---Four months earlier---
Rune Field stepped back from her work, brushing orange head spikes away from her lighter orange face and mint-green eyes. “Alright, Genesis. How do you feel?”
The much younger wyrm studied himself. He looked like somedragon had drawn glowing lines across nearly his entire body, which, to be fair, was basically what had happened. It was hard to tell that his scales were normally brown. At least his green head spikes and yellow eyes had remained untouched. He really didn’t want to imagine runes drawn on his eyes. “I feel about like normal, I suppose.”
At least their experiment was taking place outside, otherwise the light probably would have been keeping everydragon up. Besides, Genesis enjoyed watching the stars. The Mystic Forest Coven was actually in a meadow on the edge of the forest, giving them a clear view of the night sky.
Rune frowned a little. “You feel normal? I just rewrote almost your entire natural magic field to channel all available magic into fire breath. How can that feel normal?”
Genesis shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, Rune.”
“Try breathing fire.” She tilted his head back. “Just not on me. I don’t know how how hot your fire could get, and the last thing I need is a blast of plasma melting my scales.”
“But you don’t mind if it melts my teeth,” Genesis muttered. Still, he breathed some fire upwards. It didn’t melt his teeth, which was always nice, but what he had intended to be a small plume turned out to be a massive pillar instead.
Night watch was usually a complete bore, but things became a lot more interesting whenever his ancestor was involved. Often dangerous, but interesting.
“Ah, dirt clods.” Rune leaned over and studied the glowing lines across her descendant’s chest. “I must have tied everything into volume instead of heat. Here, if I can just tweak the concentration a little, it should give us the heat increase we want while scaling back the size of your fire breath.”
Genesis looked over her shoulder. “Uh, you might want to wait on that.” He pointed to a wyrm he had never seen before, who was walking toward them from the treeline.
As he drew closer, the wyrm was revealed to have green scales, light yellow spikes, and blue eyes. The new wyrm was walking on all fours, but that wasn’t unusual, nor was the travel pack near his hips. He did look ready to collapse though.
“Are you alright, stranger?” Genesis stepped forward to greet him. “Is there anything we can do to help you?”
“I’ve been better.” The newcomer yawned and held his head for a moment. “Sorry. Is this the coven that specializes in rune-based enchantments?”
“It sure is.” Rune jammed a thumb at her descendant. “What do you think all that stuff covering Genesis is?” She extended a hand to the new wyrm, which he took. “I’m Rune Field, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Rune Field, Genesis. I’m, uh, Gemstone Aura.” He poured a bit of healing magic into his palms and rubbed them on his temples. “I know this is going to sound odd, but what time of year is it?”
Genesis exchanged a confused look with Rune. “Uh, it’s the middle of summer. Why?”
Gemstone’s eyes widened, then he groaned. “I’m going to kill him.”
“What?” Genesis asked. “Kill who?”
“No one. I mean, nodragon.” He yawned again. “I hope you don’t mind, but I need to study enchantments here for a while.”
“I don’t see a problem with that,” Genesis said. Specialty covens, like Mystic Forest, tended to attract wandering experts and members from other specialty covens that wanted to gather and exchange information. This newcomer would be the fourth to have shown up in the past year. “Besides, Rune can always use another victim for her crazy experiments.”
Rune elbowed him, but she nodded. “You’re exhausted. Come inside. You can sleep in our nest tonight.”
“Thanks.” Gemstone followed as they led him down into the main cave.
Like many covens, they had built it themselves using a combination of claws, tools, and magic. Glowstones were scattered across the ceiling and floor, casting the twenty-three nests in light that was strong enough to make everything visible but soft enough to sleep through. A couple of runes were in the middle of the cavern, radiating heat. Caves got rather cold at night, even during the summer. More runes covered the ceiling and walls, reinforcing everything.
Genesis pointed at a rune to the side of their path. Not only were the lines of the rune jet black, but the air itself seemed to grow dark around it. “You’ll want to avoid that one,” he whispered. “It won’t hurt you, but it’s an anti-magic ward, so it will turn off all your spells. Walking through one also doesn’t feel great.”
