Twinkle. When Ruby nodded, she lit up her horn with a white glow and moved up next to the colt, which allowed the pebbles to show their true colors. “I have not read many books about rocks,” she admitted. “I’m familiar with precious gemstones, of course, but not these.”

“Harumph!” Ruby snorted and let loose a small jet of flame, which made the little colt jump and almost drop the worthless pebbles. “Fluorite, mostly. Jasper. Pink feldspar.” She flicked her tongue forward and plucked the pink stone out of the collection, crunching it carefully between her back teeth. “Bland.” With small flicks of her tongue, she plucked the rest of the stones out of his hoof, leaving only the fluorite pebbles. “Meh. You can keep those. They’re bitter and not very pretty.”

“Some stones look different under sunlight.” Twinkle concentrated and her horn glowed a deeper violet, making the largest rock remaining in the little colt’s hoof glow bright blue.

“Awesome.”

The little colt gawked at the glowing rock for a moment before Ruby’s tongue snatched it away from him. Chewing quietly, Ruby ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, then declared in a very serious tone, “Yuck.”

“Oh.” Rootworm looked down at the pebbled floor of the cave. “So does that mean you won’t let me look at your sparklies?”

Once again, Ruby wanted to say no, but the pony was already inside the line, and seemed to enjoy looking at her treasure as much as Twinkle. And, after all, he was going to contribute some gems to that collection anyway in a few years, so it might be time to figure out just where to put them.

“I suppose,” she grumbled while turning and taking the few steps over to the ledge where she slept. “Not for long. I want to get back to my nap.”

Once they started, Rootworm most certainly gave no indication he was going to sleep for the next few days. He squealed in delight with the way the Ruby-sized bed of crystalline semi-precious stones glittered in the light of Twinkle’s horn, galloped around to look at every single emerald and ruby in the little puddles of water running down the back of the cave, and fairly dove into the shallow pool in pursuit of the pale white cave crayfish darting around from rock to rock. It took hours to calm the little pony down, and in the end, Ruby had to resort to telling him the whole history of every little trinket or bauble that caught his eye.

He even had some good suggestions on how best to arrange the gemstones to catch the light and look pretty, although she put one large clawed foot down on his volunteering to polish them.

“They’re fine.” Ruby scooped up the little pony in the palm of one hand and carried him back across the line. “They don’t need polishing or anything else.” She waited until the little colt had gone back to the other ponies, who to her secret disgust, did not seem surprised to see him still alive.

“He has a point.”

The voice coming from right beside Ruby nearly made her jump, because Twinkle Twinkle was a very ignorable pony when she was being quiet, and she was quiet nearly all of the time.

“What, do you think I should have all of you ponies polishing my treasure? That’s my treasure, and if anydragon is going to be touching it—”

“Gemcutting,” said Twinkle, heedless of the mass of dragon directly over her head and drooling slightly on the top of her mane. “Some gems are not properly faceted to reflect the light properly, and a pony trained in gemcutting can chip and cut it to look better, or even cut around flaws to make several smaller gems out of a larger and less valuable gem. It would not change their palatability, unless you are excising less desirable minerals from their crystalline matrix, but I noticed several mineral aggregations in your collection that had inclusions of less desirable gemstones, according to your displayed taste preferences.”

There were a few gems pushed to the back of Ruby’s lair that still had rock clinging to them, leaving them gluey with the sharp taste of granite between her teeth for hours after nibbling on them. Ponies did not eat gems, so there would not be any danger of leaving one of them with her treasure only to find half of it gone when she turned her back, like it would if she let Brass look over any of her precious things. After all, if they could separate the tasty from the tasteless while waiting for the other ponies to be able to— Ruby considered the word, which was almost an obscenity to other dragons. To buy the ponies away from her.

“Can you cut gems?” she grumbled.

The pale purple pony shook her head.

“Can any of the other ponies in my hoard cut gems?”

Twinkle shook her head again. “It’s a rare talent.”

“Then why are you pestering me about it? Wait. Let me guess.” Ruby let out a sigh. “The other ponies.”

“Not all of the ponies who survived the dragon attack are here. You know that.”

Ruby huffed. “I don’t want the attention of the Dragonlord. It doesn’t matter how much treasure I can get in exchange for the other ponies if he comes by and takes what he wants.”

“The other ponies will not be treated as well as you have treated us. They will die.”

“Let them die,” snapped Ruby.

“We saved your brother’s life.”

Ruby had her mouth open to deliver an acid rebuke, then slowly closed it. “How much,” she finally muttered after much thought. “How much extra treasure will you promise me for every living pony I bring in, no matter what their condition, no matter if they survive after they arrive, no matter what.”

Twinkle thought. “Five pieces of emerald,” she said. “Each the size of a hoof-tip.”

After a long period of grumbling, Ruby nodded. “It will take me a few days of flying around, visiting some of the dragons I know who like weird things, so I can—” Ruby shuddered “—exchange treasure with them for any leftover ponies.”

“We’ll need the path cut from your cave down to the valley floor widened,” said Twinkle almost immediately. “So it will be safer to dump the midden basket and make our daily trip to pick any herbs we need to treat Brass’ injuries.” She cocked her head to one side and looked up at the dragon. “I didn’t think you understood the concept of credit.”

“I don’t.” Ruby extended her wings, giving them a trial flap in the confines of her cave and checking for any painful twinges or injuries before her upcoming flight. “We do, however, understand the concept of debt. You owe me, little pony.” She bared her teeth and lowered her head to speak in a low growl right next to Twinkle’s face, which was not as rewarding as Ruby thought, because the little pony just looked like she was examining her gumline for decay instead of being terrified.

“Give me a basket to carry the ponies in,” snarled Ruby instead. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

- Ω - -

It took less time than Ruby expected to check the lairs of the other dragons for leftover living ponies, and the ones she was able to find were all universally sick or wounded. It was not all that bad of a trip because of the traditional bargaining between dragons gave her the opportunity to express some of her concealed frustration.

The process of getting something out of another dragon’s lair was not that complicated. First, you found a dragon who had something you wanted and bellowed a challenge outside of their lair. If they had any interest, they would come out and bellow a threat of their own. Small piles of treasure would be produced by each dragon in order to tempt the other dragon away from their pile, carefully placed far enough apart so one dragon could not grab them both, and kept away from any onlookers who might decide to grab an unguarded pile for themselves. Then each dragon, still bellowing threats at each other, would cautiously back away from their pile in the direction of the opposite pile, provided it was big enough, and at some unseen trigger, would pounce upon the pile and drag it away from their competitor. Bigger dragons would, of course, demand bigger piles, which meant that some of the larger dragons could increase their hoard by simple threats of force. It was always a touchy process to know just how far to push a smaller dragon without them turning into a suicidal ball of teeth and claws, determined to take a chunk out of their tormenter. Particularly since an injury could lead to death, like her idiot brother had almost proved.

It was more complicated when a pony was part of the pile. They tried to run away, and the other dragons had broken several pony legs in order to discourage such evasive movement. So in the end, with less of her hoard expended than she originally thought, Ruby returned to her cave with another clawful of ponies in the basket made out of tree limbs and cattail reeds.

None of the new ponies had the skill to cut gemstones, of course, but one of them was a ‘nurse’ with experience in treating injuries. It was more than a little funny to watch the transition each of the new ponies went through, from their first full-blown panic upon being unloaded onto the sandy floor of Ruby’s cave, to looks of pure bafflement when Twinkle Twinkle explained the situation, then after a day or two, the just plain weird acceptance the ponies displayed. Currently, they had gotten to the point where they helped check the last few injuries of Brass as he recuperated or walked carefully down the narrow path that Ruby had carved in the cliff wall down to the grassy valley without more than the occasional frightened glance at her.

The presence of other distant dragons soaring on the thermals of the valley probably helped keep the ponies nearby, but it did not explain the fascinated way they would gather around Brass to listen to his rambling stories about growing up or other dragon tales they had both been taught by their mother. And in exchange, they told Brass about their previous life in the distant mountain kingdom of Unicornia, where they had the most perfect life until the coming of the Windigos.

“It sounds like a very pretty place,” said Brass during one of their breaks. “It’s a lot further than dragons fly normally, but since there aren’t any ponies there—”

“The Windigos would kill you,” said Twinkle flatly. “You’re very strong and invulnerable against fire, but they freeze their victims.”

“I’m full of fire,” bragged Brass. “I could just breathe on them until they all melt.”

“You’re full of something,” grumbled Ruby from the edge of their little firelit storytelling group. “Think about it, rocks for brains. The ponies had to run away from them. They couldn’t kill them because—” She paused, casting a questioning look at Twinkle.

“They’re too fast,” explained Twinkle, who levitated up a ball of water from the stream. “They’re faster than pegasi, so they would just circle around, out of reach while they made the area colder and colder.” The ball of water she was floating turned white, then clear, until at last, she dropped it on a rock where it broke into icy fragments.

“Yeah.” Ruby shifted uncomfortably and looked at the circle of drowsy ponies, well over two claws worth of furry creatures sharing her cave. She did not count her lazy brother, who really should have flown home by now to sleep off the rest of his recovery in his own lair. Worse, the bothersome tendency of the ponies to fill any empty time with work seemed to be rubbing off on him.

Several of the wounded ponies had recovered enough to hobble around the cave, because it seemed they were not content to just rest and recover when there was work to be done, baskets to be woven, or clay to be sculpted, the last of which was a perplexing pony thing. They wanted their food on ‘plates’ and carried in ‘bowls’ with ‘glasses’ for the water, which clumsy hooves attempted to make out of a clay deposit they had found in the valley and her brother’s fire had been used to ‘cure’ them.

Well, they were cured, if being relatively symmetrical was a disease.

More disgusting to see was the way some of the warped clay containers had been used as ‘bedpans’ for the few ponies who could not stand on their own. Dragons in that condition were left alone. The strong survived, the weak died. Ruby tried not to think of what she did to keep Brass from dying from infections that the ponies had put into his sizable rear and likewise had cured by removing the steel darts and medicating him.

It was most certainly not the way things were done. If any other dragons found out, she would be laughed at, mocked, and attacked as weak. It was a dragon eat dragon world, but…

Family. Twinkle Twinkle certainly understood the odd sibling ties that Ruby had always downplayed. If prompted, the little unicorn could talk for hours about each of her missing brothers, and the ways they had tried to make their odd little sister happy. It reminded her uncomfortably about her own sibling.

Ever since they had been hatched, Ruby and Brass had trusted each other more than the others of their kind. It had been his advice to fly around the pony encampment and look for a treasure that other dragons had not laid their fire upon, which had worked out well for her when she found the undefended wagon and not so well for him when he had found something far too well defended for his sensitive rear.

She glared at the little purple pony. In a way, Twinkle was all his fault.

As soon as Brass got well, Ruby was going to thump him good.

- Ω - -

Ruby had just gotten settled down in her hoard, shifting a clump of crystalline quartz next to her head in case she wanted a late snack, when the sound of beating wings could be heard coming from the front of the cave. A sharp chill ran down her spines at the thought of just who it was that made wingbeats that heavy, reinforced by the bellow of command from the opening of the cave.

“Female! Come forth and obey your Dragonlord!”

The panicked ponies in the outer cave fairly flowed past her, cowering in Ruby’s piles of treasure without regard to the rules which she had clearly marked out for them. For a change, she could not really blame them, because she was so frightened she nearly peed herself, and even Brass came scurrying to the entrance of her forbidden sanctum.

“Sis,” he gasped.

“Stay here,” she whispered back. “He wants me, for Egg’s own reason. I need to get to him before—” Ruby stopped and looked around for a familiar shade of purple. “Eggshells!”

“Are you really the Dragonlord?” sounded a small voice from the opening of the cave.

Ruby came scrambling out into the front section of the cave and scooped up the small purple pony while skidding to a halt in a spray of gravel. The Dragonlord was even larger than she remembered, filling up the narrow entrance to Ruby’s cave to the point where he probably could not get inside without ripping the entrance wider, or breathing fire until the rock turned into flowing lava. He was a harsh shade of red, looking angry even when standing still, with sharp spines and two tusks like a boar, only no pig could use those teeth to disembowel another dragon like he could. Two fierce black eyes like featureless onyx stared back at Ruby and darted a quick look at the contents of her foreclaws.

“What is that thing doing here?” spat the Dragonlord.

Ruby tightened her grip, but thankfully Twinkle did not try to respond through her claws as she feared. “They’re part of my hoard, Respected Dragonlord. Quite valuable.”

“They?” The Dragonlord scowled and shook an occupied claw. “Bring the other ponies to me! This worthless pony refuses to tell me where they keep their treasure!” He held up the limp pony that he had been carrying, then threw the pony body into the stream that trickled through the front half of Ruby’s cave, making a splash that sprayed water across the whole area. “Bring them here!”

Twinkle stuck her head out from between Ruby’s claws and watched the Dragonlord with that eerie stare she did so well, but did not say a word. She was probably going to start talking in a few minutes anyway, so Ruby decided to get in the first words.

“They don’t have any treasure worth taking, Revered Dragonlord.”

“What!” The Dragonlord clawed at the outside of the cave, eventually sticking his massive head inside the entrance and glaring at Ruby from nearly biting range. “They have treasure! Dragons returned from the raid with gold and gems, but not enough for the number of ponies there. They are hiding it somewhere, and the ponies will tell me where, or else!”

“Or else you’ll eat us,” said Twinkle.

“Right!” A look of perplexion swept over the Dragonlord’s fearsome features, and he glowered at the little pony who was not showing him the right amount of terror, or any at all. “That one will do for a start,” he snapped.

“No!” Ruby yanked her closed claw away from the Dragonlord before she realized what she was doing. “I mean—”

“I can tell him where the pony treasure is,” said Twinkle Twinkle. “I’ll make him a list of every pony wagon with more than twenty pieces of gold or thirty gems, but it will take a moon, and I will need that pony in exchange.”

“Tell me now or I’ll rip you into little pieces!” snarled the Dragonlord, pulling back far enough to stick one clawed arm into the cave entrance and grope blindly. Ruby, who had pulled back several steps in order not to get clawed, felt something in her chest give way with an almost audible ‘twang!’ She spun in place, slamming her tail across the questing arm and bellowing once it had been withdrawn.

“THIS IS MY LAIR!”

The Dragonlord’s face was a study in stunned rage, but in the moment of indecision he allowed, Ruby lunged forward with smoke curling out of her nostrils.

“Get out! Threaten my treasure, will you? Do you have any idea how much this pony is worth?” she bellowed, shaking her closed fist with little bits of Twinkle’s purple fur sticking out of it. “You want to know where the ponies hide their treasure? Food offered it to you for practically nothing!” She was teetering at the edge of her cliff entrance now, shouting at the much larger dragon hovering his bulk outside, but Ruby’s blood was burning and she had no intention of backing off.

“Your Dragonlord commands—” he began before Ruby cut him off with a titanic bellow she did not realize she was able to make.

‘COME BACK IN A MOON!” She lowered her voice to a mere bellow and added, “You want to know where the ponies hide their treasure? I’ll have it for you, now get out!” If she had a door to her cave, Ruby would have slammed it, but she settled for just glaring at the huge red dragon until he stopped hovering at the edge of the cliff and just dropped into the valley below, swooping up almost immediately and flying away with powerful sweeps of his wide wings.

“YOU HAVE A MOON!” he bellowed back over his shoulder, but did not add any more. When he was out of sight in the distance, and Ruby took a moment to look around the valley, she was shocked to see how many other dragons had emerged to watch the ongoing drama. She snarled at them, more for her own sake than any sort of threat, and sulked back into her cave.

“Stupid pony,” she muttered, opening up her claw and dumping the disheveled mare onto the gravel. “Could’ve gotten me killed. Still could get me killed if he comes back and you can’t— What are you doing?”

Twinkle Twinkle had dragged herself most of the way to the stream trickling through the front half of the cave and was touching her hooves over the limp pony the Dragonlord had thrown. “Nothing broken,” she said. “Mostly bruises and cuts.” Twinkle scooped some water up in one of the warped bowls the ponies had been using for drinking, holding it awkwardly in her hooves and moving to the pony’s head before dumping it over the dirt-encrusted creature.

“Wha—?” The miserable ball of fur and mud spluttered, and the pony opened two astonishingly teal eyes, which only lasted until she saw Ruby. At that point the pony gave out a short gasp and collapsed again.

“She’s alive, but injured and exhausted,” said Twinkle. “Ruby, can you please pick her up and carry her to where the stream is deeper so she can be washed?”

“You wanted her,” scoffed Ruby. “Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I hit my horn when you picked me up, and I think you broke my hind leg.”

7. Predestination

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Predestination

“I was born old and foolish. It was a great timesaver.”
— Starswirl the Bearded

Having a real doctor or nurse to treat the injured ponies would have helped, but all Twinkle had was a unicorn stallion named Care who had worked at a hospital as an orderly. Still, when he had arrived Twinkle had promptly promoted him, and he had been doing his best ever since to keep everypony patched up.

Thankfully, Twinkle’s hind leg had not been broken by Ruby’s actions, but it was severely sprained. She was forced to rely on the same makeshift medical treatment the rest of the injured ponies had used: broad leaves from a number of the valley plants as crude substitutes for bandages, willow sticks for splints, and lengths of wirevines to tie them all together.

Since she could not follow Brass down into the green valley to forage for supplies and food like the rest of the ponies, Twinkle dedicated her time to the injured, particularly Nova. He had slipped into unconsciousness a week ago, and only surfaced a few times since then, talking about impossible things and events. Although his burns appeared to be healing, he was wasting away, and Twinkle was taking a considerably unorthodox method to save him from starvation.

“That’s disgusting.” The female pegasus who the Dragonlord had dropped scowled and wrinkled up her nose at where Twinkle was pre-chewing several fibrous tubers from the valley. “It’s a waste if he’s just going to die anyway, or be eaten.”

After spitting a mouthful of chewed paste into the bowl, Twinkle turned to Pansy and tried to give her the same kind of look Obsidian used to give to disobedient subordinates. The pegasus had been badly treated by the Dragonlord, but she had most likely been protected from the worst of abuse by her fainting disorder. That did not mean she had escaped unscathed. She limped on nearly all her legs, while nearly every patch of her coat was scratched or torn with several leaf bandages around her torso and very few tattered feathers on her yellow wings, making it that much more difficult for Twinkle to say the harsh words she needed to say.

“It is my order. All of you need to survive until the rest of your families can exchange treasure for your return.”

“It’s ransom,” muttered Pansy with a hesitant glance toward the back of the cave where Ruby was sleeping. “We should kill the dragon and escape.”

“You faint whenever she growls at you,” pointed out Twinkle. She picked up a spoon with her hesitant magic, which had mostly returned to her usual weak level of power. The spoon was either borrowed or exchanged — depending on the point of view — from Ruby’s treasure hoard, which had proved to be a makeshift source of the simple tools that ponies took for granted, and that Twinkle had never really thought about before. “The rest of the ponies are servants. Even though Nurse Care is a unicorn, he was not in a position of power in the hospital. He emptied bedpans, for the most part. I am the most noble of the ponies in this herd, therefore it is my position to lead.”

“The most noble unicorn,” whispered Pansy quietly, with another nervous glance at the shadowed back of the cave. “I am First Primary to Commander Hurricane, High Exarch of the Pegasi. We discovered the new lands to the south together, and it is my duty to reunite all of you with our greater herd.”

Twinkle Twinkle held the spoon of pre-chewed tubers to Nova’s lips. Then, after a period of inactivity where he did nothing more than breathe, she spoke without looking in Pansy’s direction at all.

“I do not wish this position, but I am the most qualified. Your fear has made you stupid. Your proposed actions can do nothing but get us all killed. If, by some highly improbable action, you were to kill two dragons many, many times your size, you cannot fly with your wings in that condition. You would be forced to walk tens of thousand trots through an area filled with dragons leading fourteen other ponies, some of whom are gravely injured. Provided you survived the trip with one or more of us alive, and find where our kind has gone, we would then lead the angry dragons back to the exodus where they would kill many, many more of our kind. All because you are frightened.”

Pansy bristled, only to shrink back at the sound of Ruby’s interrupted snore from the back of the cave. The pegasus stalked away, eventually curling up in the far corner of the cave and whimpering with her head tucked under one tattered wing. It was discomforting for Twinkle to pressure another pony into compliance with her will, but it was the job of nobility. Her father had said that all leadership was a matter of hurting other ponies for their own good, and she had never really understood just what he had meant.

Now, she knew.

“That was…” The silent bulk of Nova shifted under his bandages and dressings, and he coughed a few times. His voice was dry and cracking, but once Twinkle had given him a drink of water (thankfully, not pre-drunk) he managed a brief groan and licked his lips. “That was cruel.”

