For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, neither party moved a muscle. The seven ponies were frozen on the spot at the entrance of the cave, their breaths caught in their throats as they stared with wide eyes at the cave’s lone occupant. Similarly, the vast crimson-coloured dragon sat motionless at the other end, his enormous body filling nearly half the cave, staring back at the ponies with massive yellow eyes.
There came a feeble squeak from somewhere at the back of the group, which echoed through the whole cave. Then, all hell broke loose.
The dragon opened wide its enormous mouth and with an ear-splitting roar, sent forth a massive plume of red fire. In the last seconds before they all became ponies flambé, Rainbow Dash finally found her voice again and screamed at the top of her lungs, “TAKE COVEEEERRR!”
The seven scattered in all directions, sprinting alongside the wall of the cave as the fireball exploded at the entrance, desperate to find cover wherever they could. Twilight, Starswirl and Applejack huddled together behind a massive boulder off to the left of the entrance, while Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie led the others on a run behind a small wall of stalagmites. The dragon stretched out its limbs, each the size of a tall tree, slowly lifting itself off the ground as it roared and raged. As Twilight raised her head to get a look, she felt her blood run cold at the sheer scale of it.
It was almost twice the size of any dragon she had seen. Even among the massive swarm of dragons that had made the Great Migration last year, she had never seen one quite the same size. Scales each the size of a dog shone red in the mingled red light of its fire, and the ethereal multi-coloured light of the twin lanterns. Huge pale horns protruded from its head, just above its brow, the same colour as its claws and teeth. A line of ridges ran from the back of its skull, down its back, until they formed a mass of spikey horns on the end of its tail. Huge ragged wings sprouted from its back, furled for the moment in the tight confines of the cave.
“What in the hay is that thing doin’ here?!” Applejack shouted above the din.
Twilight peeked over the top of the boulder to see the dragon watching her friends’ running with hungry eyes. “It must be guarding the Tears, right Starswirl?”
The old unicorn nodded. “Aye. As I said, it would be likely that such a powerful artefact would be guarded or protected… but a dragon! I never anticipated that!”
“Well, what do we do now?! We can’t exactly drive it off, the entrance is too small!”
For the briefest second, Twilight’s fear and panic gave way to scientific curiosity. “Hey, that’s right… how’d it get in here in the first place then?”
“Back on topic, if you please Twilight!” shouted Starswirl as he yanked Twilight back from peeking over the top again. The boulder suddenly shook as a second fireball cannoned into the other side of it. The three ponies cowered even lower behind it.
Over at the other side of the cave, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Rarity leapt from behind the stalagmite formation and took cover behind a small ridge of stone. And just in time too, as the dragon’s massive tail came down upon the stalagmites. The tailspikes, each the size of a bear, crushed the rock formation to dust.
Rainbow Dash wiped droplets of perspiration from her brow. “This is nuts! We gotta get past that guy! I’ll bet he’s blocking the way to wherever the Tears are!”
“But how?!” Rarity wheezed, “That beast would turn us into charcoal before we were even close to it!”
As if emphasising her point, a blast of heat and a fierce red glow from the other side of the ridge indicated the impact of another massive torrent of flames. Rainbow Dash desperately wracked her brain for some sort of idea. The growing heat of the boulders at her back was an ever-present indicator that time was quickly running out.
“Rainbow, we gotta move!” Pinkie’s shrill cry brought her back to reality as the air around them began to ripple and the far side of the ridge began to glow red. Pinkie Pie looked around for some new hiding place and saw a perfect hiding spot a particularly broad stone column. Beckoning to Rainbow and Rarity, she expertly cartwheeled out from behind the ridge, the dragon’s fire just singeing the tip of her tail. With mere nanoseconds to spare, she rolled to the column and crouched low behind it. She beckoned with a hoof at the other two ponies.
Rainbow Dash zoomed from the ridge to the stone column, so fast that the naked eyed could barely register it as anything short of teleportation. Rarity hung back a moment, not near fast enough to make such a run with the dragon glaring straight at her.
The massive red monstrosity stooped its head low as it approached the boulder where Rarity was hidden. Opening its gaping maw wide, it tensed up its muscles and prepared to lunge forward. But before it could, it felt two blasts of magic strike it in the back of its head.
