All the rejected intruders groaned in pain, some punching away those who had fallen on top of them. Lovey rolled onto her back and panted heavily. Her heart was racing from the fear of falling so high and so fast.
"I can't believe I survived that," she said. "I JUST got my self-confidence back! I think..." she trailed off.
With some difficulty and wobbling, she managed to stand on her legs, but had to hold herself with hands on her knees. One of the smaller intruders, leaning against one of the still knocked out giants, rubbed her dizzy face to try and get her vision back. That's when she spotted Lovey wobbling around in a drunken stupor. She fell on the floor multiple times.
"I don't remember drinking ten beers," Lovey mumbled.
"Hey...It's..." The intruder vomited before she could continue talking. She spat once and wiped her mouth, leaving way to anger. "It's one of the lovies! She was thrown out with us!"
One of the giants, still too dizzy, rolled over onto his side to look at her. "How do you know?"
"Look at her!" the small dragoness pointed.
Lovey slapped the sides of her head several times to try and 'sober up' again. It worked partially. The world still appeared to wobble, but she could see clearly instead of in a fuzz. She got to see dragons around her size coming to 'rough her up'.
"If we beat her up some, the others will have no choice but to come out and face us like real dragons!" the intruder shouted.
"Yeah, and you're totally going to succeed in your ploy," Lovey mocked. She stood straight up and looked at the dragons head-on. "I'VE BEEN THERE FOR MONTHS! I KNOW HOW TO KICK YOUR ASSES!"
"What?"
"FIRST, IMMA PLANT YOUR ASSES, IN THE GROUND! Then I'll grow them and have asses to kick every year!"
The dragons scratched their heads in confusion and ignored the bizarre threat. Two of them charged at Lovey and managed to punch her in the face and left ribs. She shared the same pain by hooking the rib puncher in the snout and grabbing the arm of the other, pulling in towards her and using the imbalance to break their elbow. Lovey managed to dodge a few kicks from new attackers, but still got hit twice. The pink dragoness started fuming at the mouth from frustration and jumped in the air, smacking many of the dragons away with her tail. She wanted to have fun. She really did, but unlike friendly sparring, this was a fight for her life and well-being, and it wasn't going on very well.
"Just because you slap us with your tail doesn't mean you're good at fighting, you pink flower."
Lovey blinked at the dragon and gradually displayed confusion. "Really? 'Pink Flower'? That's the best you can come up with?" She waved the dragon away. "Pffff. Some insult."
The pink dragoness narrowly dodged a punch thrown by that dragon during her mockery. She slid under his arm, to his side, then knee'd him in the hollow area below his ribs, forcing him onto his own knees.
"I may not be some black-belt master of karate or some master in muay thai, but I am a master when it comes to kicking you in the face!"
She hopped over his back and did just as she said, but there wasn't much she could do with the stronger dragons, or even the bigger ones. There were limits to what someone of her size could do to dragons sized like Scarlet on her own. Thus, Lovey found herself kicked up into the air and blasted away with a fireball, leaving her battered and bruised in the black impact crater a little further afield.
The responsible giant laughed at her inabilities. "The pink one can't even breath fire! I bet she can't even--"
A loud 'thump' sound, seemingly amplified in an echo chamber, sounded over the dragon's voice, and in that split moment, Lovey saw all of them lean to the right a bit, then get jettisoned far away to the left. Another thump saw them repeat the motion, but once up, and then hard into the ground, creating numerous craters. One of the colossi forced himself out of the crater and looked around to see the cause of the pain. It was Emboreale, casually walking towards Lovey. The dragon hissed at the serpent, and was about to breathe fire, but the serpent's 'fins' flickered, and a pale-blue aura surrounded the colossus. To Lovey, it looked like they were being twisted and contorted far beyond what any living creature could live through within the bubble. Yet, when it popped, the dragon dropped back to the ground, unconscious and unhurt.
"It's illusion magic, Lovey," Emboreale explained. "Makes you think you're suffering what is being shown, but nothing is actually happening to you." She plucked the pink dragoness from the ground and placed her on her back. "There we go. You'll have to stay there. I can't take you back to the gardens."
