Bounce . . . Bounce . . . Bounce . . . Bounce, Phalanx felt each jump of his companion bouncing on his side in an attempt to wake him, and although he had already been awake for some time he had no desire to actually get up. For the last few days he had been enjoying the wonderful thing called "sleeping in late," it had been years since he been without any responsibilities to do so.
Bounce . . . Bounce . . . Bounce . . . THUD! Still feigning being asleep, he had felt when his companion had jumped on him wrong and bounced in the wrong direction. The THUD just confirmed that his companion had now greeted the floor this morning. Despite how hard he tried to fight it a small smile crept across his lips.
He was just beginning to bury himself deeper into his covers to relish his victory with more sleep, when he began to feel something giving off a lot of heat close to his face while a bright light began to burn through his closed eyelids. A part of him began to panic knowing what was coming. He quickly opened his eyes to confirm what he had feared.
His cute little companion of red and orange fur was glaring at him with cyan blue eyes at no more than a foot away from his face, and was creating a fireball. Falling out of his bunk he picked up the little furball with his magic, hurriedly worked through the locks on the door of the wagon, flung open the door, and tossed the crazy pyro furball out of the wagon.
He had just enough time to shut his eyes before an explosion of light, heat, noise, and force violently rocked the wagon he had been sleeping in. "Alright! You win! I am up!" Phalanx called out while trying to rub the afterimage of the explosion he had just seen through his eyelids out of his eye.
Outside sitting in a black crater a creature known as a Mars Djinn puffed out her chest at her victory over the lazy unicorn. She happily bounced over to a rock that was facing the sun and turned to stare at it looking at all the beautiful shades of colors that came with the sunrise. When the sun rose it was time to get up, she would eventually have him properly trained to do so.
A hour later Phalanx was fully awake having had breakfast, a few drinks from the nearby pond, having refilled all of his canteens from the pond, and having answered the call of nature was putting on the last of his steel armor before hitching himself up to his wagon. Phalanx did a few stretches in his armor checking to make sure that all the plates were properly aligned.
The steel armored covered up most of his black coat, while his silver mane stuck up out of his helmet and giving his silver tail a few flicks to complete the stretches, since once he got started going he wouldn't be able to stop for several hours. They were still days away from the Everfree Forest and he still didn't know what he would find there. Only that he had made a promise to return a favor owed to the fire obsessed puffball and he would honor his word.
If he could have he would have preferred to take the train to Ponyville and walk to the Everfree Forest to get there quickly, but that wasn't an option as he doubted he would have been allowed to load all the content of his wagon on to the train. Having enough weapons to arm a few dozen beings made the ponies that lived in the interior of Equestria nervous and they would no doubt call the Solar Guard on him. The very last thing he wanted was to come in contact with the Solar Guard, it would bring up old history and problems he didn't want to deal with.
He glanced at her; for it had made it quite clear, several times under threat of fiery explosion, that it was a she and didn't respond well to being called he or worse it. As he had seen first hoof when he had shown her off to the various ponies, gryphons, Minotaur, and other beings that had been held by the Diamond Dog slavers they had killed when they had raided the camp. One of the ponies had made the mistake of calling her an it, and he had run behind a rock that he had then stacked a few shields on top of it just in case before she had thrown a small fireball at said pony.
The pony had survived minus most of his tail, mane, and eyebrows. Showing she have very good control over her powers when one compared him to the char broiled Diamond Dogs she had killed. They had freed dozens of beings taken captive, taken out a large group of Diamond Dog slavers, probably bought a few months of safety for the surrounding towns, and unknowingly created a horror story of heavily armored unicorn that lead a army of possessed weapons and commanded a fire demon that hunted down and slaughtered slavers.
As he was pulling the wagon he would occasionally glance back to check on her. Sometimes she would be bouncing in place enjoying the ride, jump from the wagon onto his back to get a better view, would be dozed off to sleep, the rocking of wagon having put her to sleep briefly, but most often she would be looking into that bag of gems he had gathered up for her when they had looted the camp.
