Once Burnt, Twice as Cold

Once Burnt, Twice as Cold

Chapter 1

On New Beginnings

After walking for what seemed to be an hour, heading in the direction of the mountains I saw when I landed, my stomach started rumbling and I began to feel slightly out of breath. Normally this wouldn’t have worried me, being that I wasn’t very fit in my old body and could barely run for 5 minutes without having at least a short break. Still, I thought that since I was in a new body, that the rules had changed and I had finally gained an upper hand in the game of life. Unfortunately this was not the case, and I started to feel the burden of my weight on my stamina.

Spotting a nice, shady mini-forest of palm trees to stand in, I walked towards them and leaned my back against one, and began to think about whether or not this place was actually real. To make sure that I wasn't dreaming, I stood up and stretched a little. Then ran full speed towards the nearest tree. In hindsight, I could have just pinched myself or hit my head against the tree I was already leaning on. But instead, I had decided that this was the best course of action.

Big mistake.

A few yards away from the tree I was running towards, a line snagged my feet and tripped my body out from under me. Regaining my focus, I look up and see that I am hanging by my foot about eight feet from the ground, with my cane embedded in the sand from where I had dropped it. With the only object I had that had a chance of getting me out of this mess down by my feet, I began to swing myself backwards and forwards, trying to get enough momentum to either grab another tree and untie myself, or slip out of the knot or break it. Gathering some significant speed from the swinging, I see that it would only take a few more swings to grab onto the branches of the tree in front of me. Trying to get to the tree faster, I began to swing quicker, but accidentally fell out of rhythm with the rest of the rope and begin to spin uncontrollably.

Spinning round,(while disorientating) also gave me a nice view of the trees around me, and made me notice that there was a tree much closer to me from behind than the one that I was actively trying to reach. Because of my new forced perspective, I was also given a nice front seat view as my face was smashed into one of the other trees and I feel unconscious.

As I awoke from my partially self-induced blackout, I felt a very hot breath wash over my face. Opening my eyes, I see a dragon, smack bang in front of me.

Now, this probably wasn’t the most normal of situations to be in, mainly because up until now I had no idea there was such a thing as dragons. In this situation I decided to do the most logical course of action upon being faced with a flying lizard with teeth that looked as sharp as they were long.

I started blubbering and crying.

“Oh please don’t kill me!” I half shouted, the sound muffled by what I thought were tears flowing down my face. “I’m too pretty to die!,I’ve never found love! I have a family! I’ll give you back rubs! I’m pregnant!”

This continued on for a good few minutes, eventually descending into me just shouting random syllables at the dragon and hoping it would go away.

The entire time this is happening, the dragon is staring at me with the most confused look on his face. I’m guessing he was deciding whether or not to flash fry me, or put one of his massive claws around my shoulder.

Looking at this gargantuan beast with tears in my eyes and my relatively short life flashing before me, I was really wondering if this was the end of my quest. Instead, he did something I didn’t think he could conceivably do. He began to speak.

“Not pony, why you must make so much noise.” He turned his giant head and looked me directly in the eyes. Astounded by this action, I could only repeat what I had been saying for the past 20 minutes.

“Please don’t kill me,” I repeated.

“Kill you? I only kill prey that puts up a fight,” he grumbled. “You don’t put up a fight. I will not kill you.”

Visibly relieved, I stopped my flood of tears and tried to form sentences that I hadn’t been repeating over my crying.

“Uhm, if you aren’t going to kill me, can you at least release me?” I asked hopefully.

He began a deep bellowing laugh that seemed to shake the ground under us.

“No, no. Your life is mine now.” He was still chuckling to himself, laughing at my expense.

“What!?” I shout, confused.

“I own you now, if I cut you down.”

“But, why?” I was still thoroughly confused and not sure if he was joking or not.

“Well, if I had left you here, you would be dead. So, I have averted the reaper for a while. Until the time comes and he returns, you are mine,” he explained.

“No!”  I huffed, not really seeing another way out of becoming his slave.

“Well, it is getting dark soon, and I enchanted this thread to keep you tied here until I release you. So unless you want to be eaten by another dragon who is not as honourable as I am, I would suggest you take my offer.”

“So, you are a slaver then, taking me hostage and setting up a trap? And you said you had honour.” I was now in a fully blown foul mood. I didn’t like my prospects in this situation one bit.

“I have honour, something you wouldn’t know. I am a king among the lesser kinds like yours, and as such, I can claim things that you cannot even comprehend.”

“Honour!? You call this honour!? Fine, I accept your offer!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in frustration.

“Good, I now mark you with my clan’s sigil. May you forever hold to us.” And with a wave of his claw, I was free and a burning sensation was felt on my back. The first true feeling of heat I have had here.

“Now you are mine, and I take you as part of my hoard. Seeing as you speak Equestrian so well I shall set you to the task of teaching my daughter to speak the common tongue.” He washed his hand over my body, letting his magic attune to my essence.

“Fine, I shall teach her,” I reluctantly agreed. “Just promise me I will not be harmed or mistreated.”

“I can promise that for myself. I shall treat you like any of my other pets...but for my daughter I cannot be so sure. She has the fire of true dragonkin inside her. Now climb onto my back, we have a full hour's ride back to my mountain.”

He lowered his back and let me hop on, grabbing my cane from in between my legs. Twirling it, I got on his back, wondering just what I had gotten myself into.

A ride on dragonback is really something to behold. It’s like being shot out of a cannon, with the wind rushing over your face and nature just speeding past you, going too fast to even see a thing. It really put things into perspective.