“It was honest, and needed,” said Twinkle. She gave Nova another drink of water and held a spoon of tubers up to his lips again. “Now, eat.”

Several spoonfuls later, Nova made a face and managed a few more forced words. “This tastes like somepony else already ate it.”

“I chewed it for you.” Twinkle took a fresh broadleaf from a nearby stack of supplies and used it to wipe off his face. “If you don’t eat something, you’ll die.”

“See, there you are being all honest again.” He opened his mouth and allowed the contents of a spoon to be put inside several times before continuing. “You’ll never be a noble if you can’t lie. Here, I’ll show you.”

With great effort, he lifted up a hoof and held it to the side of Twinkle’s face. “You have beautiful eyes, Lady Twinkle.”

Since the young stallion’s burnt face was completely wrapped in medicated bandage leaves except for his nose and mouth, and she did not ever remember meeting him before, it was an obvious lie, and not even worthy of a response other than feeding him the last spoon of mashed tubers.

“You have this little dimple on the right side of your cheek that shows when you smile,” he continued once he swallowed, “that is when you really smile, not just fake it. I fell in love, that is will fall in love the first time I saw it. Will see it. We’ll have three foals, one colt and two fillies, and be so much in love, in our own way. Then, as the foals grow up, we’ll grow apart until I leave, and you marry again. That will be the last time I see you for a thousand years, and will always remember your face.” The blind pony touched her gently on the nose and ran the tip of his hoof down her cheek where it stopped, making a suspiciously tingling sensation.

After a full minute, Twinkle moved the sleeping stallion’s hoof back to his chest and listened to his slow, steady breathing. It was one of the strangest things that had ever happened to her, because she could feel her heart hammering away, making every part of her body throb in sync with her pulse.

Somehow, she knew Nova had not been lying.

- Ω - -

Both dragons gathered in the outer cave with all of the ponies in attendance, making for a nearly crowded meeting. Pansy stayed in the back, keeping the bodies of several of the wounded between her and the dragons, but Twinkle stood in the very center, holding a twig in her magic.

“The Dragonlord asked for the location of the treasure held by the ponies in the exodus,” she explained, drawing on the pebbled floor with her twig. “I will need your cooperation to give him what I promised.”

“Traitor!” hissed the lone warrior pegasus, hunching down behind one of the other ponies when the eyes of both dragons turned in her direction.

Continuing as if Pansy had not said a word, Twinkle used her twig to tap one of the boxes drawn on the dirt floor. “I’ve given the problem much thought over the last few days, and have come up with only one plan that has a chance of saving your lives. To that end, we will need to produce a primitive variety of paper, a suitable ink, and quills. The last will be the easiest.” Twinkle looked in the direction of Pansy, who fluttered her tattered wings and snapped back.

“I’m not going to help you betray our own kind to theirs. Pull those quills out of your own a—” She gave out a sharp yelp when Twinkle’s magic plucked one of her few remaining intact primaries and floated it over to the young unicorn.

“Once we have produced a paper substitute, I want you each to write a letter to the surviving members of your family in the event my plan does not work as well as I hope.” She paused, holding the pale yellow pegasus feather in her magic. “I shall try my hardest to save you all, but some of you may not survive. I certainly will not. I hope you do not hold my weakness against my family when you return.”

“Why aren’t you more worried about giving the dragons a list of where all the gems are?” snapped Pansy, moving almost up to the young unicorn and fluffing out her sparsely feathered wings to appear larger.

“I told the Dragonlord I would give him a list of every pony wagon with more than twenty pieces of gold or thirty gems. Since most ponies are obedient, and that is the limit established by King Bullion on the departing wagons, obviously none of the wagons would have more than the limit. Other than House Blueblood, and their wagons were destroyed on the last raid.”

“You mean—” Pansy trembled and looked up at the two dragons towering over her. “You’re going to give him a blank list?”

“Yes.”

With a faint gasp of inhaled air, Pansy fainted again. Twinkle continued without a pause.

“By the time the Dragonlord returns, most of you should be back with your families. I’ve already discussed my plan with Ruby and Brass. He will smuggle you out of the cave in small groups, hidden under a layer of dung in the larger basket we’ve built, and fly you to the rest of the herd. Pansy will go with the first load so she can explain the situation to the pegasi.”

“He’ll kill you.” The unicorn nurse stepped forward with his head bowed, looking at the boxes drawn onto the pebbled floor instead of at Twinkle. “The Dragonlord. He’ll tear you to shreds.”

“Yes. Both of us,” added Twinkle. “I’ve thought about all of the possibilities, and come to the conclusion that our deaths are inevitable. Even if Ruby were to turn us all over to the Dragonlord, he will still believe that our families are concealing a vast quantity of wealth from him. Once he finished questioning us, the Dragonlord would kill us, then kill Ruby. If we lie to him and point out one of the wagons in the exodus, he will kill us all and attack our families.”

“I won’t go down without a fight,” growled Ruby with enough menace that the unconscious Pansy whimpered and curled up into a ball. “I think I can take enough chunks out of him so he won’t chase after your families and mine. Brass will have to fly away to somewhere dragons don’t travel, since he can’t help me fight the Dragonlord without the whole valley diving in.”

“Don’t wanna,” grumbled Brass.

“You’ll be alive,” pointed out Twinkle. “By taking the rest of the ponies to our herd, you will show that some dragons can be trusted. I’ll write a letter to Princess Platinum to see if she can collect a gem or two from each of the families so you will be rewarded. Now, there’s very little time to prepare if we are to slip the other ponies out in small numbers, so let’s get started.”

- Ω - -

The resulting basket looked very… whatever an escape basket was supposed to look like, she guessed. Between the tight weave of willow branches and cattails, it was opaque enough not to show the ponies stashed in the bottom, while still being strong enough for Brass to carry it however long he needed to reach the ponies of the exodus. Twinkle still had her doubts about the plan, but nothing better had come up in the few days it had taken to get the basket ready, so it was time to implement it before the rest of the ponies in Ruby’s cave lost their nerve.

“Should we draw straws to select who goes first?” asked Nurse Care, who looked like he would have been perfectly happy to draw a very long straw and not entrust himself to such a flimsy form of transport far up in the sky.

“No.” Twinkle pointed. “Pansy will go with Rootworm. Pansy in order to be able to convince the pegasi guarding the exodus that this is not a trick, and Rootworm because he’s young, and has his whole life in front of him.” There was a little grumbling among the whispers of the other ponies and Twinkle was going to continue in the same tone of voice her father used when he was giving orders before her attention was caught by an unexpected noise. Nova staggered to his hooves while she was gathering her nerve, and she moved instead to catch him since he was going to inevitably fall. Which he did.

“Don’t,” he managed to rasp into her ear when she was carefully putting him back down on his mat of woven reeds.

She wanted to ask him just what it was she was not supposed to do, and just why he was straining to say it, but after thinking for a breath or two and arranging the bandaged unicorn more comfortably on his woven reed mat, it still was not as obvious as he seemed to think it should be. After all, the unicorn was blind with all of the bandages on his face, so he could not have seen…

She closed her own eyes and concentrated, focusing not on what her eyes had seen when the Dragonlord had threatened her life, but on the memory of her other senses. The stentorian bellowing. The crushing sensation of Ruby’s claws around her barrel. The scent of brimstone. Something else.

The scent of pony poo, carefully arranged to be put over the top of the basket once the two passengers had been stuffed into the bottom, interfered with her memory, but it made something else itch at the back of her mind. Something that Nova had noticed, even blinded and lying on his woven mat where he could get a fresh breeze from the outside of the cave…

“Change of plans,” she said.

- Ω - -

It was important that Twinkle Twinkle be seen at the cave entrance while Brass flew off into the distance with the basket hanging beneath him. There were probably other dragons who would be watching, aware of the Dragonlord’s demands and seeking any opportunity to earn favor from him. Since he believed Twinkle knew where the ponies kept their treasure, all of their attention would be on her while the rest of the healthy ponies trudged down to the valley floor under Ruby’s close supervision.

The mouth of the cave made a good spot to just sit and watch, something Twinkle Twinkle was an undeniable expert at. Although Brass had flown into the distance and was no longer visible, all of the rest of the dragons in the area circled on thermals or perched on the cliff face running along the edge of the valley. Back when she had been with her family in Unicornia, this would have been a fascinating place to watch, with the glitter of the dragons high in the sky and the cool breeze filled with lush, green scents sweeping in the open cave. It took some of the pleasure out of the experience to realize just how many lives were depending on her actions, and how frustrating it could have been if Twinkle was an ordinary unicorn, like the others.

So she sat, and watched, and thought, until the sun was low in the sky and the other ponies trudged up the crude ramp Ruby had made from the mouth of the cave down to the valley. Events had all progressed the way Twinkle had expected today except for one thing.

Brass was flying back to the cave, far too early and without the basket.

“Sis! Sis!” he gasped once Brass had managed to get all four claws down on the pebbled inside floor of the cave. “They were waiting for me!”

“Where’s the basket, numbskull?” Ruby clouted her brother in the head with a closed fist in what would have been a crushing blow for a pony, but only slowed Brass down enough so he could make more sense.

“They took it. Five of the big dragons who have been hanging around the Dragonlord jumped me when I was about halfway to where Twinkle said the ponies were. They went right for the basket and tore it away from me, but while they were fighting over it, I ducked into some clouds and headed back here.” The big dragon lowered his voice. “Do you think they smelled the ponies?”

“No,” said Twinkle and Ruby at the same time. Ruby scowled and jerked a clawed thumb in the direction of her hoard. “The two ponies have been hiding back there ever since you left. Even the other ponies didn’t know the basket was empty.”

“You mean Pansy and Rootworm are alive?” gasped one of the terrified ponies who had just dumped her basket into the pile of harvested hay. The two ponies in question emerged cautiously out of Ruby’s back corner of the cave and rejoined the small herd with hugs for all, even for the sullen pegasus.

“They would have been dead or captured if I hadn’t changed the plan.” Twinkle thought seriously hard. She was used to being the smartest in her family, even though she preferred not to show it off, so she added, “Nova said something that made me send the first load without ponies in it.”

“Greed.” The bandaged unicorn stirred from his mat and coughed several times before one of the other ponies brought him a clay dish full of water. “Underestimated his greed,” added Nova once he had drank the bowl empty.

“How can too much greed be bad?” snapped Ruby. The rest of the ponies had gathered around by then, including Pansy and Rootworm who had both been very quiet after their stay in Ruby’s treasure room. It made Ruby take cautious steps to avoid stepping on one of her valuable property, but she moved forward several steps through the ponies to prod her reluctant brother in the chest with one sharp talon. “You had to have done something to tip them off.” She jabbed him in the chest again, making him step backwards toward the cave entrance. “You were working with them, weren’t you?”

“Wait!” Twinkle wove through the rest of the staring ponies and walked up to Ruby’s flank. “Stop. I know what you’re doing.”

Brass looked down at the pony, obviously confused. “What is she doing?”

“Saving your life, nitwit.” Ruby gave him another jab in the chest.

“She’s going to attack you and chase you out of her cave,” explained Twinkle. “It’s the only way—” On impulse, Twinkle Twinkle looked back at Nova, who had slumped back on his woven mat but was shaking his head ever so slowly, side to side. “It’s one of the ways she can save your life,” corrected Twinkle Twinkle, thinking furiously just as fast as she could.

“You mean there’s another?” Ruby swung her head down and looked nose to nose with Twinkle.

Twinkle shot a quick glance to Nova, who was sitting up and appeared to be paying attention. “Yes. I think.” After filling another bowl with water from the stream and scurrying over to the unicorn, she opened her mouth to speak, but Nova spoke first.

“Hello, Twinkle. Gentledragons.” Nova had not moved more than one ear during Twinkle’s approach, but she could see just the hint of a smile under his bandages. It made her flustrated, which was annoying because she needed all of her concentration if she was going to get the other ponies through this alive.

“Good afternoon, Nova. Are you needing your dressings changed or more medication?” Twinkle sniffed the air next to the silent unicorn, then came to an abrupt realization which took her some time to properly comprehend.

“I’m acceptable, Miss Twinkle,” responded Nova, slowly and with great care. He took a drink of water out of the fresh bowl and ate a few small chunks of raw cattail root before continuing at the same measured pace. “It takes less effort for me to keep my pain spell active now, so I’m able to stay conscious for longer periods of time. You may keep chewing my food, if you wish. I take it that Brass has recovered from his injuries enough to be outside for extended periods?”

“Yes,” said Twinkle. “Unlike the Dragonlord.”

Ruby let out her breath in a sharp chuff and swung her long neck, allowing a much closer view of the dragon for Twinkle. “What?”

“The Dragonlord is injured,” said Twinkle, “most likely by the same sort of pony weapons that penetrated Brass’ posterior. He is likewise nursing an infection, albeit not as deadly as your brother’s, but one that is weakening him. I should have noticed it when he visited your cave, but I was too engrossed in looking and listening to him than to sniff the air.”

Ruby moved closer to Twinkle to the point where she had to turn her head and regard the pony with only one eye. “So?”

“Allow me, fair ladies.” Nova drained the last of his water and shifted positions on his woven mat, moving so the few unburned patches of his coat would be in contact with the woven cattails. “Are you familiar with the Story of the Singing Monkey?”

Twinkle was, but she stayed silent. “No,” admitted Ruby, and Twinkle could see the resulting little signals of relaxation in both Ruby and Brass. Dragons liked sitting in one place for hours, telling or listening to stories, and in that respect, Twinkle found herself to be more of a dragon than a pony.

“I shall keep it brief,” said Nova. “Due to my injuries, I may need to return to a meditative trance at any moment. In summary, there was once a king of camels who captured a unicorn and threatened to kill him. The unicorn begged for his life and promised that he could teach the king’s pet monkey to sing like a nightingale within a year. The king was amused, and granted his stay of execution with that condition. So day after day, the unicorn practiced with the monkey, howling and screeching until the guards could not stand to be in their presence and only an old goat servant remained to watch the lessons.

“One day when the monkey was unusually discordant, the goat asked the unicorn, ‘Why did you promise the king that you could teach his monkey to sing? It is quite impossible, as you are proving!’ The unicorn merely smiled and replied, ‘A great number of things can happen in a year while I live comfortably in the king’s castle and eat the king’s delicious food. I could die. The monkey could die. The king could die. Or, the monkey could learn to sing.’”

Twinkle made careful note of what Ruby’s face looked like. She almost seemed as if about to sneeze, with her nose wrinkled up and her eyes closed to narrow slits. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, she asked, “So, I’m a monkey?”

“I thought I was the monkey?” said Brass.

“It’s only a story,” said Nova, although slowly and with the fatigue already beginning to creep back into his voice. “In this case, we ponies are the monkeys.”

“But ponies can already sing,” said Brass with a curious bend to his head, holding it sideways as if to make sense of Nova’s words in that fashion.

“Shut up, stupid.” Ruby returned to glaring at the blinded stallion, which did little to intimidate him. In fact, Nova was settling cautiously back down on his mat and putting his head on the pillow when she added, “What does this have to do with the Dragonlord? Tell me, or I’ll eat you!”

Twinkle looked up at the two dragons. “I think I know. I’ve got an idea, but I need confirmation.” She paused with a thoughtful frown. “How well can you both act?”

8. To Be Lunch Or Not

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
To Be Lunch Or Not

“She was a genius. And an idiot. Thankfully, not at the same time.”
— Smart Cookie, a translation⁽*⁾ of On Discourses of Dimensional Phasing and Flan, Volume XXIZ by Chancellor Puddinghead
(*) When asked what language it was translated from, Cookie merely said “Hers.”

The bellowing of enraged dragons echoed around the valley, drawing the attention of every scaled inhabitant within miles. The audience gathered individually with perked up ears and spread wings to perch on nearby spits of rock and sections of the cliff face where they could get a good look at what was going on, but some were a little close when Brass came shooting out of the cave entrance in a burst of dragonfire with Ruby in close pursuit.

“They’re mine!” he bellowed, trying to turn in flight only to have Ruby’s jaws clamp down on his tail and yank him out of the air. The two dragons tumbled down into the scrub brush and ragged trees below Ruby’s cave, ripping and tearing at each other with great fury.

“Mine!” screeched Ruby. “The Dragonlord will reward me with first claim on the pony treasure!”

“I helped capture the pony!” screamed Brass. “Their treasure is mine!”

The watching audience gained a line of ponies, all cautiously peeking over the cave lip but none brave enough to attempt escape with the roars and bellows coming up from below. A few of the dragons looked at the curious ponies, but it was quite plain that if any of them made a single move in their direction, both fighting dragons would jump on them like a loose gemstone.

In the end, Brass erupted out of the mess of flung trees and muddy water to flap away from the cave, turning around once he had gotten far enough away to bluster, “I should have crushed you in the egg! I’ll have that pony away from you and find out where the ponies are hiding their treasure! The Dragonlord will see who is the better dragon!”

“I’m the one the Dragonlord trusted to question the pony!” bellowed Ruby back just as loud. “And I’ll rip the guts out of any dragon who tries to take that away from me!”

- Ω - -

Once Ruby had herded the watching ponies back into the cave and given one last fiery glare out of the entrance to keep the curious onlookers at bay, she lowered her voice.

“How was that?”

“Awesome,” breathed Rootstock. “You had him by the tail and socked him right in the face and then he grabbed you by one wing and smacked you into the pool and then you clobbered him over the head with that tree—”

“We all saw the fight,” said Twinkle, cutting off the exuberant little colt. “I’m not a good judge of emotions, but the two of you seemed to be fighting for real, so the other dragons should believe he is trying to steal us.”

“Are you sure you two were just pretending?” asked Nurse Care with a quaver of fear quite obvious in his shaky voice.

“We wrestled like that in the nest all the time,” said Ruby. “If I killed him like the others, I wouldn’t have anydragon to fight with. It was good practice for later when we grew up.”

A dead silence followed, with every pony except for Twinkle looking at Ruby with wide eyes.

“Awesome,” breathed Rootstock again. “My big brother was always too busy out in the fields to play with me. How many…” His voice trailed off. “What do you mean, if you killed him like the others?”

“Just what I said. Six of my mother’s eggs hatched. She killed two of the weak ones, and my brother helped me kill the other two before they killed us.” Ruby cocked her head to one side and looked at the stunned ponies. “What?”

“Ponies don’t kill their siblings,” said Twinkle. “We may fight at times, but ponies do not kill.”

“There were a lot of dragons killed by ponies during our attack on your wagons,” snapped Ruby.

“There were a lot more dead ponies that we could not protect,” snapped back Pansy, which surprised Ruby, but not as much as when the timid pegasus stalked forward, putting herself between the ponies and the dragon. It looked like Pansy was going to say something else, but the pegasus froze while looking at Ruby, then fainted.

There was a very awkward silence.

“Eggshells,” rumbled Ruby. “I don’t even know why I’m trying to protect you ponies instead of eating you all.”

“Enlightened self-interest,” said Twinkle while the rest of the ponies edged backwards. “If you kill us, the Dragonlord will kill you for certain, and we’ll all be dead. If you don’t kill us, the Dragonlord might kill us all, but we might be able to all survive if we all work together.”

There was something deep in those dark violet eyes that annoyed Ruby, and after a few moments of thinking about what she had said before, it made more sense. These ponies cared about each other, regardless of family boundaries. Ruby was female and understood the concept just a little more than her brother. Male dragons viewed eggs as an annoyance, and baby dragonlings as a prospective threat. Female dragons actually cared for their broods, thinning out the ones who were defective or weak and allowing nature to take its course with the remainder. Once a dragonling became old enough to think, the mother dragon taught them everything she knew, languages she may have learned in the nest from her mother or long tales of history. Ruby could still remember the day her mother kicked them out of the nest, driving her and Brass away with strong buffets of her wings and swipes of her claws. Their father had given chase, but was distracted by the possibility of breeding again and had been lured back into the cave before he had managed to do more than claw at them once or twice. Afterwards, they had even set up lairs fairly close to each other, but still, Ruby had no fanciful ideas about what would happen if Brass snuck into her cave and found a bunch of undefended eggs.

“So I go out and fight him again tomorrow,” said Ruby slowly, “and every day after that so I can practice for when the Dragonlord returns.”

Twinkle nodded. “Or skip a day here and there to keep the other dragons off balance. When you come back to the cave, we will check to make sure you do not have any undetected injuries, then we all will make a trip to the valley to forage for supplies. Guarded, of course, by you. From what you said earlier, the other dragons will respect Brass as the dragon with the pending claim against your treasure, and should allow us to gather food and herbs unmolested.”

With a grumbling rumble, Ruby nibbled on her bottom lip and tried to find flaws in the plan. “What if my brother is injured?”

