//------------------------------// // Loyal-Tied // Story: Stupid Direction-Face // by Estee //------------------------------// "And we're done." The ruins of that one boulder were right in front of her. She was looking directly at them, with the last rays of setting Sun glinting off fragments of what was probably exposed silica. It had been fairly fragile anyway, Twilight had said, a mineral-glued collection of multiple clumps, and those who had impacted it had still been lucky, hitting the fracture lines in just the right way to leave them with nothing more than two weeks of slowly-fading bruises and frequent moans whenever they forgot that they weren't supposed to be moving in normal ways just yet... Claws hooked the ledge on her left. Shivering tips gouged a final hold, and near-spent muscles eventually heaved the dragon's torso onto nearly-level ground. "T-t-that's it..." he just barely managed. A little arm shift followed it, and he managed to get about a tenth of his hips to relative safety. "We... I did it..." Rainbow nodded, still focused on the boulder. A reflection here, a refraction there, and any of it was better than looking at Garble. "Yeah. So we're done. That's your cave. And since you spent so much time learning the way up, I'm betting you know how to get down. Thanks --" mostly spat, and at this point, she was mustering exactly as much flame as he could "-- for the experience." Unless he suddenly decided he needed someone to walk him inside, or the cave mouth had somehow collapsed and he declared the job unfinished with destination unreachable, then ordered her to start kicking boulders... She instinctively glanced up, because if that was the case, she needed to evacuate even faster than she'd originally planned. And then there was nothing she could do except try to blink away the dazzle from a near-blinding, completely unexpected surge of something which wasn't exactly light, something only she could see... Her forehooves came up, rubbed at her closed eyelids. It didn't help. "Oh, horse apples," she muttered, and didn't care who heard, much less understood. The weather team had shifted a truly ridiculous amount of heat. And they'd needed to find places they could shift it to. In pegasus sight, the cave entrance flashed, surged, the energies stored within pressing against the woven border which had been invisibly and intangibly layered across the mouth. But that weaving had been done by multiple pegasi, and so the threads, while they connected, weren't exactly perfectly aligned. The more ponies who worked at a weaving, the more conflict would arise between slightly-differing styles and personal field signatures: it was an inevitability of pegasus magic, and one of the many reasons waterspout transfer operations were so hard to control. Any ongoing group effort performed in a small area for too long would ultimately, unstoppably see the weave distort into a tangle, and what happened after that could potentially turn into legend. The kind where there was only one survivor to tell the tale. This... not enough pegasi, power, or time: they never would have attempted it if there had been any chance of coming up against the Weft Line. But it was still imperfect, and so the heat within attempted to clash against the cold outside, the two forever trying to even each other out. And with the energies of pegasus magic moving to intercept, turning it back a split-second before too late, the triple interaction created a conflict of energies more appropriate to the heart of a cloud as it existed a tenth of a second before the lightning surged forth. Rainbow blinked again, and quickly looked away. After a few seconds, her eyes started to clear, just in time to see Garble trying to force himself upright. His arms slipped. Scales skidded across the dirt, bringing him something less than a hoofwidth closer to his destination. The last few rays of Sun played across his prone form, and they glinted there as well. Some of it could have been from little highlights in the keratin. Most was reflecting off near-microscopic granules of ice. "Garble?" Not with concern. Never with concern, because the jerk didn't deserve any, and so it amazed her that she'd been able to verbally fake it. "J-j-j-just... a f-f-few more... I... for my... f-f-f-f..." Another push, claws fighting the ground. The dirt won. He lay there. Breathing slowed. Eyes starting to close. And Rainbow, her mental focus still within those special bands of vision, finally saw how little heat was rising from him. The last of it. She didn't think too much about it. As with so many other things in her life, it was one of those situations where thinking just wasted time. Insistent, almost angry, and she also didn't bother thinking about why: "Can you get your arm up?" His eyes opened just enough to let her see the glint of yellow. The serrated mouth opened, but neither words nor flame emerged. The left arm shifted. All four of her knees bent in concert, and she pushed her torso against the rising limb, used her own momentum to force it across her back. (The claw tips scratched, but that didn't matter just now.) But the only place he had to grip was the edge of the wing, and with claws involved... "Okay," she breathed, and immediately came up with a better plan, moving herself forward, feeling the trails of pain skid down her spine until they ended at the base of her tail. "Close your hand. I'll pull." He didn't