• Published 18th Apr 2016
  • 6,008 Views, 200 Comments

The Ties That Bind - chief maximus



A newly minted ruler finds herself in need of advice, and has a radical idea. What if she tried asking her new 'friends' she met at the Gauntlet? One of them was a princess, maybe she could help her?

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Heavy Are The Horns Part 3

“She'll come to eventually," Spike said, propping Twilight’s head up off the ground with a book.

He turned to Ember. “So, how have you been liking the whole ‘Dragon Lord’ thing?” he asked, grabbing his bowl of gems.

She honestly wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. The whole reason she’d asked them down here was because of her reservations. But on the other claw, she was the Dragon Lord now. Dragon Lords were supposed to be strong, and their wills unwavering. “It’s going fine. I just had some questions to ask about this whole ‘ruler’ thing.”

Spike nodded, indulging in another gem. “So, don't take this the wrong way, but if you had questions about ruling, why didn't you just ask your dad?”

Ember paused. She knew why, but it pained her to think about it.

As she searched for words, Spike worried that he had upset her.

“I mean, I'm glad you invited us, really! I didn't mean to—”

Ember silenced him with a single claw. “It's okay. It's just that me and my dad … well, we’re just … we’re just different, okay?” That was a half truth. Granted, she was very different from her father. But their differences had never stopped her from asking him anything before.

After examining the ground for a bit, Spike focused on Ember. Empathy was something many dragons were raised without, but thanks to his upbringing, Spike was more than experienced in reading the emotions of others. Seeing the tinge of pain in Ember’s eyes filled his heart with a strange feeling. He couldn’t quite put his claw on it, but it was something akin to anger. He hated seeing her this way, and it seemed to gnaw at his very soul. Plucking up his courage, he reached out.

“Ember, I only saw your dad once. Do you think you could … uhm … tell me more about him?”

She lowered her eyes at him. What the heck was he getting at?

“He was big and yelled all the time, and I wasn’t. Why do you care?" she replied coldly.

Spike visibly recoiled at her tone. “Well … I mean, I never really had one, and I was just wondering what it was like…” he replied weakly.

His response crashed through Ember's emotional walls like a wrecking ball. Her sharp glare softened. “I…I didn't know. You never had a father?”

Spike shrugged, staring down at his uneaten gems. “Twilight's the one who hatched me, and from then on, she took care of me.” He looked up at her. “She's all I’ve ever known.”

Ember couldn't believe it. To think that a dragon would grow up, not only without a father, but without any draconic parent at all? What kind of travesty was this?

She managed to stow her outrage. Along with a familiar anger, came an unfamiliar emotion. Sadness, not for herself, but for another. This young dragon before her had never known the joys of a first mighty roar, or a truly respectable column of fire rushing between his teeth as his parents cheered him on. A sad smile tugged at the corner of Ember's lips as she began. “Well, my dad is big, but he’s always been that way since as far back as I can remember.” She rested a cheek on her palm as she continued. “When I was little, he would always tell me what a strong dragon I was going to be.” She chuckled to herself. “You know, I think he secretly always wanted a male, but instead, he got me.”

“Wow,” Spike replied. “Like, did your dad teach you how to fly? When did you get your wings? Did he teach you other dragon stuff? Like, did he—”

“Whoa, slow down, Spike,” Ember said, genuinely smiling at this point. There was a certain charm in the young dragon’s innocence. Or was it ignorance? “Yeah, pop taught me how to fly. He told me he was really good at it before he became the Dragon Lord. He still knew a few tricks, but it was mostly him trying to tell me how to fly, rather than show me.”

Spike hung on her every word. She was the embodiment of a world that had moved on without him, a world that, if not for Twilight being the first caring face he had seen after hatching, would have been no more alien to him than Ponyville was to Twilight. “So, where is he now?” Spike asked.

Ember hid a wince as she glanced down the hallway towards her bedroom. “He's … well, something’s wrong with him.”

Spike sat up. “Wrong?”

“Ever since the Gauntlet of Fire, he's been getting weaker. I mean, he hardly leaves his hoard! I try to get him to go outside, to hunt, to fly, but he won't. He just keeps going on about how proud of me he is!” The intensity of Ember's voice had grown with each word, until she was nearly shouting by the end of her sentence. Catching herself, she continued in a near-whisper: “I think it's because … because he passed the scepter.”

Spike glanced back at the still-unconscious Twilight. “You think passing the scepter is making him weak?” he asked plainly.

She set the staff on the table between them and glared at it, the Bloodstone still glowing with the dim light burning inside it. “He told me that he had been the Dragon Lord for as long as anyone could remember, and that he was the oldest dragon alive.” She looked back to him. “Normal dragons don’t live as long as he's been around, Spike. I think that’s why he didn’t want me to claim the scepter. He didn’t want me to be the reason he … he’s—”

A groan from the floor drew both their attentions away from the difficult conversation. Spike hopped off his chair and knelt beside Twilight.

“Twilight, are you okay?”

“Spike? Ember? What happened?” she asked, still a bit woozy.

“I told you about our dragon elder, and you kinda passed out,” Ember replied.

Twilight sat up, rubbing the back of her head, but otherwise seemed to come out unharmed. “I swear, that never happens.”

Ember and Spike shared a knowing glance as Spike started to giggle.

“What?’ she asked.

"Nothing! We're ready to head out when you are,” Ember said, helping her to her hooves.

Twilight smiled. “Great! Just let me grab a few notebooks!" She disappeared down the hallway. In the wake of her disappearance, the tension of the conversation she’d interrupted returned full force.

Spike glanced at Ember as she grabbed the scepter off the table. “So, when I first grabbed that thing, I felt something kinda … weird. Do you get that … feeling … when you hold it?”

