Dragon Tale
“And so the foreman said, ‘Pine Bel? That township’s full of nothing but surly drunks!’ And I said, ‘Yes, exactly! I feel quite at home there.’ So, he said-”
Archer pulled himself away from the control panel he was wiring and stood in an exaggerated standoffish pose.
“-‘You don’t stand a chance, boy. No Pine Beller ever amounted to anything in the history of Vorlan!’” He slouched again. “And I told him, ‘Just you wait. By this time next year, the Monster Hunters’ Guild will have a new trophy hanging on the mantle, and I’m going to be the one to bag it!”
The recent basement intruder and singular audience member, Scootaloo, oohed and ahhed appropriately.
“So, did you?” she asked.
“Did I what?”
“Did you get, like, the biggest, meanest, nastiest monster you could find and have your Guild guys hang it up?”
“Well, yes. I was a few months late of ‘this time next year,’ but I managed.”
“Woooow! What was the trophy?”
“Why, the Canis Major’s head, of course.”
The filly’s eyes did that thing again. You know, the thing where they suddenly magnified themselves until they became two giant black pools of innocence and wonderment? That thing.
“Whoa.”
Archer chuckled, bending back down to the tangle of wiring he was currently tasked with soldering. “I think I’ve got my first fan, Pinkie.”
Pinkie giggled from somewhere behind the mess of machinery that composed the hovercart-in-progress.
“Well, here’s hoping you get plenty more! Toss me the sonic screwdriver, wouldja?”
The device in question was pitched over the side, and soon enough began buzzing merrily away at whatever bolts needed adjusting, or whichever plates of the chassis weren’t fastened in just right.
“Hey, Archer, do you have any more stories?”
He looked back at the tiny filly currently drenching him with attention. He smiled.
“Yes. But you know I’m going to run out eventually, right?”
“Oh, that’s no problem! We can always make more!”
Dear lord, another adventure? Here? He’d been in Equestria for three days, and he’d already had more adventure than he could stomach. And how on earth could this little Fae girl, no bigger than a Dachshund, conceive of killing anything uglier or more threatening than a horsefly? These thoughts and various sundry others passed thankfully unspoken as he turned back to his work.
“Alright. How about I tell you the story of my first big hunt?”
“Yes! Yes, please!”
“Alright, let me see. It was just a little after the Summer Solstice, and we’d gotten a call out from a township called, of all things, South Long...”
One can rest assured, the ensuing tall tale was hyperbolic to the extreme, and not necessarily 100% true. In fact, several facts were made up on the spot so as not to disappoint his eager audience of one.
But, in the interest of clarity, we will print here the events contained therein - as they really happened.
***
South Long.
What in the sam hill kind of a name for a town was South Long? He’d seen the map. The town wasn’t really long-shaped, and it was definitely farther north than some other human settlements he’d seen. He chalked the “South” half up to some isolated podunk villagers being misinformed about their position in Vorlan’s nether regions. The “Long” half likely referred to the time it took anyone to get to the dang place.
“Oy! New Kid! Quit daydreamin’ and get yer fat carcass over ‘ere!”
Thus spake Billock, the guild lieutenant, Highlandic terror, and generally unpleasant individual who’d been picked to head up the Salamander hunt in the middle of scenic Nowhere.
The New Kid was called that because he was both new and far younger than either of the two grizzled bears of men he’d had to haul luggage for. Every mile was a new ache in his arms from the absurd amount of gear he bore in the two oversized kit bags.
On his back were his bow and quiver, dismissed by the terrible two as a “needle flinger” and a “pincushion,” respectively. He had packed light, ironically enough.
“You know,” muttered the kid, after an hour or so, “You still haven’t told me why we couldn’t ride. A cart, or even horseback, would be just delightful...”
“Actually I did tell yer already,” rumbled Hobrig, a veritable brick outhouse with skin rounding out the trio. “Horses ain’t nothin’ but trouble ‘round salamanders. Method of attack’s just as important as angle, and horseback ain’t no way to be when there’s fire about.”
“Besides,” chuckled Billock, “We gotta put some muscles in those wee little arms o’ yours, or that toy on yer back ain’t gonna do us much good, aye?”
“Wait, so you’re actually going to let me help?”
“Did I say that? Nooo, I got a hankerin’ for rabbit stew. That’s your job!”
The two giants shared a laugh at the boy’s expense. Surprisingly, it was only the third that day. Usually, they were much worse.
“So,” the boy huffed as they clambered up another of the shoreward hills, “Who exactly thought it was a good idea - oof - to send for the Guild to come and clean up some salamanders all the way down here? I mean, honestly...!”
“If’n yeh spent as much time walkin’ as yeh did flappin’ yer gob, we’d be there already!”
“Maybe if you’d let me take point, like I wanted, and give someone with carrying muscles the job of carrying, I could-”
“Shut up! Cripes, son, do you ever stop complaining?”
It's a mystery as to how, but this led to the two getting into a petty argument over some meaningless Guild-related drivel. Hobrig shook his head and kept climbing.
And then he reached the top and stopped.
