//------------------------------// // Alliance? // Story: Scales of Time // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// Twilight let loose a flurry of orbs at the dragoness, narrowly missing the kirin dodging off the walls and rolling around. Celestia wasn't as adept at the movements as her guest seeing as she was hit in the face by an orb, blowing her back and destroying her tea cup in the process. "Princess!" everypony screamed in terror. "Oh my," the dragon queen laughed. "Looks like you hit your guest square in the face with your little toy." "Why won't you get hit?!" Twilight growled. Twilight's target chuckled in response and back flipped away and over two more shots fired by the magic weapon. The mare growled loudly and galloped over to the queen in order to kill her and cut her into pieces. The dragon queen responded by breaking off a leg from the table and using it as a makeshift staff. Meanwhile, Sparkles and the guards rushed over to Celestia to help her up. "Princess, are you okay?" Sparkles asked. The princess struggled to sit back up and looked on to see the two fighting. She put a hoof to the right side of her face, and when it was forced off by Sparkles, the group could see that she was severely burned. Even her mane had been damaged by the stray shot, and it didn't seem like Twilight and the dragoness were stopping at any moment. "Let me go," Celestia spoke in a crackled tone. "But Princess, I need to--" Sparkles was pushed away by the alicorn and looked on to see Celestia casually walk towards the fighting group. She erected a magical barrier around herself that deflected the strays fired from Twilight's lance into the ground, sky, and walls all around. Celestia's horn started building up an increasingly vicious amount of magic of a yellow tint, and the closer to got to the fighters, the more violent and apparent the build-up became until it was held no longer. The two combatants were blasted away with a force strong enough to tear away at large heaps of ground beneath them distort the gravity around them. This caused the two ponies to spin in a circle then smack against different surfaces and be compressed them. In Twilight's case, it was underside of a tower roof and, in the case of the dragoness, the walls of Canterlot Castle. "Wow. I forgot how you could do these sorts of things,' the dragon queen noted. "But, I've gone past this sort of weak spell." The kirin's claws glowed a color similar to Celestia's magic before unleashing their own abilities, shattering the spell Celestia had brought upon the two who wronged her. Shocked at the display, Celestia remained inattentive for but a second, which was enough for the dragon queen to slide underneath her and punch the mare in the stomach. The kirin followed up by grabbing onto Celestia's legs as she slid further down and twist them violently, making the pony flip and slam onto her side. "PRINCESS CELESTIA!" the guard contingent screamed in horror. Suddenly, volleys of arrows and a large amount of ponies from all tribes rushed towards the one who would attack their benevolent monarch. The dragoness stood onto her hind legs and welcome them with open forelegs, a demented smile on her face. "This reminds me of the good old times!" Twilight was still stuck to the wooden, conical roof of the stone tower, and she was feeling an immense pressure on her back due to the dent in the construct. With a bit of effort, she managed to tab her left hind leg which released a strain of energy through the armor, effectively shattering the spell. "Ugh. We built our armor to counteract the spells the dragon queen puts on us, Celestia," Twilight mumbled to herself. "Do you really think that would keep me trapped here?!" Twilight yelled before jumping back down. The lavender unicorn got to see the guard contingent and the alicorn fighting against the dragoness in her dragon form, but they weren't a match for; Not because they were far too weak, but because they were inexperienced with fighting dragons. This showed -rather painfully- in them shooting the juvenile with simple arrows and then again doing the same thing with this fully grown adult whose scales were even thicker. Twilight watched further as, out of nowhere, a blue mass slice the castle's walls as it jettisoned towards the dragon queen who shrunk back into her 'kirin' form just mere microseconds away from having her head sliced off. The walls of the castle that had been cut started compressing into a singularity, cutting and collapsing everything around it into nothing. The blur impossibly turned around on a dime and landed in front of the whole group, stomping around angrily and tossing ponies around as it searched for the dragon it had seen. When it nearly stomped on Celestia, several of the guards charge at it with their spears, but Twilight came rushing in to stop them. "DON'T TOUCH IT!" she yelled. Startled, one of the ponies tripped and lost hold of their spear, although it did hit the ejge. However, like the walls, it too compressed into a singular point. The ponies scrambled away from the gigantic, blue creature as much as they could. The dragoness did the same and took Celestia with her to hide behind the bushes while Twilight galloped towards the ejge and waved her weapon at it. "Ejge, there are no dragons here!" she yelled. The two-mouthed head of the creature lowered itself to her to have a better sense of her being. Having no eyes, the ejge had an unknown method of 'perceiving' their surroundings. Its 'hands' and the long extensions growing out the back of its wings, perpendicular to the finger bones, twitched aggressively. "I killed the only that came here. Its' over there," she pointed towards the corpse. "I'm still harvesting it. You might have sensed a dragon due to the odors." The ejge stomped over the mare and towards the skeleton, observing it and the pieces and poking them just to be certain they weren't fake. When it was done