If Cadance were to describe the Dragonlands in one word, that word would be 'craggy'.
Or possibly 'barren'.
'Inhospitable' was also a contender.
Given the option, she'd prefer to petition to be allowed to use at least a few sentences to do it justice. No one word could properly capture the rock-strewn landscape, pitted with craters and crevices, where actively flowing volcanos were more common than trees.
Still, it wasn't all bad. The constant updrafts made flying a breeze; she could practically glide the whole trip.
All in all, not the worst spot for a vacation. If you didn't mind the eternally oppressive dry heat and could handle the constant presence of dragons.
Had she mentioned dragons among her single-word-descriptions? Because there were dragons. Lots of dragons.
Young dragons fighting over gems or pride or nothing at all. Old dragons slumbering the years away. Scales in enough colors and patterns to give Darwhinny an aneurism.
Most stayed down below on the ground, going about their business without ever noticing her flying by. The few that did either didn't care about a pony in their lands, or at least weren't personally concerned by her presence.
The other great thing about being alone in the sky was not having to worry about her long-distance conversations being overheard.
"I'm just saying, he may have been a great warrior back in his day, but things have changed since then. Tactics have evolved, and Shining Armor was the top of his class in the Academy."
"Bah," an aged voice replied from countless leagues away, "Tactics are all well and good, but at the end of the day there's no trumping Rockhoof's raw physical strength. So long as he retains the stamina to keep fighting, he could outlast anything your husband could throw at him."
"Starswirl?" Sunburst's voice cut in, "If you don't mind, we're having a little trouble translating this section here. It doesn't make any sense in context."
"Hm? What? Let me see that, lad." There was a sound of ruffling paper (not that that hadn't been a backdrop to their whole conversation thus far) before he spoke again. "Aha, I see the trouble. This character here is smudged. That's a grinott, not a syllph. So the phrase refers to an individual, not a region."
"Of course! That makes so much more sense now! Thank you!"
"My pleasure, dear boy. Now, where were we?"
Cadance chuckled. "I think we got off topic quite a while ago. Are you sure we're not inconveniencing you with all this work?"
She could almost imagine she could hear the bells of his hat jingling as he shook his head (he'd cast a silencing charm after realizing how distracting they were to the other researchers). "Quite the contrary. It has been many years since I've been able to do the proper work of a scholar. In fact, this is assuredly just what I would I have spent my time doing had I not turned to adventuring. Recovering and restoring ancient documents. It's truly a pleasure to get back to my roots."
Cadance shrugged and adjusted the course of her flight to keep the arrow of light straight ahead. It seemed to diminish as she got closer, but it was still just long enough that she could see it if she crossed her eyes. Again she was thankful that there was no one around; especially the paparazzi ponies.
Suddenly, a thundering boom nearly knocked her out of the sky. She instinctively tried to reel away from the noise, but such an action wasn't easy when the sound was coming from her crown. She fell through the air, her body twisting against the wind as she tried to regain her bearings. At the last second she managed to snap out her wings and turn the freefall into a sharp glide that set her down near the base of a craggy plateau.
"What in the world was that?!" The rumble of crumbling stone and panicked voices came from all around and she wished that the Diadem carried across more than just sound. "Somepony answer me! Is everyone alright?"
"We're fine, your highness," Starswirl replied, coughing slightly. "Everyone is in one piece. As to the noise... I have good news and bad news."
Her heart tensed. "The good news?"
He cleared his throat. "We've had something of a breakthrough. It seems that the Crystal Heart functions quite well as a power source for the Scepter. This supports the theory that they were designed to be used in tandem."
"And the bad news?"
It was a moment before Sunburst answered for him. "...How do you feel about natural lighting in the East Wing? Or something like a very open-floor plan?"
Cadance sighed and allowed the tension to drain from her body. If he could crack jokes like that, then it couldn't be too bad. Certainly it couldn't be worse than Flurry Heart's accidental magic sneezes (though Luna had once threatened to classify giving the baby pepper as a declaration of war).
"Alright, just confirm nopony is injured and please... be careful."
"Will do, Princess."
She focused her magic back into the Diadem, its tracking spell having faded as she lost focus during her unexpected dive. "Oh! Looks like I have some good news as well."
"Hm? What's that?" Starswirl's voice cut in over the chatter of ponies asking each other if they were alright. "Have you found the next relic?"
"Not quite, but I think I've narrowed it down to a single mountain." She paced back and forth a few steps, watching as the line of light twitched to continue pointing inward. "I think it must be hollow."
"Excellent! See if you can find a way inside; a natural cave, perhaps. If you are lucky, this relic won't be posing much trouble at all."
