Reign of Fire

by MarvelBrony

Chapter Nine

When Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash entered their room again, they found that Rarity and Pinkie Pie had both joined Fluttershy in slumber. Applejack, however, remained awake, sitting slumped over in a chair and staring at the wall. When she saw them come through the doorway she lifted her head and blinked tiredly at them, asking in a low voice, “So how’d it go? What happened?”

Twilight groaned and flopped over on one of the beds. She rubbed at her tired eyes, sighing before she replied. “Oh he just wanted to talk to us about... about....”

“About joining his army as commanders!” Rainbow Dash exuberated quietly, “I honestly can’t think of anything more awesome than that!” Rainbow was obviously too excited to sleep. She paced and leaped about the room, a wide grin on her face.

Applejack’s eyes widened and she glanced at Twilight. “He... wants us to be in an... army?”

Twilight sighed again and nodded sadly. Applejack cocked an eyebrow. “Why is tarnation would we need to join the royal guards? Don’t they have enough soldiers?”

Rainbow stopped jumping around and looked at her. “Not the royal guards; a real army! An army to go out and fight monsters and barbarians and... and...” She grinned and almost did a flip. “And I’m gonna be the leader of the pegasi air force!”

Applejack blinked in confusion and looked over at Twilight, who still lay on the bed, her forelegs covering her face. “An...an... army? To fight monsters? Twilight, what the hay is goin’ on here?”

Twilight mumbled something incoherently and Applejack walked over to her, nudging her up with her snout. Twilight sat up and blinked. “What? Oh yeah... L-Lord Psyron wants to conquer the world and he wants us to help him...” She glared at Rainbow Dash. “But we aren’t going to, are we, Rainbow Dash?”

Dash paused from her jubilance and frowned at Twilight. “Wait, what? I said I’d think about it and I did! I mean, can you imagine anything more awesome than leading an army and fighting monsters?! Seriously Twilight, you need to look at the bright side of things! He sees power in us and likes us! Why shouldn’t we do what he wants?”

Twilight leaped off the bed and ground her teeth. Her tired mind and body was not helping her temper. “No, Rainbow! We are not going to obey the one that killed Celestia and locked Luna in stone! I can’t- won’t do it! And neither should you!”

She strode over to Rainbow, still glaring at her. “You’re the Element of Loyalty, Rainbow Dash. I thought you would be a bit more faithful to Celestia, but nooo! You just go and want to follow some psychotic megalomaniac that offers you an ‘awesome’ job!”

Rainbow Dash glared back at her and stomped a hoof on the ground. “Well what else are we gonna do, huh? I loved Celestia as much as you, but now she’s gone forever and there’s nothing we can do about it!” She hovered up in the air and held her hooves out in confusion. “Sure, I’m the Element of Loyalty, but who am I supposed to be loyal to? I tried my best to help Celestia and failed. Now Psyron’s on the throne and he’s our ruler. Who says I’m not supposed to be loyal to the ruler of Equestria, no matter who it is?”

Twilight’s heart sank. Obviously Rainbow Dash had been pondering the same problems that she had been pondering earlier, and she was taking the wrong side on them.

Rainbow continued. “If we don’t join Psyron, what else are we gonna do? Fight him? Even Celestia and Luna couldn’t beat this guy. Heck, even the Elements of Harmony couldn’t beat this guy! What are we supposed to do on our own against him, huh?”

Twilight didn’t know what to say. What Rainbow was saying made sense logically, but in her heart Twilight knew that it was wrong. She frowned and gazed blankly at the ground, muttering the last argument she could think of. “What if he makes you fight other ponies? Would you be able to fight and maybe kill your own friends?”

Rainbow blinked and stared at her in shock. “Of course not! But he said we would be fighting monsters and barbarians, not other ponies!”

Twilight looked up. “He said we’d be fighting all those who dared to oppose him. What if some ponies oppose him, huh? What if there’s a résistance and he sends you out to fight them? What then, huh?”

Rainbow sat hovering in the air, silently staring down in frustration. Finally she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Well if anypony is stupid enough to fight against their ruler, then they deserve to be taken down.”

She sighed and glided over to a chair, slumping down in it. Twilight stared at her in horror. What had happened to Rainbow Dash that made her so careless and disloyal? Why... what... how...

Before Twilight knew it, she had fallen over on the floor in fatigue, her eyelids flickering. Applejack nudged her gently. “You wanna get on a bed, sugarcube?” The unicorn shook her head weakly. It was all too much for her to take. Everything happening so fast... so often... so shockingly...

She barely felt the blanket cover her before she fell into a deep sleep, her tired and broken mind whirling in sheer confusion.

