A Disgraced Prince and an Incompetent Mage
A meager fire crackled on the mountainside. The wind whispered and scattered wet snowflakes on a bitter breeze. It was a stark world of white ice and black stone shrouded by silently shifting fog. He exhaled frozen breath over a steaming mug of tea before swallowing a gulp.
He missed his creams and sugars back home in Canterlot. He missed his warm blankets, his steaming sauna, and his bath full of hot water. Blinking in the wind, he felt fat flakes stick to his eyelashes. The heat of his drink was slowly working its way through his limbs.
A pale sun dyed the clouds bloody as it rose. The Prince finished his tea and nudged his companion awake. She groaned and grumbled as she forced herself up, shaking the dusty frost from her wintery blue coat. They breakfasted in silence and then continued their ascent.
“If the Great and Powerful Trixie had known it was going to be so cold, she would have stayed home.” She huffed, pulling her thin cloak tight around her body. An errant gust nearly stole her pointed hat.
Blueblood fared better in his warm white fleece, but the incessant snowfall made him damp and chilly. “And if I had known you were going to complain so much, I’d have left you in Canterlot.”
“If only Trixie had been so lucky.” She replied with a sneer. “Then she could have heard the news of how the esteemed Prince Blueblood froze to death on a mountain, unable to get a fire going.”
“I’d have been able to light it if it hadn’t been for all this damn snow!” The Prince idly kicked at a drift of powder. “If my kindling wasn’t damp-”
“Alas, no dry kindling yet three bags filled with luxurious silk neckties.”
Blueblood stopped dead in his tracks, pointing an immaculately manicured hoof at the bright red band around his throat. “This is a cravat you uncultured, inbred little-”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie would like to issue a formal retraction.” Her voice oozed sarcasm as she gave a mocking bow. “At least you’d have made a fabulous frozen corpse.”
The pair of them followed a thin, serpentine path up the side of the mountain, at times having to shimmy along ledges no thicker than their hooves. It was slow, strenuous going, made worse by the cold numbing their legs. It had been three long days of bleak weather and weak sunlight. As they clambered up onto a plateau they lay flat on their back and took heavy breaths as they stared up at an iron sky.
“How much further?” Trixie gasped, clutching a hoof to her chest.
Blueblood rolled onto his stomach, damp spots blossoming across his thick fleece as the cold soaked through it. He stared off into the distance and his breath hitched in his throat. Trixie followed his gaze.
This was where the trail ended. At the other end of the craggy clearing was a tunnel that gaped like a screaming maw. Jagged icicle teeth protruded from hard granite gums as the mouth belched out a plume of acrid, sulfurous smoke. Flickers of flame danced distant beneath the earth, casting ominous shadows on the stone walls.
It had been centuries since an Equestrian Prince had been on a dragon hunt. The practice had once been a rite of passage for Equestrian royalty but had fallen out of fashion for thousands of petty reasons and many dire ones. Countless knights, squires, nobles, dukes, and princesses had been burnt to a crisp on hunts just like this one. It seemed much safer to prove their worth by hosting sumptuous dinners and decadent galas than to test their mettle against fire-breathing monsters.
All that meant that to slay a dragon carried a level of prestige utterly unheard of in Canterlot. A level of prestige that couldn’t be ignored. Not even Celestia herself could look past an achievement of this caliber. Her faithful student had earned her praise hatching a dragon with magic. It only reasoned that slaying one ought to pry her attention back where it belonged.
“You didn’t tell Trixie there would be dragons involved!” She whispered, violet eyes wide with panic.
“It was in the contract you signed.” Blueblood pulled down the hood of his fleece jacket. Snow and ash mingled together into a grey slush around his hooves. “In fact, it was the first thing I mentioned.”
“Trixie didn’t read the contract! Trixie never reads contracts! You know this!”
The Prince said nothing. The smirk on his lips spoke volumes.
Trixie harrumphed, tossing her mane indignantly. “This is the last time Trixie works with royalty.” She paused. “Unless they double her pay, of course.”
