— Spike —
Spike collapsed onto the floor of the ex-library the instant he crossed the threshold. He wasn't sure if Ember didn't notice or didn't care, but she proceeded to try to walk right over him, fail and join him on the floor, followed by the rest of the dragonesses who seemed to think that on top of them was as good a place to fall over as any.
"You wouldn't—" Ember said, desperately gasping for breath completely independent of the pile of dragonesses on top of her. "Think that—gliding down—from a mountain—would be—so much—work."
"Yeah," agreed Kindle, huffing and puffing just as much as Ember. "What's with that, Ems? Our new bodies are cut; that shouldn't have been that much work."
Ember didn't say anything for a while, until the silence was, not precisely awkward since they were all too exhausted to be self conscious, but very obvious. Finally, she admitted, "I don't know."
"Wish I had a camera," Slag said with a bit of gruff satisfaction, not tired at all. Having been turned into a baby dragon due to her injury, she didn't have wings and thus, had been spared the marathon flight by riding on the back of Carnelia.
"Shut up," Ember groused with something of a pout. "And get me some water." The rest of the dragon pile agreed.
While Slag was in the kitchen noisily dragging a stool over to the sink with effort, Spike spoke up. "...I might know what's going on."
A chorus of indistinct, inquisitive grunts followed.
"It's the magic," he explained, having noticed that the pile of dragonesses on top of him were all still heaving. Part of him was glad he was face-down, while the rest was still very conscious of the warm feel of scales on scales. "The Ring of Ashmund can only change the body of dragons, but if I've learned anything from Twilight, it's that anything as heavy as a dragon has to be using magic to fly, at least a little. That would explain why the rest of you are more tired than I am; I've built up my magic, at least a little. We probably just need some time for our magic to catch up to our bodies."
There was a rumbling of affirmation, when Ember swore. "Damn it, Slag."
"What?" the baby black dragon said, dragging a bucket of water in from the sink.
"You're the only one who was bigger to start with," Ember grumped, then pulled herself half an arm's-length out of the dragon pile and dunked her head in the bucket of water, gulping it down. Once it was as empty as she could make it, she pulled her head out of the bucket and flopped down next to it.
Spike wasn't sure if he should ask, but if he'd learned anything about dragons from Ember, it was to say things anyway. "What about the rest of you?"
"Carnelia's a bit older than me," Ember said, answering for them. "Drift is a bit younger. Kindle's almost as young as you."
"Huh..." Spike said, absorbing the new information while they all just lay there.
Slag dragged the bucket back and forth a few more times, giving each dragon a chance at it, though Carnelia had recovered enough dignity to refuse by the time it was her turn. She still didn't get up, though.
"Do you think they'll catch my father?" Ember asked out of the blue.
"You heard what the old princess did a few weeks ago, right?" Kindle asked rhetorically. "Basically liquified an ancient dragon and chased him into a canyon to the east? If he shows up, I'm pretty sure they'll get him. The question is if he'll show up, though."
"We assume that he will return to his lair to assess the situation and lick his wounds," Carnelia hissed. "But is it truly necessary? What assets will it give him access to?"
"Food?" Drift suggested. "Though I dunno how much that matters since he's been given the baby dragon treatment."
"I don't think there's any more ancient magical artifacts sitting in his hoard if that's what you're asking," Ember responded with as much of a thoughtful frown as she could manage with her face pressed into the floor. "I certainly spent enough time there that I'd have noticed... though if it's something like another ring, then maybe not. He never said anything about it, anyway; he was always too much of a rockhead to care about magic, except for that damn scepter."
"Speaking of magic," Carnelia spoke up. "That is a subject that deserves our focus if we are to ensure that we do not end up in this situation a second time."
"And speaking of food," Kindle added. "Food."
Spike could feel all the attention settle on him, regardless of his ability to actually see any of them.
— Spike —
Spike was already feeling sore from the flight from Canterlot as he returned to the ex-library with a huge load of palace crystal. To his relief and definitely not disappointment the dragon pile had dispersed somewhat after he'd wormed his way out from under it; Ember and Carnelia had chosen seats in the main area, Drift had settled herself into one of the window reading nooks and Slag could be heard rummaging around in the kitchen.
Kindle, on the other hand, remained on the floor, a dragon pile of one, though she'd rolled over onto her back. As she was apparently the youngest beside him and probably the one with the least magic, he didn't blame her.
