//------------------------------//
// Prologue | Glint of a Fang 
// Story: Hear Me, Please, Dear Fluttershy 
// by B_25 
//------------------------------//


Hear Me, Please, Dear Fluttershy
B_25


It'd been the tales of dragons sending her under the bed, cowering beneath the frame with forehooves of lemon to cover her face. Stories of the night about the golden fires so bright. Heaved and breathed to villages aflame—fables of rich caves and the adventurers who dared them.

Luckiest were those who bathed in the sudden flames. Worst had been the lot that were plucked by the tails. Yanked up and held at a dangle. Jaws below. Large and monstrous. Opening wide, as they fell inside, forever disappeared in the dragon's stomach.

"I'm tellin' you. At the first sign of trouble? Buck 'em on the nose."

And six friends, unarmed but verbally dangerous, thought it wise to take one on.

"That's sharks, you hollowed pear!" Applejack's muzzle scrunched into itself as she bashed her hips into Dash. The latter hopped and stepped aside, frowning, and bearing an expression of cute defeat. "Tough their snout if they ever beef you one. That ain't dragons. Too big for a kick to do anything."

Rainbow cocked her head and walked the fine line of the stone trail. It oversaw the valley below—tops of trees a blurred green and a mess of blotches. The winding path around the mountain would leave them to the top. The view, beyond, teasing all the other stone peaks.

"But aren't sharks pretty big? Five times our size." Rainbow's head bounced in the dance with her thoughts. "Doesn't make any sense they would let us go. Especially in water. That's, like, their territory."

Applejack flinched. She didn't have the knowledge for the situation. However, she had the good sense to figure it out on the fly. One still had to act like they had the information all along in cases like these. That. And it was an obvious fact known by all.

"That's because it overloads their senses. Knocks their mind into a rumble. Must make their snout ache, or sore, or somethin' on top of it."

"Now, how is that possible? Punches are slower in water—hardly does anything." Rainbow nodded. "Especially to a shark."

"It's 'cause the contact alone is enough."

"Why?"

"'Cause, it clocks their senses!"

"What senses!?"

"How in tarnation would I know 'what senses', sugarcube!? The important part is they get overloaded! Not whatever fancy name Twilight would pluck for her rump for that."

Twilight had led the pack from ahead and, without turning her head, grumbled to the crew.

"Afraid my backside possesses zero vocabulary on the matter."

There was silence for a second as the six followed the curve around the back of the mountain; it swept back in, no doubt, leading to the next level of flooring. The entrance of the cave would be there. Fluttershy's heart caught in her chest.

"So wouldn't that contact alone be enough for a dragon as well?"

"SHUT IT!"

Fluttershy thought about offering a lot of things. That maybe kicking a dragon on the snout wouldn't be the best idea. That checking out a possible threat of a beast should have been left to a powerful princess or an array of royal guards.

Or that she should have been allowed to stay home so that, if none returned, someone knew to write for a search party to be sent out. Yet no excuses worked, and her speaking produced only stutters. Every step of hoof into stone was a jolt to the heart.

The wind came to a close as the six rounded the corner of rock—land spreading out into the expanse that laid before the cave. Nothing was here. Vast and sweeping and littered with a few boulders. Everyone spread over the area. Searching the ground for clues.

"Something about this isn't right." Rarity had been the first to speak up and drew attention to herself. "Where are the scratches? Claws carved through stone? No mess of gems or, dare I say, a carcass or skeleton of sorts?"

From behind a boulder, Pinkie hopped as she did the same toward and around another. "Nothing over here! Or over there! Nothing everywhere!" She sprang to the centre that was the circle of mares and looked to each one. "Suuuure this is the right place? Not the mountain to our left? Maybe our right? Or the one out over there? Or the one right theeeere?"

“This one, Pinkie.” Twilight turned her head and bit on the scroll from her saddle, a yank and a release, it unfurling in the air. The map was unrolled on the ground. A purple hoof jabbed the drawn, red circle. "Here. This one. The attached sketches even match the overlook over there."

Her hoof struck out to the edge to where, sure enough, everything from the depiction of the boulders, to the mountainous range on the horizon, was identical to the sketch tucked to the corner of the map in a paperclip.

Their focus returned to the page.

