For the Love of Family
28 days since the fall of Traxti City
2 days since Legacy Chaser’s murder
Afternoon, Hourglass
Discord slowly put his hands to his face before he muttered. “Not again…”
That instantly got He of Hourglass to hyper focus on the draconequus. “He of Laughter what do you mean by ‘not again?’”
Discord stood there debating on what to say and how to say it. He now knew what triggered Sentinel’s loss of harmony. What made this bad was the ‘Chaos Bringer’ was on the loose. Worse still, he had no idea how to fix this. Sentinel's choosing was responsible for his harmony last time… but that was out of the question this time...
“He of Laughter,” He of Hourglass walked right up to Discord, lifted his head, and looked straight into his eyes. “Secondclaw’s past is murky, even to him, whatever you know that may been similar to what is affecting him now you need to tell us.”
Discord saw the concern and brotherly love that He of Hourglass had for Sentinel. As much as he loathe revealing what he knew he knew he had to tell them, at least a censored version. No way was he going to reveal that He of Hourglass’ egg was one in the same as the one Sentinel supposedly ‘hatched’ a long time ago. He would need to tailor his words carefully. Luckily, he knew that the Bearers and Princesses would not reveal that either. “Very well, but Scorpan, the pony guard, and our griffon friend will need to leave. This is something only family should know.”
He of Hourglass eyebrow raised at the ‘only family’ line. The Bearers and the Princesses were not family unless Discord was including Keeper business as well in that line. In that case the Bearers would need to know as well as the Princesses. Either that, or they may have something to add. He would find out soon enough.
Scorpan could see in his expression and hear in his voice that Discord was very serious. “I… I will go check on the guardpony and He of Music… If you need me...”
Scorpan quietly left the council room. Captain Phoenix Wave saluted and followed right behind. He of Hourglass resealed the room after the two left. That left the griffon ambassador who was looking like he was going to dig in his claws so to speak.
“Fine.” Grizzle finally relented from all of the stares. “But I expect something in return Princess Celestia. A bottle of vintage cognac will suffice.”
“Very well, Ambassador Grizzle I’ll shall have one sent to your chambers a soon as possible along with a nice... slice... of MMMM.” She leaned in on the last few words drawing them out for maximum effect.
The griffon face turn just a bit pink. “Um.. right.” He quickly left the Friendship Council room looking back over his shoulder several times as he did.
“What?!” Celestia exclaimed in mock wonderment at the various looks she was getting.
He of Hourglass facepalmed and shook his head. “Please refrain from anymore of that innuendo with Quartermaster around or you all will get to see some real ‘MMMM.’”
At that, everypony blushed red and individually tried to find something interesting with the architecture of the either council room. Quartermaster suppressed the urges that were beginning to build. He would deal with it later. His hatchmate, according to the draconequus, was in trouble, more trouble than just the fact that he was grieving Medallion’s death. If it wasn’t for that fact and his son detailing that Sentinel was taking her death hard he would have scoffed. But if the draconequus had some clue to what could be going on with Sentinel or a clue to how to help him he would listen.
Discord twiddled with his claw/paw as he worked to order his thoughts correctly. Everyone even, Quartermaster, who had on an earlier occasion has been extremely short with the draconequus waited with baited breaths. Finally, Discord felt he had what he needed to say figured out.
“Have anyone of you heard of The Charred Bowl Crater?” Discord questioned.
“A crater four miles wide and nearly a mile deep and like its name the rock inside the crater is charred. Supposedly its magically charred as nothing grows there...” Twilight fell into a scholarly rhythm as she explained about the crater. “It’s a famous landmark to the south of the Zebra Confederation. Zecora once told me about it. Apparently there is some sort of mythical story associated with it.”
“You are correct Twilight... Though whole the mythical story is whole bunches of mumbo jumbo hocus pocus made up story thingy... Sentinel or Harmony… Uh…” Discord grumbled at the coming headache. “Which one should I use? I mean at the time he was Harmony…”
He of Hourglass understood the confusion that Discord was suffering from. He put a comforting claw on Discord’s shoulder. “Use Harmony, He of Laughter, if it helps you from getting mixed up…”
“Right…” Discord nodded. “Harmony was there the night when a mountain became a crater. The night that Harmony gained and lost his family. The night that a kind pony became the distant and harsh pony that you girls are familiar with.”
“He never seemed that distant or harsh to me… except in battle.” Quartermaster countered.
