In the week that followed Ares’ discovery of the scales, I spent a couple days trying to track down any research on dragons to figure out what would have created those scales, and how. Unfortunately, there was next to nothing valuable about dragons in the castle’s library, or in the books Celestia kept locked up in the secret vault. However, that didn’t mean my efforts were for nought.
The scant amount of documentation was due to the very rare native Equestrian dragon, a number of which had been hunted for sport, while others could’ve gone into hibernation for a century or two. Given that it was a female ice dragon Veloce’s father and fellow hunters went up against, I theorised that one was native to the arctic tundra of the Frozen North and wandered south, instead of the volcanic island of the Dragon Lands. In hindsight, I kinda felt sorry for the poor thing. She was likely lost, confused, and trying to feed herself when Velo’s father killed her.
Regarding the steel scale, the metal smiths were shocked when Velo brought it to them to examine. After they worked their literal and metaphorical magic, they discerned that it had a dozen layers to it, similarly to a laminated steel sword, except the quality of the steel in the scale was unlike anything they’d ever seen. Since there was no accurate way to say how often the layers were deposited, one year, a decade, a century, or even a millennium, my best and most reasonable guess was that an Elder Dragon could’ve been between twelve-hundred and twelve-thousand years old, and that was assuming the layers were an indication of age.
Based off of what Veloce said about the dragon being twice as tall as, and three times longer than Celestia, I used the scale Ares found to estimate the dragon it came from could have very well stood on its hind legs to look over top of the Castle of the Two Sisters as if it was a minor inconvenience. Something that huge in a country I was supposed to be looking after was absolutely terrifying. We also had no idea how long the scales were in that tunnel, and short of leading an expedition into there, had no way to know if the dragon was still around or not.
Still, it was worth the time to check out that tunnel to see what we could find. Maybe some awesome looking dragon skull I could put on the top of my throne to look like a badass, or more of the scales that I could have made into armour.
In the meantime, I wasn’t going to let anyone go to the chasm to fetch raw gems and precious metals without my guards there to supervise and keep them safe. Bastille, Comet, and Firefly - when she wasn’t looking after Midnight - were my go-to choices because they were strong fighters I could rely on if a dragon did make an appearance, but I was thankful that none did.
It was fortunate that the metalsmiths in Aes kept all the casting molds and die presses they made to custom build parts from scratch for the gold wash plant the first time around. They were more familiar with what they were doing the second time around, so reproducing the machine only took two weeks. Not only that, the equipment was of a higher grade because several improvements were made regarding mechanical function, parts used, and metal quality.
At the end of those two weeks, Celestia was getting ready to have the crates and parts sent over to the mining site for assembly, which was another week-long process to make sure everything slotted into place, and so adjustments could be made on site.
I decided that it would be ideal to check out the cave before the machine was assembled. Safety survey, dragon prevention and all that good stuff.
It was the Sunday afternoon before the third week was due to rollover, or the fourth week of my second, seven-and-a-half week term as Princess. As much as I wanted to bring Midnight with me so he could use his magic to make doppelgangers and confuse any scaly behemoths, his recovery time meant I was due back on Earth before he was out of bed. In his place I had Firefly, because I assumed that she would be able to eat dragon fire if one tried to roast us, and let’s not forget her affinity for light spells. There was Ares, because he knew where to go, and Veloce, because she was the only one in the castle that had knowledge of how to track and hunt dragons thanks to her father.
I made a copy of the map and took it with me, and cast a tracking spell on a gem to act as a beacon on the map, so any rescuers would know where to look for us. Atlas had the original map and would relay information to Comet in a worst case scenario. I just wanted to be prepared.
Most of the passages on the map were old lava tubes, big and small that simply ended, but a few burrowed deep into the earth like a rabbit’s warren. However, the one thing that caught us all off guard was the tunnel that Ares found. It just kept going, and going, twisting and turning like a slalom track, and was the only tunnel that was still in the process of being rendered. It was beyond terrifying to imagine what sort of eldritch horror lurked that far underground.
There were domed, roughly circular rooms at intermittent intervals along the unnatural tunnel, and a few of them had weird conical pyramids in the middle. All of that left me wondering what the heck kind of dragon digs underground tunnels and has steel scales.
I teleported myself, Firefly, Veloce, and Ares to the chasm, who took point to lead us to the tunnel’s entrance. Once he dove into the chasm, Veloce and I followed suit. About two seconds later, I remembered that Firefly couldn’t… well, fly, so I went back to to give her a bit of assistance.
“Piggy back?” I said, presenting my back to her.
