Chapter 8: On the road to the past:
The sound of my scream had hardly fainted, before the door to my room burst open, and Sky and Doctor Grace entered “Amora,” Sky said with concern in her voice, snapping me out the shock I had been in, and put a leg around my shoulders for comfort “it’s-it’s gonna be okay.”.
“How, how is ‘this’ gonna be okay?” I asked, my voice hysterical, as I looked up at my marefriend, and held up my new dragon paws for her to see “I look like one of those Chrysalis fucking Drake claws!”.
Sky looked at me intently for a few seconds, before she pulled my paws close to her chest and said “Okay, I don’t know how this is going to be okay, but one thing you should know is that I’ll there with you every step of the way.” She then let go of my paws, so she could lean in and place a quick kiss on my nose, before moving away so Dr. Grace could examine me. Knowing that my marefriend had my back no matter what, made me feel a little better about the situation, but not by much.
“So, how bad is it doc?” I asked as the unicorn doctor as she looked me over.
“Well, we got the taint, the stuff that was making you sick and itchy, purged from your body, but we ran into a complication along the way.” Bandage said as she checked my eyes.
“What kind of complication are we talking about?” I asked as I felt a new rush of panic surge through my body.
Bandage finished checking my eyes, and moved to check my newly acquired paws and claws, while she said “The other ingredient in the concoction you were sprayed with, was dragon’s blood; and though we were able to remove the taint, so you didn’t end up one of the Drake claws, the blood has its own unique magic, which apparently is absorbing the qualities of anything it comes into contact with, and apparently the effect accelerated when we removed the taint, and that leaves us with your current situation, which is you becoming a half pony, half dragon hybrid.”.
I looked from the doctor to my marefriend, who had sat down beside my bed, listening to Bandage and being ready to comfort me if I started getting hysterical. I took a few deep breaths, trying to get myself as calm as I could before I looked back at the doctor and asked “How, uh, how much of a hybrid have I become?”.
Doctor Grace let go of the paw she had been examining, and looked thoughtful for a few seconds, as if to decide how best to give me the news she said “At this moment, we estimate that you are about 65 percent pony, and 35 percent dragon; luckily, those 35 percent are mostly cosmetic changes, though we have also seen some changes in your muscles and spine, making them stronger than the average earth pony, and your eyesight has significantly improved as well, so those are very beneficial changes.”.
“But, I don’t want these changes, is there no way of turning me back?” I asked, my voice becoming panicked and hysterical once again.
“I’m afraid not,” Doctor Grace said and sat down at the foot of my bed before continuing “you see, we don’t experience with your kind of case, since most, if not all, who becomes a Drake claw, either joins the gang because of the psychosis that comes with the transformation, or because they do it out of free will to gain power, or they run off and are subsequently shot by guards or travelers who takes them for wild beasts.” She then jumper off the bed and walked up to sit beside me “So there really isn’t anything we can do for you,” She gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder “I’m sorry.”.
I let my head fall back onto the pillow, and started to cry softly into the palms of my paws. Sky began stroking my mane, while she tried to reassure me that everything would be alright. A good 5 minutes went by, before I finally regained enough control to stop crying; I dried my eyes with the back of my palm, and sniffed a couple of times to clear my nose. I laid there; just staring at the ceiling, with Sky was still stroking my mane softly, while I tried to figure out what to do with myself, occasionally looking at my new bleach white paws, with their ruby red claws. I finally came to the conclusion that even though I really didn’t like my new form, and I had felt like killing myself when I saw it for the first time, I would just have to live with it, and it also helped that I knew that Sky would support me all the way through.
I gently pushed my marefriend’s hoof away and sat up, and addressed the doctor “Doctor Grace, where can I find a mirror, so I can see how much I’ve changed?”.
“If you go to the right outside in the hallway and go all the way to the end, you’ll find a door marked ‘Showers’, we have some big mirrors in there that you’re more than welcome to use. But now I must leave you, I have some more patients to look after, but I’ll come back later for another checkup.” The doctor unicorn said with a friendly smile and walked towards the door. Just as she was about to open said door, she stopped dead in her tracks and turned towards us again, and said “Oh I almost forgot, you don’t have to worry about changing diet, you may look a lot like a dragon, but you’re still mostly pony.” I nodded in understanding, and the light purple mare gave me a nod in farewell, before opening the door and walked out, closing it behind her with her magic.