“Quartermaster” He of Hourglass facepalmed. “That probably has to do with him considering dragons to be his adopted people… though technically he was or is or ugh…”
“Oh, I got this!” Discord piped up as he snapped a blender and a box labeled ‘Pronoun Mix’. “My special cure for migraines!” He dug into the box and started pulling out pronouns. “Let’s see... a dash of ‘HE’s, a splash of ‘HIS’, a nice helping of ‘HER’s, and just a hint ‘SHE’… oh what the heck, we only live once!” Discord dumped the rest of the contents of the box into the blender and with a flair hit the button called puree.
Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie tried to hide the fact that they were giggling. Twilight and Rarity both were trying not to groan. Applejack adopted an annoyed look and the rest seemed to keep more neutral expression.
“More like a cure for lack of migraines…” He of Hourglass grumbled. How did Seconclaw ever learn to handle him?
“Well, more for me then!” Discord shrugged before he chugged the concoction. “Bleck. I think I should have added some lemon.”
“Anyway…” Discord took some sparkling dust from a pouch that suddenly appeared on his neck and blew it away. Around both the ponies and dragons a vision of a lonely mountain midst a forest rose up.
“Long before Equestria’s settlement during the time of the great pony herds… When Harmony wondered the world trying to find his place, his purpose… What it meant to be a Keeper of Harmony. In his journey of self discovery he was caught in a terrible rainstorm…”
A flash of lightning and the sound of thunder echoed in the councils and rain began to fall.
“DISCORD!” Rarity yelled at her mane being messed up by the rain.
“Oops, too realistic…” Discord snapped his paw and the rain continued to fall but was no longer real. “A mated, fully grown dragons lived there… They of Glowstone Mountain… Or They of Glowgem Mountain… either one was apparently acceptable…”
“Glowgems?” Rarity asked a sparkle could bee seen in her eyes at the possibility of glowing stones on her dresses.
“Glowstones?” Twilight added. She had never heard of a gem called that before.
Discord tail snapped and a small shard of a gem appeared before them, slowly spinning. A strange morphing colored light emitted from it.
“That looks strangely like a rainbow crystal.” He of Hourglass noted about the image of the color shifting gem. “Except rainbow crystals do not emit light…”
“You wish…” Discord smirked before his expression darken.
“Where was I?” Discord tapped his chin for a moment. “ Oh I remember now! The downpour… Harmony looked for a cave to ride out the storm and to dry out his now soaking fur. When he found a cave a strange glow from further into the cave caught his eye.
“Out of curiosity he went further. What he saw amazed him. The cave opened up into a cavern that was made of the glowgems.’ the image shifted to to a crystal cave system similar to the one beneath Canterlot. “The interesting thing about glowgems is they drown out all of color so everything had the same shifting color properties as Harmony’s coat… Before he had more than a moment’s time to drink in the sight as the saying goes he found himself face to face with a pair of angry dragons…”
Fluttershy eeped and fainted from the suddenness of two unfamiliar, angry dragons appearing in the councils. She had to be revived by a bucket of water that Twilight quickly conjured.
Discord waited for a moment for Fluttershy to fully awaken before he continued. “The odd thing about these dragons is not only did they spare him but took care of him. Harmony never did figure out why they spare him… Though I’m sure he does now… probably some dragon thing… anyway… Harmony lost track of time inside those caves… In time the trust built enough between Harmony and the dragons built to a point that they allowed him to leave…”
“Stockmare Syndrome…” Twilight whispered as she realized what happened.
“No, not possible…” He of Hourglass shook his head. He realized exactly what happened. Discord had surmised correctly, Sentinel would now know why...
“And how would you know?” Twilight questioned, her left eye twitched slightly. ”Stockmare Syndrome is a recently discovered and named psychological illness!”
“...in which hostages, captives, or prisoners express empathy and sympathy sometimes so strongly to defend and or identify with their captors.” He of Hourglass casually spoke as if he was quoting straight from a dictionary.
“Wha…” Twilight was shocked that He of Hourglass would know about that. She never remember sending anything remotely related to psychology, “How?”
“One of the Power Pony comics had a storyline dealing with Stockmare Syndrome.” He of Hourglass shrugged. “He of Laughter, is this his memories or a depiction of it?”
“A bit of both.” Discord admitted. “He only show me stills and I have no idea what the mated dragons looked like... I have done my best to fill in the rest with what likely happened…”
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain how…” Twilight started.
“For starters, Harmony’s coat…”
“What about it?” Rarity posed the question this time. She really never liked the coat all that well and could understand why Harmony always hid it when he was around… Though she would admit, if questioned, that his coat now looked dashing even with the fiery rainbow mane he sported.
“If what He of Laughter is showing is even close to the real thing then what the dragons did is atypical behavior for a dragon. Harmony should have died or been driven out, not held captive… I would suspect from the moment those dragons got a good look at him they fell in love with him… I also suspect over the time Harmony was under their ‘care’ started to love the pony underneath. I would take a step further in my assumptions to say that given the self discovery Harmony was on Harmony probably tried to take this opportunity to learn about them and dragons…”
“Meaning!?” Twilight was getting irritated at the non answer answers.
