CHAPTER 5: DRAGON
The fatigue had passed but the thirst was still a nuisance; the grey sky poured a bad omen upon the adventurers as they slowly resumed their pace towards the dragon’s lair. Trixie, dusting off her cape and hat, started to wonder what would be the proper approach to a simple but risky plan like the one Zecora had in mind. Trixie’s only participation in the plan was to pour the potion on the reptile’s nose; Zecora would handle the rest, at least that’s how Trixie pictured the strategy.
“Its easy… we get in, I pour the thing on the giant nose… from a safe distance of course, Zecora does whatever she’s going to do, we get out and everypony happy…Its easy”.
The blue mare had slightly overcome the fear of a taunting death, but as simple as that plan sounded, there were so many variants in the possible derivative events; from being praised as heroes to a rampaging dragon tearing ponyville apart. Trixie realized that they were entering into the Mouth of the Wolf without enough precautions and, depending on her consequent actions rested the wellbeing of many creatures; certainly a big responsibility for such an individualistic pony.
Trixie tried to ask Zecora if she had a “plan B” of some sort, but her attempt clogged with the unpleasant feeling of hot air flowing trough her thirsty and dry throat, that immediately made a panting sound, almost like coughing. Both remained silent during the remaining path.
A few hours passed while the pair reached the mountain’s peak, Trixie was expecting to see a dragon size entrance to an ominous cave and a smoke curtain hiding a devilish beast, waiting for victims to roast in pursuit of amusement; but what the landscape pictured was tranquilizing yet baffling for the unicorn. It was a flat wall with a considerably smaller hole than the one Trixie imagined, the smoke wasn’t coming out from that entrance, but the unicorn could still see the black trial of smoke pouring out of the mountain, but from the opposite side.
Soon, Trixie understood why Zecora lead the way behind the cave. “Is better if we take this beast with a surprise, this will give us the advantage, I think it is the most wise”, Said Zecora reassuring Trixie’s thoughts, whom stared at the zebra with disapproval. “Seriously? You just came up with a rhyme for that?!” Said Trixie with a bit of bitterness and annoyance in her voice and overcoming the displeasure of an irritated throat. To which Zecora answered with a shrug and a particular combination of embarrassment and nervousness depicted on her face.
“Let’s go in then”, said Zecora after a long pause, that directed Trixie’s attention into the tunnel ahead of them. It was a small and narrow crack in the wall, in which barely both fitted; walking one behind the other seemed to be the most efficient way to advance. Erosion seemed to be the main cause of the placement of that convenient tunnel, which was a remnant of an antique water stream of some sort.
With every step given, the darkness was growing thicker and blocking the team’s sight. Zecora was leading the way, and apparently her eyes were more adaptable than the ones of the mare, who was constantly colliding with several obstacles, mostly, the walls and several stalagmites scattered in the cavern’s course, which seemed to be an intricate labyrinth, or that’s what Trixie’s orientation senses perceived. The blue unicorn again started to carefully study the whole scenario, repeating the words “it’s simple” in her frightened yet eager thoughts.
As they advanced further and further into the depths of the darkened cavern, Trixie noticed that her vision capabilities were being restored by a minuscule glow of golden light, coming from what seemed to be the exit of the narrow hall in which they had walked for several minutes, but for Trixie, it felt like an eternity of waiting. Seeing and also taming real a dragon for the first time on her life was a shocking yet exiting task, and also in her case, enormously rewarding.
Trixie’s body started to feel the effects of the adrenaline and started to involuntarily accelerate the pace, forcing Zecora to do the same. Every step towards the light made Trixie’s enthusiasm grow stronger. The time had come, the perfect occasion to prove herself worthy and powerful, if she could do this, there wouldn’t be anymore doubts about her capabilities.
Although the task of pouring something on a sleeping dragon’s nose from afar was risky rather than challenging, but for Trixie, it was really a big deal; coming from a boastful, mediocre phony with many fears, this slightly mindless and impulsive display of courage and determination was something worth praising.