nod. There was nothing left for that. But palm moved against hair, and claws tightened. Pushing against frozen ground, squinting away from the flashes, not thinking about what she was doing or why because doing so would be the best way to stop, Rainbow dragged him across the door into summer. Of all those who had ventured within the cave during the attempts at diplomacy, flattery, and whatever it was Pinkie did, Rainbow had spent the shortest amount of time inside: just enough to... present her case -- before departing, and she'd never returned since: why bother to sightsee from a ledge when you could do it from the sky? But there was plenty of time to look around now, while Garble's breathing gradually evened out and the sweat spread through her coat, dripped down to briefly moisten the rock before evaporating, at least for that which wasn't steaming directly off her skin... For the most part, what little she could see of the interior hinted at a giant dome, and what struck her as an oddly smooth one: she supposed the previous occupant might not have been into tail-whipped rock spear defenses and so had possibly melted off the rough edges in order to make things more comfortable. But there was very little to look at. For normal light... Sun was down, and Moon was very close to new: only a little bit of star-illumination made it inside, and not very far within the mouth: she imagined that for earth ponies and unicorns, it would at most be turning what would have otherwise been absolute darkness into a morass of semi-differentiated shadows. And when it came to seeing heat... that quantity which normally belonged to an autumn Ponyville had seen a considerable fraction temporarily stored within the cave, and it had created a near-uniform glow which made it impossible to determine fine details. It also made her instinctively want to fly until she saw a swimming hole (or even a half-frozen lake), dive within, and stay there, because submersion within liquid was far better than drowning in semi-solid baking air. But she stayed for what had to have been nearly two hours, blinked the sweat out of her eyes, and watched Garble until he finally started to sit up. "Better?" Not that she cared. "Yeah..." His legs pushed, and he slid himself up the wall until he was mostly standing. "What... what did he do?" Another blink, which helped with the sweat. "He?" "He must have... I guess it makes sense when you're this high up, but I never heard about anything which would keep things warm..." He took a slow breath. "And you know what that makes him?" Rainbow already knew that any attempt to explain that he hadn't been involved in any way would skid off unyielding scales. "What?" "Stupid! If he didn't have this still set up after he left, anyone who got here in winter, forget whatever happened to what fall's supposed to be --" -- dead stop. He looked at her, and it seemed to be a more careful gaze than usual: it was certainly a much longer one, and considerably more evaluating. She glared right back at him, although it lost something for having to blink away the next trickle of sweat. "Okay," Garble finally said. "So. We got here. You did your stupid pony job, Direction-Face. Took about twenty times longer than it should have, but we got here." He grinned. "Do you know what I think a really slow journey guided by a total pegawuss is worth?" One permanent departure. She didn't care what he thought: she just wanted out, and as soon as she was sure he was done with her and wouldn't be coming back to town at all... "I told you a few stories on the way up here," and the tone was almost conversational. "Know what you're gonna be? Part of a new story. The boring part which everyone skips over so they can get to the good stuff. But this is Chapter One in the legend of how I became the biggest dragon ever -- and we're still in it. You were the boring stuff, and..." Handling claws idly scratched at the rock. "...I would have gotten here if it wasn't for you. If I'd been here before and knew where I was going. A lot faster, too, what with stupid ponies being so slow. But I would have wasted time, looking." More softly, almost entirely to himself, "I might have lost my chance..." Rainbow did something which surprised her. She stayed quiet. "So... you're no threat." More steady breathing, and he seemed to be focusing on each one. "No stupid pony is a threat." The claws flexed, in and out. "You said you were going to tell ponies the story... so you're going to see the end of Chapter One." An abrupt grin, one which made the protruding fangs slash against increasingly-humid air. "And live! Stick around for the local finale, Direction-Face, and then you can head to your wimpy little vapor puff of a home, and I'll go to mine without ever having to think about that little collection of future tinderboxes ever again." She wondered how long she could stay before sweat became froth. She'd been shifting heat away from her the whole time inside the entrance hall, and it still hadn't been enough to leave her at something fully temperate... "So what's at the end of Chapter One?" "The good part." She couldn't keep the words inside. "Prove it." The grin spread. Oxygen died. "So we're gonna need light," he said. "Don't blame yourself for that: even if we'd gotten here on time, Sun doesn't reach all the way to the back, and you need to see, right? So let's find something which can catch, and then if you know