“Harmony became a part of their hoard… It’s the only explanation for him becoming Acolyte and passing the Rite of Guardianship…” He of Hourglass exclaimed. “While I don’t know all of the details of the Rite as only someone who has passed would know... He would have assuredly failed if he had ever suffered Stockmare Syndrome by his parents claws. One has to have true, pure motives to even have a chance… Tiüai tie, ar tīru uzuthszrēüiel var ievatīt. That is the warning for any dragon wanting to pass the Rite. Harmony and They of Glowstone Mountain truly loved each other as parents and son… a pure love…”
An contemplative silence came over the gathering as each processed the story so far. After a while He of Hourglass stirred from his thoughts. He needed, as well as the rest, to have the story finished.
“He of Laughter, go on…” He of Hourglass urged Discord to continue the tale of Harmony and his parents.
“Harmony would from time to time return to his parents. Harmony once told me the hardest times for him was when he needed to leave as his duty compelled him to return to the pony lands among others to continue to work and nurture harmony between not only the ponies but the griffons(given the life debt). He would also from time to time seek out dragons to learn from them. He knew that the final Keeper would come from them and he wanted to make it easier for the dragon when he or she appeared... to help the Keeper just as he received help from the Roc Keeper…”
“On a night about four thousand five hundred years ago, after struggling to acquire a rainbow crystal, he made his way back to his parent’s mountain. He was never allowed before to study or use magic while in the mountain, and he hoped he could bargain for that chance with the crystal.”
“Why, not?”
“Glowgems are extremely dangerous and unstable... makes Twilight’s four alicorn powered laser attack against Tirek seem like a laser toy for that furball of claws of a cat of yours Rarity.”
The alicorns looked uneasy at the explanation. Fluttershy once again eeped and nearly fainted. Rarity gulped. No way would she want those gems anywhere near any of her creations.
“On that night the glow gems for whatever reason began to detonate in cascade… Harmony was not far and rushed in when he heard the beginnings of the explosion. He teleported in to see his father in the midst of dieing to protect his mother… Harmony knew what was happening and tried to get him to leave but they wouldn’t... For as you all know…”
“Dragons don’t abandon their hoards…” He of Hourglass finished for Discord.
“Harmony tried again with the mother but she too refused to leave… As he begged her she directed his attention to a single egg...”
He of Hourglass wondered at that. It’s almost unheard of for a dragon pair to only have one egg… Though it was possible that the others had already been destroyed by that point or the egg laying was interrupted by the gems explosions… Maybe the dragons had already raised the other dragons before had and had never told Harmony about their eggs. Too many possibilities came and went that He of Hourglass decided to shelf that train of thought as unfortunately, it was highly likely no one would ever know...
“He watched as the light went out in their eyes. The last thing his mother did was tell Harmony the egg’s name… As it was, Harmony barely escaped with the egg and his life… the power the was expended was… massive... as Celestia and Luna can attest…”
“We were near where Las Pegasus is now when this happened…’ Celestia explained. “We could feel the blast wave through the magic currents… it messed up the weather here for weeks afterwards…”
“I myself was near present day Traxti City at the time… I knew something bad had happened and rushed in the direction of the disaster…”
“All Harmony ever wanted, needed actually, was family… Celestia and Luna were unable to when he was ‘born.’ Luna herself was just recently born and Celestia had just lost her entire family minus her sister in the span of a few weeks. She was so young… she just didn’t know how to cope… Anyway… long story short, his parents were the first to accept him… no one else would with his coat… I know how he felt… I’m not a typical looking draconequus… normally six or seven not twelve animals...” The light darkened as Discord spoke about his own pain before it brighten. “And now you gave it back to him He of Hourglass... and yet, now... history is repeating itself…”
It had been an unremarkable mountain nothing to pretweek his interest. And now there was nothing there but a smoking crater. What the heck happened here? Discord wondered as he floated about trying to gauge for anything that could give him a hint as to what occurred, now, four nights ago. He needed to find out as something that powerful to affect him like that would not be good. The last time… Discord shivered at the thought and pushed it down as he continued his search.
Discord searched for another hour and found nothing… the area was still in magic backlash and he was getting no where. I might need to get Harmony here to see if he can see something with his order magic… As he looked around for a place to set camp he saw the alicorn. Harmony was on a hill overlooking the damage. He was just standing there gazing out over the destruction.
“Hey, Harmony good to see you here…” Discord eased down next to his friend and fellow keeper. Harmony didn’t respond to either Discord’s inquiry or approach. That is odd. Discord thought. “How long have you been here?” No answer. “What happened?”