The light was intensifying its brightness as they reached the exit. At first Trixie couldn’t see a thing, the change between light intensity was too abrupt, so much, that she thought they reached the other extreme of the cave, then, Zecora whispered “Are you ready for this?” Trixie was disconcerted, she couldn’t see a thing and started to wonder the worst, “I’m blind?!?” she said with apprehension, Zecora’s words meant that she had the dragon in sight but she only saw an intense white glow; she was paralyzed and so scared that she didn’t realize that she could distinguish her own blinking.
Trixie’s mind was being filled with visions of a life with an impediment like that; suddenly she started to mumble in awe.
“Oh no…p-p-please…this can’t be real…help me…Ze-Zecora… The great and powerful Trixie is b-blind!” Zecora noticed Trixie’s situation and chuckled as she approached to the motionless mare.
“Is that laughter what I hear?! How you dare to laugh at this disastrous situ…” Trixie couldn’t finish the sentence because of the sturdy nudge Zecora gave her, taking off the unicorn’s balance and making her tilt to the left. Trixie was going to complaint, but then, her eyes illustrated the surroundings.
“I’m not blind!” Trixie rejoiced with a shout of victory, showing her relatively low self awareness.
“Shhhhhhhhhh!”
“Ok”, she said whispering, acknowledging her ironical failure at being cautious.
Slowly focusing the images, her eyes were returning to normal just to welcome her with an incredible and unexpected glimpse of "paradise”.
What was blinding Trixie was a beam of sun light coming from a small hole on the cavern’s ceiling, same that was being reflected on a troublesomely placed shiny tray, resting in what seemed to be…gold. Trixie gasped in astonishment as she scanned the entire scene.
From bottom to top, the center of the room was occupied by an exquisite collection of relics, such as swords, crowns, canes, chalices, and other various ornaments, all covered in gold and decorative gems, and scattered around a vast pile of bits; pile which happened to be the divan of a gargantuan red beast.
The mare was perplexed; she couldn’t split her bewilderment between the magnificent treasure and the bizarrely magnificent creature. Despite of her obvious interest in the fortune exposed, the dragon dragged more of his attention.
Unaware of dragon’s behavior as a species, she approached slowly, carefully trying to make the less sound as possible.
Avoiding the disturbance of noise, Trixie glanced at the dragon’s tail, studying curiously its reptile-like skin pattern, noticing how scales seemed to become slim at the tip of the appendix in comparison of the voluminous ones covering the rest of the body; she also noticed a peculiar line of soft red elongated scales travelling across the dragon’s back. It was a morbid delight to contemplate such magnificent yet deadly creature.
The dragon snorted stridently liberating a stream of black smoke from its nose, and made the ground tremble for few instants, breaking Trixie’s observation trance and pouring some logic into her actions. She turned around and nodded to Zecora showing her disposition to proceed with the operation; Zecora understood and moved her head aside making a gesture to indicate the path to turn around and face the gigantic lizard.
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There it was, the humongous face of the red beast; this time Trixie wasn’t distracted by the looks of the lizard, anyway, it wouldn’t be a smart move if she approached and accidentally disturbed the dragon’s sleep.
Both were covering behind a boulder emerging from the soil, its size was enough to shelter both equines while kneeling, providing them with a temporarily safe spot if anything went out of control.
“Ok Zecora, now tell me how to do this”, Trixie whispered.
“Just pour the potion and rub it around the nose holes, make sure that the dragon takes a deep breath before...” Zecora suddenly noticed unclear sounds coming from the distant main entrance of the cave and her words clogged in awe.
What could that be? Both thought while covering behind the rock. The noise grew louder; it reassembled a metronome, repeating the same squeaking sound in a regular rhythm.
With her curiosity tingling, Trixie couldn’t avoid to peak above the rock to discover what was causing the sound, the responsible was approaching and soon it would be in plain sight.