I laid back on the pillow and closed my eyes, as the light in the room was starting to hurt my eyes, probably a side effect of my enhanced vision ‘I gotta get some sunglasses once I’m discharged.’ I thought and took a deep breath, before I opened my eyes again and pulled the duvet off my body, and that’s when I saw just how much of a change, 35 percent dragon could make in a pony.
My body had a mix of scales and fur, with the fur growing between the scales, making it look like my coat was a lot shinier than it was before; my tail had become longer, about a meter or so, but was still as thin as it had been before my transformation; other than that, the back part of my body was exactly like it was before.
I slowly set my hooves and paws on the ground, with Sky watching me intently; my legs felt wobbly, most likely a side effect of my treatment, and when I tried to take a step, I lost my balance; luckily, Sky was there and caught me before I initiated a painful relationship with the floor “I got you, I got you.” She said before draping one of my front legs over her shoulder, and helping me keep my balance as we walked out the door and down the hall towards the showers. Once we entered the showers, Sky sat me down on one of the benches in the changing room; she then sat down beside me asked “Are you gonna be okay cutie?”.
I chuckled a bit and gave her a quick nuzzle, before I started moving my legs around a little, to get the blood flowing, while I said “I think I’ll be okay Sweetie, once I’ve moved my legs around a little.” We sat like this for a while, with me moving my legs around, once in a while trying to put a little weight on them, while Sky sat and watched, once in a while playing around with her pipbuck.
After a long 10 minutes had passed, according to the wall clock, I was finally able to walk around, only looking like I was slightly drunk, and walked over to the part of the room that held the mirrors, with my marefriend following me, and looked at myself. I was pleasantly surprised that my transformation wasn’t as extensive as I had thought; my muzzle still had its original shape, and when I opened my mouth, my teeth were still flat, plant and vegetable crunching, just like before; my ears were also the same as before, only that they were covered in the same mixture of fur and scales as the rest of my body.
“Well, this isn’t as bad as I had feared.” I said as I took in my new appearance. I turned to Sky and asked “What do you think Sweetie?”.
Sky looked at me for a moment, before she nuzzled me and said teasingly “Well, you’re not as handsome as you were before, but I guess you’ll do for now.”.
I chuckled and gave her a light push on her shoulder, being mindful about my claws; I then gave her a quick nuzzle and said just as teasingly “Okay miss ‘I’m not good enough for the dragon/pony hybrid’, let’s go back to the room, and you can tell me what happened while I was out.” Sky giggled and followed me out the door. As we walked, my thoughts drifted to Zodi and Hoofer, and asked her “Where is Zodi and Hoofer by the way?”.
The clay red pegasus scratched her head in thought for a moment, before she said “Hoofer said he had some things to do around town, I don’t know what though, he was very vague about it; Zodi went to sell what we salvaged from the raider camp, and get your riffles and your gun repaired, so she should be back pretty soon.”.
I nodded as we reached the door to my room; I found it kinda weird that Hoofer would just walk off without telling us anything about where he was going, but I shrugged it off as him wanting to get something for his own private use. I opened the door and we went in; I settled down in my bed, and Sky sat down on the pillow she had been using when I woke up; once we were settled in, Sky asked me “So, what did you see in that memory orb, by the way?”.
I laid back for a moment to collect my thoughts on what I had seen in the artifact “I was in a small town called Flankfield, a pre-bombing mining town by the looks of it…” was all I got out before Sky interrupted me.
“Isn’t there a settlement up north that’s called that?” She asked, trying to remember.
I thought for a moment, before I remembered something and said “Yeah there is, one of their merchants sometimes comes to the stable to sell raw gems for us to process into ammunition, or for use in our machines; they must have taken the name of the town when the settlers came out of the stables to looked for a home, to honor the ones that lived there before or something like that.”.
“Yeah, I remember now, though it has been a while since one of them has been by, weird.” Sky said, nodding her head “Anyway, where were you on that memory?”.
“Right, right.” I said and continued “Well, I was in Flankfield, and I was a mare by the name of Silver Spoon; she and Rainbow Dash, you know, the element of loyalty.” Sky nodded “Well, she and Silver Spoon was in Flankfield on some sort of mission; they met up with this scientist called Time Turner, who led them into the mines, to some sort secret mine where they were mining some, uh, magical stone, I think, called lodestone; I don’t know what it is exactly, but it seemed important to them, but that’s not the strangest thing that happened.”.
“What was it then?”
“Right the memory was about to end, I saw something weird, it kinda looked like a pony made out of fire, but I didn’t see much more before the memory ended,” I laid back on my pillow and looked at the ceiling as I thought back on the memory.
