//------------------------------// // Gauntlet of Firestone, part 8 // Story: Twilight Gets a Puppy, Season 6 // by TDR //------------------------------// Twilight Gets a Puppy Season 6 By TDR Gauntlet of Firestone, part 8 [Dragonlands] "The rules are simple." Dragon Lord Torch bellowed. "The first to get the Bloodstone scepter and bring it back out to me is the next Dragon Lord." There was a moment. "CHEER!!!" The dragons cheered. "GET READY!" "GET SET!!" "HOLD UP TIME OUT!!" Trixie called up making Torch blink in surprise as everyone looked to the blue mare in confusion. Trixie broke away from the line of others, ran up to Rahs, swept him off his paws, literally, dipped him, kissed him deeply, then ran back into line giggling. This resulted in a number of eye rolls, some laughter, barfing noises from his siblings, and Rahs being embarrassed. "ARE WE DONE? GOOD! GO!" Torch roared. Spike lept off the edge of the pool slamming into and through the falling sheet of lava over the entrance landing hard and skidding across the simmering rock to scan the massive Flame-cano's interior for any sign of the scepter. Several other dragons burst through after him, some like Ember following his example of staying low, others flew through, though that showed to be a mistake as three of them slammed into a stalagmite hidden by the lava fall and were knocked out of the air. Ember and several other dragons took off deeper in and Spike cursed, rushing down along side one of the lava flows shaking off the molten rock that clung to his scales. He was starting to regret this as it was an awful lot of work for a prank. "Hoooo shit..."Scootaloo offered looking past the lava flow having taken the path along with Trixie to get around it. "I know right." Trixie offered as they looked around the massive interior filled with lava and random flame geysers. "How do they expect us to get through this?" Scootaloo stared as a section of wall exploded, though it turned out that was caused by two dragons deciding to try to take each other out of the race at the same time rather than any sort of trap. "They don't, this was made for dragons after all. Sure we could get to where the staff is, but it would take hours of putting up with the heat and dodging burns. Add in thirteen dragons trying to make sure you don't find it and it's insane."Trixie sighed. "Trixie does not plan to go in there now." "I thought you were doing this whole thing to impress Rahs?" Scootaloo offered. "Trixie is. Fuzzy will be greatly impressed that Trixie did not do something leathly stupid to try and win him. After all how well did that work for Snapple Crack, the bug, and the dog last time?" "Huh. That's kinda clever. maybe I should put my bits on you in the pool."Scootaloo considered. "Aren't you a little young to be in the Ponyville pool?" Trixie questioned. "Oh there's a foals pool too. Firefly set that up. Lower payout cause we can only bet what small allowances we have." Scootaloo shrugged. ”We only get into the bigger pools during certain events or if our parents put our names in. That's how Sweetiebelle gets by it, and Lyra has used my name a couple of times to hide that she's bidding. I get a cut when she wins, but I think they are catching on to that.” "Dare I ask where Trixie is in the pool?" "Not that sort of thing. None of us get how the main pool works so we all just dump everything in a pot, say who we expect and who ever wins splits the pot. Changing your bid requires matching your first bid with another. Though we have candy and toys dumped in the pot too and it's all being kept by Firefly and his cut is some candy any time you place a bid so no one really minds." Scootaloo offered. "I've not bid yet, but the most popular one in the pool so far is Jynx." "Because of course she is." Trixie frowned hearing a dragon scream from some where in the Flame-cano. She expected they probably found the magma spiders, or the spiders found them. "Well she is the one most of us see interact with him next to Applejack. You and Saturnia are on the bottom of the list cause some of the kids remember the bear incident, and no one ever really sees Saturnia. Though there's a different pool for her, given she's some how escaped a welcome to Ponyville party thus far." "Trixie is annoyed, but at the same time impressed at the bugs skills at avoiding the pink menace." Trixie huffed. "Trixie would also like