We Are Dragons

Chapters

Chapter 2: Cohorts
Chapter 3: Storm
Chapter 4: Not All Quiet
Chapter 5: Defences
Chapter 1: We Are Dragons

Chapter 2: Cohorts

Grains of sand lodged themselves under Ember’s scales.

The Ash Citadel’s walls were a strong defence against the desert winds, but one step outside and Ember could feel the dust starting to gather on her face. The shadow of the Citadel was an imposing one, stretching out and shielding dozens of traders and merchants from the blistering desert sun. It amazed her that so many creatures could carry out their business like nothing was wrong so soon after an attack at the mines. Even among non-dragons, the news would have circulated that ore and gemstone shipments were being disrupted.

Maybe everyone already knew, and they were simply hiding it. A hundred little white lies. One merchant acts happy when he’s actually scared. Another sells her sugar while packing up her luggage to flee. A hundred white lies could build into something uncontrollable. The thought of it made her head spin.

Ember tugged uncomfortably at the strap over her shoulder, a cord of sturdy steel wire that looped back and fastened a wool pouch to her back that held a few wrapped packets of oysters alongside the Bloodstone Sceptre. Even while it was tucked away, Ember could feel the pull to hold onto it, to clutch it and covet it and never let go. Its magic was still a mystery to her, but its power to command and compel was seeded in the blood of every dragon.

Despite its glory and power, or rather because of it, she kept the sceptre concealed. Without taking a close look, or sometimes even with one, anyone who wasn’t a dragon didn’t immediately recognise Ember as the Dragonlord. Traders, whether they were ponies or griffons or some other creature, passed by her without a second thought. They were far more focused on checking their purchases of geodes and gemstones hauled from the Citadel’s eastern mines.

It was an advantage to being such a young Dragonlord, she supposed. The reputation of mountain-sized monsters that burned villages and ate ponies whole easily overshadowed dragons on the smaller side. Even dragons coming in from the mines, tired after a day of hauling stone and ore, ignored Ember as she waited. She lost herself in the rhythm of carts rolling down the tracks. Their stretch of the desert was a nearly lifeless sea of dunes, which made it impossible to move supplies across the desert in carts without long swaths of rail tracks.

She only came back to the moment when Spike rejoined her from the Citadel’s markets. He looked almost as off-balance as Burnt, with a massive travel pack on his back that threatened to teeter out of control.

“You look ready,” she said, poking the pack to see if he would topple over. “Buy these from the ponies?”

“The general store,” Spike replied as he adjusted the straps to hold tighter to his body. “I’m a dragon, I thought I should have some credit at the Core. The dragon at the store was nice, she let me trade in my bits.”

Ember raised a brow. “You traded them in at the store? Not with Burnt?” She looked over his equipment again. A cast-iron pan dangled on the side, while a sleeping roll was tied down to the top of the backpack. She could only guess what else he had packed inside. “Hate to break it to you,” she reluctantly continued, “but you probably got fleeced. The store takes a cut out of the exchange to cover the accounting costs. You should’ve asked Burnt to do it for you, it’s his job anyway. Could’ve saved a lot, considering how much you bought.”

“A lot?” Spike winced and clutched his coin purse. “Well, at least I have an account with credit now. I’m starting to feel like I’m actually a part of this colony.”

“That’s good,” Ember said. “I want to make the Ash Citadel a home away from home. Now that dragons don’t go raiding and pillaging, we can’t keep hiding away in the Dragon Lands forever. But, we have to make this place safe, first.”

“Right, so we’re off to find this camp,” Spike said, though it sounded like he was reassuring himself more than anything else.

“Not yet,” Ember told him. “Burnt gave me some advice on where to start while you were shopping. The cohort that got attacked at the mines should be back at their posts. Burnt sent a message letting one of them know to look for us. If we’re looking for his daughter, there’s no one better to bring than a dragon who fought with her.”

“Um, Ember? Mind if I ask a question?”

“Sure thing. Something else on your mind?”

“I was just wondering, what is a cohort, exactly? The word isn’t really used that much in Equestria. Not as much as I’ve heard it here, at least.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Ember answered him. “A cohort is a group of dragons that follow one leader. I guess it’s kind of like a clan or a tribe, except no one has to be related to be in the same cohort. It’s just about who you respect.”

“Are dragons normally in a cohort?”

“Most times. They make my life a lot easier since I just have to talk to every cohort leader instead of every single dragon. I can move ten to twenty dragons into the mines just by reassigning one cohort.”

“Does that mean I can join one too?” Spike asked.

Ember eyed him weirdly. “What are you talking about? We’re friends, aren’t we? You’re already part of my cohort.”

Spike settled in silence, his stare fixed on Ember. She opened her mouth, about to ask him what he was thinking, but she left the issue alone. He clearly still had questions, and she trusted him to ask when he was ready.

Learning about the society the dragons were building couldn’t be done within a few short minutes. But for now, there was a task in front of them. With the wind blowing against their favour, it’d take a few hours to get to the mines and find their scout, and Ember did not want to waste time.

Flying was hard work for a dragon. Ember cursed birds and their convenient feathers. A dragon was weighed down by scale, which grew from digested minerals and gemstones. They might as well have been flying with a suit of rocks. Even at a rushed pace, their flight was cut down to two hours, half of which was spent flying at a snail’s pace to rest and recover.

But it was worth it. The smell of fresh ore was sweet on the wind as the two dragons flew down to land at the entrance of the mines, and Ember felt her appetite for gems invigorating her tired body.

Once a quarry, the surface still had a mile-long scar in the sandstone where the dragons dredged up their first haul. Ember remembered it. The dusty dry bedrock, untouched for hundreds of years, was so disappointing she almost gave up the colony right then and there. The top layer of stone had scant few shards of quartz deep inside, and no metal to speak of.

But with each harvest of the earth, more came out. Slabs of salt rocks were the first thing the Ash Citadel ever sold. In some places in Equestria, it turned out, ponies could not easily find natural sources of salt. It made food taste better, yes, but the mineral was also a critical ingredient to a healthy life.

It surprised Ember that the desert had so much of it. After over a year of ceaseless digging, the salt bed still covered every inch of the quarry. Dark trails of wooden rails cut paths across the white surface, circling around a single gaping maw at the centre of the salt bed. There were several other open pits, but this one was the largest by far. Ember could smell the gemstones as geodes were cracked open and inspected by dragons.

“This place is amazing.” Ember turned to see Spike gazing at every corner of the mine they glided over, unable to focus on a single thing.

“It’s the colony’s jaws,” she told him. “Here we chew up stone so it can be melted down and digested by the Citadel, although some dragons don’t think it’s worth the effort. Plus, they hate working with jewel jackals.”

“Jewel jackals? What, are those like diamond dogs?”

“Dunno, never seen a diamond dog before. But the jackals are slender, pointy-nosed canines that live underground and spend all day digging. That ring any bells?”

“Yeah, actually it does.” Spike’s sudden curiosity put some speed in his wings, and he flew slightly ahead to scan the mines with more detail. “How come I haven’t seen them in the Citadel?”

“They don’t like coming above ground, not unless we pay them.” Ember couldn’t help but shake her head, a habit she worried she might be forming whenever she had to think about profits and expenses, which was too often. “I don’t know what they do with all those jewels. They don’t eat them like we do. As far as I know, they hunt lizards and desert hares out of their holes like normal creatures.”

“If they’re anything like diamond dogs, all I can say is that they’re pretty weird.”

They glided around for a little while longer before Ember found one of the guard posts at the edge of the mine, looking out across an empty desert of sand.

“There.” Ember pointed. Outside the squat stone tower, a skinny green dragon waved up at them.

She immediately recognised the dragon once they landed. He was the guard who had interrupted her conversation with Burnt with news of the camp. That frustrated her just a little. If the dragon had not been so eager to return to his post, they could have joined together back at the Ash Citadel.

“Lord Ember, it’s an honour to meet you.”

“What’s your name?” she asked immediately, letting her impatience take hold.

“Verdant,” the guard said. “Though my cohort also calls me Sandbiter.”

“Verdant Sandbiter. You reported to Burnt earlier today. You know, you could’ve saved us some time if you just waited at the Citadel.”

He looked down as if ashamed. Though his mouth opened, no answer left his tongue. Eventually, Ember decided to drop the matter and she changed the subject.

“Tell me about the attack. How did any group of creatures overpower an entire cohort of dragons and kidnap their leader?”

“Well, it was dark, even with the light from our flames. As soon as the spears came, Rosebud ordered us to defend the carts on the rails; they were loaded with fresh gemstones from that day. We fought as hard as we could, but they threw their spears further than we could breathe fire, and stayed too far for us to chase them.”

“Then how did they capture Burnt’s daughter?”

“She tried to chase them,” Verdant answered. “They struck one of ours in the eye with a spear, and then Rosebud went nuts. She charged the attackers while the rest of us were still escorting the carts. By the time we noticed, she was too far for our flames to help her. The creatures had her tangled in multiple nets and dragged her away.”

Ember clicked her tongue, not bothering to hide the disgust on her face. A dragon did not deserve to be wrapped up in a net like some fish or wild beast. Before, just knowing about the attack worried her, but now it angered her. The creatures were out to make a mockery of dragons.

“Were you injured during the fight?” Ember asked Verdant, and the thin dragon smiled a wolfish grin of excitement.

“I’m ready to track down those walking dung-heaps if that’s what you’re asking. It’s not often a dragon without her wings can lead a cohort, but my brothers and sisters would kill me for the right to rescue her. Rosebud is more than just Burnt’s daughter.”

“You sound fired up, Sandbiter.” Ember flashed him a toothy grin. “Good. Even if we play this smart, there might still be some fighting. At least, I hope there’ll be.”

Ember spread her wings out and rode the breeze, conserving her energy for the long journey. She could hear Spike panting as he tried to keep up with Sandbiter and her, but he had already said when they took off, he didn’t want to slow them down. As long as he didn’t drop from exhaustion, Ember didn’t see the harm in letting Spike push himself.

“You said the scouts came back with a report of the camp,” Ember had asked Sandbiter not long after the Ash Citadel dipped below the horizon. “Why didn’t you go with them to find your leader?”

“Skullfang ordered us not to,” he answered. The young green dragon looked down at the sand as if the shame was still his. “He thought we might be too eager for revenge and pick a fight instead of bringing his daughter back. But that’s just a father’s worry, Dragonlord. I will focus on rescuing Rosebud, I promise.”

“I know,” Ember nodded. “That’s an interesting name, by the way. Rosebud. It’s not a dragon’s name. I didn’t want to pry with Burnt, he needs privacy, but you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”

“It’s nothing special. Rosebud says that when she and Burnt moved here, they saw a dried-up bush outside the Citadel with one lone flower that was barely blooming. She said the flower was like the Citadel, struggling to survive in a harsh and barren land. He liked the sound of it, so he renamed her Rosebud to commemorate the moment.”

Spike, trailing behind the two older dragons, piped up. “Wait, her original name wasn’t Rosebud?”

“Dragons can’t always come up with unique names like ponies do,” Ember said. “I swear, there have to be at least a dozen Sludges and Cinders out there. But a dragon can pick up a second name that they use more often, like how Burnt gets called ‘Skullfang.’ After all, what dragon wants to be just another Sludge?”

“I can think of one,” Spike muttered, though Ember and Sandbiter didn’t seem to notice. “So what’s Rosebud’s first name?”

“Blaze,” Sandbiter answered. “A good dragon name, but I know two other Blazes in our own cohort alone. Rosebud’s better.”

They carried on without stopping until the first distance marker, a sign that they were leaving the comfort and security of the colony. A rusted sign reading “Here Be Dragons” swung from the branch of a resilient acacia tree, its rare green canopy offering precious shade from the sun. Though the heat was nothing compared to a pool of lava, the three dragons still took an opportunity to rest their eyes from the light and their wings from the wind.

They heard a splash of water as Spike dunked his head in the oasis to take a drink. Ember could hear his desperate gulping.

“Take it easy,” she warned him. “Water will just slow you down.”

“Makes you wish for feathers,” Sandbiter chuckled, stretching his back. “They say those birds that fly over the ocean can ride the winds for days, stopping only to drink and eat.”

“Albatrosses,” Ember said. “Ponies call them albatrosses. But birds don’t have to worry about scales and solid bones like we do.”

Sandbiter turned to Spike, who collapsed face-up on the sand once he had his fill. “What about pegasi? You must’ve seen plenty, living in Equestria. Ponies are pretty heavy, so how do pegasi do all that flying?”

“Well, uh,” Spike gasped and sucked in a chestful of air, “pegasi fly and walk on clouds with magic. I think they don’t have to flap as hard because of it, even if they still weigh the same as earth ponies and unicorns.”

“Lucky them,” Sandbiter said.

South of the Ash Citadel, rolling dunes of sand slowly washed up against dry dirt and patches of bushes. In the Shrublands, the air was more humid, though just barely, as winds from the distant ocean blew occasional banks of fog inland. Such blessings of water could never reach the deep desert where the dragons lived, but this far south, it was just enough to breathe life into the earth.

“Another half-day of flying,” Sandbiter answered Ember after the three of them had settled down into their camp.

Ember had thought about flying through the night, but there was no guarantee the winds would hold their speed and direction. Constantly adjusting their course in the dark could leave them miles in the wrong direction when the sun rose to show them their mistake.

“We’d make it quicker with fewer stops,” he added, then looked over at Spike. “Of course, that can’t be helped.”

Spike turned his head to the ground, looking disappointed that he ended up being a burden during their flight anyway. But Ember rubbed him on the head to lift his spirits.

“It’s worth it to keep you around,” she assured him. “If there’s a chance to end this peacefully, you’re the dragon to do it.”

“You give the squirt too much credit,” Sandbiter laughed. “Whatever these creatures are, they’re still our enemies. They’ll just come back another day and kidnap another dragon unless we teach them to fear our fire and fangs.”

Ember shot him a glare and the young green guard quieted down immediately. She wanted to give him an earful and recite Spike’s glories. He was the dragon ambassador for Equestria, the largest and most powerful kingdom in all the known world. Beyond that, he was the hero of the Crystal Empire and the true champion of the Gauntlet of Fire.

But flaunting deeds didn’t seem like something Twilight would do. Humility might not have been one of the Elements of Harmony that ponies liked to talk about, but Ember felt it was implicit among the six other traits.

“You two get some rest, I’ll take the first shift.”

There was no complaint from Spike, who was practically asleep as soon as she gave the word. Sandbiter complained, insisting he stay on watch, but when his legs wobbled from exhaustion, he gave in as well.

Ember circled their camp. Unlike the desert, which was relatively low and flat with dunes being the land’s only feature, the Shrublands grew tall with its splintering cliffs and wide plateaus, like the one they had landed on. She looked down at the rocky valley, and then up to the night sky at the circling vultures. They were the only ones in the region who had a better view of the land than she did.

Once Spike started his small, gentle snoring, Ember opened up her satchel and unravelled a bundle of oysters she had packed from the Citadel. They had gone cold, but she didn’t want to risk even the slightest fire. A flame in the night could be spotted from quite far away. And as high up as they were, she’d only turn their camp into a lighthouse.

Besides, she was too hungry to care whether or not it was hot. She devoured the first two oysters immediately, biting each in half and swallowing the four chunks with barely enough time to savour the flavour. The other two, she chewed them slowly, imagining the shards of oyster shell were pieces of a sapphire or a ruby, destined to go through her body and into her ocean-blue scales.

Calcium was the chief mineral in shells, or so she had read in one of the many books the Citadel bought from ponies. Plenty of gemstones had calcium within them as well, but the flavour just wasn’t the same. Shells would do for now, but Ember knew her next few scales would come in all crooked and brittle if she didn’t get some good jewels in her system.

The smell of seafood apparently wafted up to the vultures above, because the annoying, bald-headed birds began landing around Ember before she had even finished her meal.

“What do you want?” Ember mocked them. “Gonna have to try harder tonight.”

One vulture, the biggest of the few that circled Ember, waddled up to her in its awkward bird-walk and sniffed the air. It tilted its head in a confused manner and stared at Ember.

“Not dead?” it squawked. “Why not dead?”

“I’m not some lost animal,” she answered. “I’m a dragon.”

“Yes, fly-lizard big and strong, see many fly-lizards before. When die?”

“Not for a while, bud.”

Ember took pity on the dull creature. She pulled a piece of her last oyster and tossed it on the ground. The vulture smelled the salty, slimy meat and then scooped it up in its mouth, sliding it down its gizzard.

“More? Much mouths hungry in family.”

“Huh, and I always thought it took a special talent to talk to animals. How’d you learn to speak Draconic? Or is this Ponish? Your speech is so broken I can’t even tell.”

“Draconic? Ponish?” It tilted its head again. “Only speak words.”

“Draconic is a sister language to Ponish,” Ember supplied an answer. “Or so those unicorn scholars say. Apparently, dragons spent so long raiding yaks and ponies that we took their language too. So how’d you learn it?”

The vulture gave a few mini-flaps of its wings, ruffling up its feathers. Ember didn’t know the first thing about animals, but it seemed almost as if the vulture was shrugging. However strange it may be, since she was conversing with them, Ember figured she might as well get something useful out of it.

She asked the vulture its name, or his name, as she later found out. The bird’s name did not translate well, but as much as she could decipher, he responded to Marrow-Chewer. The other vultures were Perch-Watcher, Peck-Peck, and Hard-Snap.

Marrow-Chewer, Ember chose to just call him Marrow for short, was something of a leader to the others. He found the bodies of lost animals in the desert for his wake to feat on. He had been doing exactly that all day, following them until they stopped at camp.

“Thought you fly-lizards dropped, tired,” he explained. “Smelled food and got curious. Very curious.”

“You can at least call me ‘Dragonlord.’ I rule over these lands, you know. From the Ash Citadel.”

“Forgiveness, lord dragon,” the vulture repeated after Ember, trying his best. “Known sire and grandsire, and even hear calls and songs of great-grandsire. Hear no talk of fly-lizards in See-Tree-Bell.”

“Citadel,” Ember corrected. “But that doesn’t matter. Just thought you should know who you’re dealing with in case you were thinking of pecking my eyes out while I slept.”

“No, no, no, never!” Marrow squawked.

“Good. So tell me this, have you seen any other dragons around here? My group and I are tracking one of our kind, but she doesn’t have wings yet. She was taken by creatures with long cloaks that cover their whole body.”

Marrow turned to his other vultures and they garbled among themselves for a few minutes. “Peck-Peck say she saw small-big lizard, alone. Two days.”

“Small-big?”

The vulture pointed his long feathery wings at Spike. “Small-big like that one.” Peck-Peck then piped up about something. “But more small, not as big,” Marrow said, translating the bird’s screeching into passable Draconic.

“That sounds like it could be her, or it could be just one of the dozens of lizards that live out here. We’re travelling to a campsite further south, it should have some clues. Do you think you and your vultures can look for that small-big lizard?”

“Look? Search?” Marrow suddenly collapsed onto a small dried-out bush. “Oh, is famishing work. Too far! Will perish if no search for food.”

Ember smirked. Vultures seemed like fools, but they had some idea of how to bargain, at least when food became involved. Or maybe they were just good at sounding helpless. She unwrapped another set of oysters, what was supposed to be her meal for tomorrow, and took half of them out, cracking the shells against a nearby rock and leaving the meat inside for the vultures.