For months Blueblood had studied the old scrolls in the dustiest corners of Canterlot’s library that detailed the dragonslayers of old. They issued a challenge to their quarry before the battle began, and Blueblood had burned their words into his memory. He sucked in a frigid breath and spit blasphemy from his lips.
The draconic language was a speech filled with guttural snarls and sibilant hisses. Without a forked tongue, speaking it was difficult. The result was words that sounded like grinding concrete and sputtering lamplight. A throat-shredding snarl here, a bone-breaking utterance there, all delivered on a wind that seethed and gibbered like an abattoir. Trixie winced at every word. Her ears flicked and drooped when he finally finished.
“What did you say?”
“My name, my purpose, and my pedigree.”
“Your pedigree was that long?”
“I embellished a bit.”
“A bit?”
The ground under their hooves rippled. A grinding groan echoed across the open space as if the mountain itself were awakening from eternal slumber. In the mouth of the cave, a form appeared. A sharp, angular head on a serpentine neck. A lean, slate-grey body followed close behind. Great ribbed wings spread wide, silencing the sunlight and casting both ponies into night. Talons longer than spears gripped the icy stone. Slit-pupiled eyes larger than cannon mouths stared down at tiny prey. The beast rolled its shoulders and shrugged decades of dust from its body. Falling snow melted on its snout as it drew low to the ground.
“You lie, little prince.” The dragon replied in rumbling Equine. “I have met and devoured dragonslayers of your kind, and you are no slayer.”
“We should go.” Trixie hissed through clenched teeth.
“I am Prince Blueblood of Equestria.” Blueblood ignored her and stepped forward. “Who are you?”
The dragon exhaled hot steam from its nostrils. Scaly quills rattled across its neck. “I am Sarukh the Bleak. Eldest of my clutch. Bane of Winter. Warden of the Iron Mountains. Devourer of Kingdoms.”
He shifted slightly, and the sound was like armor clanking. Blueblood was a mouse compared to Sarukh. He tried to stand tall, to look fearless as the old slayers must have been in the face of danger, but it was a farce. Sarukh sniffed, growling low.
“Your ancestors, your slayers, hunted our young. They did not dare challenge the likes of me.” Sarukh narrowed his eyes. “Return home, little prince. You do not belong here.”
Blueblood’s blade flashed as he drew it from his sheath. His horn ignited as he split the sword, twenty shards of meteoric platinum twinkled in the air around him. He had come to slay a dragon and slay a dragon he would. This was where he made his stand. Either he went back to Canterlot, a conquering hero, hailed as a legend Celestia could no longer ignore, or he didn’t return.
“I’m not like my ancestors.”
“You will die here, prince.”
“Then I will die a legend.”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie would rather not die a legend.” Trixie cut in, casting nervous glances between the pair. “In fact, she would rather not die at all.”
“Do you accept my challenge, Sarukh the Bleak?” Blueblood’s voice cracked as he spoke. He cleared his throat and reiterated it, but he was trembling and stammered over the words.
The dragon reared to his full height, standing taller than Canterlot’s peak as he bellowed. “I accept your challenge, Blueblood of Equestria!”
“Are you insane?!” Trixie’s voice was lost in the clamor.
Blueblood’s eyes flashed as he threw her a glare. “You signed a contract! No backing out now!”
The Great and Powerful Trixie made a mental note to add reading comprehension to her repertoire if she survived this. She tapped the well of magic within her, felt her horn glow pale silver, and took a deep breath.
“Ready?” Blueblood said, sounding much less confident than he looked.
She nodded in reply.
Sarukh’s head dipped low and his maw gaped. Fire roared in a great rolling gout across the plateau. Blueblood gripped Trixie’s hoof and the two of them vanished in a blink. Teleportation was a spell Trixie had spent years mastering. Well, mastering was a strong word. “Dabbling with” was more like it. They reappeared nearly a mile above the dragon, wreathed in acrid smoke.
“I thought you said you could teleport!” Blueblood screamed as he flailed his limbs, falling fast.
