"I'm just saying," a light violet Ember is just saying as Chester returns to the stone-walled cave, "you clearly didn't come from under a wolf's tail. Don't you ever get curious about that?"

I am a wolf, Holds-the-Fire blue-says. (They're sitting cross-legged together near the center of the cave.) She spreads her arms and splays the fingers on her hands. I have never been anything else. You look at me and see a human body? That does not make me part of their world. I am as lost there as Ches-ter was in mine. She hesitates, several other colors spinning in. Though perhaps, if I were to be anything but a wolf, I would be a dragon. I will never again threaten your claim over the world of fire, but when I was there, for the first time my own body sang to my howls. The colors resolve into a dull, yellow-green jealousy. I… miss it.

Ember looks down at the cave floor, the same color stirring up. "Yeah. You should have been a dragon. You'd be the great one I couldn't. I was never enough. My father was always ashamed. Too weak. Too small."

Em-ber. Holds-the-Fire reaches out, takes one of Ember's claws, turns it palm up, and places her own pale, spindly hand in it. I tried to take your pack because Father thought me too weak and too small to lead mine. You forced me to realize there are other ways of being strong. To provide and protect is to be big no matter what your body looks like. She turns her hand over and gives Ember's claw a squeeze. So keep being big in a way other dragons are small. I know you are capable of it.

Ember stares down at their clasped hands, orange building. Abruptly, she takes her other claw and starts fanning her face. "Boy! That sure was friendship lesson time, ha-ha, Princess Twilight is gonna love this." She glances around as the orange reaches a crescendo, then sees Chester in the cave mouth. "Chester!" she shouts, scrambling upright, orange dissolving into indigo relief at the distraction. "Did you fix the bloodstones?"

Chester—who hadn't dared to move, not wanting to spoil the moment—steps in to join them as Holds-the-Fire also stands. "I got the important part done," he says, grinning. "I learned that we've been thinking about them in entirely the wrong way."

"Oh?" Ember says, green tentatively stirring as the remainder of her orange vanishes with the subject change.

Chester sits down with the pair. "I figured the bloodstones were some external force. Like… some big slug suctioned onto your back. And then the relics went away and you were working from the residue they left behind, and having the slime without the slug was driving you mad."

Ember narrows her eyes, maroon taking over. "Wait, wait. Hold the boulder. Are you seriously trying to do this? I mean, you're clearly building up to some sort of 'the real bloodstone was inside your heart all along' speech, and I'd expect that from the ponies maybe, but we're gonna need a lot more than happy words and fewmets to get out of here and take on Chrysalis—"

"No," Chester interrupts before her rant can truly take off. "What's happening is that you two literally are the bloodstones."

Ember's jaw, already open from her rant, hangs there. She makes an unintelligible noise as both she and Holds-the-Fire blossom into creamsicle.

While Ember sputters, Holds-the-Fire recovers first. Her creamsicle shifts into a wordless pink—then, as she studies Chester, back to peach and then back to creamsicle again. Those are not joke-words, she finally says, the rapid-fire shifts settling down into light violet. Explain.

"Okay, so." Chester wishes he could draw a diagram or something. "It didn't start that way. Once, back in magical pony world, this cat sorceress created the scepter and crown. Apparently with the help of dragon magic, since that's what gave them their link to dragonkind. There was a fight, and her assistant stole the scepter, and with the bloodstones' combined power broken, some pony beardy wizard guy banished the sorceress here."

Ember reorients enough to contribute again. "Yeah, all we've got about that era are old stories, but that was probably Star Swirl the Bearded, that tracks."

"So she still had the crown, which was lonely and desperate to be a set again. Meanwhile, in pony world, that dragon had the scepter but lost it to another dragon, Scales—"

"Right!" Ember says, briefly spiking violet in recognition. "We've got Feast of Fire tales about that. She was the one who swiped it from the legendary Ancient Dragon Lord. Does that make him the sorceress' assistant? Who was he? What did you learn about him—"

"Focus, Ember," Chester says. She goes pink at the chiding, but he barrels on. "Scales started using the scepter in a way the first dragon never did, and got it desperate to be a set again. That's where this started. With both crown and scepter thinking the other half of the set was gone forever, they began nurturing bloodstone power directly within their wielders. Turning them into reservoirs of bloodstone energy, hoping to build them back into the missing half. Then you two had your fight. The actual crown and scepter blasted each other into, uh, what was your phrase, Ember—"

"Inert hunks of rock?"

"Yes, thank you. So you're not actually connecting to the original crown and scepter any more. The bloodstones were right—those are destroyed, gone for good. You're connecting to you."

Holds-the-Fire has been building up some tentative green around swirling colors as she listens, but at that last bit, everything starts fading into white. Your idea is bizarre, Ches-ter, she says, but if it IS true, then it ruins all hope of recovery. I have repeatedly tested my capabilities. My own power is a whisper where the Crown was a shout.

