The wind hammered, somewhat, into the flying dragon’s face due to his speed. It was a strange flow of breeze, slow enough to incite the dragon to sleep and fast enough to keep him awake.

He showed no emotions, and yet, he was very happy. That battle had not only saved thousands of lives, but also made him fight his feelings, overcoming his father. That senseless love that made him not being able to get over his death, to mirror his father by forgetting about his own ideals and follow his instead, was now gone. Logic and reason returned to him, making his mind fully operational once more. He used it to start thinking.

“If I had won in my previous state, the results could have been terrifying for our nation.” He used plural, for he thought of the Dragon Lands as a kingdom owned by every one of his inhabitants, not just by himself.

“What a coincidence that I could only defeat him when that was over. Was it luck, or is there truly a god of some kind keeping balance?”

He spent the next ten minutes debating with himself, until he abruptly interrupted those thoughts.

“All of my problems aren’t over just yet for me to have such a discussion in my head. Whether there is a god or not is not important right now, the upcoming meeting is, I have to be ready and know what I want for our nation. I will definitely change the date for this election, it’s the same day of the congress, I don’t have enough time to get ready.”

As he flew he missed something that would have been crucial on his previous debate. A tiny white flower was visible in the red ground, with eight petals, as white as the peaceful clouds which don’t bring storms, only beauty to the sky. A purple stem connected those petals with the unforgiving red earth, were nothing grew. The most impressive and beautiful part of it was that instead of having the usual stigma, it had a sapphire, bluer than the sky or the ocean themselves. It sprouted there, in the arid Dragon Lands, where nothing could grow.

It wasn’t a long trip to the castle, shortened even more by the prince’s thinking, which made him forget about the voyage there.

When he reached it, he descended while flapping his wings several times, to reduce his speed along the way down. Once there he was saluted by the two guards who were in their posts, in the entrance of the wall surrounding the royal building. They did so by hammering their spears in the ground and adopting a very straight position. Shortly after, the words “The king has arrived!” echoed throughout the whole castle. They were first spoken by the dragons on top of the barbican, then repeated by others inside of the palace who had heard it, and so on.

The place was made of the same material as the pony embassy, red sandstone. The wall which surrounded the structure was circle shaped, with battlements. It was also thick, enough to have guards on top, looking at the horizon, ready to attack any threat. The castle itself was a mixture of gothic style and the structure of a fort. Several round towers climbed their way to the skies, all with a very pointy end. On its façade it had a big round window with amethyst-coloured stained glass, divided into tiny pieces by a single wood frame with a spider web shape, the glass, filling the holes in between. The place didn’t have many visual ornaments, the sandstone was worked to be plain everywhere, the only visual delight available were the window mentioned before alongside two statues of dragons holding spears, they were next to the main door. Both looked at each other, perfectly symmetrical. In the claws further away from the door they held a spear while in the other one they had a shield, a big, rectangular shield.

As Whitefire was saluted the portcullis was opened by the guards who were on top of the barbican, the ones who had announced the arrival of the prince. There was a mechanism which those two dragons had to operate, it consisted on two big gears that had to be turned by claw in either direction depending of the action wanted, one for pulling it up and the opposite to bring it down once more.

It wasn’t the only thing operated in that moment, for the drawbridge was also lowered revealing the pointed arches inside, truly a magnificent interior to gaze upon.

The king paid no mind to the soldiers and just waited for all the actions mentioned before to happen, to have his path cleared. Once then he walked through the drawbridge over the moat, which, unlike most castles, had lava instead of water.

Inside, there was a long hallway. A big pair of doors in the other end was visible, alongside two more, one on each side. More royal soldiers were inside, mirroring the position of the statues of the outside of the castle and the salute of the first creatures that Whitefire saw when he arrived, who he ignored once more.

He turned left, opened the door and walked through the slim hallway hiding behind it. It was grey, like rocks, and had only torches to light it up, no windows were present.

It didn’t take him long to reach the next door, another torch was in the wall on top of it, its fire somehow more vivid than the one in the rest.

He turned the handle and slowly opened the door, trying to earn as much time as possible to finish thinking of his position towards the other nations.

As he committed such action sweat ran down his forehead and later, his cheeks.

His racing mind was now nonstop. As if he didn’t have enough troubles on his mind he remembered how the black paw was a threat to the rest of nations, he would have to send his dragons to fight there and some would definitely die. The Black Paw was not to be taken lightly, of course, they had some weak soldiers but most of them could be a nuisance to an average trained warrior, even to an experienced one. Worst of all, they had enough of them to declare a war on a single nation while having a chance of winning it.

He was already standing inside the room, the door fully opened, while he thought that last part, but he wouldn’t acknowledge the place he was in then.

A few seconds later, the blue headed griffin would interrupt his thinking. He pretended to cough loudly, the only thing that managed to get the new king to wake up and, afterwards, take a seat in front of the two ambassadors. He answered with an awkward laugh as he sat down.