“Trixie said she was working on it!” Trixie wove another spell, blinking them out of reality and onto the ground. They rolled through the snow as the spell spit them out somewhere dark and humid. Blueblood looked up and saw they were just under Sarukh’s tail. The dragon whirled on them, talons slashing through the melting slurry.
Catching the strike with his blade, Blueblood was still sent skittering by the sheer force of the blow. Two motes of his sword balanced him as she slid across the slush. Ten deflected another claw. The final eight he whipped forth in a storm of cold metal. It clinked against Sarukh’s scales like it had struck the palace wall.
“Oh no.”
Blueblood could see the flames gathering in the back of the dragon’s throat; a harsh bloody blow that grew in intensity. He threw himself to the ground, screaming internally that he was ruining his coat in the process. There was a sudden pop and crackle as something struck the dragon’s snout. A bright green flash nearly blinded Blueblood and sent stars whirling in his vision.
The fire died in Sarukh’s throat as he turned. Trixie conjured up a swarm of firecrackers and sent them screaming through the air. Bursts of violet, blue, and red exploded around the dragon in brilliant fashion. The mountaintop glowed like a concert afterparty as she unleashed the opening act of her magic show. It was just enough time for Blueblood to fling a mote of his blade towards the dragon’s eye. He missed, embedding it in the dense scales of Sarukh’s brow. If he felt it stick, he didn’t show it. He crouched low like a predatory cat and lunged for the wizard.
Trixie sprinted, her hooves skittering on the loose stone. She looked over her shoulder and saw nothing but teeth. In desperation, she slung a teleportation spell and hurled herself anywhere other than here. She reappeared only a few feet away, just barely enough to avoid the clamp of Sarukh’s jaws. Her hat and cloak were on fire and she hastily stamped it out as she cursed herself for not properly memorizing the spell. The dragon opened its mouth and roared, nearly blowing her off her hooves with the sonic force. Her eardrums were ringing as she watched the fire growing in Sarukh’s throat.
Flames exploded around her as Trixie threw up a feeble ward at the last second. The heat singed the edges of her mane and made sweat run down her back. Hairline cracks formed in her ward as she tried to hold it together. Her well of magic was dry and her skull throbbed with feedback. The edges of her vision grew fuzzy as her makeshift shield started to splinter.
Blueblood ducked beneath the sweep of Sarukh’s tail as he closed the distance. The pass of it roared like an oncoming steam engine as he recalled his blade. He had to find a weak point, yet all he saw were overlapping armored scales. As Sarukh arched his back, Blueblood caught a glimpse of his wings: massive, ribbed, and membranous as a ship’s sail. Blueblood aimed and shattered his blade. Nineteen needles of sharp platinum punctured Sarukh’s wings like bullets through silk, drawing thin rivulets of black blood. The dragonfire ceased, replaced with a grinding snarl of pain. Trixie gasped and clutched her chest, an unburned pinprick amid an ocean of scorch marks.
Sarukh backed away, hissing and seething as he shifted his gaze between the two ponies. His eyes narrowed to slits as his forked tongue tasted the air. The Prince recalled his blade, keeping it leveled at his foe as he helped Trixie to her hooves.
“Are you alright?” He said, wiping a trickle of blood from her snout.
“The Great... And Powerful Trixie...” She gasped the words but refused to cut down her illustrious title. “Would very much like to go home.”
“Me too.” Blueblood exhaled slowly. “Can you stand?”
“Trixie is fine.” She pushed his hoof away. “She’s faced Ursa Majors, Cragadiles, and Tatzlwurms a hundred times before. A simple dragon is nothing to-”
Trixie was cut short as Sarukh bellowed. His eyes were focused squarely on the Prince that had wounded him.
“Your blade, Prince.” He shifted from side to side like a serpent ready to strike. “Rare is the blade that stings me. I shall carve its name in stone alongside your bones.”
“Her name is Pride,” Blueblood replied with a flourish. “And she goes before destruction.”
“Aptly put.” The dragon lunged, kicking up clouds of steam with every breath.
“Behind me!” Blueblood called as he countercharged, hooves biting the stone as he galloped. Trixie huffed and followed after him, still running low on magic. Her head was ringing. She could taste blood in her mouth.
