-The Volcano, airspace above, Dragon Lord Torch-
I am a massive dragon of peerless might!
I am the size of a small mountain, wings the span of hills, breath that can rival a volcano’s heat, claws that can rend entire cities to the ground, a tail that can sweep away entire battalions of smaller beings, a crown of bloodstones made from the blood of our great ancestors, large horns sweeping past my cheeks that could tear a full grown elephant in half with a single swing and spotless armor provided by our cousins of Huoshan that was as strong as my nearly impenetrable scales.
The most damage I’ve taken over the years is to my wings and those meager little rips were nothing to me, for I am Dragon Lord Torch!
For all the prestigious power I presented, I was a wise leader and didn’t care about Celestia sending ponies to evict one of my people from her lands. For I had much bigger things to fry right here!
“So it seems I am needed here after all, I shall take care of this false dragon personally!” I eyed the monster that would dare pretend to be a dragon, it was not a true dragon and that it would harm our cousins made my blood boil. It was a dangerous being to be sure, one that I would need to concentrate my efforts on. I’ve been itching for a halfway decent fight, I was getting old and also needed some entertainment. There were very few things that would challenge our territory so openly. “Longma, hear me now, defend your home! I do not want to have wasted my time having flown all the way here to rescue a burnt out husk of what are supposed to be our strong and noble cousins! You are all beings that are as proud and mighty as true dragons, show me that my trust is not misplaced!”
The longma seemed to have been emboldened by my words and they started to fight harder. I still had it, though I didn’t know how long for sure I would. I was sure to make it all the way up until the day I gave up my position for retirement and maybe even a long while beyond that. I will always be remembered as one of the most intimidating dragons alive, I even reveled in that fact.
A gauntlet of fire would still be needed soon, but I’ve got about a year or two yet to rule and this day may be the most fun I would be getting for the next few hundred years. I will need to discuss my retirement with the other elders during our upcoming migration.
The young will rule, where the old would advise.
I hoped Ember learned something about this place, otherwise I will have failed as a father to give her some brains that our people are sorely lacking at times. If only common sense were as common as it sounded to be, then dragons wouldn’t need lords to bust their heads and keep them in line.
Some dragons complained about pillows and slept on hard rocks or have hoards with many jagged bits in them that get stuck to their scales. If the smaller dragons wanted pillows so badly, then they would either barter or go to the effort of making them for themselves.
At least our cousins were always productive and more integrated with the world at large. Even if other dragons saw them as lesser, the Longma were where a majority of our information comes from.
With each flap of my mighty wings, I stared at the sea of darkness below me and the large smoldering circle from my attack that decimated numerous empty building. It was was slowly filling up with thousands of shadow monsters, the shadow horde definitely needed to be dealt with once more.
The false dragon was sitting in the center of that blazing circle before it started to rise up to meet me, I would not lose such an obvious challenger during my reign. I would not take this threat lightly. These shadow monsters were a threat to everything, even to dragons like me.
When I was done here, my daughter had better be alright by the end of this battle raging within the city.
-Upper tier, Arizona-
“Well, that’s some nice back up to have…” I watched as the shadow dragon and the large dragon met each other in a flurry of claws and teeth.
The shadow dragon was gored by one of that guys horns and didn’t die, when the horn pulled out the large hole sealed itself up. I kind of wanted that dragon to fight me half seriously sometime in the future! Sure one of his claws are bigger than my body, but I think I could take him given enough time and effort.
“Get back to fighting friend, we still have many metal wyverns to deal with!” Fortitude shouted as he held off a pair of claws with his shield.
“Yeah, stop woolgathering and… oh for the love of, someone help me!” Jacky instead of getting whipped in half by the tail of another wyvern, it wrapped around her and got tangled on itself as it flew up into the air with her.
A flash of metal and Flamberge appeared next to me sheathing his sword. The tail fell to the ground and Jacky fell on hers, then the cut off portion of the tail proceeded to slap her in the skull. Jacky was never lucky, but she still got up and shot down another wyvern with a fork to one of those propeller tube things.
“Worry not brother, for I have arrived!” It was so nice of Flamberge to finally join the fray. “Though things seem far worse than I could have guessed, we should have probably petitioned for some extra help from Lord Torch!”
“It’s about time you showed up Flamberge, now focus on the wyverns!” I charged towards one and watched as a beam of magic from Ollie blew another wired wyvern out of the air. I leapt up and launched a forward buck that badly dented the head of the one I was aiming for.
-The Grand Time, Skelly-
“Do you seriously think that you can fight the both of us and protect the cat at the same time?!” Shocking shouted as he trotted down the corridor looking through doorways for us.
He and Jock had lost track of us, being lightweight and unable to feel exhausted had quite a few perks when it came to fighting a running battle. Like being able to move with absolute silence for one.
Nefer insisted we put a stop to the golem making machines he saw and do some damage before we leave, he was currently scouting the corridor next to me and flicking his ears for any signs of the terrible twosome.
While I agreed with the sentiment of taking out Teatime’s constructions, I’d rather get out here before Dispel shows up. I’d also rather not have Flotsam angry with me because I let her little brother get hurt.
I wasn’t worried about myself, I’ve been around long enough that I’d be willing to accept the eventuality that I would pass on. I didn’t want anyone sad because I passed away and today was not the day that that would happen, not for the lack of Shock and Jock trying.
We learned that Jock was immune to lightning now and Shock wasn’t yet back at full strength after what Arizona did to him. That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous, but after years of practice I was quite good at sneaking around.