Gemstone gave the rune a wide berth. “Thanks. I have to avoid anti-magic for the next week.”
Rune glanced back at him in confusion. “Why?”
He rubbed his head again. “Experimental memory implants. Apparently they’ll get fully incorporated into my brain in another few days, but for now, anti-magic would undo them.”
Both Rune and Genesis stared at each other before looking back at Gemstone.
“I’ve never even heard of something like that,” Genesis admitted.
“Neither had I, until …” Gemstone frowned and shook his head. “It might have been yesterday, it might have been a month ago. I can’t really tell.”
What under the Stars happened to this dragon? Genesis wondered. “Anyway, here’s our family’s nest. Do you want us to wake you for breakfast?”
“Yes, please.” Gemstone crawled into the nest and flopped into an empty space between two of Genesis’s cousins. He was asleep before he even took off his travel pack.
-_-_-_-_-_-
“Gemstone?” Genesis shook the sleeping wyrm. “Gemstone, it’s time for breakfast.”
The green wyrm squinted up at him. “Who?”
“Gemstone Aura. That’s your name, remember?”
Gemstone blinked a few times and yawned. “Oh, right. Sorry.”
“Those implanted memories must really be messing with your head.” Genesis extended a hand and helped the other wyrm up. “Who even did that to you, anyway?”
“A jerk.” Gemstone winced a little from getting up suddenly. “Yeah, definitely a jerk.” He poured some healing magic into his head. “I swear, he included these headaches as a side-effect just to annoy me.”
Genesis led him toward the serving area. Most of the coven had already gotten their food and were scattered through the cavern in circles of friends and family as they ate and talked. The new wyrm was getting a few curious looks, but word was spreading quickly that he was just another traveler here to study runes. “No offense, but why did you let somedragon like that crack open your mind and mess around with the contents?”
“Imagine learning in a single day as much as you could normally pick up in a couple of years.” Gemstone frowned and shook his head. “Maybe it took longer, like a week. I don’t know.”
“That does sound nice,” Genesis admitted. “Was this one of the dragons at your home coven?”
“No, it’s a chaos spirit that wanted to be helpful.”
“A chaos spirit?” Genesis repeated. He didn’t know what those were, but they didn’t sound especially helpful.
“Let’s just say that this world never ceases to surprise me.”
They reached the food, roast pork with rice and beans. Both dragons loaded up their plates.
“What coven are you from, anyway?” Genesis asked. He looked around, and noticed one of his friends near the wall, waving them over. “Come on, we can sit with Clodhopper.”
Gemstone nodded and followed after. “I’m originally from the northern covens, but I left home a few years before … before I got married.” He sighed, then frowned and shook his head. “Let’s just say I don’t really have a coven these days.”
“Oh.” Genesis glanced back at the new wyrm. There was sadness and regret in Gemstone’s eyes. Did his wife die? Is that why he left his coven and was traveling alone? Until he knew more, Genesis decided not to comment. They had reached the wall by them, and so he gestured to the pure brown wyrm in front of him. “Gemstone, this is Clodhopper, my best friend. Clodhopper, this is Gemstone Aura. He’ll be studying runes with us for a while.”
“You both can just call me Gem,” the green wyrm said.
Clodhopper grinned. “It’s always nice to see a new face, Gem. I’ll have to transmute some diamonds for you as a welcome present.” To say that this dragon was brown was a bit of an understatement. His scales were brown. His eyes were brown. His spikes were brown. Sometimes Genesis was surprised that his teeth didn’t turn brown just to match the theme.
“Right,” Genesis sat down next to his friend, “if you ever actually manage to transmute anything.”
“I’m getting close,” Clodhopper said. “I can feel it. Soon we’ll be able to transmute all the food we could want out of ordinary dirt.”
Gem sat down as well. “Are you using an existing gemstone as a base for the transmutation, or are you coding the molecules from scratch?”
