Fall of Deathwing

by Demeristraz

Picking Up the Pieces

Neltharion awoke to a far from pleasant morning. His body ached as he drew upon the memories of yesterday. He remembered griffons and leaping from a cliff, and then being chased by an airship full of... bunnies? Shaking his head proved to make his headache only worse, so he instead concentrated on his surroundings. The bed beneath him was far too soft, the blankets around him were far too itchy, the birds were signing far too loudly, and the sun was shining far too brightly, this was not going to be a good day.

Flaring his wings he managed to disentangle himself from the covers, and with shaky steps he hopped down onto the floor. Wood, he noted, not blessed solid rock but at least solid, he lay his head down on a cool patch, trying to sooth the throbbing sensation. A few moments passed, and he considered ways of ridding himself of avian noise pollution, as a sure sign of concussion he considered political sabotage, forcing the birds into war with the bunnies to solve two problems at once.

Over their infernal cacophony he barely noticed when someone entered the room, until a soft voice brought him out of his musings. "Oh, you're awake, I was um... I was beginning to worry." Curiosity getting the best of him, the black dragon opened one eye, squinting against the light, and beheld an odd sight. A miniature yellow horse with wings, and pink hair, stood shyly in the doorway. There was a term for them, he scanned his memory for it, but in its addled state all he could come up with was 'hippogryph' which was far from accurate. This was no crossbreed of horse and bird, it was quite literally a horse with wings. Pony with wings, actually, given the size.

"I'm um... Fluttershy." Came a rather fitting 'squeak' from the pony.

"Neltharion." the dragon grumbled, still irritated by light and sound.

"You were in um... quite the state when I found you..." The pony continued, giving him a kind smile but wide berth, as if he were a wounded but dangerous animal. Probably a wise decision, given everything. "Angel bunny is sorry for attacking you... He just thought you were trying to attack the cottage."

"I was being chased..." Neltharion began, 'by bunnies in airships' didn't seem like a good way to start things off. He tried again, "My home was attacked by griffons, I was hurt running... Making a tactical retreat."

"Oh dear, griffons can be quite mean, did they hurt you? I noticed a few cracked scales." The Pegasus stepped forward, concern suddenly outweighing her fear.

"I managed to conflagrate one of them, and escape, but likely my hoard of gems is gone." The black dragon admitted, eyeing the now closer pony warily.

"Conflagrate?" She paused, the look on her face saying she wasn't familiar with the word.

Neltharion snorted, most who didn't use fire regularly never grasped the delicate differences in using it to destroy. "I distracted the griffons, but I'm not a strong flier yet, so leaping off a mountain... Regardless I should return to my cave, and start rebuilding my hoard."

"But... But what if they're still there? Or they come back?" She asked, now looking terrified on his behalf. It was an odd experience having someone worry for his well being, even when he had goblins fixing his elementium plates, they were more worried for their own survival. Still griffons seemed to scare the pony, perhaps they were two species at war, like orcs and humans.

"They are likely gone with my treasure by now, but you are right, they'll likely make raiding me a weekly occurrence, now that they know it can easily be done." Neltharion grimaced. "Perhaps I can make the cave more confusing, and higher some stronger guards..."

"You can stay here... In Ponyville I mean." Came a near whisper in response.

"The locals would be okay with a dragon around?" Neltharion raised an eyebrow.

"Well Twilight, the librarian, has a dragon assistant, Spike. He's just a baby, younger than you..." Fluttershy began.

"I'd imagine most dragons are..." Neltharion muttered.

"But he's become a regular part of the town now, like any other pony."

"... Do you have a basement? Or a cellar?"

O~O~O~O~O

"I'm telling you I don't think boss would come this far."

"Did you see how far he was gliding? No? That's right, you were too busy looking for your head. He came this far, he'll be in the village somewhere."

Ponyville that morning was treated to the rather odd sight of a living pile of stones and a pillar of animated fire wandering through town. Much of the population rushed indoors, peering out at the strange creatures that intruded on their average morning.

