Of Purple Dragons, Great and Small

by Mannulus

Plink

Chapter 5

Plink

Derpy stood in a room above Lockinkey's quarters which overlooked the sand-filled coliseum. It was a tiny chamber at the top of the gatehouse, which stood at one end of the coliseum's oval-shaped floor. It was full of levers, gears, and long, wound spools of chain that had managed to rust by sheer virtue of time, even in the dry air of the desert.

"This is where they operated the great machinery of this place, once upon a distant past," said Lockinkey, standing behind her. "These mechanisms allowed huge, oaken gates to be opened, allowed a great, retractable linen roof to be extended outward over the spectators, and allowed water to flood the main floor for naval displays -- or to be drained."

"I need you to turn that valve, there," said Lockinkey, pointing at a large bronze wheel that protruded from a collection of massive gears near the window. "It will not turn easily, but you look strong enough."

Derpy stepped to the huge wheel, and sized it up. She was not immediately certain that she agreed with Lockinkey's assessment of her ability to manipulate such a ponderous contraption, but she resolved to give it a try, anyway.

Taking a deep breath, she reared back, and placed her forelegs on the wheel. Then, she grunted, and gave a heave. The wheel did not give at all, and she ground her teeth together and pressed harder, growling all the while.

"The other way," said Lockinkey, after two or three seconds.

"Oh," said Derpy, and she used the gathered tension in her muscles to shift back hard the other direction. At first, the wheel moved only very slightly, but Derpy continued to strain. She was surprised when, all at once, whatever corrosion or imbedded sand had impeded the mechanism's movement broke loose, and allowed it quite suddenly to turn, which it did far more easily and quickly than she had imagined it might. She stumbled to the side, so sudden was the release of the gathered torque in her shoulders and back, but with a few flaps of her wings, she managed to stabilize herself.

"Good," said Lockinkey. "Keep turning until the wheel stops."

Derpy placed her hooves back on the huge valve, and did as she had been asked. Soon, she heard from far beneath her a terrible, grinding racket, as if the tiny gears and springs of the music box she had heard winding earlier had been magnified a thousand fold. Then, there came a low hiss that raised in volume to a dull roar, and when she turned her head to look out the window towards the source of this sound, she was stunned to see the sand that had filled the coliseum slowly draining away, pulled into what looked like huge sinkholes that were widening as she turned the wheel.

After several rotations, the wheel all at once refused to turn any further, having found some sort of positive stop designed into the massive gears which it operated. Likewise, the sound of the grinding machinery below ceased, giving way to only the rumbling hiss of the sand seeping into unseen drains. Derpy let go of the wheel, and dropped back onto her hooves. Lockinkey's request accomplished, she stepped to the window, and stood alongside the old pony. The pair stared forward in stunned silence.

"There are great caverns beneath this edifice," said Lockinkey. "Into them this sand has spilled dozens of times over the centuries, and many times before that, water borne here on long-fallen aqueducts, that ships might be floated and mock battles waged within these walls. All this has emptied into them, and yet still they are not filled. Such caverns must be spectacular beyond imagining, and yet nopony has seen them but those who first lay these stones and set these cogs in place."

"It really is amazing," Derpy said, quietly. "Why does nopony know this is here?"

"Some terrifying old nursery rhyme concocted to keep ponies away," said Lockinkey. "Also, I imagine the place itself is rather... unsettling to most."

"What about to you?" asked Derpy.

"To me?" asked Lockinkey. "I suppose it is home."

Still the sand drained, but now in the center of the coliseum floor, there seemed to rise from it a thing that sent Derpy's blood cold, despite the desert heat. She'd seen dragons before, and of course had seen the tiny Xindathrana in the music box, but what struck her now, above and beyond all else, was this creature's sheer size.

Xindathrana was, in a word, a behemoth.

She was at least four times longer than the largest dragon Derpy had ever seen before, and as the sand drained away to reveal them, her scales gleamed in the desert sun like tourmaline and jade. In form, she was not unusual for a dragon. She had one head, two wings, four legs, and a tail. She was covered in scales, and she had great, ivory-white teeth that protruded from her lips, even though her mouth was shut. She had no horns; only a ridge of sharp, green, blade-like plates that reached from the top of her head all the way to the end of her tail, which terminated in an enormous, spiked ball, battered and weathered from what Derpy presumed was use in battle.