She absolutely loved anything that had various hues of red, orange, or yellow in it. He had watched her stare at sunrises, sunsets, fires, and her collection of gems for hours and never seemed to get enough of it. Her pride and joy of her gem collection was a Fire Ruby she seemed to be especially obsessed with.
They had been traveling for a few hours when he first began to hear the roars. Having lived among the towns on the borders of Equestria that were regularly came under attacks by Diamond Dog slavers, bandits, and dragons for years. One developed a danger sense for certain sounds and a proper response to them. In this case the roars of multiple dragons was to seek shelter and hope they passed you over. As he was doing now having quickly pulled his wagon into the forest brush.
He looked up at the sky and watched as flocks of dragons flew over the forest. The shear amount of dragons flying together like that could only mean one thing. It was time for the Great Dragon Migration. Great timing Phalanx, return to the interior of Equestria right in middle of their migration, what are the odds of such bad timing. Actually now that he thought of it he had been hearing rumors of strange events happening across Equestria ever since the supposed Lord of Chaos had broken out for almost 48 hours a few months ago.
Three dragons suddenly broke away from the flight and began flying down toward the road. Why? Why are they breaking off from the rest of the flight? There is nothing worth there attention down here, except the gems, but those are safe on . . . the . . . wagon . . . He glanced back at the wagon to see that the flaming fuzzy was gone, looked to road where she was attempting to collect some of the gems that had fallen out her gem bag when he had rushed to get them off the road, and sighed as he unhitched himself from the wagon. Going around to the back of the wagon he began to unload his armory of weapons and shields.
On the road the female Mars Djinn was bouncing back and forth gathering up the scattered gems into a small pile so her unicorn would be able to quickly put them all back in her gem bag. She was paying special attention to the red gem that seemed to have fire dancing in it. Just as she finished putting her favorite gem on top of the pile she was surprised by three sets of clawed feet landing around her.
"See I told you I saw some gems scattered on the road and now here they are gathered up for us to eat them." gleefully stated a blue serpent like drake while rubbing his claws together gazing at the gems before him.
"So your eyes actually pay attention to something other than the ass of that dragoness you were flying behind." grumbled a thick brown drake that was eyeballing the blue drake across from him surprised that the gems were real.
"Lets just hurry up and split the gems among us so we can eat them and rejoin the flight!" yelled a red and orange drake glaring at the two idiots she had been flying near. "What is that on our gem pile!?" she yelled drawing their attention to red and orange furry thing on their gems.
"Looks like a phoenix with no wings!" laughed the blue drake while pointing at it. The phoenix without wings huffed at him while standing defiantly on their gem pile.
"No! It's some kind of bunny with flaming fur! Let's eats it too!" Yelled the female drake while flicking her tongue out. The flaming bunny glaring at her with its cyan eyes.
"Well I think its a-" THUDCRASHBAMBONGTHUMP The other two drakes turned to the third one only to discover that he had just been hit by maces, hammers, and a sledgehammer on the top, sides, and back of his head all at once. He swayed on his feet for a moment or two before crashing face first on to the ground with little gemstones dancing around his head. Behind him stood a unicorn in armor with a glowing horn and several more weapons and shields floating around it.
Dragons were one of the hardiest races on the planet; highly resistant to magic, scales that were impenetrable to most weapons, could thrive in environments that would kill most other races, and enough natural weapons to dissuade most creatures from attacking one. While bladed weapons wouldn't be able to pierce or hack through their scales, the concussive force from blunt weapons was effective if one knew how and where to hit one with enough force.
Phalanx was both better and worse off than he imaged when he first saw the dragons land. They were teenage dragons, making them much easier to deal with than had they been full grown, but at the same time worse because they would be too prideful or stupid to know when to cut their losses.