“Half now,” she said, waggling the packet of oysters in front of her, “and half after we meet up at the camp. Don’t think about just flying around aimlessly. Do an honest search, and bring me back a sea star from the southern coast. That’ll prove you searched as much of the Shrubland as you could.”

Marrow, oyster meat still dripping from his beak, nodded his head excitedly. “Yes, yes. Search for no-wing-fly-lizard. If out there, Perch-Watcher will find, has best eyes of any vulture.”

“Good, start flying as soon as you’re done eating. The camp is supposed to be south of here, by a cliff full of small caves. Know the place?”

“Many do,” Marrow answered. “Cave has shade. Animals hide, some die. Good place to eat.”

“Keep your mind off of food,” Ember warned. “We’ll be there in about half a day. Be there by the time we arrive, okay? I know you birds can make that flight much faster than dragons, so no messing around.”

Marrow and the other vultures affirmed their agreement again, and once they had eaten everything but the oyster shells, they took off south. Ember watched them for as long as she could, but their black feathers quickly made them disappear in the sky.

Talking vultures. Ember wondered if Twilight had to deal with things like that on her adventures.

Cooler winds fluttered against the dragons’ wings. They weren’t near the coast yet, not at all, but they were half a day closer. Ember could feel the distant breeze beneath her, and she let it lift her up. Winds were always controlled by some mixture of cold and hot, high pressures and low pressures, but in the end all she needed to do was test the wind with her wing tips to feel where it would take her.

Spike, too, seemed to improve. He glided more, though his small wings still had to work hard to keep up with the two older dragons.

Below them, the caves from the scouts’ description, and the vultures’ though Ember did not share that she had been speaking to animals, came into full view. After a lengthy stretch of flying, it was a sight for sore wings.

It was a short but wide cliff that the camp had been set up beside, with three caves, and maybe a dozen pit-holes fit for a birds’ nests. Six tents, arranged in two parallel rows, flapped quietly in the breeze.

“Here!” a voice cried out from the thick shrubbery below, from the plateau that overlooked the camp. Ember turned quickly and found two dragons, red and yellow-scaled, waving at them to land.

“The other scouts,” Sandbiter mentioned, “they stayed behind to keep an eye on the camp.”

Ember nodded and guided them to land atop the plateau. The red dragon introduced himself as Brule Slipclaw. The yellow, much younger, was just Flare. Despite his distinctly long tail, which could have gotten him called “Whiptail” or something, he hadn’t gotten a secondary name yet. They would have to see whether that stayed true after the mission, Ember considered.

“Didn’t know you’d come yourself, Dragonlord,” Slipclaw bowed his head. “I’m afraid we couldn’t find any royal pillows and cushions for your landing.”

Dragons, especially young ones, liked to tease and jeer at each other, even at their own Dragonlord. Ember could tell from Spike’s reaction that it must’ve seemed disrespectful to ponies, but such simple taunts were common tests. Dragons had a right to know how thick-scaled their leader was. If she couldn’t handle a few barbed words, she didn’t deserve the Sceptre.

“Cut the pleasantries, we’ve had a long flight,” she barked back at him. “What have you been doing out here?”

Immediately, the red dragon’s confident smirk fell back, replaced by willing submission. “Watched in case the creatures returned. We tried to touch as little as possible, and scare off the foxes that come digging around for scraps. The camp was emptied by the time we arrived, but their fire pits were still hot. We also found their weapons, which is how we were sure they were the same attackers. You should take a look for yourself.”

Ember did just that, gliding down with Spike and Flare to investigate. Slipclaw and Sandbiter stayed up on the plateau. Besides herself, they were the most experienced with fighting, which made them better guards than investigators.

Stored on racks inside each tent, the weapons were exactly as they had been described, and then some. The creatures used spears of varying lengths. The short spears had thick shafts and wide, heavy heads. They looked almost like sharpened shovels, though Ember didn’t dare make light of their danger. A single spear was enough to rip through a dragon’s leathery wing, and the hooked ends on both sides of the speartip could snag on scales and weigh a dragon down in a fight.

The medium and long ones weren’t any better. Their designs were clearly meant to penetrate hard armour, as the best steel had been reserved to make disturbingly high-quality javelin heads. One could stick into a dragon’s scales, and even if it never hurt or killed, the weight of the long wooden shaft could be enough to ground a young dragon in a fight.

There were other things too, like nets, weighted bolas, clamping traps activated by springs, and hoses fixed onto canisters of water. All tools used to successfully hunt dragons.

Ember wanted to roar, let loose a stream of fire, and burn the whole camp down. How dare these creatures bring such weapons! Dragons were peaceful, mostly, under her rule. They did nothing to deserve such aggression.

“Ember,” Spike got her attention as they entered the middle tent and were faced with another array of dragon-hunting weaponry. He pointed to a small rock, rolled over so its flat side could serve as a table. On it, a crumpled sheet of paper had a half-finished sketch of the desert.

“A map?” Flare asked, picking it up and passing it to Ember.

She nodded once she took a closer look at it. “Seems that way. They measured the distance from the edge of the Shrublands to the oasis marker, and from there to the Ash Citadel.” She traced her claws along the paper, following more or less the same route they had flown in order to reach here, until she passed a small symbol for what must have been the camp. But the line went on, further south, until it was cut short by hasty smudges.

It looked like they were planning to cut through the Shrublands but to where, she did not know. If the route kept on going, they’d reach the southern sea, but the creatures could have just as easily stopped anywhere in the middle.

“Where did these weapons come from?” Spike asked, picking up one of the short spears. Of all the dragons in the Citadel, and quite possibly the world Spike was the kindest and most gentle. Yet he handled the spear with an eerie dexterity. Was it his stature, or did ponies have more experience hunting dragons than previously thought?

“I don’t know,” Flare answered. “I don’t even think dragons have figured out how to make steel as good as this. Perhaps it’s from a further kingdom? Abyssinia, maybe.”

“It’s not the steel I’m worried about.” He spun the weapon around and held its shaft up to Ember. “I lived with Twilight in a giant tree for years, and I’ve gotten pretty good at telling trees apart. This spear wasn’t made with anything that grows in Equestria, I can say that for sure. But, the colour and the grain…”

Ember followed his claw tip, squinting her eyes hard to see the details he was describing. The wood was dark, nearly black in colour as if someone had smeared charcoal over it. But she didn’t have his experience with trees. The Dragonlands wasn’t exactly a rich forest, and the only kind of wood she had seen in the desert were the—

Storm ships!

She saw why Spike wore his concerned expression. The wood was exactly the kind that their kind had spent countless hours hammering up into walls, and then breaking down for tools and scrap.

How did these enemies obtain weapons from a defunct kingdom? Ember imagined it wasn’t impossible, the Ash Citadel itself was made from the wreckages of the Storm King’s ships. Perhaps there were caches of weapons strewn across the desert as well.

“That narrows things down, but barely,” Ember said. “We can search for old ruins or wrecks. There has to be a place where they’re storing these weapons.”

“The desert is vast, Dragonlord,” Flare said, “it would still take days to cover every possible corner.”

“But they’d have to live near food and water,” Spike added.

A fair point. South of the camp, there were plenty of valleys and caves to hide in, but few streams and creeks. The only sure place for water and food, enough to feed an army, was the southern coast.

“Lord dragon! Help! Perishing!” Ember recognised the shrill squawking that called out to her. But it was even more strained and annoying than she remembered. There was a roar from Sandbiter, followed by the panicked ruffling of feathers.

Ember rushed out of the tent to find Slipclaw throttling one of the vultures by their long, wrinkled necks. Sandbiter was clutching his eye, breathing fire at the two others that circled around him, though he missed every time.

“Enough! Settle it!” Even without grabbing her Sceptre’s handle, Ember’s will was enough to make the red stone glow faintly. The two dragons continued to struggle against the birds, but they did not go for the kill.

“Lord, bring news, yes. Good news!” Marrow, the vulture in Slipclaw’s grip, cried out.

“Let them land,” she ordered, pointing to the open spot in the middle of the camp.

When both sides planted their feet and calmed, Ember explained how she had met the vultures, all while Sandbiter complained and clutched his face. The cut looked worse than it was, most of the blood covering his eye was from his own fussing at the wound. If he had left it alone, it would have healed nicely and cleanly. But at his rate, Ember suspected he’d have an impressive scar to go with his unimpressive battle with birds.

As promised, the vultures had brought a sea star as proof of their journey, though it wasn’t necessary once Marrow shared what they had seen.

“Saw no-wing-fly-lizard near cliffs. Moving away from here, to east and south. Tried to warn, tried to say you search for her, but spat fire at us. Hard-Snap caught, burned.”

“Oh, um,” Ember wasn’t sure how to respond. Honestly, she hadn’t even noticed one of the vultures was missing. “I’m sorry for your loss,” was all she could say.

“Pity,” Marrow hung his head. But only for a moment. It was like the grief entered and left as quickly as air through the lungs. “Food now, yes? Give food.”

Ember wasn’t sure if he was asking or demanding, probably a bit of both, but she wasn’t one to turn back on her word. Besides, the vultures had given credible information—she doubted one of the vultures was willing to stay behind and miss a meal just to sell the story of being burned by a dragon. She unfurled the rest of her oysters and pried the shells open with the tip of one of the many spears lying around and laid out the meat neatly.

The vultures didn’t seem to care for the niceties, however, and hungrily devoured as they would have with any other corpse.

“So, the Dragonlord keeps pets,” Sandbiter chuckled, “that’ll be a story to bring back to my cohort.”

“You can think about how you’ll tell it while you wait here,” Ember told him.

“What, why? You heard the birds, Rosebud’s just east of here.”

“Yes, and maybe she’s being chased by the attackers and the vultures missed them while they were being burned. Right now, we have their camp and we have their weapons. If we find Rosebud and get in a fight, we’ll need somewhere we can retreat to. I don’t want to come back here and find a horde of enemies with fresh spears and nets.”

“The Dragonlord speaks wisdom.” Slipclaw placed a claw on Sandbiter’s shoulder to calm him, but Sandbiter pulled away, sulking.

“And stop scratching your eye,” Ember added. “See if they have any bandages around here. You’re going to leave a scar if you don’t take care of it.”

She turned back to Marrow and his vultures. “Do you think you can take us to where you saw our friend? I don’t have any food on me now, but help us now, and you can help yourself to all the scrap at the Ash Citadel.”

“How much?” the vulture asked, his eyes becoming keen once food was mentioned. He had a look about him, like a pony merchant trying to strike a good bargain. And once again, Ember wondered if she had made too many assumptions about vultures and their intelligence.

“More than you can ever eat,” she said. “Over a hundred of us live in the Citadel, along with ponies and griffons and other creatures. Food gets thrown out every day, and no one will miss a few dozen clams and fish.”

Marrow’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he reeled back, trying to imagine what Ember was describing to him. Her words lit a fire in him, apparently, and he immediately squawked what sounded like orders to the other vultures.

“We take you there,” he said, after a short deliberation. “Find fly-lizard now!”

Chapter 3: Storm

Ember saw exactly what the vultures described.

She could not be concerned if Spike was pushing the limits of how far he could fly. All dragons, because of the weight of their scales, were slow and short-distance fliers. Even she could feel her wings tiring. But they found telltale signs of a dragon.

The vultures flew circles around them, quite literally, pointing out scorch marks where they encountered Rosebud, and where Hard-Snap was burned. They followed the trail from there. Snapped twigs and flattened bushes were the easiest signs to follow. At some points, it seemed Rosebud knew to cover her tracks, and her trail thinned, but the vultures seemed to know the secrets of staying on a creature’s path, squawking about imperceptible changes in the ground.

It gave Ember some hope that they would find her before the creatures did. Perhaps she escaped, and they were chasing her. That seemed the most likely, and possibly why they had abandoned their camp so hastily.

“Is that her?” Flare, the young yellow dragon, sped ahead of the rest. He was a remarkable flier for his age, barely older than Spike, and used his long tail as a rudder to make adjustments and hard turns easier.

He pointed a claw down to a clearing of bushes where a young dragon could be seen hiding behind the cover of a boulder. If she wasn’t Burnt’s daughter, Ember didn’t know who else it could be. She had his distinctive black scales, though not his teeth. She ordered Flare and Slipclaw to circle above and keep an eye out for any enemies while she and Spike descended to meet the young dragon.

“Rosebud?” Ember called out as they landed behind her. “Are you alright?” She wanted to ask her a dozen other questions, but her well-being came first.

Rosebud turned around and flashed her piercing green eyes at Ember, which softened immediately when she recognised her as the Dragonlord.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” the young dragon said. “Sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused, but at least this saves a trip back to the Citadel.”

“What are you talking about?”

Rosebud pointed out over the cliff, down to the sea. It was still some distance away, but from where they perched, the dragons could be at the rocky beaches within a few minutes of flight. Down on the waves, a vessel meandered on the breeze, slowly sailing further east.

It looked like an old airship from the Storm Army, not much different from the hundreds broken and smashed to build the Ash Citadel. However, the massive balloon which would normally lift the vessel was half-inflated, leaving the ship helplessly drifting on the water.

“I’ve been tracking our enemies on their ship,” Rosebud said. “I couldn’t return to the Citadel until I found out who attacked us and tried to kidnap me.”

“You escaped on your own?” Spike’s jaw gaped in awe.

Rosebud looked at him sadly, as if disappointed about something. “Not quite. I didn’t even get a good look at them. They covered my face with one of their cloaks the entire time they held me. I wish I could have breathed fire to escape, but they had chains ready to clamp my mouth shut.”

“We saw their camp, and their weapons,” Ember said. “There’s no shame in losing to an enemy who came prepared with numbers.”

“But it was on my watch that they struck the mines. I should have been more vigilant, I should have done something. Maybe if I had ordered my cohort to attack instead of defending the carts we wouldn’t have this problem now.”

“Well, we’re in it,” Ember said. “Can’t dwell on how we got here, only how to get out. After they bound you, how did you escape?”

“That is what I’m here to find out. I heard a voice, some creature who didn’t sound like the others, barking orders around the camp. He said that kidnapping me was a mistake and told them to leave immediately. As soon as they were gone, I smashed the chains against a rock until they snapped. I’ve been following them since.”

“Well, you can stop following them now. You have to go back to the Citadel. Your father is worried about you, and as long as you’re missing, rumours can spread that our colony is not safe. For the good of dragonkind, you have to go back.”

“What? No!” Rosebud protested. “This is my responsibility. I was in charge at the mines, I was the one who gave the orders to flee with the carts. I have to fix this.”

“I am the Dragonlord,” Ember growled. “All dragons are my responsibility. That makes this mine as well.”

“But I have a plan,” she insisted. “I’ll make them think the wrath of Djormunsormir has risen again.”

Young dragons, they were always so eager to prove themselves. She wondered if this was how her father felt when she made her bid for the Bloodstone Sceptre. Still, even if her determination was admirable, Ember doubted the five of them could do enough damage to compare to the legendary World Eater himself, a dragon so large the stories said he could wind around all of Equestria and swallow it whole.

It was an amusing thought, however. She decided it wouldn’t hurt to at least hear what the whelp had to say.

“They have weapons to take down a dragon from the sky, but what about from the sea? Nets and bolas can’t fly as easily through the water. I was planning to swim under their ship and burn a hole through the hull. It’s an airship, it’s not designed to withstand leaks like a normal vessel. With the rest of you here, we can pick off the survivors as they swim to shore.”

“A spear will still catch you,” Ember said, “and we’d be escalating the threat. Right now, we don’t know why they attacked us. It might be better if we talked things out.”

“And are you going to do that?” Rosebud questioned her. “Name any dragon who’s better with words than with flame.”

Ember made a simple gesture to Spike, beckoning him to come forward. “What do you say, think you can fly over there and talk to them? Maybe we’ll all go home happy and have no more attacks.”

Rosebud inspected him, from the scales on his dorsal crest to the tip of his tail. Her eyes narrowed before they widened, recognizing him. “My father mentioned you. You’re that pony-lover, aren’t you?”

Ember glared at Rosebud, but Spike simply laughed off her comment. “Yeah, I grew up with them. But I’m still a dragon, even if I don’t act like it, and I want what’s best for our people. If they’re willing to hear us out, then I’m your guy to do it.”

He puffed up his chest slightly, showing off his boost of confidence now that Ember put his skills at the helm. She was surprised he didn’t ask about the possibility of spears flying his way. It seemed he had entirely forgotten to be scared and was only focused on the task in front of him.

Of course, she’d go with him, and she was more than capable of protecting her own. Still, a little security never hurt. Ember signalled Slipclaw with a gesture of her claw, a simple series of waves that could give simple commands if a dragon was ever too far to hear her orders. In this case, the order was for Slipclaw to prioritise protecting Spike at any cost.

“If you think we can stop them that way, I suppose the result would be better than provoking more fighting,” Rosebud said. “Even if we’d win in the end. But I’m still swimming out to the ship. If your plan fails, I’m sinking their ship with or without you.”

Ember felt a tinge in her heart. Her Sceptre answered her worries, calling to her to use its power. She wanted to command Rosebud to leave and return to her father, but it didn’t seem right to punish the whelp when she spent so long tracking their enemies and coming up with a plan.

“In that case, take Flare with you. More fire and an extra pair of claws should help get the job done quicker.”

Ember immediately felt a wave of regret wash over her. She imagined the two young dragons getting speared and netted, and it formed a pit in her stomach. The only thing stopping her from turning on her word and sending them all back was her own confidence. Running from the enemy wasn’t befitting of a Dragonlord.

She ignored her worries and focused on Spike, who spread his wings wide, already prepared to take flight again. One thing at a time. For now, she told herself, it was time to play the peacemaker.

Ember was not surprised. Confused, maybe. She definitely had questions. But after what they had found at the camp, she definitely could not feel surprised. After the first volley of throwing spears fell short, and the second flew too high, Ember and Spike landed on the deck of the ship to see a dozen pairs of terrified eyes on the faces of pudgy hedgehogs.

The footsoldiers of the Storm King. Or at least their larger brethren were. A few of the massive hedgehogs the Storm King had reportedly used in his army crawled out from the lower deck, but the majority of the crew were the smaller kind. The stumpy white-and-grey creatures scurried around, circling them with tentative spears and nets.

Ember could see it now. If she just imagined them with a blanket over their heads, they matched the description perfectly. Though, their spiky hairs added a lot more size than they had.

“My name is Ember,” she announced to the cautious crew, half of whom already had their spears raised for a third attempt. “I am the Dragonlord and Governor of the Ash Citadel. And I have come to make peace. Who is in charge here?”

The doors to what looked like the captain’s quarters swung open. Out stepped four hedgehogs, each shouldering a corner of a palanquin draped on all sides with deep-blue velvet curtains. They tenderly lowered it to the deck in front of Ember and Spike, though it stopped just short of touching the floor. Instead, the palanquin rested, rather strenuously, on the backs of its hedgehogs.

Ember expected someone to step out from the curtains, but instead, a muffled voice spoke to her.

“We have heard of you, Dragonlord Ember, though we did not expect you would be here. We are the Storm Host, and we welcome you, for now.” The voice sounded female, but it was low and raspy enough that it could pass for a male as well.

