Blackacre

by Princess Woona

Wrath of Flame

17 June, Y.C. 970
Canterlot

“Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” said Princess Celestia, steeling herself against the burst of sulphuric air that poured into the room. Usually she would just transport the… guest in question, but this time she was transporting two individuals, the representative and his aide. Though doing both at once required a lot more energy, she dared not bring them one at a time: that would involve teleporting one, then letting her guard down as she built up the spell to teleport another.

And letting your guard down was never a good idea when dragons were involved.

“You insisted,” said the dragon with a trace of sibilance, his eyes skimming around the room. He took a few steps out of the transport circle, stretching out to his full height. Fifteen feet wasn’t particularly large, insofar as dragons went, but it was enough for him to look down at Celestia.

For her part, she was entirely undisturbed. He might be the physically stronger of the two, but that mattered little here — this was her territory, and he was here by invitation. Even dragons knew when it was in their best interests to keep calm, because though they might get the drop on her, she would eventually overpower them with raw magical strength.

The confinement wards helped.

“Sss-Thss,” she said, settling a portion of herself into the room’s wards, “on behalf of the ponies of Equestria, welcome.”

“As First Claw and on behalf of the Heirarch, I accept,” he said with the idle wave of a claw. “Though somehow, I don’t think your ponies wish anything well to me and mine,” he said with a slightly amused tone.

“Speaking of which,” he added, looking around pointedly, “is it just us tonight? I did enjoy that other pony, the little one.”

“He died,” she said mildly. “Some time ago.”

A lie, of course, but the dragons didn’t need to know Kissinmare was on a long-term assignment overseas. Given average pony life expectancies, he wouldn’t see out the century.

“Pity,” said Sss-Thss. “I did enjoy his company, after a sort.”

“Time passes,” shrugged Celestia. “I see you’ve a new aide.”

They both turned to look at the other dragon in the room. It was awfully hard for an eight-foot lizard to look inconspicuous, but he was doing a fairly good job at it. The aide was technically a wyrm, not a full drake; he had arms and legs but no wings.

She had often wondered at how dragons interacted socially. Dragons came in three flavors of wyvern, drake, and wyrm, not unlike ponies, but somehow she doubted their society was quite as harmonious. They probably just clubbed each other until only one was left standing. Seemed about right. Anyway, nopony had spent enough time with dragons to do an in-depth study; such anthropological adventures generally ended with an impromptu lunch for the observed specimens.

“The last one had a bad encounter with something he ate,” shrugged the dragon. “Lava didn’t agree with him from the inside.”

“I can see how that might happen,” said the Princess.

“Maybe to ponies, but not to dragons,” he said, shaking his head. “He was weak; it was overdue.” Sss-Thss took a last look around the room before fixing an unblinking stare on the Princess. “Why am I here?”

Straight to the point, as always. That was one night thing about dragons: they might be the most stubborn creatures in the world, with a heavy paradoxical mix of underhandedness, loyalty, and cunning, but they were never ones to dance around a point. Refreshing, every once in a while.

“You’re in danger,” she said bluntly.

“From who? You?” He leaned slightly closer, grinning to reveal a mouthful of particularly sharp ivory daggers. “I’d like to see you try.”

“And I’m sure you wouldn’t mind that at all,” she said, unfazed.

“We’ll wait,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Again, you’re going to have to be more specific, or I’m minded to break out a window and fly home.”

“I’d like to see you try,” said Princess Celestia smoothly, earning a glare. “I’m assuming your aide would walk.”

“He’d have to,” said the drake with a glance at the wyrm, who was again doing his best to be small in a corner somewhere, the attempt again stymied by the fact that he was an eight-foot dragon in a circular room. “Anyway, they’re used to it.”

So maybe there was intra-species rivalry of some sort. She filed the information away for future reference.

“What is this so-called danger?” repeated the drake with a trace of irritation. “You test me, pony princess.”

“Over the past six months, changelings have systematically infiltrated critical positions within the Hierarchy.”

Sss-Thss blinked once or twice, then turned to his aide in an entirely casual way.

“Brownclaw, tonight you will be walking.”

The aide gave a curt nod and stepped to the side.

“I’m going to leave,” announced Sss-Thss. “I’ll try not to kill too many of your kind on the way out.”

As the drake squared his eyes against one of the large windows on the other side of the room, it flashed momentarily to reveal a solid-looking grid of light, the confinement ward laid bare. As it dimmed, the dragon turned slitted eyes to the Princess.

“You test me, pony,” he spat.

“And you me,” she replied. “You have been infiltrated, and by your reaction, I’m willing to bet you had no idea.” She paused. “You’re welcome.”