Twisting around, it saw Twilight and Starswirl, standing together atop the boulder, horns aglow as they prepared to launch another blast of magic missiles.
Rarity saw her chance as the dragon turned away from her to deal with the other unicorns. Her gaze focused on Pinkie and Rainbow, she ran with all her might, jumping haphazardly over the beast’s massive tail. With one final stumble, she came skidding to a faceplanting halt behind the column.
Pinkie helped Rarity up. “Any ideas yet, Rainbow?” asked the unicorn as she dusted the grit off her shoulders.
Rainbow peeked out from behind the stone pillar, watching as Starswirl shot a beam of yellow magic straight into the dragon’s face. It reeled back, each step reverberating through the ground, shooting random blasts of fire up at the ceiling as it stumbled. “I got one… Hey Pinkie, you think you can get over to the others?”
“Oh, I got a few tricks up my sleeve… even if I don’t have sleeves, but that would just be weird if I actually had sleeves! But yeah, I can get to them easily!” Pinkie shouted back.
“Good. Here’s my plan. I’m gonna fly up to the dragon, buzz around his head, keep him distracted. Then you guys run around him, under him, whatever, just get past him,” Rainbow explained.
Rarity gasped. “But Rainbow, that’s far too dangerous! Not to undermine your self-confidence, but surely you remember what happened last time you tried to fight a dragon alone?”
Rainbow winked. “That’s the thing, I’m not gonna be alone. Pinkie, I need you to get over to the others and tell Twilight and Starswirl that once everypony’s past the dragon, they start blasting it with some spells to distract it, and I’ll make my getaway!”
Pinkie saluted and began making her way towards the entrance to the cave, where the others were hidden. Rainbow and Rarity had no idea how she would manage the move quick and stealthily enough for the dragon to not see her, but as they watched her, their fears were quickly put aside.
With leaps and bounds of uncharacteristic grace and balance, Pinkie managed to weave her way around the dragon’s stomping feet and swinging tail, before diving behind a rock just by the cave wall. She ducked behind the rock and, in some bizarre mockery of reality itself, popped back up behind the same boulder that Twilight, Starswirl and Applejack were hidden behind.
Before Twilight could even so much as sputter in disbelief, Pinkie rattled off in one breath, “Twilight! Okay, Rainbow says that she’s gonna distract the dragon while we all make a run for the cave behind it ’cos that’s probably where it’s hiding the Tears, then once you’re clear of it, you and Starswirl start blasting him with your magic and stuff, and Rainbow can make her escape.” She paused a moment to take a breath. “Got all that?”
After a second of Twilight running over what she had heard, the unicorn nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Pinkie nodded and turned to find shelter behind another rock. She paused a moment, however, when she noticed something. “Hey, isn’t Fluttershy with you?”
“I thought she was with you guys,” Twilight replied. “You sure she’s not over there with you?”
“Sure as sugar! I better go find her before we try this…”
But Rainbow Dash, it seemed, had other ideas. As soon as she saw Pinkie finish telling Twilight her plan, the pegasus unfurled her wings and took to the air. She flew high up, almost to the cave ceiling, and hovered there a moment as she looked over the layout of the cave for anything that she could use in her favour. “Alright,” she told herself, “distracting time… here we go!”
She dived. The dragon’s massive head followed her. Rainbow knew what was coming and flew low just in time. A plume of crimson fire zoomed over her head at exactly where she had just been, blackening the tips of her tail, but leaving her otherwise unscathed. No worries, she thought to herself, no different to those cloud-blasters at the Academy. “GO, NOW!” she shouted at the others, who obediently began sprinting towards the other side of the cave, which remained obscured by the dragon’s massive bulk.
For a moment, she could hear Starswirl’s deep voice shouting out, “By the Six, Twilight! That friend of yours is an incredible flyer!”
Rainbow smiled to herself from the compliment, but kept her mind on the task at hand, zooming straight down at the dragon’s head. She flew rings around him, watching as it whipped its head round and round to try to keep up with her. If she kept this up, he should be nice and dizzy soon enough…
Unfortunately, even with her fast eyes, Rainbow Dash was only able to keep an eye on two of the dragon’s defences at a time. For this decoy attack, she had been focused mostly on the fireballs spewing from its mouth, and its huge, spiked tail. She did not notice its huge hands, tipped with claws like pickaxe-blades, until it was too late. As she swerved up to avoid them, one of the long claws slashed a shallow gash into her shoulder.