Trixie and Zecora were anxious to see what kind of creature produced such familiar yet uncertain noise, almost like a paper blowout. Gradually, a shape started to emerge among the smoke; it was some kind of deformed creature with the strangest body shape that Trixie had ever seen.
From what she could differentiate, the monster had frog-like legs attached to a strangely shaped cubic body. It seemed like its head, if that irregular shape could be called head, was placed in front of the body like any other quadruped, mainly, because it looked like its “tongue” came out when it made the squeaking sound. But there was something that kept bothering both adventurers, and it was some sort of uneven floating formation that followed the body directly from above. It was an unusual sighting.
The thick fog of smoke made difficult to see the strange being completely, but it seemed like it was approaching directly to the dragon with an awkward and lumbering pace. But when the creature was near enough of the dragon’s reach, it was clear that this was also an unwanted guest in the cave.
As the weird shaped creature squeaked something resembling words, far from Trixie’s tympanic membrane to really understand the creature’s gibberish, the dragon lifted its claw and hit the creature, almost approximating to the same way of ponies to scare away flies.
The dragon’s waving limb eventually smashed accurately the fast dodging creature, and propelled it several meters in the air, aiming to land directly to the adventurers hiding place.
After the expected abrupt landing of the bizarre creature, it took a wile for Trixie and Zecora to realize that it wasn’t a mythological creature of some sort, but merely a common pink earth pony wearing a shocking yet pointless costume.
The pony was wearing some hypnosis pun glasses, a clown nose and a fake mustache, almost covering all her face of unwanted eyes, but this was really the purpose? Trixie thought.
The thing resembling a tongue was certainly a paper blowout and Trixie was ashamed of her previous coercion to this chump. The cubic body of the “creature” was conformed by a body-size gift wrapped box, and the frog like legs, barely distinguishable among the smoke, were plain swimming fins, also, the uneven floating form was a bunch of balloons tied to the gift ribbon, nearly all exploded in the crash.
As Trixie prepared an insulting speech to show her displeasure to the pink imp, this stood up, unable to see a thing cause of her silly specs, and turned around heading for the exit in a faint way of walk.
Trixie was outraged, and as she inhaled to release an impulsive and mindless scream to complaint about the imp’s insolence, she noticed three balloons as the scallywag’s cutie mark.
This triggered a recent memory; Trixie wasn’t too good remembering faces, besides the fact that the pink pony was hiding hers pathetically, but she could spot this as one of the pastry chefs working on the ponyville’s bake store. Same that Trixie visited before the Ursa’s attack.
Finding a pastry chef possibly trying to do the same as the zebra and unicorn was certainly a peculiar coincidence.
Something seemed suspicious about this, but it didn’t mattered. As the pink fellow approached the exit, the reptilian beast awoke with hastiness and it seemed anything but pleased. Trixie knew this was the time to act.
In a tremendous display of courage…Or stupidity, Trixie grabbed the potion and sprinted towards the dragon.
“Now hideous creature, behold how the great and powerful Trixie subjugates you!” She was already risking her life so a little bit of her habitual presumptuousness was permitted; it wasn’t the right approach though.
The dragon showing disregard to the relatively insignificant phony, inhaled a mouthful of air and exhaled a tremendous flare. Trixie’s fears were materializing, but there was no time to regret, just to react.
Instinctively, Trixie grabbed her cape with her hoof as she shielded her face with it.
“What a fool…now I’m dead for sure”, Trixie’s “last” thoughts were the product of such impulsive and numb action, but something was wrong, few instants passed and she wasn’t combusting in pain as previously pictured.
Trixie still heard that flare blowing sound, curiosity made her draw aside her cape and take a glimpse. It was unbelievable what her eyes saw.