“That does sound really weird; I don’t think I’ve ever heard about anything like that before.”.
“Yeah, and I think I want to investigate it when I get out of here.”.
“But it was over two hundred years ago, it can’t still be alive.” Sky said with doubt in her voice.
“Maybe, but I still want to go, and maybe there is a clue as to what Rainbow Dash and Silver Spoon needed with the lodestone,” I sat up and looked at my marefriend “What do you say Sky? One more adventure, and we’ll take it easy for a while after that, get back to our normal boring jobs and lives in the stable.”
Sky thought for a moment; then she smiled and said “Hay, why not, but you have to promise me that it’s this and no more, okay.” She held out a hoof, which I took to seal the deal.
I then asked her what had happened while I was in the memory orb; she said that not long after I had entered the memory, Bandage Grace, along four nurses had come into the room; Bandage had told Sky about the taint and dragon blood mix, and the possibility that I would still mutate after the taint was out of my system. After telling the doctor that it would be the lesser of two evils to get the taint out of me and let me mutate from the dragon blood alone, I was placed on a stretcher by the four nurses, and I was taken to the taint remover, a big, white, coffin like machine, with different colored gems on the inner sides and the lid; I had been lowered into the machine and for the next hour, the machine had hummed and lit up the room with a soft, blue light from a huge gem on the back of the machine, eliminating the taint from my body. Once the process was done, I was removed from the taint remover, and put back in the room to wait for me to finish my mutation, and for the memory to end, and thus we came full circle.
After Sky ended her tale, I gave her a peck on the cheek and said with a smile “I’m so glad that you were there to take care of me.”.
“You’re very welcome.” Sky said and returned the kiss.
I laid back on my pillow with a sigh and said “Well, this has been a long day, and I’d like to get some sleep.”.
Sky nodded and stood up from her pillow “I understand, I’ll go and meet up with Zodi and Hoofer. Is there anything I can get you while I’m out?” She asked as she made her way to the door.
“Yeah, if you would be a real sweetie and get me a pair of sunglasses and something to cover my feet, so people won’t get scared when they see me.” Sky nodded with a smile before she opened the door and left, closing it as she went. I turned, facing the window, and closed my eyes ‘I wonder what’s inside that cave.’ I thought as I drifted off to sleep, a sleep full of thoughts of the past.
O-O-O
Early next day, Sky came back with a pair of sunglasses and a pair of black hoof covers so I could hide my dragon paws when I was outside, plus I could give anyone who came to close an nasty surprise.
Once I had donned my armor and new accessories, we walked to the lobby where I was discharged, and we walked out of the building and into the regular, where we headed for Golden Thread’s shop; the shop owners of the district were opening their stores for the morning customers which were already starting up. Of course some of the ponies and zebras we passed, looked at me curiously, but I shrugged it off, as I knew that it was my new tail they were looking at, and while we walked, I decided that if someone asked me, I’d say that I had an accident with some taint, which weren’t exactly a lie, I would just neglect to tell them that it was taint mixed with dragons blood that had caused my transformation.
On our way to the clothing store, Sky told me that she had asked Zodi and Hoofer if they would help us with our adventure in Flankfield, and that they, after coaxing, had agreed; this made me feel more at ease, as I knew it could get dangerous really fast.
When we rounded the corner to the part of the district where Golden Thread’s shop was, we saw Zodi sitting on the front of her motorized wagon, while Hoofer was sitting in the front seat, apparently ready to go adventuring. Zodi got off the wagon’s front and walked to meet us, she had a strap of some kind around her right shoulder and neck, which was connected to the energy rifle she had gotten repaired for me; when she reached us, she held up her hoof, which I bumped with my closed paw, after which she took the rifle off her shoulder and handed it to me, along with my pistol while she said “It’s good to see you again Amora.”.
“And it’s good to see you too.” I said with a smile as I took the pistol, which I put in my saddlebag, and the rifle, which I inspected quickly before I slung it over my shoulder “Well, let’s go.” I then said and we walked over to the wagon.
“It’s good that you’re okay, Amora.” Hoofer said as me and Sky made our way to the backseat.
“You too Hoofer.” I said with a smile and bumped his hoof.
We got into the wagon, and drove off towards the city gates and towards our adventure in Flankfield
A/N: Well that’s another chapter done, not the most exiting one I’ve written, but don’t worry, the next one will have a lot more action, plus a little surprise for all you readers, so have a good one until next time.