"Not to mention," Ember says, defeat similarly washing her colors out, "we already knew we still had some remnants of power, but since Chrysalis drained me that point is moot."

"Drained you both actually, but trust me, it's not," Chester says. "Out in the real world, you two are like… bloodstone zombies, or something. Even though you've both been drained, the bloodstones' power is animating you. I don't know how Chryssa-swamini drained you selectively like that, but…" Chester blinks. "No, I do know. She doesn't drain power in general, she drains love. That's not how the bloodstones work, so she couldn't touch them."

"Okay, maybe," Ember says. "But also, what Other Me said. Our power's garbage now. If that's all you've got, we're toast."

"It isn't," Chester says. He takes a breath and inwardly braces himself for another explanation. "You've both got entire reservoirs of magic you're barely touching. Because you're both trying to connect to the wrong stone."

They both go intense peach.

"Hear me out," Chester says before they can voice their objections. "Ember, you remember that comment I made about the crown and scepter's powers seeming backwards? It turns out they weren't designed that way. Originally, both the crown and scepter did the same thing—connected to both the hearts and minds of the dragons. They only specialized after they were separated."

"Then why did they get it backwards?" Ember creamsicle-says. "We already know the scepter's the brain one and the crown is the instinct one."

"I think because originally they were trying to work with what they had," Chester says. "The crown landed with the sorceress, who was all brain and zero instinct. It tried to shape her into its missing half, which meant it had to work with her mind and enhance it, and it had to turn itself into the instinct half to complement her. Meanwhile, the scepter didn't get used until Scales picked it up. And, uh… I hope this isn't racist, Ember, but—"

She shifts maroon. "Put it that way, and there's no way it isn't."

Chester winces—he's committed to the explanation regardless, and he might as well power through it instead of getting bogged down. "Sorry. But I got the sense, from what I saw of all the Dragon Lords after that first one, that they were all bundles of raw impulse. Sorry."

"Oh," she says, and that deep red fades to blue as she relaxes. "Yeah, dragons one hundred percent are."

"Right." Chester mentally flags the minefield, grateful nothing exploded but still hoping to backpedal from the topic as quickly as possible. "So the scepter did the same thing in reverse. Tried to enhance its wielders' instincts and connections to instincts, and turned itself into the half connecting to and controlling brains."… yeah, he definitely just called all dragons stupid.

"Cute theory, but that's definitely backwards," Ember says, colors whirling as she thinks. (At least she didn't go red again, Chester notes with some relief.) "Holds-the-Fire and I already fought. She was the instinct one. I was the brain one. That's the only reason I beat her."

No, Ches-ter is correct, Holds-the-Fire says, stirring from the light violet she's been quietly listening with. When you fought me with your own power, it was with instinct and strength. You turned to the scepter when I outmatched you. And I was using the crown all along, taking all the power it would offer. Later, when I only had myself to rely on, I turned to mind.

A realization stirs up in Chester's hindbrain. "That also explains why you went gold-colored earlier, and why Ember never did," he interjects. "You're the brain bloodstone now, so of course it's pushing you to want tools, and instinct could care less about them."

Ember shakes her head, orange stirring up. "Okay, maybe that makes sense for you. But I can't do instinct. I have to be smart." The orange escalates, and this time there's something external provoking the fear. "I am incapable of being a fierce Dragon Lord, and if I'm not the smart bloodstone then I am absolutely lost in the lava."

Chester rests a hand on the dragon's shoulder. "Ember," he says, softening the tone of his voice and bracing himself, "I'm really sorry, but you've been nothing but instinct since I met you."

She whirls on him—red, teeth bared—and grabs his robes. Chester cringes, preparing to get thrown into the wall again. Then she hesitates, colors destabilizing.

"I'm not saying you can't be smart, or that you're not," Chester hurriedly adds. "You have to be smart or you would never have become Dragon Lord. But ever since, the scepter was shaping you into its missing instinct partner. It made you want to react instead of think."

Ember's red dissipates into yellow. "Yeah… I don't need a lot of help to do that." Her grip loosens, and she lets Chester go. "Point taken. I remember thinking of all the ways I could change things. I remember all the big plans I made with the ponies right after I got the scepter. But I haven't thought about them much since I started trying to be fierce enough not to be immediately dethroned."

"Then maybe you can use the bloodstone to be fierce for you," Chester says. "And concentrate on being smart when you're not using it. If we get the crown and scepter unified again, maybe they'll mellow out and stop pushing at your brain."

Ember shakes her head, stirring back into a subdued orange. "I don't think that's how it works. I…" Colors whirl for a moment, then the orange intensifies. "You're telling me I'm the instinct bloodstone, right? Well, my instincts are saying that what you just said isn't how it works, so we have a problem."