The Prince’s blade deflected a snap of Sarukh’s jaws with a vicious slap. He thrust for the eye, only for the dragon to batter him with a headbutt. Blueblood rolled in the snow and ash, his white coat dyed grey as his back was scraped raw by the stony ground. He rolled left a second before Sarukh’s talons plunged into the earth, gasping and shielding his face. He lashed out with his sword, but its edge clanged weakly against the scales.
Trixie tried to weave a spell, but couldn’t focus. Through the frigid wind and the din of battle and the simmering ache in her body her mind raced. There had to be something she could pinpoint, something she could direct her magic upon.
Then she saw it.
A single shard of metal lodged between the scales just under Sarukh’s eye. As Blueblood defended himself with wild swings of his blade, the shard wriggled and tried to free itself to no avail. Trixie’s horn burned aquamarine and the magic flowed through her as she found her focus.
“Eyes closed Blueblood!” She screamed into the wind. Blueblood heard her and slammed his eyes shut just in time.
The shard flared like a magnesium spark, blinding the dragon. He staggered, clawing frantically at the ground for the Prince he knew was near. Blueblood crawled on his stomach and narrowly avoided the swiping talons. A sweeping blast of fire followed, but Blueblood had found his refuge. He rolled beneath Sarukh and tapered his blade to a narrow point, then thrust it into the dragon’s belly. With a twist and a flourish, he withdrew it and ran like hell.
Trixie swept a hoof through the air, icicles forming on the brim of her hat as arcane power coursed through her. A sheet of ice no thicker than a thumbnail frosted the earth beneath Sarukh’s legs. Still blinking stars from his vision, the dragon slipped, sprawling flat just as Blueblood emerged from beneath him. Exhaling vapor, Trixie skated across the frozen surface and took the stumbling Prince by the hoof, twirling him like they were dance partners at the Grand Galloping Gala.
Righting himself on the slippery surface, Blueblood dug in the tips of his hooves. He silently noted the cost of the pedicure he’d just ruined and deducted it from Trixie’s pay.
"Still alive?" She chirped as they crossed a graceful figure eight together.
Blueblood coughed. His fleece had been shredded and he could feel blood seeping from the scrapes on his back. Blue and yellow bruises were blossoming across his white coat. He forced himself to grin. "Just barely."
“Try not to get yourself killed.” She said as she spun him round and launched him towards their quarry. Trixie doffed her cape and dangled it like a matador as she skidded to a halt. When she dropped it, a flurry of pigeons burst from behind it and filled the air with feathers as they took flight. She sighed. They were supposed to be doves, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Blueblood skated expertly across the surface of the ice, gaining speed as he approached the dragon. A frenzy of feathers proceeded him, pigeons swarming past Sarukh’s face as he rose and shook his head. Splitting his blade, Blueblood created a staircase of flattened shards for his hooves to follow. Sprinting up, he took a flying leap from the top and recalled his blade motes just in time to deliver a swift slash across Sarukh’s snout. Momentum carried him on as the dragon howled, and Blueblood tumbled as he landed on the beast's ridged back.
He rolled, wincing as his shredded back bounced on the rough surface. Staggering to his hooves and steadying himself as he ran, Blueblood divided his sword in two and drove them into the creases where Sarukh’s wings met his body. A geyser of black blood gushed forth, splattering the Prince’s white coat as he ran past. Sarukh coiled his body and swept his tail across his back, battering Blueblood away like swatting a fly. Blueblood’s body crumpled under the blow. He gasped as the breath was knocked out of him and the rushing of wind filled his ears. He was aware that he was falling but he was powerless to stop it.
Tapping her magic, Trixie tried to teleport to catch her flailing Prince, but she was off by a long shot. Flames sparked in her mane as she spiraled through the air. Thankfully the wind was enough to extinguish them as she reached into her hat. Trixie pulled out a handkerchief and tugged it hard. A whole stream of knotted handkerchiefs followed, growing longer and longer the more she pulled. Whipping it through the air, she managed to wind it around Blueblood’s ankle and yank him towards her. Clutching him tight, she teleported again, just in time to avoid crashing hard into the mountain.