with its evaluation, the giant looked over its shoulder, exhaled a distorting haze from both mouths then flew away back into the distance where other ejge rejoined it. Twilight sighed in relief, lowered her helmet, and wiped her forehead. "Well, looks like that was a successful distraction," the dragoness chuckled as she brushed some debris and arrow shards off of her body."I was honestly hoping that it would kill you." "How could you SAY something like that?!" Celestia was appalled. "By using my mouth, voice, and a bit of air." "What happened to your face?" Twilight asked. The princess put a hoof to her scorch marks and hid away. "You did this, but it will mend itself eventually was some medicine and my healing magic." Twilight frowned intensely and rolled her eyes. "It'll also leave a huge scar on your face. If I'm going to kill you, you should be in proper shape. Follow me." Celestia had no real reason to distrust Twilight, but she did keep her guard up. She was surrounded by her guards, and even Twilight couldn't fight so many at once. The lavender unicorn dug into one of the jars, covered her left hoof with some pinkish jelly, then approached Celestia's face and smeared it onto the burn surface of her skin. "There's. We use that in my time to heal burn wounds. Dragons have a grease residue just between their skin and scales that regulates extreme temperatures, hence why they can survive through infernos without being cooked alive." "Thank you," Celestia said. "Now that this is over, I have a proposition for you, Twilight," the dragoness cheerfully explained. Twilight glared at the kirin with a rage unknown to mortal kind. "What do YOU want?! Why are you even here?" "To get reacquainted with the Celestia of now and to talk with you." "Why? You sent that dragon after me." "Be that as it may," the Dragon Queen paced in a circle. "I did that to track you down. I know that a juvenile couldn't stop you." "Then what is it that you want?" "A temporary alliance. You and I both have a reality that we don't want to be in any longer, and I am making a dragon army just for the occasion." "A dragon..." Twilight's eyes started pacing as she looked at every idea coming through her head. "Wait, so YOU'RE the reason why the Royal Ejge came here!" "The what?" Celestia spoke. "The Royal Ejge. That dragon-sized, royal blue serpent is the Royal Ejge; the most powerful of all ejge." "So that's what an ejge looks like, but why did we never see them before?" "Because--" "Because they aren't interested in areas polluted by unnatural architecture, much like the dragons," the dragon queen interrupted. "As DQ interrupted, both of them stayed away from the general populace, including the royal ejge. The ejge are actually very peaceful when dragons aren't involved," Twilight explained. Celestia turned to face DQ and frowned. "Then why did you say that, in your timeline, all of civilization was destroyed?" "Because it was. The King Dragon doesn't care about pony architecture and is more than happy to stomp over cities and castles just to reach some ejge elseways." "King Dragon?" "It's not 'elected' like those giant dragons and their weird staff," Twilight explained. "This one is a literal king among dragons and is twice the size of a normal dragon." Celestia looked at her castle and gulped audibly. "And considering a dragon is almost the full size of my castle..." She turned back to face the two ponies, worry obviously on her face. "Then I suppose the Royal Ejge dies in a battle with it?" "In the contrary," DQ smiled. "The two are more than evenly matched. It's their weird powers that cause most of the trouble." She pointed at the wall that had been compressed into nothing. "The Royal Ejge has some bizarre power over gravity, and anything it touches compresses things into singularities. It can even fire its power as a ball of gravity." DQ mimed the ejge opening its mouth with her hooves around her head. "And the King Dragon?" "I don't know," Twilight said. "I can explain more," DQ said," But I want Twilight to hear out my proposal." The lavender unicorn sat on her haunches and crossed her forelegs. She was very skeptical. "Fine. What's your proposal." "Well, as I said, I've been making a dragon army of my own. However, to beat the King Dragon, we would need to ally with the ejge." "The ejge and dragons? You're dreaming." "Precisely. You can find an ejge nest, convince them of the area the King Dragon awakens at, then, as the ejge start to fight, I'll bring in my own army to take out the dragon reinforcements. We'll be perimeter guards." "What tells me you won't just go in for the scraps after the battle ends if we win?" "You don't, but it's still better than the alternative." Twilight took a moment to think on it, then spoke to the kirin. "Then you'll come with us since you, apparently, know where the King Dragon's awakening point is." The kirin shook her head in disagreement. "I can't go. I'm a dragon, did you forget? I'd rather not be torn to shreds, otherwise we all lose." "Then I'll take the Imposter with me." "What?" the surroundings ponies gasped. "Haha! You think she's an imposter?!" DQ stepped next to Celestia and hugged her close. "See any family resemblance?" Celestia looked at her and tears started to well up. "Luna?" The dragoness groaned and rolled her eyes. "Yes. I'm your sister. Dumbass." "Then who are you?" "Someone who lived here just as you did. Same family tree, but," she booped Celestia's nose. "just not the same timeline." "Stop doing that," Twilight growled. "If you can't come, then you best be able to direct me to where I need to go." "You can go wherever, Twilight. The ejge like places as isolated from civilization as possible. There might some water edge in a lake to the north-west about four days from here by hoof." DQ joined her fore hooves and dropped her head to look at Celestia from below with a daunting, growing grin. "I take you can take care of the rest?"