//------------------------------// // Chapter 20 // Story: A New Dragon in the Crystal Empire // by Vedues //------------------------------// “You already sent out troops to deal with that reserve army?” Cliff asked Yol Toor as he worked. They were inside the fledgling lab, and Yol Toor was covered in at least a dozen runes and enchanted gemstones. “Yes,” the gray drake replied. He was in his thinking form to make things easier for Cliff. “However, attacking is to be their last option. Their objective is simply to demoralize the Equestrians so that they will be less likely to attack the Empire. I would have gone with them, except the Council decided that destroying the Crystal Heart was of greater importance.” “I have to agree with them.” Cliff was in favor of anything that kept a drake as powerful as Yol Toor off the battlefield. “Okay, I think that’s everything. Go ahead and turn on your aura.” Yol Toor did so. The runes disappeared instantly, and the gemstones all shot away from the drake in different directions. One of them connected with Cliff hard enough that it hurt. “Let’s see if we got any data.” He rubbed a bruise forming on his shoulder and went to gather the gems. Cliff scanned each of them, growing increasingly frustrated. “So much for that idea,” he muttered after finishing with the last one. “Anti-magic normally just suppresses enchantments, but your aura erased them completely.” “I feared this would happen,” Yol Toor said. “My aura has always negated foreign magic.” “That’s something, at least.” Cliff studied the shifting blue-and-red light that surrounded Yol Toor. “What would happen if somedragon touched you when your aura is active?” “It repels them, but not with enough force to harm unless I wish otherwise.” Yol Toor extended one wing toward Cliff. “See for yourself.” Cliff looked at the wing for a moment then shrugged and reached out to touch it. Some kind of a tangible force pushed back against his palm. It was like trying to push against water coming out of a hose. He applied more pressure, but it didn’t budge. After a few moments, he gave up and let his hand drop. “How exactly do you generate an aura, anyway?” In retrospect, he should have asked that first. Yol Toor retracted his wing. “When a drake shifts to his or her battle form, or goes berserk, as wyrms call it, their natural magic field expands to fit their body’s new size. The first principle of aura generation is to expand the field slightly farther, past the scales and out into the physical world.” “So, I’m really just staring at your natural magic field?” Yol Toor nodded. “Though a highly concentrated form of it.” Cliff stepped back and scratched his cheek thoughtfully. Each magic field had a unique signature to it, almost like DNA, and it would repel any magic with a different signature. No wonder a concentrated field would provide such a good defense against enemy magic. A high enough density of magic would even function like a shield spell, which explained how the aura pushed away inanimate objects. Maybe the key to defeating him lay in attacking the aura itself. “Yol Toor, would you mind stepping into the anti-magic ring surrounding this lab? I’m curious how they’d interact.” “Actually, you might want to avoid doing that,” Clodhopper said, grinning sheepishly. “I just installed a rune that will send out an alert loud enough for the whole cave to hear if the ring is ever broken, or if somedragon passes through the ring without one of the four of us from Mystic Forest. I used to use it to keep Genesis from messing with my research.” Cliff gave him a flat look. The security system that even Discord had to think twice about getting through, and its inventor was Clodhopper? The brown wyrm seriously misread his expression. “What? One time he stole some of my notes as a prank, and it took me all day to rewrite them.” “Never mind.” Cliff sighed. “Just give me a few moments to draw up another anti-magic rune.” Yol Toor nodded and turned off his aura. “Thanks for your patience.” Cliff sat down and started drawing a medium-size rune. His clawtips left thin glowing lines on the cave’s stone floor. “Here, let me help,” Clodhopper said, coming over to sit opposite Cliff. He started on the other side without hesitation. His lines mirrored Cliff’s perfectly, of course. Both wyrms had been drawing anti-magic runes from morning until night for over a month. They could probably manage their task blindfolded. Yol Toor watched them both with clear fascination in his eyes. “I must say, wyrms never cease to surprise me.” Cliff frowned a little in confusion. “What, you mean the rune?” He