Cadance was just about to chide the old wizard for tempting fate when her stomach dropped at the sound of a rather angry and very reptilian-sounding shout.
Cadance was at an impasse. Several, actually.
The first impasse was gold, and in one of the few instances in history, the problem stemmed from an abundance of the substance rather than a shortage of it. Gold surrounded her on all sides, an ocean of coinage that rose to mountainous peaks. She could always fly up, but that way held no exit either; just a mass of stalactites.
The second impasse was one of wills, stemming from the smoking hot dragoness that sat across the low table from her.
Smoking hot, that is, in the sense that she was so ticked off that actual smoke escaped her breath in small angsty puffs and the very air around her shimmered with heat.
Cadance crunched on her stick of mica, hiding her reaction behind a cool façade as shards ground to dust, mixed with saliva into a thick sludge, and glooped its way down her throat. Supposedly this was the one type of crystal soft enough for pony teeth (or alicorn teeth, at least) locally available. Not that that did anything to help its terrible chalky taste or the fact that it was still, in every respect, a rock.
Still better than some of the other ethnic foods she'd stomached for the sake of foreign ambassadors, though.
Across the table, her partner had no difficulty chowing down on much harder rocks, tossing back rubies and onyx flakes like they were candies. To her, maybe they were.
"You must tread carefully," Luna whispered in her ear, "Dragons value strength, so once you choose a stance you must not waver. Approach too softly and she will dismiss you as weak. Too strong, and she may never agree to even the most beneficial terms out of spite."
"Also," Sunburst's reedy voice cut in with his nervous waver, "Please remember that she is the equivalent to a Princess of her people. If things go badly it could become an international incident."
Their words, while well-meaning, were something of a moot point. Cadance understood that she'd locked herself in a particular route the moment she'd opened a dialogue outside the cave. All she could do now was stay the course.
She cleared her throat of not-quite-concrete. "So, about what I was saying earlier..."
That earned her a glare. "You're still on that? I said no."
Cadance sighed. That was about as far as the conversation had gotten outside. She tried a new tactic. "Maybe I could pay you for it? The Crystal Empire is rich with all sorts of crystals the likes of which I'm sure no dragon has."
The blue dragoness scowled and snapped a particularly long ruby in half. "You remember the first thing I said to you when you showed up here?"
Cadance did. The first thing Ember had said to her was "Hey! What are you doing in my cave?!" followed by "Wait, I think I know you." This had been followed by a brief game where the Dragonlord had tried to guess her name and finally gotten it right after a few misfires. (The guesses had gotten more accurate after she'd been pigeonholed as 'pink, but not the crazy one' and 'one of the ones with all the limbs'. Eventually she'd been identified as 'the one the runs the city made of food' which was an unsettling notion, if not inaccurate from a dragon's perspective). But that was probably not what she was referring to.
"Rule number one for dealing with dragons," she recited, "Never ask for part of a dragon's hoard."
"And the second rule?"
"Never ask for part of a dragon's hoard," she repeated with proper emphasis. She considered using a spell to shoot a jet of smoke and blue flame from her nose like Ember had at the time, but decided that might be pushing the envelope.
"Oh good, so you can remember things. But since that apparently wasn't clear enough, let me add a third rule I didn't even think needed to be said." Ember sat up straight and cleared her throat. "Rule three: Never offer to buy part of a dragon's hoard unless you're looking for a fight."
Cadance was beginning to get the impression that Ember really didn't want things leaving her hoard. Which was a problem seeing how a few laps around the mountain that made up the Dragonlord's lair had very clearly pointed to the next artifact being inside it.
"You're lucky Spike talks so highly of you," she continued, "Otherwise I wouldn't even be giving you the time of day. Scales, if you'd walked up and said that to literally any other dragon you'd have a face full of fire to deal with."
Not that that would have been a problem. Cadance knew a lot of fireproofing spells from her teen years and had already cast a half dozen on herself the minute she entered dragon territory. It was only practical.
"I'm still not seeing the problem. It's just one piece. And if memory serves, it's not like you gathered this all up yourself; you inherited it. From your father, the previous Dragonlord, right?"
This attempt at diplomacy only seemed to stoke Ember's anger further. Smoke plumed from her nostrils in a display that, rather than being threatening as Cadance assumed it was meant to be, merely made her look like she had the world most gravity-defying moustache. "I earned my place as Dragonlord and the ancestral hoard that comes with it!"
The moustache was definitely detracting from her intimidation factor.
"Keep pushing," Luna urged quietly, "A dragon will agree to things in anger that they would never consider in calm. This is actually progressing more smoothly than I expected."
With that vote of confidence, Cadance stayed her course. She scoffed, putting as much noble diffidence into the sound as she could muster. "Please. I bet you don't even know half of what you have here."