"First: Why not? Second: What are you doing outside the volcano?" Lovey asked.
"Because the current Pueric Mother is defending it and sent several large groups of lovies to the pony border. The second is because you showed me that the methods of helping new members with their 'issues' is far too aggressive and dangerous to be effective, so I'm stepping in." Emboreale scratched her head. "Although it does make me wonder just how long this has been happening."
"Why the ponies? What do they have to do with this?"
"Your pueric took what little information she already had based on your rather 'recent' discussions with pony kind, including some dragon surrounded with 'ash'."
"She told you all that so fast?"
"Wh...It took an entire night."
Lovey looked to the side then scrunched her lips. "Oh yeah. I was sleeping after that."
"I also noticed you to be in good spirits, compared to before."
"I had an epiphany."
"Wooooow," Emboreale exaggerated with wide eyes. "Your muscles actually went to your brain this time." She looked straight forward and nodded. "Quite impressive."
Lovey's mouth started sparking against with pink flames, but this was ignored by the serpent she was riding on.
"If I were to fly in the air, do you think you would be able to recognize the place you fought the ashen dragon?"
"As long as the carriage is still there. Why?" Lovey asked.
The serpent snorted. "Because I have an idea about what it might be...or at least, what it's a leftover of."
Emboreale straightened herself out, and from her body came four transparent wings peeling off like a thin film on her scales. Two at the level of her forelegs, and two just a bit forward from her hind legs. They fluttered in what little wind there was, prompting Lovey to want to question the possibility of flight. Her attempts were rebuffed by the 'skin' straightening out instantly and creating enough lifting power to send the two dragons high into the air.
"You okay?" Emboreale asked.
Lovey smacked the sides of her head to unplug her ear canals, groaning in pain and annoyance. "No. I feel like I fell in the wrong direction, and my ears are plugged."
"When you learn to fly, you'll adapt to that." The serpent continued to ascend, causing the land below to shrink and lose its details. "I had the same when I started."
"I see...So you said you had a hunch about the ash dragon?"
"Yes. Just moments ago."
Lovey nodded and remain silent for a few seconds. "So is this a scenario where the 'big bad' you and a group of adventurers defeated on a mighty quest makes a terrifying return even though their prior displays were actually quite incompetent?"
"Hey!" Emboreale shouted angrily. "Leave my clichés alone!"
It took quite a while for Emboreale to reach a height she agreed with, allowing Lovey to reluctantly lean over her and look down. She was scared at first but gradually became accustomed to the height. The first thing she saw were the pony cities in the distance being attacked by rows of dragons. Some of them had huge splotches of black pushing against the reptiles. The pink dragoness could even see some of the larger figures collapse and be engulfed by the black.
"Can you see it yet?" Emboreale asked.
"For the last seventy-seven times, no! It's not because you keep asking me that that--Oh. There it is." Lovey frowned while Emboreale snickered. "You and your clichés," Lovey complained.
The destroyed caravan was still here, but a rancid smell accompanied it, one that Lovey couldn't stand, forcing her to clench her nostrils closed.
"The ponies haven't cleaned this up yet?" she wondered. "I thought they would've cared for this!"
The serpent slithered around, pushing the charred wood and decaying bodies to the side for a better look at any potential clue hidden in the wreck.
"Evidently not. It seems they haven't been informed of this and couldn't send any search parties seeing as there was much instability around here. Sending a search party could have caused more ponies to vanish, I imagine."
Lovey nodded and looked away. "Makes sense, but I still think they should have at least tried."
The serpent looked up from her investigation with a raised brow. "What's to say they didn't?" she asked with judging tone."
"I..."
"It's easy to find the faults in others, but it's harder to fix your own, isn't it?"
The pink dragoness slumped in shame, but perked up when Emboreale walked over the ruins and wiped her hands clean on the dirt.
"I can't really figure out if this is caused by anything but an unusually strong breathe of fire from a dragon. Hopefully, my confusion was unfounded and it's just some pony using magic to disguise themselves." Emboreale scratched below her eyes.