"I am only going to warn you once. Back away from my companion, leave her gems alone, take your friend and fly back up to the rest of your flight or suffer the consequences." He growled as the blunt weapons floating around him adjusted position to strike from various angles and shields gathered at his sides.
The two remaining conscious drakes looked to unicorn, to the knocked out drake, to furry thing on top of the small gem pile. "We are not losing our lunch to some fancy horn head of a guard!" the blue drake shouted before taking a deep breath and blowing out fire at the nancy pony.
As expected the horn head moved his shield to block the fire, he rushed in after his fire blast prepared to jump over the shields and tackle the horn head. He got to the shields before something - everything - went wrong, a shield almost as tall he was suddenly appeared and rushed forward slamming into him knocking the breath out of him. It drew back before flipping up, striking him in the chin and then coming down, striking him upon the head. Shaking his head he found himself surrounded by the weapons. He had only a moment to glance at the horn head, before the pain started.
The female drake looked away as the stupid moron rushed in and was repeatedly beat down by the vicious unicorn. Realizing too late this wasn't one of the fluffy friendly ponies from inside of Equestria where they frolicked and played all day long, every day. He had finished the beating and was now turning his attention to her. She remember what he had said earlier and quickly snatched up the bunny things holding it to her claws.
"You will throw away all those weapons and shields or I will gut your furry little bastard of a pet." She yelled at him while hold up his furry little companion. His eyes widened at what she had just said, she had just insulted her in three different ways in one sentence.
She looked on confused as the unicorn instead of doing what she said, ran off into the forest to a wagon, brought all his weapons close to him, and had his shields form around him like a turtle shell, before the last shield covered him, he looked at her and said "Oh you shouldn't have done that, now you really made her mad." the last shield in place he created a magic barrier over it.
She blinked at him wondering what had cause him to do that, when she noticed the creature in her claws was heating up, and for a dragon that could swim in lava to feel the something hot in their claws the heat it would be creating should not be possible. She looked into the glaring blue eyes of the furry creature she was holding as it started glowing and gulped . . .
In the skies above the Great Dragon Migration was blessed with watching from a safe distance a fire explosion that happened on the ground below/behind/infront of them. Rather than investigate it they chalked up to stupid teenage dragons messing with something they shouldn't have and paying the price for it. Natural Selection taking its course of dragons too dumb to live getting killed off early on.
995 . . . 996 . . . 997 . . . 998 . . . 999 . . . and 1000 Phalanx finished counting in his head before taking down the magic barrier around his shields. Moving the shields back against the wagon he brought a hoof to his horn to check it and felt it glowing warm. Well that explains the splitting headache I have now. Used up too much magic protecting myself and the wagon. He reached into the wagon with a hoof, brought out one of the canteens, opened it with his mouth, and dumped the water on his horn. He listen to the water sizzle as it came in contact with his horn, before cooling it down and taking care of his headache.
He slowly walked out forest, passing several fallen trees that had been knocked over by the force of the explosion, there on what was left of the road was his little fuzzy bomber standing on top of a red and orange she drake with her chest puffed out. He looked around extent of damage done, before turning back to her. "Well you certainly showed her not to insult you, didn't you?" he asked while getting a sense of smug satisfaction from her.
"Okay lets gather up your gems and be on road." He stated while slowing levitating the gems together, and started trekking back toward the wagon, but she didn't hop on his back like she usually did. He looked back at her to see her staring intently and the drake's red and orange scales, she looked up at him and back to the scales, and did so several times before he caught on. "Oh you want to add insult to injury too, don't you?" he asked while she started bouncing up and down "Fine I will go get the tongs and tweezers." he signed as resumed walking toward his wagon.
Several hours later the trio of drakes would awaken and with in moments there would be a shriek of feminine rage at the discover of the patch of scales missing from her glorious hide. Meanwhile a certain female Mars Djinn would be admiring her new collection of shimmering dragon scales.