any pony tricks for getting it going, I'd like to see that level of incompetence in action..." Because he was out of flame: something she should have realized a little sooner than she had, but it was his fault for keeping her so angry and unfocused the whole time. "One or two." Especially with this much heat around: if they found some wood, she could just concentrate some into a catch spot. It's almost over. After all the things Spike had done for her, she could do a little more for him. She found the remnants of an old campsite outside, in the shadows of the mountain wall: at a guess, it had been from ponies hiking up to watch the Founder's Day fireworks. (Garble had refused to scout, staying within the entrance, and it was almost hard to blame him: crossing the heat border had been an unpleasant experience for her, and she suspected it would be worse for him.) She got the last few sticks of dry wood going a split-second before heading back inside, carrying them to Garble in her mouth with the just-smouldering ends as far from her fur as possible: the flame caught a few heartbeats after he took them. He wasn't being particularly careful about how he held them, but then, he didn't have to be. They headed into the main dome. "So, the thing is..." Garble casually said as he made his way towards the back, "ponies don't think." She gritted her teeth as she slowly (still far too slowly) flew along, tried to pay attention to the play of firelight on walls, the odd reflections off the spots which seemed to have been melted into smoothness. "Don't think about what?" "You live in that stupid town, Direction-Face. You had to see all the smoke when he finished moving in, right? Couldn't miss it." Nopony had. "Yeah. So?" "So you know he had asthma." She did now. Not that it mattered. "So what?" His groan was soft, that of a storyteller who knew that any normal audience would have seen the point of his tale by now and, if not for the joy of getting to educate the totally stupid, would have normally resented having to set up the educational appendix. "He tried to keep it a secret. He knew it made him weak, how many dragons would have gone after him if they'd found out. But when you spend enough time around him... when he's sleeping and can't hide it any longer..." "-- is there a point to this?" He stopped, turned to look at her, hovering about three body lengths behind him. They were about halfway to the back now, and the little dome of firelight failed to fill the larger one. "The point," he shot back, "is that ponies don't think. He's got asthma, Direction-Face. It makes him weak, dumb and weak and embarrassing. He hides it from the other adults, but dragons... no matter who you are, there's always going to be dragons coming around. Testing you. He couldn't hide it forever. So he took himself, his hoard, and he went to where no other dragons would think to look for him. But he's stupid -- and the asthma gave him away. Then something chased him out of this hole. I don't know what. Maybe that one namby-pamby threw cold tea in his face until he ran for his life. He's so weak, that might have worked on him and no other dragon in the world. Or it was a neurocypher, or a rockfall of cockatrice, or six thousand manticores in one shot. Whatever it was, they didn't think. Not about the important stuff. And ponies, they're supposed to think, even if they're dumber than the stupidest dragon could ever be... and they didn't..." Garble turned again, quickened his pace. The left arm held the cluster of improvised torches aloft. The right was moving along the matching hip, claws picking at scales. Rainbow still didn't get it, and some of the anger at having to admit it (along with so many other things) made its way into the world. "What don't we think about?" He didn't answer for a full minute, not until the curving shadow of the back wall was first touched by light. "There's a dragon in the cave." "Right." Two more steps forward: one matching flap. "And the dragon moves out. Fast. Less than a day." "Uh-huh." Again. "Every pony down there saw him go, right?" "Couldn't miss it." The departing shadow of huge body against clearing blue sky... One last time, until he stopped at the edge of a wide patch of stone, one with ridges and solid bubbles and frozen mineral waves. He turned again, grinned directly at her, and the blaze of his eyes nearly lit the entire cave. "And not a single one of you morons wondered 'Where did the hoard go?'" The tip of a claw tilted a particularly large scale away from vulnerable skin, flicked out two small objects which had been resting beneath the miniature pocket and knocked them into his palm. A single smooth motion brought them to his mouth, and the first one flew in. Rainbow had just enough time to spot it before he swallowed: a black diamond, something Spike had never consumed, too rare to ever be treated as a casual snack, nearly impossible to get for even the most gourmet of meals. And it was followed by a sliver of something solid and glistening with an almost oily sheen, which Garble jammed into a gap between two protruding fangs... He turned to face the floor. The yellow of his eyes fully ignited, cast their glow across the uneven rock. The flame followed suit. She retreated. She had no choice. The multi-hued blasts were coming one after the other with only pauses for breath, the rock was glowing red and starting to run, fumes were rising from the