Or slaughter.

"You were gonna fight that?" asked Derpy, flatly.

"I was younger, then" shrugged Lockinkey.

With that, he turned, and headed down the stairs. Derpy followed, and the pair made their way to his quarters, where he promptly stopped, and stretched out a hoof to removed the old lance from the wall.

"What do you need that for?" asked Derpy, cocking her head to the side.

"In case she wakes up," said Lockinkey, his tremulous hoof still outstretched towards the weapon.

"Oh, I'm sure she'll appreciate you bringing her a toothpick," said Derpy, her off-kilter eyes narrowing.

"It is not that I can succeed, Ms. Hooves." said the old stallion. "It is that I must try. It is simply part of my duty -- my one purpose in all the world."

Derpy watched how his ancient, frail wings and hooves shook as Lockinkey lifted the lance from where it hung, and he did not even manage to gain full control of it before it slipped from his grasp, and landed on the floor.

"Could you... pass that to me, please?" he asked, clearing his throat. He did not look at her as he said this, his eyes seeking instead the floor.

Derpy sighed as she bent down to lift the lance for the old pony, and a thought came to her.

What if he drops the music box?

The idea made her start so suddenly that she almost dropped the lance, herself. If that music box was destroyed, the dragon would eventually awaken. Xindathrana had to hear its melody once a century, and Lockinkey looked at least a hundred. From his own stories, Derpy could only assume he had been watching the dragon and the music box for most of his life.

If this music box were broken, how long would it be before the wicked monster she had just seen awoke? Derpy did not in any way want to draw closer to that enormous, ancient beast, but could a pony so old and frail still be trusted with a thing so precious as the one artifact in all the world that could keep Xindathrana asleep?

"I'll carry the music box for you," sighed Derpy. "You can take the... this thing."

She passed him the lance, which he took with a wing, and he leaned into it like a crutch, jabbing the rear of its haft into the floor.

"It is my duty to see this done, Ms. Hooves."

"You can wind the music box," said Derpy, "but I'm carrying it, whether you like it or not."

"Well, I do not," said Lockinkey.

"That makes two of us," said Derpy.

She gingerly shut the still-open doors of the music box tight. Having made certain they were secure, she wrapped a wing around it firmly, and lifted it from the table. Resolved now to her mission, she took a deep breath, turned, and headed for the door.

"Ms. Hooves," came the old stallion's voice from behind her.

"What is it, Lockinkey," she said, exasperatedly, not even turning to face him.

"Thank you."

A few minutes later, Derpy stood at the edge of the coliseum floor, she and the old pony having made their way down through a series of stairwells which were still partially full of sand. From the tower where Derpy had turned the wheel, the dragon had seemed huge. From this distance, standing on the same level where she slept, she almost filled Derpy's entire field of vision.

"Is this close enough?" Derpy whimpered.

"No," said Lockinkey. "We must place it right beside her to be certain she hears it. Her ears may still be full of sand."

"Hadn't thought of that," said Derpy.

It was a valid concern. Though most of it had disappeared into several large, round drains that were now visible on the coliseum floor, each one covered by an iron grate, the entire dragon was still thickly dusted with sand. Little by little, it spilled off of her in thin streams and puffs of grit with each breath she took -- breaths that were actually visible, even from over a hundred paces away.

Derpy hesitated, her own legs and wings quivering with fear much as Lockinkey's seemed to do merely from normal exertion. She was not sure if she could even approach the enormous leviathan which slept across the sandy floor of the old coliseum, until she heard Lockinkey murmer something strange.

"She is my responsibilty," was what she thought she heard, and then, "It would break Milady's heart if I should fail."

"Come on," Derpy heard herself say, "We can do this."

They took those hundred paces one at a time, each individual hoof fall leaving Derpy more convinced that the gargantuan mass of muscles, scales, claws, and teeth was going to spring from its slumber and either crush her into the dust beneath her own hooves or completely immolate her in an instant. Her one sense of comfort was that either death would most likely be all but instantaneous, and thereby relatively painless.

But then, of course, everypony she knew and loved would probably also die.

"Why does that situation keep ending up a thing in my life?" she grumbled under her breath.

"Shhh!" Lockinkey scowled.

