Something wasn’t right. Several somethings, actually. The first thing was the voice that Solrathicharnon had heard, barely more than a squeak, saying simply ‘hi’ rather than roaring in defiance and triumph, as the elder dragon had expected the Overlord to do. The utter silence that had fallen over the Dragon’s Forge also was out of place.
But what truly stood out to Solrathicharnon was the magic he ‘saw’. It had emerged from within the obsidian tower he knew lay near the center of the lava pool. The magic was small, but bright and incredibly potent – it stood out nearly as much as the Elements did down below, or the Rainbow of Darkness would if he removed it from within his scales. Magic? The Overlord’s hoard included magic? Solrathicharnon hadn’t counted on that. He had presumed a brute of a dragon, clever, perhaps, and certainly mighty, but one that had ascended thanks to his or her own raw power, not with the aid of a trinket from their hoard.
At length, the silence over the Forge was broken by a crashing sound, and a few small hisses of surprise and pain. The elder red’s ear-crests swiveled in that direction, and he recognized the sound of dragons trying to untangle themselves from each other. That, and the fact that he could no longer hear one of the challengers that had taken to the air, suggested that one had just landed amongst his or her fellow dragons – or, more likely, crashed.
“Watch where you’re landing!” He heard a whisper in Draconic.
“Sorry,” came the reply, most unexpectedly, to the challenge. Evidently whatever was happening was so shocking that the dragon who had crashed didn’t feel like re-asserting himself – and the dragons he had crashed into didn’t think to pounce on him in his moment of weakness.
Solrathicharnon grunted, angling himself to come down for a landing himself, now that he would no longer be the first one to leave the skies. Dragons made their way for him, at least, giving him plenty of space. He lashed out and grabbed a nearby one once he had landed anyway, pulling it close. The dragon he grabbed grunted in surprise and pain – from the feel of it, Solrathicharnon had grabbed her by one wing – as the eldest dragon pulled her close.
“You,” he said. “What is happening?”
A nearby dragon whispered something that might have been ‘Saurivthurgix’; Solrathicharnon’s tail whipped out at the impudent lizard and caught him in what felt like the chest, sending him flying away. The dragon he held, meanwhile – maybe a quarter his size, judging from the size of the wing he held – struggled a little, but quickly submitted to his superior strength. “The Overlord has revealed himself,” she answered. “He…he’s a whelp.”
“He is what?” Solrathicharnon demanded.
“Barely at that,” another nearby dragon noted. “A…hatchling. He can’t be more than ten summers.”
Solrathicharnon growled low, pulling the smaller dragon very close to his barred teeth. “Do not lie to me,” he warned.
“I’m not!” The dragon he had in a death-grip objected. “He’s small, purple, no wings yet…he’s smaller than those ponies!”
Solrathicharnon didn’t believe the dragon he held. Couldn’t. He made to demonstrate as such by tearing off her lying head, when a call went up from somewhere else in the horde of dragons gathered. “Is this a joke?” The voice matched that of one of the challengers, the one who had called herself Othlaraekgixustrat. He could no longer hear any wingbeats, and presumed that all the challengers, then, had returned to the ground “Or have you just gone insane, Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs-Vutha?”
There was a moment of quietness, and Solrathicharnon could imagine Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs, if the whelp-turned-Overlord situation was true, shifting uncomfortably. “I am not joking,” the black dragon said – Solrathicharnon presumed that he was black, anyway, seeing as Vutha meant ‘the Black.’ “The Overlord has defeated all of us here.”
“Seriously?” another dragon asked, in a voice that was full of doubt but somehow lacking anger at the affront – likely too shocked to be angry.
“These ponies are larger than him!” Called another, from near where the Elements and, presumably, their owners were. “And they’re tiny!”
“H-hey!” the squeak of a voice, that of the supposed Overlord, exclaimed. “I’m not that small…and anyway, I am the Overlord now. My name is Spike.”
Solrathicharnon’s ear-crests flicked at that. Spike? Corona had used to have a minion with that name; a lost dragon whelp that Zecora had befriended prior to aiding in Corona’s release from the Sun. Dragons born outside the Forge were rare, though Solrathicharnon himself was one of them. Usually the plan of the dragon who reared their own whelps was to have a small, personal army of their own; evidently something had gone wrong with regards to Spike’s parents, or perhaps his egg had been stolen and subsequently lost by some thief.