gestured down at it. “The rune is intriguing, yes, but that isn’t what I was referring to.” Yol Toor shook his head. “The way you are able to coordinate so effortlessly. I doubt even Silver Tail and I could synchronize our movements so well, and we have known each other for our entire lives.” Both Cliff and Clodhopper looked at each other and shrugged. “It’s a fairly complicated rune,” Cliff said, “but drawing one together isn’t all that impressive.” “Perhaps not to a wyrm or a wyvern.” Yol Toor moved so that he could see both of them clearly. “Drakes prize the abilities of the individual above all else. While it does help lift each dragon to be their best, I think my kind has stagnated for far too long because we refuse to coordinate our efforts except in times of dire need.” A weary smile crossed his lips. “I hope that this alliance will help the drakes to find a better path. It would be … relieving if I was not expected to shoulder all of my clan’s burdens by myself. Far too many times, I have fallen short of what they needed.” “I think you’re doing a good job,” Clodhopper said. “There’s this one drake in Genesis and Rune’s squad, Tornado, and he just thinks the world of you.” Yol Toor chuckled and nodded. “Yes, my grandson does have a rather biased view of me. I only hope he won’t feel betrayed when he realizes that I am not perfect and have made my share of mistakes.” He sounds disturbingly like Celestia, Cliff realized, always worried that she won’t live up to the myth others had built up around her. And here Cliff was looking for a way to kill that dragon. “Okay, it’s, uh, it’s finished. Just let me charge it.” He drew a simple rune closer to him, connecting it to the main one with a single line. Then he put his hand on the smaller rune and poured magic into it. Now charged, the rune’s lines changed from white to black, and the air around it grew slightly darker. Yol Toor activated his aura and looked at Cliff and Clodhopper expectantly. “Oh, yes, it’s ready.” Cliff stepped back. “Go ahead.” The drake touched his paw to the rune. The aura around his hand grew noticeably weaker, but only for a moment, then the rune shifted back to white, and his aura returned in full force. “Wow,” Clodhopper said, leaning closer to examine the rune. “Depleted already. It normally takes a lot longer than that, but I guess having your magic field right there in the open for it made things go quickly.” He looked up at Yol Toor. “How are you feeling?” “Slightly drained, but not terribly so.” He clenched the affected hand experimentally. “It seems I should avoid these runes when my aura is active, however. I doubt you two would be happy about wasting your willpower to charge runes that I carelessly depleted.” Clodhopper laughed. “That’s for sure.” “Yeah, something like that.” Cliff fought down his rising guilt. It would be a lot easier to plan out ways to kill Yol Toor if the drake weren’t so nice and helpful. He reminded himself that tomorrow morning Fluttershy was going to have her whole world shattered by fighting against the Alliance. Yol Toor had even said that one decisive blow to end the other side’s will to fight is the best way to minimize future casualties. “Anyway, I’ve already tried destroying the Heart while it was in an anti-magic rune,” he hadn’t, for fear it might actually work, “but the way your aura overloads enchantments provides us another direction to research. I have a few more tests I’d like to perform so we can get a better idea of how it works, if you don’t mind.” “Not at all.” Yol Toor curled up on the floor. Cliff had learned that this pose was basically an invitation to relax and drop formality. “I am happy that I can help.” A rough plan was forming in the back of Cliff’s mind. He knew that an accidental death would only solidify Yol Toor’s legend as an invincible warrior and a paragon of dragonkind. To truly crush the Alliance’s spirit, he would have to die in battle, and finding a weakness in his aura was the first step toward making that happen. Cliff just wished he didn’t feel so guilty about it. -_-_-_-_-_- This is it, Cliff realized as he woke up, the day I end his mission and see Fluttershy again. He pulled himself into a sitting position and looked around. Some dragons were already up and about, but the majority of them were still asleep. What time had it been when he and Discord left? He wasn’t sure. Maybe nine thirty or so. Cliff searched through his travel pack for a crystal that was enchanted to tell time. Seven twenty-eight. He had about two hours. Two hours suddenly seemed like an eternity. First things first. He reached