The trails of smoke pulsed into flashes of blue fire as Ember's eyes gleamed with rage. "A hoard is a dragon's pride and joy. It's a monument to their strength and power, and strength is everything to a dragon. A bigger hoard means you have to be strong enough to protect it. Asking us to just... just give you part of it, it's... it's like... gah!" She scoffed out another burst of smoke as words failed her. "Why do you ponies insist we have to settle everything with words and feelings? Why can't we just fight it out like any decent race does?"
"You want to fight? Fine! Let's do it!" The words left Cadance's mouth just a moment too quickly for her brain to catch up and realize exactly what she'd said. In hindsight, perhaps she'd been getting a little too into the antagonistic role.
A wide smile spread across Ember's face. A kind of toothy grin that set alarm bells ringing in Cadance's hindbrain like a blind pegasus in a belltower. Rational thought and diplomatic training had to beat off her screaming instincts with a stick, lest she fall to their dire insistence that she flee for the hills immediately. None of this showed on her face, of course, which had been locked into the challenging sneer she'd worn as she posed the challenge.
"You're on!" the dragon cried in delight. She hopped back a few steps and started to crack her claws, neck, and every other joint she had. "I never thought I'd meet a pony who'd actually be down for doing this kind of thing the way it's supposed to be done. You want something? Prove you're strong enough to take it! But don't think I'm going to go easy on you!"
"I wouldn't dream of it." Cadance's words were practically an automated reply as her brain struggled to reboot. As loudly as she dared, she whispered to her two long-distance listeners, "Any suggestions?"
"You dug this hole," came Luna's voice, thankfully quiet, "Now you must lie in it."
"I'm with Princess Luna. It's not ideal, but she's finally open to the idea of parting with any of her hoard at all. If you back down now, she'll probably be insulted and you'll lose your only chance."
She'd thought as much. But that still left her with the issue of how exactly she was going to beat a dragon who was strong and talented enough to become the Dragonlord of her people. For all the many classes she'd taken to prepare for princesshood, interspecies close quarters combat hadn't been on the curriculum.
"My advice?" Luna continued, "Note that she has not yet specified the challenge. Seize the opportunity and choose one wisely, and you may yet prevail."
That... was something she could work with.
"You mind if I pick the nature of the fight?" she asked aloud.
"Fine by me. I can school you in anything you like. No way I'd lose to a pony."
Cadance racked her brain like Twilight searching for a mis-shelved library book. There was a fine line she needed to walk. One one hoof, there were plenty of things she was obviously, even unfairly superior in. Spellcasting, financial planning, knowing all the lyrics to The Ponyducers. But Ember wasn't some gimmicky demon or genie that she needed to trick, she was a foreign leader that Cadance was still going to need a good relationship with afterward. Pulling a cheap move like that would do more harm than good. On the other hoof, picking something that they'd have comparable talent in would risk losing her chance at the relic entirely.
What she needed was a way to leverage one of her skills in a way Ember wouldn't see as an unfair advantage.
She was pulled from her musings at the sound of a exceptionally loud crack. Ember had stretched herself into a particularly uncomfortable-looking twist that involved her tail, wings, and one arm. Cadance couldn't help but take a moment to take in her form. There was... a lot of lithe muscle on display. If Ember was a pony, Cadance imagined she'd have quite the Celestial build. Suitors from the lower noble houses would be crawling over each other for the chance to court her. Though, if her personality as a pony were the same, no doubt Ember would fight them off tooth and horn. Or tooth and wing, if she were a pegasus.
While very little of that line of speculation contributed to help her current situation, the final leg of the train of thought actually did spark an idea.
There was always her last ditch spell. The final resort she'd prepared when entering the land of lava and firebreathers just in case she had a sudden and pressing need to be far more fireproof than even her other spells could compensate for. What she was considering wasn't its intended purpose and was also a bit magic-intensive, but she'd already been holding it half-cast in the back of her mind for some time now. It'd almost be waste not to use it.
And if it worked how she thought it might, the prize was as good as hers.
"Alright," she said as Ember finished up her last stretch. "I have a competition in mind that should settle this quick and easy. No sense drawing it out."
"Easy for one of us," Ember smirked. Cadance ignored it. "You wanna lose faster that's fine by me."
It was a fight to keep her expression calmly neutral, but Cadance prevailed. "I propose we settle this via..." she paused intentionally for dramatic effect. "Claw wrestling. A simple test of strength that won't risk damaging the rest of the hoard around us. Do you accept?"
Ember raised an eyebrow (or at least, the draconically equivalent patch of darker scales) and looked down to Cadance's distinctly clawless hooves. "Claw wrestling? You sure about that?"