After a long time Harmony finally spoke, flatly. “They are gone…”
“They are gone?!” Discord repeated in confusion. “I don’t understand… and that is saying a-”
“Those BUCKING GEMS KILLED THEM!” Discord stumbled back from the sheer force of the rage that pour out in the scream, more like a roar, that came from Harmony.
“Killed who?”
“...my parents…” Harmony whispered so softly that Discord almost didn’t hear what he had said.
‘My parents?’ What he is jabbering on about? His ‘parents’ were long gone already and what does he mean by ‘gems killing them’? How could gems do this?
He eyed the alicorn further and noticed a purple and green egg carefully lying in a
‘nest’ of rags between Harmony’s hooves. Why would he have a dragon’s egg? Unless... Discord looked back at the crater in horror.
“Harmony are you saying that a dragon pair adopted you?” Discord slowly questioned, fearing the answer he would get.
He never got a verbal response as Harmony started balling, hard. Discord looked back at the Alicorn Keeper in concern. Harmony was no longer standing but lying on the ground, clutching to his chest, protectively, the dragon's egg. He laid there sobbing and nuzzling the egg long into the night and the next day.
Discord shook as he pulled himself away from the memory. Everyone was staring at him in concern. “Harmony blamed himself for not being able to do something... anything sooner… It was after this incident that he discovered how dangerous those gems are… As I already mentioned, the night he lost his parents he was returning with a rainbow crystal in hopes that he could trade it for a sliver of a glowgem. He wanted to study the gem and its unique properties.”
“As far as he and I know there are no more glowgems but a single shard left in the world. In a grief induced rage he destroyed any and all glowgems that he could come across.”
“Where is this shard at?” Twilight asked. Part of her wanted to study it another part was terrified. An ability to vaporize a mountain like that would mean that even that shard would be dangerously deadly.
“Deep underground… in a location only he knows… in a stasis chamber specifically designed to nullify it.”
“Why does he keep it?” Twilight wondered. “I mean if they’re are as unstable and dangerous enough to cause a mountain to vaporize…”
“Glowgems have a unique magical signature… He told me that he kept it as the standard if ever he needs it to track down any more that may survive or if anything similar it shows up… But I think he kept it mostly as a reminder of his failure, a reminder of what he lost, a reminder that he…”
“Enough, He of Laughter… no more… I’ve heard enough.” He of Hourglass had heard enough as Sentinel and Harmony shared personality because they were the same being. It was clear that he blamed himself for her death in the same way as he did for his dragon parents. The problem was that in both cases there was nothing he could have done to change the outcome.
A memory resurfaced, one that had been coming to mind a lot lately...
“Promise me something…” Harmony whispered.
“Huh?” Golden Heart was confused. Where did this come from?
“Treasure those whose heart you share.” Harmony stared at Golden Heart, his eyes glassy. “But not as other dragons do. Hearts are not like gold, silver, and gems that can be stored away in the tight grasp of a dragon’s hoard. For hearts to truly shine they must be free. Entrapped hearts tarnish and die. No dragon wants tarnished treasure.”
“But there is something else.” Harmony looked back down. “Your hoard is not a lasting one.”
“For the hearts one treasures are like the flowers of the field. For they grow for a while, bloom, then wilt away. All that remains is the memories. But in that fleeting moment in that time those flowers outshine any treasure that lasts forever.”
Golden Heart remembered asking him what he hoarded. Unfortunately before he could answer he fell into a fainting spell from the Magic Wasting Disease. Could it be that He of Harmony was speaking from experience? That his hoard, his treasure was one that has passed on? But what started him speaking in metaphors? And why?
He was right Harmony was speaking from experience. The advice was not only to try and help him mature but so that he would not go through the pain he had gone through for thousands of years. Advice that Harmony and now Sentinel was struggling to live.
Medallion just could have easily been killed in Hourglass. His parents could have easily died even if Harmony had a chance to study the gems… If anything it would have spurred the dragons, his parents, to hoard harder if only to protect others from the dangers of the glow gems. Either from the explosion that did eventually claim their lives or from someone taking the glow gems to use as a weapon.
“What can we do Firstclaw?” Quartermaster whispered and from the tone it was clear to He of Hourglass that he was struggling not to fall apart.
“Family was what brought back his cutiemark and allowed him to Choose. Family, cleary, from the beginning have been his hoard… family will be our answer… I doubt He of Music alone can do it like before… just like the return of his cutiemark it it will take all of us…”
Stats
Page generated in 0.041 seconds
Total duration
1,015 users online
1,343 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I knew I had a sense of deja vu while reading this... I had already read that side story..