Regardless, that answered at least one question – why every dragon in the Forge was speaking Equestrian. It was the only language Spike knew, having never had a chance to learn Draconic. He had likely ordered the dragons of the Forge to speak it; having done so, those dragons, generally the most powerful ones in the continent, had spoken it to the new arrivals, who spoke it themselves in deference to their seemingly bizarre choice.
It did nothing, however, to solve a greater mystery: How had this whelp become Overlord? Solrathicharnon knew that Corona had been able to use her magic to induce a greed-growth in Spike, but that had been Corona’s magic, not Spike’s, and from the sound of things Spike was just his normal size. So what was going on? He had some kind of magic…what could that magic do?
---
Raindrops looked to Cheerilee a moment. “This…this is weird,” she said.
“Yeah,” Cheerilee agreed. She thought a few moments, then a few moments more, feeling no rush to do so since all of the dragons seemed to be equally confused as her. However, the several moments of thought didn’t do anything to help the situation. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing. What is going on?”
Raindrops grunted, stretching her wings a few times and glancing around at the dragons. None of them seemed to know what was going on and had utterly no idea how to act at the moment. “I’ll…maybe I can move things along,” she said, taking to the air. Her ascent was noticed by at least a few dragons, but they didn’t pay her much mind once it was clear that she was only a little pony.
However, she didn’t get a chance to get very far – wasn’t even able to start flying over the lava pool – when two other beings joined her in the air: Solrathicharnon, and a much smaller beige dragon that he dragged up with him, kicking and wings beating.
“Considering what I have to put up with, I think I am a very patient dragon,” Solrathicharnon said as he began circling the obsidian tower, his voice deadly quiet but somehow carrying across the hundreds of feet that separated him from Raindrops, and him from Spike. Raindrops beat her wings, starting her own circuit around the tower in order to keep the distance between her and Solrathicharnon roughly the same. “But that patience has run out.” He looked to the dragon he held in his grip. “What is your name?”
The dragon stopped her struggling. “Uh – Rachvaeri…”
“Rachvaeri. Kill that whelp. I can’t be bothered.” Solrathicharnon threw the dragon from his grip, towards the obsidian tower.
She had to rapidly beat her wings to get air under her and prevent herself from falling down amongst the dragons below, but once she did, she hesitated, looking between Solrathicharnon and Spike. “But,” Rachvaeri tried. “I mean – he’s just a whelp…”
Solrathicharnon’s eyes narrowed. “Kill him or I'll kill you.”
Rachvaeri hesitated a moment more, before turning and heading for the obsidian spire. Spike’s eyes widened at Rachvaeri’s approach. “Hey, hang on, though!” he called. “You didn’t challenge me! Just those other four did! But that means that unless they defeat me, I’m still your Overlord, right?”
The black dragon atop the tower leaned down towards Spike, saying something in a low voice to him. Rachvaeri slowed her approach, giving the much larger dragon time to say whatever he wanted to say.
“Wait, I can be challenged whenever?” he demanded. “By any dragon? I thought that this would be the last time!”
“I never said that,” Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs answered, speaking loud enough to be heard, since Spike was as well. He waved a claw at all the dragons. “This is just…getting the word out. But you wouldn’t be much of an Overlord if you couldn’t take any dragon, at any time.”
Spike shook his head. “That is messed up,” he said, then looked to Rachvaeri. “Okay, come on, I guess…”
The beige dragon had stopped within about a hundred feet of the tower, doing her best to hover in place, though it mostly amounted to flying back and forth in a tight circle. She glanced once more to Solrathicharnon, who didn’t react other than to flick out his tongue, tasting the air. “Sorry,” she apologized, before diving forward. “But it's you or me, hatchling.”
Spike let out a long sigh, Raindrops saw, and then leaped from the obsidian tower, one claw touching the gray-and-red necklace that he wore as he fell.
And then, with appalling speed, he wasn’t a whelp anymore.
Raindrops blinked, eyes wide in surprise. His entire form had grown red and suddenly changed, elongating, bulking up, growing in size from two feet, to four, then eight, twelve, sixteen, finally topping out at around thirty feet long from snout to tail. Said tail lengthened from a short, thick, stubby thing to a long and sinuous length, while his neck had also elongated and his head lengthened into that of an adult dragon’s. The green spines on his back became pointed and increased in number, while a frill of new spines appeared around his jaw, and green, swept-back horns curled from his head. From his back a pair of wings erupted, giving him a wingspan of what had to be nearly a hundred feet when his wings stretched out to their fullest.