“I, uhm…”
“Or do you want me to levitate you instead? Ares could give you a ride if you like.”
“Well, here’s the thing…”
“Hmm, I do recall a spell that gives non-pegasi wings,” I mused.
“I’m afraid of heights!” Firefly blurted.
I blinked and stared at her a moment. “I… Oh. Well, how did you pass the climbing obstacles in training?”
“Because I know how far I can fall without breaking anything,” Firefly sheepishly said, which raised more questions than it answered.
“Ares and I need you down there with us, so can you tough it out until we get to the cave?”
Firefly gulped and closed her eyes. “I’ve had my share of broken bones, so I think I can brave this.”
She almost passed out half way into the chasm, and so did Ares with the death grip she had on the poor guy, but when the three of us finally arrived at the mouth to the tunnel, she was able to catch her breath and take a drink of water to calm her nerves.
“I hate flying,” Firefly grumbled.
“It’s probably less about fearing heights, and more to do with the fear of being unable to prevent what’ll happen when you hit the ground,” I offered.
“Not helping!”
“Ladies,” Ares interjected patiently, “shall we continue?”
“Yes, right,” Firefly said with a cough. She lit her horn and formed a glowing ball of magic in front of our group to light our path the deeper we got.
Since thestrals typically lived in low-light conditions, Veloce’s eyes were better suited to help navigate the tunnel. Not only that, her ears could pick up and discern sounds better than a normal pony, so she and Firefly lead us into the cave while Ares stayed back with me.
The bottom of the tunnel was slightly flatter than the rest of the more tubular walls and ceiling, and being so tall and wide, the four of us could stand a couple metres apart with room to spare. All in all, it looked like the entrance to the Esa-ala cave system in Papua New Guinea, except that was naturally occuring.
According to Veloce, the scratches were reminiscent of tool marks as if it were cut with a pickaxe, except the pattern of the marks were horizontal looking at the walls and pointed deeper into the cave, as if whatever made them was moving forward. We found several more scales embedded in the cave walls the deeper we got and, getting curious, used one of them to see if it was the metal that made the marks on the walls. How was something softer than granite able to do the kind of damage I saw all around me?
By the time we heard it, we were so deep into the tunnel that only the immediate area around us was lit thanks to Firefly’s spell. Lasting a brief moment, a soft clicking noise echoed from deep within the tunnel, like a handful of coins being dropped into a pouch.
We all stopped dead in our tracks as the noise passed, ears twitching to and fro, especially Veloce’s.
“What was that?” Firefly squeaked.
“Definitely metallic,” Veloce said as she planted an ear against a wall. Her eyes widened. “Oh wow, the clicking is what you guys hear, but it’s… I want to say... creating vibrations in the earth?”
“Then whatever is down here seems to know we’re coming,” I said as I looked over the map. We were roughly a mile away from one of the large rooms, and two deep in the tunnel. “I want to try getting to this room shown on the map, then, we can get the heck out. Shouldn’t take much longer until we get to the first chamber.”
“With all do respect, Princess Luna, but I simply refuse to go deeper into the tunnel,” Veloce said, fear creeping into her voice.
“I can’t really blame you,” I replied. My anxiety was beginning to act up too; I wanted to get out of the tunnel as fast as possible. Something about being that far underground was deeply disturbing. “Come on, let’s get out of here, we’ve done what we came here to do.”
“Agreed,” Ares simply said.
I walked another ten metres before the ground underneath me gave out. I had no idea how far I fell before I hit the ground, or what happened after that. The next thing I knew, I was being roused by Ares and Firefly.
“Nnnnn, whadappened?” I said groggily, testing my limbs and wings to make sure nothing was broken.
“The floor of the tunnel was thin enough that enough weight in the right spot caused it to give way,” Firefly said. “Ares grabbed me and flew down to check on you.”
“Ughh… How long was I out?”
“About forty-five seconds,” Ares added.
“Is everything alright down there?” a voice called out from above. I trained my gaze up, seeing the hole I accidentally created was about sixty feet from where I landed.
“The princess is fine,” Firefly called up. “We’ll be up in a minute.”
“You uh, you should turn around and have a look at what you accidentally discovered,” Ares said, offering me a hoof so I could pull myself up.
I was in complete and utter shock and awe when I turned around.
In the middle of the underground room which wasn't on the map was a literal mountain of gems piled from floor to ceiling. There was just enough room to walk between the wall and the gems. Rubies, emeralds, nuggets of gold, silver, and platinum, as well as huge misshapen metal boulders of some description off to the side, but that wasn’t the only thing we noticed.
“Look, diamonds…” Firefly said arily, levitating one of the absurdly large gems from the pile to look over.