- Ω - -

The roaring ball of fighting dragons tumbled through the air, winding up vanishing into Ruby’s cave with only the sound of the conflict filtering out. The rest of the dragons kept their distance, because the last time this happened, Brass came shooting out at high-speed and promptly clobbered the nearest curious onlooker. This time, there was only the thunderous thuds of impact and the occasional plume of smoke drifting out of the cave entrance, but from the sounds, somedragon was getting thumped, hard.

* * *

“Aaaahhhh!” bellowed Brass. “That hurts! That hurts!”

“Yell louder, you big softie,” growled Ruby, who was standing by the entrance to the cave, thumping up against the walls and floors with her tail and using her wings to occasionally blow a gust of dusty air outside. “It’s your fault for not dodging fast enough.”

Twinkle and Nova sat next to Brass’ eyelid, keeping magical pressure on the wad of gluey potion they had just smeared across the deep cut. “Just another minute, Miss Ruby,” said Nova. “The elixir has just about set up. The bonded scales should be just as hard as the rest of his head. Try not to hit him in that eye for a day or two, just in case. How are the rest of you doing?”

“Aft quadrant reports no significant injuries,” said Nurse Care, who had just finished scanning his magic across the dragon’s rear. “The scar tissue in all previous wounds are holding fine, and I’m clear.”

“Right front quarter, significant bruising, but well within tolerances,” said Pansy. “Fake blood applied, paint crew has evacuated the area, and we are clear.”

“Left front quarter had some sticks jammed under some scales,” said Rootworm, who was sliding down Brass’ extended leg and wound up tumbling across the pebbled floor. When he stood up, he spit out some sand and added, “I’m clear.”

“Patch is solid,” said Twinkle, backing up out of the way with Nova. “Ruby, you are clear to launch.”

“Finally!” Ruby grabbed her brother by the tail and heaved the larger dragon out of the cave entrance, watching his ballistic path out across the valley with a scowl. “If we live through this, he’s going to want to do that all the time.”

- Ω - -

A Moon was a long time, except when somepony was trying to run a household of nearly twenty ponies, supervise a dragon fight nearly every day, care for the injured, both dragon and pony, and draw plans for their survival.

Twinkle had little time for trivial items. Unfortunately, trivial items had time for her.

“Hm, black guard to E7,” said Nova while using his magic on the shapeless lump of clay that the foraging team had brought up from the river valley. “That puts your priestess in threat, by the way.”

Twinkle bit her bottom lip while trying to concentrate on her own task of mashing shredded bits of tree and plant fibres into some sort of virulent glop. Paper had always seemed so easy. Mention to the servants that she needed another stack and a few minutes later, one would appear. There were dozens of spells that she knew for shaping and smoothing the goop into a correct end product, but she had never cast any of them. In fact, her sum total of practiced spells had doubled over the last few weeks, then doubled again as she found herself as the ‘go-to’ unicorn in the makeshift herd. Twinkle, we need to extract the oils out of these herbs. Twinkle, we need to dry this flower and grind it into a powder. Twinkle, we need a spell to discourage blister beetles from eating up the new plantings. Even Nova’s assistance with spellwork, despite his blindness, did not slow the incessant demands of her tiny kingdom.

In a way, getting eaten would have been a blessing. At least it would calm her raging hornache.

“Hey, Twink. Relax.” Nova left the half-formed lump of clay sit, moved up behind her, and began to gently run his magic over her shoulder blades, leaving a trail of pleasant tingles behind. “Even I can tell you’re tense. Just leave whatever you’re working on alone for a moment and tell me what’s bothering you. Other than the dragons, that is. They’re both outside.” His warm magic continued to work its way down Twinkle’s spine, making her tail give an uncomfortable twitch.

“Are you intending on having sex with me?” asked Twinkle, turning to look at the injured stallion. Although most of his bandages had been removed, the ones on his face had remained, along with several medicated patches that the nurse had insisted on remaining over his injured eyelids for the next few weeks. She could not help but think he was looking back at her eyes because his head always stayed fixed in her direction. Perhaps it was a horn finding spell. Or, maybe not.

The question seemed to startle the stallion, and he took a deep breath before replying. “If you desire, M’Lady Twinkle. Although I must ask why you ask?”

“Guard to G5. You said we were going to mate and have foals.”

“I did?” Without being able to see his eyes, it was difficult to figure out what the injured stallion was thinking, but his nose wrinkled up. “Anything else? Oh, and guard to D5, capturing your priestess.”

“Nothing that made sense.” Twinkle spread the goopy wood-glop across the flat rock and considered which of the three paper spells would be best to use on it. First, she had to get rid of two things which bothered her mind. “Guard to F7, capturing a soldier. And you said I had beautiful eyes.”

“Castle,” responded Nova promptly.

“You’ll lose your queen,” said Twinkle.

“I’ve never liked royalty.”

“Guard to D8, capturing your queen.”

Nova bit his bottom lip and sucked on it for a long time, which gave Twinkle enough time to spread her magic out across the gloopy pulped fibres. She pressed for a while in the quiet, damp air of the cave before Nova said, “No, that’s not right.”

It did not seem as if the spell was performing any worse than expected, but Twinkle switched to her second choice, even if it was more difficult. The paper straightened out and lost some of its coarse nature as it dried, which made her give a short grunt of satisfaction. It would still need a fine coating of clay to keep their ink substitute from running, but that would wait.

“What exactly did I say?” asked Nova.

“You never liked royalty.” Twinkle flexed the new sheet of paper and regarded the few thin spots. It was as good or better than anything she had created so far. The original purpose of creating the paper had been demolished by the greedy behavior of the other dragons, but it would still give the other ponies hope to write their loved ones, even if the possibility of getting the letters delivered was slim.

“Exactly what did I say, Twinkle. Exactly, every word you can remember.”

Twinkle looked up from her freshly created sheet of paper. What little of Nova’s expression that was visible under the bandages seemed to be more serious than she had ever seen before. “Every word?”

“Yes,” breathed Nova. “Our fate may depend on it.”

“But you’re not going to tell me why,” said Twinkle. “Not even if I insist.”

“No. It’s too important.”

Twinkle wanted to tell him no. After all, if he was not going to tell her why, there was no reason for her to do what he wanted. Besides, she was supposedly in charge, and having an injured stallion push her around this way irked her. Combined with the frustrations she had been through so far, it almost actually made her angry. From his tone of voice, it was obvious that Nova had planted his hooves and was not going to give even in the slightest. It was very much a dragon sort of reaction, and to meet it horn against horn would only make him dig in deeper.

If he was this obstinate when blinded and still wearing leaf-bandages over most of his body, he was going to be insufferable when he recovered. The only way to overcome his arrogant nature was to break him intellectually, to tempt him in a way that he could not resist and crush his sense of superiority in the way that several of her father’s favorite authors had detailed.

“If you will not tell me why you wish for me to parrot your words back to you, I shall not do as you desire, unless—“ Twinkle left the word hang in the air “—you defeat me in this game.”

“You took my queen,” countered Nova. “I’m outnumbered, with one of your pieces in my backfield. I demand better conditions. When I am victorious, you are to repeat every word I’ve spoken to you, as much as you remember, and you are to admit that I am the greater intellect and more qualified to lead our subjects to safety.”

“Victory in a game of chess does not exemplify superior survival skills,” countered Twinkle. “I shall grant you my respect as to your intellectual prowess in the unlikely event of your victory, but if I win, you are to explain your complete reasoning to your request. No excuses.”

“Agreed. Priestess to F2. Check.”

“Castle to—” Twinkle stopped and rearranged the chess board in her head. “Oh, yes. Check. King to H3.”

“D7 soldier to D6,” said Nova without a pause. “Check.”

“Guard to—” Twinkle stopped again. “No, you can just capture it and I’ll be in check. Soldier to E6.”

“Guard to F4,” said Nova before Twinkle had finished talking. “Check.”

“King to… G4,” said Twinkle slowly. “Mate in nine.”

“Guard to E6,” said Nova. “Capturing soldier.”

“Guard to E6,” said Twinkle. “Exchange.”

“Priestess to E6,” said Nova briskly. “Poor exchange on your part. And check again.”

“King to G5,” said Twinkle. “Concede.”

“There’s always hope,” said Nova. “Not here, though. Castle to F5 and check.”

“King to G4, your soldier to H5, King to H3—”

“And castle to F3 for checkmate. Quite impressive for a mare. Forty moves.” Nova smacked his lips and smiled thinly, which was about as much as he could do with the bandages around his burns. “Sometimes, sacrifices must be made in order to draw one’s opponent into a false sense of overconfidence. I, of course, do not suffer from such hubris, since I am smarter than any other unicorn in Equestria.”

“Easier to say now that many of them are dead,” said Twinkle, who was going back over the moves in her mind and cringing at how easily she had been hoodwinked.

“Ahh… Yes.” The injured stallion licked his cracked lips again and Twinkle floated a piece of waxy honeycomb for him to chew on. “Thank you, kind mare. I suppose I have not thanked you enough since my initial recovery. I should be groveling upon my knees and begging your forgiveness.”

“That is not the proper place for a husband,” said Twinkle, still distracted at the way the game had deviated from her plans around the twentieth move with the dangled temptation to capture his queen. “My father would never have grovelled in front of my mother, nor the inverse. They have a marriage based in mutual respect of equals.”

“Perhaps that is my problem, then.” Nova placed the perfect clay bowl that he had been shaping in his magic to one side with the others, all lined up in perfect rows for Ruby to breathe over later. “You see, I have no equal, and I refuse to lower myself for any mare. I do have a single flaw, however. My intellect is so vast, so powerful, that at times, I am enthralled by threads of the future wafting away into the distance.”

“Then you should have foreseen the dragon and dodged when he breathed on you,” said Twinkle.

“A practical solution for my situation. You should have been there to remind me.”

Nova let out a short huff of breath and coughed briefly, a thin and weak noise that belayed his otherwise cheerful demeanor. Twinkle had always been thin, and the diaspora of ponies to the warm lands of the south had left her with hollow cheeks and protruding ribs, but not nearly to the extent that the young stallion displayed. The recovery that he had started last week had not triggered his appetite to the degree that Twinkle had wanted, so she had taken to bringing him extra helpings of the grass and roots from the foraging team, and watching him intently while he ate. Cook from home would have tied him to a chair and fed him until he resembled a holliday stuffed beet, but all Twinkle had managed to do so far was give him a bad case of gas and occasional constipation.

“In any event, I am victorious, and demand my prize.” Nova waved a hoof dismissively. “Proceed.”

The taste of defeat was bitter, almost as bad as the violet roots from the swampy bit of ground down in the valley. After casting a spell on the results of the daytime foraging, Nova had claimed they contained needed nutrients and insisted that everypony had at least a few every day. Even Ruby, who washed hers down with a bite of muddy gravel and considerable grumbling.

Swallowing down the nasty aftertaste from her upset stomach, Twinkle Twinkle began to recite every word she had heard from the annoying unicorn, matching the words against her own when they had been talking together and including all of the grunts and low grumbles he had given over the last few weeks. When she ended with a sneering ‘Proceed’ just as Nova had done, his jaw was hanging open and Twinkle was fairly sure if his bandages had been off, his eyes would have been wide too.

“That was…” Nova took a long swallow. “Three foals?”

“Most probably delusional ramblings associating my voice with another mare in your history, much as a dream state will cause neuronic triggering of old memories such as Sunshadows wrote in his book on active dreaming,” said Twinkle. “I don’t see that it has any—”

“Your coat is a subtle shade between lilac and periwinkle,” said Nova rapidly, “shading more to the dark at the hooves. Your mane is cornflower blue with a pale pink stripe, but you keep it trimmed short and it’s just starting to grow shaggy, which you hate. Your eyes… between lilac and pale blue. You don’t like being out in the sunlight because you think you’ll bleach. I have no idea how I know, but it’s a silly worry, because a sunscreen spell will take care of that. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

“I’m orange,” declared Twinkle. “With yellow and green stripes, and frosted wings.”

“You’re a unicorn,” countered Nova.

“I can have wings too,” said Twinkle. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Of course—” Nova stopped with one hoof raised, then drew it back across his jawline to scratch an itch for nearly a minute. “You lied?”

“I’m practicing. I’m not very good at it, because I’ve never done it before,” admitted Twinkle. “Now, did you lie to me when you said our fates could depend on me repeating all of your words to you?”

“A little.” The stallion sat down with a thud. “It is true that I can see things, little hints in the present that tell what the future might become. Interactions in forms of magic that other unicorns are, pardon the expression, blind to the effects thereof. My father called it the gift of jumping to a foregone conclusion from a irrational premise by skipping the intervening steps of analysis. I became so used to being right all the time that I thought I was right all the time.”

“So are you right now?” asked Twinkle. “I don’t see how we’re going to wind up married and have three foals if I’m going to die in a week.”

“I…” The stallion stopped as if he had eaten a raw chestnut, and it was caught in his throat until he took a deep breath and blurted out, “I don’t know.”

“You could have lied,” pointed out Twinkle. “Told me that you saw us surviving this, escaping back to the new pony lands, and raising a family. Stallions lie a lot when they’re trying to have sex with mares.”

Nova snorted and broke into a coughing fit, although he was grinning instead of looking like he was about to die. “Oh, don’t do that,” he managed after a short while and a blow of his nose on one of the broad leaves that Twinkle floated over to him. “It hurts too much.”

“Would sex help? My brothers are all dead, so they won’t threaten you. And your family is dead, so even a defective pony such as myself—”

She had turned her head to get another broad leaf for Nova’s running nose when Twinkle found a hoof placed gently on her mouth. “No,” said Nova. “You’re not defective.”

“I’m weird,” said Twinkle the moment his hoof moved.

“You’re unique,” said Nova.

“Everypony is unique,” countered Twinkle. “Except maybe Ignatia and Hypatia, the identical twins who lived down on Flower Row.”

“But you are not any ordinary unicorn, color and plaid coat pattern notwithstanding. You are extraordinary. Every other pony captured by the dragons, myself included, found themselves helpless when faced with their power. You found a way to use that power against your captor, and to gather more ponies to you. To live with the dragon instead of fighting her, which would be futile, or surrendering to her, which would be fatal. And, if I may be so bold, managing to save the most intelligent unicorn in the world while doing so.”

“In a week, we’re all going to die,” stated Twinkle plainly.

“No, we won’t.” Nova shuffled across the pebbled floor of the cave back to his woven reed mat and settled down on it with a few minor winces. “When history writes of this time, they will speak of you, not me.”

“History lies too,” said Twinkle. “A thousand ponies see the same event and tell a thousand and one stories about it, none of which match.”

Nova smiled and put his head down on the stuffed bundle of hay that he was using for a pillow and occasional snacking. “Then you must survive in order to write the story, so that the world may know the truth of your bravery.”

- Ω - -

In several days, the moon would be over and the Dragonlord would return to claim his treasure, or at least claim Twinkle’s blank map to the hidden gems and gold of her kind. If she were capable of being angry at the frustration that had overwhelmed her, she would have been able to breathe fire like a dragon.

She needed an idea, or every pony she had saved would die.

Any idea would do.

Anything.

Sleep evaded her much like any worthwhile ideas as fatigue clawed at her churning stomach. While night spread its wings and the rest of the herd gathered together to rest, she occupied her time at the cave entrance, staring up at the unchanging stars. Twinkle Twinkle had even stopped assisting with the raising of the sun and moon in order to conserve her dwindling strength for the upcoming confrontation.

Thus she was the only creature awake at the early hour just before dawn when the distant sounds of wind passing over scales alerted her to an approaching dragon. Actually, five dragons, all the size of Ruby or Brass, who silently swooped down and clung to the cliff face just outside the cave.

“Do you hear her?” whispered one of the dragons.

“No,” whispered another. “Go in and see if you can find the pony.”

“I’m not going in there,” whispered the first dragon, somewhat louder. “You go in and find the pony. We’ll wait here.”

“Which pony are you looking for?” asked Twinkle Twinkle.

There was an exceedingly long silence outside of the cave, followed by all five of the dragons cautiously poking their heads around the edges of the cave ‘doorway’ and looking at Twinkle.

“Grab her,” whispered the smallest dragon, about half the size of Ruby but with a ridge of spines from the top of his head down out of sight and presumably all the way to his tail.

“I’m not grabbing her,” said the first dragon, a tusked and fierce female with small piggish black eyes. “She’s a trap, obviously.”

“Actually, I’m Twinkle Twinkle,” said Twinkle.

“You have a Name?” they all hissed in unison.

Twinkle nodded. “Why are you here?” she asked. “Did the Dragonlord send you?”

One of the dragons opened his mouth to say something, but the tusked female backhanded him with a blow that would have squished Twinkle flat. It only made the male dragon blink, but he did remain quiet while the female cleared her throat and put on what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Yes, our father sent us to see how you are coming along with that list you promised.”

All five of the dragons nodded, but Twinkle could see the greed in their eyes, if not the little specks of drool they were leaving behind on Ruby’s doorway. Pointing out that she knew they were lying would be a bad idea, and admitting that she was not going to give the Dragonlord the location of the pony wagons with the most gold and gems in it was an even worse idea. The only idea that could possibly be worse was—

“I promised to make him a list of all the few pieces of pony treasure that we brought with us from Unicornia,” said Twinkle. “You must want all the heaps and piles of treasure we had to leave behind.”

“Heaps?” breathed one of the dragons.

“Piles?” asked another.

Twinkle nodded. “When we left Unicornia, bringing food was more important than bringing royal treasure like the Diamond Chandelier of King Bullion, or the Courtyard Ruby Fountain of Eternal Flames, or even his Royal Throne of a Thousand Gems. Most of his treasure rooms were sealed when we left, so all the gold and gemstones are still there.” Twinkle paused. “That is unless some other dragon took them.”

There was a serious risk of drool puddling in the cave entranceway now, but the female dragon closed her jaw with a soggy snap and began to reach forward in Twinkle’s direction. “I think you need to show us—”

“Touch me and the Dragonlord will tear you to shreds,” said Twinkle just as coldly as she could. It must have worked, because the dragon quit reaching for her and took a brief glance over her shoulder at the darkness outside. “Besides, Unicornia is easy to find on your own,” she added. “It’s straight north about three hours at the speed Ruby flies.”

The four dragon claws that had been slowly inching in her direction stopped as the sound of a sleepy dragon snort came from the darkness behind Twinkle.

“Then across the frozen Great River,” she continued, “following the tributary that winds to the north between two towering mountains, across a vast open plain scattered with peasant houses and up the valley to where the mountains of Unicornia look down. They’re supposed to look a little like noble unicorns,” she explained, “even though they don’t. Other than being pointed at the top.”

“That’s where the treasure is?” asked most of the lurking dragons at once.

“The gold and silver palace of King Bullion,” intoned Twinkle in the familiar pattern her family had recited at every meal, “shows the true majesty and power of Unicornia. Let every gem and every treasure proclaim our glory to all the world, that the kingdom shall last forever, and that all shall marvel at our works. It’s at the midpoint of the largest mountain, rising above the city of Pinnacle,” added Twinkle. “You can’t miss it. The roofs of all the towers are inlaid in gold leaf and inset with diamonds, or at least they say they’re diamonds. I think there may be a number of rhinestones mixed in with them. And the vaults below the castle contain wonders beyond imagination, with all the artefacts and relics Unicornia has collected over centuries of growth. Rare and unique enchantments, artworks from the far corners of the world, books of forbidden knowledge, all the sorts of things that a dragon could use to build a hoard that no other dragon could match. And since there are no ponies there anymore, it’s all unguarded.”

Twinkle let her eyes travel over the five eager faces filling Ruby’s cave entrance, then pointed to one of them at random. “Since he’s the fastest, he’ll probably get to the treasure first and… How do dragons say it? Place his fire upon it to claim it for his own? Then the rest of you will be left with the scraps. There are a few coins left in the fountains, I suppose.”

The dragon she had pointed out got a look of sudden terror when the other four turned to face him, and he bolted in a flurry of wings, followed almost instantly by his companions. The resulting wind of their departure almost blew Twinkle over, and brought Ruby out from the treasure chamber where she had been supposedly sleeping.

Moving slowly as not to terrify the awakening ponies who stared at her bulk and cringed back onto their sleeping mats, Ruby moved up behind Twinkle and looked out into the night. “They’re gaining on him,” she murmured. “They’re too far away for me to make out any details anymore.”

Twinkle nodded. “They’ll kill him before flying further north to Unicornia. Were those the offspring of the Dragonlord?”

“I think so.” Ruby peered into the night, then sat back on her haunches and remained silent. Minutes passed, then hours. The restless ponies settled back down to sleep, but Twinkle and Ruby continued to sit in the darkness beside each other until the glow of the rising sun began to illuminate the distant horizon.

