Chapter One
The torrid, rasping wind swept slowly over the hills and craters of the Dragonlands. It was a lonely wind, a wind that bore the weight of a thousand years of steadfast existence and promised ever more. Into this same wind a pale unicorn squinted as she covered her muzzle with a thin scarf, huffing at the dust that rose with the gusts. Once it passed, she shook her loosely curled purple mane free of debris and idly studied the swirling patterns scored into the rocks at her hooves.
“Miss Rarity!” a voice called out from behind her, low and relaxed even as it politely demanded her attention. On turning around, Rarity spotted another unicorn—this one lanky and tall, with a nearly pine-green mane to compliment his close-trimmed butterscotch coat. As they made eye contact, the colt waved and pointed off to Rarity’s right. She squinted, making out a large silhouette flying towards them, backlit by the afternoon sun.
She raised her voice as she trotted towards the colt. “That must be our escort! Princess Twilight did say that she’d sent our estimated arrival time to Ember ahead of time!” Standing in front of her companion, she cleared her throat ever so slightly. “Snails, could you go back to the airship and help Snips gather the luggage?” she asked.
“Sure thing, Miss Rarity!” Snails saluted loosely, his limbs moving fluidly as he set off around a large spire behind him.
Rarity watched him disappear as she idly channeled magic through her horn, guiding her telekinetic field through the routine motions that would leave her mane looking tidy and proper, as was only right when she would be interacting with a dragon in any official capacity. The approaching figure grew; no longer appearing as a small bird, but a discernible dragon. She continued to watch and stand coolly as the dragon landed, standing head and shoulders taller than her horn.
“Hello there,” she began, bowing her head in greeting, “I am Lady Rarity, here with two companions, as was discussed?”
The dragon nodded. “Lord Ember sends her regards. I’ve been appointed as your guide and host for your visit.” Here the dragon grimaced, a frown revealing the row of sharp, curved teeth he held within his snout. “It is a great honour.” He stiffly bowed, and gave a tight smile when he straightened up. “I am Brennheit.”
“It’s delightful to meet you, Brennheit. I trust you found us without any trouble?”
The dragon nodded and stretched his wings, experimentally snapping the beige membrane taut. “Kind of hard to miss a massive airship when you’re on any of these hills. Plus, y’know, wings.” He sat down on his haunches with a grunt. “Where are the other two ponies, then? Ember would totally have my spines if we already lost them.”
Rarity looked around. “Well, I sent them to get the luggage, so they should be back any minute now. Is it alright if we leave the airship here? No one will be disturbed or anything?” she asked.
“No, none of us really come out this way. Apparently, it’s the civil thing to do, having a place to welcome visitors without a bunch of lava pits everywhere.”
The unicorn nodded. She took in the monotonously rocky landscape, remembering her previous visits under the… previous administration. Ember had really taken charge of foreign relations since she’d started corresponding regularly with Twilight, which had done wonders to quell public fear about the dragons that would occasionally fly towards Ponyville or Canterlot. Still, their small talk skills left something to be desired.
With nothing else remotely interesting to gaze upon, she studied the dark green dragon before her carefully. Rarity was never one to turn down inspiration, and there was certainly an air of strength and confidence around Brennheit that was intriguingly reminiscent of both her own teenage bravado and the authority of a creature that knows just what it’s capable of. He even seemed a little tense, to her eyes. It was clear that the pony visitors were an inconvenience for him, but that could be a matter of not having the right experiences with her species.
“I must say I’ve never heard of any dragons with a name as unique as yours,” Rarity said carefully, “most of you seem to have names like Ember, Granite, Whip… Skull Crusher?”
Brennheit nodded. “There are more, but usually they’re the older dragons. My mother named me just after my hatching, so I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. It’s traditional, she says.” He huffed. “Doesn’t matter. Are those your friends over there?”
Sure enough, Snips and Snails were both walking back around the spire, dragging a medium-sized cart together. It was piled high, though not precariously so—Rarity had learned a few things, after all—with suitcases and a few large wooden boxes marked with the insignia of the School of Friendship.
“Sorry, Miss Rarity!” Snips, a shorter colt with a shock of orange hair and a sea-green coat, panted out an explanation as he adjusted himself in his pulling harness. “We had some trouble—ngh—getting hooked up to the cart, and then we realized we’d forgotten Miss Maud’s boxes, so we had to start over.”
Snails nodded, distracted by the sight of Brennheit as he stood up and rolled his long, serpentine neck. On noticing this, the dragon stared back, tilting his head quizzically. Snails swallowed and started walking again.