And all this happened in a second, a single moment of red magic wrapping around his form and infusing him. The necklace he wore grew with him, though it became partially covered by the scales that grew across his chest. In its enlarged form, Raindrops could see that it was made up of a red gem set against a stylized, very angry looking alicorn’s face.
The appearance Spike had taken on was familiar to Raindrops – it was the same one he had taken when he had been artificially grown by Corona, more than a year ago now. The only difference was Spike’s eyes; where before they had been green, now the irises glowed a bright red that matched that of the gem in the amulet he wore.
Rachvaeri let out a roar of surprise at Spike’s growth, wings flaring as she tried to backpedal in the air, while all around dragons let out yelps and roars of surprise, and even Solrathicharnon seemed to miss a wingbeat and do a double-take, no doubt ‘seeing’ the magic of Spike’s amulet at work. Spike, meanwhile, spread his wings wide, catching himself before he could hit the lava and charging at the now smaller beige dragon that had come to kill him, beating his wings a few times and catching thermals from the lava that propelled him forward and into her head-first.
Rachvaeri was lucky that Spike’s horns curled back from his head, else she probably would have been impaled. As it was, she let out a roar of pain and a gout of yellow fire as the wind was knocked from her. Spike grabbed her by her hind legs and pulled down even as he ascended, flipping her around in the air and ruining her lift. When Spike let go of her, she fell towards the lava below, and was only barely able to arrest her descent and avoid crashing head-first into the liquid rock.
Rachvaeri soared to the edge of the beach before alighting on it, looking up at Spike. The amulet around his neck and his eyes glowed as he reared back in the air, wings beating steadily and having no problems hovering in place as he did.
“If it’s you or me,” Spike said, his voice deeper and more rasping, “I choose me.”
That surprised Raindrops too. When Spike had grown before, via Corona’s magic, he had been nothing more than a dumb brute, an engine of destruction barely capable of speech or planning. That clearly wasn’t the case here, however. Rachvaeri, meanwhile, considered Spike a moment, growling low. “I…” she said, before lowering herself to the ground beneath her, head pressed to the basalt. “I choose you too, Overlord.”
Spike did something unexpected at that – he grinned, holding out one arm with fist clenched but thumb pointed up. “Awesome!” he exclaimed, then paused. “Um…Rach…Rachvari? Did I get that right?”
The dragon blinked a few times. “Rachvaeri,” she said.
“Rachvaeri. Got it. Don’t worry, I don’t hold grudges.”
There was a lot of fluttering of eyes at that statement, as the other dragons looked between each other and their now larger Overlord. Rachvaeri lifted her head off the ground a few feet, and when Spike didn’t do or say anything in objection, stood up fully again, looking at once relieved and confused, one hand at her neck as though feeling for a bite that she had expected Spike to deliver.
Another dragon rose into the air, one of Spike’s previous challengers – a gray dragon that was a good sixty feet long, more than twice the size of Rachvaeri or what Spike had become. Solrathicharnon noticed, and beat his wings hard to close in on the gray dragon, though he approached from a lower altitude to show that he wasn’t coming to attack – a sign of deference that Raindrops recognized, as pegasi had a similar built-in tradition as a holdover from their more military days.
The gray dragon watched the approach carefully, and when Solrathicharnon rose up to lean in close to him and say something to him, the other dragon’s eyes narrowed before turning to look at Spike. “So that’s what you did,” the gray dragon said. He banked away from Solrathicharnon and began to orbit Spike, unable to hover in place the way the smaller dragon could. “You have magic.”
Spike tapped the necklace. “Mine,” he confirmed. “What was your name again?”
The gray dragon’s eyes flashed with greed. “Versveshkepeskuskisk,” he hissed. “And that will be mine, whelp!”
Spike’s grin returned. He stuck out his neck. “Take,” he offered.
Versveshkepeskuskisk blinked a few times at that; he had been about to charge, but stopped cold at Spike’s words. “What?”