"So what? Magic is that easy?"
"Transformation magic is extremely difficult. I only know of one race of which that comes naturally and another that doesn't use magic for it. However, with what the current Pueric Mother told me, this one doesn't have it mastered that well."
"So what should we do now? Go back and tell this to everyone still at the garden?"
"No. We'll continue looking around for them. They might be mixed in with the rest. They could actually be part of your 'Red Sun', unless their goal was coincidence."
Lovey climbed back onto the serpent's back, and it was back to surfing on the air currents.
"I can see some dragons intervening with the fights and pushing the invading dragons and aggressive ponies away." Lovey's eyes widened. "I'm impressed. There's more lovies than I thought."
"I noticed. I don't recall our numbers being so big during my time."
"Down there!" Emboreale noticed. "I see a large influx of dragons. The members of this 'Red Sun' might be gathered there on both sides."
"Aren't you supposed to help them out?"
"Yes I am!" Emboreale shouted.
She plummeted to the ground, focusing a cone of magic just beneath her. When her feet impacted the ground, a large circle of electricity lashed out, electrocuting everyone there save for the lovies and Lovey Dovey seeing as she was on Emboreale's back. The dragons and ponies did not pay much heed to the pain and continued their 'war', surprising the serpent.
"Strange. That should have knocked them out."
"You could just be out-of-practice," Lovey thought.
"It's true that I haven't been really doing much with--Woah!"
The serpent jumped away from an attack by ponies wielding spears, throwing Lovey off her back in the process. The pink dragoness dodged a ballista shot meant for Emboreale, the giant bolt nearly lopping her head off. A massive blast of fire engulfed a small portion of the immense walls and burned the siege weapon off its hinges. Lovey followed the trajectory, leading her to see an angered dragon with one straight horn jutting out of the right side of his head. His body was a dark red with ashen-black hands, lower-legs, and feet. He looked to Lovey and frowned.
"Ssstupid pink dragon!" he shouted. "You lovies were supposed to be preoccupied."
"You're the ashen dragon?!" Lovey shouted.
"No! I'm just going to kill you and the other lovies here is all!"
He threw a fist forward and another, eventually going with his claws to slash down at the dragoness. Lovey didn't have the martial ability to properly counter him and found herself at the mercy of a large, downward chop. The pink dragoness braced for a strike, yet she found herself protected by a large red arm blocking the chop.
"So you're that ashen fool who didn't play fair?!" Scarlet growled.
The red dragoness tried to round-house kick the 'ashen one' in the face, missing by half-a-hair of an ant's leg, giving her time to check on Lovey.
"Are you okay, Lovey? I saw you fly away and couldn't find you when I went out to check."
The pink dragoness twitched her eyes at the name, but took it upon herself to accept it, if only for now and because it wasn't the time to argue about this.
"Yeah. Emboreale saved me and dragged me along into this."
"Emborele?" Scarlet repeated quizzically.
Lovey pointed to the serpent grabbing two smaller dragons with her hind legs, smacking them together, then passing them to her forelegs to use as weapons. The serpent threw one at the mouth of a larger dragon about to exhale fire, blocking their mouth and causing an explosion that knocked the two out at the same time. The other was thrown at a colossus near the size of Zoonzu, blinding them temporarily and allowing Emboreale to wrap around their body and flip them over onto their stomach, creating a loud 'whump'.
"Woah," Scarlet awed.
The red giant was suckerpunched by the ashen one, allowing their fight to continue while Lovey ran to safety...at least, she tried. In one direction you had angry ponies shooting at her and trying to impale her, on another you had dragons trying to crush and disembowel her.
"I really wish this was just a dream right now," Lovey cried in her mind.
The fights kept on going and going, with more dragons and ponies joining the fray. The lovie dovies were well-versed in combat, but they couldn't deal with so many attackers at once, and this was a three-way free-for-all. It had no true rhyme or reason in the great span of things, with each side having its own goal and steps to undertake to fulfill. Lovey felt over her head here.