Well then, this merited some attention.
“Fellas?”
“-Just a little pack-rat! All you do is mess with your toys and plink your little arrows around, and-”
“Guys?”
“And all you do is make big ugly grunting noises as you wave that sword around! It’s disgusting!”
CLAP CLAP
“OI! EYES OVER ‘ERE!”
Meaningless quibble momentarily forgotten, the two followed Hobrig to the summit. After a few minutes of speechless gaping, one of them finally found his voice.
“These must be some really angry salamanders.”
They’d found South Long. Or what used to be South Long, at any rate.
The entire village was thoroughly burnt to the ground. Little was left of the buildings save broken skeletons of charcoal, the roads between them stained black with soot and ash. The stench of smoke lingered - whatever had done this had done it not too long ago. A closer inspection revealed one last, rather crucial detail: There were no bodies.
“Doesn’t add up,” muttered Billock. “Salamanders ain’t normally meat-eaters. An’ even if they were mutants, we’d be seein’ bones, organs... other bits n’ bobs.... So where’s it all bloody gone?”
The ground shook. A nearby tree rattled and lost a few of its leaves. Something heavy inside one of the more intact houses fell over and broke.
Billock’s last words were “Did either of you guys hear that?”
Actually, no. Billock’s last last word was an uncharacteristically feminine shriek as the brown dragon underneath him burst from the ground and plastered him with what could only be described as a loogie made out of molten rock.
Hobrig and the kid, to their credit, wasted no time in making themselves scarce. Which is not to say the dragon was a slouch in its half of hide and seek.
The two reconvened behind the last upright wall of one of the charred houses.
“Poor Billock.”
“Aye. A moment of silence.”
…
“Tell me you brought the flail.”
“Tell me you didn’t drop the bow.”
They both produced their respective weapons and grinned.
“I’ll distract ‘im.”
“I’ll snipe.”
“Plan S?”
“S for ‘Super Effective’ or S for ‘We Screwed Up?’”
The dragon hawked another glob of magma over their cover, catching a nearby tree and reducing it to embers.
“Take a wild guess.”
“Right.”
Hobrig ran out, dodging one flaming mass and deflecting another with the flail’s spiked head.
“Oy! That man you just charbroiled owed me money! ...Ya fat, turd-scented lizard!”
The brown drake, easily the size of two alligators standing end-to-end, snorted and swiped a clawed wing at the not-unsizable man currently swinging a large metal spikeball around and shouting himself hoarse. It would have been funny, had it not been so terrifying.
Hobrig said something quite unkind about the dragon’s ancestry, causing it to rear up and prepare another of its magmatic projectiles...
...Only for a single well-placed (or lucky, not much difference this early on) arrow to come screaming in from far to the north of them both. Said arrow lodged itself in the soft flesh of the dragon’s throat, causing it to choke and preventing said magma from completing its exit.
With no other way out, the magma boiled over and ate through the thin skin of the immature lizard’s insides, burning it to death from the inside out. And so the deaths of Billock and the remote, pointless town of South Long were avenged.
Much later, Hobrig patted the kid on the back and chuckled.
“Son, I hope yeh don’ mind if an ol’ man buys you a few rounds once we get home.”
“I’m not even eighteen yet.”
“Bah, s’never too early to start.”
***
“COOL!”
This time, a chorus of three young voices were praising his story instead of one.
Wait a minute.
Archer turned from the panel. Now, alongside Scootaloo, there were two other young Equestrian fillies, one red-maned and yellow, the other a purple-maned and white unicorn.
“Alright, before anyone says anything, let me see.” He pointed at the yellow one. “Peach Cobbler?”
“Nope.”
“Alright...” He looked at the white one. “...French Vanilla.”
She giggled. “No!”
“Alright, I give up.”
The yellow one stood up.
“Mah name’s Apple Bloom. This here’s Sweetie Belle. And Ah reckon y’all already met Scootaloo.”
“Well, yes.” He shifted his glance uncomfortably between the three. “What’s going on? What do you want?”
“We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders!” shouted Scootaloo, demonstrating once again her incredibly narrow vocal range. “We search far and wide, looking for the special talents we know we possess!”
“Very inspiring. But what do you want?”
“Well...” Apple Bloom shifted and smiled. “...We wanted to see if you could help us find our Cutie Marks.”
The incredibly adorable name for whatever that was shorted out Archer’s higher logic centers for a minute. His initial response was to smile saccharinely and go “awwww.” Then he snapped out of it and went “Wait, what?”
“What in the world is... whatever you’re talking about?”
“Oh! Oh! Let me tell him!” shouted the white one. Sweetie Belle, right.
“I’m listening.”
“A Cutie Mark’s a picture that appears on your flank when you find out what your unique special talent is!”
He’d seen these around. It was kind of weird, but at least there was a reason for them now.
“Do you know anybody sporting one of these?”
“W-well, my big sister Rarity-”
“I’ve met her.”
“...She got hers when she found out she was good at finding and using gems for her fashion line!”
Archer remembered her. Three diamonds, if he had been paying attention.