“You killed them,” said Ruby after lowering her head almost down to Twinkle’s level and speaking in a whisper. “Five spawn of the Dragonlord and you killed them with words. They’re going to fly away to your frozen city and die when the Windigo freeze them, just like you told Brass.”

“I didn’t want to,” said Twinkle. “I had to.”

Ruby turned her head to lock eyes with the little unicorn. “You could have killed my brother just as easily. What will I do if you try to kill me also?”

“I won’t kill you.” Twinkle reached out with one hoof and touched the end of Ruby’s nose. “Unless you make me.”

Ruby snorted a puff of smoke, which made Twinkle cough and wave a hoof to get a breath of fresh air. “Since I met you, I’ve nearly lost my brother to your pony weapons, I have to beat his head in every day to practice for my fight against the Dragonlord, and I’ve got a bunch of pretty colorful ponies instead of gems for my hoard. What’s next, are you going to make me Dragonlord?”

“If I can.” Twinkle patted Ruby’s nose before returning her hoof to its proper support role. “You and Brass are the first real friends I’ve ever had. If you were Dragonlord, you could keep your dragons from attacking my ponies, and save many lives on both sides. The first is nice, but the second is the most important.”

- Ω - -

The next day, the wait for Brass to begin his assault on Ruby’s cave was exceedingly long, and even the ponies began to poke their noses out around her sides to scan the sunny sky. Her brother had agreed to keep the schedule somewhat random to throw off any watching dragons, of which there were quite a few this morning, but after him not showing up yesterday, Ruby was…

No. Worrying about her brother was something a pony would do. She was concerned that he had gone and done something stupid, and that she could not go rescue his sorry hide because that would leave the ponies vulnerable.

It made her idly wonder how the rest of the dragons would react if the ponies fortified the cave by building spear-throwers and arrows. No, having a hoard that could transport itself was bad enough. Having one that could defend itself against dragons was just begging for trouble. Even the spear blades and arrowheads that had been dug out of Brass had been placed quite securely in Ruby’s treasure cave so that the ponies would not get ideas and tie the weapons back onto sticks.

There still was something wrong about the sun above the valley, like it had stuck in the sky without the Dragonlord to bellow it along its path. And it was an odd shade of yellow, with petals like some sort of flower, which was a distraction that Ruby most certainly did not need right now.

She straightened up when a flying figure could be seen in the distance, mostly obscured by the sun. It was larger than most dragons, and in relatively short order, she understood why. The Dragonlord was actually carrying Brass limply under one foreleg, and landed solidly on the valley floor outside of the cave, flinging his burden down on the grass-covered ground with a loud thud.

“Female!” he bellowed. “Attend your Dragonlord.”

“I’m going to kill him,” growled Ruby just barely loud enough for the ponies around her to hear. “I’m going to rip his heart out of—” There was a feather touch of magic across her lips that stopped Ruby’s quiet muttering, and she did not even need to look down to see the determined look on the little unicorn’s face.

“I’ll kill him,” said Twinkle in a flat, cold whisper. “Take me down there, please.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Ruby quickly while she wrapped her claws around her passenger.

“Where are my sons and daughter?” bellowed the Dragonlord from down below in the valley, using one clawed hind leg to slug a solid kick into Brass’ inert side. “Where are my children!”

“Castle,” responded Twinkle. “Ask Nova when I’m gone. Now take me down there before your brother dies.”

It was a short glide to the ground, and Ruby lighted a respectful distance away from the glowering Dragonlord, where she placed the cryptic little unicorn on the ground between them. It was not the meeting she expected, with the unconscious but still breathing bulk of her idiotic brother sprawled across the muddy grass and the little unicorn looking unusually intent.

“I have completed the task, Respected Dragonlord,” called out Twinkle in a clear voice. “The treasures of Unicornia will be yours.”

“You ponies crumble without a fight.” The Dragonlord kicked Brass to one side and leaned down to put his tusked face right up to Twinkle, giving her a terrifying snarl “You are weak and surrender your treasure, while dragons are strong and take them!”

“You may have the most precious treasures of the kings and queens of Unicornia,” said Twinkle flatly. “I’ve never liked royalty.”

The Dragonlord actually laughed at that. “Nor do I. Now show me where the ponies hide their treasure!”

Twinkle bowed low. “Yes, Respected Dragonlord. It lies far to the north, in the kingdom of Unicornia above our city of Pinnacle, where your children have gone to protect it until your arrival.”

“WHAT!” The Dragonlord shrieked and blew a giant blast of flame up into the sky, but Twinkle did not react in the slightest, even when he brought a huge clawed hand down and swatted her, knocking the little unicorn into a muddy end of an irrigated field of some sort. “Why did you give my greedy little brats the location of the pony treasure before me! I should destroy you!”

“You’ll never find the treasure in time by yourself,” called out Twinkle. She plodded out of the mud, dripping and bruised with her head held low. “Take me with you and allow me to guide your path. If we hurry, we can reach the treasure before them.”

“If you are lying, I will take my revenge on your kind!” thundered the Dragonlord. “I will track them all down and burn them to ashes, every single pestilent one of them!”

He scooped up Twinkle so rapidly that he took a huge chunk of muddy grass along, and was instantly in the air with one huge sweep of his wings. Other dragons rose to fly with him, but the Dragonlord roared his defiance, and they all turned back, watching with wide eyes as he headed north until they vanished from sight.

“Is he gone, sis?” groaned Brass.

“They’re gone,” said Ruby.

9. Sacrifice Fly

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Sacrifice Fly

“Loyalty to your commander is the greatest asset of the Praetorium.”
— Commander Hurricane

Twinkle was not a betting pony. In Unicornia whenever the festivals came around with their games of chance and skill, she would attend with her brothers and watch as they exercised their talents to the feigned awe of whatever mares they were escorting around. They always made her promise to stay quiet during the festive outings, although that was difficult when she would see one game of chance or another severely leaning on the rules of probability. There was no real reason for spending the tips and shards of their allowances on the chance of getting some stuffed animal for less than they could have just purchased one, but she trailed along anyway and often found herself carrying an unexpected prize or another.

It probably related back to the way other normal unicorns used ‘things’ to recall memories. Twinkle’s mother had a glittery paper star hanging on their bedroom wall which Obsidian had given to her as a present once, and Peridot could just cast a single glance at it before her eyes would well up with tears and she would be sniffly most of the rest of the day. Twinkle was an expert at using small clues and slips of the tongue to unravel the most hidden mystery, but she had never been able to work the story of the family heirloom out of her parents.

She had no problem reading the story of the Dragonlord’s children.

The first of them had not made it more than a short distance away from the valley before his siblings had ripped him nearly in half, leaving the bloody corpse spread across a hilltop. Claws and teeth alike had torn one wing off, and although he had fought and decorated the ground with colorful scales from several of his attackers, they had worn him down in the end.

The Dragonlord landed a short distance away, but not far enough to avoid getting blood on his claws. He almost dropped Twinkle in his haste to examine the body, leaving her in the blood-soaked wreckage of a bush with strangely enough a few golden trinkets of apparent Minotaruian make under a root. She levitated them up in her magic for closer examination while the Dragonlord fumed over the body of his son. How the golden trinkets got there was another mystery in a long line, but one that was fairly easy to theorize an answer.

When Brass had used his fire magic on the family wagon and when Ruby had used hers to carry the piles of branches up to the cave, they had breathed out across the treasure and then breathed the smoke back in, presumably storing it in some sort of secondary stomach. Upon his death, the Dragonlord’s son must have breathed out that magic fire, letting it coalesce back into the treasure that had been stored inside.

Before the Dragonlord could snatch the golden baubles away, she let them fall back to the ground and stepped off to one side. He was not in a stable mental state right now, and to provide any excuse would mean her death before she could lure him far enough into the Windigo’s clutches to kill them both. She settled for holding herself in the stiff rigidity of the terminally terrified, and did not say anything when the enormous dragon grabbed her and bolted to the north again without a word.

Of course she had questions that she wanted to ask the Dragonlord during the long trip, but she was not stupid. Talking would reduce the probability of her plan working, and most probably the deaths of many, many ponies. Plus she was going to die anyway, so there was no reason to satisfy her curiosity and endanger the rough plan she was trying to follow. Still, an hour or more later when the Dragonlord curved his path downwards to land next to two more of his children who had killed each other, she could not keep her mouth shut.

She bent her neck down, closely examined the small cluster of flowers sprouting up from the snowdrift she had been dropped into, and took a tentative nibble.

“Buttercups,” she murmured to herself as she took another larger bite. They looked similar to the flower, but they tasted like sweet butter, freshly churned and salted just a bit for flavor. The exodus most certainly had not encountered any such plants, although the pony’s path had not been through this exact section of grassland, so it was not impossible for her to have missed this species before. Her mother had loved plants, and her special talent was flower arranging, so Twinkle’s home had been filled with plant books, all of which she had read, of course.

Before the Dragonlord had finished bellowing and making threats over the corpses of his two dead children, Twinkle had harvested the few plants that stuck up out of the snow and held them close while they swept back up into the sky.

Just because she had a task that would save the lives of many ponies did not mean she could not also try to unravel a different mystery.

- Ω - -

“Where is my treasure!” howled the Dragonlord, squeezing Twinkle until she could barely see the fading sunlight. “I’ve been flying forever! Show me the treasure of your kind!”

There was a vague sensation of being shaken, then the crushing pressure released except for a sharp pain in her side that was most likely a cracked rib. Twinkle sucked in welcome air and staggered to her hooves in the Dragonlord’s palm, looking out across the snowy ground for a recognizable landmark. What she saw looked vaguely familiar, but just as weird as the buttercups she had eaten a short time before.

The two short mountains the pony exodus had passed between on their way south had been replaced, one with a recognizable sculpture of some sort of snake-pony-dragon-bird thing, and the other by a massive pile of unknown colorful spheres. It actually took her a few moments to recognize the snake-creature from a book she had read, although it was supposed to be fictional.

“Draconequus,” she said out loud despite her best efforts. “A mythical creature of disunion, chaos, and strife.”

“How much is it worth?” chuffed the Dragonlord from nose-length away.

“It doesn’t really matter since you can’t carry a mountain,” pointed out Twinkle. “That wasn’t there before. Nor that,” she added, pointing at the giant pile of colored spheres. “Anyway, one of your children has died here, and the other gone north to Unicornia.”

The Dragonlord’s eyes narrowed into slits and he blew a puff of smoke over Twinkle. “How can you tell?”

Twinkle waved a hoof until she had enough fresh air to breathe, then pointed down through the Dragonlord’s claws at a discolored spot at the base of the mountain of colorful balls where a spreading stain marred the brilliant image. A short glide later, the Dragonlord scowled at the single clawed leg sticking out from under the massive house-sized spheres and the red pool around it. He poked a sphere with one claw, then stuck Twinkle up to it with a bellowed, “Tell me what that is, pony!”

A few theories she had crafted during the glide were casually disposed of, replaced by an idea that was pure insanity. She leaned forward, sniffed the sphere, then hesitantly licked it.

“Tutti-frutti bubblegum balls,” she said. “The size of houses.”

The Dragonlord was just as flummoxed as Twinkle, but hid it worse. He leaned over, took a bite out of one of the spheres, chewed, then spit out the gum onto the corpse of his child.

“If you’re frightened, we can go back,” said Twinkle.

The Dragonlord let out a primal growl and closed his fist around his captive unicorn before launching himself into the air, headed north. Inside her crushing prison, Twinkle Twinkle shivered from the growing cold and the thoughts of meeting a creature who could kill a dragon so casually.

- Ω - -

Despite the clutch of the dragon’s claws, there was only cold surrounding Twinkle’s thin coat and trembling body. The cold of the ice, the chill of her hopeless condition, and the blowing snow that leaked in through the narrow gaps between sharp talons. She had never felt the bitter bite of death so close to her heart before, even curled into a tight ball to conserve every flicker of warmth she could manage to squeeze from the sweet warmth of the odd buttercups in her belly. She could hear the Dragonlord bellowing again, loud enough to shake her numb body. Something about treasure. Something about… fire.

Fire surrounded her, small flames that curled against her mane with the stench of burnt hair. And with that fire came heat, blessed heat that washed over her like a wave. The pain was worse than the cold, but it was good pain, an agony of thawing limbs and frostbitten ears.

“Awaken, worthless beast!” snarled the Dragonlord in a burst of welcome hot breath. “What deceit are you planning? What kind of sick joke is this land that you have guided me to?”

“Cold,” murmured Twinkle Twinkle, still curled up in a ball despite her growing warmth. The longer she could delay the Dragonlord here, the sooner the Windigos would freeze him solid. It took very little effort to continue trembling, even after the dragon breathed across her several times until sweat began to run down the back of her neck.

“Get up,” growled the Dragonlord, hooking the tip of one claw under her belly and lifting. “Pathetic little bag of skin and bones. Explain how your kind did this!”

Twinkle opened her eyes and was unable to suppress an abrupt gasp, sucking in a breath of air so cold that it carried icy needles into the depths of her lungs. The word for the moment was ‘White’ but the context was anything but what she expected. The blanket of snow covering this part of the world was carved into trenches and slopes with colorful flags denoting paths down the foothills of her mountain home and the faint hint of vanilla on the breeze. Of the mountains, there was no sign except gaping holes of their foundations, a scattering of tiny golden glints around the area, and the distant thunder of something massive crashing and bashing into the ground.

“I don’t know.” The words escaped Twinkle in a cloud of white as the air froze her breath almost before it left her lips. “It’s madness. Nothing makes sense.”

“Oh, of course it does,” purred a voice from around Twinkle’s left ear. “We have all kinds of scents here at Discord’s House of Perfume.”

A draconequus only slightly larger than her shoulder practically oozed around the Dragonlord’s claws, holding some sort of bottle in its lion paw and squeezing the bulb sticking out of it with its eagle claw. A puff of apple scent sprayed right into Twinkle’s eyes, followed by a squirt of lemon, nettle, blueberry, mint, ragweed, guava, and a whole series of scents that Twinkle could not separate out, except for the last squirt of skunk.

The Dragonlord gave a bellow and grabbed for the strange creature, clutching it in his other clawed hand and squeezing. Twinkle could not see exactly what was happening due to the tears streaming down her face from her nasal passages being nearly swollen shut, but the claw she was on lurched violently several times, and she found herself clinging to one talon as the massive dragon swatted and breathed fire at the other creature.

“Whoa, there! Hold on, big fellow.” A rope coiled around the dragon, binding his forelimbs to his chest and nearly crushing Twinkle against his furnace-like neck. “Ah don’t think you’re really gettin’ the hang of this, pardner. You see, you’re the entertainment, and I’m the entertainee.”

Somehow, the odd creature was now hovering in front of the Dragonlord, sitting on a wooden chair with a gigantic hat stuck over his horns. He spat to one side and flipped a coil of rope over the Dragonlord’s mouth, which had just started to open in order to breathe fire again.

“Hello, sir,” said Twinkle as politely as she could. Just because a creature had unimaginable powers, did not mean they needed to be treated rudely. “My name is Twinkle Twinkle. We were looking for the Dragonlord’s last child. Have you seen him?”

“A dragon, you say? Hm…” The creature drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, which drummed its fingers on the arm of the creature in turn, then rang a brass cymbal. “I do believe I saw a dragon playing Mountainball just a short time ago. But enough about such boring things. All dragons do is shout and blow fire. What kind of creature are you?”

With a poof of magic, the chair vanished and the draconequus reappeared directly in front of Twinkle’s nose, still holding the rope. He leaned closer, his glowing yellow eyes nearly closed in a cruel squint as he examined Twinkle from ears to tail, then gave out a delighted squeal.

“Oh, I do love playing with my toys. When that pesky dragon let me out of my prison, I was looking forward to seeing what you ponies had been up to, only to find you all gone.”

“They’re all dead,” said Twinkle as the bitter cold of the area began to soak into her coat again. “They froze. I’m the only one left.”

“Really?” A series of strobing signs appeared above Twinkle’s head, all flashing ‘Liar!’ in rainbow colors. “I’ll bet all of those delightful toys traveled somewhere warm, and forgot to bring me along. Well?” The draconequus cocked an eyebrow, which aimed a sharp tiny spear at the Dragonlord’s nearby eye. “Are you going to try to talk me out of tracking them down?”

“It doesn’t really matter what I say,” said Twinkle. “You’re going to do whatever you want. I could never stop you. Even the Dragonlord could not stop you.”

“Oh, come on!” huffed the creature while thumping one foot against the Dragonlord’s chest. “You’re supposed to fight, like old Scalebutt here or his pesky little child. How about we play a game? If you win, I’ll leave the ponies alone, and if you lose, I get to do whatever I want with them.” He extended an arm, which had a number of colorful gambling machines on it along with decks of cards and a tiny little crane dipping into a glass box full of goldfish.

“You’ll cheat and win,” said Twinkle through chattering teeth. “You’re too strong and unreliable to be trusted, or the unicorns would not have locked you away. You didn’t even tell us your name.”

“I’m Twinkle Twinkle,” announced the creature in Twinkle’s voice, then shook his head and thumped his forehead against one claw until a number of tiny unicorns fell out of his furry ears. “I swear, that whiny little voice of yours gets into your head and just won’t leave. My name,” he pronounced boldly, sweeping into a bow, “is obvious.”

By this time, Twinkle had curled up as much as she could to save heat, and could barely see above the dragon’s claw that was holding her to the Dragonlord’s chest. “H-hello, Mister Obvious. C-could you let us g-go now?”

Obvious laughed, a cruel and heartless kind of amused that Twinkle had only heard before from a pair of small colts who liked to pull wings off flies. “I like you,” chuckled the draconequus. “You’re pleasantly stupid. For the record, my name is Discord,” he announced, holding up some sort of music player that ran on black disks and a wind-up crank.

“Hello, Mister D-d-discord,” said Twinkle while shivering.

“Die!” bellowed the Dragonlord, who had managed to get the rope off his muzzle. He breathed out in an intense fiery blast that encompassed Discord and wiped the creature away like a scrap of parchment in a furnace. The Dragonlord’s wings snapped out and he climbed up into the frosty sky, still holding Twinkle in one clenched fist. She did not mind too much, because his crushing embrace was at least warm and helped put out the smoldering fires in her coat from where she had been just a little close to the blast of fire that had destroyed Discord.

“You, I don’t like,” sounded a voice from nowhere and everywhere at once. “Tell you what. Why don’t the two of you get to know each other while I go reintroduce myself to the rest of your kind.”

There was a sharp snapping noise, and the world went mad.

- Ω - -

Twinkle was falling. She had fallen before, but this was a special kind of fall, with a lot more of her going through the process. By instinct, she rolled and spread her wings as wide as she could while being careful not to drop the precious little squishy thing in her… claws. The shock of realization made her do something she had never done before in her life.

Don’t panic! Wings out to glide! Don’t crush the me in my claws!

Her heart was beating just as hard as it could inside her gigantic chest, a cavernous space filled with churning fire, heaving lungs, and the weirdest sensation of tension. She turned her head and looked around with short, jerky motions, trying to spot the odd creature who had…

...who had…

She was a dragon now. No, Twinkle was in the body of the Dragonlord, which by process of elimination, meant that the Dragonlord was in the body of—

“Die!” screamed a tiny voice from inside her clenched claws. “Die and give me my body back! Burn in infinite fire! I’ll tear your liver out!”

From this altitude, and with dragon eyes, Twinkle could see forever. The mountains which made up much of Unicornia were missing, but by squinting a little, she could see far away where they had gone. A group of them were actually dancing around in a circle, with a limp dragonic form held triumphantly overhead. Er… Overpeak? It appeared as if they were playing some sort of violent game, an opinion only reinforced when the mountains broke into teams again, lining up with the dead dragon being put down on the open field between them. When the mountains rushed together, the dragon was kicked even further away, and a mad scramble started, which shook Twinkle out of her distraction by the emotion she felt rising in her chest.

She was frightened. For the first time in ever, Twinkle was afraid. She had always been a smallish and weak unicorn, but in this huge, fierce body, she was absolutely terrified. She was afraid at how far from the ground she was flying, afraid that she would somehow crush her frail unicorn body in her clenched claws, afraid of… being afraid.

Ordinary ponies must feel like this every day.

The sun promptly plummeted out of the sky and the moon rocketed up to the apex of its travel, while the stars spread out in the forms of various profanities in the Griffon language. It could only have been the action of that strange Discord creature, particularly since one of the bands of stars spelled out ‘Discord’s back!’