"The princess normally wouldn't send us on matters she didn't think we could handle." Twilight closed her eyes and sighed a second longer than usual. "Though in the case of dragons... even  I'm  finding this to be a bit much. They're animals. Beasts. Unable to be spoken to or reason with."

Rainbow squinted her eyes. "Yaaaaaa. I never got that part either." She flicked over to Fluttershy. "Apparently, Shy's able to speak in roars or somethin'? I dunno."

Fluttershy meeped at that and stumbled back. Hiding beneath her mane to escape the eyes on her. That wasn't enough to deter the current interest. The poor mare was forced to speak up. "I-It's not quite like that. I-I'm just more emphatic on d-delicate matters."

"Yet you speak to the animals—and they understand you."

"That... well... um..."

"Princess Celestia has taken an interest in that." Twilight raised from the page to look at Shy, examining her with a squint—before returning to the map. Tracing a hoof over the scroll in hopes of a feeling. "Dragons are incapable of speech. Never needed to evolve that far." She chuckled. "Could say it's the power and curse of might."

Fluttershy didn't like that last word.

"But hikers on the edge of Ponyville have been quoted as saying of a dragon that lives around here." Her hoof bounced from cave to cave, hoping for a spark, even embers for a direction to begin within. "Still small. Bigger than us, of course. Appearing wounded."

"Appearing?" Rarity said with a blink. "Cannot say I like the sounds of that."

"Don't you worry, princess," Rainbow chided in. "We'll knock him around to make sure he's actually wounded."

"Though if the fella were hurtin'... he'd probably be in this cave here... or the one up there."

"I agree. The multiple sightings state this as his current home. Doubtful he'd make a trip to the other ridges in his current state."

"Oooh! Hey! The map's getting dark! Who's stepping it way too close?"

Before the rest could recognize the shadows, the darkness was already upon them, three blurs from the sky. None could look up as the pressure on their necks forced them down. The rest of their bodies slammed into the ground as the mass of a palm crushed into their shoulders.

Bodies pelted the floor to horrible sounds—groans of stone and unkind thuds. The dust settled as quickly as it rose. Six friends, pinned apart, two caught by the hulking masses between them.

Fluttershy didn't have time to yelp as the bottom of her muzzle smacked into the ground. The impact should have been harder, but even then, it was a smack on the jaw. She didn't try to struggle. No whimpers of the end. Rather her eyes rose from the shadows on the ground.

Her cheek squished onto the stone as she looked across the ground. Over to where Rarity and Pinkie were smacked into the ground. No hope for a wiggle as the mighty claws pinned them so. Hardly could they look up—heads locked by claws.

Yet Fluttershy was able to inch hers and look left.

Rainbow and Applejack struggled against the dragon between them. They bucked his claw away. But the red beast had enough. His knee stomped into Rainbow's back, while his claw, its sharpness glinting in the sunlight, set into Applejack's throat. Blood trickled out.

So this is it then.

The end.

Why had she been so calm? No whimpers or croaks or the call for tears. Rainbow was hyperventilating as a nick on the throat drew a slice of blood. Applejack struggled to breathe from the weight of the knee. Pinkie and Rarity were underneath the weight of carriages from the heft of the dragon between them.

And Twilight's eyes speedily scanned the surroundings for a plan of escape. She wiggled faster to the speed of her panic. Hyperventilating at the lack of a solution. Her horn glowed, casting sparks on her captor. Those sparks bounced off his scales.

The purple dragon growled at the one on top of Twilight, nudging his chin upward. 

In the next second, that dragon grabbed her horn, squeezing it. Twilight cried as her hooves smacked the stone as magic ceased from her horn.

Fluttershy rolled beneath the immense weight, feeling like only a fraction of the dragon was being pressed down on her. Her pink mane laid across her neck and pooled on the ground next to it. She looked up at the dragon on top of her.

Had his grab of her horn been a mark of intelligence? Or the mere stopping of something shiny?

Her view ascended the frame of purple scales to the beast that encompassed them. Ash covered him. His spines, rugged though rounded, weren't as sharp as the others. His emerald frills were rich in colour; his snout, solid and perceptive. 

He stared forward at the other two from high above. Eyes glared... although they shone. Enough to glow. They were commanding in a way unexpected of a beast. That he was something more than primal.

The corner of his face twitched in feeling the contact. He glanced at Fluttershy from his perch. Looking down and looking down with an expression... not of disgust—but something close to it. Like seeing a foe but confused by them. He kept looking into her eye amidst the sea of pooling mane.