He also remembered offhandedly that he needed to take a bath if she was ever going to make those new boots for him.
“And my sis, Applejack!” interrupted Apple Bloom. “She got hers when she decided to stay an’ help the farm instead of movin’ to the city!”
“Well, that’s nice, but-”
“And Twilight got hers after hatchin’ a dragon egg and becomin’ the Princess’s student!”
She did what?
“She did what?”
“OH! OH! And Rainbow Dash got hers after she made a Sonic Rainboom in front of everypony in Cloudsdale!”
“A Sonic Rain-what?”
Where had Pinkie Pie gone? Archer felt very unsafe suddenly.
“Say, Mister Archer?”
“Yes...?”
“Do you have a Cutie Mark?”
He laughed and shook his head.
“Humans don’t get those.” Thankfully. “Buuut, if I had to guess what it was...”
An image of Arrowhead arose, unbidden, in his head. Oh, wait, that was just Arrowhead waving at him from the stairwell, out of spraying distance. Clever.
“...It would be an arrow. Driven through a Canis skull.”
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo oohed and ahhed again. Apple Bloom merely smiled and pushed past them.
“Anyway, we came down in th’ first place here because we wanted your help!”
“My help.”
“Uh-huh!”
“With what, exactly?”
“Well, we see you’re working on this here whatchamacallit...” Apple Bloom poked at the floor of the hovercart uncertainly. “...And we wanted to help you.”
“You want me to help you by letting you help me?”
“Yeah! We might get Cutie Marks for, uh... What do you call this?”
“Tinkering.”
The three fillies inhaled and shouted in unision:
“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER TINKERERS, YAAAAY!”
Archer tried to banish the ringing from his ears with vigorous application of his pinky finger. Somewhere in the process, he may have muttered something akin to “okay fine.” He neglected to consider the immediate consequences of his acquiescence.
He had just admitted three untrained, unlicensed, underaged Fae children access to the inner workings of a flying machine.
And nothing could possibly go wrong.
***
The cart cleared the basement ceiling with little difficulty. It broke through the first- and second- story boundaries with, if anything, even less resistance. It careened into the sky, more a manned rocket than anything resembling a piloted vehicle - because to call it “piloted” would imply that anyone inside it had any control over where it was going.
Archer eventually realized he had stopped screaming, and his mouth had just stuck that way.
He inhaled, finally, the air buffeting him going down his throat and sprouting icy spikes in his lungs.
And with that first breath of cold stratospheric air, he spoke.
“SCOOTALOO THIS IS THE WORST IDEA ANYONE HAS EVER HAD HOW DID I LET YOU TALK ME INTO THIS”
The wide-eyed pegasus filly simply smiled.
“Ohh, this’ll get me a flying Cutie Mark for sure!”
The cart’s rear repulsors gave out after a good fifteen seconds of full burn. Its upward momentum gone, the cart gently crested its parabolic trajectory and began to plummet.
It was just going to be another one of those days.
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"This is Ground Control to Scootaloo...."
those days seem quite common for archer....
great chapter!
Yep, one of those days
-Glassed
only one comment will do---- ROTFLMAO
That's pretty much what you'd expect.
And here we go.
>no bigger than a Corgi pup
How big are the ponies supposed to be? Corgi's are pretty small dogs. And their pups are really small.
186138 Ponies are roughly the size of ponies. They're about eye-level with Archer, who's an indeterminate height between 5 and 6 feet. Fillies and colts are just so teeny tiny because, hey, they're not normal ponies. No rules.
And I might retcon that into "the size of a housecat" because I just realized how small Corgidom would make them.
186175
Ok, doesn't help that I was thinking he was referring to Pinkie being that small, not Scoots. Then my mind went "Well how small are the kids? Half the size of my fist?" And everything went downhill from there as I'm trying to think of how he was fitting through their doorways, eat their food, etc.
So Celestia and Luna (Particularly Celly) must be freaking huge.
Yup, most definitely one of those days.
reactions:
got kjinda random after the first bit
If archer were to get turned into a pony at some point, ill send you a cookie and become your slave.
188723
Arrowhead.
Get working.
188723
You already have Arrowhead. I'll only deduct that single internet cookie from your account.
Ho ho! Jolly rich tale, good sir! Right-o, must be off to pack myself a kip, whot! And a glass of port! Where's the Admiral's port?!
I read 15 chapters within a day. You sir write a good story so far.
♫♥I look forward to reading what happens next in your story♥♪
185657
well i wouldn't say underground... but, i remember when the first chapter came out.... I immediately tracked it cause the story was awesome.... others just realized how awesome it was also and tracked it too... I think i saw this on EQD? did u put this story on there?
199439 Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.
Inconspicularity made the cover art because he's just such a bro.
"Toss me the sonic screwdriver, wouldja?"
you know, Pinkie Pie, the doctor is gonna be wanting that back eventually
185826 Ground I can see, Control I cant Fiiiiind!!!
deviantart.com/download/214656873/kentucky_fried_scootaloo_by_procaballus-d3jsuax.jpg
Delicious.
My god! This is hilarious!