“Have you come for your kind?” the Host continued. “She is not with us.”

Female or not, it didn’t really matter to Ember. It was irking not to know who she was speaking to, but what was being said was much more important. She wondered if she should tell them that they already found Rosebud. No reason to leave her gem hoard out in the open, as dragons commonly said. Some secrets were better left closely guarded.

But, Spike did not seem to agree. “She’s safe with us now,” he told the voice behind the palanquin. “But we came to make peace. Whatever reason you had for attacking the dragons, I’m sure it's just a big misunderstanding.”

There was a pause, and the voice spoke again. “Dragonlord, do you always let your whelps speak for you?”

Ember narrowed her eyes. Whelps. Like “filly” or “colt,” the word referred to a young dragon, either before their moulting or just after. But she never heard outsiders use the word. Dragons were dragons, as far as anyone else was concerned. The word was used almost exclusively by her kind. How much did this hedgehog know about dragons?

“I can speak for myself,” she finally answered, “when I need to. But my friend here has his own words to say. You should listen, for your own sake.”

A harsh whisper came from the Host, and then the hedgehogs began to turn the palanquin so the front was directly facing Spike. “I am listening.”

“You might not know this, but many years ago when Dragonlord Ember took the responsibility of leading all dragonkind, she promised to make our people less aggressive and to stop raiding others for food and gems. Since then, dragons have done a lot of good for the world. The volcanic ash in the Dragonlands makes excellent fertiliser, and now dragons are part of a worldwide trading network!”

Spike threw his claws up excitedly, though it seemed to only make a few hedgehogs level their spears. “It just goes to show,” he continued without noticing, “you can get a lot more from working together instead of fighting. So, what do you say? Wanna try it out?”

To Ember’s surprise, the voice laughed. It was a soft, gentle one, much like how a pony might laugh at their dog for performing a trick. With another hiss came another command, and the palanquin slowly turned back to face Ember.

“I think not,” the voice said. “You see, the Storm King promised us an empire for fighting by his side. Now the eccentric tyrant is dead, and all our scattered forces have retreated. We do not have the empire we were promised. So, we hoped to carve one out for ourselves, right where your Ash Citadel now resides, on top the remains of our old empire.”

“You mean the junkyard?” Spike replied. But no answer came from the Host. She was only interested in Ember, it seemed.

“No one was there,” Ember answered after a quiet lull. “You can’t possibly expect us to acknowledge that as your territory. It was an airship junkyard, a place for things to be thrown away.”

“But it was still the property of the Storm Empire. The ships were going to be recycled.”

“The desert’s pretty big, you know?” Ember folded her arms. “Why not just move somewhere else? There are a few hundred miles of nothing between the Citadel and Kludgetown. Live there, if you’re so desperate.”

“You of all dragons should know,” the voice replied, “that an empire must grow. The walls of your Citadel feel tight, do they not? The same would be for us. Our lands must grow, and we would inevitably return to this confrontation, fighting over who gets what land. No, far better be it to fight now than let your kingdom grow unchecked.”

“We started building the Citadel five years ago, back when your king died and your pathetic empire fell apart, I might add. Just a reminder. If you wanted to hit us while we’re weak, I think you missed your shot. You caught us off guard once, but don't expect it to work again.”

“There are many things in the world,” the voice said, and this time Ember swore she could hear the smirk behind the words. “You haven’t even begun to understand all of them.”

Ember snorted at the Storm Host. “Well, I know I could burn you and your ship straight down to the bottom of the sea,” she threatened. “You’re crazy if you think you can win against us. We’re dragons.”

Suddenly, the Host’s tone grew grave. “I do not need to win. You are not the only one with many friends, Dragonlord.” Just as the voice went silent, a massive burst of seawater flooded the top deck.

Ember heard Flare and Rosebud, roaring and yawping at the thing that had just dragged them out of the water. With the sun behind it, she had trouble making out exactly what it was. But that was quickly fixed once two wide wings unfurled in the sky, blocking all the sunlight over the ship. The leathery wings and light refracting off the surface of its scales were both too familiar. In an instant, Ember recognised what the voice had summoned to fight for her. A dragon.

It crashed down, throwing Rosebud and Flare across the deck. The dark blue dragon, his scales similar in colour to the curtains on the palanquin, rocked the ship with his enormous weight. Half the length and width of the ship itself, it was a miracle that all that scale and muscle didn’t sink them immediately.

Ember dug her claws into the deck, scrambling to right herself so she could take off. The dragon’s tail splashed around and sent more water flying up, but compared to him, she was quick and nimble. The blue dragon’s enormous wingspan made it hard to turn, and impossible to take off without sufficient clearance.

Ember dodged and weaved through the air, narrowly escaping snapped rigging and tumbling masts, before turning back on the ship and diving for the palanquin. The hedgehogs bearing it had already scattered the moment the dragon burst from the water, so there was no need to hold back. She loosed her flame onto its blue curtains and swallowed everything inside in a pleasing orange glow.

Yet there was no scream from the Storm Host. In fact, there was nothing at all inside the palanquin, save for a small pedestal with a shallow pool of liquid within it. Light shimmered off its surface, and through the reflections of Ember’s flame, the image of another dragon’s face projected above, into the smoke.

“I’m sure you have questions, Ember,” the Host mocked her through the window of light and smoke, “I can only hope this answers a few of them before you die. Brother! Finish this!”

The dark blue dragon roared and swiped his tail across the deck. Ember jumped, launching herself up to the air. Spike and the others were nowhere to be seen, though she noticed Slipclaw flying above, desperately scanning the water for them. The rush of battle flooded her senses, the fire and salt and, sadly, hedgehog blood scented the air so much she barely noticed the Bloodstone Sceptre calling out to her.

The stone at its top was searing red and hot to the touch as if it too wanted a piece of the action. And Ember saw no reason to deny it. She pulled the Sceptre from her satchel and aimed it at the blue dragon.

“Stop!” she cried out at him. “I am your Dragonlord and I command you to stop!”

The dragon twisted his neck towards her and froze his assault on the ship. And yet, he did not seem to calm down. His jaws snapped wide open at her as he prepared to unleash his flame.

Ember growled and waved the Sceptre at him again, asserting her will through it. She’d take a little fire if it meant silencing the mad dragon. But before she could get a word out, she found herself flung backwards into the front mast of the ship.

There was a burning sensation on her arm, but what had caused it, she couldn’t be sure. She swapped grips, holding the Bloodstone Sceptre in her other arm as she fought to get back up to her feet. Her wings were sore from cracking the thick wooden mast, but after one good stretch, they seemed fine to support her in the air.

Another burst came, this time arcing up through the air at Slipclaw. She saw what it was. What she thought was the dragon’s roar was actually a thunderclap, born from an arc of lighting where a spray fire should have been. She couldn’t believe her eyes. What kind of dragon breathed lightning?

She clutched her Sceptre. Her command didn’t even seem to faze the dragon. The glowing gemstone still called out to her, begging to be of use, but reluctantly, she put it away. She didn’t have answers yet. And they were facing a true adult dragon, larger by far than even Skullfang.

“Slipclaw!” Ember cried out, taking flight as quickly as she could without tearing apart her already bruised wings. “We came for Rosebud. If you find her before I do, take her and go.” She ducked instinctively as the blue dragon roared and launched another current of lightning their way. “And do it fast!”

She pulled Spike out the moment she found him. He had taken a hit, apparently, and passed out on a floating plank in the middle of all the fighting. The lightning dragon, occupied by trying to ground Slipclaw, had control over the fight from his perch on the ship. Ember only managed to bring Spike back to safety by swimming him to shore, using floating chunks of the ship as cover.

“What’s happening?” Spike whispered as she pulled him up against a smoothed rock.

“Something bad,” she said. “Go back to the camp as soon as you can and wait with Sandbiter. We’re retreating.” The word sat bitterly on her tongue as she said it, but it was the truth. Cowardly or not, she’d at least bring her dragons back to the Citadel. Alive.

Ember swerved around the lightning dragon’s assaults from both tail and breath. It became harder and harder to search for the others once his eyes were on her. He began firing lightning into the sea without a care, shocking his own soldiers who were scrambling to return to their ship.

Spears flew up from the deck. Those who were safe on their vessel grew bolder every moment and threw an increasing amount of nets and spears to entangle Ember and Slipclaw. The burn on her arm didn’t help, either. It was an unusual pain. Dragons lived in fire and lava, their scale and their bodies uniquely suited to the impossibly high temperatures of volcanic calderas. Suffering from a burn was not something Ember could ever imagine if it weren’t for her arm. She could feel scales flaking off the wound, and the skin beneath was unbelievably tender.

Was this what a burn felt like? She understood why ponies avoided the Core this pain was what they risked by walking through the hot air of the furnaces. She clutched it tightly as she dove down, faster than the nets could catch her. A few spears still struck, but she flew far enough away from the ship that the steel-tipped weapons bounced uselessly off her scales.

Fortunately for her, Slipclaw was there to earn himself enough glory for a few new names. Perhaps Flashburn or Blackroast, for he gave no mercy to the hedgehogs targeting them. His flame blanketed the deck as he dove, scorching hair and hide of the mammals and sending them desperately back to the sea. But as long as the lightning dragon remained, neither of them could turn the battle to a victory.

“For the Ash Citadel!” Ember heard a pitched voice cry out in the middle of the flames. Out of nowhere, Rosebud crawled out from under the deck. How she got there, Ember couldn’t begin to guess, but she had on her an array of weapons taken from the hogs: spears slung over her back and a roll of nets wrapped around her waist like a belt. Even some odd potions dangled from her shoulders on leather straps.

She attacked, wildly throwing potions and spears at the lightning dragon. The spears did nothing, though one ricocheted off his scale and struck down a hedgehog fleeing Slipclaw’s fire. The potions in glass balls, however, burst into clouds of smoke that seemed to stick to his scale, slowly turning them into flakes of stone.

The lightning dragon growled and lashed out with his tail, knocking Rosebud aside before she could unfurl the net around her waist. She took a tumble and fell off the side of the ship.

There was no time to waste. Ember dove, flapping harder than ever even though her wings screamed for relief and rest. She struck the sea hard enough to send floating debris back up onto the ship and then began whipping her tail back and forth like a snake.

Ponies, and most mammals, in fact, had an awkward way of paddling through the water with their ill-suited limbs. They were sluggish, fighting to stay somewhere between drowning and moving while they swam. But not dragons. Even the thickest adult had a powerful tail strong enough to rocket through the water.

Ember caught up fast, snatching Rosebud and her newfound weapons from the depths of the sea and propelling them quickly to the shore.

“Slipclaw!” she yelled once she felt the rocky land beneath her feet. “Have you found Flare?”

A simple twist in the air and flick of the tail from the red dragon, another simple signal dragons liked to use, gave her the answer she needed. It was a common sign, often used to greet distant dragons while flying, but it was just a general acknowledgement. If he had heard her and had nothing else to say, then Slipclaw must’ve had some idea of where Flare was.

It was just a matter of pinpointing him.

“Lord dragon!” one of the vultures, possibly Peck-Peck, cawed from a purchase along the coastal cliffside. Her gutturally accented Draconic was even worse than Marrow’s. “What do? What do?”

“If we die, you’re not getting your meals,” she snarled at the bird. But if there was something they could do to help, Ember couldn’t think of it. Grab weapons from the enemies? If they didn’t get annihilated by lightning, they’d only be able to carry one spear or net at a time, and neither seemed like they would slow down the lightning dragon for more than a second.

Find and carry Flare? Unless the vultures had another dozen hungry mouths ready to help, Ember couldn’t see them carrying a dragon, even one as young as Flare.

And then she looked down at Rosebud, lying unconsciously in her lap. About a dozen glass bulbs filled with the stone-potion still hung from Rosebud’s shoulders. Small, potent, and the only thing that seemed to even faze the lightning dragon. And all they needed to do was make the glass crack.

“Take these,” she quickly ripped the leather straps off Rosebud and handed the potions to the vulture, “and drop them on the lightning dragon. Do it high enough that the glass will break.”

“Drops rocks, annoy storm-lizard, yes?” Peck-Peck yapped, taking up the potions in its long, hooked talons.

“More or less,” Ember said. “Just don’t miss. Find Marrow and take the shot together, you’ll have a better chance.”

At the drop of his name, Marrow came out from behind a bush and grabbed up the other strap of potions.

“Will eat soon?” he asked.

“Yes!” Ember said, growing annoyed at how they could think of food at a time like this. “I’ll roast a hedgehog for you if I have to. Just get that lightning dragon to stop attacking us!”

Without another question, the two vultures spread their wide wings and began their eerie circling, as if the ship itself had become another dead animal in the desert. They flew high, higher than Slipclaw could manage in his exhausted state, and far higher than the lightning dragon could accurately aim.

His lightning blasts already missed Slipclaw, albeit narrowly. Against hollow-boned birds, he couldn’t even come close to electrocuting them. And then the potions dropped.

It was a beautiful sight. Ember could not tell who had hit and who had missed, but even with half the glass bulbs plopping into the sea, the other half did more than enough to stun the dragon. The scales on his face turned to stone, even forming stiff plates around his eyes.

He roared a bolt of lightning out and clawed at the rocks, ripping off his former scales and exposing the rosy skin and muscle on his face. Ember wished she could be on the ship at that moment, a spear in her claws to lodge straight into the dragon’s face. But he was already recovering, pulling stone shards from his face. Watching from the side would have to be enough.

Slipclaw dove the moment the potions hit their mark, but not before the wild shot of lightning struck him on the tail. He spun, fighting for control until he crashed against the water’s surface.

A dread silence fell over Ember, but just for a moment. The dragon recovered from the stone on his face after prying much of his petrified scales off, leaving behind some gruesome pinky flesh that stood out against his dark blue scales. Suddenly, Slipclaw broke out from the water, clutching Flare tightly in his claws.

The dragon saw them immediately and swung open his jaw. Ember moved, picking up a spear from Rosebud and shooting through the air. She had no experience with throwing spears, and at the range from the shore to the ship, she knew there was no chance she could hit. But if her burn was anything to go on, she knew how much a dragon relied on its scales. The spear flew from her claws, and she saw the moment in the dragon’s eyes when he noticed the weapon flying for his exposed face.

The lightning dragon flinched, sucking in its charged lightning and ducking behind a collapsed mast. The spear missed completely, landing on the opposite side of the ship. It never would have hit even if the dragon had stayed completely still.

Nevertheless, it did its job. Ember twisted in the air and swooped back to the shore, clutching Rosebud in her arms as she rejoined Slipclaw in their exhausted and desperate retreat.

Ember collapsed on a sleeping cot inside one of the tents when they returned to the abandoned camp. For once, she felt it was appropriate for vultures to follow her. Her wings were beyond sore, and the burn on her arm still throbbed painfully, no matter what position she laid in.

The only thing that gave her comfort was knowing that for the past hour, the lightning dragon had not followed them. Rosebud was safe. Spike had made it to the camp just before them, and though he was tired as well, he still managed to bring a bowl of water and fresh bandages for Ember.

“Thanks,” she whispered to him as he cleaned her arm. She heard the tinkling of her scales falling out from the injury. It made a sort of crunchy sound as the damaged scales crumbled apart. Apparently, lightning was the one thing dragons had no immunity against.

“Do you always sleep with it?” Spike looked at her, then at the Bloodstone Sceptre laying beside the cot. “It looks kind of uncomfortable.”

“It comes with the job,” she said weakly. “I just… I don’t know why it didn’t work this time. That dragon, it was like my orders meant nothing to him.”

“Maybe he just didn’t hear you?” Spike asked. “He can’t disobey what he can’t hear, right?”

Ember laughed, just a little. “Don’t you remember when you were summoned by the Sceptre? You were halfway across Equestria and you still couldn’t refuse my father’s command.”

“Yeah, but what about the other dragons? I know of a few adult dragons living in Equestria, but they didn’t come. And now that I think about it, no adults went to the Gauntlet of Fire.”

“Because the Bloodstone Sceptre has to go to a young dragon that represents the next generation. That’s the tradition. Trust me, if my father wanted a bunch of adult dragons there to fight over the Sceptre, they all would have shown up. And then the world would have been short of a few dozen dragons.”

“Short a few?”

“Because adults can’t fit into the caves for the Gauntlet of Fire. They would have had to fight to the death for it instead. That’s why we have the tradition of youth.”

“Oh, I guess that makes sense.”

Spike quietly returned to Ember’s wound, wrapping up her arm in thick bandages, applying some kind of salve made from a desert plant. Ember recognised it. A lot of ponies brought it with them to the Ash Citadel in case they needed to treat burns. As the sticky sap coated her wound, a cold sensation started to wash over it.

“Ah, now that’s good,” she sighed.

“Glad you like it,” Spike said, “I’ll have to apply it a few more times today, to keep it fresh.” He stood up, rolled the remaining bandages together, and collected the trimmed plant stems.

“Hold on,” Ember reached out with her good arm. “Is it alright if you stayed for a moment? I just need someone to talk to right now.”

Spike sat down beside her without a second of hesitation. “Of course. That’s what friends are for.”

She smiled and then thanked him again. She couldn’t explain the feeling, but knowing he was there, and that she could close her eyes and trust that she’d wake to find the Sceptre still beside her, made her chest swell with bittersweet happiness. She wished she wasn’t in such a vulnerable position, but it was good to know where her friends stood.

They talked extensively about the lightning dragon, who he might've been, and who his sister, the Storm Host as she called herself, was as well. Spike explained the image she had seen under the palanquin.

The Storm King had used the very same potion to cast a spell that could send his voice and image across any distance, so long as there was another spell to receive the message. With weapons and ships from the old Storm Empire, Spike said he wasn’t surprised to see some remnants of its magic as well. They both wondered what Twilight would say if she had the chance to investigate the spell’s inner workings.

The stone potions that Rosebud found on the ship were used during the Storm King’s invasion of Equestria as well. Against a pony, a single glass ball of the mixture rapidly expanded to a cloudy gas covering the body and turning it all to stone. Ember had to wonder if it was just sheer size that protected the lightning dragon.

If the weapon had been used on her, would she be stuck waiting for some unicorn wizard to change her back?

“What do you plan on doing about it?” Spike finally asked when they seemed to run out of possible answers to their many questions.

“We need to know where they came from, first of all,” she answered, “and then strengthen the defences around the Citadel. The Storm Host, whoever she is, couldn’t have been clearer. They want their empire, and they’re willing to expand into our territory to get it.”

Chapter 4: Not All Quiet

Ember the Dragonlord tried not to show the pain.

She was the Governor of the Ash Citadel, Bearer of the Bloodstone Sceptre, and Protector of Eggs and Hatchlings, but all she could think about was bathing her arm in that plant salve Spike had used on her burn. After two days of hard flying back to the Citadel—the trip took longer since they had to take turns carrying Rosebud, and Ember’s arm demanded more rest—Ember had gotten only a few hours of sleep before dragons came knocking on her door.

Over a dozen dragons crowded together around the Core, grumbling among themselves, bumping and pushing with their tails and wings to be the first to speak. She could see all of them from above. Above the doorway to Burnt’s office, her office as long as she was here, hung a short ledge barely large enough for one dragon. But it was there that she stood. Like standing on a pedestal with nowhere to walk off, she was showing her people that she would not back down from their complaints.