Then the dragons started to growl.

And  that's when Fluttershy became scared.

Rarity and Pinkie were the first to wiggle in hearing their dragon speak. Growls and roars, slow and sinister, their language, dripping in gruelling tone, as drool smacked in globs from the corners of its mouth.

Its voice vibrated in an unsteady fashion throughout its body, the shivers it sent from its claws and their bodies, a tingle, unsettling, that crept underneath the skin. Its talking was more than audible. It attacked every sense. Wafting breath inhaling poison into their snouts.

Fluttershy had been the most scared of the dragons because, unlike the rest of her friends, all in a worse spot than herself, she, for whatever reason, could understand them. 

Beyond the implications of their voices.

To actually understand what was said.

"...white one... big stew... creamy milk..."

Fluttershy's eye widened in shock. She shook, not in escape from the claw—but in a flush of panic. She expected the force on her neck to double—but the dragon didn't do anything at all.

The silent beast raised an eyebrow before watching his brothers. Watching them speak, then glancing at her.

“...Blue one... Orange One... Feisty...”

It slurped its foaming drool.

“...Better had... while alive... juicy... juicy juicy juicy!”

Fluttershy cried in a yelp and rocked back and forth in a desperate bid to escape. The pressure on her neck doubled as the claw pinned into her spine. Fluttershy wobbled and kicked and whimpered. Outright screaming and crying with a mouth that could not close. Someone else was shouting—a voice of a pony. Twilight called for him to leave her alone. To focus on her instead. Anything to be brave.

But the dragon lowered himself to the freaking girl, with puffs of smoke trailing from his snout, examining Fluttershy's face closely, as his breath flared back her furs. Little marks of snoot tinged their tips. His talon stabbed into her mane and swept it off her face—exposing it. Exposing her.

The pressure on her back and the crushing of her chest into stone caused it harder for her to breathe. Fluttershy squeezed at every breath. They came smaller and faster as the corners of her vision started to darken. Blood pumped in her veins, feeling cold and numb, throughout her body, as the effect echoed in her ears. 

Fluttershy glanced at her wings. Unable to feel them—but seeing them flare. Twitching uncontrollably as they limply beat onto the ground. Spreading and shrinking. Weakly trying to take flight.

Yet her eye flew back to look at his face, the intimidation it stroked in coming close, the amplification of the bearded spines dotting across his jaw with a few above his lip—scales flexing to the angle of his head. Lips parting. Fangs showing. White and piercing. Long with a forked tongue behind.

Maw able to devour meat.

It should have overloaded her into an endless sleep.

Yet those eyes were captivating.

Green with the glow of the moon behind it. Fierce, yet not malicious. Concentrated on making a discovery. It stole her into a calm, a hitched breath, peaceful to whatever happened next. Even if all this was to snag an ear for an appetizer.

 "...That one... ANNOYING... Eat Now! NOW!" 

The purple dragon was slow in turning over his gaze, as though the others were not worth his time, pests that he barely put up with. He rose from his kneel on the yellow pony. Then his expression changed. Everything Fluttershy feared to see.

Lips raised and fangs bared. Choke of a growl that was only a growl. No words had come from him. No attempt at speech. Maybe he was beyond the rest in that. Unable to speak even in their language of accentuated roars.

“.......SMAAAAALLLL...........ONLY NEEEEEEDS OOOOOOONEEE!.......YOU GIVE THE REST......." 

The other dragon raised his knee from Applejack and stomped it into the ground, creating a crater with the impact, slamming his other claw back into the mare. He snarled at the purple dragon. Both growled at him.

The purple beast looked down at Shy one more time. Enough to see the horror in her expression—one different from the rest. Others were fearing the unknown. But not her. And that difference could be felt.

"Please."

The crackled cry escaped her. Both of her eyes looked up to him. Foolish and stupid to attempt to talk to a dragon. And yet she did. Placing all of her faith in him. She swallowed, moving her head in his palm, going to speak again.

"Please don't let them do it."

The dragon's face exploded in a series of blinks as his features lightened. His lips opened a little to no hope of close. He returned to looking at the rest of the crew, which were busy in the domestic dispute for more food.

The rest of the girls saw this.