“I said take it,” the Overlord said. He beat his wings a few times, and then landed on the beach, other dragons making way for him, and even more space being cleared for Versveshkepeskuskisk. “Go on. I won’t stop you.”
The gray dragon paused. He had expected a fight, probably – most likely an easy one – not for Spike to just offer the source of his power to him. After a moment, however, he came forward, looming over the smaller Spike and grabbing the amulet that he wore, pulling. It didn’t budge. He tugged again, but was no more successful – not even making in Spike stumble. With a roar, Versveshkepeskuskisk drew back one hand, claws ready to strike off Spike’s head, no doubt – but then Spike’s form glowed red again.
And once again, Spike grew. In a moment he was bigger than Versveshkepeskuskisk by about ten feet, wings spread wide, glaring down at the now smaller dragon, who had roared in surprise and backed away at Spike’s sudden growth.
“I love this thing,” Spike said, his voice having grown yet deeper and louder as he loomed over the gray dragon. “It can’t be stolen. Doesn’t come off unless I want it to come off. Maybe – maybe – it would come off if you were able to knock me out…but that’s not gonna happen.”
Spike exhaled green fire at Versveshkepeskuskisk, who roared in surprise, more so when Spike came forward at a sideways angle, striking the dragon with a wing before turning and whipping at him with his tail. The gray dragon grabbed Spike’s tail, however, taking the blow and visibly being hurt by it but not letting it slow him down in the slightest. He pulled the Spike forward, and the Overlord of All Dragons seemed surprised as Versveshkepeskuskisk’s mouth snapped forward towards Spike’s neck. The now-larger dragon, however, twisted suddenly, dropping to the ground and turning, sending Versveshkepeskuskisk flying. Spike was up a moment later, arm slamming into Versveshkepeskuskisk’s head. The gray dragon cried out in shock and pain, even more so when he spat out several shattered teeth.
“Kill you – ” he began.
“Nope,” Spike finished, grabbing Versveshkepeskuskisk by the neck and then headbutting the dragon. Versveshkepeskuskisk cried out, stumbled a little when Spike released him, and then fell over, eyes blinking rapidly and still breathing but clearly dazed and down. Spike, meanwhile, had a hand to his own head, steadying himself. “Ugh…” he groaned, shaking himself clear. “No one wins a headbutt…”
There were shouts of surprise. Spike turned just in time to see Solrathicharnon land, rearing up to his full size – still larger than Spike – and head and jaws snap at him, not even giving him a chance to get his bearings. Spike still managed to avoid the deadly maw by falling backwards and scurrying away, getting space.
Solrathicharnon didn’t relent, however, leaping forward. Spike did the same, ducking low, but still caught the red dragon’s tail, making him cry out in pain. Solrathicharnon, meanwhile, landed easily and turned with surprising speed given his bulk. “Grow,” he commanded. “It doesn’t matter, whelp. I am older, I am stronger,” his hand went to the scales at his neck, the ones in which small objects could be tucked. “And I have – ”
Spike grew, as Solrathicharnon commanded. His form flashed red, his eyes took on the color of blood. In a second, to no one’s surprise, he was the same size as Solrathicharnon. What did come as a surprise was that he didn’t stop.
Solrathicharnon froze in whatever he was reaching for, blind eyes wide and ear-crests flared to their full extent as Spike passed a hundred and fifty feet, dwarfing the red dragon. But he didn’t stop there – a hundred and seventy-five feet, two hundred feet, three hundred, four hundred…other dragons scrambled over each other and took to the air with roars of shock and surprise. Raindrops had to spin, weave, and most of all pray that none of them would collide with her in their rush to escape the monster that Spike was becoming.
Additional spines had grown along his back, at his elbows and along his chin and in a crest around his eyes. A second set of horns grew out from his head, curling around the set that was already there. The iris and pupils of his eyes faded away and the white became an angry red, but there was no doubting that despite the appearance, Spike could still see perfectly well. His whole form glowed with an angry red light as he finally stopped growing. He spread his wings wide – his full wingspan had to be more than a thousand feet – and he loomed over Solrathicharnon.
“Hi,” Spike said, in what was probably supposed to be a normal speaking voice for him, but which instead echoed with the same kind of intensity that Raindrops had thought only Luna or Corona was capable of. “What was your name again? Sol-something-something-something?”
