Dragonshyness

by Jordan179

Chapter 8: Into the Dragon's Lair

Fluttershy

She slowly trudged down the mountainside.

There was a painful hollowness in her heart. I've let them all down, she thought. I slowed them down, I nearly got them all killed, and then -- at the moment they needed me -- I let them down. I'm worthless. Less than worthless.

It would be a long way home. She'd have to wend her way down all those twisting trails she'd taken up the mountain -- climb over the rockfall, leap over the gorge -- at least that's an easy jump, she thought, then take the same back route that Applejack had carried her up along. Hours and hours of walking -- while the confrontation with the Dragon would be decided without her.

Step, step, step. She looked across the abyss of sky to Canterlot. The haze from the Dragon's breath was blown to one side by the vagaries of the winds, and the capital city was surprisingly bright and clear on its in the thin upper air. Beneath it the wide plains were hazy, lost in the combined effects of denser air and dispersed Dragonsmoke.

They'll win, she told herself. They defeated Nightmare Moon.

She looked southward toward the Castle of the Two Royal Pony Sisters. She thought she could see it, but even her sharp eyes could barely pick out the shape of old tumbled towers in the midst of the Everfree, and she was far from sure that she was looking at the right location.

You helped them beat Nightmare Moon, something within herself reminded her. Without you there would have been no Element of Kindness.

She stopped for a moment, considered that fact. There was a moment of pride, followed by shame, as she considered that she would not be there to help them this time. Then reason asserted itself.

That's because the magic needed six Element Bearers, she reminded herself. This has nothing to do with the Elements of Harmony. This is just straightforward diplomacy.

She stared down the trail again. Step, step, step. Each hoof-fall was a drumming against her own heart.

And the Manticore? that treacherous part of her own self asked her. What would have happened if you hadn't been there to calm the creature?

She stopped, shuddering at the memory. Not the memory of the Manticore -- Manny was a sweet kitty at heart -- but of the deadly battle that had nearly ensued.

Rarity -- magnificently mad enough to engage him in hoof-to-claw combat, rocking the huge felid back on his haunches with a spectacular spin-kick to the jaw, leaping away just in time to avoid being torn to pieces. Had her timing been slightly off, the elegant, generous mare who always made time to talk to her when Fluttershy was feeling sad would have been destroyed.

Applejack, cheerfully taunting him, leaping on his back and riding him in a deliberate, good-natured parody of the normal way a predator would leap on the back of a Pony. Applejack had been so kind to her today, giving her all the strength and support that Fluttershy's own mother had been unable to provide, and she too had put herself in harm's way to do her part fighting alongside her friends.

And Rainbow Dash -- that brave, shining exemplar of all Pegasus virtues -- trying to throw Manny off balance by catching him within a one-Pony whirlwind. Rainbow had actually been struck by the manticore's tail. Fluttershy remembered that horrible moment when that little blue form had tumbled helplessly across the ground, the way her own heart had stopped, time seemed to stand still until Rainbow got back up on her hooves, not soaked in blood or pumped full of poison from the deadly barbed tip of that tail, as Fluttershy had feared.

She could have died in an instant, Fluttershy reflected. My protector. My best friend. My -- Aware of how much Dashie despised her now, Fluttershy could not bear to complete the last clause, even in her own thoughts.

But Dashie didn't die! Fluttershy told herself. She got up, and Twilight --

And Twilight, obviously afraid that if they tried any further one-on-one delaying tactics some of them would get hurt, led the other four in a charge.

Which was a mistake, Fluttershy remembered. Manny would have had done with dominance displays then; he would have felt desperate and gone all-out against them. What would have happened then?

Twilight still might have won -- she was smart and powerful, and their friends were skilled fighters. But somepony would doubtless have gotten hurt -- or killed. Manticores were not only big, they were also fast.

And we didn't need to fight, Fluttershy remembered. I could see that something was bothering Manny, that he was more cranky and frustrated than genuinely enraged, that I could calm him down and make friends so we didn't have to hurt one another. I could see ...

And nopony else could see. Because she'd been there, what might have become a fight to the death had resulted, instead, in Fluttershy making a new friend, and they'd gotten past what Fluttershy now knew to have been one of the Nightmare-ridden Luna's traps, with no creature -- not even Manny -- getting seriously hurt.