Once the colts were standing next to Rarity, the dragon took a deep breath. “This way to your cave, ponies. It’s a bit of a walk, so I really hope you can keep up.”
With that declaration, he started off in the same direction he’d come from, which Rarity noticed was faintly sloping downwards. They continued in relative silence, with the two colts muttering to each other as they looked around, taking in the rock formations as they rose against the darkening afternoon sky.
Eventually, about fifteen minutes of walking later, Snips spoke up. “Hey, mister dragon, where exactly are we going?”
The voice was a welcome distraction, Rarity thought, from the landscape, which had long since grown tediously dreary to her eyes. So distracted in her head, she nearly missed Brennheit’s response.
“Dragon Lord Ember decided that we should get some of the caves we never use and make them into ‘guest houses’, or something,” the dragon shrugged, making air-quotes with his fingers. “So there’s an area where the rest of the dragons here won’t bother you too much, and you won’t bother us either. You can sleep there, and leave your stuff as well.” He cast a critical eye on their cart piled full of belongings, which was periodically being righted by short bursts of Rarity’s telekinesis. “In fact, for being what you brought here, it’s a pretty decent hoard.”
Rarity’s eyes glimmered. “It is? I’m glad to hear it! Of course, we’re here to collect some rock samples and such for a friend back in Ponyville, so it might even get more impressive!”
Her face soured as she breathed. “And heavier, too,”
A thin plume of smoke streamed out from the dragon’s nostril. “I wouldn’t say rocks count as impressive, but if that’s what you ponies like, it’s good enough for me.” He squinted along their path, flaring out a wing to signal for his companions to stop as he felt a rumbling in the distance. “Actually, let’s stop here for a second. There’s some guys crossing the path up ahead and I don’t want to have to explain what I’m doing here.”
Tossing back her purple curls, Rarity frowned. “Brennheit, darling, it sounds as if you’re ashamed of us!” she called out, playing up her indignation.
“Well, in the eyes of creatures who can bust boulders and breathe fire, picking up stuff with your horns is pretty lame, so… kind of ? There wasn’t much competition for the role of pony tour guide,” he admitted.
Snails cleared his throat. “Mister dragon? You’re totally wrong, we can too do real cool stuff with our magic!”
“Yeah! Totally as good as a dragon crushing rocks!” Snips added.
They were met with a raised eye-ridge from Brennheit, the beginnings of a smirk forming on his face. “Yeah? Prove it.” He gestured to a boulder off to the side. “Have fun.”
The two colts shared a look and nodded. Snips concentrated, casting a spell while aiming his horn at the rock in question. As his aura grew, Snails cracked his neck and joined in, feeding his own magic into the same point.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, across the surface of the stone, a ripple appeared. Once it cleared all that was left was a two-dimensional flame flickering and glowing. As Rarity watched with interest and Brennheit maintained his smirk, the flame shrank and a snake coiled around it, devouring the fire. The snake was in the process of contorting itself into some shape or another when Brennheit scoffed under his breath. “What are they doing? None of that is real, and you unicorns make stuff glow all the time anyways,” he muttered.
Rarity cast a glance his way. “That’s actually rather good illusion magic. Compensating for the surface of the rock is no small feat, and they’re still younglings,” she admonished.
“Alright,” Brennheit said, “but if that’s all they can do…” He snapped his wings out, emitting a jarring noise, and roared as he shot a plume of flame into the sky.
Snips and Snails were both caught off guard, and as they flinched, Snails channeled even more magic into the rock, where Snips was directing it. Since the magic was inside the stone, the sudden influx caused it to shatter into tiny pieces, leaving a pile of rubble and two panting colts staring at Brennheit. “What’d you do that for?” Snips yelled, “we were doing good!”
The dragon shrugged. “It was a little slow for my taste,” he said. “But the way you two smashed that rock was pretty cool.” He stood up. “The rumbling’s done. I think we can get you to the cave in another few minutes. Come on, ponies.”
The three ponies looked at each other and shrugged. They followed again, and shortly came to a respectably-sized hill. As they worked their way around the hill, Brennheit explained some of the rules in place for guests of the Dragon Lord.
“Basically, any treasure you find that has no owner is fair game. You’re not dragons, so of course we have dibs, but if you find it here or whatever, it’s yours. Nodragon is allowed to try and fight you for it. Something Lord Ember said about indiscriminate fighting being counter-productive.” He shook his head. “I don’t think any of us know what that last part means.”