Neither ponies or dragons had the power to fight Discord alone. Not even if they managed to gather together with all the other intelligent races of the world. The magic he had shown was totally unlike anything Twinkle had ever seen before, but there was one hint to his origins that she had to face despite the fear which clenched her bowels.

She angled her glide to the rocky gaps where the bases of her childhood home had once been.

- Ω - -

To reach her destination, Twinkle had to fly over the Great Chasm at the base of the former mountains. The Bridge was gone, of course, centuries worth of unicorn construction and improvement wiped out by an errant mountain foot, but the crevice remained. Her acute dragon eyes could see down the sharp slopes deep into the looming darkness where a few shattered wooden fragments of the Royal Wagons stuck out of the endless snow, but nothing else. She had hoped in some corner of her new draconic heart to see an indication that there had been survivors, maybe a hoofprint, or a fire for warmth. The absence of any such evidence of life drove a painful spear into her chest, sharper than the icy cold, much like the Dragonlord must have felt when seeing each of his dead children.

She took a moment to mourn in a way that she never could have before. Sorrow was far too closely related to anger and fear for her to understand before Discord had swapped her defective unicorn body with this powerful but just as deeply flawed creature. She hovered there for a short time, giving little puffs of warm breath over her cold claws whenever the unicorned Dragonlord began to run low on profanity, then turned to deal with the main reason she had remained in this frozen and dead land.

Twinkle Twinkle had heard about the storage vaults beneath the mountains of Unicornia, like all foals. She had even gotten a glimpse of an artist’s rendition of the layout. If she had been in her original body, there would have been no confusion at all in her search for the most secure vaults among the shattered remnants of stone and rubble, but this body held memories in a frustrating fog that only got foggier the further in the past she was remembering. It made her growl and shake the fist with her original body inside, which reminded her to breathe over it once in a while to keep the shivering unicorn warm. Thankfully, the Dragonlord’s child had left a trail by clawing his way through the maze of passages first, ripping into one vault door after another in search of treasure beyond his comprehension, until the last door which concealed something more than anydragon could be prepared for.

The room behind the torn-off door was a featureless white, a stark absence of color in a perfect sphere broken only by the hole created by the Dragonlord’s child. A being of chaos would have certainly found the imprisonment here maddening, if it had not been mad already. The bone-piercing cold only made it more obvious that there was no way any ponies could survive to entice the being back into its ancient prison and restore the seal again. Even her own chilled dragon body was sluggish, and anything that gained the attention of the playful mountains would certainly be squashed in minutes.

She had just turned to leave when a fragment of the broken door shifted and the corner of a frost-covered book was revealed. It was difficult to pick up without damaging since her claws were so large and she did not have her unicorn magic, and impossible to turn the pages. Since the book and the shattered prison were so close together, they had to be related in some way. Perhaps there was some history of this Discord creature concealed inside, a valuable treasure she could hoard away into her cave and keep forever—

Twinkle broke off from that enticing thought when a growing faint tremor moved up through her cold talons. The animated mountains were returning, so she spread her wings and climbed up into the icy skies. Quite obviously, if the book did contain some way of imprisoning the creature, dragons were the last species to properly explore the possibility.

Keeping the precious book clenched in one clawed fist and the cursing body of her former self in the other, Twinkle Twinkle took to the skies again and bent her path to the south, flapping for all she was worth as the sun and moon played tag in the sky.

- Ω - -

The vast wings of the Dragonlord ate up distance with an unstoppable appetite. The ground below shifted from snowblown white to patchy green in short order, then to a black and white pattern of squares and parallelograms with herds of tiny creatures darting around them like mice. Well, not exactly like mice, because the mice below seemed to be the size of elephants, and the creatures being chased more like warped and distorted animals. Maybe cats. It would fit with the warped sense of humor she was beginning to recognize.

At the moment, Twinkle had something more important to deal with. Several golden-armored pegasi and griffons carrying spears were climbing up into the sky, obviously with the intent of intercepting her. To be honest, Twinkle had not really thought about the rest of the diaspora while she was flying here. She had been too obsessed with keeping her unicorn body warm, thinking about the book, and trying to come up with an explanation to tell Princess Platinum that would not sound as if she had lost her mind.

“Halt!” bellowed the front griffon in what was supposed to be an intimidating fashion, if not for the fact he was outweighed by an enormous ratio from the dragon he was threatening. “Come no further, dragon, or I will—”

“Get out of my way!” bellowed Twinkle Twinkle as a flare of unanticipated rage roared to life in her chest and burst out of her nostrils in the form of smoke. “I must speak with Princess Platinum!”

The armored pegasi and griffons alike were set back by her outburst, and scattered like pigeons when she followed it up with a massive wingblast of wind. Tucking her wings up, Twinkle barreled through the flying defenders and angled her precipitous plummet in the direction they seemed to be guarding. Even though the signs of Discord’s presence were all over the place, the green valley was filled with square shrubs and small trees around which the ponies clustered in small groups, one of which caught Twinkle’s eye.

Landing was much more difficult than flying, and Twinkle hit the ground hard enough she almost reflexively caught herself with both forehands, which would have been a very terminal ending to the unicorn mare held in her right claws. There was no doubt at all that the pony she had nearly crashed in front of was Princess Platinum, mostly due to the regal unicorn’s bearing under the unexpected visitor, but also because of the way her formerly white coat caught the sunlight and glinted the way a pony-sized lump of platinum would if given a brisk shining.

“Stop!” bellowed Twinkle at the sudden rush forward of the other guards, more than eager to sacrifice their own lives in defense of their metallic princess. “I have not come to fight!”

“Die! Die! Kill them all!” filtered out from between Twinkle’s foreclaws.

“Ignore that,” growled Twinkle. “I’ve come with an offer of truce between dragons and ponies.” She snaked her head up and looked around, then crouched back down into the growing circle of watching ponies to look the platinum princess right in the eyes. “We have little time before he returns. Here, take this.”

Showing all the poise expected for royalty, Princess Platinum floated the book out of Twinkle’s open palm and regarded it blandly. “A book?”

“The creature—” started Twinkle, not wanting to say his name “—was imprisoned by the unicorns some time ago within a cell in the Great Archives. He bears a chaotic magic greater than dragonkind and ponykind together. With that book, you may be able to find a way to fight him, to imprison him again.”

“Kill him!” fumed the unicorn in Twinkle’s other clawed hand. “Tear him to shreds!”

“Yes,” said Princess Platinum, looking a little distracted by the vengeful noises coming from the dragon’s clenched fist. “We shall need something more if ponykind is to trust you, dragon.”

There was a momentary hesitation in Twinkle’s scaled breast before the blazing fire of anger filled her again. “You dare doubt my word?” she bellowed, regardless of the possibility that it might attract the chaotic creature. “Do you know how much work I went through in order to keep your ponies safe? There are twenty two ponies taken by dragons that I managed to save.”

Platinum’s glittering eyes grew large. “My father,” she breathed. “Is one of them my father?”

“No,” said Twinkle, feeling the chill of that dark chasm again, and the small splinters of broken wood and tumbled stone at the bottom. “Your father is dead, as are too many ponies and dragons alike.” She tightened her grip on the angry Dragonlord to cut down on the frothing threats. “It is my fault that the creature was released. I sent the children of the Dragonlord to the vaults of Unicornia, thinking that the Windigo would kill them. Instead, they broke the seals and released it upon us both.”

“Then give us the ponies you have captured,” responded Platinum immediately. “Allow us to return them to their families so we can confront this challenge together. Show us that you can be trusted.”

“No.” Twinkle was not certain if the abrupt response came from her natural draconic urge to keep everything she could lay her claws on, or if maybe there was a logical reason. “They’re safer where they are now,” she continued out of reflex. “When you have dealt with your problem again, send us word and we shall talk. Until then.”

With one abrupt motion, Twinkle shot up into the sky, scattering pegasi and griffons in all directions, and leaving the pony settlement behind in a matter of minutes. Nothing could catch a dragon in full flight. They were masters of the air, with domain over the entire world. More powerful than—

Twinkle took a quick glance behind herself, thankful that the noise she had imagined was not the odd, overpowering monster who could destroy her without even trying. She flew on for a while, far too aware of the tiny unicorn in her claws, and how it would only take a single motion to reduce the fragile body to paste.

Bereft of her exceptional memory and thrust into a body which considered rage and physical violence a part of every conversation, she felt an unusual empathy for this ‘Discord’ creature. She could understand both sides of the coin, both the powerless and the powerful, the great and the small. It did not help her current situation any, but she could wrap her new draconic mind around it without hesitation.

Things were so much simpler as a dragon, but not any less dangerous. The detailed way Twinkle had experienced life before had turned flatter and more stark, much the same way the other dragons would turn on their former Dragonlord if they discovered she… that is he was actually a puny pony.

All of her life, Twinkle’s solution to problems was to remain out of the discussion while stronger and more verbal ponies argued about solving them. Only after they had exhausted all of their options was she able to slip a suggestion into the discussion and let themselves be convinced to the solution she had been able to see all along. That would not work now, because her mind was no longer the inviolate strict procession of rules and memories that made solutions leap out fully formed and ready for implementation.

Time. It all came down to buying time for the ponies to research the contents of the book. It was the only way she could think of to stop Discord, but during that time, the dragons would be drawn to his arrogance and whimsy. Dragons could not resist a challenge, much like moths could not resist a candle’s flame.

They would all die for his amusement, just like the Dragonlord’s children.

To save the dragons, she was going to need help, and there was only one place to get it.

As the Dragonlord.

11. Love, War, and Family

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Love, War, and Family

“I have stared into the depths of the cosmos, unleashed powers that other mortals could never comprehend, and bent reality to my will, but I shall never understand the females of any species if I live a thousand years.”
— Starswirl the Bearded

As time went on in the odd uncountable fashion of the unreliable Sun and Moon, Twinkle began to realize how much her frozen former life had changed. Not only because she was in a dragon body, feeling real emotions for the first time. It was because other ponies and dragons were depending on her. She had been cared for her entire life by parents and servants, pampered like a delicate flower. Now, she was caring for an entire collection of strangers, thrust together by chaotic fate and placed within her claws for protection from a violent world.

Still, some things remained the same no matter what body she was in. Ponykind’s knowledge of dragons was extremely thin, so in the slender possibility that Twinkle survived, it was her responsibility to bring back as much knowledge as possible. Quiet discussions with Brass filled in a number of her gaps about dragon culture and behavior, but one thing stood out as something that dragons took totally for granted.

“Now, carefully breathe out,” said the Dragonlord to Teakettle with her face almost into his mouth. “Focus on that peculiar feeling that you told me about before and set the leaves alight.”

The annoying dragon meekly breathed out across the pile of dry leaves, causing them to flash into smoke almost instantly. Despite a light breeze, the results of her experiment coiled up into the sky and vanished without the expected drifting, leaving no traces of smoke behind.

“Interesting,” rumbled Twinkle. “Move aside. The next pile is mine. If this ability can be taught, it is valuable and you will be rewarded.”

“Really?” Teakettle had an eager look in his oversized eyes that made Twinkle aware of how unexpectedly bright the awkward dragon had proven so far. “Is it worth a pony of my own?”

Suppressing a much more gentle response, Twinkle cuffed the smaller dragon across the back of the head. “Dragons are not gentle with them. Only Ruby has displayed the intelligence and trust to shelter the ponies until the threat of Discord is removed and our two races may seek a way to live without destroying each other. Until we can understand how fragile they are, other dragons—including yourself—will not be permitted to be alone with any of them, including Nova. Thankfully, he survived Wheezy’s treatment or dragonkind would be far poorer. Still, he did survive, unlike several of their more fragile number. We shall see.”

Focusing her breath down to what Twinkle could remember of the whistling dragon’s fire, he focused on the last pile of leaves and let his fire consume them. This time, the whirl of smoke curled up into the air and vanished almost instantly.

“Success,” rumbled Twinkle. “I think. The leaves went somewhere, unlike the fire used to store treasure in our second bellies. That makes five types of dragonfire so far, and there has to be more.”

“Five?” asked Teakettle with a sideways tilt to his head. “My special fire, regular fire, and treasure fire is only three.”

“Nesting fire,” said Twinkle, still furiously flogging her draconic mind into thinking about where the smoke had gone. “When a dragoness breathes out her fire around her nest as a warning to any male dragon. Then hatching fire to bring the dragonlings out of their eggs once they have matured as far as they will progress.”

“Oh, yes,” said Teakettle, his eyes growing even wider than usual. “Don’t mess with eggs, even if you can sneak into a nest. New mothers have hot fire.”

“That would fit the theory,” mused Twinkle, scratching her chin with one talon. “Your battle fire is hotter when you’re not carrying treasure in your second belly, so once a female breathes out her special fire, she’s more powerful to defend her eggs against jealous dragons and predators. A weak female who can’t defend her eggs can’t reproduce, while a strong one produces many young dragons.”

It was quite obvious that Teakettle was not a deep thinker, but he was trying to struggle through the concept. “Strong dragons make many strong young dragons, but weak dragons—”

“Intelligence can be as powerful as dragon might,” said Twinkle. “Smart and strong can defeat smart or strong.”

Teakettle nodded enthusiastically. “I’m really smart and you’re awfully strong. And you’re smarter now than you’ve ever been before.”

It was dangerous territory for the odd-sounding dragon to think his way into, made worse when Teakettle stopped talking and just looked over at Ruby’s cave for a long moment.

“Dumb dragons or ponies would have been destroyed by Discord already,” said Twinkle in a low rumble of menace. “We all need to be smarter, or we’re all going to die.”

“Like that weird little pony you took north to—” Teakettle had been talking slowly with only a trace of his normal whistling speech, but he stopped abruptly, swallowed, then looked up at the considerably larger Dragonlord, who smiled back with excessive teeth displayed.

“Think about your next words,” said Twinkle, “or they could be your last.”

Teakettle did not say anything, but a positive stream of emotions flowed across his expressive face. He was obviously thinking something that Twinkle would prefer he not, but she could not bring herself to kill him right there in order to keep the secret of her body swapping with the real Dragonlord. After all, she was not the Dragonlord. She was both smart and strong as she said.

Thankfully, Teakettle remained silent, which was another credit in his favor. Dragons could think for a very long time before speaking, far longer than Twinkle had expected a few scant weeks ago. Ponies tended to action before the facts were fully known, much like she could see Nova scurrying out of Ruby’s cave and headed in their direction at a full gallop.

As he drew near, Nova’s appearance only seemed stranger. His mane and tail were covered with twigs and leaves, leaving a trail of debris behind him. Twinkle did not have her usual intelligence in the Dragonlord’s body, but she had an exceptional sense of hearing, and she could hear Teakettle suck in a quick breath and say, “So that is what my fire does?”

Slowing as he approached, Nova eventually dropped into a full bow that would not have been out of place in King Bullion’s court, although with enough leaves and twigs still in his shortened mane that he most likely would have been thrown out as some sort of beggar.

“I think he is interfering with us,” started Nova breathlessly without any of his normal dancing around the point. “These leaves and twigs started dropping all around me a few minutes ago, and I can’t find any pony magic that— What are you doing?”

It had to be a record for the shortest magical transport ever. Twinkle’s fire enveloped a small pile of dry grass nearby, and moments later the resulting smoke materialized above Nova’s horn in a cascade of smoldering hay. She almost apologized for the inconvenience, except that was not a very Dragonlord behavior, so she laughed instead.

It was a natural action for the Dragonlord and greatly pleasing to Twinkle because she had never laughed as a pony, ever. A good husband would be able to make his spouse amused, and in her frail form, she was so crippled in that regard that she almost wanted to remain a dragon when Discord was defeated. Of course, that was not an option. Chaos magic was inherently unstable, and transformations would go back to their original state upon its removal, or at least that was what Nova had deduced during one of their earlier conversations.

When that happened, Twinkle would face an entirely unwinnable challenge as a frail pony set against the mighty Dragonlord. Until that happened, she was determined to take every opportunity to experience life on this side of the scales. That included laughing until she could barely breathe at the look that Nova was giving her.

“Unfair!” he proclaimed. “I’m the smartest unicorn in the world. I should be discovering new magics, not you.” He frowned at a loose leaf for a long moment until it vanished in a swirl of smoke, which Twinkle found to be even more amusing.

Or at least until she coughed, and the leaf appeared in a burst of flame.

“Ha!” declared Nova.

“Ha indeed,” rumbled Twinkle. She took the smoldering leaf in the tips of her claws and examined it while Nova continued talking.

“As a form of communication, it is quite limited,” he admitted. “Still, we should be able to use it to talk to Teakettle after he is sent to Princess Platinum’s court.”

“What?” coughed Teakettle with a whiff of steam out of his nose. “Why would I—”

“Because you know about my wife,” continued Nova flatly in a tone of voice that Twinkle had begun to dread. “You will be unable to resist telling your fellow dragons, and so the Dragonlord will be attacked and killed by his own kind, leaving all dragons thrown into chaos and destroyed in turn by Discord. The only way for dragonkind to survive is for you to be sent to the growing pony lands, there to take service as an Ambassador.”

“Ambassador?” said Teakettle, sounding out the strange word with a few whistling tweets from his nose as he worked his way to the end. “But if you… I mean the Dragonlord…”

“Nova has never been wrong,” said Twinkle, towering over the smaller dragon. “If I am not who you think I am, I would tear you into pieces now that I have taken the secret of your special fire so that I might keep it for my own. Correct?”

“Err…” managed Teakettle while backing up slowly, matched by Twinkle’s slow forward movement.

“You will be… rewarded for your service,” said Twinkle. “It is an exchange.”

Teakettle stopped backing up. “Rewarded?”

Twinkle let her teeth show. It felt good, not as good as sinking her jaws into the overly smart dragon and ending his threat for good, but it was a mixture of dragon and pony that was the best choice for all of them. “You obeyed the Dragonlord’s command to bring your new pony into Ruby’s collection. There she thrives and grows in value. Obey this command and your reward will be… greater. I cannot say for certain because the future wavers like a flame before us, but it will be better than the destruction Nova saw by far. Besides,” she had to add, “you wanted a pony. Now you will have thousands. You’ll just have to be very cautious playing with them, because if you harm even one…”

Teakettle swallowed. “You’ll kill me?”

“They will kill you.” This time Twinkle exposed every sharp tooth with a mighty grin. “Ponies change to meet threats. It has been several moons since dragonkind happened upon a loose caravan of tattered refugees, and the conflict killed many on each side. Threaten them now and your death will be swift. They have little to lose, and they know how to kill dragons quite well now.”

Nodding rapidly, Teakettle cast a quick look all around for any unwanted listeners, then slowed. “So… What is it like? To be a pony, that is.”

It was a complicated question with a far more complicated answer than Twinkle was able to come up with using the Dragonlord’s mind. She settled for arranging herself more comfortably on the grass and pointing with one talon to Nova. “You’re the smartest unicorn in the world. You answer him.”

Thankfully, Nova did not casually dismiss the question or give some meaningless quip as a response. He paused, considered his words carefully, and eventually said, “I’m unsure. Perhaps after you have spent some time among our kind observing us from a different viewpoint, you will be able to answer the question far better than myself.”

* * ✹ * *

Her encounter with Teakettle’s unexpected insight made Twinkle exhibit some pony caution instead of her Dragonlord arrogance. The longer she stayed around the other dragons, the greater chance that one or more of them would come to the same conclusion, and the same solution would not work twice.

Since Ruby had already breathed her nesting fire in the cave, the remaining ponies were about as safe as anything was in the world. No dragon, male or female, would approach a nesting female without serious consequences. That applied to the Dragonlord also, or so Twinkle surmised and had no intention of putting that theory to the fiery test.

She still wanted to see the eggs, just out of curiosity.

Instead, Twinkle spread her wings and exalted in the pleasure of flight far, far away from ponies, both hers and the southern lands where the refugees from Unicornia had settled. Her role was much as many of her dragons, who had been dispersed to the far corners of the world with orders not to interfere with other races, even if there was treasure sitting around unguarded. Particularly if such a tempting treasure were to just appear out of nowhere. Teakettle’s special fire proved useful for communication, although neither Nova or her new diplomat put anything down on paper that might have clued Discord in any way. In all odds, the draconequus was just as smart as them all put together, and had no desire to be returned to his imprisonment in whatever form the ponies were able to devise. An intercepted letter could destroy every chance of normality returning.

In another time, her journeys to visit distant races of Equestria could have been enormously satisfying. Even with the fate of the world hanging over her, she still found it fascinating to discover races and places that had never been mentioned in any Unicornian book, although she planned on rectifying that shortfall if she got out of this alive. There were even underwater creatures who dared to speak with the terrifying monster, provided she kept her motions to a minimum and did not roar like normal dragons.