Blueblood coughed and spit, flailing his arms as he sucked in a lungful of air. He was just in time to come to a crashing halt as the two of them slammed into the ground and skidded across ash and gravel. His vision was swimming as he forced himself to his hooves. Trixie fared a bit better, shaking her mane and blotting out the simmering embers on her cloak. Both were panting hard, gasping for breath as they reveled in their brief respite.
“You okay?” Blueblood said, brushing his mane out of his face.
“Never better.” Trixie coughed out a ring of smoke. She watched as Sarukh writhed and seethed, his forked tongue smelling the exhaustion of his prey. “We’re not making much progress.”
“Yeah.” He huffed, his breath crystalline in the cold air. Sarukh’s scales rippled as he inhaled, the quills on his throat bristled and glowed. Blueblood formed his blade into a single long arc as Trixie readied a ward. “How long do you think that’s gonna hold?”
Trixie gnawed her lip. “The Great and Powerful Trixie could potentially hold her shield spell forever. But realistically, she can keep it stable for ten seconds. If she’s lucky.”
“Can you make it fifteen?”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie... Uh...”
Before she could finish, Sarukh belched a stream of fire in their direction. Trixie whipped up her shield and almost immediately felt the buzzing in the base of her skull. Dragonfire was anathema to her magic. She was meant to be performing for bits back on the dusty trail, not fighting dragons Celestia knows where.
Blueblood was counting the seconds under his breath. Five, six, seven, eight. “On three, we’re going to swap. Just like we talked about!”
“Now?!” Trixie ground her teeth together so hard she thought they might crack. Magical feedback was shredding her nerves with every second. Wet penny taste on the back of her tongue. Static in her limbs. Pulses of color flashed in time with her heartbeat. Scream rising in her throat.
“One...” Blueblood took two steps back and sucked in a breath. Sarukh was closing on them fast, his monolithic shadow visible just behind the molten glow. “Two...”
“Count faster!” Trixie yelped, her grip on her magic tenuous at best.
“If you’d stop interrupting me then-”
“BLUEBLOOD!”
“Three!”
Sprinting forth, Blueblood planted a hoof squarely on Trixie’s back and vaulted over her. He could feel the flames scorch his belly as he arced over them, landing just beside Sarukh with a roll. The flames sputtered as the dragon changed his target. Trixie dropped her ward and retched as her magical reserves flooded back to her. Twelve seconds. Twelve was better than she’d expected.
The Prince ducked beneath a swipe of Sarukh’s claw and dodged his jaws by a hair’s breadth. Skidding to a stop, he reached for his blade. There was a split second when their eyes met. For the first time since he’d set foot on the mountain, Blueblood saw a momentary spark of fear in the reptilian eye. His lips curled into a fanatic grin as he snapped his blade forth.
Except there was no blade.
There was a loud crack, a puff of smoke, and a shower of confetti as Blueblood produced a bouquet of roses in his outstretched hoof. The paper petals fell on Sarukh’s befuddled snout as he blinked.
“What is this?” He growled flatly.
Blueblood beamed. “A distraction.”
Sarukh barely had time to process the words before Trixie delivered a long, jagged slash to the other side of his face. Blueblood’s blade raked across his scales and cut a gash through his eye. Trixie was no expert, but even she couldn’t miss such a massive target. She dropped the sword like a hot iron and kicked it across the stone to its rightful owner. As Sarukh turned his roaring wrath on Trixie, Blueblood hurled the roses aside in a spray of scarlet and whipped his blade to the ready. Dancing to one side, Blueblood drove the tip just behind one of the rattling quills in the dragon’s throat. Sarukh lurched just long enough for Trixie to conjure a cloud of periwinkle smoke to vanish in.
Blueblood split off five shards from his sword as Sarukh’s toothy jaws gaped wide. Fire boiled within his gullet, glowing like an iron forge. This time, the Prince didn’t waver. Five shards lanced out and raked the inside of the dragon’s neck, shredding the soft and sensitive flesh. The flames died, quenched in a glut of blood and bile as Sarukh retched and choked. Tearing his shards back, Blueblood shattered a fang more ancient than Canterlot Palace. As Sarukh’s screams of agony dislodged snow on white-capped peaks miles away, Blueblood arced a shard over his quarry’s head.