Chester's got to admit she has a point, but ripostes anyway. "That's a very smart argument from someone worried they can't use their brain."

"Yes, but that's Now Me. You're arguing for me to embrace this. If that works, I get the power I need, but I turn into yet another one of the endless line of Dragon Lords with an impulsive reign of terror."

Em-ber, Holds-the-Fire gently cuts in—making a point of projecting blue-and-yellow concern along with the meaning of her words. Perhaps we are different enough that this is no consolation. But when our fight changed my focus from instinct to intellect, it did not change what I desired. My pack became no less important. I think that already you care for your pack and your… friends. (She's used the word before, and she seems to know its meaning well enough, but it still comes across as a word she learned from a foreign language with no native equivalent.) I think if you journey from thought into heart, it will only strengthen that care.

Ember considers that in silence. Her roiling orange retreats, and though the color doesn't take over, some tendrils of green sprout in the resulting uncertainty.

"Yeah," she says. "I hope so."

"I think you can do more than hope," Chester says. "I don't know what it's like being different in the particular way that you're different. But"—that long-ago flash of Chryssy's orange-red leaps to mind unbidden—"I do know what it's like to have something inside that scares you. Something that only a few people can ever understand, which makes people you care about look at you weird."

Deep blue tentatively stirs in Ember to join the green. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He reaches over to take the dragon's claw. "And that thing inside can be a curse or a superpower. You can't change what you are. You can't make it turn off, or make it shut up when it's inconvenient. But if you accept it, work with it, it becomes a source of strength. You can understand where it wants to take you, and guide it along a path that brings you joy instead of pain. It'll bring you experiences normal people never get. And when you do find the ones who get it, they mean more than anything in the world."

He turns his head to stare at Holds-the-Fire as he reaches his conclusion. She's staring back, and he knows what she sees.

Her own colors are unsettled—some threads of dull beige, yes, but some threads of green, too. Pastel, for what once might have been, and a more tentative deeper green, for what still might. And the much more substantial deep blue, of knowing exactly what he's talking about.

With a bit of reluctance, Chester turns back to Ember, giving her claw a squeeze. "You've got me. You've got Celestia and Sunset, and your friends back home—Princess Twilight, and Spike, and Thorax, who you should introduce me to if we get out of this mess. If we're lucky enough to survive long enough to get you home, I think you'll do just fine."

Ember has been building up to a finely mixed blue and orange as he speaks. Specifically, cerulean and pastel blue, trust and gratitude, along with a jagged self-directed orange that Chester is starting to recognize—Ember confronting the distressing realization that she has feelings. (He's beginning to appreciate the full extent of the trauma she must have from growing up as a dragon.)

But as he finishes, a spike of lilac pierces through and disrupts it all.

She snorts, laughter catching her off guard, and jerks back her claw to cover her muzzle. "Wow, Chester. You had that pep talk nailed right until the end there."

Holds-the-Fire, too, spikes lilac and lets loose a trilling yip. Chester gives in and joins them. He can't get over how fantastic it is to see them sharing things, even a laugh at his expense. Even the cave seems to be getting in on it, its illumination now a much more placid blue, the cave entrance taking on the appearance of a dim and hazy night.

Ches-ter does provide a useful reminder, Holds-the-Fire says as her amusement fades. All this talk is meaningless if we do not return to the world of forests. But I believe I see our path. She holds a hand out to Ember, shifting to a brown resolve. We have known for some time that the bloodstones themselves draw strength from each other. If I am to be the scepter now—then I offer you my power, if you will share your crown in return.

Ember reaches a claw out, but hesitates at the last moment, her colors slamming into a gray wall, with a bit of orange still visible.

It's frustrating, but Chester gets it. Things have changed between them so quickly—and there's something about that hand which feels momentous, even by the standards of everything they've just dragged each other through.

He extends his own hands to the pair, focusing on radiating encouragement. "I support this. I believe in you both."

That hand Ember lunges for immediately, her scaly claw squeezing with a pressure that's on the edge of painful, even here. And Chester can feel the turbulence underlying her drab, guarded mask. She's vibrating—there's more fear there than she's letting on.

On instinct, he opens himself up—like he did with the pushing, but in the reverse direction—and allows that orange to seep into him. It's not overwhelming like Chryssy's siddhi or the bloodstones' rage were, but it's fear, it's distressing nonetheless, curling his stomach and spearing through him like the cramps of food poisoning. But in this moment, he wants nothing more than to help Ember through this, and he's got the capacity to take it on.

The orange visible behind Ember's mask bleeds away, and her posture un-tenses. Chester glances at Holds-the-Fire. This time, she's the one who is staring at his outstretched hand and hesitating, colors internally whirling. She glances up to his face and silently takes it, colors retreating back to resolve as she shifts her attention back to Ember.