I wasn't a burden then, Fluttershy thought. Nor a failure. I succeeded. I showed I was worthy. She smiled for a moment at the memory, then remembered. Except I'm obviously not really worthy. That was obviously a fluke.

I can't be worthy. Not given what I'm doing right now.

She stopped and thought to herself.

But I can't go into the Dragon's lair, she realized. I just fall on the ground and tremble helplessly every time I even think too hard about doing that. She began to shake a little even at the thought of thinking of doing that, proving her point. No, I have no choice. I can't go into the Dragon's lair, so I must go down the mountain.

She lifted a hoof to take another step on the downward path, when suddenly a thought struck her.

I don't have to go down the mountain, she realized, and I don't have to go into the Dragon's lair either. I can go back up to the ledge in front of the Dragon's lair, and just sort of stay there -- just in case they need me. Maybe they won't need me -- they'll drive away the Dragon on their own, and then they'll all despise me for my cowardice, and ... she winced at the thought of the contempt in a particular pair of purplish-red eyes, then considered that at least their owner would be alive to despise her ... and that'll be all right. Everypony knows I'm weak. But they like me. They'll still let me be their friend -- I hope.

But if they need me ... if their lives are really in danger ... maybe I can do something. Probably not much. But something.

And if it gets me killed ... well, everypony has to die someday, right? And if I'm worthless -- doesn't that mean I'm also expendable?

Something seemed liberating about the last conclusion.

She shuddered again at the thought of dying at the claws and teeth of a Dragon, but then shuddered even more profoundly at the thought of the deaths of any of her friends. She turned and looked up the mountain.

She hesitated.

Then she put a hoof down. Then another. Then another.

She began walking back up the trail. Toward the dragon's lair.

Toward her friends.

***

Twilight Sparkle

She was now all the way at the end of the straight section of tunnel. Ahead of her the way curved to the right. The tunnel might have begun its life as a lava tube, but certain features --- the regularity of the columnar sections of stone and the flatness of the floor -- made it obvious that someone or something had shaped this cavern long ago for a habitat. The work looked very old, and she didn't know how long the Dragon had used this cave. She suspected the carving was older than the Dragon.

"I'm going in!" she said. Her tone of voice projected a confidence she was far from feeling. She fully appreciated all the ways this could go wrong, and that some of them could result in her own messy and early demise, but there was no point dwelling upon them. She wanted to keep her followers -- her friends -- in good spirits. And she wanted to make sure that the Dragon, who might well be only half-asleep, knew of her courage. According to the books she'd read, Dragons responded far better to a brave approach than to a timid one.

"He --" Twilight searched for the most optimistic explanation of the Dragon's behavior "-- probably just doesn't realize what he's doing." She looked back toward the cave mouth, now invisible as she rounded the bend, but still noticeable by the indirect sunlight reflecting from the left-hand wall to dimly light her way. "Right?"

The voices of her friends echoed down the tunnel from the mouth, where they were waiting.

"Uh -- sure," said Applejack. She was, as always, a terrible liar.

"Of course," added Rarity. She managed to make it sound sincere.

"Easy-peasy!" chimed in Pinkie Pie. She sounded cheerful. Of course, she almost always sounded cheerful.

"If you say so," commented Rainbow Dash, sounding doubtful.

Rarity giggled nervously.

Their lack of faith in her slightly saddened Twilight. Not that she was really all that much more optimistic than they were -- she'd been counting on Fluttershy's talents at this stage of the mission. But still -- it was disconcerting to realize that the others saw it too.

She figured that there was a very great chance that the Dragon wouldn't actually try to kill her -- as long as she didn't try to plunder its hoard. In the past 500 years or so, unprovoked lethal Dragon attacks on Ponies in Equestria were almost unheard-of -- probably because Equestria had become strong enough that such attacks looked far too risky to a creature whose lifespan was normally measured in centuries, and sometimes millennia.

Still, the Dragon had free will. And it might just be in a bad mood.

If it was, her best bet was to teleport out of the cave, and ... ?

Twilight wasn't sure what to do next. Twilight herself might be able to teleport and Rainbow Dash fly to safety, but she couldn't just leave Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity to face the creature alone. No, in that case they'd have to fight, and if they fought Twilight wasn't sure that she had enough magic to win. Nor was she sure how any of her friends' skills could stop an angry Dragon.