liquefying mass and while breathing such vapors would have saved Spike the need for a volcano health trip, a pony doing the same would have only found a form of death which Twilight had saved them from once before. She did what she hated nearly more than anything and backed away for the sake of survival, getting as close to the cave mouth as possible without truly exiting so she would have fresh (and cold, cold enough to burn) air to shift towards her lungs while simultaneously moving the fumes out well past her private breathing flow, watching as prismatic gouts and bursts and rebounds of the most intense flame she'd ever seen tore through the cave, burning into the mountain, melting the mountain... It took at least ten minutes, and that duration became her new definition of forever. The residual glow faded away, let the illumination narrow back to torchlight. Heat didn't so much dissipate as add its weight to what had already been pressing against her coat, trapped by the weave, and she had to bring a personal airflow current deep into the cave with her to prevent fainting, most of which was negated by the time she reached him and left her back at that sweating stage again. But she paid very little attention to that part, as what was in front of her seemed so much more important... Gold. Silver. Copper here and there. Brass, aluminum and that was hardly ever seen outside of drawn wire, plus crowns, necklaces, chalices, and gems, more gems than she'd ever thought could exist, more types than she'd known to exist, more than enough to put Rarity into either a drama faint or two-week coma, completely filling a pit which was nine body lengths in rough elliptical radius and who knew how deep, all of it completely untouched by the heat, without even a trace of molten rock on a single facet... Garble's eyes were wide. Still glowing, a lambent yellow which reflected off those uneven fangs. Staring down as if there was nothing else to look at in all the world. "They don't think," he almost whispered. "He has asthma. You see the smoke cloud and you know that. So he can't move it, not the right way. And it's so hard to move in the first place, so hard... but he can't do it like a real dragon should. So he's got to haul it the kid way, see? Physically. He was probably smuggling stuff in here for moons before he settled in, went to sleep, gave himself away. But whatever cleared him out... did it in a hurry. No time to haul it all back out. So you burn a pit. You get amber and tanzanite, enough to line the interior, about a claw thickness worth, and you treat them. Dump the hoard in, another treated double layer on top so that when you have to melt your way back in, everything inside is safe and you're okay for putting the molten stuff on to seal, too. And since no dragon knows where you were... they won't look. Why would they? They sure don't know you've got asthma. And anything else... they just see some melted rock. Maybe figure he smoothed out a rough patch, and they can't get through anyway. But he couldn't hide it from me, Direction-Face, and he tried, he did, but I heard someone talking about seeing smoke, I paid them to fly over without telling them why and that was still such a risk, but no one could think..." He took a deep breath and once again, it was such that his mass seemed to be increasing on the spot. And then it was. "It's mine," he whispered as he slowly swelled, torso expanding, limbs thickening, claws beginning to curve. "It's mine, I wanted it, I wanted and it's mine, all mine, it's my right, it's what I was born to do and it's all mine..." (She was only backing away to get some room between her and his expanding body. That was the only reason. It was.) Abruptly, the dragon took a fast, sharp breath, one which added an extra fifteen percent to his height. His eyes slammed shut. And those curving claws flexed inwards again, into his palms. Pressed against the scales, skidded to the edges. Pressed harder, into the gaps between them. Drew blood. The gasp was oddly soft. The next two words were not. "It's... ours!" It had been a shout. And it had been one of triumph, emerging with enough force to drive the launching body inward, the expansion began to reverse as the light from his eyes dimmed... "It's... ours..." Garble softly said -- no, chanted, a mantra, one which visibly drove more of the madness away with every word. "It's ours. It's for us. So we can have an 'us.' So we can be the first to last, the first ever, it's for... all of us..." He stood within the ash cast up from molten rock that lined his little part of the cave. Within the pit of his own footprints. "Garble...?" And the tone made it clear that he was speaking just to make sure there was, in fact, still something left which could speak at all. "It's... hard... it's so much pyrite-harder than I thought it would be, Direction-Face, it's hard, but I'm riding it, I'm surfing the lava and I'm not gonna fall off, it's just... so... hard..." There was a single moment when she wanted to press her body against him. Rub against his scales no matter what little cuts might come, let him know there was someone else there, and she even flew forward a body length -- -- but then she stopped. Garble seemed to feel her aborted approach. Turned his head just enough to see her, then faced the treasure pit again. Exhaled, long and slow. "It's not bad," he decided, evaluating the contents of the pit with something