Inside the entrance tunnel, Fluttershy huddled up against the cavern wall, eyes firmly shut and forehooves clamped on her ears to block out the sound of the battle going on inside the cave.
As the dragon roared again, she whimpered. Dragon… why did it have to be a dragon?! Why couldn’t it have been something else… ANYTHING else?!
She knew she had to help her friends. She wanted to help her friends, but… how could she face that… that monster?! One breath of fire and we’d be goners! And that’s just the fire, there’s still the razor-sharp claws, and the teeth the size of fenceposts, and the tailspikes…
Then she heard a new sound. A scream of pain and shock, not from the dragon, but from an all-too-familiar voice. As she hazarded a peek into the cavern, she froze as she saw the source of the scream.
It was like time itself had slowed down. Just by the dragon’s left shoulder, Rainbow Dash was flapping weakly to stay in the air. Blood dripped from a gash on her shoulder, which snaked down her back, across her shoulder-blades to the base of her wings. The spray of red that still hung in the air drew her eye to the dragon’s tailspikes, the very tip of which was stained with fresh blood.
In an instant, Fluttershy snapped.
Flying with speed born of newfound rage and ferocity, she was up in the dragon’s face in an instant, landing on the monstrous beast’s snout and shrieking in its face.
“HOW DARE YOU HURT MY FRIENDS, YOU… YOU MEANIE! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF, ATTACKING OTHER CREATURES FOR NO REASON! JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO ATTACK ANYPONY YOU WANT?!!”
The dragon’s eyes bulged with shock and bewilderment as this tiny creature seemed to show no fear as it shouted in his face. But before the dragon had any chance to respond, be it with words, roars or more fire, Fluttershy clenched her eyes shut a moment, before opening them full and glaring right into the dragon’s face.
Now, dragons are known for many things: their insatiable greed for jewels and precious metals, their breath-weapons, which ranged from the common firebreath, to the poisonous toxic gas-breathers, the less common earth dragons, which spewed up endless heaps of loam and dirt, and even the rare dragons that could actually breathe out thunderclouds. Their ferocity and their size were well known about them too. Their fears, however, were not well known. Nopony had ever witnessed a dragon truly expressing fear. At least, not in known accounts.
This dragon had never been more terrified in his life.
There was something in this pony’s eyes that frightened him more than anything he had ever encountered. They were like deep, dark pits into the depths of someone’s worst nightmares. They were like staring into the pits of Tartarus itself. Every time the dragon tried to make some sound in protest, Fluttershy stepped closer and closer to the beast’s gargantuan eye, until she was almost touching it.
Finally, the dragon could take no more, and he lowered his head down. Then his body as he lay down on his belly, resting his head on the cavern floor. As Fluttershy hopped off of his snout, he placed his clawed hands upon his head and closed his eyes in submission.
A ragged cheer rose up from the ponies who lay scattered around the cave as they rushed out to Fluttershy.
“That was incredible!” Pinkie squealed as she swept the timid pegasus up in a ribcrushing hug.
Applejack shook her head in wonder. “Well I’ll be. Looks like that whole incident back at Smokey Mountain wasn’t a fluke after all, eh girls?”
“Wait…” Starswirl muttered, raising a forehoof. “You mean to say, she’s done this sort of thing before?”
“You mean staring down a dragon? Oh yeah, she’s been there before!” Rainbow said as she came limping past the dragon’s prostrate form. In a flash, Pinkie had grabbed her in a massive hug as well.
“Aagh, Pinkie! Watch the shoulder!”
“Ooh, sorry!” Pinkie loosened her grip on the hapless pegasus in an instant.
Fluttershy rushed off a moment towards the cave entrance, returning with her saddlebags. “Hold still Rainbow Dash… how bad is it?”
“Eh, not too bad.” Rainbow shrugged. “Hurts like all heck, but I’ll be fine.”