Rarity cast an appraising look at the cave they’d been allotted. There were mattresses, and pretty decent ones, too, on the floor. A table sat in the corner, with pony-sized cushions around it, and a few mana-lamps scattered around. Hesitantly, she channelled her gem-detection spell on the off-chance that she could find something of value to bring back home. The result displayed itself so brightly that she yelped, drawing the attention of both the dragon and the two colts currently pestering him about whether or not they could use the lava-pits.
“Did you step on a sharp rock or something? Am I gonna have to go get Lord Ember?” Brennheit squinted at her.
“Oh, no, not at all,” Rarity assured, “I was just wondering… who lives in the cave beyond that wall?” She pointed a hoof at the rightmost wall of the cave.
Their guide appeared to think for a minute. “Well… no one. I don’t think there is a cave, actually. Why?”
“You see, I cast a spell that allows me to find gems and valuable items,” she explained, drawing an interested glance from Brennheit, “and just beyond that wall, there’s a veritable treasure trove of gemstones of all sizes! Some of them are even cut already!”
Brennheit blinked. Snips and Snails both turned and studied the wall with interest.
“I’m gonna have to tell Lord Ember about this for sure. Glad to know you’re all settled in, she’ll be happy to hear that!” As he spoke, Brennheit was already backing out of the cave. “Gotta go, be back sometime, bye, ponies!” With that, he unfurled his wings and took off in the direction of Ember’s residence.
Rarity trotted to the cave’s mouth, waving at the departing figure. Once he was gone, she turned around. “He’s right, there’s no cave entrance where my spell says all the gems are,” she told the colts.
“Damn, does that mean we can’t get them?” Snips grumbled. Snails tilted his head back thoughtfully before speaking as well.
“Didn’t the rule say if it isn’t someone’s we can keep it?” He studied the wall. “This is our cave right now…”
Rarity nodded. “Do you boys think you could try that illusion spell again on that wall, then? Maybe imagining what’s behind it?”
The two of them nearly fell over themselves as they unhooked their backs from the luggage cart and cast the spell, this time depicting a massive pile of gold coins and royal jewelry across the ridges of the near-black stone that made up the wall. Rarity waited a few seconds, until they’d started adding details to the coins that now looked suspiciously like their own faces. Then, she lit her horn and cast a spell that she’d learned from her recently formed friendship with a stage magician called Trixie.
Firecracker.
The colts jumped, once more overcharging the spell. So worked into the wall was it that Rarity’s whole family could have easily walked through the resulting hole. “Thank you, dears!” Rarity called out as she poked her head through and released a series of small floating lights from her horn.
The cave holding the treasure hoard was smooth, a perfect half-sphere carved into a mountain, with no entrances or exits save for the one that Rarity had engineered for herself. There weren’t, in fact, coins and swords and chairs aplenty. A mound of gemstones and some ornamental jewelry lay about the room, a few chests lying open and empty in the center. Moving closer and letting the younger colts get a look themselves, she noticed a particularly ornate crown lying on its side. Her own education told her that it was Equestrian in style, but very old. She gave it a cursory inspection for runes or traps and giggled. Her mind on fantasies of Daring Do adventures and secret expeditions, she gestured dramatically to no-one as she held the crown in her magic.
“It is quite fetching after all, and it isn’t like any dragon will wear it quite as well. Not to mention the velvet accents and these stunning sapphires match my coat just so!” She giggled, and put it on her head. Just before it made contact, however, she heard an exclamation from the other side of the room, accompanied by a blinding flash of light and a ripple of magic through the room. She turned around, her magic releasing the crown onto her head as she did so.
She saw Snips shaking his hoof, ceremonial hoofguards attached to each of his legs, similarly ornate in a style not unlike the crown she held, inlaid with sapphires on the silver-like material. He wasn’t having any luck getting them off. Snails was likewise indisposed, trying to pull a peytral off his neck. This one displayed sweeping, detailed lines curling across both sides, eventually circling loosely around a large sapphire that resembled a four-pointed star in the very middle.
The mare sighed and closed her eyes as a third bright flash came out of what was now her crown, though not quite by choice. “So much for being a responsible chaperone,” she whispered.
When Brennheit poked his head back into the ponies’ guest-cave, he was met with a wryly grinning Rarity and two colts grumbling as they strapped themselves back into their cart.
“I’m terribly sorry, darling, but we have to cut our visit short. Why don’t you keep the rest of what was in that cave, there? You were an excellent guide,” she said.
The dragon blinked. “Lord Ember said… you could have what you wanted from there. But, uhm, okay then.” He studied their new accessories. “What’s got you all in a hurry like this?”
“Well, you see--” Rarity drew out the words as she thought of a way to phrase it. “We need to see a princess about some clothing, if you will. Rather urgently.”