close to total professionalism. "It's not great. Any real dragon would have done a lot better than this by his age. But... got to start somewhere." Her own words felt oddly soft. "So what are you going to do?" "Move it," was the immediate reply. "The right way. Which means I've got to start searching through this stuff. He's got to have white opals in here, because he can't use them. I mean, just because he can't use them is no reason not to collect them, right? They're part of a proper hoard. So he's even more likely to have them because there's no way for him to use them up. And besides, even if he didn't get them on purpose, put a lot of this stuff together and you'll find some. There's too much not to have a few just by accident. And it won't take that long to attune. After that, just get enough, load up my flame, breathe on this stuff, and send it to..." He blinked. Five times. Focused on the treasure again, seemed to take in its raw mass. "...well, yeah, like I'm gonna tell you that part. But I'm on my way, Direction-Face. So unless you want to stick around and help me find some, assuming you know what they look like and I know you suck at gem-spotting, I guess we're --" He looked directly at her, then, and it felt as if he was doing it for the first time. Then back to the pit, and she just barely heard him whisper three words at the moment before he jumped in. Goblets fountained up in all directions, and she casually dodged a gold frame. "Hey, Direction-Face!" She glanced down. "Does this fit any of your dumb pony legs? 'cause a noble dragon sure doesn't have use for it!" His arm moved, and a silvery circlet flew towards her. Her right foreleg automatically slashed out, and it slid a little way towards her ankle. She shifted position just in time to keep it from sliding off her hoof. The metal rested in place for a few seconds, vibrating. There was a drop of blood on it, glistening on the place where it had touched his palm. "Keep that," he said. "Because it's pointless and simple and stupid, so if I hang onto it, all it's gonna do is remind me of you. Now if you're not going to hang around and help a true noble dragon ship off to his first fortifications, get home already! Because unless they're doing the grunt work, any dragon would have had all the pony company they could stand for one day. For one lifetime!" Rainbow, who had heard all three whispered words, stared at him for a few seconds. "So you don't need me?" "I could use an extra set of eyes, but I already know those pie plates are only good for catching pies. What, you don't have any friends to visit? With your personality, that's not much of a surprise..." "...fine," she ground out. "Goodbye." "See ya around. But only, you know, if I'm the unluckiest dragon ever, and I just pretty much proved I'm not, so..." "Right." "So get out." She started flying towards the cave mouth. Paused. "Garble?" "You're still here?" "This cold's going away tomorrow morning. About an hour after Sun comes up. There's going to be... pegasi outside, working on the weather, and they're going to... well, the temperature will go up out there, but it's going to go down in here. It'll even out. They won't come inside: they'll just be by the entrance for a couple of minutes. And then you can go." A long pause. "Oh... right, sure, a pegawuss weather forecast. The other thing you're good for, unless you want to be the first pony ever who gets a noble dragon lesson on how to see. Now scram." He wasn't worth an insult, or a sigh (hardly anything was worth one of those), or a single extra moment of her time spent in his presence, much less any which might be used for thinking about those three words. He wasn't worth anything except a trip to the library, one which she had to make immediately. Rainbow flew back towards the cave mouth, gradually accelerating up to a more standard speed (but not too quickly: at this point, it was more than begging for wing cramps). Her own personal set of directions was also simple. East and down. The adult dragon's landing created an instant detour. She just barely registered his arrival in time, felt the blast of wind from massive wings moving through the entrance hall, veered up to the point where she grazed the ceiling as his mass shook the ledge, he went through the intangible weave and under her, never seeing her, charging for the interior at full four-legged speed. There was no time to cry out, and no words which would have reached anyone over the pounding footsteps, a small hill impacting the mountain with every racing, snarling step. There was only a gasp from the interior -- -- and then Garble finally flew. He went under her, body tumbling, wings tucked close, left arm leaving a trail of blood from where the adult had bitten into it as a means of getting the flinging grip. Hit the ground about two body lengths from the weave, rolled the rest of the way out onto the ledge, not stopping until the last of the momentum left the limp form huddled against the remains of the broken boulder. He clutched at the fresh wound, tried to sit up -- and then his walking claws spasmed, his body curled, his neck arched while his jaw began to chatter... The laugh came from behind her. It was loud. It was somewhat bemused, with more than a little anger laced throughout. But more than anything else, it was bitter, and Garble shivered faster at the sound. "TOO SMALL." It was also getting closer. She was