The blade mote was an ideal focus for Trixie. She twisted through space with a perfect teleport (albeit one that wreathed her in no small amount of green flame) and flourished her cape. She tapped her magic and lit up the sky with a brilliant glow. Her cloak suddenly grew heavy as a conjured blacksmith’s anvil appeared from behind it. It dropped like… well, an anvil… to shatter Sarukh’s senses as it bashed his skull with a satisfying clang. Pinpointing Blueblood’s shard a second time, Trixie blinked back into existence beside him, setting his scarred fleece on fire. Blueblood hurriedly threw the jacket into the snow and stomped out the embers.
The dragon was breaking. Crowned with gore, blind in one eye, missing a tooth, and dribbling black from his scaly lips, Sarukh looked like a boxer going into his tenth round. His breath was short and ragged, his back shuddered with every movement, and the fire within him had been reduced to a dismal spark. He didn’t speak. He glared with his one good eye and bared broken fangs.
Blueblood and Trixie didn’t speak either. Trixie had rusty clots of dried blood settling on her face, her coat was pockmarked with small burns and bruises, and her head ached like it had been smashed with a sledgehammer. Blueblood had been battered and bludgeoned nearly as badly as his foe. His back was covered in a latticework of abrasions that flared raw with every breath.
The dance was at its end. Do or die.
Ten shards split from Blueblood’s blade, dotting the mountainside with meteoric platinum. He looked to Trixie and gave her a nod. She returned it. Both took deep breaths and broke into a sprint. Sarukh’s claws sparked on the stone as he opened his mouth in a silent battlecry. Any words died in his lacerated throat.
Blueblood and Trixie moved in perfect sync, a beautiful, flowing symmetry normally reserved for practiced performances. Sarukh brought a claw down on top of them, only for Blueblood’s scattered motes to pry open his fist and sting his palm. Trixie locked onto a pair of shards and wrapped Blueblood in a sudden squeeze as she sent them bursting through two interlinked teleports. Sarukh doubled back like an eel, gaping his mouth to swallow them whole. Just as his jaws snapped around them, he tasted a mouthful of acidic smoke as they teleported once again. Then again. And again.
Flames licked at their bodies with every flash. Even with a focus, Trixie’s magic could only take them so far, and her reserves were running dry. They burst out of their sixth blink, Trixie could feel the wooziness of feedback eating away at her. A seventh took them just out of range of a whipping tail, and the eighth fully drained her magic. Her brain screamed at her to stop. Her breath hitched and she tasted bitter bile.
Nine blinks took her to the very brink of her abilities. Trixie was fading fast. She didn’t have the talent for a single teleport, let alone ten in rapid succession. Her body slumped against Blueblood as her consciousness ebbed. The final blink was the most important. Summoning the final drops of her power, Trixie’s horn sputtered like a candle in a stiff breeze.
She and Blueblood exploded like rockets as they appeared in the sky. They fell like meteors, flames burning around them as they dove. Trixie gasped as her eyelids fluttered. Her eyes rolled back as she tumbled through the air like a ragdoll. Blueblood briefly flailed to grab her before pulling her tight against his body.
Blueblood recalled his blade in full as he streaked toward the earth. The sword tapered to a razor point that he thrust downward. Sarukh had just enough time to look up before the collision. The Prince’s blade plunged through the weakened scales at the crown of the dragon’s head. He felt the sword flex briefly as it struck bone. When it snapped straight again, it pierced through the skull. A mind older than Blueblood, older than the Equestrian Nation, older than the very mountain range that surrounded them, flashed a final terrified thought before it was silenced. A coughing, rattling exhalation whispered through the dragon’s fangs as he breathed his last.
Sarukh the Bleak was dead.
The mountain was silent, save for the sigh of the wind.
