Once upon a time, a stalwart knight of the old Equestrian Guard sought to slay a draconequus who was, if not precisely evil, at least ambivalent on certain issues that all right-thinking folk found repugnant.
The knight felt that he was equal to the task. His armor was bright and shining, sturdy and strong; his sword was keen and always sharp, an enchanted blade passed down in his family for generations. He was young and handsome, strong and agile of mind, and he took care to study the nature of his quarry with a ferocious intensity, staying up late night after night and poring through dusty tomes, traveling afar to seek additional wisdom, and saving every spare coin to improve his armor and equipment before setting out to rid the world of the dastardly rascal once and for all.
After a long and grueling quest, the knight finally cornered the slithery creature on the dueling field, triumphantly reared up and struck home with his enchanted sword, in a thrust to penetrate the heart of the beast… who shrugged, looked down at the sword protruding from his breast, pulled it out and popped it into his mouth. The astonished knight dropped to all four hooves with a clattering rattle of his armor.
As the draconequus chewed, he said, “You surely didn’t think I kept it in there, did you?”
“Kept what?” cried the knight, as the beast took huge bites from the blade of his family heirloom sword. He leaped up to try to rescue it, but the slithery creature simply squirmed out of his reach, munching away.
“My heart, little fool,” said the beast, magical glitter drooling from his lips. “It’s in quite a different place.” He tossed the hilt at the knight and ambled away, leaving the poor fellow distraught and disarmed, staring at the remains of his sword in great dismay.
The knight could not let it go; he knew he would have to seek out the true heart of the beast. And so he armed himself with a larger and somewhat less enchanted sword and pressed on, traveling for years, crossing seas and climbing mountains, questioning dusty scholars in musty libraries, acquiring wisdom and maturity that overlaid the bloom of his youth, but only enhanced and deepened his rugged beauty.
At long last he stood on a high temple before an ancient sage, full of age and lore, whose gray mane and tail had grown so long that the sage had them coiled up and was using them as a couch.
“This ye dragonnekwis is full fell a beaste,” said the aged one, “An his heart beats naught within his breaste, as with all normal-thinking folke, but a mightie distaunce away…”
“But where?” implored the knight. “And please, speak more plainly!”
The sage lifted one brow, then coughed. “It is told in years past that a thousand leagues from here lies a mountain… deep within that mountain, there is a sunken lake, and at the center of that lake, there is an island, and at the crest of that island, there is a church, and in the center of that church, there is a well, and inside the well is a duck, and in the duck’s nest there is an egg, and within that egg… there beats the heart of the beast!”
The knight shivered as he comprehended the vast distance, but undaunted he recrouped his flanks and set forth once more. Up and down rocky hills that ruined his steel shoes, across dusty plains with not a wisp of dried grass in sight, over deep crevasses that tested his resolve again and again, he carried on, until at last the mountain loomed before him. He descended into a dark damp cave, through turning tunnels lit only by glowing fungi. When he reached the vast cavern of the misty lake, so great was his thirst that he drank deep of the doubtful waters, and it was some time before he could continue.
Rested and refreshed, he ventured across the lake upon a crude raft, and his pulse quickened as he made out the shape of the craggy island and the church of mossy stone through the dark haze. He leaped forth as the raft neared the shore, dashed through the open doors of the church, ran to the well, disturbing the duck which quacked and fluttered about, and reached out, trembling, to seize the egg. It was warm and it pulsed with a regular beat. At last, he had the heart of the draconequus at his mercy!
He raised it over his head, ready to dash it to the stones, when a sudden dry voice breathed into his ear:
“Are you really ready for this level of commitment?”
The knight yelped, jumped in the air and fumbled as the egg threatened to slip from his grasp. He wound up hugging it to his bosom as he whipped around to face the draconequus, who loomed in the air against the stained glass windows like an errant squiggle of paint, a single duck feather on the end of his nose.
“So this was all a trap?” sneered the knight. “And if I dash this egg down, it’ll just make a rude noise, won’t it? It was all a waste of time!” The egg pulsed with a steady beat in his grasp, calm and glowing with a hint of turnip flowers, elderberry and watercress sandwich.
“A waste?” drawled the draconequus. “I should be offended. I spent so much effort on creating this whole setup just for you. You might say I put my heart into it… oh, don’t look so miffed. It isn’t a trap or a waste, it’s a test.”
The knight cocked his head oddly. “A test?”
“Yes. Mind if I get comfy?” The beast suddenly dropped down into a coil like a garden hose, his varied limbs sticking out at odd angles. “Anyway, little knight, you’ve dedicated years to hunting me down, with singleminded intensity. All that privation and self denial, when you could have followed your peers and quested to gain a title, or the hoof of a financially secure princess, like all ordinary-thinking folk. But… you chose to chase me. You really must be interested in me, in some way, to have stuck it out like that.
“I wondered if there was something deeper behind your obsession. So I put my heart in the egg, and the egg in the duck nest, and the nest in the well, and the well in the church, and the church on a pile of mascarpone herring dip, but it kept sliding off so I tried the lake island instead, and then—” He paused for a dramatic breath, dislodging the duck feather. “And then I asked myself from a few hundred years back to spread the tale so it would get to that old temple sage. And now the moment is at hand! Now we can find out what your real motives are, the true reason behind your pursuit!”
“True reason?” scowled the knight. “What do you—” He stopped suddenly, for that long neck snaked out as the beast placed a delicate peck on the knight’s lips.
The knight stood stunned, gazing close into the red and yellow eyes of chaos, which seemed to have gone misty around the edges. Their breaths commingled in that moment.
“It’s all yours now,” whispered the beast, as the heart-egg throbbed at a quicker pace between the knight’s hooves. “Please don’t drop it.”