"Shy! Are ya crazy! You... you can't plead with these things to do anything! They'll—"

The dragon had dived his muzzle into Fluttershy throat, the moral of the lesson, felt instead of heard, in feeling his snout brush into her coat. Within seconds those fangs would bear into her throat. Tearing it out. Either having understood her with rage or truly being a brute.

Or maybe he would do worse than kill as all the dragons were male.

Those long and repeated sniffs on her neck ignited that fear.

Then on a final sniff...

...the claw freed from her neck.

The dragon charged forward without warning, roaring without words, bearing his claws and his fangs, launching himself into the other two. He bolted at them and clasped at their throats, screaming louder and rising them higher into the air—before slamming them down.

Their claws released the mares on reflex as their weight, born from the momentum of the claws, crashed into the ground. Each of the girls rolled onto their hooves and stumbled around in a panic as, behind them, the dragon was hunched over the other two.

In the seconds of confusion, he lifted the fat one, picking him up and pummeling him into a boulder—slamming his back into stone. The fat of green roared for a return in stepping off the rock. Yet a purple fist charged into his belly, causing him to lurch back and his head to lean forward, which met the spin of the other claw.

The purple dragon entered a spin after his first punch, the second knocked into the fatty's face and, as the injured dragon crashed into the boulder again—a palm covered his face and, with a pull, was then smacked into the rock with the full might of a dragon.

Once. Twice.

Saved from the third time.

By the rising of the other dragon. Taller and bulkier than the rest. Coming behind the purple one, boring its jaw into his shoulder and neck. Biting through the sheet of scales to the flesh behind. A burst of blood curved from the torn flesh.

"G-Girls!" called a voice from behind. "O-On me! Quickly!"

Fluttershy was stumbling back as she was watching the fight, the smaller dragon, sweeping his foot into the leg behind him, twisting as he did so, able to throw the bulk of the beat overhead. He slammed him into the ground, the impact releasing the jaw's grip on his throat—revealing the gap to open flesh.

The tissue beneath was red and bleeding like raw meat. The plump muscles pulsating, squirting blood. Fluttershy could hardly swallow at the sight. Much less take her eyes away from the life beneath a dragon's scales.

"Q-Quick! Let's get out of here!" Rainbow called as the gang huddled into a circle, watching the brutality ahead. The purple dragon kept slamming his fist into the face of the blue dragon. Meanwhile, behind, the fat one wobbled off from the boulder. "Winner of this gets to have all six of us!"

Magic sizzled. "Nopony move! I d-don't where this will take us—but it'll take us away from here!"

Fluttershy's chest closed at hearing that. Around them drew the glow of a circle that blew minuscule currents. In the distance, the dragon turned, over his shoulder, side of his face bloody, his eye on her.

"T-The right!"

The dragon looked right as the fist bore in time to feel the force of a punch, the green dragon, winding up from around the boulder, clocking him in surprise. The purple predator fell on his back, rocking to get up—until the fat one fell over him.

"Ha! Purple one's going down! Enjoy being dinner for a change!"

Fluttershy's pupils shrank at that implication. Wanting to cry out whoever said it in the pack. Yet she couldn't break the gaze shared between her and him. Swallowing and shivering in being unable to say or do anything. He looked back at her, even as the other drag dug into him, with a gaze, not mad or sad, but rather, intense on her.

The blast of magic singled its completion. The third dragon rose and stood over the fallen one. There was nothing that could be done. Nothing could be said to stop any of this. Fluttershy didn't know why it happened. What use there was in it.

But silently.

She mouthed the words.

'Find me.'

Then the third dragon fell onto him.

And everything flashed to white.





The bubble dissipated over the winding path, the six dropped onto dirt, surrounded by grass and hills, the view of buildings on the horizon. None rose to their hooves as all had lost the strength to do so. Escaping death had exhausted them of everything.

"We lived," Rainbow said, lying on Applejack's back, the pair stacked. “We lived. Holy Celestia! We're alive! Talking and breathing and all of that. Oh, mom and dad! Oh, clouds in the sky! We're alive! We're alive."

Rarity had rolled onto her back, uncaring for the patch of mud, white coat and violet mane, no longer meaning that much. She breathed even in the splash of filth. "Oh, darling. How much I share that sentiment. That was insanity. How close we came... how close we were... had those brutes not gotten greedy."

Applejack breathed the hardest. "Ya... ya think that was it? Their snarls over who got what?"