sweating more than ever, sweating almost enough for two, and Garble couldn't seem to focus, couldn't move, the injury on top of what had to be thermal shock, with the adult taking his time about closing in because he knew... "TOO LITTLE FLAME YET," the red dragon said. "NOT ENOUGH FIRE BURNING INSIDE FOR THIS COLD, NOT ENOUGH TO FLY IN IT. SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN ORIENTED, WITH ICE FREEZING THE MAP INSIDE. IMPRESSED, ALMOST, THAT YOU MANAGED THE CLIMB WITHOUT DYING. IMPRESSED, ALMOST, THAT YOU WOULD TRY SO YOUNG. TRY TO SUPPLANT. BUT ONLY ONE TRY. YOU LIVE -- SO THAT YOU CAN TRY. AND WE LET YOU. THAT IS THE WAY. YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO CHOOSE YOUR TIME AND CHANCE." He was starting to move under her now, into what little Moon and starlight could reach the cave, his existence expressed as a giant shadow -- except for his face, lit by glowing eyes. Rainbow had learned to read dragon expressions, even on one so large: being around Spike provided all the inadvertent tutoring she would ever need. This one was mostly smiling. Mostly. "YOU CHOSE -- POORLY." He was too large for any amount of wind, not which she could raise in a hurry: for something else of this size, she could have tried to blind it for a moment with dirt, but he had those nictitating membranes. Carrying Garble meant a chase and she didn't know how fast she could move while bearing his surprising weight. The adult was too large to be affected by the cold as the teenager had been, no amount of heat she could shift in would hurt him and it wasn't her strength, she was hovering and sweating and making the mistake of trying to think... ...she was sweating... "MISSED IT, OF COURSE," the adult continued as he fully passed beneath her. (She was barely paying attention to that now: her legs were shifting, moving in and out under her torso, gathering...) "PLANTED BITS OF WHITE JADE IN THE FRAGMENTS. THE ONES YOU TOUCH NOW. JUST ENOUGH EXPOSED. DIDN'T KNOW TO LOOK. SOME SECRETS ARE FOR THOSE WHO SUPPLANT. BUT STILL TOOK ME HOURS TO GET HERE, AFTER FEELING THE ALERT. IF YOU HAD BEEN FASTER -- MAYBE. TAKE THAT AS COMFORT IF YOU CAN." And he was outside. Garble was trying to move, and it seemed as if there was something oily and glistening between his trembling claws, but it was vibrating with the rest of his body, he hardly had any grip at all and his arm would barely work... "ONE TRY," the huge dragon said. "BY BIRTH, BY BARGAIN, BY WAY. AND SINCE YOU WERE CAUGHT -- ONLY ONE." It moved closer to the huddled form. It brought a foreleg up. What little Moon there was reflected off claws. "BY WAY, YOU FAIL," it told the night. "BY WAY, YOU D --" "-- hey, ugly!" The claw froze. The red dragon turned its head. The blaze of its eyes illuminated her, hovering with her body partway across the weave. Her construct sitting exactly in the middle. "YOU." She grinned. She couldn't help it. "YOU KICKED ME." She nodded. "OTHERS NOT HERE," it observed, and the light glinted off giant fangs. "YELLOW ONE NOT HERE. AND YOU... YOU, JUST LIKE HIM... HAVE MADE A BAD DECISION..." "Wanna bet?" It started to turn. Rainbow stayed on top of her construct. Legs still moving, for whatever extra assistance that might provide. "OLDER OFFENSE," the adult told Garble. "THE NEXT BITE: YOURS. THE FIRST BREATH..." She didn't move, except for weaving legs and hover-maintaining wings. Holding sky. "You leave him alone." Completely amused now. "OR?" "Or I use this." It looked at what she'd created. "OH," it said, and it was so close to another laugh. "THE WORLD'S SMALLEST THUNDERCLOUD. PERHAPS A SINGED SCALE, FOR ALL THE LIGHTNING THAT YOU CAN LAUNCH FROM IT. WHICH, UNLIKE YOUR CORPSE, WILL HEAL. SO?" It was small. It was half the size of her head, woven from the humidity created by her own evaporated sweat. And the dragon was right: under normal circumstances, she could do more by scraping boots across a thick carpet -- "So -- this." Her forehooves tapped the surface. -- unless that cloud was sitting directly on the border of interactions between heat and cold and magic, held every last erg and thaum she'd been able to tuck inside, along with everything surging naturally through as it lay across the weave... Most of the explosion went forward. Rainbow forced her head up, just enough to see one dragon body prone on the ground. It took a few more seconds before she could stagger to her hooves, another five breaths until she verified that all wing joints were no more than moderately bruised from the slam into the cave floor. Slowly, she trotted forward. There was no point in pushing it yet. Through the weave, into the frozen night. Approaching the body. It took a slow, shuddering breath. Rainbow arranged herself to be in front of its near-broken gaze. "I can do that again," she lied, nodding to the cloud: just enough left exposed around the edges of a flared wing to let the adult know it was there, more than enough hidden to keep the red dragon from seeing that it was mostly a broken lattice of fading wisps. "Any time, at the exact moment I see you thinking about trying to flame. I've had a couple of years to learn what a dragon who's about to flame looks like. There's this little nostril flare which you can't hide. So I think you're going to leave now. And you're not going to bother me, or my friends, or him. Ever." The head came up. (Rainbow held her position.) The long neck curved. Huge