“Do you have any idea what this pony is going on about?” demanded Sss-Thss of his aide.

“No sir,” he hissed in reply.

“No,” agreed Celestia with a curious look, “you wouldn’t.”

“Listen,” spat Sss-Thss, “of course he doesn’t. There are so many problems with that assertion, I hardly know where to start.”

“I’ll wait while you figure it out.”

The drake boggled a bit at that. He wasn’t used to being contradicted, and especially not by creatures smaller than him. Certainly not by ponies, at that — if anything other than a dragon talked back, chances are he would simply eat it.

“Let’s start with the obvious three,” he said, clenching his jaw in a valiant attempt to control his temper. “What do you care about dragons, what do you know about the quvxa, and why in blazes should I trust you?”

“I don’t care about you,” said Celestia. “My interests here are my own; you know well enough I’m not doing this for all your hatchlings.”

“As usual, interested only in yourself.”

“This, coming from a dragon?” she shot back. “I’ve known about this for some time, and it serves my interests to let you know about it.”

“How noble,” he hissed. “Doesn’t explain what a pony knows about quvxa. The Burning Southlands are a ways away, even for us, and I haven’t seen any of your kind overhead lately.”

The Princess gave an elegant shrug. “I have yet to see a dragon in the Frozen North, yet six years back you made an offer I found difficult to refuse.”

“It was timely, wasn’t it?” grinned Sss-Thss, the multitude of teeth unnerving sight from any predator. A few days after Bearlin had frozen over, a courier appeared at the Appleloosa border carrying an offer. The dragons were willing to thaw the town — no small task, even for creatures whose main calling card was breathing flame — for the mere cost of allowing them to have the bodies of those ponies who might be ‘accidentally’ burned in the process. Not to mention, of course, the intelligence that allowing a herd of dragons to cruise through the heart of Equestria in broad daylight might gather.

Needless to say, Celestia didn’t have to think too hard before routing that particular offer away in the permanent file.

“My sources are my own,” she repeated. “As are my interests. I think you can understand why I wouldn’t explain how, exactly, I came to have this rather sensitive information about the Hierarchy that you seem… not to have.”

“Which brings me to the last of the important points,” said Sss-Thss with a trace of amusement, having stopped taking any of the conversation seriously. “Why should I believe you?”

“You shouldn’t,” she said simply.

“Ah.”

A pause.

“I think I’ll be leaving then.”

“You won’t,” said Celestia, letting the walls of the room shimmer slightly, “but I don’t think you want to quite yet. You don’t believe me, and I don’t expect you to. I do expect you to believe another… dragon.”

“Brownclaw?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at the entirely confused wyrm.

“Look to your aide,” she said. “Ask him yourself, if you want. He wouldn’t have made it this far if he didn’t have a head on his shoulders.”

“Unlike you, I see,” grumbled Sss-Thss, but he turned towards the smaller dragon anyway, looming over him twice as large with an expression flitting between anger and boredom, settling on exasperation. “Brownclaw. Why should I trust the pony princess?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said immediately, as if by rote.

“Great. We’re leaving now.”

Celestia rolled her eyes at the wyrm. “Work with me, please.”

To her great surprise, Brownclaw hesitated, the nodded.

“You should trust her on this… because…” he started, then faltered for a moment, eyes whirling in thought.

“Because she went through a lot of effort to bring you here, and she wouldn’t do it to play some sort of practical joke.”

“Maybe,” shrugged Sss-Thss. “Maybe she was bored.”

“Because,” tried the wyrm again, “she wouldn’t risk bringing a pair of dragons into Canterlot unless she needed to. And if she’s telling the truth, she wouldn’t risk going to the Hierarch herself.”

“Again, maybe she was bored,” offered the drake. “And maybe she wouldn’t risk going to the Hierarch at all, because she knows he’d just as soon tear her wing from wing as listen to her.”

Celestia allowed herself a little smile. She wouldn’t mind engaging in that particular test of skill, though maybe it would have to come at a time when they weren’t engaged in a military standoff. Maybe in a few hundred years, if the old lizard was still around.

“Because,” he tried for a third time, “because… because she means it?”

“That’s a nice thought,” said Sss-Thss. “Keep it to yourself.” He sized up the window again and flexed, sending a ripple down most of his upper body. The walls glowed in response, reminding him once again that he would have to get through the alicorn first.

“Let me rephrase,” said Princess Celestia, her voice steely. “Look to your aide.”

She reared up slightly, horn flashing, and again the confinement wards flickered, but not with power. Sss-Thss might not be a magic user, but he had a dragon’s unerring sense for advantage, and he knew weakness when he saw it. The urge to make a break for it might be strong, but his sense of curiosity was stronger — and it only grew as a ripple of green flashed through the room.