“You best put that right back this instant, little lady,” I said scornfully.
“It’s a pile of gems literally sitting here for the taking!” she objected.
“This is the horde of a dragon,” Ares said. “If you steal from one, the owner won’t hesitate to kill you to get it back.”
Right then, there was a small avalanche of gems from where Firefly extracted the diamond in the pile, putting us all on edge. It was like we were in a horror movie and Firefly’s recklessness alerted the axe wielding maniac to our position. Ares and I shot the mare an accusatory glance, strongly suggesting she put it back
“Hey guys, something’s coming!” Veloce echoed from above.
“Ah, heh,” Firefly sheepishly said as she put it back. “Yes, let’s go. This place gives me the creeps.” Luckily the pile didn’t collapse, or that would’ve meant being crushed and buried alive.
Ares and I flew back up top, but Firefly didn’t teleport herself back up for some reason. “Well, what are you waiting for?” I called down to her.
“I can’t teleport!” she exclaimed. Firefly lit her horn, but the spell quickly fizzled out.
I tried to teleport her up to us, but my spell also fizzled. Odd, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Then, I tried, and succeeded in levitating her up onto the ledge with us.
“What do you suppose that was all about?” Ares curiously asked.
“Why Firefly’s light spell and my levitation works down here, but teleportation doesn’t? No idea.” I heard several more gems clatter down the bigger pile, making my ears involuntarily twitch like I was prey being stalked.
“Tell me you didn’t try and sneak a gem,” I said to Firefly.
“If a dragon chases us to get the gem you stole back, I’m tripping you up to buy the rest of us some time,” Veloce sneered.
“That wasn’t me,” Firefly said, looking back down to the mountain of gems.
Then and there, I sensed a fifth presence that wasn’t Firefly, Veloce, Ares, or me. It was close, and getting closer like Veloce said a minute ago. Then, the same soft clicking sound from earlier reverberated around the room, ending just as quickly as it started.
“That sounds a lot closer than before. We should seriously get going,” Firefly snapped.
The clicking sound resonated again, and everyone froze. “That’s right on top of us!” Veloce hissed.
The tunnel began shaking around us, growing in intensity. The mountain of precious gems began to topple as cracks began spider-webbing all around the tunnel.
“Earthquake! Run!” I screamed.
We all began to haul ass back the way we came as chunks of rock began dropping to the floor with dull thuds, reverberating all around us.
Then, an unholy, deafening roar violently shook the cavern, knocking us off balance.
We quickly picked ourselves off the ground and I used a speed enchantment to give us an extra boost, running like bats out of hell.
“RUN!!!”
All around us the tunnel was collapsing, massive boulders and chunks of earth nearly sealing off our escape, forcing us to weave around them while my bubble shield protected us from falling debris. Firefly barely managed to keep her light source ahead of us so we weren’t tripping over anything.
Then, a chunk of the ceiling fell ahead of us, completely blocking our path.
“We’re cut off!” Ares shouted over the din of the cave-in.
“Ram the boulder!” I yelled ahead
“I’ll break my neck!” he screamed back.
“Trust me, just do it!”
I weaved a spell as we closed the distance, and fired it at Ares as he impacted the boulder. He successfully punched through to the other side, creating a big enough hole for the rest of us to follow after him.
“What was that?!” Ares bellowed.
“Piercing spell, just keep running!”
Ahead, a dull pinprick of light grew closer with each passing second. It was all we kept our focus on, sweet sweet daylight. I picked up Ares, Firefly, and Veloce with my magic and threw them clear of the tunnel as I leapt out, a cloud of rock dust billowing from within.
I immediately teleported us as far away as I could, which just so happened to be in the middle of the castle’s garden where Celestia was reclining on a cloud hammock, drinking from a coconut.
“Was that… a dragon?” Firefly breathlessly heaved as we all flopped onto the ground, paying no mind to the extremely confused and concerned Celestia.
“Yeah, it was,” I replied, gasping for air.
“Can somepony explain to me what in Tartarus just happened?!” Celestia not-so-patiently demanded, fixing all of us an intense glare.
“Dragon,” Ares wheezed, picking himself up off the ground and dusting dirt off of his coat.
“I didn’t expect one to be this close to home, quite literally too,” I added.
“Did you get a good look at it? How big it was, what it ate? Anything at all that will help us?” Celestia probed incessantly.
“All we know is that it has steel scales and somehow bores through solid rock,” Firefly stated.