With a heave, Spike set the two heavy canvas sacks full of crystal down, fished out an apple-sized chunk and set it on her chest.
"Thanks," she mumbled as she moved it to her mouth and started to nibble on it.
"How sweet," Carnelia observed, still sitting casually across the room. "Aren't you going to serve the rest of us as well?"
Spike rolled his eyes. "I wasn't planning on it, no," he said, making his way over to drop into the couch. He'd already eaten while he was out, himself, as it meant he'd have less to carry back.
Carnelia gave the slightest pout, then got up to take her pick of the crystals, followed by the rest of them. "I suppose you just like to see us stretch, hm?"
Spike did his best not to blush, or to look, or to not look as they all did exactly that, bending over to fill their arms with piles of crystal and take them back to their seats. It was a relief when Slag was the only one left, having been late coming in from the kitchen and unable to get access to the bags until the crowd had gone. She seemed to want to take as much as the rest, even resorting to holding a big chunk in her mouth as she adorably waddled away.
"Okay, so... magic," Spike said, doing his best not to acknowledge Carnelia at all, going on to explain his own history, what he could do, which was mostly sending things to alicorns with his breath, and what he'd been able to teach Ember to do, which was send things to someplace in line-of-sight with hers.
"So, it's all in the fire breath, huh?" Kindle asked, having finally sat up in order to pay attention to the lecture-slash-conversation. Crossing her eyes to look down her snout, she let out a small lick of sky blue flame with some curiosity.
"As far as I know, yeah," Spike confirmed, and worked with them all to get them to the point where they were sure they were breathing magic, not just fire. When the time came to show them how it worked in practice, though, Ember was surprised to find that she easily sent her practice stick across the room as well as the stone bust behind it.
"Woah!" Ember exclaimed. "That—that was easy!"
"I suppose that our exhausting flight was a chance coincidence of pushing too far too soon," Carnelia mused, tapping her chin. "If I were to guess, I would say that our magic seems to be adjusting to suit our bodies fast enough."
Buoyed by Ember's success, Kindle set a chair on fire.
It didn't go anywhere.
They were still going to need practice.
— ✶ —
Twilight woke to an empty bed some time around noon and availed herself of the comforts she had installed while practicing with her dream magic. Clean and awake, she checked in with the guards she'd set to watch over the former dragon lord's lair, and reassured them that the portal would remain open and then left to go about her day.
The first thing she did was, of course, check in with Luna and explain the situation. It hadn't been entirely necessary as the portal had been hard to miss, but Twilight didn't really need a reason to go see Luna.
Presumably, the Celestias had noticed the nearly a dozen ponies that had set up watch in the lair, though she couldn't easily confirm it.
After a short working brunch with Luna, Twilight headed off to the old library tree to check in with Spike, Ember and the rest of the dragons.
In contrast to some of the previous times that Twilight had knocked on Spike's door recently, she'd barely started to knock when the door was violently yanked open.
"Did you get him?!" demanded the teal dragon at the door who was, of course, Ember. The smell of smoke that accompanied her was new, but Twilight couldn't exactly say that it was unusual. Nothing seemed to be immediately on fire, so she decided not to mention it.
...Nothing was on fire, was it?
Twilight shook her head as she entered the tree. "No, sorry—uhh—empress," she said, stumbling over the slightly ridiculous title, though she had no right to throw stones given her own librararchy. "But you'd know better than me how long it takes a dragon to travel the distance. I've set up a portal now and sent a squad of guards through to watch it. They'll do a better job of it than we would and come get me if anything happens."
Indeed, nothing seemed to actually be on fire, though none of the other dragons were in sight and it was rather warm inside for a breezy spring day.
Ember immediately slumped at the news, though she recovered fast enough to ask, "A portal? Like, just step through and you're there?"
"Yes, fortunately I had reason to be looking into them," Twilight said. "They're not common because of how difficult and wasteful they are, but I'm an alicorn, so it's right up my alley."
Ember just said, "Huh. Which alley?"
Twilight sighed, sure that Luna would have laughed at that one. "No, no, it's actually at Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower, which I've been using while they clean up and rebuild the palace at the center of town. Obviously, I don't recommend you go through since the whole point is that we're expecting your father with the scepter."
"...Yeah, I'm staying the muck away from that place," Ember insisted with an instinctive snarl.