“What —” he started, but fell silent as Brownclaw floated upwards, suspended in a field of amber.

“What are you doing to me!” demanded the smaller wyrm, twisting about with a look of terror.

“I don’t care if you betray the dragons,” she said, gritting her teeth with concentration. “I don’t care of you lie to them. But you come into my castle, as my guest, and betray my trust?”

The wyrm arched back — then suddenly snapped straight up, his face twisting into an expression that wasn’t quite… right.

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said in an unnaturally hollow voice, eyes dull. “Dragons don’t know. Not expecting it.”

“They know now,” said Celestia, straining at his containment.

“Oh yes,” growled Sss-Thss, “quvxa.”

“No,” he said. “He knows. Even if the Hierarch knew, it would be too late. And once I go…” His lips pulled back in an eerie approximation of a smile. “Who will warn him?”

The amber sphere pulsed for a moment, then started glowing brighter as rivulets of light streamed from the wyrm’s body —

“Down!” shouted Celestia, and though of course Sss-Thss did no such thing it might have been a good idea, given the hot blast that shot through the room. When the dust settled, most of the chamber was in shambles, with beams protruding at structurally unsound angles and confinement wards a faded afterthought.

Opposite them was a perfectly clear ring on the floor. And in the middle of that ring was a creature not unlike a pony, but with charcoal black skin, iridescent eyes and wings, and a fang-like horn.

Princess Celestia breathed a sigh of relief.

Sss-Thss drew his next breaths slow and deep, a somewhat discomforting sound given the absolute stillness of the room.

After a minute or so of silence, he spoke.

“You will return me directly to the Hierarch,” he said quietly, his voice felt more than heard. “I have warned him of weakness and sloth, but for too long he has done nothing.”

Celestia held her peace, well aware that, until approximately two minutes ago, the Hierarch’s so-called sloth was the only thing keeping Equestria safe.

“I will take the corpse of this… thing,” he continued, voice rising, “and throw it to his feet. Let him do what he will, but if the result is anything less than instant action, I and mine will declare a Trial of Refusal and strike him down, tooth and claw, on the floor of the Great Lair itself!”

His voice had risen to a fever pitch, and Celestia was glad of the backup wards of silence on the tower. Not only for her own interests but for his as well: she knew Sss-Thss commanded no small modicum of respect among the Hierarchy, and his words now walked the fine line of treason.

“Let there be a purge of the unworthy the likes of which the land has never seen!” he thundered. “Strike the traitors! Strike the infidels! Strike the quvxa ghachox in their shells!”

His eyes where a whirling mist of red, glimmering off his crimson scales. “And when we are once again pure, when the shadows have been cleansed from within, let there be a flight the likes of which the lands have never seen! A crusade to regift the Burning Southlands their name, to cleanse the quvxa with dragonfire!”

His eyes were aflame now, literal tongues of fire rippling about his head.

“The southlands will burn, a beacon to all who dare betray dragons.”

With a flutter of wings he was at the circle in a flash, picking up the changeling corpse and doing his very best to not rip it to shreds.

“Bring me back,” he declared, muscles tense and eyes flashing. “Bring me to the Hierarch so that I may light the fire to cleanse the land of the quvxa filth.”

Celestia knew better than to argue, offer good wishes, drop a told-you-so, or in point of fact do anything other than exactly what the dragon demanded. No words needed to be said. Sss-Thss, ambassador of the Hierarch to Equestria, would remember.

She raised her horn and gathered her energies about her, linking the dragon to the floor of the Great Lair. She had always liked the idea of teleporting straight into the literal center of the Hierarchy, just to see the chaos it would cause; she was almost saddened that she would miss the aftermath.

A quick push, and the dragon was gone, leaving only a backblast of sulphuric air in his wake. Carefully feeling out to make sure he made it in one piece — simple as it was, this was one transport that could not go wrong — she gently slumped to the floor.

Celestia was exhausted. Not just physical and mental and magical, but an existential tiredness that drained her to the bone. What’s more, she was covered with rubble and the upper floor of her tower was a roaring mess. Slowly, carefully, she released the last few holds on the remnants of the confinement spells, finally letting go for the first time in hours. Sunrise was a while off; until then, she could just lay here, maybe sleep a bit, and recover her energy, without having to hold a ward, work a spell, or hold a poker face for anyone or anything.

And so, in the utter privacy of her own castle, secure in the knowledge that she had just quite literally ignited a firestorm half a world away, Princess Celestia smiled.