"Don't worry about me."
Ember shrugged. "Your funeral. I accept."
"Fantastic." Now Cadance let her grin shine through. "Just a second, please."
With that, Cadance let the spell she'd been pre-casting flow through her horn and fully manifest. Starting from the nape of her neck, a wave of pearlescent pink scales began to rush across her body. The change spread quickly, like an art restorer wiping away paint to reveal a new image underneath. Her wings twisted, feathers stiffening and fusing until they snapped into leathery sheets of skin. Her mane pulled up and went rigid, rapidly calcifying into a set of spiraling horns with the Diadem still nestled between them.
She sat up after a moment, finding her balance much easier on two legs rather than four as her muscles shifted into new positions.
Just as quickly as it had begun, the spell finished, leaving behind a statuesque pink dragoness where once had been a pony.
"Whoa," was all Ember said as she took in the newly christened dragoness, her cheeks going oddly purple. "Well that's... new."
"Just evening the playing field." Cadance's smile hid the strain she was feeling. Already the transformation was pulling at her magical reserves. She figured she could maintain the transformation for only a few minutes, tops. Less if she needed to do anything strenuous or excessively magical.
Hopefully a few minutes was all she would need.
She moved to the slab of rock Ember used as a table and braced her foreleg against it, claws up and spread. "Are you ready?" she asked, her voice picking up an odd lilt as she tried to talk around unfamiliarly sharp teeth.
Ember didn't respond for a moment, only continuing to stare. She quickly shook herself out of it and came to the opposite side of the table, though Cadance noted that her complexion was still a few shades darker than normal. Maybe she was sensitive to foreign magic?
"I'm ready."
"Give us a countdown then."
"F-Fine. Three... two... one... Go!"
The fight for dominance began in earnest. Both sides had their strengths. On one side was a dragon; born and raised in a society that prized physical strength, and the leader of their might-makes-right political system. On the other was another dragon, but more importantly, one that was actually an alicorn and still very much full of alicorn magic. And alicorns, as many creatures tended to forget, came packaged not just with wings and magic, but also the legendary strength of an Earth pony. The fact that her transformation spell was based on an idealized dragon form—and thus, had magically perfect muscles—was simply icing on the cake.
It was, strictly speaking, a very cheap move. Of course Ember, having no formal education in the technicalities and mechanics of transformation magic, knew none of this. And while she would later retell it as a glorious struggle against a worthy foe, in objective honesty it wasn't much of a contest at all. Cadance certainly struggled for the first minutes, but that was almost entirely due to her unfamiliarity with a new limb that bent (from her perspective) the wrong way. Once she overcame the mental block to bend her "hoof" backwards, victory was swift.
"Phew," Ember sighed as she wrung out her claw after all was said and done. She glanced at her table, specifically the new crack running down the middle and through the imprint of a forelimb. "That was a real challenge, and that isn't something I go around saying to just anybody. Scales, you are strong for a pony."
Cadance reversed the spell and returned to her usual form. "Try signing your name on royal papers for three hours a day, everyday. There's no better workout for the forelegs."
"Whatever. You won, so take whatever that thing was you wanted." Ember's eyes narrowed dangerously. "But just that one thing. Nothing else, understand?"
"Perfectly."
With the Diadem guiding her direction and her magic making excavation a breeze, it didn't take Cadance more than a few minutes to find her prize.
The Crystal Flugelhorn was a perfect match to the Diadem and the Scepter. While the Empire was full of flugelhorns, and many of them crystal besides, none could hold a candle to this. It flowed in smooth curves like eddies of a river trapped in time. Every surface was covered in fine etchings of crashing waves and shifting storm clouds that almost seemed to twist and move as they caught the light. Yet despite a level of artistry that would not be out of place in any museum, it was clearly more than a display piece. The mouthpiece had clear scratches through the carvings where teeth had worn away at it.
"Wait." The sound of confused dragon broke Cadance from her awestruck inspection. "That thing? That's what you wanted?"
"Yes?" she replied, clutching the Flugelhorn a little closer to her chest, "Don't tell me you want to change the deal."
"No, please, take it. If you had said that that ugly old thing was what you wanted, I'd have paid you to get rid of it." She scowled at Cadance's hard fought reward, which was starting to feel like a booby prize. "I remember chewing on it when I was little. Never. Again. I was gagging for a week!"
As the gears of her mind spun loosely, Cadance replied with the first thought that came into her head. "You realize that this is the kind of crystal most of the Crystal Empire is made from?"
Ember's eyes widened in surprise. She glanced back down to relic with a concerning mix of disappointment and disgust. "Well there goes our emergency food supply then."
Cadance chose to take that as a joke. She hoped it was a joke.