Both Genesis and Clodhopper looked at him. “Huh?” they said in unison.
“Enchanting gems and crystals is kind of a recently acquired specialty of mine, so I learned a way to create them.” Gemstone shrugged casually.
“You know how to transmute things?!” Clodhopper shouted, drawing the attention of several other wyrms. “Ah Stars, I wanted to be the one to invent that.” He latched onto Gem’s shoulders. “You have to teach me how you do it!”
Gem remained surprisingly calm throughout the display. “Sure, it only takes a second.” He reached into his travel pack, which he still hadn’t removed, and pulled out a small diamond. “This diamond provides a crystalline base for me to work from.” He set the diamond on the ground and carefully scrawled a rune circle around it and then another rune circle off to the side. A bean from Gem’s plate went in the other circle moments later. “This will provide the raw material for the transformation.” Both rune circles began to glow. “All I do is copy the molecular structure, store it in a matrix, and then apply it to the bean.” As he spoke, the bean shifted and changed into a small brown gem. “The only problem is that I use up far more energy creating the crystal than I would get out of eating it.” He passed the bean-gem to Clodhopper. “It’s useful for research, but unless you’ve got a crystal pony around, crystallization isn’t a viable method of feeding a coven.”
Clodhopper didn’t seem to hear. He just ran off with the gem, shouting something about a major breakthrough and forgetting his breakfast in the process.
“I didn’t know that you could already use runes,” Genesis said, leaning down a bit to study the circles. He recognized most of the individual parts, but they were put together in ways that he had never even imagined.
“I’ve been studying them for a while.” Gem returned the diamond to his travel pack and continued eating.
Genesis waited a few seconds for the other dragon to elaborate.
He didn’t.
“So anyway,” Genesis cleared his throat and picked up his own food, “what was that about a crystal pony?”
Gem winced. “Oh, that? It was just a rumor I heard once about a type of pony that can crystallize things with almost no effort.”
Genesis whistled. “It would be nice to have one of those around. You know, if we could somehow convince it not to kill us all.” He chuckled softly.
The other dragon just looked away. “… Yeah.” Gem ate a few more bites of food. “Who do I talk to about jobs around here?”
Great, less than five minutes into a conversation, and he was already making things uncomfortable. Genesis looked down, wondering what he had said to upset Gemstone. Did ponies kill his wife? “There’s a sign-up board over there by the entrance,” he waved in that direction, “just mark your name in the metal next to whatever job you want.” He glanced up at Gem, who seemed back to normal. “Uh, if you want, Rune Field, Clodhopper, and I are looking for a new lab partner. It doesn’t come with any special privileges, and you’ll have to get used to Clodhopper blowing things up, but the three of us should be able to help with your personal projects too.”
A thoughtful look crossed Gem’s face. “Sounds good to me. Thanks for the offer.”
“No problem.” Genesis looked around to make sure nodragon was listening in on their conversation. “Just do yourself a favor and don’t let Rune use you as a test subject. It never ends well.”
-_-_-_-_-_-
Gem hadn’t been kidding when he said that he had been studying runes for a while. The green wyrm seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of characters, structures, and designs, even managing to teach Rune a few new tricks on his first day, then a few more on his second.
His practical skill, on the other claw, was almost nonexistent. It took him twice as long as any other rune master to draw even a simple rune, and he made a lot of mistakes even then. Genesis began to suspect that the green wyrm was badly out of practice. At least he was getting better. Every day saw a modest increase in his skill and speed.
Throughout it all, Gem’s headaches slowly diminished and his memories sorted themselves out, or so Genesis assumed. Gem never really talked about his past. There were other strange things about him as well, like how he almost never took off his travel pack, or how he walked on all fours whenever his hands weren’t occupied, or how he kept looking off to the north, like he was hoping to see something. He also insisted on training with their warriors every morning, though he outright refused to become a warrior when they asked. Some days, Genesis would even find him talking to an empty cavern. In spite of Gem’s oddities, though, Genesis enjoyed having him around. He was friendly, hardworking, and the source of many surprising new advances into runes and rune theory.