“Well, let me at least bandage it up a bit,” Fluttershy replied as she extracted a small roll of bandage from her saddlebag. With a gentle touch born of years of experience, she examined the jagged gash that ran from her shoulder to her wing, and wrapped the bandage around the top of Rainbow’s foreleg and the base of her left wing, before taping a final length of bandage over her shoulderblade. “There. That will at least stop the bleeding. You’re right, the cut was pretty shallow, so you’ll be fine once it heals over.”
Twilight smiled, not just happy that her friend was not seriously wounded, but that somehow, they had come out of a fierce battle with a dragon relatively unscathed! Rainbow’s scratch aside, the damage amounted to little more than a few scrapes and bruises, and some singed manes and tails.
Soon, the ponies were wandering freely about the cave, seeking out any nook or cranny where the Tears might be hidden. They had already encountered a mysterious statue, a glowing mountain and a guardian dragon, a hidden chamber did not seem like too much of a stretch. But even with Applejack bucking every loose shelf of rocks, Pinkie clambering over every possible hiding place, Rainbow Dash checking the higher walls, Starswirl’s spells, and even Twilight and Rarity’s gem-finding magic searching for any hiding places, the result was the same. Just one big cave with one entrance and exit, and nothing more.
Fluttershy, meanwhile, had chosen to stay with the dragon, who remained in his prostrate position in the middle of the chamber, lying on his front with his chin resting on the cave floor. Fluttershy paced back and forth in front of the dragon, a proud smile on her face and a slight spring in her step (thought she was sure to keep a safe distance from the monster). She did not often like to raise her voice at other creatures, but who knows what that dragon could have done to her friends had she not? But they were safe now, because of her. And what’s more, she had overcome her fear of dragons once again. Granted, it was for the sake of her friends and not herself, but still, the feeling of pride was amazing!
Her smile slipped a notch, however, as she saw the strange look in the dragon’s eyes. Gone was the primal rage it had held when it first attacked, or the feral fear it felt when she had turned her Stare upon it. Now, it was looking at her with eyes that looked sort of glazed over and, of all things, tired. The dragon stared at her with a look of weary resignation, as if to say “Go ahead, do it… Finish me off.”
For the first time in her life, Fluttershy actually felt pity for a dragon.
Hesitantly, she edged towards the massive ace of the beast, step by step, until she was close enough to reach out a quivering foreleg and gently pat the dragon’s cheek. “It’s okay… we’re very sorry for the intrusion. D-don’t worry, as soon as we’ve found what we’re looking for, we’ll be on our way and you can get back to sleeping.”
Suddenly, the dragon’s eyes widened in apparent surprise and he rumbled what could have been heard as a feral, draconic, “Huh?”
“It’s alright. We’re not going to hurt you.”
The pegasus then noticed a change in the dragon’s eyes. It was as if a veil or mist fell from over his eyes, and they seemed to gleam and shine with new life. He lifted his head slightly and peered down at Fluttershy. And smiled.
“Thank-you,” the dragon said.
Fluttershy leapt back with a frightened squeak. “Y-you spoke! I mean, I know dragons can talk, which is very interesting on its own, but… well, I didn’t realise you could speak. I… I thought you were a, um… feral dragon or something…”
Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Rarity heard Fluttershy’s sudden squeak and were swiftly rushing to her side. “Fluttershy, is everything alright?” asked Twilight, “I heard you shout. The dragon’s not trying anything, is he?”
“Why would I try something? She just freed me,” replied the dragon.
Twilight’s jaw dropped so hard, it nearly left a dent in the floor.
Rarity stepped forward. “Freed you? What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly that, little pony,” he said. “I was put in this cave as a hatchling to guard something. A very special and powerful gemstone. The ponies who put me in here cast a spell on me. And by being the first pony to spare me, you broke that spell.”
“The ponies who… you mean the Princesses?” Twilight found her voice again. The dragon nodded
“This powerful gemstone you speak of,” Starswirl had just come to join the others. “It would not happen to be something called the Tears of Gaia, would it?”
“Yes, yes, that was what they called it!” he replied, his low voice echoing around the cavern.
“But what was this spell they put on you? How did it work?” asked Twilight, her curiosity knowing no bounds.
The dragon took a moment to stretch out its massive limbs and tail. “Aahh, that does feel good… The spell? Well, it granted me the power and long life needed to guard the Tears forever against any creature that came looking for it. It could only be broken by the one who overpowered me in their search for it, but once I was defeated, would be willing to spare me.”