After a minute or so that seemed like hours, they stood before the beastly leviathan. From so close, Derpy could feel Xindathrana's body heat. It was so intense that it perceptibly raised the temperature around the dragon's body, even under the desert sun. Sweating intensely, partly from the creature's radiated heat, partially from the sun, and partially from stress, she bent down and very carefully placed the music box on the ground near the dragon's head.

Lockinkey knelt, somehow finding a way to move even more slowly than usual. Remarkably, not even his armor made any significant noise as he did this, and the tremors that normally wracked his body seemed to be absent. It was as if all the old pegasus' focus was being directed with every ounce of intensity he could muster towards this one, simple task of ever-so-quietly activating this little, egg-shaped machine. As he pressed inward the emerald that acted as the lock for the tiny doors, both ponies cringed at the miniscule click. Now, Derpy thought back to the last time Lockinkey had wound the contraption, and she dreaded the tiny, grinding noises its gears would produce.

At least it won't be as loud as the sand was, she thought.

"Wait a minute," she said out loud.

Lockinkey's eyes widened with mild panic and shifted towards her, but he said nothing.

"No, seriously," she said, and Lockinkey frantically shook his head very slightly left and right, miming shushing sounds with his lips.

Derpy just raised a hoof in response, and continued to speak.

"All that racket when the sand drained didn't wake her up, right?" she asked.

Lockinkey froze his lips mid-shush, and shifted his eyes left, and then right.

"You have a point," he said plainly.

"Either the spell's still working," said Derpy, "or she's a really heavy sleeper."

"Well, still," said Lockinkey, blushing slightly, "I must wind the box and make certain that she does not awaken for another hundred years."

He fit the little key once more into its place, and wound it several times, producing the familiar sound of the box winding. He spoke as he did so, and his words bore the cool, sighing satisfaction of decades of uncertainty brought to final, welcomed relief.

"And there... we..."

PLINK! went the music box, and the key suddenly began to spin freely, as if no longer properly resisted. The melody did not play, and the gears and springs did not wind or grind. Lockinkey spun it around several times completely before he gave up and withdrew his hoof.

Both ponies just stared at the box, blinking their eyes.

"It broke," said Lockinkey, after several seconds had elapsed.

"Why now?" whined Derpy. "After all this time, why now!?"

"Well, I suppose anything mechanical only lasts so long," said Lockinkey. "Though, to be fair, had I not wound it earlier today, it might have worked just this once more."

"Lockinkey," said Derpy, "I do not need you to point that out, right now."

"It would have dawned on you eventually," said the old pony.

Derpy shrugged, nodded, and said nothing.

"The utmost droll thing about this, though," said Lockinkey, "is just how many times in my life I have imagined this exact scenario. I would call it a recurring nightmare, except that I most often considered it while awake. Of course, the horror of it was that in those flights of fancy, the dragon always awoke. The fact that she has not just makes this whole situation rather amusing."

"Lockinkey," said Derpy, sternly, "don't tempt Fate."

"Tempt Fate?" said Lockinkey, incredulously. "Ms. Hooves, you are being obtuse. You said it yourself: If the sand draining out of here did not awaken Xindathrana, nothing will. After all, what are the odds that the previous enchantment would wear off at this precise moment? Tempting Fate? Pish and posh."

As if in punctuation to the stallion's declaration, the dragon, of course, awakened.

It began as a low groan from the creature's throat. The frequency was such that Derpy did not so much hear the sound at first as she did feel her bones vibrate inside her. Then, she saw the titanic creature's chest swell with the deep breath of a yawn; heard and felt air moving into the vacuum that Xindathrana's cavernous lungs created with their expansion. It whistled like a distant gale in the dragon's throat, and then was exhaled, the sounds and sensations repeating themselves in reverse.

"Touche,` Fate," said Lockinkey.

Derpy looked at him, and gave a weak "Ugh," and a gentle shake of her head.

Saying nothing in response, he took two steps forward, and weakly thrust the lance into the dragon's side. Having wedged the weapon's tip between two of her scales, each one taller than himself, Lockinkey released it, and stepped back, leaving the lance hanging limply from the dragon's body.

"That's it?" asked Derpy. "That's all you're even gonna try to do?"

"That is all I have to do," said Lockinkey.

Then, the dragon struck.

Comments

[DonutBeagle]

Well, they're screwed.