Without Fluttershy, this whole quest had become far riskier than she had feared when she'd accepted the mission.

Twilight was intelligent. She had known all along how dangerous an expedition this might prove. But she also knew that she had to prove herself to Princess Celestia.

I'm starting to wish I'd come up this mountain alone, she thought to herself. That way, my poor planning would have only gotten me killed. Not anypony else.

Part of her was still cold and calculating -- colder and more calculating by far than she usually let on, for she knew how it could upset other Ponies. But part of her -- especially over this summer -- had thawed. These weren't just assets to be employed to ensure success -- not even just her followers. They were her friends

She could lead them as if they were a squad of Guards, but the fact was that if she lost any of them it would break her heart. Kindly, caring Applejack; brave Rainbow Dash; happy-go-lucky Pinkie Pie; elegant Rarity -- how would she be able to live with herself if she caused the deaths of any of them? At least Fluttershy's safe, she thought. That's the silver lining to her funking out like that. But there were still four hostages to fortune waiting outside that cave, whose lives might be lost if she made a mistake.

How do you handle this, Big Brother? she asked the absent Shining Armor. She knew he'd been in some hairy situations in his life, even though he tried not to let her find out about the worst parts of them. Are the Ponies under your command your friends too? How do you stay sane knowing that they could die if you mess up?

She would really need to have a talk with him when he came back from that long deployment overseas. She'd never fully appreciated what it must be like for him, commanding other Ponies he knew well, until she found herself in the exact same position.

The tunnel widened into a great cavern. To her right, a huge rope of solidified lava also widened into an oddly-shaped structure, roughly the length of one of Ponyville's streets and the size of a large building. Some sort of diffuse magelight illuminated this chamber, and by this light she could see a tremendous pile of gold, gems, jewelry and other precious items. Strangely, the great irregular lava flow seemed to be partially covering this hoard, a degree of neglect which seemed against everything she had read of draconic nature.

"Mr. Dragon?" she asked tenatively, wanting to establish that she was an unexpected visitor, rather than a hoard-thief. What she had read of the things Dragons might do to thieves had frankly horrified her, so she felt it important to make this distinction before this Dragon had time to act. She was embarrassed by the unfortunately frightened-sounding quaver in her voice.

Not because it gave a false impression, of course. Twilight was terrified.

It gave a true impression -- which was not the impression she meant to give.

But then, though she was honest enough by most standards, Twilight had never claimed to be Honesty.

She peered in all directions, looking for the Dragon, so caught up in this effort that she walked, face-first, into a overhang protruding from the mass of congealed lava. She stepped back, wincing at the painful contact with the rock -- the rock which didn't feel exactly like rock -- felt a bit too warm and slightly flexible to be rock, and smelled overpoweringly of sulfur and archosaur. She stepped back, looked up at the rock -- and for the first time got a really good look at the rock formation which filled half the cave. Looked up -- and up -- and up ...

Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped.

The entire mass which she had assumed to be a rock formation -- mostly because it was much, much bigger than any living being she had previously observed -- was, in fact, the Dragon.

What she had collided with was the very tip of the beak of an immense, vaguely birdlike head, adorned with brow-ridges over the eyes and a crest of pink spikes, rather like the green ones adorning her foster brother and Number One Assistant. The difference, aside from the fully-adult proportions, with tremendously extended jaws and beak and relatively smaller cranium, was that while Spike's head was smaller than was Twilight's own, the head of this Dragon was roughly the size of the entire Golden Oaks Library -- with room to spare for a rare-books annex.

Oh. she thought numbly, as she felt her limbs weaken at the incredible sight. Oh.

Even her mind was silenced by this reality.

***

Pinkie Pie

The pink Earth Pony peered anxiously down the dark tunnel, as if by dint of assiduous observation she could somehow ensure that Twilight Sparkle would survive. The tunnel curved, and she could not see where her friend had gone. She was far more worried than her optimistic comment made it sound, but she did not want to depress anypony else.

The truth was that she was trying to perceive the curving chains of probabilities, the world-lines that were normally laid bare to her sight beyond sight. Normally, she could reach out and touch those chains, change the world-lines to favor her ends, ensure that she and those she loved would be safe.

But she had almost exhausted herself saving Twilight -- and everypony else -- from the avalanche. She was strong, but she was still only an Earth Pony. Not yet -- what Paradise promised she might become someday. When she tried to twist probability, pain burned through portions of her self which she lacked the words to describe, which even Granny Pie, even Paradise Itself, had not been able to explain to her. And nothing changed.