Policy was very relieved and giving thousands of prayers to Celestia in gratitude. His bodyguard, though, was feeling the opposite. Lightning was cursing Celestia, for she secretly wanted Lance to win, only to fight someone of her skill level, to have some real fun, not like the usual scum she was sent after. The griffin bodyguard, who looked like any other soldier with silver instead of the usual copper armour, had his right paw on his sword, which was already halfway of being drawn completely. When he realized that Whitefire was the one who had entered the room he slowly sheathed it again.

The dragon king looked to the left, then to the right. He noticed that an ambassador was missing, he was just going to ask about it when the dragon guards in the room suddenly announced “The first council of King Whitefire is now in session!” Although he was startled, he hid that pretty well, in fact, no one noticed his reaction.

Seconds after the end of the announcement the white scaled dragon stated his question.

“Where is the hippogriff ambassador?” Regret enveloped him shortly after speaking that phrase, as if he had directly insulted them, who he still wasn’t sure how to address.

Policy quickly answered his question, somewhat. “We don’t know, but do not worry your majesty, Equestria has already sent one of its agents to find out.” The last thing he was worried about was the way he was talked to.

The griffin didn’t show signs of being bothered either.

“Very well, thank you.” Replied the white dragon, the way to speak to them hadn’t come to his head yet.

“With that out of the way” Interrupted the griffin, “I wish to speak of a nuisance to all nations.”
He cleared his throat before starting his speech.

“The Black Paw, as you already now, is a very strong criminal organisation, with enough power to resist the strength of a single army, perhaps even defeat it. That’s why king Grober determined that all nations should unite and attack them from all sides, a combined effort might do the trick to destroy them all with minimal casualties.”

He looked at his guard and nodded, the silver armoured soldier retrieved a map from his belt and unrolled it on top of the table. It would have gone back to its former position if the ambassador didn’t hold it in place from its ends.

It was a map depicting all the territory of both Griffonstone and Equestria, with several locations marked in red and orange.

“We have acquired information on most of their locations, the orange ones are lesser camps, probably spotters for caravans. Those don’t hold more than a hundred soldiers but they are very well placed and defended. Each has two wooden walls, one behind of the other and three watchtowers, each placed far away from the other so they cover different sides. There are tents inside each, the place where they rest we presume.”

He took a small pause before resuming.

“The red ones though, are a whole different category. There are only three but each of them is a fortress. Stone walls protect them from most projectiles and several arrow loop windows allow the archers to shoot while also giving them protection from incoming attacks. That’s all we know about them as facts, but we think that each battle against one of those could last days or even weeks, given how much supplies they can store in each one.”

He stopped talking and looked at Policy, then at the king. They both were listening carefully to his explanation. After seeing that he had stopped both focused their vision on him instead of the map.

“I presume you already agree to make an alliance against these bandits right?” He spoke with confidence, he knew that they had to say yes, even more, that they were planning to say yes from long before.

They both talked at the same time, their words hard to comprehend, all that the griffin heard them say was some form of approval from each of them, which mixed into incomprehensible words, they did have a consent air to them, that was enough for the blue feathered ambassador.

Very well, I will now review the military tactics we plan to…

The prince, for a short moment, wondered why hadn’t the hippogriffs sent a diplomat.

The space between two big mountains denoted the road which led into the Skydive Hippogriff’s kingdom. In the middle of it, a dark blue unicorn walked along, towards the neutral kingdom.

The pony had a mane and tail which were wavy, with the occasional hair sticking out, in need of brushing. Another visible quality was that he had a pointier horn that the average unicorn.

He also had a cape, which would usually hide his cutie mark but the wiping wind lifted it, revealing the mark.

It was a blue bubble with a picture of him inside, the former representing a shield.

After walking for some time the mountains ended and the road turned left, since there was a cliff, impeding it to move in that direction any more.

The stallion walked to the edge of the cliff, which gave a clear view of the Hippogriff’s kingdom.

The unicorn was shocked after seeing it, everything was on flames or demolished and the flying creatures were fighting something. They were fighting black biped creatures, white hair surrounded their heads and went all the way to their backs. They seemed mouthless and had a symbol in their black armour, two blue lightings, parallel to each other.

The wind still lifted his cape, but it now also waved his mane and tail.

“Celestia made a good choice when sending me.”

He got rid of his cape by tossing it to a side before resuming.

“Now, let’s make them meet their graves.”

His cutie mark, which once was a blue bubble, slowly disappeared. A fireball displayed itself later, as slowly as the former cutie mark had gone.

Author's Note

I loved writing this chapter! I devoted myself to describe the castle as much as I could. Learned a lot of it's parts!

Anyway, as always, hope you enjoyed! And feel free to point out any errors I may have commited, alongside suggestions!