The abnormal had become the normal so gradually that when Twinkle found herself clinging to a narrow ledge on the middle of a rocky mountain, she found herself considering the best way to return when Discord had been trapped. After all, the ibex had been a fascinating conversationalist — once he was sure the dragon would not eat him — in all aspects of their species history and abilities. Well, except one.

“So you’ve always been able to do this?” she asked, turning her head sideways in order to get a better look at the tiny ibex hooves and the even tinier cracks and notches in the granite that was supporting the owner over a very impressive drop. There was a quiet knocking noise with each bite as the goat tapped his huge curved horns against the cliff face, sounding very loud in the relative silence of the isolated area. “I mean before Discord.”

The ibex continued to chew without a response for a while, which was fine by Twinkle since her parents had emphasized the importance of proper manners, and the amount of effort the ibex had to expend to reach the one small weed deserved some kind of reward.

“Yes,” said the nameless ibex before picking his way up some invisible trail to the next tuft of greenery sticking out of the cliff face.

“And it’s not magic or some sort of glue?” she asked.

“No,” said Discord from just by her left shoulder, which almost made Twinkle fall off the cliff when she startled. “Not everything in the world that’s odd and funny is my fault, after all. Isn’t that right—” the draconequus smiled with a mouthful of sharp dragon teeth “—Twinkle Twinkle?”

All of the thought that Twinkle had considered for the next time she met Discord went straight out the window, although she did not have a window available, so the cliff had to do. She lunged for the smirking creature, only catching herself with one claw partway to Discord’s neck.

He tutted quietly under his breath and shook his head. “I’m starting to think there’s no pony still inside that lizard shell.” He stuck out his forked tongue and gave a hiss.

“Is your tongue bifurcated normally or did you do that just to distract me like you changed your teeth?” asked Twinkle before she could stop herself.

“Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!” An entire collection of banners, bells, and streamers opened up behind Discord, all exclaiming ‘PONY’ in huge letters, or at least until Twinkle breathed fire across them and they went up in a roar of flames.

Discord coughed and waved one paw to clear the smoke away. “Okay, maybe a little teeny bit of dragon in there too. It’s a fascinating combination. I’ve peeked in on you from time to time, but there’s just so much to do around the world.”

“And creatures who need their lives upended,” growled Twinkle.

“Bored little things who need a little excitement,” countered Discord as he snapped his fingers. “Like this.”

The ibex continued to graze on the tiny cluster of weeds despite his hooves having turned into large discs that appeared to be stuck to the vertical stone cliff face. With a series of popping noises, the ibex moved to the next weed and continued grazing as if nothing had happened.

“I presume some of your victims are more appreciative of your ‘gifts’ than others,” said Twinkle flatly.

“There are a few stuffy humorless sticks out there,” he admitted. “Two ponies in particular who you are responsible for.”

“Me?” Twinkle hoped the ponies had found some different way to stop Discord than their previous featureless mirrored chamber. A being of chaos trapped in that kind of static prison would be forever surrounded by maddening order, forever unable to escape his own attributes. His current insanity was certainly less severe than she expected, and the weeks or months since his release had moderated even that. Perhaps he had experienced a change in perspective even greater than Twinkle.

“Not likely.” Discord tore a sheet of parchment off the top of Twinkle’s head and considered the last line of writing on it. “My perspective is ideal.”

“For you,” said Twinkle. “I notice you didn’t swap places with any other creatures. How can you understand what they want without some sort of empathy? I never would have understood just why dragons need to be protected without—” she flexed a massive claw “—this form. The diplomat I sent to the ponies is probably the most pony-friendly dragon I could find, and even he has problems with his position.”

Discord made to respond, then paused with one talon raised on his claws to point at her. “I forgot just how annoying you were. I’m going to deal with those other two pests and be right back. Maybe you’d be less of a pest as a mosquito. Or a slime.”

Then there was another popping noise and the ledge where Twinkle crouched was empty again. The ibex did not seem to mind and continued grazing on the odd sprout here or there on the cliff while Twinkle thought furiously about nothing at all. It did not seem to work since a scroll of parchment trailed down from her head with a constant tick-tick-tick of an unseen machine.

“That was Discord?” asked the ibex between bites. “Seemed unhappy.”

It was true, but in an odd direction. “He has everything he could possibly want,” she mused out loud. “He can go anywhere, do anything, but he has no peers. He has nopony to fight against, nopony to defend, and no family or friends. I feel sorry for him.”

She had not intended to say that out loud and really did not believe it until she thought about it for a time. The ibex occupied his time with chewing, although he was the first to grunt in a generally positive direction. “Sounds like he needs beat. No young buck can get sense knocked into their noggin until they get knocked down a ledge or two.”

It felt more comfortable for Twinkle to have a good distance between her and the ground, which was going to be a problem if Discord was defeated and she returned to her regular form. Perhaps she could eventually get a tower for a house and do her thinking out on a balcony, if Nova’s predictions were reliable. There was little more that Twinkle could do to encourage such a result, even as the Dragonlord. Sometimes, becoming powerful meant you had less power than ever.

And then…

The world shifted below Twinkle in a blur of motion, sky and ground interchangeable parts in a giant puzzle flung in all directions, like being hit by an exploding carnival booth and covered in toffee in a blizzard. There was absolutely nothing for an extended period of time, and then darkness flooded into Twinkle’s senses.

It was a familiar darkness, filled with a familiar scent that overwhelmed her own noxious odor. She had hooves again, and a horn that she lit up immediately to look around the small chamber she was stuck inside, and the rather large boulder shoved in front of it as a crude door. All of the habits of her life, the memories up to when Discord swapped her mind with the Dragonlord, every twinge and ache fought for her attention, but one overwhelming priority trumped them all.

“Help!” she called from a dry and sore throat. “Discord’s spell is broken, so the Dragonlord will be headed this way! Anypony!!”

There was no reply.

1. Fire in the Promised Land

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Fire In The Promised Land

“Our kingdom shall last forever.”
— King Bullion of Unicornia

The traces of the wagon harness bit into Peridot’s shoulders as hard as she pulled, etching lines of fire down her flanks to her burning hooves. Fire was good, fire was the friend of a unicorn, in fireplaces and in ovens, bringing heat to the world and food to the belly, but this terrible fire ate into the aching muscles beneath her coat and threatened to rob her of life even while it burned the last vestige of fat from her pampered ribs and noble chest. Soon, she would be out of fat to burn and she would waste away like the others while she walked, ever onwards, away from her home and in the direction of a mere promise.

Words. They were such fragile things when the Windigo had first appeared, but for unicorns, words meant far more than the deadly reality of the blanketing snow and the piercing cold. Harsh words had been exchanged between King Bullion and his beautiful daughter, Princess Platinum, when the ice and snow had begun to fall. He insisted the mysterious creatures were just another minor inconvenience within their precious nation, while Platinum predicted far worse. With each flake of snow, their heated conflict grew until the day when she took her wisest advisor and stormed out of the castle in a huff. For a time, the common ponies of Unicornia had considered her departure for distant lands to be the foolish act of a petulant princess who saw dangers where there were none.

But the snow had continued to fall, and the screams of the Windigo grew closer.

When Princess Platinum returned to the frantic snow-packed city of Pinnacle with not just her advisor, but representatives of the earth ponies and the pegasi, Peridot and her remaining family had believed her words. The princess spoke of a land far away, filled with a new hope for their kind, where the deadly winter would not follow. In short order, the new representatives of the three tribes united to bring word to all of the freezing ponies, for if they stayed in their beloved city, they all would die. Even King Bullion bent to the harsh reality of their situation and called for something unheard of in the history of Unicornia.

Exodus.

❄ ❄ ❄

While the days had slowly passed, the endless trudging through drifts of snow had progressed to slogging through slush, then mud, until finally sprigs of grass peeked up in clumps, giving weight to Princess Platinum’s promise of a new home. To either side, as far as the eye could see, ponies of all types trudged along just like her. The strict cultural divisions of all three tribes were thrown into the ash-heap of history, just like the golden spires and shimmering fountains of her homeland, now buried beneath endless snow and ice.

All of the ponies in the exodus had suffered loss. Peridot’s eldest son had foolishly joined an expedition to the highest peaks in the Unicorn Range to confront the Windigo, and had been mourned when only two frostbitten earth pony servants staggered back to the city with tales of the brave unicorns turned to ice and shattered into bloody red shards. Her other son had been with King Bullion’s escort during the terrifying descent from their mountain home and was engulfed in the avalanche which had swept the cream of unicorn society into a churning ball of ice and stones cascading down the mountain into the jagged crevice far below.

Peridot, at least, admitted to the death of her sons. Princess Platinum had stated quite firmly that her father was merely lost, and at any moment he would return to take his proper place as king. In his absence, she had refused to take up the mantle of queen while she roamed through the mass of fleeing ponies, giving reassurance and confidence where it was the most needed, and even taking her own turn under the harness of any wagon which seemed to be flagging during their journey.

Even the most arrogant and aristocratic unicorn remaining could not do less when their own pristine princess was knee-deep in mud, pulling the wagon of a common earth pony servant. If the aristocracy had their way, the wagons would be piled high with the contents of their mansions, heaped with statues and piles of gold while earth ponies bent to their proper place under the harness. Instead, the royal family had relentlessly stalked through the evacuation of the city and ordered their priorities with steel discipline.

There was space in the wagons for only the most needed of things. Sculptors wept outside their snow-packed galleries while they collected only their smallest tools for the trip, while poets stood in the streets and read aloud from their works before feeding them into the fires for warmth. Princess Platinum had even thrown her crown into the rubbish a dozen times, only to have one pony or another retrieve it and carry it in her place. Food, foals and the bare essentials were all that made it onto the massive caravan, but while the punishing journey went on and on, the departure from their ice-choked city left a gruesome trail.

Hardly a night went by without one pony or another found dead from fatigue or stress, left behind under whatever cover could be scraped together when the wagons once again departed with the light of day. Broken wheels and trash, discarded tools and unneeded material trinkets, all scattered across the shallow graves of the dead while the ponies moved ever onward. They were hungry, sick, soaked in sweat and bloody with the scratches of ice and rocks, but they still trudged along toward the warm new land which Princess Platinum had promised.

The cultural divides of ponykind had cracked when the Windigo first appeared, but now were shattered completely in exchange for simple survival. The distinctions between pegasi, unicorns or earth ponies no longer mattered when the day was done and the herd gathered together in small clumps to give in to their exhaustion.

The breakdown of classes had even struck Peridot where she least expected it. The eldest child of her senior servant was now showing the first signs of being swollen with foal, and the pregnancy could only be the result of her own lost son’s attentions during the cold, dark nights. At one time so few moons ago, the possibly hornless foal would have been an embarrassment to her noble House, gotten rid of or hidden to conceal the shame, but now Peridot could only pray to whatever unknown gods of this new land that her sole grandchild would survive, even if she herself perished. Undoubtedly, there were many in the vast herd in much the same situation, because the cold of the unceasing winter had driven together pairs of ponies who never would have associated before. Warmth was warmth after all, and the heat of passion could drive away the chill of the Windigo, if only for a brief time.

The slow descent of the Sun triggered a practiced reaction for the grazing ponies in front of the line of wagons. The wide line of foragers, spread apart so each scattered blade of grass could be eaten instead of trod upon, slowly began to condense together in tired clumps and groups. Campsites were started, with little dots of campfires from precious scavenged wood while the tired ponies gathered to warm themselves. Soon it would be time for the Sun to be lowered below the horizon and the Moon raised. The wagons would provide shelter for the exhausted ponies during the terrifying darkness while the creatures of the night emerged to hunt, and when it came time for the unicorns to raise the Sun again, their journey would all start over again.

The slow wagons following behind the foragers did not reach their campsites until the Sun had touched the horizon, but Peridot Brings The Dawn did not hurry her actions when she shrugged free of the harness. Her task as Dawnbringer was passed to others for a time. The strain of raising the sun and moon had backlashed on her several days ago, and she had been told to not use her magic until it recovered. She took the news much like a pegasus being told not to fly or an earth pony not to walk, and had thrown herself into the only activity she could. She pulled the family wagon so the servants and her lone remaining daughter could graze on what little bits of grass stuck out above the scattered snow and mud while they plodded onward.

The earth pony servants and farmers who had been traveling with them already had a small campfire going with a pot of gooey oats starting to simmer by the time Peridot dropped her rump into an empty spot by the fire. She really did not need the warmth, as hours of walking had kept her warm, but it kept the cooling chill away when the clammy sweat on her coat began to finally evaporate. She accepted a bowl of watery oats from her daughter Twinkle, as the slender unicorn filly sat and watched her afterwards.

“Go on,” said Peridot, nodding toward the other ponies. “Your father is joining with the Nightbringers to raise the Moon. Prepare a place for him at the wagon when he is finished, and get some rest. I will be along shortly.”

“No, Mother.” It was a bit of a shock to hear her daughter talking, because Twinkle Twinkle had always been an extraordinarily quiet child, even before the snow had begun to fall. If still waters ran cool and deep as the old saying went, Twinkle’s waters were frozen solid and went down for many furlongs. She just sat there and watched, with her skinny sides showing so many ribs beneath her thin coat.

Twinkle was the same shade of pale wisteria as her mother, giving Peridot the sense of looking into some mystical mirror while she breathed and looked back into her dark violet eyes, so close to black as to be indistinguishable in the shadows. Her daughter lit her horn in a pale pink glow of magic and the bowl of watery oats floated closer to Peridot, with a spoon beginning to descend into it much the same way as she had fed the little filly years ago. “Eat,” said Twinkle.

Peridot obediently opened her mouth and accepted the first spoonful of oats from her daughter, keeping careful track of the level remaining until she held up one hoof. “Enough, Twinkle.”

Her daughter did not react, but just remained with the spoonful of oats hovering in front of Peridot’s lips. It took an astute observer to pick up on the subtle clues, because Twinkle was a frustratingly closed pony who never seemed to smile or frown, but her mother could sense the sharp tension inside her ebb slightly when Peridot accepted the last bite of oats and leaned over to give her quiet daughter a brief nuzzle. “Lie down,” said Peridot once she had finished chewing. “I have something which needs be done.”

It was odd to hold the cooling bowl in the crook of one hoof instead of her magic, but Peridot had been through the magical exhaustion of raising the sun before, and was used to the limitations of earth ponies. She waited until Twinkle had strode slowly off to the other side of the family wagon for her nightly resting spot before Peridot took several steps over to where the small family group of servants were gathered with their meager evening repast, and to Willowbark, who watched her approach.

“Dawnbringer Peridot,” said Willowbark, lowering herself into a deep bow alongside her family. “We are honored.”

“You are hungry,” said Peridot bluntly. “Eat.” She passed over the half-full bowl of oats to the reluctant young earth pony mare and fixed her with the most firm glare she could manage. “You carry my grandchild, but even if you did not, you were the favorite of my son, and I will not see you go without as long as I have breath in my body. Again I say to you. Eat.”

“I…” The young mare hesitated, looking back and forth among her family. “I do not deserve—”

“None of us deserve this,” said Peridot. “We have all lost much, your family and mine, as well as all ponykind. I say this not as the Mistress of House Starshine, nor as a unicorn, but as the mother-in-law I wish I was, standing by your side with my son as your husband. I cannot demand that you eat in order to keep your strength up, but I can ask. A third time I say to you. Eat.”

The mare stood quietly, without even a glance at her silent family behind her while she digested the impossible things her unicorn mistress had said. Then she bowed her head, stuck her nose in the bowl, and quietly ate until the last flake of oats was gone and the bottom of the bowl had been licked clean. “Thank you,” said Willowbark with eyes downcast once she had finished. “Thank you, Dawnbringer Peridot.”

“I…” Peridot hesitated, unwilling at first to make the unprecedented move, then flowed into the words a noble unicorn was never to say to a common earth pony. “I would ask for you to call me… Mother.”

The young earth pony was taken aback, looking up and blinking her dark blue eyes several times before asking, “Are you certain? The rest of the unicorns—”

“The rest of my pretentious kind can bite my cutie mark,” said Peridot while a small spark of ire rose up in her heart. “If you were good enough for my son, you are good enough for me.”

When Peridot returned to the other side of the family wagon, the thought continued to burn in her chest in a welcome warmth, even though everything else was still cold. Her exhausted husband had already collapsed next to one wheel with little Twinkle snuggled up to his side, but there was a small scrap of blanket on the ground next to them. The weather had warmed enough since their frigid departure from the city that they no longer needed to wrap themselves in every blanket they had been able to bring, but Twinkle was the most precious creation they had remaining, and they slept on either side of her to protect the last remaining fragment of their life together.

Peridot bent down painfully from the aches and twinges of her day in the harness only to find a small pile of damp grass placed right where she was to lay her head. Undoubtedly, either her husband or child had placed it there, gleaned from their meager grazing ahead of the wagon. With substantial reluctance overcome by the burning hunger in her belly, she silently ate their sacrifice down to the last blade of grass before settling in beside them, three bits of warmth in the cold darkness.

- ☾ - -

The clang of alarms and the flare of illumination spells woke Peridot from a dream of drifting ice and snow blowing endlessly over the spires of her childhood home. Reality was not any better with the harsh light of fire blossoming up in the sky while pegasi darted and danced around huge flying monsters.

Dragons!

The screams of frightened ponies filled the air whenever the massive shadows in the sky darted down, spraying dragonfire across several wagons before swooping back up into the air. One shadowy drake veered in their direction only to turn away when Obsidian fired a bolt of magic at its chest, making the dragon silently vanish through the smoke while it sought less-protected prey. Her husband was powerful but fatigued, and his magic had done no more than annoy the dragon, much as the weak flashes of unicorn magic from all around them in the darkness did not seem to be very effective against the attackers.

“Too strong,” rumbled her impassive husband, holding back a second bolt of magic while looking for another target. “Scales are too thick for magic.”

A second dragon tumbled past, this one with a dozen pegasi swiping and jabbing at it. The golden armor they were wearing was a last minute improvisation by the earth ponies and unicorns while they prepared to leave their home, taking one last frantic effort to protect the militant pegasi who were to protect them. Forged by earth ponies from whatever metal they could grab and the last sticks of furniture in the city to fuel the forges, and hurriedly enchanted by unicorns, the armor was proving its worth now.

Sparks flew whenever a dragon’s claws managed to connect with the elusive pests but with little damage until a dragon caught one of its pursuers in a crushing swipe that bounced the pegasus off the ground. It was a short-term victory for the dragon, because the pegasus promptly came springing right back up into the air and rammed a spear into the monster’s belly. The tumbling melee passed on out of sight with Obsidian still not having fired his magical bolt while he looked around the sky for another, less-obstructed target.

“We need to get to the ballista,” gasped Peridot once she finally made it to her hooves. An unexpected fire of protective instinct blazed to life in her chest when she watched distant shapes in the smoke plunge down on the defenseless ponies and the screams of terror abruptly cut off. “Twinkle, stay here and protect the servants.”

Her daughter simply looked back with her normal impassive gaze, not seeming to be worried in the slightest about the screams of death and destruction all around. With a nod, Twinkle turned and began herding the nervous earth ponies into relative safety, or at least getting the youngest and most vulnerable hidden under the wagon where they would not be trampled by the panicked ponies. Obsidian, however, turned to look at Peridot with a sharp glare.

“Wife, we should not abandon our family.” His eyes twitched to the sky, and the held bolt of magic finally shot away, bouncing off the ribs of a passing dragon and causing the beast to wheel away while hissing in pain.

“If we do not hurt them, if we do not kill them, they will return,” snapped Peridot, feeling the fire in her chest rage hotter in impotent fury while more ponies died. “They will see us as nothing more than food, and will harvest us as grain before the scythe until the last are consumed. Come!”

She broke into a gallop in the direction of the ballista, a crude device slapped together by earth pony artisans in the last hours before they had left Unicornia. By using captured torsion of a wooden crossbar, it could fling a spear much further than even the most powerful unicorn, although it had only been used to frighten away larger predators until now.

By the time she had galloped to the device with her husband close behind, it had already seen a close attack of at least one dragon, because several wounded ponies lay scattered around the area, groaning in pain. The attack had not stopped the defense of the ponies totally, though. One massive earth pony was slowly winding the device all by himself while bleeding from a shallow cut across his forehead.

Throwing herself into the winding mechanism beside him, Peridot grunted with the same rhythm that the ratchet clattered, one sharp noise at a time while expecting at any second the blaze of dragonfire sweeping over her tired body. Behind her, there was a bright glare of silver light and the sharp tang of magic when Obsidian forced an enchantment spell onto one of the spears which had been scattered around the siege machine as if they were foal’s toys. The scent of blood and fire made the primitive part of her pony mind want to hide and quake in terror, but the thought of the dragons attacking her sole remaining child drove the fear out of her mind and replaced it with the feral growl of a mare facing off against predators in the wild.