“Okay, we can move.” Nefer whispered to me as he looked around the corner, I nodded and put him into my ribcage. “You do realize how disturbing this is for me right?”
I rolled what passed for my eyes and made my way into the corridor, apparently he could guide us to where the golem ponies were coming from and what we needed to deal with to stop them.
Nefer saw them down a few flights of stairs, this airship was really complexly built and that complexity made getting around problematic. The upside was that it was easy to find places to avoid the real danger lurking in the maze like construction of this place.
We eventually found some stairs down and I took down several patrolling pony golems when I found them. It was explained to me that they were kind of like me, except soulless and driven by the magic of their creator.
At least this Teatime wasn’t a necromancer, or else I would stop at nothing to end him. That would always be a chip in my withers.
“Take a left here, I think it’s that way.” Following Nefer’s instructions, we saw a golem open and come out of an opening metal doorway.
I made sure it lost its head and split it in half before it could spot us and looked into the room as the golem disappeared. Its three pieces reappeared inside an object above the cylindrical machines Nefer spoke of.
Its two halves of a head and body eventually fell into one of the empty cylinders and magic started to slowly pull it back together and mend it. I noted that others were taking far longer because they were far more broken than the one I just dealt with.
I don’t think I liked all this mechanical stuff of the future very much, given we just watched as the mechanical pony walk out of the cylinder with its head fully back on its neck.
Given a few seconds, I ripped it apart more thoroughly with my axe and then looked at the thing in the ceiling separating the parts into each particular cylinder. The magic at work was at least making sure that none of the parts were mixed up and given to the wrong mindless minion.
“If you destroy that, it should stop more from coming out. We might want to get out of here real fast once you do though.” Nodding to Nefer, I idly tore another golem apart as it stepped out with ruthless efficiency, only several more golems stepped out. “I’ll keep them distracted you destroy that thing above us!”
Nefer hopped out of my ribcage to the floor and ran forward and darted around the numerous metal pony’s attacking him with shovel shaped blades extending from their hooves. He wasn’t a fighter, but he was swift and didn’t need to be.
I immediately started climbing up onto one of the machines by grabbing onto a round thing sticking out of it. I pulled myself up and watched as Nefer made two of the metal ponies damage each other. Once I was up on top of the cylinder, I leapt up to grab onto the edge of the see through magical storage container’s that was separating the golem chunks.
Upon climbing up onto it, I looked for something important to break. The round glass hollows with water gas looked sufficient enough. I raised my axe and brought it down on the hollow sending a billowing hot spray at my body as it shattered.
“They’re in the repair room, get down there and stop them before they do too much damage!” It seems Teatime was well informed about what goes on in his flying vessel.
I swung my axe at another hollow and another burst happened, the entire container I was standing on was beginning to tilt. I noted that it didn’t have many supports and was mostly held up by the hollows, the foundation of any structure was always its support and this thing would soon fall if I kept hitting them.
I smacked my axe at the metal while looking towards Nefer evading through a gaggle of metal ponies, he looked up at me and I waved to him and pointed below me.
He looked curious and then smiled once he figure out what I had planned, he started my way and the large rectangular container started listing even more as I cut at another hollow and the meager supports that were holding this thing aloft groaned.
Soon Nefer was underneath and various metal ponies were encroaching upon him, I had struck another pipe and another burst of water gas started to flood the upper portions of this room room. I could also see the telltale flicker of the unicorn magic used in this things construction beginning to cascade with sparks of energy.
Unicorn magic always had the ability to create, but more often than not destroyed things just as well. It looked like the magic holding this thing together was starting to go from ‘creation’ straight to ‘destruction’. When unicorn magic starts gearing for destruction, it was never a good thing to be as close to it as we currently were.
“The steam coolant pipes are being damaged, get down there and stop them now!” Teatime wasn’t happy with what I was doing, so I was clearly doing something right.
When the metal ponies were almost gather beneath the container that collected their parts from a distance, I swung my axe and cut one last pipe, the container dropped slightly but did not fall.
“Shock Spear!” At the sound of Shocking’s voice, I leapt off the container and fell to the floor into a tumble. A bolt of lightning pierced through the container and where I had been.
I did not know what the bolt of lightning hit, but the large container started topple onto the gathered golem ponies.
I swept Nefer up into my ribcage and then slid under the biped bird known as Jock. After I got to the other side of him, I was knocked through the air and out of the room through a door by the explosive blast of the container hitting the floor.
I stood up, shaking my rattled skull, and narrowly avoided Jock’s heavily muscled limb ripping into my skull as he stood up. It instead got stuck in the wall next to me.
As I ran from him and took a right, I looked into my ribcage and saw that Nefer was knocked out cold. I had to quickly escape this place now and prevent any further injury to him.
“Blast it all, what did you two buffoons do down there!” That was not a happy unicorn.
“We’re working on dealing with the intruders, but your repair thing is all broken, it’s kind of ironic really!” Jock shouted as he charged after me, we had stayed here for too long and I didn’t want to be here if that sea of shadows ever got into this machine ship.
I got back to the stairs and ran up them, I turned and went up another flight. Jock was pretty fast in a straight away, but he was having problems turning corners.
This looked familiar, I know the way out!
“Get back here so I can break your skull open and use it as a cup, because that would be metal!” Jock’s words were really quite strange, did he say strange things like this all the time? My skull was not made of metal, I would know if it were and only barbarians drank from pony skulls. He should use young hydra skulls instead.
“Do not let them get off the ship, we could use more bargaining chips!” Yeah, not going to happen since I was already back on top of this metal ship.