The mouths of just about every dragon in the Dragon’s Forge dropped open at that, and for a few moments there was only the sound of beating wings. “Solrathicharnon-Charir-Uskirlymzolthurkear,” said one at length, not far from Raindrops.
“Solrathicharnon-Saurivthurgix,” corrected another a moment later.
“Yeah, I’m not going to be able to remember all of that,” Spike said. “Solrath. Big Red. I’m Overlord now. Okay?”
The red dragon was shaking – not in fear, but in anger. His ear-crests had folded down, his teeth were clenched tightly together, wings spread wide and claws flexing and unflexing. One went to his throat again, but he seemed to think things over for a moment as Spike loomed over him.
“How?” he hissed. “Corona’s magic could not make you this mighty, I know it! And even when you were infused with it…you were overcome by a pegasus! By one pony, one of the ones you've brought here!”
The eyes of all the dragons in the sky were on Raindrops then, as was Spike’s, a fact that she was instantly aware of and just as instantly uncomfortable with. She held up her hooves. “Whoa, wait,” she said. “Wait, hang on, there was – I mean, I was forty feet tall at the – but it’s not like I can do that at will – ”
Raindrops was aware of a dragon behind her. She turned, and saw Claxokarthelornarux, the silver dragon from before, had flown up behind her. Before she could react, the dragon grabbed her in one hand, then let herself fall to the ground. Raindrops did nothing to hide the very real terror she felt, screaming aloud. She brought her hooves down on the claw that held her, but if it hurt the silver dragon, she wasn’t showing it.
“Solrathicharnon-Charir-Uskirlymzolthurkear makes a valid point, Overlord Spike,” Claxokarthelornarux said, holding Raindrops forward towards the dragon that was something in the area of six times her size. “How can you be Overlord when a foe who’s beaten you in the past is still alive?” She smiled a smile that was completely without humor or cheer. “Or is that why you had her brought here?”
“What?” Raindrops asked, then turned to look at Spike. “W-wait, what? B-but…that was…S-Spike?”
The Overlord of All Dragons took a single step forward, since that was all that was needed to bring him up to Claxokarthelornarux. He snorted green flames. “Right,” he said. “You made me bite off part of my tongue. That hurt!”
Claxokarthelornarux released Raindrops, but Spike wasted no time in snatching her from the air with a speed that belied his size. He pulled her up to eye level. “It hurt a lot, Raindropss!” he exclaimed, eyes flashing and voice growing far more sibilant. “Sso did the hoof to the face…I think you broke a few ribss, too! You’re lucky that sshrinking back down to normal ssizze healed everything!”
Raindrops squirmed in the grip of Spike, but he held her firm. From far below, she heard hoofbeats. “W-wait!” Cheerilee’s voice cried out. “Spike, wait, please, don’t – Raindrops didn’t want to hurt you!” Spike looked down to her, reached down and picked her up. Cheerilee didn’t try to struggle or escape as he did, and soon the two were held in either hand of Spike, looking him in his eyes. Green fire leaked from his jaws like some kind of burning liquid, though it evaporated to nothing before reaching the ground.
Cheerilee glanced to Raindrops, before pressing on. “You weren’t in control of yourself, Corona was directing you – Raindrops was just trying to protect us! She didn’t mean to hurt you!”
“Protect you?” Spike hissed. “Protect you from a sscared dragon hatchling who never even knew hiss own parentss? Who’ss only friend had turned him over to an inssane alicorn? WHO TURNED ME INTO A MONSSTER?”
Spike inhaled, and the sucking sound that he was making as he did so was more than familiar to the two ponies now – he was taking in air to fuel a gout of fire that would incinerate the two ponies. Cheerilee looked to Raindrops, tears in her eyes. Raindrops didn’t look any better herself as she looked back, as the two realized that this had always been a trap, that somehow Spike had known they were in Pferdreich, or at least Raindrops had been, and that all he wanted was revenge.
Raindrops looked to Spike. “I’m sorry,” she said, closing her eyes. She didn’t think he’d hear her. But the sucking sound stopped at that, and on opening her eyes, Raindrops saw Spike glaring at her still. However, he let out his breath – downwards, away from the ponies, and with no fire running through it. He closed his own eyes, shaking his head, before putting both ponies back down on the ground. Neither could keep their legs under them long, both falling to their barrels and staring up at the titanic dragon.