eyes briefly rested on the smaller, shivering form. Back to her. "PEGASUS..." There seemed to be nothing she could say to that, although she found herself briefly surprised that it hadn't been "pegawuss." "THE YELLOW ONE... SOMETHING IN HER EYES. SOMETHING... DEEPER THAN HER EYES. BUT... YOU...." She wasn't moving. The concealing wing held steady. She had a nearly straight shot to Garble if she needed it. "IT IS MY RIGHT," the adult said. "HIS RIGHT TO TRY AND... SUPPLANT ME. MINE TO TAKE THE PRICE... FOR HIS FAILURE." Her own words felt too soft. "To kill him." There was no hint of disagreement in its expression, and even less caring. "BETTER ME... THAT IT BE ME..." And all her volume temporarily came back. "It's better that you kill him? How is that --" "-- MY SON." She stopped. And now there was a new tone to the words. "DO NOT LEAVE HIM TO OTHERS... HE WILL TRY AGAIN, HE MUST, AND ME... IT WOULD BE QUICK..." She knew the notes, the rise and fall in the syllables. The red dragon was begging. Her wing almost dropped. The feathers shook. "Leave him alone." It was a whisper. The huge eyes briefly closed. "WE... BARGAIN." It had very little to attack with. But her position was no better. And Garble was still too vulnerable to a desperate tail swipe: one sweep could send him off the ledge... "What's the deal?" "I TAKE HOARD. FAR AWAY. NO INTERRUPTIONS, NO SUPPLANTING WHILE IT IS MOVED. YOU DO NOT FOLLOW. THERE WILL BE NO PENALTY FOR THIS ATTEMPT. IF HE CAN FIND IT AGAIN... HE CAN TRY AGAIN. BUT IF HE FAILS... THEN IT WAS HIS CHANCE. AND HIS PRICE." It stared at her, eyes half-lidded. "I WILL SWEAR THIS BARGAIN, ON THE FIRST GEM, ON THE TRUE FLAME. THAT HE LIVES AFTER WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT, WHEN HE SHOULD NOT. BUT NO MORE." It took her more time than she ever would have imagined to find the words. "What... what if he never tries again?" "HE WILL. HE MUST." She looked at the curls of smoke rising from lightning-blasted scales. It was so much easier than looking at those placid eyes. "And if he tries it with you... and fails?" "IT IS... THE WAY..." And then there was something else she had to ask. "Garble? Does he... mean it?" The shivering words took some time to emerge. "On t-t-the first g-gem... on the t-true flame... yes. If he s-s-swears... he can't break it." She seemed to have too many whispers in her. "How do you know?" "H-h-he'd die..." And she went back to those huge, oddly patient eyes. "Swear." It forced its head up again. "I WILL -- NEED TO FLAME. IT... CANNOT HURT YOU. ONLY ME." And that had her lashing her tail into the bits of cloud, surrounding them and freeing up her wings so she could fly and land in front of Garble's prone form, that much closer to emergency evacuation. The long neck twisted again. The giant face looked oddly amused. "DO NOT TRUST?" She nodded. "WISE," it commented. "BUT FOR THIS... IT IS TOO LATE TO HARM YOU. SAID I WOULD BARGAIN, AND SO WE HAVE ALREADY BEGUN..." It pointed its head away from them. The nostrils flared in a familiar way, and yet one she'd never fully seen before. It exhaled... Darkness danced on the rock. The flame was not black. The flame was what might have been left after black was removed from existence. It was a color which would allow no other colors to exist. It was a tiny hole flickering against the edges of the world. Slowly, the red dragon forced itself upright. A line of smolder ran down one leg, to the scorch mark where the lightning had grounded itself. "WE HAVE BARGAINED. MY TERMS... ARE ACCEPTED?" Rainbow forced a single nod. "THEN ON THE FIRST GEM, ON THE TRUE FLAME... I SWEAR." It put its left foreleg into the flame, and the scream broke the night. Garble managed to move his arms then, got them over the partially-shielded membranes which served as his ears. Rainbow got her hover going and freed up her forelegs, only to once again discover that hooves formed something less than a perfect seal. But neither could flee from the sound as it reverberated off the mountain, moved through the weave into the cave and echoed out again, every shift and change from impact with any surface only increasing the pain, and forever became the time for which the cry of agony had existed and always would... ...until it stopped. The red dragon slowly put its left foreleg down. The flame was gone. A single scale shone with something more than black against the night. "HE WILL NEED TO RECOVER," it said. "HE NEEDS WARMTH." "It's... warm inside the cave," Rainbow managed after too many seconds. "HAD NOTICED," the dragon dryly commented. "WE MOVE HIM THERE, UNTIL MORNING. IF HE CAN LEAVE ON HIS OWN THEN, HE WILL, UNHARMED. BUT I WILL GUARD MY HOARD. ANY APPROACH... IS A SECOND TRY." It took some time to get Garble inside, even just within the entrance: Rainbow was hesitant to led the adult assist, especially in any way which would let it get a good look at what her tail was truly wrapped around. But eventually, it was managed, and the red dragon went further within. She heard metal shifting and guessed it to be from a still-unsteady tail getting a little too close to the pit. She sat down in front of Garble, who had been propped into a semi-sitting, mostly-slumped position. Dim yellow eyes slowly came up to meet hers. "We should clean your wound," she told him, nodding to his arm. "I can fly down and get some water. Or... I have a friend who kind of... got forced to learn something about