She could still see into the future a little bit. And what she could see scared her. She kept seeing horrible possibilities. Sometimes a crushed and mangled mess of blue fur and feathers that had been Rainbow Dash. Sometimes the corpse was covered in blood-soaked lavender hair. Sometimes all of them lay dead -- except, of course, for Fluttershy. She felt a moment of hurt disbelief at the knowledge that Fluttershy had deserted them. I thought she was my friend.

Get out of there, a familiar voice was warning her. If you die now you can't fulfill your destiny -- if you die now, it will be a generation, maybe more, before I can bring about your reincarnation. I need you, my one and only Beloved Pink Daughter. This world needs you -- the time is shorter than you realize!

No, thought Pinkie, firming her jaw. I'm not leaving them. I'm not leaving Dashie. I'm not leaving Minty.

The odds are against you, Paradise warned. Its voice consumed all her bandwidth, blinding her each time it spoke to all probabilities. Paradise was expending a lot of power to speak to her precisely, not with the vague intimations of her Pinkie Sense but direct psychic communication. I can't protect you ... you're not safe ...

It's not about the odds, thought Pinkie to her sire. I'm not just your Daughter. I'm a Pony. A Pie. And a Pie doesn't cut and run on her friends.

Disbelief.

You don't understand, said Pinkie kindly. But it's just that way. I can't let them die. Not again. Not if there's something I can do to stop it. If I stay, and we all fail, at least maybe we'll get a nice epilogue scene in the afterlife. It could be really heartwarming. If I run away and live, and they die, it -- it just wouldn't be funny.

At that moment, Pinkie felt something shift around her. Suddenly, the worldlines brightened, most of them stretching out to long and happy futures for them all.

Did you do that? Pinkie asked.

No, said Paradise. The connection cut off, as the last of their entangled particles were examined, their spins resolved.

Then Pinkie saw just who figured prominently in so many of those better futures.

She smiled openly. I just knew you wouldn't really let us down. She briefly glanced at a certain rocky outcropping. Pinkie couldn't see her -- not even so much as a strand of her long, light-pink mane -- but she felt the truth.

Fluttershy was back.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

There's a lot to like in this chapter. The twisted, tragic logic Fluttershy uses to convince herself to go back, the glimpse of Twilight as she was before Ponyville and how much she's already grown since arriving, the glimpse from the truly unique perspective that is Pinkie Pie...

And we end on a transcendent hope spot, as though the clouds parted for probability itself. Well, in the sense of brightening, not in the sense of greater clarity. You know what I meant.

In any case, great job. Eagerly looking forward to more. Especially if you'll be using each character's perspective as she tries to appease the dragon. If nothing else, I want to know what Rarity was thinking. She's good, but she's not that good.

[Jordan179]

4445442

The twisted, tragic logic Fluttershy uses to convince herself to go back ...

Fluttershy is torn between love and fear, honor and self-loathing. She loves her friends, most especially Rainbow Dash, but her fear is paralytic to the point that even when she wants to do the right thing she finds it difficult. For all her non-conformity, she in many ways believes in the code of honor of a Pegasus of one of the High Clans -- and despises herself as unworthy of the ancient traditions. What the better side of her wants to do is to stand beside Rainbow Dash -- but her phobias are crippling.

In the end she uses her self-loathing to conquer her fear. She decides that, if she is worthless, then she is also by implication expendable -- so she can stop worrying so much about whether or not she survives. By convincing herself that her own life doesn't matter, she reduces her fear for her own safety to a triviality, and passes through the depths of cowardice to find her courage.

... the glimpse of Twilight as she was before Ponyville ...

One of the things I find most attractive about Twilight as a heroine is that her reaction to danger is not implausibly fearless -- but it is rational. We frequently see Twilight frightened in the series -- usually when she's startled by something genuinely frightening, such as being teleported to stand before Nightmare Moon, or (in this story) literally bumping into a Dragon so large she'd mistaken him for a geological feature of the cavern. But her fearful reaction is short-lived, and she never lets it overcome her reason.