“Gemstone Aura, you’re a genius!” Rune Field exclaimed one day.
Genesis and Gem looked up from where they had been working on a temporal stasis enchantment. In theory, time would pass at less than one tenth the normal rate inside of the affected area. In practice, it either exploded or did nothing at all.
“What did you do?” Genesis asked.
Gem shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“He confirmed the existence of the astral plane, that’s what!” Rune practically squealed with joy. “Look at this enchantment!” She shoved a plate of metal into Genesis’s face.
He had to lean back to see it more clearly. Most of the runes were fairly simple, designed to make the metal glow softly. The rune at the center of the plate, however, was completely new to him. He pointed at it and looked to Gem. “What does that one do?”
Gem flushed. “Oh, that was just something I was experimenting with.”
“This is more than just an experiment.” Rune set the plate on the table between them. “Look at these characters.” She pointed. “Conjuration, alteration, and release to create a never-ending flow of astral energy, then movement-based generators on either side to harness that flow and power all the other runes with it. This could be the first completely self-sustaining enchantment that we’ve ever seen!” She pulled Gem into a tight hug. “I can’t believe you’ve only been here for two months, and you’ve already created something so remarkable!”
Gem didn’t respond, but Genesis could have sworn he heard the green wyrm mutter, “crap,” under his breath.
After Rune finally let go, Gem straightened his head spikes. “Actually, I heard that there’s a coven around here that specializes in emotion control and manipulation. If possible, I was hoping to go visit them for a few weeks. There’s a relationship between crystals and emotion magic that I’d like to explore some more.”
Rune laughed. “Of course you can go. I’ll talk to Lightning Strike and see if we can dig up a map for you. Before that, though, you have to teach me how you created this rune!” She grinned wistfully. “I wish Luminous could have lived to see this. He always wanted to create a self-perpetuating enchantment.”
Genesis smiled. Rune hadn’t spoken about her deceased husband very often in the forty years since he passed on, but he knew that she still thought about him often. After all, the loss of a spouse was something they both shared, and Genesis knew he would never stop thinking about Rain Water.
-_-_-_-_-_-
“Remember, Cliff, you can’t change the past,” Discord’s voice echoed in his head. “It isn’t even that you shouldn’t change the past. You literally can’t. There’s a certain amount of wiggle room when you're traveling farther back, but if it’s just a few months like this, there’s a role that has to be filled, and if you try to act against that, it will stop you.”
“I know,” Cliff replied, shooting across the vast plains that surrounded the Moss Hills Coven. This wasn’t the first mental conversation the two had shared since traveling back in time. The draconequus has created some kind of link between them, which at least helped Cliff get through some of the lonelier days, when all he could think about was Fluttershy. He paused for a moment to reflect on how crazy he must be if he was actually grateful to have Discord around.
Cliff shrugged off the oddness of it all and kept running. “You must have explained it to me a dozen times before you dropped me next to the Mystic Forest Coven.” He jumped off of a particularly large hill, soaring through the sky for a few seconds before landing. “You never did tell me what ‘it’ was that would stop me, though.”
“Who knows?” Discord replied. “Fate? Time? The universe? Whatever it is, you can’t change things that are, from your point of view, the past. You can try all you want. Sometimes it will even make an alternate timeline or two, but those always fall apart in the end and everything reverts to how it was originally.”
“So basically, I can’t do anything to stop Heart from joining the Dragon Alliance.” Cliff jumped again, bringing into view the hill he had heard about. He could just make out the cave entrance at its base.
“Yes, which makes it rather baffling that you still insist on coming here to meet her, before she sends somedragon out to recruit you.”
Cliff skidded to a halt just far enough away from the coven that he could finish his conversation in private. “Discord, the last memory I have of Fluttershy is her on the verge of throwing up just from looking at me. The last thing I said to her was that I’d be back in ‘a few minutes.’ That was nine weeks ago!” He threw up his hands in frustration. “Yes, I know it hasn’t even happened yet from her point of view, but I still think about that every minute of every day. I need to see a familiar face before I go crazy.”