Below her, at the entrance to the Core Office, Burnt and Spike stood guard, growling at any dragon that roared a little too loud and began to start their flames. Well, it was Burnt who did most of the growling. Disagreements between dragons were settled usually by fire and blood, or a good wrestling match in a pit of lava. But now wasn’t the time for that.

“Who are all these dragons?” Spike had asked just a few minutes before the first to arrive started demanding answers for the attacks.

“Cohort leaders, like Rosebud,” she had told him.

She didn’t list any names, she doubted Spike would recognise any of them, but from her little perch, she could see their faces clearly. Leaders from every cohort of the Citadel seemed to gather. Most didn’t bother her, leaders of small cohorts stuck to the back of the crowd mimicking their more impressive comrades, though everything they said usually lagged behind them.

There was only a few Ember was truly concerned about. Reave Stonesplitter, his cohort was the largest among the miners, may have been the most pressing. After all, the Citadel would be nothing but a heap of scrap if not for the mines. Then there was Caldera Hammerclaw. Without her cohort, Ember was fairly certain the other dragons who worked at the forges wouldn’t be able to make anything more complicated than a horseshoe.

But neither of them was the largest and loudest. That honour belonged to a red by the name of Rend Farfire. Along with the other two, he was one of the few full-fledged adults in the Citadel, and he threw his weight around by bellowing complaints louder than the rest.

Ember would have ignored his loud yawping if it wasn’t for the fact that Rend’s cohort made up half of the Citadel’s guards, something the arrogant dragon couldn’t help but remind everyone of.

“These attacks are making us look vulnerable! We should burn the last of those storm-whatevers to the ground!” As Farfire roared, Ember couldn’t help but remember a pony saying, something about hammers and everything being nails. His back was a tapestry of scars, each one hard-earned from a duel that he had started. And if things went his way, the whole Citadel would be dressed up and down in old wounds.

“And where is that dragon?” he continued. “That traitor should be chained up at the bottom of the mines for working with our enemies.”

Ember held her tongue. Traitor. That implied he ever had loyalty to the Dragonlands. And she was sure it wasn’t the case. No dragon in the history of dragons had ever done what he had done. Disobeying the Sceptre and breathing lightning instead of fire, her head still struggled to understand how either of those was possible. But, considering there were no questions about those details, it seemed the secret was still safe for the moment, and she wanted to keep it that way. The Citadel was already up in flames as dragons picked up news and rumours about the attacks.

Ember wondered if she should have kept it all a secret. Dragons knew she had gone south, but if she wanted to keep it confidential, she could have easily denied them any details. Instead, she had told Burnt everything that his daughter had faced and ordered him to share the basics of it. Every dragon deserved to know who they were fighting.

Though, if they were going to argue about it instead of preparing, Ember considered keeping things closer to her chest next time.

“My only concern was rescuing Rosebud,” she finally answered him. “Our enemies are not like scattered griffons or peaceful ponies. They were organised and armed with specialised weapons to bring down dragons. Capturing that dragon could have put Rosebud in harm’s way. Who here wouldn’t choose to save their hatchlings over fighting the enemy?”

That silenced quite a few jaws, but not Farfire’s. Instead, he spat a wad of fire on the ground, scorching a loose bit of coal at his feet.

“Or maybe you tucked your tail and ran at the sight of a real dragon. Dragonlord Torch should have never let you compete for the Bloodstone Sceptre.”

“Just Torch,” Ember growled. “I am the Dragonlord, and before you say your complaints, you will remember to respect that title.” She gripped her Sceptre firmly, letting her will flow through the red gemstone at the top. Even if he was her father, Torch had willingly given up the title. No one was the Dragonlord but her.

All the dragons, even Farfire, gave a shallow bow and acknowledged her power, and the power of the Sceptre.

“Of course, Dragonlord Ember,” Caldera spoke up, her silvery scales shimmering under the sceptre’s magical light. “We are all simply concerned. It seems you hold the opinions of ponies higher than the opinions of your kind. We do not have six heroes to call upon in times of need, and I believe Farfire simply wants to know why you let such a valuable asset slip away. Was the fighting so intense you couldn’t even issue a command?”

Ember loosened her hold on the Sceptre and lifted her will from the dragons. They calmed down with Caldera taking the lead, but Ember would have honestly preferred to contend with Rend. Average as adult dragons went, the red’s neck was long enough that if he wanted to speak to her eye-to-eye, he needed only to walk up and stretch to the ledge. Size and power were all dragons ever looked for in a leader, but Rend Farfire was so dull that Ember wondered if he hadn’t taken a few hits to the head along with his scars.

Yes, it would have been easier to argue with Rend. He was too simple to concede his position, but he’d never win an argument either. Meanwhile, Caldera could reason her way around most other dragons. And she had a point.

“I told you, she’s a coward!” Rend snorted, pointing an accusatory claw at Ember. “She even brings a pony princess to judge the Citadel. I’m not surprised a dragon that bows to ponies would let one battle scare her off. If I had the Sceptre, I would have ordered that dragon to burn his little hedgehog friends before finishing him off!”

A dozen younger cohort leaders, many of them around Ember’s age, cheered at Rend’s claim. Caldera simply rolled her eyes at him.

Ember clenched her jaw, thinking of what she could say now that they were fixated on the Sceptre. The last thing she wanted to do was lie to her dragons. She could feel her fire rising as she grew angry. Lying felt like running from the truth, like being the coward Rend claimed her to be. She wanted to stand firm and face the truth head-on like a dragon, whatever the consequences.

But fire died down when she imagined the panic and dissent that would follow if they all knew the truth about the lightning dragon. Or was calling them storm dragon more apt? They once served the Storm King, after all.

Ember shook the distraction from her head. Whatever their name, she had to lie. If she played into Caldera’s suspicion and claimed the fighting was too fierce, Rend would have his day and paint her as a Dragonlord who couldn’t even handle a fight with hedgehogs. Perhaps she could say she didn’t have the Sceptre on her, since she never expected to face a dragon. Whatever story she could have made up, it didn’t matter. Just as she was growing frustrated, Spike clearly could not stand to see his friend accused.

He shot up in the air, flying up to Rend and staring him in the eye. It looked almost comical; Rend’s eye was nearly the size of Spike’s head.

“She’s not a coward!” he shouted at the red dragon. “I’d like to see you fight a lightning dragon and say you wouldn’t do the same!”

And then Ember’s fire went cold.

“Lightning dragon?” Rend narrowed his eyes at Spike. “Dragonlord, what is this whelp talking about? What are you hiding from us?”

Spike whipped around to face Ember, eyes wide and face aghast, covering up his mouth with his claws as he realised what he had blurted out.

The other dragons, Ember noticed Caldera and Reave specifically, started to stare. Some of it was suspicion, after all, she had hidden the truth from them, while other looks were of confusion and anger. Well, at least she could stop thinking about her options. There was only one thing to do.

Ember told them the truth in detail. In front of every leader of nearly every cohort, she told them of the Storm Host and how she had used a spell to speak from afar. She described the dark blue dragon—a storm dragon she had decided to call them as a reminder of their enemy’s identity—who spat lightning instead of fire and could completely ignore a command from the Bloodstone Sceptre.

During the story, some dragons spoke out. Rend Farfire, the arrogant brute, mocked Ember and accused her of using the Sceptre wrongly when it mattered most.

But she levelled it against him and challenged him to try her. He did not.

Despite Ember’s reservations and initial distrust, the dragons of the Citadel took the news somberly. Rather than panic or challenge her for the Sceptre, the cohort leaders, even Rend, listened. There was little in the world that could shake a dragon’s confidence, for as long as there was a Dragonlord to keep their kind tame, or tame enough, it seemed all her dragons had believed that nothing could threaten their new kingdom. Any challenge to that basic assumption bore sober consideration.

“So, this dragon, if he could even be called that, is not a traitor,” Caldera said. By some trick of light and positioning, her scales seemed to dim their reflections and settle down. “He is an enemy, head to tail.”

“Some enemy,” Rend scoffed. “My guess says the Storm King kept him as a pet or something. Anyone who serves under a fool like that king is no dragon in my books. Let me find him, I’ll end this problem with one quick strike.”

Ember found it ironic that Rend of all dragons was calling the Storm King a fool, but his posturing couldn’t help but stir her imagination. How did a dragon come under the banner of the Storm Army?

“The only thing you’ll end is all our suffering,” Reave Stonesplitter, the brown dragon nearly as big as Rend, said. “One lightning bolt and the whole Citadel will be freed from your yawping like a newly hatched whelp.”

“You have the claws to back that?” Rend snarled but backed off immediately when Ember tapped her Sceptre. Both males glared with blazing infernos in their eyes. But as long as the fire was in their eyes and not their mouths, they were making progress.

“We can fight among ourselves when there are no more enemies left for us,” Ember said. “Until then, we have to prepare the Citadel to handle any kind of invasion. I think they’ve been testing our defences with the hedgehogs, seeing how we’ll react. Now that they know they’ve been exposed, these dragons may not hold back any longer.”

“Let them come, we can take two dragons!” cried one of the smaller leaders, a pink-scaled female. Ember couldn’t remember her name immediately. Was it Smokestack? Cinders? Whoever she was, she seemed to have the approval of Rend, who nodded at the pink dragon’s aggression.

“We are not going to invite an attack,” Ember replied, announcing to the whole crowd. “We know what we’re fighting, but not how many. The Storm Host called that dragon her brother, but we can’t assume it’s just the two of them. Maybe she had more siblings, or parents. Or maybe a whole horde of them is waiting beyond our shores.”

Ember raised her wounded arm to the crowd. “We already know they can hurt us. Plus, their soldiers use weighted nets and spears. Maybe against one or two, we’d win, but how many dragons will have to die to take down five? Ten? A hundred?”

Caldera flicked her tail about, scattering some young dragons crowding around her. “What do you say should be our first step then, Dragonlord?” She gave herself more space and cleared a circle with her at its centre, forcing the other dragons to look her way.

“It’s unlikely they’d strike at the Ash Citadel,” Ember said. “Our steel walls are complete and continue to grow stronger by the day. But our other territories, the mines, fishing posts, and home caves out in the desert, they’re all at risk.”

It was a short list, but one that would perk up any dragon’s attention. Gems, food, and shelter were at stake. The last one was the most important of all. Gems and fish could be found anywhere else, but a good secure cave that could hold a dragon’s precious horde, that was hard to come by.

“We can start by putting up lightning rods across the colony,” Caldera suggested. “We’ll see if that lightning spitter can control the electricity he makes. My cohort should be able to put up most of them.”

Ember nodded and gestured down to Burnt. “The Core Office will help manage the funds you’ll need to make them work.”

“Put those credits into the mining cohorts,” Stoneplitter said, pushing his way past Rend to grab Ember’s attention. “We’ll need stone and steel to build more fortifications, but my dragons need better tools and carts to pull all that material out of the earth.”

A few other dragons, Ember guessed they were the leaders of the other mining cohorts, puffed small sparks of flame in agreement. It sounded like a good plan as well, and she didn’t see why it couldn’t complement Caldera’s. The Ash Citadel had the resources to spare for both. Of course, dragons had to be greedy.

Caldera laughed at the brown dragon. “Give me half the time it takes your blockheads to dig a hole and I’ll build a weapon that’ll tear down any fortress. Dragonlord, we have enough materials, what we need is a set of skilled claws to do something with them.”

Ember raised the Sceptre, not using its magic but simply as a gesture to silence the other tiny arguments beginning to spawn from Caldera and Reave’s dispute.

“We can support both of you, for now,” Ember said. “If it turns out we can’t, I’ll judge the progress you both make and pick a direction. But for now, we can’t let a single detail slip by. So you both have my support, agreed?”

Both of them huffed. Two winners would always look like a draw to dragons, and they’d remain mad even if they were better off for it. What surprised Ember was the remarkable silence coming from Rend. She looked at him, curious as to what was going on in his head.

He took notice and simply smirked. “Don’t worry about us lowly guards,” he said mockingly. “Unlike those two, we’re ready to fight: any place, any time. Just promise my cohort a skewer of clams for every charred hedgehog and we’ll be there.”

Ember smiled. Sometimes she had to appreciate her kind’s bravado. Simple desires over food and gems were much easier to manage than whatever kind of politics happened in Canterlot’s royal palace.

As soon as the hearing was adjourned, Ember retreated to her dwelling. Just above the Core, most dragons lived in false caves, ledges made from steel or stone that jutted inward, creating a shelf that overlooked the Core. Once a layer of steel was welded on top, it made for a passable cave for a young dragon.

Hers had rows of heavy, fire-retardant curtains pulled across the front to create a kind of door at the mouth. They were cheap and inexpensive, many ponies she talked to said that firefighters in Equestria wore the material all over their bodies as they worked. The only added luxury was its purple colouring. The curtains were the first gift Twilight had sent to Ember when the Citadel opened its doors to the world.

Twilight had insisted that the purple colour was her friend Rarity’s idea since purple was a colour for royalty. Ember took it on good faith that it was by tradition, and not some trend set by Twilight conveniently being a purple alicorn.

She laid down on a flat boulder in the middle of her false cave. She had ordered a few dragons to bring it in from the desert when the false caves were first built. Something like furniture, though she imagined that rocks made uncomfortable beds for ponies and griffons.

Spike was close behind her, already preparing that salve for her burn. “I’m so sorry,” he pleaded with her. “I don’t know why I said that stuff about the dragon. But that guy was just insulting you, and I couldn’t take it.”

Before she said anything to him, Ember peeled the bandages off her arm and took a look at the burn. She winced as the tender skin was exposed to the air. The scorching currents of air rushing up from the Core felt different without a layer of scales for protection.

“It’s fine,” she said, sitting up and giving Spike space to get close and treat the wound. “They took the news better than I thought they would. I should have just told them everything from the start. Dragons should trust me if I’m going to be their Dragonlord.”

“Applejack would like the sound of that,” Spike said.

Ember looked at him strangely. “Am I supposed to… Do I know that pony?”

“Applejack? She’s one of Twilight’s friends. The Element of Honesty?”

Ember shrugged. “If you ask me, ponies are all sparkles or rainbows or sunshine. You see one and you’ve seen them all.”

“I guess that’s if you never grew up around them,” Spike said.

He gave the burn a quick rinse, cleaning off the old, sticky residue of the salve before applying a new coat. Once it was clean, a quick rub with the plant-goo and a swift wrapping of bandages made Ember’s arm feel almost as good as new.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Just doing my duty as an ambassador to the Dragonlands.”

“As a dragon.” Ember looked at him with a frown. “You’re doing your duty as a dragon.”

“Uh, isn’t that what I just said?”

“You called yourself an ambassador to the Dragonlands. But more than that, you’re still a dragon. You still belong among us.”

“I dunno, I still feel weird around so many dragons—”

“You should stay here, Spike.”

There was a pause and a blank look on his face. It was as if his brain had suddenly shut off for a second as he tried to process what Ember had just asked of him.

“I don’t mean forever,” she quickly added, worried he might get the wrong idea. “I know you’re still a pony at heart, it’s one of your good traits. That’s why when Twilight finishes her tour here and goes back to Equestria, I want you to stay, just for a while, until the attacks have stopped.”

“I’d like that, but it’s not up to me,” he told her. “If Twilight needs me, I have to go with her.”

Ember nodded and knew that was the best she was going to get. “I understand, but please ask her if you can stay.”

Once her burn was cleaned and wrapped up, Spike left her to rest. Ember fell asleep quickly, letting the sound of hammers and furnaces take her mind off her arm’s throbbing. As she slept, her mind drifted from one worry to another. Dreams flashed quickly in her mind, not long enough to remember but enough to recognise.

The Storm Host’s voice echoed through her sleep, repeating all she had said. An empire. The dragons were barely a kingdom, and yet their new enemy had such high ambitions. But a dragon who flew too high was doomed to fall from exhaustion.

A metallic skritch-skratch outside her cave woke Ember up.

She wondered how long she had rested. The sun scarcely reached into Ash Citadel, and the fires of the Core left a consistent orange glow at all hours of the day. She could have slept for ten minutes or a whole day.

She rose off her rock to answer the scratching outside her cave, pulling back the curtains just enough to let her guest in.

Skullfang, nearing the size of a full adult dragon, had to duck down low to fit through the entrance. His crawling on all fours looked more appropriate than the wobbling upright gait he still kept. As dragons aged, their bodies became too difficult for their legs and spines to support upright.

Burnt looked around quickly and then settled down in the back corner of her cave. Before she could ask him why he had come, he revealed a deep metal bowl from behind his back, laden with sapphires and garnets and aquamarine gemstones.

“For me?” Ember tilted her head, but her claws could not wait. Before Burnt could answer she was already picking the sapphires and vanishing them in a single gulp. The stones dropped with a satisfying clinking sound in her stomach, and immediately her mood lifted.

“A gift basket, Spike called it,” Burnt said. “I asked him what would be the best way to thank you for bringing my daughter back safely.”

Ember laughed. “Ponies do love giving their friends food. One time when I visited the Princess, she had the walls of her home made out of crystals for me.”

“Are you certain? I’m not so sure…” Burnt narrowed his eyes thoughtfully but then shook off whatever thought had taken hold of him. “Nevermind, a discussion for another day. I wanted to ask you if you’d be able to oversee some of the defences being built by the aqueduct. Caldera told me she has some ideas she’d like to try, she just needs a few days to set it up.”

“Where on the aqueduct?” Ember asked for clarification. It ran west, from the Citadel straight to the sea, and at a leisurely pace, it’d take a dragon a whole day to fly its length.

“She had a few ideas, spoke too quickly for me, frankly,” Burnt admitted, nervously picking at one of the teeth that jutted out of his face and gave him his namesake. “She did specify starting at the head, however. ”

“By the fishing village?” That was the furthest possible place to start. “I’ll have to see how my arm heals. That’s a lot of flying.”

“I can arrange for you to be pulled on a skipper. I know a few griffons who’ll do the pulling, for a bit of coin. Or we could get some jewel jackals to take the job.”

Ember imagined it for a moment, and then decided she would rather take another hit from the storm dragon than be seen being dragged around in a skipper as if she was helpless.

She refused Burnt’s suggestion, despite how easily the boat-like vessels could slide across the sand.

“As long as you think you’re up to it,” Burnt said. “But don’t push yourself when you don’t have to. The Ash Citadel needs you at your best, and personally, I don’t want to see the dragon who saved my daughter’s life make her own injuries worse just to keep up appearances.”

Ember nodded. “You’re too wise for a dragon. Certainly wiser than Rend.”

“That’s not a hard bar for any dragon to pass, Dragonlord.” They both laughed. But it was only a passing nicety to stall the real question that was on both their minds. The question of the storm dragon.

Burnt had heard the story already, but he still asked Ember to recount it one more time, just to be sure. She didn’t want to believe it, and probably neither did he, but she couldn’t deny what had happened.

“Perhaps they’re some variation, like how pegasi and unicorns are both ponies, despite their differences,” Burnt speculated. “Can it be the same with dragons?”

“Maybe, but if that were true, wouldn’t there be records or stories of them?” Ember wondered. “The Storm King’s conquests spanned a decade or two. If they are dragons like us, they must’ve been around for much longer.”