over to Clodhopper’s sleeping form, and cast a spell to ensure that the brown wyrm would stay asleep for at least three more hours. Next, Cliff ate breakfast. He barely tasted the gems and bread, but it was important to keep up appearances, even if he was eating by himself. A part of Cliff was sad that Heart and the others were still assigned to the Empire. It would have been nice to see her one more time, and Genesis and Rune had been like a family to him since he first arrived at the Mystic Forest Coven. Talon and Crystal had also grown on him over the last two months. Hay, he would even miss Tornado. I'm going to miss spending time with a drake? Cliff he forced down another chunk of bread, wondering what this mission had done to him. After his meal, Cliff checked the crystal again. Less than twenty minutes had passed since he had woken up. “Great.” He put the crystal away and got up. There was one other thing he could do to pass the time. Cliff casually walked down to the cavern where the Alliance stored its food. He gave the guards some excuse about harvesting crystals for his research and then walked right in. The cavern was huge, of course, nearly as large as the central cavern above, and it was nearly full with the Alliance’s stored food. Well, it was a bit inaccurate to call it the Alliance’s food, since most of it had come from the Crystal Empire. Drakes had been hauling back crystals and grain ever since the Empire was captured. Cliff carefully reached into his travel bags and pulled out a small sack full of powdered poison joke flowers, courtesy of Discord. He found the gems, crystals, and grain that the Alliance would be using in another day or two and split the powder evenly among them. With any luck, most of the Alliance would be affected, leaving them unable to strike back against Equestria for a week until the effects of the poison joke wore off. There was nothing else to do after that, so Cliff went back to the main cavern and walked around it a time or two … or three or four … or ten or twenty. Other dragons were starting to give him odd looks, and so Cliff gave up walking and took a quick bath in one of the rivers that passed through the cave. Water wasn’t as plentiful in the caves where Equestria’s troops were hiding. He might not get a chance to bathe again until the Empire was retaken. After thoroughly scrubbing himself off, Cliff checked the crystal again. One hour to go. You’ve got to be kidding me! He jammed the crystal into his pack and made his way to the lab. All of his research notes were already in his pack, but there were a few experimental runes that Clodhopper had been working on. Cliff spent a few minutes subtly damaging them so that they would have to be redrawn from scratch. Cliff considered leaving a note, apologizing for his betrayal, but the whole point of doing things this way had been to keep the Alliance from realizing that anything was wrong until it was too late. Actually, a note might be helpful. He located a spare sheet of metal and wrote out a short message. Clodhopper, All this sitting around and researching is starting to make my head spin. I’m going to take a quick run around the area to clear my mind. I’ll be back in a day or two. -Gemstone Aura Satisfied, Cliff left the note on Clodhopper’s workstation. With nothing else to distract him, his eyes turned to the Crystal Heart. As always, it was strange to see such a powerful and important relic just lying on the raised piece of stone that served as his desk. Now was as good a time to switch them as ever. Cliff reached into his travel pack and searched around until he located a small blue gem in the vague shape of a heart. Another gift from Discord. Cliff activated the gem’s enchantment, and it suddenly expanded into a perfect replica of the Crystal Heart. Not only did it look the same, but it gave off an identical magical wavelength and would be nearly impossible to damage or destroy. With any luck, Clodhopper would still be studying this fake until the real one could be used to free the Crystal Empire. He quickly placed the Crystal Heart in his travel pack and put the false one on his desk. Now he just had to wait for an hour and leave. Cliff took a deep breath to calm his rapid heartbeat. He had been wearing a travel pack every day for four months. Nodragon would question him for it now, and they certainly wouldn’t want to look inside. Cliff sat at his desk and tried to will the minutes to pass more quickly. He even pretended to be doing more research, though he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything even if he had wanted to. He