Ember takes a breath and meets her stare. "You'd better fight as fiercely alongside me as you did against me," she growls, the chocolate hue of bravado.

Then you had better defend my world with the ferocity you defended yours, Holds-the-Fire replies, her brown unwavering.

A spike of different brown, muddy pride, stirs Ember to motion. "You know I will," she says, and grabs Holds-the-Fire's hand, firmly squeezing.

There's an electric jolt as their connection completes.

The storm surges into the cave—mist full of rage no longer, but potential, licking at the cave walls and igniting their surroundings into sudden brilliance from a thousand little fingers of electricity. Their surroundings wash out into light—

* * *

—and Chester's focus swims back to the gray and frozen tableau of the prison cabin.

In the black-and-white photograph of the frozen world, he's cringing at the back wall of the bathroom, one arm hugged around Ember's torso. The wolf is frozen mid-flail from an attempt to escape his grasp, eyes blank, stare locked with Holds-the-Fire and dagger-toothed jaw agape. His other arm is locked straight out with his hand splayed on the skin of Holds-the-Fire's stomach as she reaches out to grab the wolf. Her mouth, too, is curled into a blunt-toothed snarl underneath solid eyes.

One of her hands has brushed against Ember's outstretched paw, and at that point of contact—a spark. A tiny blue arc of light, so full of power that it dances even amid the world's paralysis.

Time

restarts

with an electric boom and the world blurs with motion. Two lightning-fast impacts, one against the front of his body, the other at his back, and then he slowly reorients with the concrete floor caressing his face.

He's throbbing with pain and with power—at first the latter, an invincible rush, dwindling quickly away. The shadows are dancing back and forth—in the corner of his eye, the light bulb is swinging around the ceiling, the same impact that hit him having turned its cord into a pendulum—and there's further motion by the toilet and by the door. As Chester remembers to breathe (remembers he's got a body, with needs), Ember and Holds-the-Fire pick themselves up, the wolf also huffing and the girl sucking in a sharp gasp. They're both shimmering with power—colors diluted with disorientation, but with auras so intense that they distort the lines of the room.

Ember shakes herself out—like a wet dog, but shedding no moisture—and her frazzled fur resettles slightly. "Uuugghh." She's the first to find her voice, and also to spike into color as she glances around and sees Chester weakly stirring on the floor. "Chester?" she dark-blue-says. "You okay?"

Chester's looking at Holds-the-Fire as Ember says that, and sees something remarkable. The blue from the wolf at the corner of his eye leaps the gap in space, stirring up inside the girl. The motion of their colors is smooth and continuous, like if he were staring at the left and right side of a single person half-hidden behind a pillar.

"Uh," Ember adds, blossoming into peach. And no, it's not like they're a single person—there's clearly two cores, two emotional sources there. As the peach reaches Holds-the-Fire's side, a flurry of colors echoes back, a different peach entirely, and soon colors are barraging back and forth. It's like watching the telepathic conversation back in the car again, except sped up like a fast-forwarded recording, and by the time Chester's even bringing his mind to bear on the colors he sees, they've resolved into a mutual violet, different shades inflecting them on both sides.

"You're shocked. Surprised?" Ember says to him, quickly enough that without seeing the back-and-forth he might have not even noticed a delay. "So this is what feeling other people's emotions is like. You do this all the time? No wonder Thorax is so good with this stuff."

"Not to interrupt," Celestia's faint voice says from the main room. "But what was that explosion?"

Chester finally shoves himself to hands and knees on his second try; he's nearly boneless with fatigue. "It's okay!" he says, slurring a bit at first until sensation returns to his mouth. "I think we fixed the bloodstones."

Yes! Holds-the-Fire violet-says, and her voice is sharp and clear, as if she was standing inside his skull. I can feel my pack where I left them. I— it's just the slightest of hesitations—can talk to them. I can feel you. Feel Ches-ter's people. The violet intensifies into blazing triumph.

"Excellent!" Celestia says. "Well done. Not to look a gift phoenix in the nest, but I don't suppose you also achieved apotheosis and are about to blast us all with healing love?"

"That kind of wiped me out," Chester says. "One thing at a time."

"Ah," Celestia says. "Well, not to alarm you, but that noise rattled windows in Canterlot, so prepare for company."

Author's Note

So proud of Chester, Ember, and Holds-the-Fire right now.

And it's time to head into the adventure's final act. If you can't wait until Thursday, Sept. 26 to see what working bloodstones are capable of, this is a great time to read Fang and Flame (which won the Imposing Sovereigns II contest) and find out what happened when Ember and Holds-the-Fire first fought. Otherwise, tune in on Thursday for "Drawing Lines"!