Burnt fiddled absent-mindedly at one of his fangs again, distracted by his thoughts. “The hedgehogs come from a distant land, don’t they? Far enough away that it could permanently separate our kinds.”

Ember groaned, rubbing her head. She still couldn’t picture it: dragons separated from each other for hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of years. More pressingly, if their guess was right, she had to wonder where those dragons had been all that time.

“I don’t know about you, Burnt,” she said, “but I’m still tired. There’s too much to know, and I don’t have the time or the books like Princess Twilight to figure it all out. I need rest, and then I’ll focus on preparing the Citadel. We can ask our questions when we don’t have enemies to fight.”

Burnt nodded and then rose to his feet, still ducking down to keep from scraping his head against the ceiling. “You have a practical kind of wisdom, Dragonlord. Same as your father. A shame there are so few dragons like you.”

He parted the curtain with his wings, spreading them as wide as he could to catch the hot air billowing up from the Core. He’d need every gust, his adult body was growing in fast, and his wings would not do a good job of keeping up, not for a few more years anyhow.

Ember laid back down, but she quickly realised that no matter how hard she shut her eyes, her sleep had been disturbed. She tried settling her mood, eating a few chunks of topaz and aquamarines, but they were no help. Without any other recourse to calm her nerves, she stepped out of her cave and decided to take a flight around the Ash Citadel. At least then, dragon or non-dragon, everyone would know that the Dragonlord was still strong and ready to lead.

She followed one of the air currents up to the upper levels, gliding by a number of shops and stalls owned and run by griffons and ponies.

Instantly, her appetite flared.

Diamonds, while the most delicious of all jewels, were also incredibly valuable. Other gemstones did just as well for growing healthy scales, so most dragons were comfortable giving up the short-lived flavour of diamonds in order to trade for more useful resources, like enchanted tools or special crafts.

And those diamonds adorned rich ponies and griffons, who set their success into bands of silver and gold. Just how rich did non-dragons become, trading in the Citadel?

Ember wondered for a moment who’s colony it really was.

She ignored the appetite onset by such a rare flavour and focused on a task, any task. It had been a few long days, but Princess Twilight was still in the Citadel. She had been entertained by the kind living in the Citadel for a while, but Ember decided it was the right thing to do to show her a little more hospitality.

The Equestrian consulate was deep in an iron web. Dozens of walkways crossed from one side of the walls to the other, suspended by thick steel cords dangling from the ceiling. Ponies could fall off one walkway and find themselves on another just ten feet below. It was difficult to fly through, but that was preferable to a thin web that would never catch a falling pony.

The consulate office was built much like the Core’s office, although it was much smaller in order to remain safely suspended on top of steel support beams. Like the Core one could find food, medicine, or official documents at the consulate, the ponies seemed to require a great deal of variety. Three kitchens, four stores, and even a bank, extended from the consulate, and ponies of every kind entered in and out of their doors as they would in any Equestrian town.

The ponies scarcely paid any attention to Ember as she passed by them. With the Sceptre packed away in her bag, she imagined that she must’ve seemed like just another dragon to them.

Inside the consulate, the dim and brutalist design of the Ash Citadel faded away. The metal skeleton of the building disappeared, completely concealed by layers of soft carpets, curtains, and potted indoor plants. The steel walls were banished and replaced with a welcoming beige wallpaper, though Ember could still make out the tiny bumps underneath where the rivets had been placed.

The pony at the front desk, a slight portly mare with a lavender mane done up in a bun, greeted and welcomed her. The mare recognised Ember immediately, as expected of a consulate worker, and they exchanged some quick words before Ember asked to see Twilight.

“I’m afraid she’s not in right now,” the mare told her. “She should be out, taking a walk through the Merchants’ Level.”

Asking about their business, no doubt. Ember thanked the mare and quickly made her way back out to the Citadel, descending down through the canopy of steel.

The Merchants’ Level was a series of wide steel bridges that spanned the middle and upper layers of the Citadel. Anything from any of the other kingdoms, from Equestria to Mount Aris, and even some scant goods from Griffonstone and Abyssinia, could be found there. While narrow walkways and pipes formed something like a canopy, the Merchants’ Level was a divide between the dragons below and non-dragons above.

Plenty of dragons still visited, of course. There was a currency exchange among the colourful and eclectic stalls, the only place outside of the Core which would accept the Citadel’s credits. Credits became bits, and bits could buy a dragon anything from anywhere else in the world.

Ember eventually found Twilight at an enchanter’s stall, seemingly in a discussion with the unicorn who operated the register at the front.

“Dragonlord!” The enchanter noticed her walking up to his stall and immediately rushed to place his best-looking pieces out in front. “How fortuitous! The Princess and Dragonlord grace my shop with their presence in simultaneum!”

She eyed the unicorn carefully, taken back a bit by his speech. At first, she thought it was a difference between Draconic and Ponish, but that didn’t make sense. The two were so similar that she never had a problem understanding other ponies.

Twilight gave Ember a knowing look, and she realised that this pony just happened to be a little strange, even for pony standards.

“It’s not a coincidence,” she told the enchanter. “I actually came to check on Princess Twilight. Am I interrupting?”

“Oh of course not,” Twilight said and then gestured with her horn to the tools laid out behind glass cases. “I was just asking him why he doesn’t use Starswirl’s Method of Parallel Entanglement to unify the uneven distribution of enchantment energy. And then he said it’s because he thinks Mistmane’s System for Adjusted Particle Diffusion is better for making more durable tools.”

The Princess laughed as if she had just shared the wittiest joke in all of Equestria, which she might have, but Ember had no sense for half the words she said. Instead, the Dragonlord just politely nodded and chuckled along.

“Every pony has their opinions I guess,” Twilight waved one of her wings in the air as if to fan away the issue. “I mean it’s not like I’m an expert who spent her whole life studying magic or anything.”

“Okay then,” Ember smiled and put a claw around Twilight’s shoulder, “I think we’d better go before someone, not naming names, uses magic to blow a hole in my colony.”

“I would never!” Twilight gasped. “I mean, I might be able to. But who knows?” She spun her head around to the enchanter. “Like I said, it’s not as if I’m an expert at spellcraft or anything!”

Ember quickly removed her from the stall and together they continued walking. Once Twilight had cooled off from whatever obsession had possessed her, they began to talk about the Citadel.

“I heard the news passing among the ponies,” Twilight said, sounding so composed it was as if nothing had happened a few minutes ago. “You know you can always ask Equestria for help, right?”

Ember swallowed her nerves. Which news, she wondered. That clean water was limited in the Citadel? Or that the Citadel was under threat from a storm dragon? The latter was impossible, she decided. Her own dragons had only just learned of the details.

“With the water? I know it’s a problem, but we’ll be installing new filters to clean the seawater we get from the beach.”

Twilight raised a brow at her. “Water? I meant with the remains of the Storm King’s army.”

What ponies said about the speed of gossip was true, and Ember suddenly felt like drowning herself in a pit of molten slag.

“How much have you heard?” she asked, trying to hide the embarrassment flushing her face.

Twilight shared, recounting all but the most recent news. It seems the rest of the Citadel heard about the hedgehogs and the remains of the Storm Army as soon as Ember had returned. A whisper here, a whisper there, perhaps one of the other dragons made a comment and someone overheard. However the news spread, it didn’t matter. It was out already.

Ember hesitated on filling in the gaps in the story. Twilight didn’t know a dragon was involved, let alone a storm dragon. But she would’ve been an idiot to try and keep it a secret any longer. If so much news had spread so quickly, by the end of the day she was sure Twilight would find out anyway. So she confessed the rest to her, including how the Bloodstone Sceptre was useless. She described the Storm Host and her brother, plus the potion spell the Host had used to speak from a distance.

“I know that spell,” Twilight said when Ember mentioned it. “Tempest, a defector from the Storm King’s army, showed me how it works. The magic’s advanced, but easy to use once it’s concentrated into a potion.”

Eyes looked their way as they walked by traders and merchants. The Princess and the Dragonlord, what prudent entrepreneur could resist? Fortunately, the ponies and griffons in the market respected their authority enough to give them a wide berth and mind their own business.

“But these storm dragons, I've never even heard of them before,” Twilight continued. “That burn on your arm, that’s from their lightning?”

Ember nodded, flexing her arm around to show it wasn’t a big deal. But she immediately questioned why she did that, Twilight wasn’t some dragon to be easily impressed by a show of strength.

“He had dark blue scales, almost as dark as the night, and he was the size of a full-grown dragon. Nose to tail tip, he was almost as long as the airship.”

“I’ll have to see what I can find about it in the Canterlot libraries. If there’s any record of a dragon like that, it’d be there. But until then, I think I can send a company of guards to help protect the Citadel.”

Ember stopped walking. “No.”

“No?”

“That dragon is dangerous even to other dragons,” she said. “I don’t want to think about what it could do to ponies. If you send your guards, they’ll end up my responsibility, and I have enough on my mind right now.”

She held out her arm. “Even if they can hurt us, dragons are still the only ones who can take that lightning and survive. So it’s up to us to protect the Citadel.”

Before they continued their discussion, the two of them noticed the many eyes that had fixated on them now that they had stopped in the middle of the Merchants’ Level. They turned back around and returned to the consulate to talk with privacy.

Twilight even told the mare at the front desk to cancel all visits and turn away visitors until they were done.

“It’s not just dragons who live here,” Twilight said once they settled inside the office, normally used to sign off on trade and travel documents. “Every pony in the Ash Citadel is my responsibility. You can’t stop me from protecting my citizens.”

“I don’t plan to stop you. But I’m asking you to trust me. If my dragons can’t protect the Ash Citadel, what can your guards do?”

Twilight tapped the tip of her horn. “Don’t count us out of the fight, we can still pull our own weight.”

“Twilight, please.” Ember pressed her brows together with her claws. “This isn’t Equestria. We have to be able to hold our own, or else the other kingdoms aren’t going to treat the Dragonlands as anything more than a rag-tag bunch of brutes. Queen Novo, Prince Rutherford, King Thorax, do you think they’re going to respect the Citadel if we can’t even hold it for more than a few years?”

Ember slumped down and she could feel her scales scratching against her wooden chair. The Equestrian consulate’s office was even simpler than the Core’s, with wooden furniture instead of the usual steel or bronze that dragons used. It was packed with bookshelves and an overcrowded desk of papers and the floor was covered in a soft carpet.

Her mind drifted for a moment, and she thought how dangerous it was. If a single lucky spark drifted up from the Core’s forges, the whole office would be swallowed in flames.

“I never knew you felt that way, Ember,” Twilight said. She fell silent, deep in thought and humming to herself. She picked up a fountain pen off the table and twirled it around in a levitation bubble. Ember watched, briefly mesmerised. Was that as easy as it looked?

“Still, I can’t just go back to Equestria and do nothing,” she eventually said. “I trust you to defend your home, but at least let Equestria send you supplies. Potions and medicines should help protect your dragons. I can even add a few royal wizards to guard the supplies. Even if you don’t want them getting into danger, a lot of graduates from our School of Magic can enchant letters to deliver themselves. It’s not a communication potion, but those spells can send messages much faster than a dragon or pegasus can carry them.”

Ember nodded. “Fair enough. As long as no pony is putting themselves in danger, I wouldn’t mind the help.”

“And I don’t mind offering it,” Twilight said. “It’s the least I can do to repay you for all the rare jewels Rarity’s been able to buy for her dresses.”

Ember felt grateful for Twilight’s friend. She couldn’t for the life of her remember exactly what this Rarity looked like, but she knew she was the pony who had a hoof in gifting the purple fire-resistant curtains that dressed up her cave. Pony fashion, the need to wear a dozen trinkets that served no function, would probably never make sense to Ember, but she appreciated the demand for gemstones it created.

“If you really want to help, there’s one thing that’ll help more than any amount of magic or potions.”

“There is?” Twilight tilted her head.

Ember nodded. “Let Spike stay in the Citadel, at least until the danger is gone.”

Twilight’s face quickly paled. “Y-you want Spike?”

“He’s a dragon with a pony’s wisdom. I can’t think of someone better to help organise the Citadel.”

Suddenly, Twilight’s posture changed and she sat higher up, straightening her back and fluffing up her feathers just slightly in a way that made her look bigger.

“I’m sorry, but Spike is just too important to me. I can’t leave him here in good conscience, not if there’s a chance he might get hurt.”

“You just said you trusted us to defend the Citadel. On top of that, his fire breath can send messages instantly. Isn’t that the same as sending unicorns to do the job?”

“No, it’s not.” Twilight hesitated, but only briefly. Whatever reservations she had, she quickly sorted it out. “I care about all my subjects, of course, and I trust you to take care of them by defending the Citadel. But Spike is different. He’s family, and I’m sorry to say it, but I just can’t trust someone else to protect him. I’m sorry.”

Ember took a deep breath and settled down. She could feel her scales rippling as her muscles tensed up underneath. What she wanted to do was fight for Spike, he had every right to rejoin his kin, especially when they were facing a dangerous enemy. On the other claw, Twilight had a point.

“I just risked life and limb to save a daughter,” Ember wiggled her injured arm to prove her point. “I can’t exactly turn around and take a dragon away from his mother, even if they are an unlikely pair.”

Twilight seemed to relax and her feathers flattened down. “Thank you.”

“But I just have to ask,” Ember added, “how long do you think you can shelter him? He has his wings, he’s not a baby dragon anymore.”

“There’s a difference between letting him travel the world and knowing he’ll be fighting against the Storm Army and a storm dragon. I’m not trying to shelter him from the world, but there are lines I can’t let him cross.”

“I understand,” Ember said, “and I won’t ask you again.”

Ember walked the length of the Merchant’s Level afterwards, drifting from one stall to the other, ignoring the invitations from ponies hawking their overpriced goods.

She tried imagining what she would do without Spike. It wasn’t that he had any particular skill: he’d never be able to convince a dragon of anything, the Storm Host proved as much, and he didn’t have experience fighting or brawling. His value came from his ability to trust in his principles. Dragons the world around at least had heard the rumours about Equestrian magic. Time and time again, little ponies proved that they could prevail against overwhelming odds simply with their friendships and magic.

But even if a dragon knew that’s how Equestria remained so strong, it didn’t make it any easier to put faith in generosity and kindness when greed and dominance was the norm, not the exception, in the Dragonlands. That was Spike’s strength. He could stick to his beliefs even in the face of adversity. In a sense, he was useful because he was reliable.

Ember scoffed and laughed at herself. For all her preaching about how dragons needed to form an independent kingdom, she still felt so reliant on a pony’s way of thinking. And then, as if summoned by her thoughts, or more likely a stroke of coincidence, she came across Spike. Rosebud walked with him, elbows hooked together, as he passed by a hippogriff’s shop selling pearl jewellery and specialised fishing rods.

“What are those?” Rosebud asked, pointing to a heavy-looking rod on display. The shop owner, busy with another pony, didn’t seem to hear, but Spike was quick to answer.

“I’ve been to Mount Aris a few times,” he said, “there’s like to catch big fish with them, like sailfish or tuna.”

“With a rod? I thought they could turn into sea-ponies. Why not just swim after them? Or throw a net?”

“It’s mostly for fun. Like a game. The rod makes it a challenge to fight the fish, you have to pull at the right time and make the fish tire itself out until finally, you reel it out of the water.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Rosebud said.

Ember, letting the two young dragons talk, snuck up behind them before cutting into their conversation.

“Sounds fun. Maybe we could try it one day.”

“Dragonlord!” Rosebud jumped and spun around, unhooking her arm from Spike’s.

Her squeal caught the shopkeeper’s attention, and that of the other ponies trotting by the stall. The hippogriff at the counter immediately approached Ember and started asking her what she’d like to buy, but she turned him away and asked for some privacy with her dragons. The hippogriff seemed a little disappointed, but he didn’t dare refuse her.

“You two getting to know each other?” Ember waggled a curious brow.

“N-no,” Rosebud replied, catching herself. “I mean yes. Well, we already talked on the way back to the Citadel. Spike just wanted to take a tour of the Merchant’s Level. He said he didn’t get a good look at it before.”

“Haha,” Spike laughed lightly, “I think I’ve spent more time outside of the Citadel than in it.”

“That’s too bad,” Ember said. “I spoke with Twilight just now. It seems she wants to take you back to Equestria.”

“Really?” Both Rosebud and Spike said at the same time.

“But she’s not just abandoning the Ash Citadel, right? Is she going to send help against the storm dragon?”

“Some, yes.” Ember nodded, trying to hide the bittersweet expression that was trying to surface. She was glad his first concern was the Citadel, but she would have liked him to be more worried about having to leave. “Mostly in resources, no guards or soldiers. Fighting a storm dragon is too dangerous for anyone but another dragon.”

“But why does Spike have to leave?” Rosebud asked.

“That’s just how she wants it. They’re family.”

The young dragon hissed sharply. “Family? She’s a pony princess. What would she know about dragon families?”

“Um, Rosebud?” Spike carefully interjected, placing a claw on her shoulder to calm her down. “Twilight was the pony who hatched and raised me. I know most families aren’t like mine, but she’s like my big sister and my mother at the same time.” Spike paused. “Wow, that sounds really weird when I say it out loud.”

“Whatever she is, they’re important to each other,” Ember said.

“But Spike’s important here too. Shouldn’t he get to decide if he can stay?” Rosebud quickly turned and locked eyes with him. “You don’t want to go, right? The Ash Citadel is a city of dragons, why would you want to leave?”

Spike stepped back, not saying anything for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. Just like a dragon would, Rosebud came on him strong. Ember wondered if Spike had any experience talking to a younger dragon, a female dragon, at that.

“I do want to stay,” he said slowly, “but if Twilight wants me to leave, I don’t have a choice.”

“But will you be happy?” Ember asked. “Having no choice and being happy with what happens aren’t the same.”

Spike opened his mouth but no words came out. His eyes darted around the way eyes always did when someone was searching their thoughts. The search must have come up empty because he found no recourse and eventually relented.

“I do want to stay, just a little bit longer. Even if it’s dangerous.”

“Then you’ll have to tell Twilight that,” Ember said. “And leave me out of it. I already told Twilight I’d respect her wishes, so you’ll have to change her mind on your own.”

“He’s not alone,” Rosebud said with a confident grin. “I’ll talk to her—”

“Oh no,” Ember took the young dragon by the claw, “the last thing you are going to do is make more trouble for me. This is Spike’s business. Let him take care of it himself.”

Chapter 5: Defences

The letter crinkled in Ember’s claws as the sandy wind blew by.

The edges of the page weren’t even singed. What kind of magic did Spike’s fire have?

Ember scanned over the words on the paper again and felt the same wave of relief she felt the first time she read it. While she spent the better part of a day and a night recovering from her injury, Spike had spoken to Twilight. According to him, it was a hard-fought debate, but he eventually won the Princess over.

With some exceptions.

Spike could stay, but Ember was going to have to accept a small garrison of Wonderbolts at the Ash Citadel. Spike didn’t write why, probably because he was too embarrassed to admit that Twilight only wanted her elite pegasi to watch over him.

Ember would have preferred a less conspicuous crew of ponies, but it was a small price to pay to have Spike at the Citadel.