"... So then I tell him that these Elements of Harmony were used to seal him, and Eddy says 'How do you beat the spirit of Discord with a large aquatic mammal?' " Tinder burst out laughing, with Flint joining in shortly after, the two were wandering the streets seemingly careless of the stares they were getting.

"Boss! Hey boss! C'mon out we're here to rescue you!" Flint shouted.

"Really? I'm not sure the boss needs rescuing, there should be a better word for what we're doing." Tinder pondered.

"But what if he ran into that one pegasus from here, the 'dragon slayer'."

"I thought you said she just made the dragon cry?"

"Isn't that bad enough? We have to save him."

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASP~!"

"Huh?" was the eloquent response of both lackeys.

"Ohmigosh Rocky! Is that you?" A pink earth pony had leapt out of nowhere and landed before the two bickering elementals.

Tinder immediately burst into laughter again. "I told you all earth elementals look the same!"

Flint paused a moment, choosing to ignore his friend. "I'm sorry miss, my name is Flint, I've never met a Rocky."

"Oh, of course I see it now that I'm up close. You're made mostly out of scoria aren't you? Which means you're probably from the mountains." Pinkie said, giving him a close look.

"Really? I would have taken him for... Granite." Tinder said with a snort of laughter.

"Ignore him, we're looking for the boss, he's a small black dragon that was chased away from us by some griffons." Flint said.

"Oh no! Those big mean meanie heads, I'll help you find your dragon, don't worry your pretty little polished head." The pink pony said, hopping away in a seemingly random direction.

O~O~O~O~O

Neltharion sat at a table, looking down at what was presumably to be his breakfast. A bowl of soggy oats. He contemplated asking if the pony had any gemstones, but seeing how accommodating she was being, he didn't want to push. It was bad enough seeing the 'killer rabbit' making increasingly ridiculous demands.

"Okay Angel, here's your salad." She said, pushing a bowl of green things towards the mammal. He picked up one of them, took a single bite, and then threw it at his host's head, pushing away the bowl. "Oh do you not like it? Can I get you something else?"

"Leave him, if he's hungry he'll eat it." Neltharion grumbled, seeing the bunny give him a glare. "Right now he's just being rude."

"What about you? Are you going to eat your oatmeal?" She asked timidly.

'So this stuff has a name?' he thought, looking down at the steaming pile in front of him. "I'll go looking for some gems later, dragons don't get a lot of energy from... pony food."

"That explains why Spike is always eating." She said with a nervous laugh. "I should go feed the rest of the animals." She made to rise but Neltharion beat her to it, seeing a way to repay her current kindness.

"I'll take care of it. " He said, ignoring her rather quiet protests. He went out the back door and quickly found a bag of animal feed, and located a feeder nearby. Stepping out into the clearing the sounds of animals completely stopped, they had all turned to look at him in wary silence.

Neltharion extended a sharpened claw, hearing an audible gulp from his audience, and neatly cut a hole in the top of the bag. Fixing the animals all with a look, he poured the food into the trough unceremoniously, stepping back when the bag was empty. None of the animals dared move forward. "Eat." He growled. The animals all rushed to the trough, careful to give him a wide berth, and nervously began picking up food pellets. "Quickly." He added, and in a flurry of movement the animals were back in their places, mouths and paws stuffed with as much food as they could carry.

Neltharion made his way back inside, smug grin on his face and tail waving happily, humming a tune about burning villages. In the doorway stood Angel, frown on his little bunny face, and stomach rumbling. The black dragon dropped a few food pellets in front of the bunny, and gave him a very toothy grin. It was time he checked out that cellar Fluttershy mentioned, he was certainly not sleeping on that bed again.

'Thwack' a pellet bounced off the back of Neltharion's head. He turned to give the tiny mammal his most fearsome glare, and the bunny threw another. The black dragon spat a gout of fire, incinerating the projectile mid flight, and pounced at the fluffy adversary. Predictably it bolted, and the two began an epic chase around the yard, little bunny legs pumping frantically to flee from sharp fangs and claws, and the occasional blast of scorching heat.