“I – I don’t have to hurt her,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at the silver dragon who had captured Raindrops in the first place. “What would that prove?”
Claxokarthelornarux glanced down at the ponies, then back to Spike. “But – she had defeated you – ”
“And?” Spike demanded. He spread his arms and wings wide, looking around at all the other dragons. “Is there any dragon here who thinks I couldn’t end her if I wanted to? But it doesn’t prove anything. It’s like kicking over an anthill.”
“But – but why would you – ”
“Because I’m in charge, that’s why!” Spike roared, jaws snapping forward at the silver dragon. Claxokarthelornarux yelped and skirted away from the attack, lowering herself to the ground as she did. Spike glared at her a moment more, before turning around and looking to Solrathicharnon. “I’m in charge. Right, Solrath?”
The red dragon still had a claw at the scales on his neck, and visibly fumed at being addressed by so short a name. At length, however, he set all four claws on the ground, and bowed his head. “You are,” he hissed. “You are Overlord – for as long as you can keep the title.”
Spike smiled, tapping the amulet he wore. “Forever,” he said, spreading his wings wide and beating them. Him taking flight was like the winds of a storm, strong enough that the smaller dragons had to grab hold of the ground or fly away from his airspace lest they be knocked around – nevermind the two ponies caught almost directly beneath it, who grabbed hold of each other and hunkered down.
Spike rose into the air, wings beating beneath him, gem on his amulet glowing brightly along with his eyes as he once again hovered in place with his wings and little other effort. “Any other challengers?” His demand was met with silence, and after a moment he grinned. “Alright, then! Awesome! Now hang on, it’s getting late. We’ll meet tomorrow and figure things out. I’ve got big plans!”
With that, he turned and flew back towards the black spire that rose from the lava pool, form glowing red as he did and beginning to shrink. By the time he reached it, he had shrunk down to a mere twenty feet long, and continued to shrink even as he landed and walked back inside. The black dragon, Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs, waited for him to enter before looking back out at the gathered dragons, and to the two ponies in particular, before ducking down and following Spike into the tower.
There was silence for a long time, as the various dragons in the Forge struggled to comprehend everything that had just happened. “So,” one said at length. “That happened…”
“Did you see how big he was?” Asked another.
“No dragon has ever been that big,” said a third. “Not since Glaurancalunggon.”
“And he’s our Overlord, going to lead us to new hoards…”
There were probably more conversations, but neither Cheerilee nor Raindrops had a chance to hear them, as the latter was quickly on all four legs and galloping along the basalt beach, Cheerilee following after her and calling her name. Raindrops reached one of the streams that fed into the lava pool and dove into it. It only reached up to her barrel, but she wasted no time bowing her head and swallowing great mouthfuls of water. Eventually her shaking legs gave out and she let herself fall into the water, soaking herself thoroughly and only raising her head above the water when she felt her lungs begin to burn, though she only lifted her head far enough out of the water to keep her nose out of it – making her look like some kind of jasmine-furred, herbivorous crocodile.
Cheerilee stared at her. “I thought you wouldn’t drink – ”
“Changed my mind,” Raindrops answered, raising her head just a little in order to do so but not looking at Cheerilee. The stream’s bed was made of stones of various sizes, all of them worn smooth. She fiddled with one of the rocks between her front hooves and wondered if it ever rained here. The water flowing over her coat and hooves felt nice, though, almost nice enough to make her forget being held by a dragon, looking at Spike in his red eyes, looking at…she felt a snap in her hooves, looked down, and saw that she’d snapped the stone she held in two.
Cheerilee considered a few moments, before joining Raindrops in the water, frankly in no better a state that she was but willing to try and be calm for her. “D…do you think that’s why Spike brought us here?” Cheerilee asked. “To…to get some kind of closure with you?” She had almost asked to try and kill you, but knew that Raindrops didn’t need to consider that right now.
“I think he wanted to kill me,” Raindrops said, vividly considering the possibility anyway. She felt her throat drying out again as she did, and dipped her head back into the water, drinking deeply. It was cool, at least as compared to the air of the Dragon’s Forge. Certainly as compared to dragon fire. “S…so that’s what a Draconic Overlord looks like…”
Cheerilee sat down, barrel pressed against Raindrops’ own, and to her relief Raindrops extended a wing and wrapped it around her friend – she could use a comforting touch at least as much as Raindrops right about now. “What is that necklace?” Cheerilee asked at length. “It has an alicorn on it. Did you notice that?”