The smoke drifting around the night air billowed when another dragon flew overhead, beleaguered by a dozen pegasi but snapping and swinging as a pony might when beset by a swarm of bees, only in this case, the bees were getting the raw end of the deal. One pegasus was caught by the dragon’s tail in a stunning slap, spinning him out of control and bouncing off the ground a short distance away in a violent tumble ending in a spray of dirt and a virulent curse.

Flames had scoured the pegasus of his helmet’s crest and most of his tail, but he staggered back up and shook his head once he caught sight of the earth pony ballista, as well as the mismatched crew. “Don’t load it like that!” he called out, darting over next to the device and supervising their work.

Obsidian accepted his assistance loading the glowing spear, but he swatted away the pegasus hoof reaching for the triggering device when another dragon flew by, a mere ghost in the growing smoke.

“No,” grunted Obsidian. “Closer.”

“Closer? I’ll give you closer,” said the pegasus. He shouted up into the clouds of choking smoke at another of his kind, pacing his words with a note of command that brooked no disobedience. “Private Pansy! Get a couple of your squad and lure one of those big monsters here! We’ve got a surprise for it.”

The pegasus saluted with a sharp “Yes, Commander!” drifting down before she darted away into the smoke.

It took interminable minutes before Peridot spotted another of the massive beasts, shimmering a deep magenta in the reflected light from the smoke and illumination flares while it lunged and snapped at a cloud of valiant armored pegasi. They seemed to be almost herding the dragon like a troublesome bear, judging their spearing jabs and close passes with the bravery of ponies who had nothing to lose. One pegasus had not dodged very well, and was clenched fast in one talon-tipped fist, still struggling against her imprisonment but apparently alive enough to scream while struggling to get free.

The pegasus commander reached for the triggering mechanism again, only to have Obsidian block his hoof.

“Closer,” he repeated. “Taunt it and draw its attention or you could hit the captive.”

“All right, if that’s the way you want to play the game,” snapped the pegasus. He held up his forehooves over his head and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Oy! Fathead! Yeah, you there with the tiny brain and the oversized ears. Didn’t your mother used to clean our toilets?”

When the dragon roared, the pegasus commander waggled his rear at it, but only briefly, because the dragon followed its roar by darting forward at an astonishingly rapid velocity with its mouth opening up to breathe.

“Shoot! Shoooot!!” shouted the captive pegasus while the dragon drew close and inhaled. The commander scrabbled for the trigger again, but Peridot blocked him this time, holding the larger pegasus back with a strength born of desperation when the dragonfire poured down on them and her husband lit up his horn.

Fire washed over the translucent barrier Obsidian projected across the siege machine and its crew, leaving the dragon frozen in surprise when the smoke blew away. It only lasted a moment, but that was all it took for the pegasus commander to adjust the aim of the ballista and stroke the triggering mechanism, sending the hard-driven enchanted spear deep into the dragon’s magenta-scaled chest and nearly out its back. With a piercing shriek, the dragon contorted in agony, flinging the captive pegasus out into the darkness before it crashed onto the ground. Then with one final bellow and a spray of grass and dirt, the dragon rolled over a nearby rise and thrashed out its life.

The mismatched crew stared at the furrow the dragon had plowed in the muddy grass while the pegasi above gave a ragged cheer. The earth pony who had helped load was the first to recover, patting the ballista on its rough wooden surface and rasping, “Was that close enough?”

“Oh, yeah,” breathed the pegasus commander with his eyes narrowing and a victorious grin beginning to emerge onto his face as he pointed. “Come on! There’s some more over there.”

“Again?” wheezed Peridot.

The commander’s grin became feral. “Yeah. Let’s see how they like being hunted.”

- ☾ - -

After what seemed like years of blood and combat, Peridot finally managed to take a breath without hearing the sounds of dragons above or the screams of terrified ponies in the distance. The beasts had fled, leaving the bodies of ponies and dragons scattered around the torn landscape while the false light of impending sunrise began to paint the sky.

Despite the crushing fatigue overtaking every living pony remaining, the dead ponies, or what was left of them, were buried as quickly as possible. Some of the missing had run away and some were lost to a horrible fate, but the vast majority had survived yet another night, and for that, the survivors were grateful.

Once the last of the pony bodies had been placed under the ground and mourned, Obsidian strained his magic along with the remainder of the unicorns. One at a time, the horns of the unicorns lit up, making a line of colorful dots in the darkness stretching as far as the eye could see in each direction. There were holes in the line, their flickering light weak in others, but all lit up to press the Moon below the horizon and raise the Sun on the scene of blood and death.

The dead dragons were ignored while the ponies turned to their morning tasks. There were more important needs than to bury the monsters. They would be left behind once the ponies moved onwards, left to rot on the muddy battlefield. They were dead. There were far too many dead by now.

The living were what was important. The lines of ponies began to form again, ready to start their journey onward in the direction of Princess Platinum’s promise, fewer in number but still united in purpose. Peridot and Obsidian trudged back to their wagon with their coats caked in ashes and mud, only to stop when the empty hill came into view.

Where the wagon had been was nothing but a torn blanket and empty dirt, trod into a thick morass by the claws of several dragons. There was no wagon, no servants, and most importantly, no Twinkle.

Peridot stumbled forward onto the hill, groping at the discarded blanket in the forlorn hope that it somehow concealed some hint that her last foal still survived, but there was nothing but a few strands of dry grass and several pale purple hairs. Crushing fatigue rooted her to the spot while the dawning sun burned hot on her neck and the world seemed to fade away. She took a deep breath, bowed her head, and finally released the tears she had been holding back for months. To her side, her silent spouse held a trembling hoof across her back and also joined in her sorrow with tears of his own while they held each other.

A gentle touch on her shoulder made Peridot twitch and open one eye to see a familiar pony, blurred through tears but still and silent in front of her with all the weight of one who bore tragic news. Behind Willowbark stood the rest of the family servants, each surviving earth pony slumped in fatigue on the muddy ground with their heads bowed, ever obedient to her will as they had been to her household for generations. Their survival was an unexpected sight, but her daughter was not among them, and Peridot’s heart sank in despair when the young earth pony mare began to speak.

“Dawnbringer Peridot. Nightbringer Obsidian. Lady Twinkle saved our lives.” Willowbark swallowed while her tense neck trembled, but she continued, with her voice as strong as the namesake of all earth ponies. “When the dragons drew near, she ordered us to our neighbor’s wagon down the hill while she stayed behind to draw their attention. She said the pittance of gold stored in the floorboards of your wagon would delay them, and that we all were to hide and be very quiet.”

Willowbark moved with trembling hooves, stopping a distance away from where the family wagon had been parked and pointing up into the air with one hoof. “There were two dragons right there, and she faced them down. We were all so frightened we could not move, but your daughter just stood right here in the open and rebuked them until they seized the wagon and flew away, taking her with them. She was so brave.”

“She’s alive?” Peridot moved forward, reaching out with one hoof to the earth pony servant before she caught herself and returned to her husband’s side. “She’s alive,” repeated Peridot, her voice cracking.

Willowbark shook her head. “She was, but she can’t be now. They would not have kept her alive for long, Dawnbringer. They are beasts.”

“She is alive, and will rejoin us soon, my daughter,” said Peridot through narrowed lips. “I refuse to admit otherwise. Are you and your family ready to depart, Willowbark?”

“How can you—”

“We must go. The greater herd is already moving.” Peridot looked in their direction of travel and took a deep breath. “The bodies of the dragons will draw predators. Have our neighbor’s wagon prepared to depart at once.”

“There could be others who fled during the attack,” said Willowbark.

“The pegasi are searching. They will bring them to us while we travel.” Peridot took in the group of frightened earth ponies and the heavy wagon at the bottom of the hill with one sweep of her eyes, as well as the slow trembling of Obsidian at her side. “Have my husband loaded into the neighbor’s wagon to rest before he collapses. We shall join their herd and pull our weight.” Peridot fixed the nervous earth pony mare with a direct look. “As my newest daughter, I expect obedience. Now, please.”

While the young mare helped Obsidian to the waiting wagon, Peridot took one last glance backwards at the horizon and beyond, where the land of Unicornia had been before the ice and snow had swallowed it alive.

Then she walked down the hill and took her place in one of the empty wagon harnesses while the earth ponies spread out and began to walk, ever onward to the promised land.

Author's Note

First chapter scored sixth place in the Writeoff.me End of an Era contest, edited by Pascoite and encouraged, so you can blame him for this :)

10. Honesty, Sincerity, and Compromise

Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Honesty, Sincerity, and Compromise

“Take whatever you can get, and come back for the rest.”
— Dragonlord Fang

Dragons were fire and fury, but Ruby had been all tense nerves since the Dragonlord had taken Twinkle and flown away. Still, to protect the big lug against the Dragonlord’s return, she had managed to get Brass dragged up the narrow path to her cave by way of brute force, a few kicks, and the unwelcome assistance of the ponies.

Really, if it were not for the prospect of being dismembered by the returning Dragonlord, she would have been far more concerned about her mobile living treasures. They were worried about her idiot brother, and fussed about his injuries like… well, ponies. It left Ruby with little more to do other than scowl and huff.

She was not about to admit it, but Ruby missed the annoying little unicorn. Not just because she was worth so much gold, although that was a lot of her concern. Ruby had gotten lazy because of the little pinhead. Complicated solutions to complicated problems strained her mind now, and made her want to spend a few weeks snoozing in her treasure pool with her nose stuck into the cascade of cave water trickling down the far side of the pool.

Ruby always woke up missing a few gems when she did that, though. Sleep nibbling.

It seemed impossible that one little unicorn could kill the Dragonlord, of all things, but Ruby had watched while the tiny defenseless thing had used mere words to kill his five arrogant children. It was a one-way trip for Twinkle, though. The Dragonlord’s children might kill each other on the trip north, but the Dragonlord himself was far tougher. It was even possible that the Dragonlord might survive, a thought which drove a cold chill down Ruby’s shoulderblades, colder even than the Windigo Twinkle had spoken about. He would be weakened by the cold, furious beyond rational thought, which was the only way Ruby could kill him, tear out his bloody heart, and make the rest of Dragonkind follow her leadership.

Then?

Whatever was tossing the sun and moon around like a loose coin was dangerous beyond belief, but there was no chance a new Dragonlord could force a large number of dragons to fight it. Ruby didn’t want to fight whatever it was either. And the ponies? That was laughable. They only fought when their tails were in a crack and had nowhere to run.

Ruby scratched an itchy spine and considered the idea for a long, long time, both taking into account the vast amount she knew about dragons and the small but growing pool of knowledge about ponies. The one thing she had not expected from ponies was their ability to fight like raving beasts when cornered. Ruby had been very careful not to trap any of her ponies where they could not escape, just in case. Dragons blustered a lot, hit each other, and generally used physical violence as punctuation unless very upset, which made this Dragonlord worse of a problem than most because he was always angry.

The creature… was an unknown, which upset Ruby even more. At least it was flinging around the sun and moon and had remained away from the cave. The way Ruby was accumulating odd creatures, it might decide to move in and stay.

“Female!” came the bellow of the Dragonlord from outside the cave. “Attend your Dragonlord!”

Ruby’s heart sank, and she could feel her fire gutter into coals. Twinkle’s plan had obviously failed. The Dragonlord sounded as energetic as ever, but somehow… hesitant?

Still, it was the command of the Dragonlord, and Ruby swept out the front entrance of her cave and into the sky, then descended to rest in the grass before the massive red dragon.

“What is your—” Ruby’s words were interrupted by the squeaking of a furious unicorn from inside the Dragonlord’s clenched fist, declaring death and destruction on any who would dare to insult dragons in this way, and unspeakable pain once he returned to his rightful place.

Ruby looked up into the face of the Dragonlord, only this time, she could see something that most probably no other dragon would have been able to recognize. She looked at the clenched fist containing the small, cursing creature, then back up at the immense dragon, before turning to a curious dragon nearby and blasting a jet of flame at him.

“Back, you cretins!” she bellowed. “The Dragonlord wishes to speak with me! If he wanted your pin-sized head over here, he would have beaten it into the ground and dragged it here! Back off!”

A second jet of flame and a fierce glare made the rest of the dragons scatter like terrified bugs, giving plenty of space for a quiet conversation with the… whatever was inside the Dragonlord’s body.

“Speak, Dragonlord. Speak and I shall obey,” she bellowed with her head down, promptly following it with a whisper. “What’s going on? Twinkle? Is that you?”

“Yes,” hissed the Dragonlord. “The Dragonlord’s children released a creature named Discord. He exchanged my body and your Dragonlord. Or our minds. I’m afraid, and angry, and my stomach is churning, and… my hind legs are starting to get sluggish. I think it’s the infection from the ponies’ weapons. Don’t laugh!” Twinkle lashed out with one clawed fist and clouted Ruby over the head. Thankfully, it was not the fist with the cursing unicorn, but it did make a few of the dragons who had begun to creep closer reconsider their actions.

“You’re not Twinkle,” hissed Ruby once she had picked herself back up. “You’re acting nothing like her.”

“I am Twinkle,” hissed the Dragonlord right back. “It’s just that I have all these emotions I’ve never had to deal with before and I’m… frightened. I need help to deal with this creature. I need your help, and all the ponies you have in your lair, and every dragon in the valley. Even that may not be enough, but we have to try! Please!”

No Dragonlord would ever ask for help, or work with other dragons and ponies alike no matter how terrible a creature they were facing. The obvious thing to do would be to tear into the false Dragonlord and kill him, then smash the cursing unicorn he was carrying in his fist.
Without experience in using his larger body, she should be able to kill him without getting too injured in return, then…

Ruby would be the new Dragonlord, and have to deal with whatever creature had so effortlessly screwed up this Dragonlord.

Dragons knew magic, because they were magic in many regards. To casually rip a dragon out of his own mind and stuff a unicorn’s where it had no right being was a terrifying example of his power. This ‘Discord’ could destroy all of dragonkind on a whim, particularly if an inexperienced Dragonlord were unable to unite the individualistic dragons against the threat like they were some sort of… ponies.

An idea blossomed in her head, much like fire sweeping through a dry forest.

* * ✹ * *

Twinkle tried not to let her emotions control her actions as the dragons of the valley and beyond gathered together around her. Somewhere deep in her heart she still knew she was a delicious herbivore in the company of aggressive total omnivores, but her mind kept the shield of dragon-ness wrapped around her vulnerability. Ruby’s plan had some validity to it, despite the fact that Twinkle could not use her usually sharp mind to dissect it into discrete chunks and calculate probabilities, so the only path she had left was to throw her new body into the project and ‘wing it.’ At least her frail unicorn body was concealed in Ruby’s nest, shoved into a crevice behind her treasure and blocked from escape by the simple expediency of a huge rock.

“Your Dragonlord speaks!” bellowed Twinkle Twinkle. “Hear my words!” The surrounding dragons shifted positions with a giant hiss of rubbing scales and shifting wings, giving her a moment to breathe in before continuing.

“A great threat has risen that threatens to destroy all of dragonkind. Even all the might of the dragons arrayed against it will fail!” The dragons did not like that at all, and shifted positions with more than a few quiet grumbles that she had to silence before they grew.

“Shut up!” she bellowed. By sheer coincidence, the sun decided to dart below the horizon the moment her voice echoed from the surrounding cliffs, and the dragons were extremely quiet when the ball of fire sprang up into the sky and began to trace circles and loops like some sort of deranged bird.

“Is it the ponies?” called out one of the dragons.

“No, it’s not the ponies!” she snapped. “They’re just as much in danger as we are. And the griffons, and the minotaurs, and everything else! We’re going to have to work together to tear the guts out of this creature!”

The silence that fell over the dragons was absolute.

“That means all of us!” she bellowed when the first dragons began to open their mouths to ask questions or bellow threats. “Until this creature is defeated, no more beating up other dragons. No taking treasure from other races. And no eating ponies!” she added with a fierce roar and blast of fire.

“They killed my cousin!” called out one of the dragons.

“One of the ponies killed my whelps!” bellowed Twinkle so fiercely that she could barely remember her own role in the event. “She drove them to the icy north where they murdered each other in their greed to steal the pony treasure! One of the worthless whelps let that—” The sun took that moment to dive below the horizon while the stars held up little placards with numbers on them.

“—that thing out of the cage the ponies had it trapped in,” she finished in the darkness. “The ponies captured it once, so I’m betting they’re the only ones who can do it again! That’s why I gave them the book I found next to the cage!”

“Gave?” gasped the entirety of the surrounding dragons in an odd echo of muted horror.

“Gave!” snarled Twinkle with every single bit of menace she could put into the word. “What, is one of you some sort of genius who can read pony books? Can you find out how to put Discord back into his prison? When did you become the Dragonlord!”

She put her entire lungs into the last word, and the surrounding circle of dragons became very quiet. Or deaf. It was hard to tell in the dark since the sun plunged below the horizon and the stars were hiding somewhere before the echoes had died away. Twinkle waited long enough for the words to soak in, about as much time as her father would whenever he was yelling at another pony, then snapped, “I’ve got some new rules!”

“How are rules supposed to stop something that can juggle the sun!”

Twinkle snarled into the crowd of dragons, trying to hide the pleasure she felt about Teakettle responding to her prompt so well. “By not playing by his rules! He wants to pit us against each other for his own amusement? Let him be bored! He wants to have us dance to his tune? Stand still! He wants us to play his games? Run away! Let the dragons be a distraction while the ponies figure a way to lock him up again! That is how we will beat him! He is an enemy of dragonkind unlike any we have faced before, so it will take dragons unlike any the world has seen before to defeat him!”

Another wave of fearsome cheering later, Twinkle waved the dragons to silence. It was a heady feeling of power that threatened to go to her oversized head, if not for the immediate and fatal consequences of such a foolish move. Besides, the most tricky part of Rose’s plan was next.

“To do this, we’re going to need every dragon and pony!” bellowed Twinkle. “Some of you are hiding ponies in your lairs. Don’t try to deny it. You’re going to bring them here and allow Ruby to take care of them! Yes, I said Ruby! That’s the name I’m going to use for her! I’m tired of calling her Female!”

“But I don’t want my pony to be eaten,” said one small voice out in the crowd of dragons that sounded suspiciously whistle-y, like Teakettle had gone out and found a new equine toy to keep in his lair.

“She’s not going to eat your pony,” said Twinkle. “She’s going to hold your pony with the rest of them, so it won’t get sick and die. We need every captured pony alive, and they require other ponies around them to be healthy, so go bring them here. They help each other, and they’re going to help us!”

This time it was not Teakettle who asked the obvious question. “How can puny ponies help us?”

“In many ways, but the first is the same way they hurt us.” Twinkle pivoted and pointed with one long claw, trying to keep the same rough exterior that the Dragonlord possessed. Brass had agreed to drag himself out of Ruby’s cave, even though he was still injured from the Dragonlord’s previous attack, and he made a good wedge to apply against the rest of the dragons’ natural suspicions.

“Brass there had a dozen pony spearpoints in his ass when he came back from the raid. Ponies pulled them out before the infection could kill him. If we’re going to fight Discord, I don’t want any of you idiots dying on me! So line up here if you’ve still got a spear or any other chunk of pony metal stuck in your hide somewhere, and I’ll show you how they’re going to help . Ruby is going to tell the ponies to carefully pull the chunks of metal out, and the first one of you who complains about how much it hurts is going to find out just what pain is! Now line up, dragons with the most steel in their hides in the front!”

No dragon came forward.

Twinkle could feel a coil of fear mixing with the fire in her new belly, which she forced into a sneer of pure arrogance, curling her lip up and putting as much contempt into her voice as she could. “Cowards,” she breathed. “You were brave enough to risk danger when we attacked the ponies, and now you want to hide behind each other? The bravest of dragons is the one who keeps puny ponies safe by my command! Her brother had an armory pulled out of his ass! Even he had enough courage to ask Ruby for help, in the way all dragons will need to cooperate in order to defeat this new threat! Watch the way a brave dragon can put aside his foolish pride and deal with lesser beings.”

He swung his massive head over to glare at Ruby. “Have the ponies… I mean ask one of the ponies to come out here. The blind one, preferably.” It was only by strength of will that she avoided adding ‘please’ in the way her mother had taught her. Dragons did not use that word. Perhaps it was time for a change.

* * ✹ * *

It was interesting how Twinkle could see so sharply at this distance. He could count every short regrowing hair on Nova’s face as the unicorn picked his way down the path from the cave with Nurse Care at his side. The path was wide enough for a dragon, but she still watched their descent carefully. It certainly would have been tragic if one of the ponies had been jostled off the edge, and not just because it would have reduced the value of Ruby’s hoard.