“Au contraire,” Veloce said, “the tunnel had roughly the same diameter and circumference as the castle’s east tower.” She sat up on her haunches and shook herself of any dust and debris, and made sure there were no holes or tears in the webbing of her wings from the rocks. “It likely slithers in the same manner as a snake, which would explain the flatter portion of the cave, thus it probably doesn’t have any arms and legs, or wings if it lives underground.”
Ares stretched and cracked his joints. “There has been sightings of ground-dwelling forest dragons, flying sky serpent, and so on and so forth. I don’t think this is just another, garden-variety dragon.”
“Ares is right. Proper dragons have four limbs as well as wings,” Veloce said. “Wryverns have two legs and two wings, and then there’s wyrms: no legs or wings. It’s safe to say that we’re dealing with a Steel variant of an Earth Wyrm.”
“One that apparently causes earthquakes,” Firefly added. “By the way, what was that clicking we heard?”
“Some form of echolocation if I had to guess,” Veloce offered.
A small thunderclap from Celestia’s cloud startled all of us into looking at her. “Are you four going to keep ignoring me?”
I cleared my throat and put on my best professional demeanour despite looking like a shaggy tramp that lived underground. “We made educated guesses based off of observation, and we’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a steel earth wyrm living underneath the caldera.”
“At least you’re alright,” Celestia said thankfully, pausing in consideration and furrowing her brow as she settled back on her seat.”How dangerous do you think it is?”
I pulled down some cloud and shaped it into a big pillow to join Celestia, flopping onto it. “Considering that we were almost eaten alive, I’d say it’s pretty bad.”
Staring over the horizon, Celestia considered my question. “It’s too bad you didn’t get a good look at the dragon...”
“We were too busy running,” I said dryly, gesturing to everyone’s dishevelled state. “If we want to set up the mine, we’ll need somepony to deal with a dragon with thick steel scales that can cause earthquakes.”
“Dragon slayers cost a premium, and are few and far between, unfortunately.”
“Awww, I think I broke the tip of one of my horns,” Ares said randomly, drawing my attention as he poked at a piece of white and black bone which I saw was from his left horn.
I had no idea you could hire actual dragon slayers. Sounded like what Veloce’s dad did for a living, and that gave me an idea. “Firefly, Ares, take the rest of the day to yourselves. Have a drink, get cleaned up, and get ready for duty tomorrow. Veloce, stay here with me.”
“What for, Princess?” she said.
“Thank you, Princess,” Ares said, taking flight towards the castle as Firefly poofed away.
I turned back to Celestia and said; “If you can hold off constructing the machine and establishing the mine, I could look into hiring somepony to deal with the dragon.”
“Absolutely not,” Celestia said sternly. “We’re only getting by on the extra gems and minerals getting chipped out of the crevasse. We can’t afford to hire hunters of any kind.”
“Veloce’s father killed an ice dragon,” I said pointing at the mare in question.
“What are you suggesting? That we hire him?”
“Correct. Velo, how many dragons has your father dealt with?”
“A couple here and there. Usually juveniles,” she said.
“This is a prime opportunity. We can’t, in good conscience, set up a mine literally on the doorstep of a dragon,” I said.
“This is a sticky situation you’ve got us in, Luna,” Celestia grumbled.
“Allowing those pegasi mares to stay at the castle was a mistake that wound up biting us in the ass,” I admitted begrudgingly. “So give me the chance to set things straight.”
Celestia cleared her throat. “You’re still young and have got much to learn about being a princess. Alright then, you can fix this, but don’t be surprised if I step in at some point.”
And that was the pot calling the kettle black. “We would need to postpone things until I can sort this out.” I looked to Veloce and said; “Do you think you could arrange something with your father? If not, at the least he could point us in the right direction.”
“You misunderstand, Luna. You’ve got one week to have the situation completely seen to,” Celestia interrupted, “that’s when we’ll have the machine up and running. We are in no position to postpone things, especially if we’re lending money to dragon slayers,”
“A week?!” The main problem I had with that was how long it would take Veloce’s dad to actually get to the castle from wherever he was, or how long it would be until I could get a message to him.
“Within the next week, correct. You should go speak to Jackal, he’s the fastest flyer we have working as a courier,” Celestia added.
I was going to object, but held my tongue. “Alright then, I’ll have the situation sorted out by this time next week. Come on Velo, let’s get this figured out.”
I flew back up to my bedroom on the cloud like a magic carpet as Velo followed. When I got off, I sent the cloud back to float over Celestia, then zapped it with a bit of magic, causing the cloud to erupt with a bolt of lightning. I heard her scream all the way from my room. Take that for imposing an impossible deadline.
I decided to make myself scarce before Celestia tracked me down to enact her petty revenge.