*****
Trixie blinked her eyes awake. Everything hurt. Her head was spinning so much that she had to force herself not to vomit. She rolled onto her side with an anguished groan.
There was a voice, a shape moving in the gloom, and something cold was pressed to her brow. Something bitter and foul was forced into her mouth. Trixie tried to spit but a hoof clamped over her mouth.
“If you spit on my hoof, I’m not giving you a single bit!”
That pierced through the fog and tapped her brain. Trixie forced herself to swallow whatever it was, gagging as she crumpled back. Blueblood breathed a sigh of relief. As she blinked in the firelight, Trixie saw that the Prince had bandaged himself up after the battle. He was steeping some kind of soup over a flickering fire, the smell of which made her forget the pain.
"What was that?" Trixie gagged. She could still taste whatever it was. Reaching up to her forehead, she found a damp cloth had been laid over some nasty welts there.
"Painkillers. After all that, I figured you need them." Blueblood winced a bit as he reached over to stir the pot. “Are you hungry?”
“How could you tell?”
“You’re drooling on your cape.”
Trixie wiped her mouth and swallowed hard. “The Great and Powerful Trixie would greatly appreciate something to eat.”
The Prince ladled a bowl full and passed it to her. He held out a spoon for her to use, but Trixie tipped the bowl back and drained it in a few gulps. Blueblood’s smile was as faint as their firelight. “Another?”
“Please.” Trixie hummed. “What was it?”
“Tomato and peppergrass soup.” Blueblood handed her a second helping. This time, Trixie accepted a spoon. “I would ask how you’re doing, but your lack of table manners tells me you’re probably fine.”
“Trixie resents that.” She flicked a spoonful of soup at him. It missed and sizzled on the cool stone floor. “Did we win?”
“We won. We’re dragonslayers now.” Blueblood pointed to the mouth of the cave they rested in. Trixie could just barely see the body of Sarukh through the veil of falling snow. “In the morning we’ll send a message back to Canterlot. I’m going to relish in their shock and awe. Do you think I should say our battle was ‘hard-fought’ or does that make it sound like we were in over our heads? Maybe ‘our illustrious battle’ would work. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Trixie was silent for a moment. She slurped her soup as the logs on the fire crackled and sent up firefly swarms of sparks. “Blueblood?”
“That’s Slayer Blueblood to you.”
“Whatever.” Her eyes drifted down into her bowl as she exhaled slowly. “Why did you bring me with you?”
Blueblood blinked. “Why not?”
“As I’m sure you’re aware.” Trixie ran a hoof through her mane. “I’m not really all that Great or Powerful.”
“Oh, I’m very aware.” He chuckled softly. Blueblood had already begun to rummage through his bags looking for the perfect preening outfit to greet any Canterlot dignitaries in.
“So why me? You’re royalty. You have your pick of any wizard in Canterlot, ones who can summon lightning or tear up mountains or boil oceans or teleport where they want without setting themselves on fire.” She huffed. “I should be performing at birthday parties for fillies, not fighting dragons.”
The Prince paused. He had been debating between a navy blue cravat swirled with stars and an austere white one. His eyes fell on Trixie as he sat on his luggage, wincing as his bandages chaffed him. “But I didn’t want to slay a dragon with a competent wizard. I wanted to slay a dragon with the Great and Powerful Trixie.”
The pair shared a smile in the flickering firelight. Trixie opened her mouth to thank him before the full realization of his words dawned. “Bastard! Once her wounds are healed, Trixie will smite you! Wrath and fury on your house!”
“O, woe upon me! The Lame and Incompetent Trixie is going to bore me to death with card tricks again!” Blueblood laughed, shielding his face as she threw her spoon at him. “Careful! You’re going to spill soup on my white cravat!”
“Dire are the consequences for besmirching the name of The Great and Powerful Dragonslayer Trixie!”
They looked at each other, turning the words over in their mouths.
“It’s a bit wordy.”
“The Great and Dragonslaying Trixie?”
“But how will Trixie’s many enemies know she’s powerful?”
“I’d assume slaying a dragon counts as powerful.”
“Trixie will workshop it.”