The chase abruptly ended at the front door to the cottage, when Fluttershy came out to check on them. "Just a game of tag." The black dragon grunted, Angel nodding along. The bunny darted inside, and left the pegasus and dragon to inspect the cellar.

It was dark and confined, which were both pluses in Neltharion's book, but also rather cold and damp which was problematic. The cellar was little more than a burrow dug into the dirt beneath her house, held up by support beams. As he inspected the cellar the two began talking.

"I know it's not much, I usually use it to store food during the winter. I know the Apple family has something similar, maybe Twilight's library has a better basement, or Rarity's boutique?" She said, seeing him rather dissatisfied with the 'cave'.

He winced at the idea of even going into the village, let alone living there. "This will do." He said, halting her list of other solutions. "I can gather some clay from a nearby river, and heat it into ceramic or something. Coat the walls and floor so that it's more solid and less damp."

O~O~O~O~O

The two emerged from the cellar to the sound of "Fluttershy~!" Five ponies were approaching the cottage. The pink one lead the pack, hopping right up to the yellow pony.

"Heya Flutters', we're looking for a dragon, but not Spike, this one's black and a little bigger than him. We figured we'd come to you last, since if you found a dragon you'd tell all of us because you're so afraid of them!" She managed to gasp out in one breath.

Neltharion raised an eyebrow about the yellow pegasus being afraid of dragons, it was an entirely reasonable thing to be afraid of wasn't it? But perhaps she wasn't usually as timid around creatures that weren't dragons.

"Oh um, I did find one actually, a dragon I mean, he's going to be staying with me for a while, I mean in my cellar, because he likes it down there, or he will once we, I mean he renovates it." She said meekly to the group.

"Boss!" Came a shout from behind the crowd, an animated pile of stones rumbled forward, past a shocked Fluttershy and up to the dragon, who stood in the entryway to the cellar. "We found you at last! We were worried we'd have to go home!"

"Yeah Boss, we got to meet some really interesting ponies though, while looking for you." Tinder said, joining his companion.

"I noticed you brought them with you." Neltharion deadpanned. "Regardless, Flint, do you think you could find me some gems? I haven't eaten all day and my cracked scales are irritating me."

"Sure thing Boss." The Earth elemental rumbled, heading off into the woods.

He noticed the other ponies giving him odd looks, and turned to address them. It was the white one, with a horn on her head that spoke first. "You look just like an adult dragon, only smaller." She remarked.

"Am I not supposed to?" He replied, with a raised eyebrow.

"No no dear it's just... unusual."

"What she means is, Spike, my assistant is a baby dragon, and looks quite different from you. From what I've read dragons come in all shapes and sizes though, so..." The purple one, also horned, added.

"I heard you had a run in with some griffons." A cyan pegasus with polychromatic hair said, "Heard you had to run away."

Neltharion bristled a little, "I suppose you'd send a child to fight three fully grown griffons and expect it to win then? If they live long enough to see me as even an adolescent, they will find their actions not worth the small pile of gems they stole."

There was an uneasy silence at that statement, from the tension in the group they appeared to have mixed feelings regarding griffons, so likely there wasn't some war going on with them, likely just a few bad experiences. He was spared from elaborating further by Flint's timely arrival with an armful of gems.

He immediately began sorting the pile, meticulously inspecting each gem before placing it in the appropriate place. The white pony stepped forward and began to help, a fact that irritated him at first, but he resisted the urge to snatch the gems away. It turned out she had quite the talent at recognizing gem quality, and mentioned as they worked her 'special talent' was finding gems.

Finally done sorting he scooped up those he would eat, three rubies, two sapphires and an emerald, and pushed the others into a pile. "Picky eater?" The orange pony asked.

"Would you eat rotten apples?" He replied, popping the first ruby into his mouth, feeling his inner fire burn it away, and the aches slowly begin to fade. "Eating gems lets me absorb their magic quickly, and gives me my essential nutrients. Eating flawed ones would give me 'Dragon Rickets'."

"'Dragon rickets'?" The purple unicorn, Twilight, the one with the dragon assistant asked.

