The King With Naught But Gems to Eat, and Naught But Gold to Drink (The Misfortune of King Midas)
Some call him 'King Midas the Foolish.'
The greedy pony ordered his subjects to labor day and night, mining gold and gems to enrich their tyrant. Farmers neglected their fields, obeying orders to dig and strain and swear deep underground. Crops failed, and famine afflicted the kingdom. The thinnest and weakest ponies sickened first from lack of food.
Midas's subjects rebelled. They took up picks and shovels as weapons of war, laid siege to their king's palace.
The king looked down from his highest tower at the rebels. He resolved to outwait them.
But the miners turned rebels dug many barrowfuls of rocks and mortar, which they brought to the palace as a sarcastic form of tribute. The angry ponies blocked up the palace's doorways and windows with walls of stone.
In building their king's new prison the rebels preserved only one gap, a window in the palace's highest pinnacle. If their king essayed an escape through that one exit, he would only plummet to the stony ground far below. Such an escape would break the tyrant's body and crack his head.
Ponies called up to the tyrant through his high window, "Enjoy your palace, you cannot escape it! Enjoy your gold and gems, for no one will bring you aught else to eat or drink!" With many such taunts and curses ponies sought to torment the deposed king.
The king brooded in his palace turned prison. Every day he grew hungrier, every hour thirstier. He considered climbing up his palace's stairs to the highest room, and leaping out that one remaining window. Surely the fall would kill him, and he would hunger and thirst no more.
After a year and a day, the rebels thought to crack their king's confinement. The wealth within the palace was rightfully theirs, was it not? They themselves, with their own strong limbs and backs, had wrested those hidden treasures from the earth's bowels.
A company of rebels took up pick and shovel once more, to break into the palace.
Once the first doorway had been breached, the ponies crept within the dark place, carrying the same lanterns they'd once used as miners.
Ponies explored passage after passage, room after room, looking for glittering treasure. But in each hallway, each chamber, they found only heaps of stinking dirt and coatings of foul dust.
Where were the gold and jewels ponies had labored so hard to dig at their tyrant's orders?
When the ponies had investigated the rest of the palace, they climbed the tallest tower's staircase. Filled with an unaccountable forboding, they carried their picks and shovels, held ready to be used as weapons.
In the highest tower's topmost room, the ponies discovered an enormous lizard, larger than an ox.
The lizard opened its mouth, and roared. Flame spouted from its jaws, singeing the clothing and manes of the rebels' front rank.
The very bravest pony ran directly at the reptile, clanging his shovel's blade against the beast's scales.
The reptile roared again, but the courageous pony dodged well enough to avoid being roasted alive. With his shovel's sharp tip he stabbed at the beast's side.
The lizard roared a third time, and ran away towards the window. The creature pushed its body into the opening. Rocks fell from the window's edges. The beast pushed harder, and popped though the hole like a cork from a bottle.
Ponies went cautiously to the window, peeked out. Upon batlike wings, the monster flew away into the distance.
But where was their deposed tyrant? Where were the treasures the ponies had heaped up for him?
The ponies muttered and argued. Where could the kingdom's riches be hidden? The rebels searched the palace again from top to bottom, finding nothing.
But finally one pony ventured an answer. "We bade our tyrant to eat gems and drink gold. Perhaps he did exactly that."
"What do you mean?" asked another pony.
"Perhaps beneath the burden of our taunting curses he changed form, became that fire breathing beast we found in his stead. The creature consumed our gold and gems, digested them, turned them into stinking dirt." With the point of his shovel, the pony tapped the filth which coated the palace's floors. "I think this dirt is what remains, of the wealth we gave our tyrant."
Some ponies call that deposed king Midas the Foolish, or Midas the Greedy, or Midas the Cruel.
But some also call him Midas the Gem Gnawer and Midas the Gold Drinker. Some even say he was the very first dragon, father of all dragonkind.
~~***~~
Smolder laughed. "That's not how it happened at all."
"Not at all?" Starlight Glimmer asked.
"Hardly. How could a pony turn into a dragon? That's absurd."
"So what did happen?" Starlight wondered.
"It's pretty simple. Many years ago, when time was young, a grotto of ungrateful dragons waged war against the Great Dragonlord."
"The Great Dragonlord?"
"Yes. They picked up clubs and big rocks, and marched to war against him. But the Great Dragonlord beat them, of course. Can you guess what happened next?"
"No idea."
"The next year, that same ungrateful grotto went to war against the Great Dragonlord a SECOND time. Can you imagine?"
"Did they do any better the second time?"
"Hardly. They lost again. But the year after that, they attacked the Great Dragonlord a THIRD time. Can you believe it?"
"It does sound like they weren't very fast learners."
"They were pretty stupid. So the Great Dragonlord sat them down, and he said, what will it take for you to learn?"
"The dragons of the grotto said, we don't like you and we will never stop."
"The Great Dragonlord scolded them, but they wouldn't listen. So finally he said, I will MAKE you stop."
"What did he do?"
"He hit the rebel dragons with a big club all over their bodies, again and again, until all their scales fell off. So they became just these little soft bodied creatures, pathetic really."
"Oh, really."
"Yes really. And then he whacked them in the mouth again and again, until their big sharp teeth wore down to little nubs. They wouldn't be able to bite through a dragon's scales anymore."
"That sounds tragic."
"But they deserved it."
"Then what happened?"
"The Great Dragonlord whacked their claws until their paws were worn down to just stubs."
"How terrible."
"So then the rebels were little soft bodied, nubby toothed creatures with stubby little feet. They couldn't dig caverns with the claws they didn't have any more. They couldn't eat gems with their little nub teeth. So they went far away from the Dragonlands, to live in forests and fields, and eat grass and flowers instead of proper rocks and gems."
"Oh."
"What I'm saying here is, ponies are dragons who were punished by becoming not dragons anymore."
Starlight glared at Smolder. "That's a horrible story."
Smolder shrugged. "That's what the legend says."
Spike shook his head. "What is wrong with you two? Can't you just get along for once?"