was far too anxious. After a few minutes, he heard somedragon walking down the tunnel that connected the lab to the main cavern. Cliff looked up and smiled a little as one of his previous wishes came true. “Hey, Heart. I thought you were still down at the Crystal Empire.” Heart stopped just outside of the anti-magic ring that surrounded the lab. She didn’t return his smile. In fact, she was glaring at him. “What are you planning, Gemstone?” Cliff didn’t have to fake his confusion. “What do you mean?” “I’m not an idiot,” Heart almost growled. “I’ve always known that you sympathized with the ponies, but I didn’t interfere because I wanted to believe that I could trust you.” Behind her, Cliff saw a small group of dragons gathering in the tunnel. “You can trust me,” Cliff said. The anti-magic ring would block out her Empathy spell, but he generated a wave of sincerity anyway to help with his acting. Were they on to him? Oh crap, crap, crap, crap, crap! Heart shook her head. She looked sad. “I’ve had a couple of wyrms keeping an eye on you for a while now. We know that you don’t want to destroy the Crystal Heart,” she nodded toward the fake on Cliff’s desk, “and you’ve been observed interfering with the research of your fellow rune masters. Then this morning, Sweet Song noticed you displaying all the characteristic signs of an impending betrayal.” She sighed. “Gem, she wanted to throw you in a containment cell right away, but I came back from the Empire because I still want to believe that you’re on our side. So, I’m sorry, but I have to ask,” she leaned forward, nearly touching the anti-magic bubble, “are you intending to betray us?” Cliff looked her right in the eye. “Of course not.” Heart’s shoulders sagged. “You’re lying.” She looked down. “You hold a little too still when you lie. Not even your tail moves.” Her eyes hardened and she pulled herself back up to her full height. “Step away from the Crystal Heart. We will escort you to one of the containment cells, where you will be detained for the duration of this war.” Cliff froze. Discord couldn’t hear him inside of an anti-magic bubble, and nearly a dozen warriors stood between him and the exit. There has to be a way out of this! Think, Cliff! Think! He glanced down at the fake Heart. They thought it was the real one. Even if ‘Gemstone Aura’ was a traitor, they won’t be that concerned about one wyrm getting away. “Alright,” he said gently. “I won’t fight you.” That much was certainly true. He recognized Yol Toor as one of the drakes in the tunnel. Fighting wasn’t an option. Cliff got up and moved away from his desk, hand raised in surrender. “Thank you for not making this harder than it has to be.” Heart smiled weakly as she stepped through the anti-magic ring. No doubt she hadn’t done so earlier for fear that he would attack her while the rune negated all of her defensive spells. However, what she wasn’t aware of was the upgraded security that Clodhopper had installed. A piercing shriek filled the chamber before she could even reach the false Heart. It only lasted a second, but that was all he needed. Cliff cast Speed Burst while everydragon else was covering their ears from the painfully loud noise, rocketing himself through the anti-magic ring and over the heads of the dragons gathered in the tunnel beyond. Unfortunately, the ring deactivated all of his protective magic, making his collision with the stone floor far less than pleasant. Something in his left forearm snapped, making him gasp in pain, but there wasn’t time to focus on that. Cliff pushed himself back to his feet and ran toward the main chamber, casting spells as he went. A blast of red and blue energy flew just past the front of his muzzle, leaving a burning hole in the floor. “Surrender, Gemstone,” Yol Toor commanded. “I have no desire to kill you.” Not an option. He still needed to get out of the cave so he could contact Discord. Cliff turned invisible, shot up to the ceiling, and ran out into the main chamber just in time to avoid a much wider blast that filled the whole tunnel. Almost everydragon in the main chamber was looking toward the lab, frozen by confusion. If listening to Spirit and Autumn had taught Cliff anything, it was that confused and frightened beings will believe almost anything they hear. Normally that was a state that they worked hard to avoid, but Cliff saw a golden opportunity. He jumped into the middle of the crowd just as his invisibility wore off and shouted, “Princess Celestia is impersonating Yol Toor! Get her!” At first, nodragon moved, then murmurs of fear and anger began to build, and within seconds, they