"It's an illness that affects whelps. Our bones, claws, scales and teeth are mainly made of Aluminum based compounds, which we get from eating gems. Without a steady intake of gems our growth slows down, but if we eat impurities, those impurities end up in our bodies." He demonstrated by holding up a seemingly good emerald, placing it down on the ground he gave it a firm tap with one of his claws, and it split down the middle. "Strong gems, strong dragon."

"That isn't in any books I read, dragons aren't really big on living among ponies, that's what makes raising Spike so hard sometimes." Twilight seemed distraught, likely worried about her assistant's diet.

"Well, if Neltharion is going to be living here, I'm sure you can come ask him questions, he seems to know a lot for a dragon so young." Fluttershy suggested.

"Oh! What if, he's actually a really old dragon who was hit by a shrinking spell?" Pinkie gasped, getting only groans from her friends.

"Flint, did you happen to find any clay while you were searching for these?" Neltharion asked, trying to change the subject, something about that pink pony bothered him immensely.

"Oh! Yes, there's a lot of kaolinite in one of the ravines over that way!" The earth elemental rumbled.

"That will do nicely. We'll need several barrels of it." The black dragon said, prompting all of the ponies present to volunteer to help out. It took much of the remainder of the day, with Flint and Applejack hauling barrels of the clay to Fluttershy's cottage, while the rest used it to pave over the dirt floor of the cellar. The wooden support beams were coated to look like stalactites, further improving the cave's ambiance, at Rarity's suggestion. Once the coating was done, Tinder heated the clay to harden it, leaving the cellar finally looking and feeling like a proper dragon's cave.

Neltharion spent a few more hours, after everypony left, sorting through more gems that Flint brought while they worked. The flawed gems would become his hoard, which he slept on. While eating gems was the quickest way to draw out the magic, dragons naturally leached magic from their environment, meaning sleeping on their hoards was a good source of energy. He had mentioned this to Twilight, who agreed to let Spike keep a 'Rock collection' in his bed, but not for eating.

Fluttershy approached the entrance to what was once her cellar, noting its now spooky appearance. She dared not go down, both for wishing to give her new dragon friend his space, and because the cooling clay had left the cave quite hot. "Nel?" She quietly called into the dark.

The dragon paused in his work, his family had called him that. Not his flight but his brothers and sisters. If anypony else referred to him as that he would be irritated, but he decided to let it slide. "Yes?" he called up at her from the darkness.

"Twilight was hoping we could swing by the library this evening." She said, her tone of voice indicating it was his choice if they went, much like everything else she suggested.

The dragon weighed his options, it was already getting dark, the crowds wouldn't be a problem, it was just a visit with one of the pegasus' friends. One he found tolerable after spending the day working beside. The unicorn was rather antisocial, and reminded him much of his brother Malygos. Settling on an answer he climbed the incline to the surface, giving a simple "Fine." to Fluttershy as she lead the way.

They were both silent as they walked the path into town. The yellow pony seemed to still be nervous in his company, and he felt no need for small talk. It did seem strange to him, that such a timid pony would volunteer to house a dragon in her basement. He felt he should make some attempt at getting her comfortable with his presence, but at the same time it seemed that was just who she was, and she would likely open up in time.

"How quaintly elven." Neltharion muttered as the library came into view. The library appeared to be carved out of a still living tree, and stood out among the other buildings of Ponyville. They approached the door, and Fluttershy seemed to be getting increasingly nervous. With a soft tap on the door they waited, and after a moment the door flung open with a deafening "SURPRISE!"

O~O~O~O~O

Neltharion disliked parties. He did not like being social, he did not like being crowded, he did not like cake, and most of all he did NOT like noise.

The library was packed with ponies, likely the entire village was in attendance, and each of them would come forward occasionally to greet the newest resident of the village. After the first few he began including a very toothy false grin with his introductions, which cut most conversations short.