“Fine, have fun with your family reunion. Oh, as an added bonus, Heart will be meeting her new wyvern friends in another three days. Won’t that be fun for you to watch?”
“Yeah, loads of it,” Cliff sent back sarcastically. “Let’s get back to the time travel thing. Did you really have to send me back so far?”
“You’ve had time to establish a reputation with the Mystic Forest Coven while taking notes on every single rune they can use, and after that slip-up with teaching them how to make astral chargers, they’re sure to recommend you to help them study the Crystal Heart. It’s just a pity you had to teach them something that will make all of their runes more effective and easier to maintain.”
“I didn’t mean to teach them anything,” Cliff insisted. “I’m just so used to using astral chargers whenever I had to enchant something back at Everfree that I modified one into a rune without thinking.”
“Yes, I’m sure all those dead soldiers will be completely understanding.” Discord somehow conveyed that he was rolling his eyes. “Just remember to bring back complete notes about everything useful that they have. Hopefully that will help balance things out.”
Cliff patted the travel pack that he was rarely without these days. “Don’t worry, I will.” He took a deep breath, and stepped toward the coven. “Okay, wish me luck.”
“I wish you chaos, does that count?”
“Coming from you, probably.” Cliff reached the base of the hill, bringing the cave entrance into full view. He could make out a purple form sitting just inside.
“Hello, stranger,” a surprisingly familiar voice called. Heart Echo emerged from the shadow of the cave. “We don’t get many visitors this close to the Great Tournament.”
Life around crystal ponies required a lot of emotional control to avoid offending them, which is the only reason Cliff was able to contain his surprise. From what Discord had told him about this coven … would tell him about this coven, whatever, they almost all used the Empathy spell to read the emotions of those around them. Heart would definitely notice if he reacted to her as anything other than a new acquaintance.
“Well, I’m kind of a traveling researcher, and the focus on emotion spells around here might help with my studies.” He stepped forward and extended his hand, generating the emotions of casual friendliness. “I’m Gemstone Aura, by the way.”
Heart shook his hand. “Heart Echo. It’s nice to meet you.” She paused for a moment. “Sweet Song, a friend of mine, is coming up. I’m stuck on watch duty for today, but she can show you around and get you acquainted with things.”
Cliff masked his disappointment with more casual friendliness. “Thanks. I’ll just meet her halfway, if you don’t mind.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” Heart waved him in.
“Glad to hear it.” He walked past her. “I’ll see you around, Heart Echo.”
“See you around, Gemstone. I hope your stay is an interesting one.”
If only she knew. “I have no doubt it will be, and just call me Gem.”
-_-_-_-_-_-
Spending time with Heart proved to be difficult. Apparently she was the best empath that Moss Hills had, and the wyrm in charge of security and training for the entire coven. Cliff attended as many of her training sessions as he could, but it was a large coven, and she had lots of students and even more friends to keep her busy.
Not being very social himself, Cliff was still little more than an acquaintance when the wyverns first arrived.
It was weird enough just knowing that Heart had joined up with the Dragon Alliance. Being there when it happened had been completely surreal. The strangest moment came when a wyvern named Twister asked what the Mystic Forest Coven could do to help in the war effort. Cliff knew he had to say something to make himself seem like a valuable ally, but he also didn’t want to risk giving them any ideas for strategies or techniques that Equestria just hadn’t seen yet.
In the end, Cliff had told Twister about anti-magic runes. He already knew that the Alliance would use them, so he couldn’t see any harm bringing them up. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little like a traitor to Equestria, and especially to Fluttershy.
At least he made himself feel better by handling ‘recruiting’ at Mystic Forest in his own special way.
-_-_-_-_-_-
“… So basically, we’d be volunteering to get ourselves killed,” Cliff finished, addressing the hundred and thirty or so members of the coven. “I’ll be heading back in an hour, if anydragon wants to come.”