were charging toward the lab, shouting for the defeat of Princess Celestia. Suddenly, Cliff was terrified. Too terrified to run, or to even breathe. He generated a wave of courage to counteract it and dove out of the way before another spell could hit him. He saw Sweet Song, Heart’s second in command, scanning the crowd for him. She must have been the one behind the emotion-based attack. Cliff ignored the pain in his arm and slipped away from her. That attack had cost him precious seconds, and the wyrms from Moss Hills were quickly pacifying the crowd. “Gemstone Aura is a traitor,” Heart yelled, running into the main cavern. Magic infused her voice, demanding that everydragon who heard her believed what she said. “Stop him before he can get away!” Cliff shot toward the entrance, but a drake saw him coming and reared up to block him. He crashed into the drake’s wing membrane. A shout of pain escaped his lips as the impact shook his broken arm. Some kind of energy net pinned him to the ground before he could move. “Oh, do I have to do everything myself?” Discord appeared over Cliff. The net disappeared instantly, and the drake was lifted into the air. It smashed into the oncoming crowd with a sound like a bowling ball. Discord snapped his fingers just as Yol Toor shot another beam of energy. The beam split before it connected with them, creating two smoking tunnels on either side of the main one. “Four months!” Discord pulled Cliff upright. The wyrm’s broken arm healed instantly at his touch. “Four months of planning, and you had to ruin it in the last forty minutes!” He snapped his fingers again, and a hail of wyvern breath attacks transformed into rose petals. “They still think the fake Heart is the real one,” Cliff sent through their mental link, not bothering to wonder how Discord had known that he was in trouble. He retrieved a gemstone from his pack and was about to shoot it at one of the nearby dragons when Discord smacked it away. “Killing destroys chaos, which makes me weaker. I thought we covered that already.” “Draconequus,” Torch roared, rearing up near the back of the cavern. “Stop!” “As you command.” Discord’s eyes began to glow yellow and the air around him began to warp and ripple. He thrust both arms forward, and the effect suddenly expanded to fill the whole cavern. As it hit, dragons seemed to freeze. Even wyvern breath weapons and wyrm spells froze midair. “What did you do?” Cliff asked. “He said stop, so I stopped time.” Discord wiped a thick coat of sweat off of his forehead. “It won’t last forever, though, so how about we leave while we still can?” He turned and ran toward the cave entrance. “Can you teleport us back to the caves?” Cliff asked as he hurried to keep up. “Not inside of this giant ring of interconnected anti-magic runes,” Discord huffed in response. “Just running through it the first time nearly made me pass out.” “Why would that affect you?” Dragons walked through it all the time. “Anti-magic only affects high concentrations of magic, like active spells,” Discord said through gritted teeth. “I’m a spirit, so my entire body is a high concentration of magic, and did you really have to include over a thousand runes in this particular ring?” They had reached the mouth of the cave by that point. Cliff dropped his spells before jumping through the runes he knew sat under the snow and ice there. Discord fell in a heap beside him, gasping for air and almost see-through in places. “I hate … those runes.” Cliff shivered, though he couldn’t tell if it was from shock, worry, or the freezing temperatures. “How did you know I needed help?” “Sensed chaos building in there,” Discord replied weakly. He snapped his fingers, and Cliff was suddenly back to his usual purple scales and green spikes. “Now then … we have thirty-eight minutes until our past selves disappear from the caves beneath the Empire.” He shrank down to the point that he could have fit in the palm of Cliff’s hand. “How about you carry me to the entrance … and then I’ll warp us inside. Deal?” “Deal.” Cliff scooped up the tiny draconequus and placed him in his travel pack. “And, Discord, thank you.” “Oh, you know.” Discord waved a paw dismissively. “Friendship … Magic … All that stuff. Now if you’ll excuse me, I could use a nap.” He reached up and pulled the pack closed around him. “Wake me in thirty-eight minutes.” “I will,” Cliff promised. He looked around for a moment to get his bearings. Wait for me, Fluttershy. I’ll be there soon. Then he activated his running spells and shot off toward the secret cave entrance and the yellow mare he hadn’t seen in four months.