During the ride, me and my new dragon “friend” didn’t really have the time to chat, him focusing on trying to not kill us in an untimely fashion, and me being a real passive aggressive bastard and refusing to cooperate in any means short of him threatening to dive bomb.

We travelled over a good distance to get to his secret hoard, traversing across the skyline of many mountain ranges and volcanoes until we hit a surprisingly dense set. As we came closer to one of the mountains, my ride began to slow down.

As we pulled closer to the foremost mountain he began to mutter to himself in ancient sounding tongues. As he opened his jaw, he let forth a mighty roar and the mountain shook, opening a passageway in the formerly smooth stone face. Inside the hollow mountain, I was greeted by a sight beyond imagination; jewels and gold were everywhere, adorning every surface and hung around every pillar. It would be a thief’s dream destination.

But looking beyond the gold and jewels lay a much crueler sight, one that I wished I hadn’t seen. There were hundreds of slaves down in the lower systems, mining along the rim of the mountain, chained to the walls and given rudimentary tools to mine.

From my seat from up so high, it was hard to get a proper look at the workers, but they also seemed to be extremely skinny as well, with hardly any muscle on their bones. Flying past over them on dragonback, I could hear their moaning still echoing in my mind.

After another few minutes of flying through the cave system, the dragon began to slow down and came to a halt before a very ornate set of doors set into the inside of the mountain.

Knocking on it gently with one talon, I heard a loud growl from within, and seeing my ride open the door and walk in, I took it as the dragon equivalent of ‘Come in!’. Taking that as my queue I followed the larger dragon through the massive doors.

Closing the massive doors behind me I began to look around the room and make note of my surroundings.

Inside the room there was a feeling of practicality over the much more lavish mood created by the cavern I had been riding in. There weren’t many flashy baubles or gaudy set pieces. Instead there was a set of furnishings that seemed to have been hand carved, with chairs and tables littering the room, and a large four poster bed at the center of the room.

And inside the four poster bed was the room’s occupant. Slipping off the covers and onto two feet, a female dragon walked over towards us with a grace that I would have only guessed would come from a predator.

The dragon was an almost bright blue, with white spikes adorning her beautiful, angled face, and large emerald-green eyes that seemed like bottomless wells. Her body was slim and muscular, walking on two legs as I do, instead of the four legs like the dragon that had escorted me in. And then, walking towards us, she gave me a little smirk and hugged the first dragon. He leaned into the hug and squeezed her a little, not giving it too much pressure as his size easily dwarfed her own, him being the size of a three story house and her being the same height as me.

Now coming over to me, she gave me an inquisitive look and grumbled something in a language unknown to me. Looking to the larger dragon for help, he merely chuckled and said something back to her. She then turned back to me and laughed as well, though this time with a small sadness to it. She then turned to the larger dragon and asked him something again, and he trotted off to one of her tables.

On the tables was a small collection of gems, one of the only things that seemed to be of any worth in the room. He focused on it for a second and growled in the unknown language again, but this time the gem began to illuminate and a spark of energy flicked between the dragon’s claws.

He then padded back over to me and grabbed my cane, with me not protesting only to find out what the devil he is doing.

Using one of his claws, he dug a small notch into the head of the cane and shoved the enchanted jewel into it. He then handed me back the cane and stepped back.

“Can you understand me?” he asked, his mouth not quite matching his words.

“Yes, of course I can...?” I was puzzled. We had already spoken before, and he knew that we understood each other fine...but then I also realised something: my mouth was not moving to the same shapes as the words I produced. Instead I had just an open mouth and felt deep vibrations coming from deep in my throat.

“Good good, I am glad to see I am not rusty on my spellweaving.” He clicked his claws together and the gem stopped emitting a glow.

“What you are holding now is the equivalent of a universal translator. The spell seeks out your intended words and the person who you are going to speak them to, and changes what you are saying into their language, while giving you the ability to understand them in return.”

“You know, if I still wasn’t mad for the whole ‘You kidnapped me and am now forcing me to be your bitch’, this would be pretty darn awesome. But it’s not, because you did those things.” I was still getting used to the idea of slavery and humour makes a great coping mechanism.

“You will learn soon that I did you a great favour, you would not and most probably will not survive without me.” He was still trying to be kind, but that didn’t matter. He was still a slaver.

“Yeah, whatever. What do you need me to do?” I grumbled, reluctant to serve.

“You shall be teaching my daughter how to speak Equestrian, so that she can become the noble that she was born to be.”

“Why not just let her have one of these crystals like I have? Surely that would be easier.”

Taking me aside most probably so his daughter, who had been silent this entire time, couldn’t hear, he told me, “The reason is twofold. Firstly she is very...let’s say, ‘anti-social’. I thought this type of interaction with another being, other than myself, would be a good way for her to open up. Secondly, she needs to learn to not rely on magic, and instead gain her own skills, in case she is ever without it.”

“Fine. So where am I staying?” I asked. This was a big cave and I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too far.

“Here, of course,” he replied, speaking slowly and clearly, as if I were an idiot. “Like I would let you run around my mines unsupervised. My daughter will be your teacher just as much as you are hers. She will teach you the customs that will be expected of you and about our ways.”

“Sounds fun,” I sarcastically replied.

“Good, now I’ll let you two to get to know each other.” And with that he went up to the doors, opened them and walked out.

Looking over to across the room, I saw that the female dragon was looking at me and trying to find the words to speak.

Walking over to her, I still have to wonder just what I had gotten myself into.

A/N: Sorry for taking over a month this time chaps, School work and stuff really bring down a burden on me more than I realised and as such this chapter was late. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope the wait was partially worth it.

Also, big thanks to Traveler for the editing help.