"Had to be! Did you see how they both looked at that purple one? Think they wanted to steal both Twilight and Fluttershy!" Pinkie attempted to sit up, barely able to do that, resting on her rump. She looked over to Shy, who, at the moment, laid back on a rise of a grassy hill. "He was looking at you like something special too! I-I was so worried that... that..."

"I saw it the closest." Twilight was the first to reach her hooves, falling left and right, barely able to stand. "He definitely had an interest in her. Don't know in what capacity. But he would have done her differently than the rest."

But Fluttershy could say nothing to the rest. Only for tears to break in the corners of her eyes. She cried and curled into herself. Turning onto her side and tearing up for all of the past events. Due to the feeling of surviving it all.

"Least we know that one's dead for sure."

Fluttershy choked a little bit harder on that. A rise in her lungs to voice opposition. To state a feeling different from the rest. Yet she couldn't. All she could do was cry and cry, even on the walk home and all throughout the night.

Unable to manage more than a sniffle.





Moonlight shone through the window above the bed. Fluttershy laid underneath the covers. Eyes never able to stay shut. Cabin empty for once. The one night she would take the company in anyone or anything.

The event played back in her mind. Not the surge of fear or all the repressed feelings from it. Only that dragon. Seeming like he knew that she could understand. Yet he'd said nothing—no words or attempt at speech. Not attempting any means of communication.

Even at the end there, that sniff and that charge, what was that for? No shout or claim or anything. Was it for their sake or the mere summoning of rage? There was no answer, no matter the tossing and the turning. Mane frizzled, and her coat a mess.

She struggled to sleep to get to sleep.

Until there came a knock at the door. Slow and dead in sound. Tapping with long intervals in-between. It roused her from whatever miniature comatose state she'd been in. Enough to roll out of bed, landing on weak hooves. A stumble, wobble of the body, out the bedroom and into the hall.

Where the glow of fire existed at its end. It glinted into the glass of the second-floor window. It looked over the bridge and to the forest in the distance. Guards travelled outside, silhouettes due to the distance, holding up torches as they stormed all over.

And the dull knocking did not stop.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. So very not well.

She rushed down the steps and paused on the final few. A figure blocked the light coming through the door's window. Imposing and featureless. Merely leaning back and falling forward. Those knocks.

They lightly pounded.

Fluttershy looked back up the stairs to the hall. Knowing the bedroom door was still open. That she could snuggle underneath the covers, clench her eyes, and hope for everything to be okay in the morning. Yet the figure kept its knocking.

Escape out through the back? Find friends or anyone for help? Wise choices.

Maybe even enlist the friendly animals, any who would wake up for her, to ensure she could do the former.

None of that happened. Logic and self-preservation lost after today. Trembling hooves took her toward the door—a strip of pink mane falling over the left of her face. With a shivering gulp, her hooves reached for the handle, unlocking it, not needing to pull back the frame.

And the dragon fell in.

He crashed onto the ground and covered the floor like a scaly rug.

Rain pelted the entrance of the home and clattered on wood. It pelted against the glass and drench dirt into the beginnings of mud. Grass darkened and froze with the enrichment of a freezing sea. Beyond marched the stomping of hooves and the series of torches coming from the forest.

Fluttershy quivered in place and seized up. Looking down with an upturned muzzle at the lying dragon. Something wet licked at the bottom of her hooves. Warm instead of cold. She looked down to see bright red staining soft yellow.

She yelped.

And then.

"I heard something from over here! Quick! Follow me to the cottage!"

Another sound escaped her at seeing the distant troops winding the path to her home. Darkness thick enough to hide both sides. Though the clattering of armour was somehow louder than the howling winds. Everything felt so frozen from the biting cold.

Fluttershy's gaze jumped from the troops and the dragon, stunned from fear of it all, thrown into a nightmare. Frozen from the cold and the dark. Of the intruder in her home. Blood warming her soles.

W-What... what do I... I...

A groan from him and a yelp from her. Dragon turning on the ground, if only a little, the side of his face lifting from the ground. Again it had been him. Purple scales, chipped and removed, cuts and slashes outnumbering them. Then there was that eye. Always tense, even when opened wide. Death's door narrowed it, and yet, it never lost the vibrancy of its colour.

How it shone in looking up at her. Its intensity wasn't backed by anything. No qualm or expectation. It merely looked at her. If she acted or didn't. What she did or didn't do. It was trained on her. Concentrated. But possessed nothing more behind it.