Not surprisingly, most of the wyrms suddenly had somewhere else they needed to be. Cliff had to hide his grin. The Dragon Alliance was/would be a formidable enough threat without a bunch of rune masters on their side. Not to mention, he had grown to think of some of these dragons as dear friends. The last thing he wanted was to lead them to their deaths fighting in a war that shouldn’t have happened.
“Hey, Gem,” Genesis said, walking up to Cliff. He was followed by Rune Field and Clodhopper. “Sounds like you had an interesting couple of days.”
“That’s an understatement.” Cliff didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he thought about everything that was getting set in motion. He looked at the three dragons that had been crazy enough to take him in and treat him like family for so long. A sigh escaped him. “I’m really going to miss you guys.”
“I don’t know how,” Genesis said with a smirk. “We’re coming with you.”
“What?” Cliff stared at them in disbelief. “Didn’t you hear? This is a suicide mission that could have been avoided if the drakes were just willing to see past their deluded sense of honor or if the wyverns weren’t so stubborn about pushing for war.”
“You said we’re going up to the place where crystal ponies live,” Clodhopper said with a grin. “I’ve been working on crystallization magic for years, but they can just do it naturally. I can’t wait to study their methods!”
Rune Field leaned against Genesis. “We might be separated by five generations, but I’m still not letting one of my descendants travel halfway across the planet without family there for support.”
Genesis tousled her head spikes before turning back to Cliff. “I know you’re just trying to scare us off because you don’t want us getting hurt, but you obviously want to help if you’re volunteering. Besides,” he nodded at Rune and Clodhopper, “four rune masters are better than one, right?”
What Cliff wanted to do was facepalm and talk them all out of it, but instead, the young dragon found himself smiling gratefully and saying, “Thanks, really. How long until you’re ready to leave?”
“Just give us a few minutes to get everything packed.” Genesis paused, his light yellow eyes thoughtful and distant. “Hey, Gem, I don’t know if any of us will be much use on the battlefield, but thanks for giving us a chance to try and make a difference anyway.”
Cliff barely managed to hold onto his smile. “Yeah, no problem.” After they left to get ready, he slipped outside to try and figure out what had happened. “Hey, Discord, are you there?”
“No, I’m not there, but I’m certainly here, if that’s what you meant.”
He rolled his eyes. “Close enough. Listen, I think I just ran into one of those things that ‘it’ wouldn’t let me change. I was trying to talk some dragons out of supporting this war, but I wound up accepting their help instead.”
Discord sent back the sensation of nodding. “Yes, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I did warn you to expect that sort of thing.”
“Except I thought you said I could change some small details.” Cliff growled in frustration. “If we can’t, then why are you even out there, messing with wyrms’ heads to make them less likely to join the Alliance?”
“Because I can, Cliff. Isn’t that obvious?” Discord chuckled. “When time traveling, the only way to know for sure if you’ll be allowed to do something is to try it. I’m convincing hundreds of wyrms not to join the war, but that won’t make the army any smaller when we catch up to the present, because the army was already smaller than it would have been, thanks to my future self’s actions, who is the present me ever since we jumped back.”
Cliff tried to wrap his head around that and failed miserably. It actually made his head hurt a little to wonder if he had any sort of free will at all, or if everything was flowing along some predetermined path. “So we can stop worrying about these arbitrary restrictions on our behavior once we get back to the present, right?”
“Of course. As soon as our past selves disappear, we’ll be free to do whatever we want. Why do you think I spend most of my time in the present? It’s the only point in time that can really be changed,” Discord sent the feeling of a wide grin, “and after all, change is the very essence of chaos.”
-_-_-_-_-_-
The next two and a half weeks were a blur for Cliff. He was assigned to Heart’s squad—by dumb luck, as far as he could tell—along with Genesis, and when the two of them weren’t training with the rest of Squadron Five, they were helping Rune Field and Clodhopper come up with ways to weaponize various runes.