With that out of the way, she folded the letter and tucked it away into her bag, nestled beside the Bloodstone Sceptre and a wrapped package of oysters for the journey to the aqueduct.

In the end, she had to take a sand skipper. It felt humiliating to be hauled around, but the scales on her burn had only just begun to poke out over the skin, and the injury was still soft and sensitive. Flying only stretched and irritated it even more. So she finally agreed to a skipper, though not one pulled by griffons.

Undoubtedly, a team of flyers would have no problem crossing the length of the aqueduct in a day or less. But griffons were more numerous in the Citadel, and most of them worked in some kind of shipping or receiving. Most of the Citadel’s griffons only stayed for a few days at a time until they were ready to leave and escort more shipments.

No, griffons could spread rumours of her weakness too quickly and easily. That left the jewel jackals. Though they could not fly, the subterranean canines were remarkably fast on the sand. Their paws, Ember had noted years ago after they first appeared in the mines, were soft and wide and able to spread their weight across the loose sand.

Slender and long, their bodies were uniquely suited to slither through the tight spaces of their underground tunnels where they hoarded jewels for decoration. At least, Ember assumed they were for decoration. No one truly knew. Jewel jackals never let outsiders into their tunnels, they only came out and worked with the Citadel whenever jewels were offered.

An added benefit to their narrow bodies was their speed. When they ran on all fours, jewel jackals could be described as snake-like compared to other mammals. Their agile and flexible spines coiled up and whipped out, giving them unimaginably long strides.

When well paid, a team of jewel jackals could pull a sand skipper across the length of the aqueduct faster than even the swiftest griffons could in the air.

In the back, Burnt laid on his side, staring out at the endless horizon of dunes and shrubbery. Though he had duties piling up back in the Core, he promised to make sure she rested during the journey instead of jumping out halfway to prove she had recovered enough. Ember promised she wouldn’t, but he didn’t believe she could control herself. And neither did she. Beside him, Rosebud sat, playing with a spear she had taken from the hedgehogs’ camp.

After her return, the doting father barely let his daughter out of his sight. To her displeasure, she and her entire cohort of guards had been reassigned to safer positions within the Core or elsewhere in the Citadel.

The jackals pulled them fast, but the trip west still felt long and slow. Nothingness was the key feature of the desert. The odd vulture here and there perched on the pipes or a cactus in the dunes were the only interesting things in sight for those long hours.

When they finally arrived, the sound of crashing waves signalled them. The coasts close to the Citadel were tall and rocky. Sheer cliffs shot up out of the water with only a few sandy beaches below to stand on. Instead, storage rooms and homes for fishers were built inland with winches and elevators to shuttle creatures and hauls up and down the cliffs.

The aqueduct itself cut through the middle of the fishing village and descended to the shore, slowly reaching out beyond the sandy shore and to a steel platform erected above the waves where seawater pumped.

“It’s about time,” Rosebud said and jumped up on the edge of the skipper. “I’m dying for some grilled fish.”

“The Dragonlord isn’t here to dine.” Her father held her back. “We’re here to assist and offer directions, it’s been years since she’s visited.”

“Since the aqueduct was first built,” Ember said, “but I don’t need both of you to give directions. Burnt, check with the fishers, dragons and non-dragons alike. Ask if they’ve seen anything unusual, and make sure there’s nothing we need to worry about when it comes to our food supplies.” She turned to Rosebud. “Think you know your way around this place?”

The wingless dragon nodded and pointed to a small tower, a mesh of steel scaffolds barely taller than the stores and houses. “Stood watch right there for weeks with my cohort.”

Ember stared at it, wondering how relaxed their security had gotten just because they thought dragons were untouchable.

“Good. Take me to Caldera and her cohort, and then we can think about getting something to eat.”

The village was sparsely populated, but it was large in terms of land. Stretching north and south along the coast, Ember guessed that she probably couldn’t fly from one end to the other without stopping for a break. But most of the homes and shops were built for non-dragons.

Along the cliff face, dragons lived in natural or dug-out caves. Most of them were richer dragons with precious hordes to hide away and were willing to pay a tidy sum to claim a real cave for themselves, away from the unnatural feel of a cramped steel false-cave.

Caldera was among those dragons. Ember found her sticking her head out of her cave and overlooking the beach as she glided over the village, holding Rosebud tight in her arms. A few younger dragons in their smaller alcoves noticed their shadows passing overhead and took flight to give Ember her space.

“You’re just in time, Dragonlord,” the silvery dragon called out, only flicking her eyes up to track Ember as she landed on the ledge jutting out from Caldera’s cave.

“For?”

“The first lightning rod test.” Caldera gestured with the tip of her nose to a tall metal structure rising out of the sand of the beach below.

Ember wondered about the name. It looked less like a rod and more like a fake tree. A long cylindrical metal scaffold stretched to hold up a net of wires. Slender steel arms spread apart at the top like the leaves of those palm trees Ember had heard grew in the tropical places of the world.

Rosebud watched with intense interest, standing precariously close to the edge for a wingless drake.

“How are you going to test it without a storm?” she asked.

Caldera peered down at the young dragon. “Wondered that myself, until I remembered that pegasi can control the weather. I hired one of them to fetch a storm cloud from Equestria.”

“Hired?” Ember asked. “How much?”

“Enough to make his little eyes bulge,” Caldera chuckled. “But don’t worry about it. I didn’t have time to run the extra cost by Skullfang, so I paid out of my own hoard.”

“You should be reimbursed.”

“Don’t fret it,” Caldera waved her claw. “It’s as they say, Djormundsormir doesn’t notice a few dropped scales.”

The test went surprisingly well. The pegasus had brought a massive storm cloud, slow and fat like an overburdened airship, with such a strong electrical charge that Ember could feel her scales tingle despite being hundreds of steps away. Strike after strike, long arcs of lightning flew from the cloud directly into the rod’s metal net.

It would take weeks to place lightning rods like that all over the village and along the aqueduct, but Caldera assured Ember that her cohort was already forging the steel pieces they would need. As long as the miners produced the ore, the Ash Citadel would have its protection.

Satisfied that the rods would work, Ember asked Caldera to show her where in the village she planned to place them. Small buildings that used metal in their walls or roofs could be just as easily protected, Caldera assured, by placing smaller versions of the lightning rod design.

The major targets, like the storehouses for fish and clams, the management centre for the village, and the shipping bay where skippers were loaded with goods to take back to the Citadel, would have to have lightning rods with wider canopies to account for their larger areas.

Placing them only where protection was needed was easier than simply creating a shield-like grid of rods, which was what Ember originally had imagined. Even so, major and minor buildings were scattered across miles and miles of the coast. It still seemed daunting. But a little bit of challenge was good for a dragon. Their kind was too prone to laziness, too happy to sit on top of a hoard and wait for something to enter the cave.

“It’s a good thing we’re near the coast,” Ember said to Caldera. “Clams and water, your dragons should be happy to have fresh-caught meals after a day of hard work.”

“Managing them is a pain in the hindquarters though,” Caldera replied with a chuffing remark. “They’ll do the work, but not without asking how soon until their next meal break. Oh, you should’ve seen them when that whale rolled ashore this morning. Young whelps, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut.”

“A whale?” Ember asked.

“Dead on arrival on the northside of the village. I heard the ponies wouldn’t touch it and the griffons wouldn’t butcher it unless they were paid for every pound. A team of dragons should be carving it up now, but most of it should still be there if you want a fresh piece.”

A whale, now that was a catch. Even two or three adult dragons would have a hard time catching a grown whale. Fire was useless, and the massive beasts were surprisingly fast and agile in the water, diving deeper than any dragon could hope to reach. It took keen hunters and efficient teamwork to have a chance to hunt a whale.

At least it would, if not for the other kingdoms. The megalithic beasts were protected by demands from Mount Aris and Canterlot. According to Queen Novo hippogriffs and seaponies had a deep respect for whales and their role in nature. The business ponies in Canterlot seemed less interested in nature but swore on their hearts that whale watching was a million-bit business.

But a beached whale, and an already dead one at that, well, there was nothing that could be done for it. Except, of course, making use of its remains.

“I won’t pretend to have intimate knowledge of these lightning rods,” Ember said, “but it seems like you have some clear plans to start with. I’ll have to wait and see how it goes, so for now…”

Ember turned to Rosebud. “Why don’t we get something to eat?”

She couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

On the northern side of the fishing village, where a length of the narrow sandy beach stretched a little further out to the sea, a flower of blood splattered across the sand and spilt back into the sea.

The cracking of bones and squish of muscle and sinew being cut from their bonds was a messy affair, but a precious one. Dragons happily ate seafood, but thousands of generations of raiding and burning and pillaging did more than just build up hoards of gemstones.

As Ember flew closer to the beach, with Rosebud on her back, some ancient predator instinct in the back of her brain made her mouth water. But dragons, as it turned out, were not the only ones with an appetite to fill. If she came any later, Ember wondered what other mess might be lying around on the beach.

Surrounding the young dragons working on the whale, who were cutting flesh and bone with circular powered saws purchased from Equestria, were hungry vultures. The black-feathered birds hardly seemed to care about the saws or the flames being breathed on some of them.

The vultures that got hit with flame took a dive into the sea and simply swam back to shore, ready to take their pick of the whale’s carcass.

Ember scanned around before she landed. Was Marrow among these vultures, or were they a different group? After a moment, she pushed the idle wondering aside. How would she know if Marrow was among them? That bird was a little bigger than the rest of his kind, but that wasn’t enough to single him out in such a big flock.

She blasted the sand below her with a short jet of fire, scattering the vultures and giving herself space to land beside the whale.

“Dragonlord Ember!” one of the butchers waved to her. “What are you doing here?”

“Just a little curious,” she answered, “it’s not every day you find a whale on the beach. And one already dead, too.”

“Now we won’t have to send it back,” he laughed. The butcher wiped the blood and fat off of his face. He was a pale, lime-green fellow with a rather sharp and protruding nose. Did he use it to poke around carcasses?

“Too bad luck seems to balance itself out though,” he remarked as he struggled to keep his face clean. Before he could finish his thought, a group of vultures dove down to finish it for him.

Another butcher breathed fire into the sky to chase off the birds, but they simply weaved out of the way as they neared the whale. As one focused on pulling the dragon’s attention, the others stuck their beaks into the exposed whale meat, pulling strips off the muscle and blubber, flying away to a safe distance to eat.

“Trouble?”

“Just see for yourself,” the lime-green butcher said. “They’ve been here since this morning. We just can’t chase them off.”

“I’ll handle it,” Ember said, sauntering out to the crowd of vultures standing just outside the reach of dragon flame.

Some backed away, eying the distance carefully so that they could stay as close as possible while still being safe. Others instantly fled, crowing about how they were going to be fried. Out of the flock, only a few murmured in horribly poor attempts at Draconic.

“Lord,” they cawed, lowering their heads timidly, until finally a tall vulture, tall for his kind at least, walked up and met her halfway.

“Marrow?” Ember checked with him, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was unsure.

“Lord! Come to make promise good?” he asked. “Fly-lizards stop us, no listen to the promise.” His speech could never pass for a real dragon, but it was a marked improvement from the croaking, cawing, and squawking that the other vultures made. He was definitely Marrow.

“Hold on,” Rosebud said sharply, recoiling slightly and looking at all the vultures with some kind of newfound disgust. “They can talk?”

Ember tilted her head, about to remind Rosebud that it was a couple of vultures who had helped drop the stone potions on the storm dragon. But she remembered that Rosebud had been hit hard during that fight and probably didn’t have enough sense at the time to even realize the vultures were speaking.

“I’ll explain later.”

She turned back to Marrow. “Now you, I don’t remember promising you all this,” Ember circled the whole whale in one wave of her arm. “And I definitely didn’t say every vulture from here to Kludgetown was invited to the Citadel.”

“T-this is family. Brothers and sisters, and children of brothers and sisters. Sire’s sister’s family here also.”

All this in one family! It looked like a flock had awoken from the desert just to strip an entire whale bare. If this was one family, how many vultures in total drifted across the desert’s winds?

“Oh no, that’s not what I agreed to,” Ember said. “You and the other vultures that were with you that day, you can eat what you like around the Citadel because you helped. I didn’t make a promise to every vulture in the desert. They didn’t earn my word.”

Surprisingly, Marrow nodded instantly. “Yes, yes, tell family to leave then? Marrow stay and eat?”

That easily? What wouldn’t this vulture do for food? Ember made a mental note to never be outbid when it came to dealing with these animals. It seemed even family loyalty meant very little.

“Yes, tell them to leave or I’ll put a bounty on their heads, ten bits each. That should get some griffons on their tail feathers.”

Marrow hopped back to his kind, swapping his voice and regressing into a series of guttural hisses and sharp sounds that almost sounded like a dog’s distant bark. Most of the vultures turned their featherless heads toward Ember and stared with fearful eyes before bolting to the sky. Others started to fly away, but Ember could see them come back down and land on the edge of some roof or shop, staring and waiting.

Well, every kingdom had its share of pests, Ember thought. It was good to know that hers wasn’t any different.

They ate whale-blubber bacon, delicious dripping fats flowed down Rosebud and Ember’s tongue that morning. The enormity of the whale was something to behold.

Not wanting to turn an eye away from protection, Ember stayed in a small residential cave for two weeks, watching and inspecting the work Caldera and her dragons did and enjoying butchered whale. Rosebud, not used to the village’s remoteness, insisted on eating breakfast every morning with her.

Burnt was furious when Rosebud had insisted that she stay at the village to help. Ember wasn’t there to witness the argument between a father and his teenage daughter, but whispers and rumours said Rosebud hurled words at Skullfang as if she was a fully-winged dragon trying to leave the home cave for the first time.

Most dragons would do anything to protect their children, and Burnt was no exception. But Ember sympathised with Rosebud as well. Every young dragon dreamed of exceeding their parents’ shadow, or at the very least to escape it. That said, Burnt was the Lieutenant-Governor of the Ash Citadel, and though he was needed back at his office to govern, his shadow stretched a little longer than the average parent.

A day after his return to the Citadel, Rosebud’s entire cohort was suddenly assigned as guards to the fishing village. It was a little overbearing, Ember admitted to Rosebud, but she didn’t mind the added security while the threat of the Storm Army loomed in the distance.

“What would Spike think about this?” Rosebud asked, holding up a piece of whale before sticking it in her mouth. She ate ravenously, swallowing a thick strip of whale bacon. They baked the cuts of fresh belly with dragon fire, eating quickly while the fat still bubbled and dripped from the meat.

Ember blinked and pulled herself from her thoughts. She gave the young whelp a bittersweet smile.

“What do you think? He’d probably be repulsed,” she replied. “It’s no wonder he’s such a small dragon, even at his age. Those ponies have been feeding him nothing but their own diet. Tasteless vegetables and mushy fruit.”

“Repulsed?” Rosebud blinked and looked at the sizzling strip of whale she had tightly pinched between her claws. “But… we didn’t even kill it. Those vultures would have eaten it anyway.”

Ember smiled at the drake’s hesitation. Though she had to admit, she never imagined any dragon would be flustered over what Spike thought. But it was just a fact of youth to think so much about one’s peers.

“I’m sure he’d come around to it, he’s eaten clams already,” Ember said. “I doubt he could ever bring himself to go hunting, but he’d probably understand the importance of efficiently using what comes to us.”

After all, a bit of fat was good for a dragon’s health, or so said conventional wisdom. Though dragon flame didn’t seem to burn any kind of solid fuel when it was breathed, the energy for such fire had to come from somewhere.

At some point, a great dragon thinker must have noticed how much energy animal fats stored and reasoned that the oily substance supplied the energy for fire inside a dragon’s body. Over time someone’s idea took hold and became a popular reason for dragons to indulge their appetites.

Ember wasn’t always thoughtful, not in the same way scholars were when they started asking obscure questions about nature and such, but she admitted she was curious about how much truth was behind that common wisdom. A dragon’s fire was integral to who they were. It wouldn’t hurt to know a little more about it.

But that was a question for another time.

Over two weeks in the fishing village, Caldera had made good on her plans and then some, working ahead of schedule and constructing the foundations for guard towers along the aqueduct. Each one was to be within eyesight of its neighbours’ smoke signals so that an attack at any point would alert the next, continuing until the Citadel itself.

But Caldera insisted there was still more to do in the village before she felt it was safe against the Storm Host’s threats. Rosebud took an immediate interest, Ember noticed. Perhaps it was her way of escaping her father’s shadow, simply escaping into the world of blueprints and prototypes instead of being surrounded by guards claw-picked by Skullfang.

The silver dragonelle took Rosebud’s interest quite well and instructed her on the basic principles of mechanics and motion, followed by long bouts of welding pieces of metal together into spring-loaded traps and other contraptions. Ember supervised the work but quickly lost herself in the details. The simple motion of objects slowly shifted to lessons in air currents, pressure differences, buoyancy, and even simple Equestrian alchemy. All too much for Ember to take over the course of a few days.

She had to question how much Rosebud actually learned. For all the young drake sat through, she seemed to apply little more than the basics. But no harm, no foul, as the pony saying went. The Ash Citadel could benefit from more educated dragons, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Rosebud to learn at her own pace.

Caldera’s lesson that day was on the various properties of metals and their alloys. As soon as she moved beyond bronze and steel, Ember decided that was enough for her. She left Rosebud to her new hobby and left Caldera’s workshop, a massive warehouse in the middle of the village, and made herself familiar with her subjects. She kicked the dirt as she paced around the village, passing by young dragons buying fresh caught fish or griffons unloading tools and building materials from sand skippers.

“Dragonlord,” some dragons acknowledged her as she walked by. It was a refreshing quiet compared to the market in the Citadel. Every seller seemed to move at their own pace rather than hawking at strangers to look at everything in their stores. Above her and the squat homes and shops, lightning rods cast their shadow over the streets. A few young griffons, probably kids who came with their parents, hid from the sun in their shade, fanning each other with their wings.

Some shade would be nice. Ember held her claw over her eyes, shielding herself from some of the light. The desert heat didn’t bother her one bit, but the cloudless sky made the sun’s glare an oppressive presence, forcing those below to squint in pain from its brilliance.

And then, as if on cue, a shadow came from overhead. A long, unwieldy shadow. Ember turned, her first instinct telling her a dragon was flying overhead. Instead, she looked up to find a distant blanket of storm clouds rolling over the sea, covering the sun’s light. A figure emerged with two broad wings and a bloated, fat body. Ember clutched the Bloodstone Sceptre reflexively, but let go as soon as the image above her drew closer.

Wings made of cloth unfurled in the wind, hauling a wooden body suspended below a leather balloon bloated with air. It seemed the Storm Army had not been slacking either since their last encounter. And as much as she dreaded the fight to come, her dragon blood boiled with excitement. Before her was a real airship, not some rusting, sun-dried corpse of one hiding in the desert. And she could finally see what it was about these ships that made the rest of the world fear the Storm Army’s wake.

“Guards!” she called, her heart almost skipping a beat as she raised her Sceptre. “Take flight!”

Bursts of fire erupted into the air as dragons across the village signalled one another of the coming attack. Those who simply lived and worked in the village ran at the sign of the signal, grabbing their hard-earned gems and bits and scampering east towards the Ash Citadel, following the path of the aqueduct. Those who remained were either the guards or merchants with too many goods to carry and too little sense to leave it all behind.