He met Spike, a very interesting purple dragon with green spikes and rather humanoid proportions. As expected a discussion revealed there were no Aspects here, and certainly no standardized color flights, but Twilight confirmed that the whelp hatched from a purple egg as a result of some uncontrolled magic on the unicorn's part. Neltharion wanted to launch into a discussion on magically altered dragons, but felt the timing was inappropriate. Regardless after witnessing Spike's ability to teleport objects via his flame, he felt the unicorn had inadvertently done some tampering when Spike was hatched.

Infuriatingly the noise of the party only seemed to grow as the time ticked by, and within only an hour it was driving the dragon mad. The air was getting too stuffy, the crowds were getting to crowded, and the cursed racket would not let him think. With a muttered "I need to go" he slipped out of the doorway into the night, unnoticed by all except one pony, who slipped out after him.

Fluttershy caught up with him about a block away, as he walked with deliberate pace towards her cottage. "I need to go back to my cave." He said, between deep gulps of air.

"You're having a panic attack." She said softly, landing next to him.

"I shouldn't have come here." He said, eyes showing he was still panicking. Fluttershy didn't know if he meant the party, or Ponyville in general.

"I'm sorry, I should have told you it was a party, but Pinkie said it would ruin the surprise."

"It was too crowded, and too noisy, how can anyone stand that much noise?"

"It happens to me too." She said trying to comfort the flighty dragon. "I used to hate crowded places like that, but I've slowly been building up a tolerance over time. I know what it feels like to have an anxiety attack like you are having, but no matter what it feels like, you aren't going to die. Just stop and take a deep breath, there's no one else around, its quiet now." She urged.

The dragon did so, standing in the middle of the street he closed his eyes and tried to relax. He tried to push down the instinct to run away, and the much more dangerous instinct to fight, to lash out at the ponies that dared close in on him. He focused on the silence around him, hearing Fluttershy breathing steadily nearby. He concentrated on matching her breathing pace, and eventually calmed down.

"I'm still going back to my cave." He muttered, and the pegasus nodded comfortingly.

"That's alright, just as long as you are in control, and not your panic." She said.

The two once again were walking in companionable silence, he noticed now that the sun had long since gone down, and a massive field of stars stretched out overhead. It was comforting, after dealing with the crowds of ponies to feel that much space around him. Soon enough they had reached the cottage. "I'm sorry I took you away from the party." He said, recognizing she was still with him.

"It was your party, there's not much point being there if you aren't" She said, looking down so her hair covered her face.

"I'm going to bed, it's been a long day." He grumbled, turning toward the converted cellar.

"Good night Nel." Came an almost whispered response from behind him.

Comments

[PegasusKlondike]

My face when a full raid party pursues Neltharion to Equestria.

[krtys]

Really amazing story so far, please sir can I have some more

[serra2]

581714

-Open Ticket-

" Hey Blizz, my issue is that Deathwing appears to be bugged in DS, we downed all the bosses leading up to spine, but when we start up spine, we just get an error saying we need to buy the equestria expansion to do the next part. what gives?"

[Griffin2x]

"they'll likely make raiding me a weekly occurrence" Budum Tish. Anyways great chapter.

[Cadmium]

one word:
AWESOME.
I hope updates are frequently and go on for a looooong time!

[PegasusKlondike]

582059 HAHAHA! Equestria expansion! EPIC to say the least

Achievement unlocked : To the Moon! (Defeat Nightmare Moon without using the Elements of Harmony power boost.)

Wouldn't it be cool if we could get the author to use our mains as the raiders.

[AssortedCreme]

At least he got out before a DK soloed him. Once you reach that point your badass cred is pretty much toast.

[roman117]

581714 GENIUS

[StasisLock]

*sorry about the caps*

"I AM DEATHWING! THE DESTROYER! THE END OF ALL THINGS! INEVITABLE! INDOMINABLE! I AM THE CATACLYSM!"

...and you had a teeny, tiny panic attack at a party. It's okay Nel, things (might) get better from here.

[A Wild Magikarp]

She... she just called Neltharion, the Aspect of Earth, once Deathwing, the Destroyer... Nel?!
-
This relationship developed well. Don't rush the F-word, one like... Nel (snerk), does not call another friend easily, even if it is Flutters. Pacing is key to a good story.