"Careful! That beast utilizes the dark! Don't let its wounds or smaller size fool you."

"Watch for the grass! It could be prone and waiting to pick us off."

"Certainly more crafty than the usual dragon."

"Have to be if you're weak."

"Harhar!"

"EVERYONE SHUT IT!"

They were hunting for the dragon—no doubt to kill him. Do what dragons had done to ponies. Fluttershy backed away from the body, shaking and wanting to cry, yet unable to do the latter.

Indeed, she could have cried and run away and known she would have been in no harm.

Rather, it's because there was a choice to be made.

And she was scared to make it.

As the dragon watched on, dying, speechless.

Looking into his eye had flooded her with calm. Its glow steadied her nerves. Granting the calmness that allowed for direction. The call to action that the poor mare invested herself into. She steeled herself with a nod and stepped forward.

She stepped closer to the dragon, her hooves splashing into a pool of his blood.

"I-I'm going to h-help you now." Fluttershy dropped her muzzled next to his cheek, looking into his eyes as warm red washed across the underside of her muzzle. His expression didn't change. Though there was a fluttering in his eye due to their proximity. "But I'll need you to do as I say, okay? I'm going to lay next to you now. Try to hold me the best you can. I'll drag you out of view."

The mare backed to his side and then dropped to her knees. A little splash rang out. She wiggled underneath the bulk of his mass, the jolt of frost shaking her away in how cold he was. The dragon saw this. Before he could take offence—black smoke flared from his snout.

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you—"

Fluttershy swallowed those words as she wiggled underneath his body again, the previous cold, no more, as the sheet of scales warmed her like a heated blanket. Something burned beneath his coat. Fire held to warm himself up. Not that he could feel it.

Fluttershy shook her head when she heard the hoofsteps coming closer. Something significant fell over the extent of her barrel. An arm without strength. Large, though slender and lacking the muscle to support itself. It laid over her side and grabbed at her stomach tightly. The tip of his talons cut at her skin.

Her body rose, and her eyes shut, as she bunted the pain and the weight. Legs wobbling intensely as they fought to advance even a step. She fought with a whimper and the lazy sound of a body being dragged. Taking him from the door, far from it, around a corner to the living room.

They reached the carpet out of view from the door and, on arrival, her legs buckled into the ground. The two laid together for a moment. Weak and stuck with the horde soon upon them. There was a sickly feeling in the air—everything, warm and freezing, simultaneously.

I... have to get up now... o-or... or else... or else they'll come in...

The arm slipped off from her barrel and clattered on the ground. Fluttershy rose in a panic and looked at him. His eye closed. The expression of a dead pet. Blood leaking down his body. She wanted to do something for him. Yet she had to deal with the door.

Hoof on the wall for support as she limped across the wall. Bloody hoof marks left on the wood as the fire was at the entrance of her door. Steel on stone as guards crossed the bridges. Ones dressed in gold armour.

Darkness still bathed the entrance and, as the mare got to the door, she fell on it, the last action she could do. It closed and clicked shut. Her rump slid down the bark until crashing on the ground. Once more, her body had given up. Due to emotions this time.

Made weak by every little thing.

Oh dear... dear, oh dear... why me... please not me...

The rattle of armour was louder than the storm.

Hoofsteps sounded closer than the beating of her heart.

The bottoms of spears struck and stuck into the dirt.

"Hello? Is anyone home? By order of the Royal Guard of Princess Celestia herself," the guard gave a final call, "please, anyone here, make yourself apparent at the door! We know someone is here! Please answer!"

Fluttershy whimpered. Seconds to prepare.

"Y-Yes?" Fluttershy lifted her muzzle to let her voice carry out better, slunk behind the door still, praying that they didn't know that. "I-I-I'm F-Fluttershy. H-How can I—"

"Did you close your door only recently?"

"I-I u-um... s-saw ponies coming and I... I..."

"Hey, captain? Easy on the poor girl."

"Private. This is not—"

“This is Fluttershy, the element. Part of the report that sent us out here today. Victim of the attack?"

Fluttershy swallowed. "I-Is that why y-you're here?"

Three figures loomed above the frame of the door, the embodiment of blackness, seeming like blackened foes in a nightmare. They would keep looking like that even on opening the door. Featureless always as they came to devour.