Raindrops shivered, but nodded. One hoof went to her own throat, to the Element of Honesty. “It looks like an evil version of these,” she noted. Her eyes widened as she looked to Cheerilee. “You don’t think it is, do you? What if there’s some kind of…of…Elements of Disharmony or something?”
“If there is, I think ours need an upgrade,” Cheerilee noted. “All mine does is look pretty and try and choke me. I actually had my fur trimmed so it would stop doing that. Almost helped.”
Raindrops considered that for a moment, before chuckling a little. Her laughter died down, though, when the two heard a series of large footsteps behind them. They looked, and saw Hesjingrasvim approaching. After facing down Solrathicharnon, being snatched from the air by Claxokarthelornarux, and nearly being immolated or eaten or crushed or any number of other things by Spike, the sight of a mere fifty-foot dragon no longer inspired much fear in either pony.
“So,” he said. “Now you’ve met the Overlord. Again, I understand.” He eyed Raindrops. “You are so lucky, little pony.” He nodded his head towards the jungle. “Guess now you know why our whelps don’t ever come out from there, though, unless they have to.”
Cheerilee stood, looking up at the green dragon. “Did you know Spike was going to do that?” she asked, trying her best to remember that even if Hesjingrasvim was tiny next to how big Spike could get, he was still several times her own size, and so shouting at him probably wasn’t a good idea. “That he was going to threaten Raindrops like that? Try and kill her?”
“No,” the dragon answered. “I’m not sure that the Overlord knew that he was going to do that, either.”
“What?” Raindrops asked, as she stood herself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” the green dragon began, before pausing and looking towards the obsidian spire. He shrugged. “Well, now it means you can try and figure it out yourself. The Overlord wants to see you both.”
Raindrops’ wings flared instinctively at that, beating several times – splashing the water as they did – as every fiber of her being screamed at her to start running and not to look back. “I don’t want to see him!” she exclaimed.
The green dragon scoffed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“He just tried to kill me!”
“But he didn’t. And he probably won’t. Like he said, it won’t prove anything, so what would be the point?” He sighed. “Why do you keep fighting him? He’s bigger then you are. Things would go a lot smoother if you just did what he said, when he said it.” Hesjingrasvim leaned down. “Just think of him as a dragon version of your princess.”
“Luna doesn’t go around threatening to immolate her subjects,” Raindrops pointed out.
“Yeah, but she’s the strongest so she’s in charge, right? Same principle.”
Cheerilee and Raindrops started at that. “That’s not why Luna is the princess!” Both objected loudly, before they could think better of it.
Hesjingrasvim was startled by their outburst, but like most of his reactions to them his expression changed to confusion rather than anger. “It’s not?” he asked.
“No!” Cheerilee exclaimed. “It’s because…well, okay, look, there’s a long sequence of events during Equestria’s early days right after the first Hearth’s Warming. See, it had been agreed that the noble class of the Kingdom of Unicornia would be retained and the military elite of the pegasi and the landowners of the earth ponies would be integrated into it, and – ”
“Uh-huh,” Hesjingrasvim interrupted, glancing to the spire again. “The Overlord wants to see you now. Are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”
---
A dragon has no personal name. His or her name is given to him or her by other dragons – their names are acclamations towards great events in their lives or things that they had earned. A strong enough dragon could try and claim a specific title for themselves, proclaim it for themselves, but ultimately it only stuck if other dragons went along with it. And the older, larger, and more powerful a dragon became, the more they accomplished, the longer their names were supposed to be.
No dragon was going to go against the will of the Overlord, though. As such, the eldest dragon in the world, the formerly largest and most powerful, was now known to every dragon simply as Solrath.
Big Red if they were feeling foolish. So far none had been, though.
Solrath felt his blood boiling, felt the fire in his belly threatening to spill out in a great conflagration. He had already exhaled fire at any dragon that had gotten within fifty feet of him as he took to the air, getting away from his lesser brethren and landing along the edge of the Forge’s caldera, giving him the space needed to think.