It was a tricky line for Cliff to walk. He didn’t want to give the Alliance any new weapons, but he also needed to do enough that they’d chose him to help study the Crystal Heart. In the end, he decided that getting the Heart was his biggest priority and showed them how to incorporate astral chargers into most of their runes.
He also tapped into the well of information that Discord had literally injected into his head—not a pleasant memory—and developed an enchantment that would let a crystal absorb the emotions of those around it and reflect them later. Cliff couldn’t think of a stronger way to shout that he should help study the Heart than to literally build a simplified version of it. That, and he couldn’t see any way that it could be turned into a new weapon.
Unfortunately, Cliff didn’t get a lot of time to spend with Heart Echo. She was off at meetings most of the time, and he was always working in the rune lab. Just about all he could do was wait while she talked with those two venom wyverns, Talon and Crystal, after their training battles, so he could escort her back to the coven.
“Hey, Gem?” she asked on one such occasion. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” he replied, running at the relaxed speed of fifty miles per hour or so.
“Is war really as bad as they say?”
Cliff slid to a halt, carefully suppressing the confusion and worry that were bubbling up inside him. “What makes you think I’d know that?” Did I say something to tip her off?
Heart shot past him by several hundred feet before grinding to a halt. She closed the distance between them slowly, like she was afraid of scaring him off. “Every time somedragon mentions this war, you react. It’s a mixture of fear, regret, hopelessness, and longing.” She looked at him sympathetically. “It’s the reaction of a dragon that has seen more than he should have to.”
Images flashed through Cliff’s mind, mostly of Fluttershy. “War destroys lives on both sides,” he said, not meeting his cousin’s gaze. “It would be a lot better to try negotiating with these ponies than to attack their city and just hope that things work out.”
Heart looked at him incredulously. “Do you know how many times Equestria has fought with dragons over control of land?”
“I know of eight covens that were driven from their homes,” Cliff said, “but that’s only eight in more than a thousand years of history.”
“I only knew about six covens,” Heart said, “but there have been fifty-seven incidents with drakes as well. Do you know all sixty-three of those incidents I studied had in common?”
Cliff could guess. “None of them ended well.”
“The dragons were killed or driven out of their homes every single time, even though they were always there first.” Heart stepped closer to him. “Sometimes they tried to get along, as long as the ponies recognized that they were on drake land.” She shook her head. “The ponies wouldn’t accept that. They always called in Celestia, or rounded up an army, or attacked the drakes in their sleep, or something.”
“You know,” Cliff said, “they could’ve sat the ponies down and tried to work out a peaceful treaty.”
“What would be the point?” Heart asked. “Sixty-three conflicts over land, and sixty-three times that dragons were either killed or forced to leave. I think the ponies have made it clear that they aren’t interested in sharing their territory.”
“Ponies don’t understand wyrm or drake ways of doing things,” Cliff said, “A drake duel or a wyrm silent agreement won’t mean anything to them. You need to sit down and talk with them. That’s the only way ponies know how to make agreements.”
Heart looked at him curiously. “You’ve talked with ponies?”
“You might say that.” Cliff shook his head. “Just try talking with them, please?”
Heart studied for a moment before she nodded. “Okay, I’ll talk with the Council but don’t expect them to agree to it. Wyverns don’t even understand what diplomacy means, and drakes …” She rolled her eyes. “You know what drakes are like.”
Cliff could only nod.
“Look,” Heart said, “I might not think talking with the ponies will do any good—I mean, look at their track record—but I don’t want to cause unnecessary bloodshed, and neither do the drake lords. That’s why we’re planning to surprise the ponies, capture their leader, and peacefully evacuate them all. More than that, this is a chance to finally unify the dragon race. Even if it comes to a fight, isn’t unity worth fighting for?”
Cliff thought about Thunderfang. It hadn’t escaped his noticed that he would kill/had killed their always stressed and often grumpy squad leader. Would he agree that the fighting will be worth it? “Just … please, try to talk with the ponies,” Cliff said at last, stepping away from the other dragon. “They might surprise you.”