"Princess Celestia has ordered a few detachments of the guard to scout the area for today's assailants. Two were found nearly dead on the spot of the initial attack." The tallest figure in the middle bent forward, coming into the wood, his muzzle and her back, a foot apart, only wood in the way. "There was a reported third we've nearly caught. Lost him in the Everfree. He's suffering from a previous wound that'll likely kill him—as though we'd let him go so easily."

Fluttershy knew it was better not to speak. She would have croaked. And something in that would have let everything out. The captain was still on the other side of the door. His energy phasing through the wood. 

"There appears to be blood on your door."

The mare silently squealed.

"Do you think you could open it up for us? Let us take a look at you? We know the storm is terrible... perhaps you could invite us inside?"

Hyperventilation. Chest closing and never opening. Heat biting in dots across the skin, setting it aflame. Breaths longer and harder but pulling less oxygen. The hall closed. Shrunk. Crunching into itself. Removing the air needed to breathe in this cramped spot.

"Are you nuts, captain!? The poor mare just went through a near-death experience, and you're—"

"Why is there blood on the door private!?"

Fluttershy spoke without knowing. "I-I! Um! I-I run a vet! A-And sometimes... critters... t-they come and they... they..."

"Any of those critters happen to be a dragon?"

"Captain! You're out of line! There's no reason for this!" The left figure turned on the one in the middle. "She nearly died from one today! Report even says she hasn't left her home because they were still out there! The dragon isn't here!"

The captain drove his muzzle into that of the private. "All paths lead here! Those soaked prints match his! He needs to be here!"

"He isn't here! He's already fooled us once with his tracks—what if he's doing it again to buy time in the hunt? You said it yourself." The private shook the face off his. "He's a crafty one! Enough to grasp basic concepts. We'll lose him in the darkness at this point.

The captain was still and silent. Eye narrowing until his hoof smacked into the mud.

That attack scared her more than the roar of a dragon.

"Forgive us for the disturbance, ma'am." The figure turned away. The other two slumped with an exhale. "We'll be here tomorrow to check for an update. Keep your doors and windows locked. Report anything you see as suspicious."

Fluttershy didn't reply because she couldn't. Still, she sat on the ground, leaning against the door, the shadows in the glass frame leaving. Hoofs stomping in mud, fading, as the glow of their torches did the same. Soon it was just the wind. Pouring of moonlight. Darkness and silence returning to the hall.

Not even the sound of breathing ruining the scene.

Oh no.

Fluttershy rose forward, only to fall onto her chest. Crawling the same until she could reach her legs again. Walking across the blood, now lukewarm, around the corner to the dragon lying there. He'd flipped onto his back, face looking at the window at the wall, up and out, to the darkened clouds in the sky.

There'd been a gap in the clouds as though it were a last wish. Revealing the blue glow around the moon to the whiteness that radiated from its surface. So cold. So distant. Yet calming in a sickly way.

His eyes dimmed as well in looking into the final goodnight.

"N-No! You stay with me now! On me now!" Fluttershy collapsed next to him and guided his face over with a hoof, coming to stroke his cheek, feeling the smoothness of his scales—and the unfortunate gaps between them. She pulled his eyes onto hers as she brought her muzzle in close. "You're going to be okay! Y-You have a lot of blood loss. Wounds cold and maybe infected.”

Her lips drove into the bridge between his eyes, kissing the spot, keeping there, as to bring about calm. Her mane pooled onto his chest and draped over its side. The dragon blinked. Coughing, his first hint at breathing again. His gaze flicked over to the mane, barely lifting a claw to collect the bubblegum strands, running a digit over the silk, the delicate feeling of smoothness.

And then his head fell back, and he choked another breath, barely able to wheeze.

Steady yourself. He'll die if you don't. Ignore everything else now. A bloody critter has knocked on your door for help. Fluttershy breathed, in and out, in a premeditated rhythm. Looking to the sofa meant for bears, she dashed toward it, biting its corner and yanking it back. Now do what you normally would. Help him. It's all that matters now.

The cushion hit the ground, and the mare continued pulling it back. Getting it next to the dragon with the other side back into the wall. Then she came next to his side, nudging him, groaning greatly to roll him. Part of his unconscious followed with the movement as he rolled onto the cushion.

And laid on it limply.

Now go and get your kit. This is going to be a long night.

But it's better than being his last night.