It was strange to think that way. As Dragonlord, he kept seeing her real name instead of the artificial ‘Ruby’ that she had given to her. And being in the Dragonlord’s body continually made Twinkle think of the body he… that is she was in to be her natural form. It strained her draconic mind, and she wished Discord had kept her real mind with her no matter how much more difficult… no, impossible it would have been to play her role.

It helped to watch the two ponies approach, with tentative motions and wide-nosed sniffs of prey walking toward predators, until they stopped a short distance away. Twinkle lowered her head and moved closer, trying to avoid a pleased draconic smile when Nurse Care began trembling.

“Good day, ponies.” A dragon’s voice did not have ‘friendly’ in it, but Twinkle was trying. “I would like to exchange my promise for your services, much as you did for Brass.”

The nurse quit trembling, most probably out of shock. Nova hesitated, cocked his head to one side, and made as if to speak although nothing came out for a few moments.

“Well?” asked Twinkle when she began to get impatient, another new emotion she was attempting to suppress.

In the most formal of Royal Court etiquette, Nova announced, “What services do you require, Honored Dragonlord?” He had far more volume than Twinkle expected, most probably due to a sound spell he was casting. The surrounding dragons held themselves perfectly silent, riveted with curiosity over this strange and unique occasion, making his voice clearly audible even to the dragons in the back.

“Your fellow ponies stuck a number of spears and arrows into me,” said Twinkle. “This is understandable, because we were attacking their caravan at the moment. If you will remove them, I swear by the First Egg, by My Name, and by my Magic, that I shall not harm any ponies, or allow any ponies to come to harm, as long as I live.”

It was too bad that Nova still had leaf bandages over his eyes, because he had the most interesting startled expression, and it would have been pleasurable to see how wide his eyes opened. He swallowed, tilted his head to the other side, and shook it slowly.

“That is insufficient,” said Nova slowly. The surrounding dragons gasped, then went silent again. “We get to keep the spearpoints,” he added.

Twinkle huffed, then settled back down, cautiously due to the numbness in her rear. “That could be a reasonable request,” she rumbled, “since they belonged to ponies in the first place. How can we be certain you will not use them to harm us again?”

There were a few low titters of laughter among the observing dragons, which cut off abruptly when Twinkle swung her head around to look for who was making the unwelcome noise.

“They are collectable,” said Nova. “They are symbols of the conflict between dragons and ponies, taken from the Dragonlord himself. That makes them rare, and extremely valuable. In the years to come, should we survive, ponies would… exchange much gold for them.”

A low murmuring went around the collected dragons, which made Twinkle happy that the conversation was going somewhat in the direction she wanted. “Half,” she offered. “I would keep some for myself, so that future generations of dragons can be shown just why we should not hunt your kind.”

* * *

The agreement turned out to be the easy part. Surgery hurt!

“Don’t just twist it,” growled Twinkle through gritted teeth. “Pull it out!”

“In a moment, Your Majesty,” sounded Nova’s voice from around her hindquarters. “The tip of the spear bent when it hit bone, and we’re trying not to do any more damage.”

“Bone?” said one of the nearby dragons with a shudder.

There was a clang of metal in the pile next to Twinkle as the bent spear landed, dripping with puss and still clutching a thin segment of draconic muscle in its crooked tip. Two other dragons gasped, and one of them turned around with his face turning green. Well, greener.

Nurse Care had not spoken a single word during the entire ordeal, but Nova was sounding cheerful, almost jovial with every blade removed. That was probably because he did not see how much blood or pus was involved, since he still did not have the medicated pads removed from his eyes. Instead he was standing upwind, using his magic to guide the nurse’s extractions in what would have been considered to be an amazing display of field dexterity back in Unicornia. It took a skilled unicorn to cast a working without being able to see what they were doing, and she could feel his magic tracing the lines of the metal in her leg, separating tissue from another intruding blade until Nurse Care tugged it free and tossed it on the pile.

“That should be the most difficult ones, Revered Dragonlord,” said Nova.

And nearly an hour later…

“I believe we have them all now, and the wounds sealed. Just one last check with the metal detection spell and… Yes, that’s it.”

Twinkle took a look backward along her curved flank to see the two unicorns looking back. Well, one was looking back with the kind of expression that ‘Shocked Horror’ had passed quite some time ago, while the other still had his blood-soaked leaf bandages on his face. “Go wash,” she managed before turning her angry glare at the circle of watching dragons. Some of them seemed a little too excited at seeing their Dragonlord so incapicated, so she raised her voice to a gravely screech.

The Dragonlord’s mind contained a large number of appropriate profanities, of astonishing range and scope related to her present state of pain. She did not stop until she began to repeat herself, which took some time, and gathered the attention of every dragon in the valley as she had wanted.

After waiting a few moments for the echoes to die away, she addressed the rest of the dragons with a fearsome scowl. “Next!” she bellowed.

* * *

It was remarkably easy to snooze while other dragons were getting their own festering wounds treated, although she seemed to be required by her elevated station to chuckle grimly whenever one of them complained too much about their own injuries and threatened the pony surgeon who was saving their life.

That was not the only reason she could not sleep as much as she wanted. Apparently, her forceful demand that the other dragons bring their ponies to have Ruby care for them was taken as a good idea also. Dragons were obviously poor choices for pet owners, and when you added in the various traumas the poor things had been through… There were at least five nervous ponies who were brought in alive, and two who had expired fairly recently. Those were more difficult. Twinkle had to order one of the dragons to help the captive ponies dig a grave, and dealt with the subsequent grumbling with an extremely short speech.

“Dragons are dragons,” she growled. “Ponies are ponies. Do ponies tell us how to treat our dead? Then we should not tell them. Bury the bodies as they request, and any who disturb the graves will answer to me.”

The grumbling ceased.

It made Twinkle consider the draconic way of settling disputes vs. King Bullion and his royalty-clogged court. They both had their advantages, and perhaps a little outright theft at the edges for both races would be mutually beneficial. The solution the ponies came up with for division of the various spearpoints and other dragon-embedded weaponry was likewise innovative, much like the way Twinkle had divided the loot between Ruby and Brass.

First and foremost, Nova would repeatedly run a cleaning spell across the extracted metal until the steel glinted silver and all the remaining bits of wood shone in the sun. The dragons appreciated that more than Twinkle expected, because of their natural tendency to polish and clean their own hoards. Then one of the ponies from the cave would separate the blades and various bits of steel into two smaller piles. To Twinkle’s surprise, Rootworm proved to be the most popular sorter because of his youthful exuberance and frequent comments about how sharp or dangerous each item was as he carefully examined the size and condition of each blade and point.

The dragons were fascinated by the process. Nurse Care fretted nearby, because he had nearly adopted the small colt, and did not have the same sense of youthful immortality that Rootworm displayed.

Then the injured and recuperating dragon would select one pile to keep, and the other would become the temporary property of the Dragonlord, held in proxy for the ponies and their eventual liberation/exchange to their peers. Since Ruby’s cave was too damp to prevent rust, and was starting to get crowded, Brass dug a shallow cave into the dry cliff face so the wealth of shining steel could be properly displayed, and ponies wrote little display placards for each grouping.

Admission was set at one Equestrian bit. Bragging was free.

Time went by at a rapid clip, and not just because the sun and moon flung themselves around at the whim of Discord so far away. Dragons slept when they were recovering, and bigger dragons slept more. If King Bullion had this kind of metabolism, Unicornia would have only functioned on weekends. Then again, dragons were immensely destructive, so being inactive for long periods was beneficial to just about every other creature. It also kept her from facing Nova and explaining her present situation.

Of course, it did not stop Nova from waking her up one day when she least expected it.

“Good morning, Revered Dragonlord.” The sun took that moment to vanish into the sky, leaving behind the sound of a defaulting balloon. Twinkle had thought she was getting used to the sky’s odd behavior, but she still was left to blink in the darkness while the stars began to flicker to life above her, each with a tiny number attached to them. “Or afternoon, I suppose,” he added.

Twinkle turned her open eye to the ground level and examined the unicorn, who was entirely too close for her to focus on properly. Nova was still wearing his leaf-poultice bandages over his eyes, but she could see small pinpoints in them as if they were only being worn for show among the dragons or to counter the bright sun. The rest of his coat appeared to be growing back in across his dark bare skin, although slowly, and he seemed reasonably healthy for a pony who had been brought in nearly dead.

“What do you want, pony?” Twinkle kept her voice low, or at least low for a dragon, since there did not seem to be anycreature around at the moment. She would prefer to keep it that way since her deception was running on a rather thin thread.

“I just wanted to report to the Dragonlord on the health of the ponies in Ruby’s care,” said Nova. “We are now up to twenty-eight, including the insane one who has been placed in the back of the cave and blocked in by a boulder. She does not eat as much as she should and spends most of her time scheming your demise, which is cute, in a psychopathic way. I suppose our wedding will be delayed until I can find an appropriate set of manacles,” he added with a slight tilt to his head.

Apparently, the Dragonlord’s body was able to blow a perfect smoke ring when she snorted in laughter. “I knew it would be difficult keeping my secret from the second-smartest pony in the world,” she said.

“Smartest,” declared Nova. “The crazy one isn’t that smart, and you’re not a pony.”

“I’m smart enough to wonder what will happen when my uninvited guest is gone.” Twinkle reached out one foreclaw and wrapped it effortlessly around Nova, feeling the gentle tickle of his regrowing coat against her palm.

“We’ll have a very angry Dragonlord,” said Nova’s muffled voice. “At least he should be pleased that his dragons are alive and well, plus far more wealthy than before.”

“Delusional optimist,” said Twinkle.

“I have to be,” replied Nova from inside her fist. “Otherwise, how will we both become fathers? But that is neither here nor there. Unless you get some exercise, you will not heal correctly. Far be it for a lowly pony to give orders to the illustrious Dragonlord—”

“But it is the place for a wise advisor to give their advice, in a mutual relationship of respect between our two races.”

“Right.” Nova wriggled around until he could get his nose into a crack in Twinkle’s loose fist. “You need exercise.”

It was a phrase that Twinkle had heard quite frequently during her time as a pony, and she responded much the same way as she had frequently done to her parents, only without the book.

“I can see you out there,” said Nova, who was still inside her closed fist. “You’re only pretending to sleep.”

Then he cheated.

“Your clever plan depends on it.”

She opened her clawed fist and regarded the upstart unicorn stallion, with his nose stuck up in the air and a smug smile concealed poorly amidst the curls of his growing facial hair. “As Dragonlord, it is my responsibility to lead my dragons,” she rumbled. “If you are to become the leader you claim is your destiny, then you too should be a leader of your kind.”

It was the matter of one surprised moment to scoop Nova up and deposit him on the upraised scales where her neck merged into her shoulder plates, then with a mighty flap of her wings, she soared into the sky.

“You’re right,” admitted Twinkle, spreading her wings wider and making a wide circle in the sky. “I need this.”

Nova had very little to say as he clenched tight to her rough shoulder scales, but she could feel a trickle of moisture running down her neck as she swooped and glided.

* * *

Whatever time passed, be it weeks or months, waiting was interminable. Other than Nova’s growing hair, there was no reliable measure of time with the sun and moon popping up and down at the whim of the distant Discord, and apparently there were enough entertaining things around the world that he had not returned. Or at least yet.

Physical exercise made a good distraction from the occasional rumor about Discord from her wide-spread collection of dragons, even though she could not help but think about how she was making the Dragonlord’s body stronger in the event that Discord was actually defeated. It was a risk she had to take, even if she kept thinking of herself as himself. It was easy to slip into the mindset of dragonkind while flying, and taking one of the ponies along kept her centered.

Although Nova refused any more flights, insisting that his place was keeping Twinkle’s fragile body alive and healthy for her eventual return.

Rootworm made a good flying companion, because he was unafraid of anything, including other dragons. He was clueless about Twinkle’s body swap, which was fortunate, and curious as a cat, which was dangerous for them all. Thankfully, he was also obedient to the Dragonlord, whom he adored, particularly if rewarded on rare occasions.

“Not today, little one,” rumbled Twinkle. “Today, I fly with Ruby.”

“Again?” The little colt stuck out his bottom lip and twisted one hoof into the stubby grass. “You’ve been flying with her all the time lately.”

“I’ve been getting strong, much like you.” Twinkle held one huge claw down next to the colt, who stretched up as far as he could against the deadly curve. “Soon, you will grow as large as me.”

They exchanged laughter, which was something that did not require gold or gems, until Rootworm looked up into the sky with a squint.

“And there’s Ruby again. Does this mean you’re going to fly away, Dragonlord?”

“Yes, indeed. Grow while I’m gone, Little Egg. Grow in size and value, so the ponies will be proud to pay much gold for your return, and they will admire your worth. Females will vie to be your mates, and your offspring will—”

“Eww!” declared Rootworm, who turned and galloped for the cave. “Uncle Care! The Dragonlord is saying icky things again.”

Laughter felt so odd and comfortable at the same time while the Dragonlord ascended into the sky, much as if her time as a fragile unicorn was the dream and this was reality. Even if Discord was never defeated, he could adjust to this far too easily. Her memories of family and home had faded in a way that she never would have tolerated as a unicorn, but she was making new ones every minute of every day, no matter how short or long.

“Finally getting up here without your little friend?” asked Ruby, who had slipped alongside the thoughtful Dragonlord without being noticed.

“Dragons do not have friends,” he rumbled, then gave the insolent female a light wing-clap to the head as they flew. “We have subjects, and property.”

“Oh, so I’m property?” Ruby unfurled her wings wider and swooped up, leaving the Dragonlord spinning in a whirl of downdraft. That could not stand, so he gave a mighty flap of his own to pursue, and the chase was on. Every updraft or gust was a part of the game, and the whole sky was their playing field. Instinct drove his body, curling to dive and swooping again when Ruby rose to greater heights, with a swipe at her tail whenever it was within reach.

This freedom was far better than being a unicorn! Emotions ran through his body like lightning in a storm, and it was impossible to stop their mutual dance, even if he wanted. Again and again they clashed together, then climbed higher in the sky until the world was very small beneath them.

And then…

* * *

There was a large patch of grass that had been identified as the Dragonlord’s private lounging spot, and Twinkle spread her immense body out across it like a sun-warmed rug. If she were being honest with herself, she could admit to being ever so slightly overwhelmed by her… or his recent experience. She was really feeling like a he right now, and it did not contribute to a rational flow of thought. At least the rest of the dragons were giving him considerable leeway, except for Brass who had stationed himself on a nearby grassy bluff and was keeping an eye directed in Twinkle’s general direction. It was a lot like her father had done whenever one of her brothers had been out in the garden with a young unicorn of appropriate breeding, most likely to prevent a completely different kind of breeding. Which she understood now. In great detail.

“Ahem,” came Nova’s quiet voice far enough away to avoid any inadvertent scorching due to surprise. “Respected Dragonlord, may I approach?”

Twinkle opened one eye, looked around to make sure they were relatively unobserved except by Ruby’s one relative, then nodded. Nova had long ago out-healed his need for the herb-infused leaf bandages over his eyes, but he still wore them like glasses pushed up onto his forehead because the dragons expected it. After all, he had leaves on his face when they first saw him, so they expected leaves on his face from then on. In some ways, dragons were quite stupid. In others, they seemed brighter and more attentive than ponies, and less prone to meaningless panic.

Which was probably good for Twinkle right now, because after she landed, she had seriously considered a great deal of panic.

It was reassuring to feel Nova patting her on the nose, in a most non-pony fashion. Had he struck a female unicorn in that fashion, severe injury and most likely an assault charge would follow.

“So,” he said with a faint sniff, “a serious talk or would you rather have humor?”

“There’s nothing funny about what I did,” rumbled Twinkle very quietly. “It was… Well…”

“Sex,” said Nova. “To be specific, you’re going to be a father, if Ruby’s behavior back at the cave is any indication. She’s nesting,” he clarified. “No eggs yet, but I suppose that will take a week or two.”

“It was very violent,” managed Twinkle.

“Dragons never struck me as the gentle type,” said Nova. “I was watching, as were many of the dragons. We kept Rootworm in the cave. Didn’t want to disturb his youthful innocence. And on an up-note, the rest of the dragons have been giving you wide berth since. Since Ruby is going to clutch the Dragonlord’s eggs, I’m betting they are keeping their heads down. Oh, and from what I’ve gathered, don’t go up to the cave.”

“I know that,” snorted Twinkle. “Father used to tell stories about Mother when she was with foal, and I did get the story from Ruby and Brass about their childhood. Um… Ruby was not… upset, was she?”

Nova pursed his lips and considered his words. “For a dragon, she seemed quite pleased. And if our observations of the nearby dragons is correct, several other female dragons are considering—”

“No,” said Twinkle quite solidly. “I… um… If this is all successful in the long run, I do not wish to explain it to Mother.”

For a long moment, it seemed as if Nova were about to make a humorous statement about all older mares wanting grandfoals, but he restrained himself. It was the mark of a fair husband, if they ever got out of this alive, although she was quite certain that aspect of his personality would grow abrasive over time until their certain divorce, as he had predicted.

Thinking pony thoughts was reassuring. Having Nova around also made it easier to think like a pony. Whenever the Dragonlord was called to break up a fight or negotiate some draconic dispute, she reveled in the power, the sheer might of her immense body and the cringing respect it brought. Father had always claimed that power was addictive, and this degree of power over powerful dragons… it was an immense temptation that grew more difficult to fight every day. The longer she was in the body of the Dragonlord, the more dragon-like her mind she became.

And yet.... She had seen dragons change their thinking about ponies, not just because the Dragonlord threatened physical violence, but when they finally realized that an exchange brought additional value to each contributor. And not only ponies, but distant dragons brought stories from other races, minotaurs and wild griffon tribes, as well as strange creatures that did not match anycreature that Twinkle had ever read anything about. Word about Discord had spread as far as a dragon could fly, and many of the races encountered had only been few and scattered survivors from foolish attempts to stop the chaotic monster. Some of her dragons had fallen prey to the temptation of fighting also, and only an occasional tattered or warped remnant had managed to pass their stories on.

It would take every clever thought of her dragon and pony mind for Twinkle to weather this storm, and bring as many of each race through to the other side. She had been doing so well, passing messages for dragons to take to the ponies and enforcing her rules among her subjects about how smart dragons were to treat Discord if they blundered into him. Smart dragons survived. Dumb dragons did not.

She brought one huge claw forward and gently stroked down the back of Nova, holding her strength back to a gentle touch. There were so many things outside of her control, and twice as many that she only could influence indirectly, even as Dragonlord. Still, she had already saved the life of Brass by pulling the pony speartips out of his rear, and helped Nova save the lives of many other dragons by the same disgusting process.

For all of her life, Twinkle had been alone except for her family, absolutely certain that her defective body would never clutch and bear eggs… That is attract a mate and raise foals on her own. If Nova’s whimsical statement about them becoming a family was prophecy instead of delusion… Then again, he had tossed off the same kind of line about the Dragonlord becoming a father and here she was, to-be father of a nest. Perhaps it was not all about Twinkle Twinkle, the painfully intelligent unicorn, after all.

She looked down at the tiny unicorn stallion, truely looking at him for the first time. The dragon part of her noted that he was recovering well, putting on enough weight that he was not all burnt skin and thin bones anymore. The pony part of her… evaluated. Good teeth, noble upbringing without that horrid sense of unfounded superiority, and smart enough to yield to Twinkle’s good ideas while proposing innovative solutions of his own. Her disadvantages were his advantages, and the other way around also, creating synergy. Mother and Father would have no objections to them becoming mates, provided her parents were still alive, and of course provided she was not still a dragon by then. They were truly stronger together than apart, even in their current forms. Nova trusted her, and she trusted him.

Trust was the most important part of mating after all. Sex would wait. It would obviously have to wait for now, but if everything worked out in the long term between dragons, ponies, and Discord, sex would naturally be a part of that, as well as pregnancy and childbirth. It was a possibility that Twinkle the unicorn had never really considered before, even though she had been surrounded by it in her family. Part of her body merging with part of Nova’s body and producing foals from her own belly, suckled by her own teats, and raised by the two of them together. It sounded… interesting now, not impossible.

“Twinkle,” mused Nova nearly under his breath, but still audible to her sharp draconic senses. “What is it like being a father?”

“Complicated.” Twinkle gave her future husband a gentle pat on the head with her extended claw and tried to arrange his stubbly mane, which was growing in all white and curled. “I’m certain you will grow to appreciate it, when your turn comes around. After all, you will be the second most intelligent pony in the world then, and you shall father brilliant children.”

“Promise?” asked Nova.

“In good time,” rumbled the strange Dragonlord. “For now, we must take things as they come.”