There was a moment of awkward silence until Twilight suddenly had a thought. "So, Ember; we didn't get around to it yesterday, but the Celestias were suggesting we set you up with something more appropriate in the way of housing as a sort of role model for the rest of dragonkind and now that you're their empress, it makes even more sense."
"I did talk to the... Celestias... about that, actually," Ember said, reminding Twilight that Spike had mentioned Ember being inundated with talk about 'Celestia things' by the daytime alicorns. "And I am way too tired of Spike treating me like I'm always five seconds from setting this place on fire."
"Great!" Twilight beamed. "And since nothing official has been done about it on the Ponyville side as of this morning, it means nopony has told me I can't do it yet."
Ember blinked. "Ponies tell you you can't do things?" she asked, dubious.
Twilight rolled her eyes. "You have no idea," she said. "I get that we have all these construction ponies, stonemasons, architects and all the rest that need the work, but you'd think I could at least clean up the mess I made of my own palace."
"And you want to do that?" Ember asked, incredulous.
Twilight didn't quite blush, but it was a close thing. "It's embarrassing still having it around, to be honest, and I could have it done in an afternoon. You don't need to worry about that, though, my loss is your lava fountain."
"...Lava fountain?"
— ✶ —
Unfortunately for Twilight's eagerness to outrun anypony who had yet to tell her she couldn't magic up a residence for the dragons and Ember's obvious interest in the term 'lava fountain,' their first stop had to be Rarity's tower again to figure out where, out of the land that was available, to do it.
Well, no, the first stop had been Spike insisting they all get washed up because they'd been practicing magic, which for dragons apparently meant a lot of fire.
Twilight was not jealous of the eagerness that Spike's harem displayed in reaction to the idea of learning magic in contrast to her own demigoddesses. Again, as with Corona's scrying spell, that was envy, not jealousy.
Minor frustrations aside, Twilight had gone ahead to Rarity's tower to get started while the dragons cleaned up from their sooty study session. By the time the six of them showed up—which was really quite quickly for six people to shower, actually, but she supposed they didn't have any manes or coats—Luna had finished with her immediate business and Rarity had prepared a large table covered in maps of Ponyville.
Or maybe the maps were just kept there; that seemed like something they'd need quite often, especially since some of the maps had been layered over with modifications on onionskin paper that had been pinned in place.
"Firstly," Luna said, taking the lead. "Is to ask what sort of environs you wish to inhabit." Twilight had noticed that her marefriend's diction tended to regress in more formal situations, so apparently she was taking this seriously.
It was cute.
"Alas, while it would certainly be easier and quite appropriate to put you up in one of the nearby mountains, the purpose of this venture is for you to be seen, so they are not quite nearby enough for our purposes," she explained, then added, "Nor do we wish for them to be. Sweet Apple Mountain has caused enough problems in shading crops that had previously been very productive. Though the ubiquity of light from the sky rainbow has ameliorated this, we still do not wish to exacerbate the issue."
Twilight nearly choked on her own tongue. "The sky rainbow?!" she asked.
Luna gave Twilight a mischievous smirk. "Yes, well, it has taken my sisters so long to name themselves that it seems to have slipped their mind that they also need to name their actual selves, so that is the best that I can do for now."
"Do I want to know what you're calling the other one?" Twilight asked, still recovering from her coughing fit.
"I am taking suggestions, but for now, Candesca is 'the great warm spot,'" Luna provided.
"...Anyway, yes," Twilight said, directing the dragons' attention to the maps. "We don't want you too far away, but out on the borders should be fine. I was thinking something on the Everfree side since ponies haven't expanded in that direction. There's even a river nearby for... let's say, emergency hydration purposes."
"I am perfectly capable of not setting things on fire!" Ember objected, crossing her arms with a pout.
"Are you, though?" Spike asked.
— Ember —
Ember would never admit it, but she was conflicted about having the pony princess just magic up a place for her and the others. It hadn't escaped her notice that they'd asked her what she wanted and then went on to add a bunch of limitations and rules that amounted to them basically having the area picked out already. They weren't wrong about any of it, but she'd had enough of being led around by the nose 'for her own good.' Getting away from that sort of thing was the entire reason she'd come to Equestria to begin with.
So no, she wasn't entirely happy about it, no matter how much the phrase 'lava fountain' bounced around her head like a squirrel on a hot rock.