“Dragonlord!” Ember recognized the voice calling to her. Sandbiter sprayed sand through the village streets as he rushed to find her. “Where’s Rosebud?” he asked, his face painted with anxiety.

“Safe with Caldera.”

“Hammerclaw? Unless she built a new weapon already, that old lady can’t protect Rosebud. I have to find her.”

“Fix the real problem first.” Ember snagged him by the collar and pulled him back to her side. “Take half of your best fliers and see if you can’t burn their ship down. If this airship’s anything like the wrecks we know, there should be plenty of wood for fire.”

“What about the storm dragon?”

Ember hesitated to answer. She didn’t have one, to be honest. But now wasn’t the time to sound unsure. “If one of those storm dragons shows their face, just watch out for where they aim. You’re smaller and faster, so don’t get caught.”

Sandbiter nodded, standing a little taller now with the words of his Dragonlord. Even his scarred eye, a ghastly-looking streak of poorly healed skin, seemed to brighten up.

Without wasting another moment, he took off into the sky, flicking his tail in rapid side-to-side motions as he signalled his cohort to join him. Ember watched their flight path. They were going to charge the airship head-on.

She doubted it would be that easy. Even if the ship was crewed by stubby hedgehogs, their spears and bolas were designed to bring down a dragon in flight. They would need support.

She had to figure out how to provide it, and fast, for the airship made the first move before it even flew over the shore. A volley of heavy spears whistled through the air, meeting the dragons halfway and forcing their retreat. One of Sandbiter’s dragons, who was more slender and agile than the rest, managed to slip past the first few shots. But even they were eventually repelled by the second volley. Then the third. And by the fourth, they were turning back to try approaching from a different angle.

Ember jumped out of the way as one of the stray spears nearly took off her head. Its forged steel tip scraped and fragmented against the walls of a small storehouse, blasting stone and shards of steel in every direction. Ember covered her eyes, letting the bits deflect off her scales.

She hoped every griffon and pony had made their way out of the village. Any non-dragon could have been lacerated to ribbons if they were caught in the shrapnel of the heavy spear. No, it was more than a heavy spear. These were much thicker and longer, too much for a hedgehog to even carry let alone throw so far. They were oversized bolts, the kind fired from a giant wind-up crank bow called a ballista.

In the distance, the sound of shearing metal signalled Ember that the attack was coming closer. Another bolt had broken through the roof of a building and soon they would be upon the village.

“No time,” Ember told herself, wishing she had prepared a better strategy against an air raid.

She spread her wings out and flew, dropping down along the cliffside and gliding across the sea. From a distance, she was told, the shimmering blue of the water looked a lot like her scales. Hopefully, it would be enough to avoid attention from the hedgehogs, at least long enough to go behind them where their crank bows could not fire. As soon as the shadow of the ship passed overhead, she pulled her head up and flapped hard, driving her body against the current of the wind to ride it higher.

This ship was clean. She could tell as she came near that it had never taken a full crew out of its port. The painted insignia of the Storm Army was still spotless and whole, without a single edge chipped. The steel frame that shielded a few vital parts of the hull still glistened in the sun with fresh lustre. It hadn’t even developed a layer of salt from exposure to seaprays. It seemed, at least on the outside, that this attack itself was an ill-prepared one. They were simply executing a desperate and hasty raid. Ember convinced herself of this, steeling her nerves as she landed on the helm of the ship. Without a moment to spare she loosed a stream on fire onto the deck, enveloping the hedgehogs in a blaze.

One of them ran up from the deck, dressed in a baggy cloak that would have obscured his form if it wasn’t for the wind blowing the hood from his head. He launched bolas at Ember first, charging in afterwards with a short spear aimed for her neck.

She ducked the chains on the bolas, but the spear struck its mark, deflecting off the scales of her neck. Ember grabbed the spear and spun with all her might, wrenching it out from his little paws and whipping him off the ship with a satisfying snap from her tail. Two other warriors attacked, throwing short spears with bladed tips to cut away at her wings. But their aim was off for both of them and the spears sheared off the scales across her head.

Not waiting for more hedgehogs to find their nerves and take a clean shot, Ember swung her jaw open wide and blanketed the deck in a curtain of fire. From the sounds they made, she struck true, but more importantly, the smoke that began to billow out from the ship blinded the hedgehogs, allowing her other dragons to approach.

The sharp hiss of hot air whistled above as Sandbiter and his cohort attacked the airship’s balloon, ripping the elastic material apart. She saw one of the dragons swerve below, burning a hole through the hull and smoking the hedgehogs out from the lower decks. Dozens of the furry little creatures fled above, only to find the rest of their ship on fire. Some came with filled buckets, but it was a losing fight to try and extinguish dragon fire. Every bucket of water that was laid down simply invited the dragons to layer more flames over the cinders.

All remaining ballistae were either abandoned, burning, or had operators too panicked to land a shot on the encircling dragons. Easily a hundred dragon-lengths in the sky, some of the hedgehogs still took their luck with the ocean, diving off into the salty abyss to escape the fire.

“Dragonlord Ember!” one dragon called out, the one who had come up from the lower decks. “The ship, we need to move it!” she cried, waving something in her claw.

Ember waded through the fire and approached the young dragon before the object she held cracked. By the time Ember came close enough to see it clearly, it was too late, the glass ball had coated its contents over the young dragon’s arm, seemingly seeping through the scales and into her muscles, slowly transfiguring her body into stone.

The young dragon screamed and let go of the glass bauble, falling over and clutching her arm as she tried to claw the stonified scales off. Without thinking, Ember reacted instinctively and swung the Bloodstone Sceptre at her arm, shattering the stone before it crept any further. The limb came off, leaving behind a dried and scarred stump where the muscle was in the process of hardening.

“Sandbiter!” Ember shouted. Dragons rarely ever shed tears, but the young dragonelle already had streams running down her face that sizzled away as they dripped down onto ashen wood. A lightning burn was bad enough, Ember couldn’t imagine what kind of pain she must’ve been in.

“What is it, Dragonlord?” Sandbiter rushed to her side, freezing when he saw what had happened. “Carnelia!” He rushed to her side immediately, slinging her over his shoulder.

“Get her back to shore,” Ember ordered. His wings were already spread, ready to fly, but before he could get more than two flaps in the air, a spike of stone erupted up from below deck. Sandbiter stumbled back, dropping Carnelia.

“Is that what I think it is?” Sandbiter called out as he got to his feet.

Ember looked down the hole the stone spike had made. Dozens of barrels, all filled with the potions, were falling from the broken hull.

“That’s why Carnelia said we need to move the ship,” Ember’s eyes widened, looking out to where they were headed. “If this flies over the village, we’ll be hitting our own.”

Sandbiter looked over the edge of the ship. “We’re dropping fast, thank Djormunsormir. We shouldn’t hit the village at this rate”

“We can thank legends when this is over,” Ember growled. She looked back down to the hull and the sea. “That fluid can still damage the reefs and kill the fish.”

Ember turned back to Carnelia, who was still clutching her arm. “Change of plans. Can you still fly?” Carefully, the dragon nodded.

“Good. Go with Sandbiter and burn as many barrels as you can. Let’s hope dispersing it in the air will be better than letting them sink to the bottom.”

Sandbiter placed a claw on Carnelia’s shoulder but she shrugged him off. The dragon wiped her face clear of tears and jumped off the ship without a moment of hesitation, taking flight up to the top of the air balloon.

“Are you sure she can—” Sandbiter started.

“No, I’m not,” she admitted, “but there’s no time for doubt. Move.”

“At once, Dragonlord,” Sandbiter said with a grim look of acceptance. His scar knotted up for a moment, but was quickly replaced with a widened look of shock as he opened his mouth to shout. It was useless. His voice was overpowered by the booming crack of lightning.

Ember turned too late. A flash jolted from the clouds behind the airship and a single arc of lightning flew out. Only by Sandbiter’s quick action did she narrowly escape. He pushed her as he screamed, taking the full current to his chest.

Her ears were rung and her vision blinded by the flash, but she could just barely make out a muffled cry from Carnelia as she dove down, folding up her wings as she accelerated after a plummeting Sandbiter.

Ember blinked several times before her senses returned. She saw wings flapping away, Sandbiter’s cohort scattering from the electric arcs shooting from the black mass flapping within the storm clouds. The silhouette of a dragon staring straight at Ember.

She looked at her claw. Even dazed by lightning, her first instinct was to clutch the Sceptre. The blood-red stone at its head shimmered bright red, screaming out at her to use its power. Knowing it wouldn’t work, but desperately hoping their first encounter had been a fluke, she listened to the Sceptre. Ember projected her will with its magic, calling out to the storm dragon to surrender. It didn’t matter if she was too far to be heard, or whether she said anything at all, the Sceptre’s power could command dragons from across the world.

Just not storm dragons. The black mass slowly dipped its head out from the clouds, just enough to show its face to Ember. It wasn’t the scarred face of the dark-blue dragon she fought. She was younger, bright-eyed, and had a dark shade of grey that matched the storm clouds around her. And if she wanted to, she could land a solid hit on the Dragonlord.

Instead the dragon sneered and dove down, picking up speed before spreading her wings to catch the winds. She shot forward, past Sandbiter and the rest of his panicked cohort, flying for the village.

Ember wasted no time giving chase, ignoring the dull pain that lingered in her ears from the storm dragon's thunderclap and forcing all her effort into her wings. But she could not easily catch her. The storm dragon was larger and her wider wings caught more of the wind than Ember could ever hope to match in a straight flight.

Before Ember reached the shore, the first arc of lightning erupted from the dragon’s mouth. Smaller homes and shops shook, toppling over from shockwaves, while others the storm dragons simply crushed under her weight. If she had been urged to fight before, now Ember was infuriated at the sight of her colony squashed like an anthill. She folded her wings and aimed her stoop.

With the storm dragon distracted, Ember had a clear shot on the dragon’s temple, driving the end of the Bloodstone Sceptre as hard as she could. Sparks flew as the crystal staff scraped against scale, but it hardly seemed to bother the storm dragon. She jerked and whipped her neck around, throwing Ember off.

But anticipation pushed Ember back to her feet, in time to find the dragon’s open jaw aimed right at her face. Lightning flew out and Ember curled to protect herself, but the bolt never struck. Instead, the bright arc sparked against the metal cage behind Ember, one of Caldera’s lightning rods.

The storm dragon seemed just as surprised. And in that moment of hesitation, Ember took her chance. She launched a spout of flame at the storm dragon’s eyes and nose, disorienting even if she couldn’t harm. Her opponent reeled firing another arc of lightning that drew straight into the lightning rod again.

Ember sneered and pushed harder, ejecting hotter and hotter flames. But without its lightning, the storm dragon was still a dragon, and Ember learned that lesson the hard way when a tail struck her from the side. She rolled with the force, but it still sent her crashing through a shop.

“Like a true dragon, you are!” hissed the storm dragon before leaping up and flapping to the sky. Ember raised up her Sceptre like a shield, expecting a dive, but instead the storm dragon simply hovered above the village.

Ember looked up, seeing the storm dragon circling, surveying the rest of the village with a closer eye now. Sandbiter’s cohort, carrying him back to shore, were only just beginning to set their sights on the fight, but the grey storm dragon didn’t seem to notice them. Instead, she flicked the tip of her tail as she flew, much in the same way dragons did to send unspoken signals.

Ember was surprised to see her using tail signals. Some motions were familiar, while other twists were meaningless. Was this an invitation to speak? To call a truce? The thought of ending the fight without winning was sour, especially with Sandbiter’s injury unavenged, but it was the smart option. She lowered the Sceptre, pulling her will from it and ignoring the seductive pull of its power, letting it know it was helpless now.

“Rethinking your invasion already? Your army was useless,” she mocked the storm dragon as she flew up to meet her. “You’re not Djormundsormir, you can’t swallow your enemies whole.”

The storm dragon simply smiled. “You are impressive, Dragonlord Ember. You made your move much sooner than I expected.” The dragon gestured with her tail around the village. “But metal contraptions can only buy you so much time. Like I said, we will have the empire we were promised.”

She thought the voice was familiar, but that confirmed it. “You’re the Storm Host, then?” Ember said, wearing a cocky smirk on her face. In truth, she did her best to burn the image of the storm dragon in her brain. The shape of her scales, her colour, and especially her size and strength. She was smaller than most adult dragons, but there was no doubt the Storm Host was fully grown.

Her tail, just as long as her body, swayed in the wind for balance and countered the motion of her neck as it flexed and bowed in the air. Being cloudy grey, she could completely vanish into a thunderstorm just by flying into the clouds.

“I hope I don’t disappoint,” the Storm Host replied. “I flew here despite the wishes of my brother. He has been restless ever since you scarred his face.”

“He shouldn’t have shot lightning at me,” Ember said firmly, trying her best to keep her composure. “Glad he remembers the lesson.”

“No need for threats, Dragonlord. We both know where we stand. You can fight as hard as you like, but the Storm Empire will have its day. You will see.” Then the Storm Host flashed a grin. “You know what? Why wait? You can see it right now.”

But the taunt flared her temper, and Ember flashed her teeth in a full snarl. “A few flattened buildings, is that your best?”

The Storm Host laughed, but when Ember readied to fly behind a lightning rod, instead the Host’s breath spewed storm clouds. Greyish puffs frothed and spewed, wrapping up Ember in the storm front until she couldn’t see the sun nor the sky nor the village or cliffs. Static danced on her skin, crackling down along the scales of her back.

A pair of glowing blue eyes flew by, taunting her as the Storm Host’s wings threatened to blow Ember out of the sky.

“You should scurry back to your desert jewel, Dragonlord,” the Storm Host said, hissing out another sharp, condescending laugh. “Head back and watch your precious Ash Citadel burn.”

An arc of lightning shot past Ember, and she responded with her own jet of flame. But when the heat evaporated the clouds around her, all she saw of the Storm Host was the whip of her tail slinking behind the retreating storm.

Her laugh echoed in Ember’s mind. What had happened to her Citadel?

Chapter 1: We Are Dragons

The Ash Citadel loomed over the sands.

Ember clutched her Sceptre tightly as her airship pulled closer towards the shadow of that monolithic structure. Its metal frame radiated the desert’s heat like a black fireball. Which wasn’t that far from the truth.

As the airship brought her closer, she could see smoke rising out from various corners of the Citadel. Ember scowled. Don’t they know we have to be perfect today? But, she let her anger flow out of her like a river of lava. It couldn’t be helped. The desert was dry and hot, and dragons were famous, or infamous, for their natural flames. That the whole thing had not burned down already was a miracle.

Ember leaned her Sceptre against her shoulder and paced about the top deck of the airship, watching the dunes roll by as they entered the long shadow of the Citadel. The narrow supply lines on the ground looked like a line etched onto paper by a pencil from above. A variety of creatures could barely be spotted from the airship. A few ponies hauled heavy crates of supplies on their sand skippers, long boat-like sledges that could skim along the crest of dunes. The desert’s soft sands made the wheel an impossible tool to use. And yet the Ash Citadel was supposed to be her people’s symbol of progress.

For every scant few ponies that trotted about the Citadel, Ember could make out dozens of dragons flying through its gates and airship docks. It was rare for dragons to build anything, let alone do so together in an orderly fashion. And yet the Ash Citadel still stood.

It was no palace. It was nothing like Mount Aris or Canterlot, but it was theirs. The place had been a wasted ruin before her dragons found it. It was a junkyard for airships, one so completely abandoned that even the rats had trouble picking through the remains. The only thing that told them its story were the insignias painted on the hull of every ship: storm insignias. The symbol of the Storm King.

Well, not so tough now, huh? You greedy beast. Ember smirked as her airship descended to one of the jutting metal walkways. The Storm Army was once feared from Mount Aris to Abyssinia and their king was a monster only to be whispered about on hushed lips. It gave Ember a unique sense of pride and joy to know her people had defaced and destroyed the memory of such a powerful foe.

We took your precious airships and ripped them apart, she thought, mocking the long-dead King. Guess we know why you never came to the Dragonlands.

The walls of the Citadel were now in full view. The smell of metal was rich in the air as welding sites and ore refineries spat smoke through the fortress’ spiked domes. Ember could still see some remnants of the Storm Army’s airship in the walls, despite her dragons dismantling them for scrap materials. A few planks ripped from the hull of abandoned airships and repurposed as beams for the wall still boasted flecks of blue paint from the insignia of their dead king. The metal parts which were not completely melted down were welded together and bolted over the wooden walls, giving the Ash Citadel its grey outer shell. And even as new metal was welded on, a few of those old metal fastenings bore the shape of the Storm Insignia.

Ember removed herself from the edge of the airship and prepared to walk onto the Citadel, grabbing her only piece of luggage, a simple satchel that she could hang on the Bloodstone Sceptre, and joining the rest of the passengers aboard. Ahead of her, a procession of armoured dragons waited stiffly, holding long spears in their claws.

“Quite the display, Dragonlord Ember.”

Ember turned to welcome the main attraction of the day. As one of the few alicorns in the world, and the sole ruler of the Equestrian kingdom, the global symbol of progress and unity, Princess Twilight Sparkle was admittedly the more important of the two leaders. Even Ember, with a dragon’s pride, could not deny it.

“I asked my lieutenant governor to prepare an entourage for your tour of the Citadel, Princess,” she replied. “The desert can be very dangerous, after all.”

“Which is why Spike and I are here.”

The Dragonlord turned her head about, looking among the other passengers on the airship for the young dragon assistant. Spike was more like the Princess than he was a dragon, but having him close by still made Ember more comfortable about the visit. There were still customs dragons were not used to when interacting with other creatures. Politeness, for example. And yet Spike was one of the few who had the temperament to mediate that tension.

“Yep,” his voice squeaked out from behind a stack of luggage twice his height. “Official Friendship Advisor, reporting for duty!”

Ember laughed. “Is that you under there, Spike? You look ridiculous.” She immediately waved one of the guards over, and signal him to help carry Spike’s burden.

“Whoo,thanks,” he huffed, “I needed that.”

Together, the three of them walked down the metal platform that reached out from the walls of the Citadel. Tall arches, big enough to pass airships through, opened up the insides of the Citadel to the desert. The smell of rust and coal grew stronger now, and the heat of blast furnaces made the desert’s air feel like a winter breeze.

Ember took a deep breath. She had been on a hippogriff airship for a week, surrounded by tourists, diplomats, and merchants from Equestria and Mount Aris. The nations of ponies and hippogriffs were capable of a lot of things, but understanding dragons was not on their list of talents. Ember’s head ached just thinking about spending another day on that ship, surrounded by the chattering of other creatures. Sleeping through most of the flight was the only way she managed to cope with the journey. And after long days of inaction, she welcomed the acrid smell of hot slag and iron.

As the guards escorted the three of them inside, an older black-scaled dragon approached them, pushing aside the ponies and dragons offloading supplies from other incoming airships. He was not a true adult dragon yet, the massive kind that slumbered for centuries on piles of gold and gemstones, but he was on his way. The dragon was broad-shouldered and lumbered from side to side as his legs struggled to balance his mass. It was almost comical, the dragon’s body had already entered the stage where it was easier to tread around on all fours, but as long as he could still walk upright, the height made him the most imposing figure around.