to point out the bear was the fault of the two idiot colts." "I know that, you know that, but the two 'idiot colts' are doing their best to make sure everyone one else thinks it was your fault."Scootaloo offered. "Granted I will say Snips has lost a LOT of weight being on the Black List for the last few years. He's still short though." "Pinkie Pie is very thorough it seems." Trixie nodded before pondering. “How does one get in on the pot for when Pinkie catches Saturnia?” Ember cursed to herself as she glided over a gap, it was probably bad form to trick the obsidian bear to go after the larger dragon that had been nearby, though if that green scaled bitch hadn't attacked her first she might not have. Right now she was certain she was closing in on the staff, there was a series of tunnels criss crossing around the outer walls that lead into a major pillar in the center. It was something that only the smaller dragons could use to get further. She wasn't sure if that was set up by her father or her grandmother. The latter seemed to want a much younger dragon to take over, or at least one clever enough to control her greed growth. Ember had learned how her grandmother did her size change thing early on, though she had not amassed enough of a hoard to reach much bigger than she was now for the simple fact she preferred things other than treasure, and growing up was conditioned to not think of anything but gems and such to be a hoard. Still, once she was Dragon Lord she was going to take the time to track down whoever had written Wolf of the Harvest Moon and ask them for an autograph. Twilight raised an eyebrow as Scootaloo and Trixie walked back out of the Flame-cano. “After that display of yours, I'm surprised you gave up.” Bleu offered. “I know my limits.” Scootaloo shrugged. “Trixie has had enough lava spiders for today thank you very much.” Trixie added. “Well they lasted longer than I expected.” Torch declared with a nod. “Top ten at least.” “Well putting those stalagmites just on the other side of the lava curtain was a dick move.” Bleu offered. ”Those things took out six of the competitors right off. And you knew two of them were scared of spiders when you filled the lower cavern with the damn things.” Torch smiled. “There it is!” “There it is!” Spike and Ember whipped their heads around to glare at each other as they came out of the tunnels. Ember was holding one of her wings close to her back as and encounter with a cinder worm in the tunnels had smashed her against a wall injuring it. Spike had more black scales than purple as evidently there was an ash beast somewhere judging by the smell of the soot on him. The chamber they had entered was a large lava bubble that had hardened into a dome with a number of tunnels running out of it from old cooled lava tubes, a large basalt chunk in the center of the chamber had the scepter sitting on it. The pair glared at each other, their eyes narrowing before they both rushed the stone where the scepter was only to screech to a halt as a red clawed hand snatched it up in front of them. “I GOT IT!” Garble shouted doing a little dance on top of the rock. “I'm the Dragon Lord!” “You have to get it back to Dragon Lord Torch first.” Spike snapped. “Not sure how you plan on doing that as I've kicked your tail up and down these mountains for years.” Ember growled a bit of electricity dancing along her bared teeth. “You've seen what my siblings can do... I'm known to WIN fights with them.” Spike offered as he cracked his knuckles. Garble blinked looking at them before frowning. ”Yeah, yeah, whatever, I bet you only win cause..... WHAT THE SHARDS IS THAT!?” Garble yelped taking a step back, Ember and Spike quickly looked behind them to find... a rock wall. The two stared a moment before they slowly turned their heads back to where the scepter had been only to see that Garble had buggered off with it. “I am never going to live down that I fell for that.” Spike offered in full on deadpan. “If we kill him, no one will ever know.” Ember replied just as deadpan. The pair of them nodded and launched themselves after the red drake. Rahs perked up his ears as he heard screaming coming from the cave mouth, the pitch of it was enough for him to flatten his ears. It didn't sound like Spike. The Moon Dog blinked perking his ears back up as he did hear Spike, and the drake was swearing at someone. There was also a