More vaguely, she was also a bit uneasy about whether this made sense empire-wise. She wanted to show dragons that they could live better lives, yes, and part of that was cooperating with ponies like sensible people, but did being handed everything like this really show that?
Maybe not, but it had to be better than living in the basement of some dude's barely habitable tree. Tartarus, it was probably better than using the Ring of Ashmund to build something herself, which was hard to admit, but she didn't want to glorify the power and strength of being the biggest asshole, even if it was the only thing she really understood.
Spike would be surprised to know, but she did actually listen to him. Ever since she'd 'found' that book, she hadn't been sure what to make of it. It showed her things that she wanted—a society with dignity and culture ruled by those of actual merit—but like a wolf looking up at a bird, she didn't really understand how to make it happen.
The area that the pony alicorns led them to was greener than any place in the dragonlands, but that didn't make it lush or especially picturesque. It had been explained to her that ponies had been scared of the nearby forest until the alicorn of the sun had turned most of it into a crater. There was still a decent strip of forest on this side of the crater, but it wasn't something you could exactly get lost in anymore.
Having gone untended for so long, the area was mostly shrubland. There was plenty of greenery, but the ground was hard and kind of tired looking.
At least, it was until the most boring demigod alive arrived. At first, she'd forgotten that the pony with the hat was supposed to be one of the demigods, but she hadn't met that many ponies and the way she stomped her hooves and created an entire field of fluffy green grass was a clue.
Then, the one with the stars reminded everyone that she was the one who gave the demigods their power.
"This species grass is called emerald zoysia," she explained, producing a shining star from her neckpiece and even from a distance, Ember could feel it. It was like the feeling of the crown she'd held yesterday, only a hundred times more.
It was the feeling of raw, powerful magic like she'd never felt before, deep in her chest.
Then it changed; it crystalized, and so did the grass.
"...And now it's emerald zoysia, made of actual emeralds growing like grass," she concluded with half a smirk, half a grimace, as if she were both proud and a little ashamed.
Ember felt similar, but for different reasons. Pride, she didn't quite manage, but there was a definite jealous greed. It made her wince, though, because grazing like animals and ponies was beneath them.
Drift didn't seem to think so, and bent down to casually take a bite. "Hmm," she said, thoughtful as she chewed. "Chewy, but with a snap at the end," she judged. "Definitely emerald, though."
She'd always been one of the weird ones, having grown up near ponies. It didn't matter that that was what Ember was now going for—it was still weird. Shut up.
Moments later, there were also clumps of 'ruby grass' dotting the area, which got similar reactions. Ember didn't exactly get how the names of the grasses were relevant to Twilight being able to turn them into miracles, but the feeling of the magic and how it crystallized... that she was kind of beginning to get a feel for.
As everyone else began walking up to the proposed site, Ember bent over and picked a clump of the emerald grass. Checking to see if anyone was watching her, she fixed that feeling in her heart and blew her coral-colored fire over it, turning it into ruby.
"Woah," was all she could say, her eyes wide. Taking another quick glance at the group of mixed alicorns and dragons, she shoved the ruby grass into her mouth and hurried after them.
It tasted kind of bland and weirdly stringy for a gemstone, but it was definitely ruby.
Ember needed to feel more of this pony's magic.
— ✶ —
Twilight was a little concerned at the initial lack of interest from Ember in building her a... well, a palace, basically. She was a very closed-off individual, though, and seemed to be the most free with her feelings when she was being rude, so maybe it was fine?
Whatever the cause, it seemed to go away after the first few minutes. She was rather proud of the emerald and ruby grasses, even if she'd had to resort to puns to ensure they still grew. That seemed to be... not a rule, exactly, but a decent guideline, at least; it was simple enough to brute force the magic to make any natural, normal thing, but if she wanted it to behave differently than it normally would, she needed more weight of logic behind it.
For things that she knew how to do with unicorn magic, that was enough to let her do it with dream magic. For the more esoteric things, though, she hadn't found a more effective logic than puns.
Just having to admit that puns were a kind of logic was painful, but Luna was right about that.