how to treat --" A single bare breath. "-- get out..." "...what?" His head came up a little more. "...you... I would have done it if it wasn't for you..." Part of her mind said Yeah, right, which was why she was surprised when her voice went with "Garble, you heard him, he took a couple of hours to get here. You just weren't fast enough. Even with warmer weather and no recovery time, you would have needed to have those white opals with you, plus whatever that 'attune' stuff is... I know you think you came in with a plan, and parts of it were pretty good, but you sort of rushed in here with half of what you needed. Sometimes when you... make up a stunt in the middle of the flight, you're gonna crash. You just got lucky, you had a crash you can fly away from, and if you just think this through a little more, I just bet you --" "-- it was you! I would have had it started if it wasn't for you! I'd be on the way to keeping my friends! I don't screw up, I never screw up, and the only different thing here is you, you stupid... get out! I never want to see you again! GET OUT AND NEVER COME BACK!" And she was gone. It was instinct, at least partially. The decision to leave, made without true thought, and so it had been the right thing to do. But it didn't save her from hearing his last words. "STUPID! STUPID DIRECTION-FACE!" Or from having seen the first tears. By the time she finished her story, Sun was less than an hour from being raised, and Twilight's little kitchen was completely out of wake-up juice. The last three mugs hadn't really done much. The librarian closed her eyes, and kept them that way for what seemed to be a very long time. "Twilight?" "I don't know..." A deep breath expanded the narrow rib cage, as much as it ever could be. "I don't know what I can tell him, Rainbow. He... lives with so much already. After what happened with the growth spurt... it took him weeks before he really started sleeping again, practically moons. I know I have to tell him. I do. But... I don't know when. He needs..." "He needs to know." It was as soft an insistence as she'd ever heard come from her own voice. "He needs to be a child," Twilight quietly countered, a tired gaze now shakily resting on Rainbow's face. "For as long as he can be. I'll tell him, Rainbow. I swear I will, and I already know that the longer I wait, the more he... might hate me when he finds out. When he learns how long I knew. But... I can take that. He's my brother... so let me tell him. Please." Rainbow stared at the library shelves for a while, or at least towards one particular area. Nothing new in the Adventure section. "Maybe... maybe he doesn't have to do it," she offered. "He's a dragon raised by ponies, Twilight... by you. Whatever this way is, he's not part of it." It got her a faint smile. "You're... probably right. But it's still going to be hard. Rainbow... I know you're tired, I can see you trying to keep your eyes open --" "-- me? I could do this for another three days straight if I had to --" "-- and if you just want to head for your bed, I'll let the rest of the weather team know -- not everything, but that you can't help reverse, you've got a good reason, and they can't go near the cave for a few days. But can I ask you two questions first?" "Sure," Rainbow shrugged. "But I'm pretty sure I told you everything, so..." "Maybe not. You said that before Garble jumped into the treasure, he said something. But you didn't say what it was. Did you hear it?" "No," Rainbow lied. "Oh... okay. And... I know this is a longshot, but... the griffons have a word, and I don't think there's a pony equivalent. Have you ever heard the term 'speciaganger'?" "No," Rainbow admitted. "What's that thing mean?" "It means... someone from another one of the sapient races who's sort of... living your life. The way it would have been if you'd just been born as a member of that species." Rainbow thought about it for a while. "That is one of the dumbest words ever. Seriously, how often are you going to pull that one out? Every three centuries?" But now that she really thought about it... "Although... maybe..." Twilight's tones seemed oddly cautious. "So after tonight, it... means something to you?" "Yeah. Can you imagine a griffon version of Daring Do? Because I just did! And then they could meet! I wonder if anypony's thought of that before this? Maybe I even beat the author to it..." She wound up heading for home after she left the library, and she told herself it was because any weather team she was in charge of would have picked up enough incidental awesomeness just from hanging around to perform the full reversal without her. And once she was back on her own totally spectacular vapor mega-puff, she settled into bed. But sleep didn't come immediately. Two things kept going around in her head, the first of which was that 'speciaganger' nonsense. As words went, it had the chance to be something fantastic when dropped into her favorite novels, and... had absolutely no relationship to the real world. Not in any way that she wanted to think about, or could seem to stop. And there were more words. Three of them. Garble, standing on the edge of the treasure pit. A circlet resting on her nightstand. And syllables which would never have been spoken by a bully and jerk and potential murderer with no depth, and so she wished they never had been. But there was no way to take the words back. Any of them. 'It's ours -- hers.'