Spike. The whelp had magic, magic the likes of which Solrath – it wasn’t even accurate Draconic, it should have been Solrathi! – had only seen in three other sources: Corona, Luna, and the Rainbow of Darkness. Whatever trinket he had, some kind of necklace or amulet, Solrath guessed, it was potent, in the same scale as the Darkness that Solrath still had.
As powerful? More powerful?
Maybe.
And that infuriated Solrath, that he didn’t know. Solrath was not a dragon afraid of taking risks, of gambling, but only if he knew the odds of success and failure. But he didn’t. Whatever Spike had, to Solrath’s ability to sense magic it appeared powerful enough to make him doubt the Rainbow of Darkness. That same vision told him that it was just as surely dark magic, too. The magic imbued within the trinket wasn’t quite as black and vile as that of the Rainbow of Darkness, but it was certainly evil magic in its own way, a corruption. And, again, powerful. Spike had barely tapped into it to do what he had done, to grow to tremendous size. It could do so much more, Solrath knew.
Then again, the Rainbow of Darkness could do more than warp a mountain valley, too. Solrath hadn’t used the Darkness to its full power yet. He hadn’t thought he’d need to. And he certainly hadn’t used it on himself – he didn’t know what it would do to him yet. Whatever power it might offer, Solrath doubted it was worth the trade-off in corruption to his body and, more importantly, his mind, his ability to think, his most powerful tool…
But what to do about this Overlord?
There was a beating of large, powerful wings from nearby. Solrath snarled, turning in the direction and exhaling as powerful a gout of flames as he ever had, the one and only warning whatever whelp was approaching would get.
The warning didn’t deter the approaching dragon as it landed, however. “You’re in a foul mood, Solrathicharnon-Charir-Uskirlymzolthurkear,” Claxokarthelornarux said, her voice coming from too far below where it would have otherwise if she were sitting upright - she was bowing her head and neck, then, a sign of deference.
Solrath turned in the direction of the voice, his wrath stayed for a moment. “You prevent me from slaying the ponies, but then offer one up to the Overlord,” he observed, returning to the here and now. “You crawl on the dirt before that whelp, but that is the second time you have used the name that is mine by right…not that the whelp even noticed the first time. You have only ever taunted me and baited me before, yet now you come here submissively.” He leaned forward. “What games are you playing, Claxokarthelornarux?”
“A simple one,” the dragon responded. Not for the first time, Solrath wondered what she looked like – she had been born well after he had lost his sight to Luna. “The only one I have ever played, ever since I first tore my way free of my egg, earned my first name, stole the first part of my hoard. The game is called ‘I want to be Overlord.’”
Solrath scoffed, spreading his wings wide. “Not while I live.”
“I honestly wasn’t sure that you still did,” Claxokarthelornarux noted. Had it been that long since he had last joined a migration? Yes, it had been...a hundred and fifty years. Maybe more. “Even though you are, what, fifteen hundred years?” Claxokarthelornarux continued. “Even you don’t have long left to this world, Solrathicharnon-Charir-Uskirlymzolthurkear.” There was a low rumbling from her throat, and she shuffled forward. “Does that frighten you?”
Solrath’s wings beat once, propelling him forward. Claxokarthelornarux roared in surprise, but Solrath was already on her, crashing full into her chest and bowling her over. Her head snapped up and bit down on Solrath’s shoulder, but his scales were thick and more than up to the task of defending him as he pinned her with one arm and tore her loose with the other, his own jaws coming down on one arm and biting. Blood hotter than boiling water gushed into his mouth, and she roared in pain, convulsing enough to shake the older dragon loose and get out from under him. She didn’t get far, though, before Solrath leaped again and landed atop her back, pinning the somewhat smaller dragon to the ground with merely his own bulk and one arm, while the other grabbed her by the throat, claws getting under her scales and touching the softer flesh beneath.
“You never knew when to shut up,” he observed. “I should kill you. I would very much enjoy it at the moment.”
Claxokarthelornarux was breathing heavily, and Solrath could feel the sputters of flame coming from her nose and mouth as she did. “Fine, do it,” she said at length, “and forget learning about the Alicorn Amulet.”
Solrath paused, head tilting slightly. “The trinket worn by the whelp?” he asked.
“The same,” the other dragon responded. She shifted a little under Solrath’s mass. “I know quite a bit about it, as it turns out…and I’ll tell you everything as long as you do three things with the knowledge: spare me, kill Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs-Vutha, and kill the Overlord.”