He paused, as if to let the information sink in. Twilight then thought back to the inscription above the doorway to the cave. Could that have said something about this? All other eyes turned to Fluttershy. The timid pegasus shrunk back from the attention, hiding her face behind a lock of her hair. “…Me?!”
“Yes, you. You were the first creature to defeat me in a fight, but not kill me… That was the worst part of the spell; how every time I was killed, I would be brought back.” The dragon frowned as his voice became softer for a moment. “No matter how often I failed in my task, I would never have the honour of reaping the consequences. Instead I would be brought back, to live with the memory of my failures.”
Fluttershy felt her pity for the creature grow. “Oh, don’t think like that, Mr Dragon. I’m sure you’ve done a great job protecting the Tears. Otherwise, they would probably have been found by now.”
The dragon cocked his head. “I suppose so… But whatever the case, I am free of that curse now, thanks to you. For that, I am in your debt.”
Fluttershy blushed slightly. She’d never had anyone in her debt before!” Oh! Um… well, you’re very welcome, mister, uh…”
“Tharos is my name.” the dragon replied, bowing his head before the pegasus. “My name is Tharos, and Tharos means me.”
“Oh, okay. Well, mister Tharos… it’s really okay, you don’t need to be in my debt or anything, I’m happy to help…”
But the dragon would hear none of it. “No, I must! Your wish is my command.”
Twilight and Starswirl look to eachother a moment as he said this, and both nodded. Twilight then walked up to Fluttershy and whispered something in the pony’s ear.
“Uh huh…hmm. Okay, I’ll ask.” Fluttershy whispered back. Clearing her throat, she said to Tharos, “Um, well, if it’s okay with you… M-maybe you could, um, show us where the Tears are hidden?”
“Yeah, I mean, we did free you from a curse and all. It’s the least you can do, right?” Rainbow Dash added brusquely. The other six ponies glared at her a moment.
But Tharos smiled and nodded. “I suppose I do owe you that much. Alright, climb on my back and I’ll take you to them.”
“Climb on yer back?” asked Applejack. “But where are we goin’? Ain’t the Tears in her somewhere?”
“No they are not.” Tharos responded, “They never were.”
The cowgirl kicked at the cave floor with her hind legs. “So, basically… we just came all this way… just to find out we didn’t need to come all this way?!”
A deep, bass chuckle escaped from the dragon’s mouth. “I suppose you could put it that way, little pony.”
“Now Applejack, don’t despair just yet. Tharos, if you know where the Tears are, would you be willing to take us to them?” Starswirl asked.
He nodded, stretching one of his arms like a ramp. “Of course. As that Rainbow pony says, it is the least I can do.”
But the seven ponies were hesitant to climb aboard, Rainbow Dash in particular. “How can we be sure you’ll take us to the Tears?”
“She has a point,” agreed Twilight. “No offense, but it’s not exactly the easiest thing to trust a full-grown dragon.”
But rather than be offended, Tharos simply shrugged and reared up on his hind legs. Placing a single hand on his underbelly, he raised the other in the air beside his head. “By my honour as a dragon of the old world, and by the fire in my belly, you have my word.”
“How good is your word of honour as a dragon?” Starswirl asked.
“Better than most dragons of this age, I would imagine, if you distrust me so much.” Tharos countered with a slight grin. “I would sooner fly face-first into a mountainside than betray it.”
There was a brief silence as Tharos’ words echoed around the cavern. Everypony looked up at the massive dragon’s face, looking for any sign of betrayal or falsehood. Tharos looked right back, his massive scaly face giving nothing away.
“Well, I guess ya can’t say much to that. I dunno ‘bout you guys, but I trust him.” Applejack said, breaking the silence at last. “Lemme up, Tharos.”
Tharos’ smile widened as he stooped down on all fours, holding out one hand to Applejack. She hopped onto his palm, and he lifted her up and deposited her upon his shoulder.
One by one, the seven ponies were hoisted up onto Tharos’ shoulderblades, where there was little shortage of ridges and spikes to hold onto or lean against. However, not all were so willing to climb up onto a dragon. Fluttershy least of all.