Twilight is typically calm, cool and calculating in a crisis (which is why she gets the "Nerves of Steel" trope in her Shadow Wars character page. In Nightmares Are Tragic, this is actually one of the signs by which Princess Luna recognizes her as the reincarnation of her lost love Dusk Skyshine -- think of Dusk as a (much) nicer version of a Martin Caidin protagonist, and you've got a good portion of his personality.

It's one of the things for which Luna admires Twilight, and she feels this admiration even when the Nightmare still has her in its grip. But then two things Luna always respected, in any of her incarnations, were courage and intelligence. (This is also why she quickly befriends Fischfootur in All the Way Back -- ironically, the combination of courage and intelligence are also what Luna likes about Dragons, in general -- her problem with most Dragons is that they are also often brutal, which Fischfootur is not).

Twilight is the daughter of two cool intellectual types whose brother is a cool military type, whose adoptive brother is an archosaur and whose mentor is a superintelligent and transcendent Cosmic being in an immortal equine incarnation. Twilight is absolutely brilliant, and is usually thinking several steps ahead of any other Pony; to her many facts are plain about any given situation which are completely unknown to most other observers. She's not exactly in bad physical shape, but her advantages over other Ponies are intellectual and magical, and she outwits most opponents with complicated Batman Gambits and Xanatos Gambits the way that a human can outwit a housecat.

So when Twilight approaches a problem, she tends to see things in a rather cold and calculating manner by ordinary Pony standards. For instance, she has no problem organizing her friends as if they were an elite squad of Guards; she even conceptualizes things based on the military manuals and histories she's read.

She sometimes forgets that she has emotions, until her face gets jammed right up against the reality that these are her friends and their deaths would not be merely a negative outcome or a waste of resources, but seriously heartbreaking for her. She's not used to thinking this way, because most of her life the problems were theoretical (this story takes place only three and a half months after The Return of Luna) and, most of her life, she had no real friends (Moondancer, Twinkleshine and Minuette were mere friendly acquaintances -- Spike was actually closer to them than was Twilight). Now, she had friends -- and is finding out that this means she has more hostages to fortune.

I'm glad that you.like my portrayal of Pinkie Pie. When Pinkie's being serious -- and her thought processes here, including her comment about a possibly "heartwarming" scene in the afterlife, are as close to serious as Pinkie ever gets -- she is a very great thinker but a very alien one. Her primary source of information is her worldline-probability-sense (rather like the one developed by Paul Atreides in Dune) and her primary way of solving problems is setting things up for humorous reality-warping. This involves heavy reliance on intuition and solving problems by massively parallel means.

Organized, rational data collection and analyis, and linear logical-mathematical problem-solving, of the sort at which Twilight Sparkle excels, are almost as alien to Pinkie Pie as is Pinkie Pie's methodology to Twilight's. Pinkie Pie doesn't understand Twilight much better than Twilight understands Pinkie Pie, but it doesn't matter that much to her. She always prefered pink, Minty green -- they loved one another all the same. Not so different in this life, from her point of view.

Fluttershy's return is a great moment, because it opens the possibility for a solution to the problem that does not involve anypony dying. As Pinkie knows explicitly from her worldline-sense, and Twilight knows implicitly by logical analysis.

Twilight does not know that Fluttershy's returned, but she's going to give it her best shot anyway. That's the kind of Pony she is.

[Redric Carrun]

The work looked very old, and she didn't know how long the Dragon had used this cave. She was

*sentence just cuts off

Is this dragon scaled up from canon? Because, in the episode, his head was maybe as big as the main room of the library, not the whole tree.

[Soap Box]

Hmm.

Taking a break from reading to say something.

On the one hand... I like the insight into Twilight and Pinkie's mind, especially the former. Considering the Mane Six as followers was an interesting touch, and I really liked the comparison between her and Fluttershy, with both thinking 'Well, maybe I'll be the only pony to die today'. Its an interesting point about them...

But virtually the whole fic up to this point was told from Flutters view exclusively (Pinkie's rock scene excluded). Changing that formula 75℅ of the way through the story is a little jarring.

So...hmm. Not sure what I think here. It has good content -the other two have great stuff to be read into and analysed- but breaking the form feels a little like cheating.

[Starcat5]

4446003

She's not exactly in bad physical shape, but her advantages over other Ponies are intellectual and magical, and she outwits most opponents with complicated Batman Gambits and Xanatos Gambits the way that a human can outwit a housecat.

Bad example. I've known too many house cats. 😼