A semi spherical wall of coins, jewels and ornaments were protecting her from the deadly flames. At first Trixie couldn’t find a rational explanation to this, but, as the seconds went by she realized that she was actually the holder of that golden shield. Apparently the previous motion triggered Trixie’s magic unconsciously, forming that convenient armor.
“HAHAHA!” Trixie laughed in ecstasy, bringing enough bewilderment to make the dragon stop its attack. Trixie noticed the halt of the flames, poured out her magic and jumped out the shelter yelling, “Have at you sucker!” throwing the whole potion bottle. The dragon attempted again to melt the blue pest, inhaling deeply to exhale fire, but before the beast could do something, a cracking sound assaulted the ears of the presents.
Apparently, Trixie’s throw resulted accurate enough to hit the dragon’s palate, smearing the blue potion through the lizard’s throat. This didn’t kept the dragon from trying to roast the unicorn, but when it exhaled, the fire was replaced by the same black smoke covering the sky.
This offered a perfect chance to sneak around and return to where Zecora was hiding.
“What you did?” Zecora asked.
“I shove the potion in the throat of that prick”, Trixie answered proudly pointing at the dragon with her hoof as she mischievously chuckled, “Now go on, do your domestication thing so we can go for my book”.
“The potion doesn’t work like that, I told you to rub it on the nose, not to shove it in the throat!” Zecora answered unpleased.
Trixie blanched in terror for her fault as she heard an uncanny familiar voice, consequently the dragon emitted a treacherous roar and its enormous silhouette headed outside. Both followed the reptile, hoping to stop any demonstrations of rampaging destruction.
As both reached the exit, their eyes were met with an ambiguously unpleasant vision. There it was the pastry chef plus other four or five ponies, all unknown to Zecora, almost all indistinguishable and for Trixie, except by one.
“Twilight…” Trixie whispered in anger.
The dragon was about to strike down all the ponies with its fire breath, but, as happened before, instead of fire, a stream of smoke emanated from the dragon’s mouth; it seemed as if the potion had something to do with the loss of the characteristic dragon’s ability.
Suddenly a yellow Pegasus emerged from the small crowd and yelled “How dare you”, distracting Trixie from her astounded nemesis.
Flying towards the dragon’s face nagging the beast with and unsuitable argument for the situation, the yellow Pegasus was asking for an unpleasant death. That’s when Trixie remembered, that voice was the one that caused the avalanche while ago, an overflow of contradictory feelings flooded Trixie’s mind, wanting to adjust counts with the one that almost killed her, she could deal later with Twilight, humiliation wasn’t worse than death, but she knew her place and it was too soon to act, preferring to stay hidden in the cave.
“They need our help!” Zecora interrupted the unsettling thoughts.
“No”, replied Trixie with seriousness, “Haven’t you identified that voice yet?”
“I know, but still they need us”.
Trixie was so surprised by this answer that she couldn’t avoid turning her head and stare at the zebra in astonishment. Trixie’s mind was building the proper answer to depict her annoyance when something unlikely and ridiculous happened.
It was the dragon, acting like a pitiful child trying to give justification of its acts to the yellow nagger, the potion miraculously worked. Trixie wasn’t giving too much attention to the dialog between the dragon and the Pegasus, but when the humongous lizard started to cry, she had enough.
“It seems that they don’t need us anymore”, Trixie said as she turned around and headed towards the treasure.
“A stinky pile of…how dare you boohoohoo…that’s what she needs… she almost killed me…what a jerk…” Trixie grumbled with disdain depicted on her face as she took off her hat and started to fill it with treasure until it lost its original shape, replacing it with an uneven round form.
Carrying the booty with her magic, she addressed to Zecora.
“The job is done, and my part of the bargain was effectuated…Now I demand my reward”, said Trixie arrogantly.
Zecora nodded in acceptance, and both headed to the tunnel where they came from. Luckily, Trixie could step in the tunnel with the hat full of wealth, acknowledging the bigger treat that was expecting her in Zecora’s home.