“C’mon Fluttershy! It’s perfectly safe, I swear!” Rainbow Dash called down impatiently.
“Yeah, it’s fine! Come on up!” added Pinkie. “It’s actually pretty soft up here! It’s just like those squishy floors you get at playgrounds.”
“You mean like mulch?” Twilight muttered, giving the skin under her hoof an experimental prod. Indeed, as tough as the scales no doubt were, they did have a certain degree of give to them. As Pinkie said, much like the springy, compressed mulch used to pad the ground in children’s playgrounds. Just as she was dwelling on this intriguing discovery however, she and the other six ponies were forced to make a hasty grab at anything they could, as Tharos jostled to the side slightly, with another deep chuckle.
“Don’t do that! It felt strange!”
Twilight grinned sheepishly, and made a mental note to tread lightly whilst on Tharos’ back. Who knows how many acupressure points and nerve endings she might accidentally trigger otherwise?
Once he calmed down, Tharos lowered his head down to Fluttershy’s level, giving her what he hoped was a gentle smile. Unfortunately, any smile from a dragon would show off hundreds of teeth the size of shovel-blades. Fluttershy gave a fearful squeak and backed away even more.
“Please, little pony. I promise you can trust me. Just climb aboard.” He said in the gentlest voice he could, holding out his ready hand.
After a few moments hesitance, Fluttershy finally took a nervous step closer. Then another. And another. Then she placed an experimental forehoof on the palm of his hand. Reassured that he was not about to crush her into a yellow and pink smear on his claws, she clambered up into his hand.
“Now don’t worry, little ones.” Tharos called over his shoulder as he placed Fluttershy with her friends. “I’ll be sure to fly as smoothly as possible… Now, erm, you might want to take cover and shield your eyes for a moment. It’s about to get very hot for a moment.”
The ponies all looked to eachother with an unsure glance. But the ominous rumbling in Tharos’ belly under them was all the confirmation they needed, and they quickly ducked down behind what they could find, covering their eyes.
Tharos, meanwhile, was channelling every ounce of dragonfuel in his body, gathering it all in his belly, which began to swell like some massive balloon. The rumbling of the flames in his belly grew into a low roar as it amassed inside him, until he could take it no more.
With one huge breath, he forced every last tongue of flame from his belly, up through his throat and burst forth from his mouth in one massive blast. So bright and hot was it, that it barely even looked like fire at all! It looked more like some strange hybrid, somewhere inbetween being a flame and being pure light energy.
“No way…” whispered Twilight, awestruck at the sight. “He’s… that’s… is he breathing plasma?!”
TTHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The livid, blueish-white ball of plasma smashed into the wall of the cave, exploding on impact. For a few seconds, all was consumed in blinding light and a ringing in everypony’s ears.
Then, the light dimmed and the dust clouds cleared. Twilight cracked her eyes open and was dumbstruck. Her friends fared no better.
Before them, where there had one been a solid stone wall with nothing but a tiny tunnel to the outside, there was now nothing but the clear afternoon skies, visible through a massive, almost-perfectly round hole, edges blackened, some patched still glowing orange from the heat.
“… Well, I was about to say something about someone as big as you getting outta here,” Pinkie finally said, almost nonchalantly. “But I guess you could say that you-“
“Don’t even think about it Pinkie.”
“Huh?” Pinkie looked over to a frowning Rainbow Dash, who sat on the dragon’s bag by her side.
Rainbow replied, “I know exactly what you’re gonna say, and you’d better not say it.”
Pinkie opened her mouth to speak. “I said don’t!” Rainbow shouted.
Pinkie paused a moment, before letting a malicious grin grow on her face. Unable to contain herself, she finally spouted in breakneck speed, “But I guess you could say you blew that question away, hah!”
“DANGIT, PINKIE!”
For the first time since they entered the cave, the seven ponies laughed. Tharos’ low chuckles mingled with theirs, and he clambered through the freshly-blasted hole, perching on the ledge.
“Ahh, it feels good to stretch my wings again. Alright, hold on now, little ponies!”
As he felt seven pairs of hooves cling tightly to his back, Tharos unfurled his wings wide for the first time in over a millennia. With a final triumphant roar, he leapt off the ledge and swooped out into the cool air, the excited and terrified shrieks of the ponies ringing loud and proud in his ears.