Applejack looked down at the sleeping Twilight and sighed. She turned to Rainbow Dash, who now sat sleeping in the chair, her wings twitching about in slumber. AJ shook her head sadly and walked over to the windowsill, gazing out into the black night. So much had happened so fast. Nothing was the same anymore. And if even loyal Rainbow Dash was giving in, perhaps it was time to finally accept their fate and adjust to a new life. Perhaps... perhaps...

Applejack laid her head down against the window and drifted off to sleep.

In another room within the castle, a different kind of conflict was being played out. Voltspark sat at a table in the middle of the library room, casually flipping through a book on lightning and storm systems. His sister Dracona, however, was not so calm. She paced back and forth through the room, muttering and fuming under her breath, which her brother mostly ignored. She finally spoke loud enough for him to hear:

“I hate her.”

Voltspark glanced up at her, his features showing his boredom. Here they went again. “Hate who?”

Dracona stopped pacing and growled menacingly under her breath, “You know who I mean.... Our little sister. I hate her with every fiber of my being!”

Voltspark blinked and continued to stare at her impassively, carrying on with his standard reply. “Why so?”

Dracona formed her front right hoof into a clawed hand and slashed at the air viciously, snarling, “It’s our father; he cares for her far more than he does for us. And all because she’s his precious little secret weapon...” She hissed and unfurled her dragon-like wings. “He only keeps us around because of our powers, you know that as well as I!”

Voltspark closed the book and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, so what are you expecting, a father to tuck you in at night and read you a bedtime story?”

She glared venomously at him. “Don’t you dare mock me, Voltspark!”

“Then stop getting your tail in a twist and quit your whining! After all these long years we’ve finally won, so just bask in the glory while you can!”

Dracona stood glaring at him for several seconds, the tempo of her breath rising in pent-up anger. Her voice was low and riddled with savage fury as she stalked towards him, hissing, “I don’t need glory, brother, I need respect! I need to be treated like a normal pony, not some half-breed freak of nature!”

Voltspark snorted. “Oh come on, that’s just your special power. I can shoot lightning from my horn and turn into living electricity and I’m not complaining about it!”

She whirled around and strode up to a nearby mirror, glaring at her reflection intensely. “But at least you can walk around freely like any normal pony, while I have to become somepony else to avoid being seen as a monster!” She slammed her clawed hoof against the mirror, knocking it backward and cracking it. Voltspark wisely refrained from making a seven-years-bad-luck joke as his sister continued her tirade.

“I’m a freak, a mutated creature that only lives on the lives and personas of other ponies!” She dropped to her knees and hissed brokenly. “I don’t even have any power mark on my flank... I’m not an individual, I’m a population.... A population of other lives, other personalities, other voices.... other souls....” She looked up at her brother, tears of bitterness stinging in her reptilian eyes. “You have no idea what it’s like! And neither does our father... and especially our sister!” She spat derisively and laid her head down, folding her wings in around her like a filly cuddling a favorite blanket.

Voltspark continued to stare down at her, his face still impassive. He had seen Dracona suffer an emotional breakdown such as this many times before, and so it rarely affected him. He opened up the book on storms and began to read again, but was interrupted when another book was hurled across the room and hit him in the face. He grunted and looked up just in time to see Dracona looming over him. She had now taken on the form of a fully-fledged dragon; not nearly as large as one, but just as dangerous and imposing. She wrapped her long lithe tail around his throat and drew him in close, snarling in a low, raspy voice, “Lisssten to me, brother... we are only here because father hasss need of our powersss.... once we are of no ussse to him, he will toss us aside like any other common sssoldier!” Voltspark gasped and winced as her grip tightened and her eyes hardened. “I ssswear to you that ssssoon, very sssoon, I will sssatisfy my thirst for ressspect, but only after I rip the throat out of our dear little ssssister and drink her blood!”

She threw him back into the chair, where he sat gasping and rubbing his throat. She stepped back, clenching her claws into fists. Her long fangs gnashed together and a growl issued from her throat, causing Voltspark to cringe in apprehension. Dracona suddenly swung her tail out and knocked over a tall bookcase, spilling books, maps, and ornaments everywhere. Voltspark ducked as a portion of the shattered bookcase flew over his head, and only got up when the dust had settled. He peered cautiously over the table and stared in shock at what he saw.

Dracona now lay on the floor in the exact pose that she had been before, only this time, it was not her. She had taken the form of their sister Obsidia and lay staring into the broken mirror before turning her head to look at Voltspark. A chill ran down his spine when she smiled eerily at him, at the same time slowly morphing back into her normal dragonesque form.

When her transformation back had completed, she laid her head back down and whispered, her voice now normal as well, but still bearing a tinge of vicious sentiment. “Someday, brother... someday I will gain the respect I deserve. I will become my own individual, my own creature; not a copycat of some other pony’s body, but a brand new one... Someday brother... someday....”