female voice that was coming up with even more impressive swears that were thankfully mostly drown out by who ever was screaming. Rahs looked down at Trixie who was acting rather odd to be honest. The mare hadn't even really tried to go into the Flame-cano, she had mostly stuck around Scootaloo near the entrance. While he was quite happy that she hadn't risked herself like that, it seemed a bit out of character for her. Her grandfather also seemed to be fairly calm where he lounged, though he was evidently in an argument with two female dragons, one he expected was Mable from the bridge club. Rahs didn't want to think about massive dragons playing bridge, he also didn't want to think that if the game was the same as ponies played or involved actual bridges. The screaming grew loud enough that the others could hear it now and everyone's attention focused on the falling lava in front of the Flame-cano's entrance just as a red drake burst through it flinging lava everywhere. The lava had barely had time to fall over the hole he made in it with his exit before Ember and Spike exploded out of it with clear murder in their eyes as the red drake ran from them straight towards Torch. Rahs frowned, it looked like he had the scepter. Not like that was gonna stop Rahs from planting him in a rock again if he tried anything stupid. If that made the new Dragon Lord mad enough to try to invade, well good luck getting into the Oneiroi. The pair finally tackled Garble just before he reached Torch, the trio slamming to the ground and tumbling to bounce off one of Torch's claws hissing and biting and letting loose with flame and lightning. As the dust settled, it seemed Garble had held onto the staff despite Spike and Ember's best efforts. Rahs was almost impressed by that given how the pair of them had twisted the drake nearly into a pretzel shape. "I've got the Blood Stone Scepter, I'm the new Dragon Lord." Garble wheezed out. "Off of him." Torch ordered glaring at Spike and Ember, both of whom reluctantly drew back, glaring at the red dragon. Garble winced and started to untangle himself standing to his feet and raising the scepter in the air. "See I've got the Blood Stone Scepter." Garble insisted holding up the scepter. "Where?" Torch questioned. "Right here....." Garble looked at the scepter in his claw. The half melted scepter with the words, 'Made in West Taiwan' etched onto the handle. "What?!?" Garble gasped looking it over and reading the other words on it." What the heck is a Sailor Moon limited edition?" "I thought that looked familiar... Ember grumbled getting a look from Spike. "Wait a tick, that was the one on the pedestal, where's the real Scepter?" Spike demanded looking back at the Flame-cano, not sure if going back in there was worth the prank at all now. "Were you looking for this?" The entire crowd whipped their attention to Trixie, who pulled off her hat and drew the Bloodstone Scepter from inside of it to wave around. "THE FUCK!?!" Twilight, Ember, Spike, and a good portion of the crowd demanded. "Trixie has informed you at least once before that her talent is spectacle, and you cannot tell me that this has not been that!" Trixie grinned. "Oh yeah. I'm putting my bid on her." Scootaloo nodded sagely. Trixie trotted over offering the scepter to Torch who looked at the mare and narrowed his eyes. "You did not even go into the Flame-cano, how did you get this!?" "The rule you gave said we would be doing this today. Trixie does not recall a time ever being given for when we would be going into that death trap, so Trixie snuck in about midnight last night when all the monsters were asleep and retrieved it." Trixie explained. "Thus Trixie also completed the challenge of being clever as no one caught Trixie cheating, and she had to explain it." "I knew i liked this one for some reason." Bleu cackled. "SUCK IT MABLE!! MY GRANDDAUGHTERS THE DRAGON LORD!!!" Trixie's great grandfather shouted. "Huh..... a pony with dragon blood." Torch considered. " Ehh whatever, I've got a beach cabana rented and I'm tired of waiting. Boom, You're Dragon Lord have fun. What are you called?" "The Great and Powerful Dragon Lord Trixie, shall do." Trixie proclaimed "Right. " Torch nodded. "MEET YOUR NEW DRAGON LORD. THE GREAT AND POWERFUL DRAGON LORD TRIXIE SHALL DO!!" "Wait, no, not that last part...." Trixie called up to him. "CHEER!!" And there was cheering.