Far, far below, at the very base of the Shard, unbeknownst to Tharos or any of the ponies, two pairs of yellow and black eyes watched the dragon and his passengers flying off into the distance, his triumphant bellows echoing through the afternoon air.
“And there they go.” Maughoth muttered to himself. “Afar vadokanuk, if I’d known there was a dragon in there, I’d have brought someone with me who could fly! Urkuk!”
Gadhup cringed at his master’s rather colourful language. “What should we do now, sir?” he asked, as he watched Tharos flying off towards the plains and out of sight.
Maugoth sighed, his pointed teeth turning it into a strange whistling sound. “Head back to the others and tell them to break camp now. When I get back, we’re tracking that dragon like our lives are at stake… mainly because if Burzkala finds out we lost track of those ponies, they’ll have all our heads.”
The wiry little creature nodded and scuttled back through the undergrowth towards his cohorts’ campsite. Maugoth hung back a moment, looking up at the mountain high above them, complete with a brand new hole straight through the side.
We’d better be careful about this, he thought, before trotting back to his troops.
By the time the sun was beginning to set, Tharos and the ponies were far from the Crystal Mountains, flying further and further south over Equestria. After the initial shock, the ponies had slowly settled into travelling on the back of a dragon, finding a sure hoofhold in the scales and bumps of Tharos’ back. Some of the more adventurous ponies, like Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, even started to enjoy it!
“Hey look!” Pinkie Pie shouted, pointing down at a tiny mass of light on the ground below. “I think that’s Ponyville down there! Hi Mr and Mrs Cake, hi Gummy!”
Twilight felt a sudden tightness in her chest at the mention of Ponyville. They had already been gone more than two weeks. With everything that had happened, it was hard to believe that they were so close to home. The sooner they got back, the better.
Waiting until Tharos’ flight got a bit smoother, she tentatively stood up and heaved herself up the dragon’s back until she was perched just at the base of his jaw.
“Um, Tharos, how much longer until we reach… wherever it is we’re going?” she shouted up at his ears.
He looked back and gave a reassuring smile. “Not long now, “he replied. “We just need to wait until the sun goes down, and then I can do it!”
Twilight peered up at the sun, where it was almost below the horizon. “Do what?”
But before he could answer, his eye was drawn back to the horizon, as the last rays of golden sunlight dimmed, and the sky went dark.
With a satisfied grin, he looked back to Twilight. “You might want to sit back down.”
The unicorn quickly obeyed, letting herself slide back towards Tharos’ shoulderblades, where she grabbed tightly onto a spine and watched anxiously for whatever the dragon was about to do.
Finally satisfied that the sun was completely and truly down, Tharos cleared his voice and shouted out in a loud, echoing, rumbling voice, words of some strange, ancient power:
“Naal faal krein ahrk vulonkrein, bex faal miraad!”
Suddenly, there was another blinding flash of light, joined by a deafening roaring, like that of savage winds that tear apart the sails of ships at sea, sending their crew hurtling into the dark waters.
When Twilight’s eyesight finally returned, her breath was taken away.
Where there had once been a view of the plains and forests of Equestria before them, with the great peak of Canterlot to their right and the Appleloosan mountains in the far distance, there now stretched before them a strange, alien landscape.
Great rolling hills of green and yellow stretched far below them for miles around, forming into bizarre brown mountains in the farthest distance, which seemed to curve and droop over at the tops, almost like cyclopean thorns growing from the earth. Up above them, the once dark sky was now a vivid deep blue, like a sapphire. But in place of the moon, there hung a huge purple sphere, like a ball of solid gas, almost filling up the sky entirely with its vastness.
“Up ahead!”
Wordlessly, everypony turned to look forwards, between Tharos’ horns. About a mile ahead of them there loomed a small patch of short, white mountains. In the middle of all these, there rose up two enormous grey columns of stone, dotted with massive chunks of green stone. One rose to a sheer point, with nothing but a tiny ledge on one side. The other was flat, opening up at the top like the crater of a volcano. Between the peaks stretched a length of smooth stone, forming a natural bridge between the pillars.
“Behold, the Pillars of Prasinus! The final resting place of the Tears of Gaia!”