“About time you showed up,” he snarled, extending a claw out to Twilight. She immediately leaned back, overwhelmed by the dragon who was over twice her size. He squinted his eyes at her, and then inspected his claw.

“Did I do it wrong?” he quickly asked Ember, flustering and flicking his tail around nervously. “You said ponies shook hooves as a greeting.”

“Came on a little strong, though,” Ember said before turning to Twilight. “Sorry, this is my lieutenant governor, Burnt Skullfang. Burnt, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle. I expect you to be a little more careful from here on out.”

“Yes, of course.” The dragon looked down ashamedly and tucked his claws close to his chest.

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Twilight said, quickly laughing the matter off. “I was just surprised, that’s all. Most of the dragons who travel to Equestria are still young. I don’t think I’ve seen any dragon with your… stature. At least not one that wasn’t breathing fire at me.”

“I understand, Your Highness,” Burnt said, bowing. “My dragons have been busy whipping the ruins into shape, as you can see.” He gestured around them, along the walls and down to the lower levels of the Citadel. “There hasn’t been time to learn the proper manners.”

From where they stood, it looked like a massive metal pit. Clusters of forges were scattered among piles of scrap metal and broken ship parts. Walkways crisscrossed to form something resembling separate floors on a skyscraper, but Ember could still see down to the ground floor and up to the ceiling. Dozens of dragons flew around, lifting buckets of metal scrap to where sparks flew off the walls. There, dragons used their flame to add new pieces of scrap, strengthening the pillars and beams that held the entire structure up.

“It’s impressive,” Twilight gazed at everything, even if she covered her nose with one of her wings. “I’ve read as much as I can about dragons and dragon history. This might be the single largest construction effort dragons have ever done.”

The governor beamed with pride at her compliment and waved them all to follow him. “I can continue the tour now, Dragonlord. We’ve made some exciting progress here.”

“Yes, go on,” Ember said.

Dragons were usually hotheaded and stubborn, so Burnt was a rare sight. He had both the patience to lead a fortress full of dragons and the imposing size to make them listen. He had a wide snout and crooked, jutting teeth that gave him the name Skullfang.

“We’ve finished work on sealing the holes through the wall,” he said as they walked across the Citadel on a suspended metal bridge. Its plates were grated, and Ember could look straight down at the dragons working. “So now sand doesn’t leak in every time we get a wind storm. With that done, we’ve started work on tearing out the wood in the walls. The planks were good as a base, but we’ve started making mortar out of the limestone we get from the mines. We’ll have stone walls soon, and be able to recycle the wood for other purposes.”

Their tour of the Citadel was short, considering its size. The dragons didn’t have anything fancy like Equestrian cities, so there was little to see beyond the forges, storerooms, and mess hall. And they completely avoided the Core of the Citadel. It was where the blast furnaces ran day in and day out, consuming piles of ore and spitting out white-hot metal and sulfurous slag. For a dragon, the heat was hardly noticeable. But to any other creature, the Core was to be avoided at all costs. The air alone was hot enough to blister the skin.

“I can imagine why dragons have been flocking to this colony. But it’s not just dragons that live here, is it?” Twilight asked as the tour flew up a few levels to the cooler residences. Around them, the Ash Citadel started to look a lot more like a place they’d find in Equestria. Stores and shops, welded into the walls and crowded metal canopy, were helmed by ponies and griffons.

“I wouldn’t be a very good Princess if I didn’t check on the community of ponies living here,” Twilight said. “And I’d like to talk to them alone if that’s alright.”

Burnt gave no answer, though he looked over to Ember as if to pass the decision over to her. But Ember didn’t know what to say, either. Twilight was the first world leader to visit the Ash Citadel. Even though the other kingdoms traded with the dragons’ colony for stone, gems, and most importantly, metal, the thought that dragons could build something permanent instead of burning it down was a novel one. Twilight had shown a lot of trust and faith by coming to the Ash Citadel, but it seemed strange that she would want to explore it on her own after asking Ember to organise a tour.

Yet, it wasn’t as if there was a set itinerary. The Dragonlord and her lieutenant governor weren’t experts at hosting delegations, and they had no plans after showing Twilight everything the colony had been up to. Moreover, it wasn’t as if she could say no. Ember knew Twilight would understand why she couldn’t let Equestria’s Princess walk alone in a colony of dragons, but there were eyes everywhere, waiting to see what the dragons would do. Merchants would whisper, traders would speak, and news would carry from the desert all the way to Mount Aris and Griffonstone within a week, all claiming the Dragonlord was hiding something from Princess Twilight.

“Sure, of course, you can talk to your ponies,” Ember finally answered. “This is the merchant’s level. Equestria’s consulate office is a few floors up. One of the guards can show you the way.”

“Thank you,” Twilight said, bowing her head. She turned to Burnt and gave the hulking dragon a warm smile. “I see now why Ember trusts you. I’m impressed you’ve been able to make something out of the Storm King’s old ships.”

“Thank you,” Burnt laughed.

“Um, Twilight, would it be alright if I stayed with Ember?” Spike suddenly spoke up and licked his lips. “I wanted to take another look at the mess hall, they had some really shiny gemstones.”

The Princess nodded. “Take your time. I know you don’t get a lot of chances to be around other dragons.”

Spike’s mood immediately jumped. “Thanks, Twilight!”

“We’ll take care of the whelp,” Burnt laughed, patting Spike roughly on the back.

Ember waved to one of the guards with her Sceptre, commanding him to lead the Princess to the Equestrian consulate. She had half a mind to send another dragon after them, to hang back and listen in case there was anything she needed to know, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She knew Twilight wouldn’t. It was nice of her to visit, but Ember could imagine that she felt out of place. Maybe all she wanted was to be among her kind for a while.

“Burnt,” Ember said, immediately shifting her focus. “We should head down to your office. I have some questions.”

As big as the Citadel was, it only took the three dragons ten minutes of flying and bumping shoulders with welders and metalsmiths to reach the bottom. They were deep within the Core, surrounded by the firelight of a dozen blast furnaces. As the heart of the entire Citadel, the office was the only building with some measure of decorum. The walls were made from polished metal and smoothed stone, and any dragon who was not busy mining, melting, building, or welding worked in the office.

Ember could still see the dirt path she made when she and her dragons found the airship junkyard. The Core was technically underground, built within the pit where the airships had been dumped. And through the centre of that pit, a long stretch of packed earth led straight into the office building. It had blackened from the ash and slag that spilt over from the furnaces, looking more and more like the main road in a small town where all the major buildings clustered to do business.

Up above, merchants from the other kingdoms sold exotic and foreign goods in exchange for the Citadel’s steel, but if a dragon needed new tools, gems, or treatment for an injury, they came to the Core.

Spike tugged on Ember’s arm as they passed a smaller off-shoot from the office formed into an open kitchen. Fires burst up into the air, but not for metals. Fish, oysters, and clams sizzled as they cooked on thin metal spikes, roasted over a charcoal pit and then set out on countertops around the chef. A not inconsiderable amount of dragons gathered to take their fill, and Ember watched with Spike as the chef seemed to hand out a skewer to any dragon who asked.

“You two hungry?” Burnt paused and firmly gripped Spike on the shoulder. “Bet they don’t serve anything like that in pony land, huh boy?”

Spike wiped his mouth and shook his head. “Not really. Equestria has all different kinds of food, but never any meat. I thought we just ate gemstones?”

Burnt looked over to the Dragonlord curiously. “Don’t they teach anything about dragons over there?”

Ember shook her head. “They don't know enough to teach,” she told him. Then she poked Spike in the belly. “Spike, we eat gemstones because they keep our scales healthy, but even dragons can't grow bodies out of nothing. The Dragonlands is surrounded by the sea, what else would we eat other than seafood?”

“I never really thought about that,” he admitted. “I’ve always eaten what other ponies eat. And gems, of course.”

“Well then,” Burnt said firmly, stepping forward to the kitchen, “I know our first order of business. You might have a pony’s mind, Spike, but not a pony’s body. Let’s get some fish in you!”

The other dragons watched them as Ember moved ahead of the lieutenant general and placed her order first. She wanted to discuss the Citadel’s needs with Burnt first, but if he insisted on eating, then she was going to make up for the week she spent eating the raw fish that hippogriffs liked to serve.

“Twelve,” she told the chef, a very old dragon who had clearly shrunk past his prime. He was fat around the belly, skinny around the tail, and his arched back concealed the massive beast he must have once been. Despite his age, however, the elder’s knobbly claws spun the skewers over the fire with quick precision, and his tail wrapped around the fire pit in a funnel, keeping the heat trapped inside.

Ember spied Spike staring at her, gawking at how many oysters she had ordered. Her lieutenant general came up next in line and ordered twenty skewers for himself.

“Show off,” she scoffed as the old chef passed her twelve skewers, fresh off the grill. She stepped back and rejoined Spike, giving him two of her skewers.

“Thanks,” he said, taking them with a confused look. “But can’t I just take my own?”

Ember laughed. “Not unless you have the credit for it.”

“Credit?” Spike said, confused. “Wait, if you use money, why not just use bits like Equestria?”

“Because most dragons usually don’t go buying things in Equestria,” Ember explained. “We might use Equestrian bits when we trade with ponies, but between dragons it’s useless. Using it here would make us completely dependent on Equestria for currency. At first I wanted to make our own coins, but since dragons can never agree on anything, we couldn’t agree on what kind of coin to make. So, I just ordered all the dragons to use a system of credit.”

She pointed to a giant book in the corner of the kitchen, far away from the fires and locked behind a glass case. “The Core Office keeps track of every dragon’s credit. How much paid, how much spent. The infirmary, pharmacy, and general store all have an accounting book like that one, and it’s updated every few days. A dragon does their work, they get credit. If a hammer breaks and they need to replace it, they can spend it at the store.”

“And if they spend more than they have?”

“That’s for Skullfang to figure out,” Ember said. “The lieutenant governor’s office handles that kind of day to day accounting. Kind of like the banks where ponies have to keep track of their bits.”

“Banks do more than that,” Spike started to explain, but he dropped it. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter if Ember understood Equestrian banking or not. “I guess it makes sense. At least no one has to carry any money around.”

Ember nodded, glad to be understood. If it made sense to him, then she was doing something right with the colony. Ruling over dragons could be easy if she were like her father. Dragons were staunch individualists, and mostly only cared about themselves and their families. In the past, it was all too easy to let dragons do as they wished.

But she had seen what the other kingdoms were like. Even visiting Equestria for a few days was an eye-opener. To the northeast, griffons were finally beginning to rebuild their kingdom, while the changelings were busy modelling their hive after Equestrian methods. Mount Aris, an old and revered kingdom, was the second bastion of the developed world, welcoming tourism and almost entirely filling the gaps in Equestria’s sphere of influence.

She thought about the future of her dragons as she plucked oysters off her skewer, crunching through the shell and fleshy core in a single bite. With no cities, no industry, no military, and no economy, the Dragonlands would fall behind every other kingdom in the world. And unlike the other species, she didn’t have a council of experienced diplomats and leaders. It was just her, the Bloodstone Sceptre, and a rare few dragons ready to give their future a chance.

Spike sat quietly by Ember and nibbled at his oyster, though he slowly grew more and more frustrated as the shell denied him. Ember broke out of her head once she noticed him fidgeting, and almost broke out into a roaring laughed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, covering her mouth.

“It won’t… open!” Spike answered.

“You’re a dragon,” she reminded him. “Just bite it like a gemstone.”

“The whole thing?” Spike squeaked, staring at the skewer with a new perspective. Slowly, he fit his mouth around the thickest part of the oyster shell and bit down hard. It was like eating a fat crunchy piece of quartz. Until the inside burst open. Sizzling salty juices flooded his tongue and spilt out from his mouth. Ember watched his eyes go wide as he chewed on the rubbery meat inside.

“It’s so weird,” he finally said after he had swallowed the whole thing. “It’s good, but I don’t know if I can get used to the texture.”

“One step at a time, Spike,” Ember smiled. It was enough that he was appreciating what it meant to be a dragon, he didn’t have to like all of it yet. “It’s just good to have you around.”

After the dragons had eaten, they retired to the governor’s office. It was cooler, marginally, than the furnaces outside. Cool enough to be one of the few places in the whole Core to store books and paper. Behind the lieutenant governor’s desk, a long glass cabinet held stacks of account books, exactly like the one in the kitchen.

Ember gripped her Sceptre in one claw and tapped the blood-red stone with the other as she paced about. But Burnt simply sat down at his desk, the cushioned metal chair creaking under his weight.

“Do you it’s going well?” she asked Skullfang.

“The tour? I don’t see why not.”

“The whole world is watching our progress, Burnt, don’t brush this off like it’s another routine check-up. If the Princess of the largest kingdom in the world has even doesn’t give her full support here, the other kingdoms are not going to take us seriously.”

Spike watched them talk while picking oyster shell fragments out of his teeth, and for a moment Ember wondered if it was wise to talk about Twilight in front of him. But she quickly abandoned her distrust. She needed to trust him, or else working with Equestria would become a lot tougher.

“Just tell me if there’s anything I should be worried about,” she said, staring Burnt down. The massive dragon seemed to shrink before the Dragonlord, and he folded his arms defensively.

“Water is our biggest issue. Fresh drinking water has been rationed out for all non-dragon residents, but already we have griffons flying back to their homes because it’s not enough.”

“Non-dragons?” Spike quickly asked. “Why are non-dragons getting rations?” Once again, both dragons stared at Spike, surprised by his question. They looked at each other, and this time Burnt was the first to answer.

“Because dragons are sturdier than any other creature, and we can do just fine with the water that comes through the canal to the sea.”

Ember watched him blink at the new information, and she swore she could see the thoughts inside his head merging as he processed it alongside everything he must have learned growing up.

“Dragons can drink seawater?” he finally asked, almost shouting in surprise.

“You’ve seen the Dragonlands,” Ember said, “you know we have nothing but lava and oceans. There’s no natural freshwater source.”

“I know, but there’s so much salt in the ocean.”

“Salt’s just another mineral,” Ember said, nodding. “I don’t know what it does to ponies, but just like every other excess mineral, salt gets put into our scales. If you eat nothing but salt I’m sure you’ll turn white and flakey eventually, but it’s not normally unhealthy for us.”

She refocused on Burnt Skullfang, leaving Spike to sit quietly and contemplate his recent revelation. “What are you doing to produce fresh water right now?”

“We buy water purifiers whenever we can,” he answered. “Mostly from the hippogriffs, sometimes from the ponies. Other than that, we have workshops in the Citadel dedicated to boiling seawater to separate the salt and make it drinkable. We’re sustaining for now, but it’s pretty close some days.”

Ember growled, not at Skullfang, but their whole situation. Now she had to wonder what Twilight would do if she found out ponies were rationing water in a dragon colony. It didn’t look good.

“We’ve also had more attacks from the desert creatures, especially around the mines. No losses, aside from a few carts of ore and gems, but it keeps stress high among the miners.”

“Can’t change that,” Ember sighed. “We have to defend ourselves, but we’ll be seen as invaders if we clear out the natural habitat around here. One of the Princesses' friends, and close advisor, insisted that the Ash Citadel has to affect as few animals as possible.”

“It’s not beasts that are attacking us now,” Burnt corrected grimly.

“Oh? Who is it then?”

He shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but they’re too organised to be simple beasts. They strike at night, and always before a sand storm. Plus, we’ve found the spears they left behind after the attacks.”

“That doesn’t give me much to go on,” Ember growled again, this time at Burnt. She gripped her Sceptre tighter. “How has no one seen these attackers? Did every dragon forget they can breathe fire?”

“Well, we’ve seen them. We just don’t know what they are.” Burnt pulled a folder out from the glass cabinet behind him and spread its contents out on his desk. They were charcoal sketches of short, stubby creatures, though what kind was impossible to tell with the cloaks draped over their bodies.

“How many in the last attack?”

“Twenty to fifty, depending on who you ask.”

“Did anyone see what direction they came from?”

“South, as far as we can tell. Which isn’t much. They know the desert well, attacking just before sandstorms and leaving in time for the winds to blow their prints away.”

As Ember rapped her claw against the Bloodstone Scepter, the door behind her screeched open. A green-scaled guard stood outside the office, his armour covered in sand and dust. He looked young, still older than Spike, but not by much, although he was surprisingly lanky. He was nearly as tall as Skullfang himself.

“What is it?” Burnt barked at the young whelp. “Can’t you read the sign outside? I’m speaking to the Dragonlord!”

“It’s the scouts, sir,” the young dragon replied, “they found some kind of camp, and they think they might have a lead on your daughter.” Immediately, the lieutenant governor’s office shuddered as Burnt stood up stiff, almost tossing his desk aside from the force of the jolt. The screech and twist of metal made the guard tense up, and his tail stuck out like a steel skewer.

“Go,” Burnt snarled, “now!”

The young dragon spread his wings and fled the office as quickly as he came. Ember watched him leave for a moment, stunned by what she had heard, before turning back on Burnt.

“Your daughter?”

Burnt fidgeted, flicking his eyes around the room in search of something to fixate on. But Ember planted herself, and the Bloodstone Sceptre, firmly in front of his burly snout. Eventually, he caved.

“Arrgh. I didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want you to think I wasn’t focused.” He scratched the frilled scales along his head. “And I, uh, lied when I said there were no losses. After the attacks started, I posted a cohort of dragons to watch over it. My daughter was in charge. And she was kidnapped during the last attack.”

A swirl of feelings hit Ember as she balled up her fist. She didn’t like being lied to. She wanted to scold him for hiding the truth, for not sending a letter about the attacks sooner. She wanted to hit something out of anger that a dragon that she was sworn to protect, was in danger. But moreover, she felt sad for Burnt.

“I wouldn’t be a good Dragonlord if I asked you to put your personal feelings aside,” she said while fiddling with her Sceptre. “Still, I can’t ask you to handle this for me. You’re too invested, and I need a dragon who can keep a level head.”

“I understand,” he said, though his face was awash with disappointment. He held his claws up as if holding an egg. “But Rosebud’s so young, her wings haven’t even come out yet.”

Ember softened her face and reached out, placing a claw on Burnt’s shoulder. “And that is why I am going to handle this myself, old friend. Whoever attacked us needs to know that dragons protect our own.” Ember turned to Spike. “We all do.”

“Wait, why are you looking at me like that?” Spike got up out of his chair and leaned for the door.

“You heard what I said,” Ember pointed at him with her Sceptre. “I need a level-headed dragon for this, and we both know that’s not going to be me. Spike, I need you with me on this one.”

He gulped. “Against fifty shadowy night creatures that kidnap dragons and attack with spears? No thanks, I think I’d just slow you down.”

Ember’s expression hardened. “A dragon is in danger, a dragon younger than you. She’s one of our own. I thought ponies were supposed to help creatures in need. And you’re a dragon who thinks like a pony. That’s double the reason. Don’t you want to help save her?”

Ember wasn’t sure why she bothered to question him so hard. Spike quickly began to settle down as his panicked look faded away. He might’ve been cautious and uncertain, but if there was one thing she had to say about Spike, it was that he was a helper.

He looked back to her with renewed determination. “Yeah, I do.”

Author's Note

This first chapter is intended to be a preview. Subsequent chapters will not be uploaded until part 1 is complete.