Regardless, Ember remained stoic throughout the process—mostly—but she did at least become more interested and involved, almost to a strange degree, actually. The promised lava fountain got her interest, of course, but she also seemed prone to make frivolous requests. Twilight had heard Rarity complain about customers changing their minds before, but did she really need to go from granite to basalt to marble and then back to basalt and granite again? Twilight would have said that the dragon empress was yanking her chain just to test her patience, but rather than looking proud and smug, it was those moments when she seemed the most intensely focused, almost ignoring Twilight herself.
Also, Rarity was doing the same thing, the hypocrite.
That was fine, though. Twilight was enjoying having something to experiment with. Not everything she tried went exactly how she'd wanted it to and she'd had to teleport back to Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower to grab a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary from the crates of things recovered from the destroyed palace in order to do a few things, but it was incredible to stretch her metaphorical magical wings.
The one thing that kind of spoiled it was the little voice in the back of her head that reared its head every time she punned and created something unnatural, saying, 'what if this reminds somepony of Discord'. It was true that Twilight hadn't been in her right mind when she had gone off on Rainbow Dash about implying that Discord was her father, but she really, truly did not wish to be connected to the draconequus in any way, shape or form—conceptually, metaphorically or even in rumor.
...But apparently not enough to not use lava tubes in the plumbing.
If there was one thing that surprised her about the whole thing, though, it was how not at all instant the whole thing actually was. Setting aside the vagaries of working to someone else's half-formed ideas or having to go fetch reference books, even having a star on hoof to provide the magic was only barely sufficient for such a large structure and they all spent a significant amount of time simply standing around waiting for the magic saturation to grow dense enough for one thing or another.
Another unforeseen delay was, simply, the puns and the fact that Twilight was not all that great at them. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of many things, and her sense of humor had improved a lot recently thanks to bantering with Luna, but coming up with the right pun for a specific purpose was not easy.
All in all, it took Twilight most of the afternoon to finally end up with something the dragons were happy with, but even so it was vindicating to prove that she really could deal with the ruined palace in an afternoon as she'd insisted.
It did, of course, occur to her that it would have gone even faster at night, but the bottleneck of her single star had been unexpected and she'd wanted to get it done as fast as possible while working inside everyone else's schedules as well. In spite of all of Twilight's power and impossible creations, Applejack's help had been uniquely suited to the situation for not needing to engage in the brute force saturation method that Twilight was using; if she had to guess, she'd say that the logic that powered Applejack's magic was the self-reinforcing logic of her cutie mark.
That idea alone was worth ten afternoons of playing with magic, and it had hardly been a chore.
The end result was... well, it wasn't what Twilight would have designed, but Twilight wasn't a teenaged dragon or a fashionista. It was part castle and part manor house, all in polished dark gray stone with the occasional white trim and the occasional crystal, though for the most part it wasn't anything that would be too tasty to dragons.
Structure-wise, the central building was one big, long open hall flanked by four wings of rooms, two in the front and two in the back, ironically making something close to a dragonfly shape from above for any dragons that were flying, which might have helped in the creation it if she'd noticed it at the time.
And, of course, there was the lava fountain out front which was quite artistic.
Yes, Twilight would say the afternoon was well spent.
— Spike —
Spike was doing another walkthrough of the rather larger than necessary castle-palace thing that Twilight had been all too happy to just... magic up out of nowhere, apparently.
Yes, he'd been there when she'd tip-bribed that waitress for silence with two gold bars, but this was something else entirely.
It hadn't been more than fifteen minutes since Twilight, Luna, Rarity and Applejack had left when there was a crash from the central hall. Spike didn't even question it; he instantly knew it was going to be Ember breaking something.
To his complete lack of surprise, Ember was large enough to reach up and touch the ceiling of the hall, which was an easy estimation to make because that was what she was doing. More specifically, she was plucking some kind of gargoyle-looking thing off the wall and tossing it over her shoulder where it landed on top of another one.
This was strange, because Spike specifically remembered Rarity complaining that gargoyles belonged on the outside and had forbidden Twilight from including them.
The mystery was solved when the towering form of Ember took a deep breath and blew a plume of coral fire at the corner where she'd removed the last gargoyle, producing another one, though even from the ground Spike could tell it was misshapen.
Ember, too, noticed, so she plucked it off the wall and tossed it on top of the other two. Even expecting it, the crash was loud and he gave a slight hiss, covering his ear holes.
Ember paused, looking down at Spike, who had never seen such a large dragon looking so sheepish.
"So, it turns out that magic is easy, but making things look good is hard."