“Actually, yeah, I think I do. It’s like I’m connected to every dragon on the planet, like I can feel their heartbeats or something.”

“That’s exactly what I felt, too! Weird, right?”

Before Ember could answer,Twilight returned with her saddlebags and a grin. “I’m ready to fly!”

Spike hopped on Twilight’s back, and the three ascended out of the volcano and into the open sky. The grand vistas that greeted them on their way in did not disappoint on their way out: the vast, jagged landscape stretched endlessly before them.

As they flew, Spike leaned down to speak over the rushing wind. “Twilight, I think something’s wrong with Ember’s dad.”

She turned over her shoulder to look at him. “What? What do you mean?”

“Well, while you were passed out, we had a chance to talk. I asked her how she liked being the Dragon Lord, which led to me asking about her dad.” He glanced forward, making sure Ember was far enough ahead to not hear them. “I think not being the Dragon Lord is killing him.”
Twilight held her tongue in shock. What on earth could possibly kill a dragon like Torch?

“Killing him?” she repeated.

“Yeah. Ember thinks that the power of the scepter kept him alive, and when he passed it on…”

Before they could finish their conversation, Twilight noticed Ember dropping in altitude. She followed her down into a field of grains. Though it wasn’t her first choice, it would certainly do in a pinch. Spike slid off of Twilight’s back and joined Ember on the hillside. They sat in silence as Twilight grazed, until Spike spoke up.

“I never knew the dragon lands could grow anything,” he remarked as he and Ember looked over their view of the landscape from the hillside.

“In some parts, they can,” Ember said, laying the scepter across her lap.

“Ember, have you ever left the dragon lands?” he asked.

She sighed, thin wisps of smoke curling out of her nose. “No; my dad always kept me in the fortress. I managed to sneak out a few times, but with the scepter squealing on me, he always caught me before I could make it very far.”

Spike's eyes lit up. “But you’ve got the scepter now, so you can go anywhere, right?”

Ember scratched her head. “Yeah, I guess I could.”

“Like, even to Ponyville? You could come visit us!”

“Pfft, why would I ever want to go to a place like that? All those ponies being all lovey-dovey with each other all over the place? No thanks.”
Spike’s hopeful joy melted off his face.

Before Spike and Twilight’s arrival, Ember had tried to coach herself on empathy, and even at her novice level, she knew she’d maybe said the wrong thing. “I-I mean, you guys live there, so that's like, the only reason I'd go, you know?”

Spike’s smile returned.

Phew! I really need to work on this ‘empathy’ thing if I ever decide to go there. I'd probably make every pony in town cry in two days if I wasn't careful! Ember thought to herself.

“There’s other places besides Ponyville that you could go to,” he suggested. “There's the beach, the forests, and lakes, all kinds of fun stuff that isn’t quite as rocky, hot, or, you know … lifeless?”

“Well, I've heard of forests and lakes, but what’s a beach?”

Spike’s eyes widened. “You've never heard of the beach? Like, where water meets land?”

Ember cocked her head. “Like on a lake? You mean shore?”

Spike shook his head. “No, at a beach, the water is much bigger! Like, you can't even see where it ends; it just goes on past the horizon!"

Ember’s eyes matched Spike’s. “No way… Is that… that’s a real thing?”

“Yeah! It’s called the ocean,” Spike replied, ecstatic that he was able to interest his newest friend in something from his world.

“Can we go there?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Heck yeah, we can! We can swim, build stuff out of sand… the beach is awesome!”

“You guys ready to go?” Twilight said, some bits of grain still clinging to her cheeks.

Ember smiled, standing up as Spike did the same. “Yeah, let’s get back in the sky.”

They took off toward another mountain along the range. Since gaining her wings, Twilight had become much more graceful in the skies. She matched Ember’s speed and mirrored her smooth slaloms through the air. In no time, she found herself following Ember’s descent into a mountainside cave. They flared their wings, kicking up a small cloud of dust as they touched down at the entrance. Spike slid down one of Twilight’s wings as Ember turned to them.

"I'm so excited! A lesson in dragon history from an actual dragon!" Twilight sang.

"Yeah, well, she hasn't actually seen a pony in a long time... or possibly ever before, so let me introduce you so that you don't get eaten."

Twilight and Spike gulped. "Eaten?" she repeated nervously.

Ember waved a claw. “Don't worry! As long as I vouch for you, you’ll be fine!” She turned and began heading into the cave, the glowing light from the scepter increasing as they ventured further into the darkness.

"So, uhm... what is this dragon historian's name?" Twilight asked, still not quite assured that she wouldn't become a dragon snack.

"Balgok Oth, Devourer of Souls," Ember replied flippantly. "But I just call her Gam-gam."

This did nothing to allay Twilight's fears as they continued deeper into the cave.

"Gam-gam!" Ember called into the darkness. "Gam-gam, are you home?" she yelled, her words echoing endlessly off the walls as the hallway ended in a much larger, open room. Ancient runes and inscriptions covered nearly every inch of the cave walls.

After her echoes subsided, the sound of falling coins and shifting gems grew louder, until a dragon's head nearly as big as Torch's rose out of the darkness. This dragoness bore horns rising up from her head, instead of down like Ember's. Her off-white scales reflected the scepter's dim light as she focused her razor-thin pupils on her visitors.

It took the massive dragon a moment as it drew closer, smelling the air around the visitors in great huffs that threatened to sweep Spike off his feet.

"Remember me, Gam-gam?" Ember asked, holding the scepter close to her face to allow a better look. The elder dragon examined her for a moment.

"Ah, yes! Ember, my youngling,...the last time I saw you, you were but a hatchling, just learning her first words," she said, the low rumble of her voice shaking pebbles and dust off the roof of the cave. "And what's this? You wield the Bloodstone Scepter? Has your generation already come of age?" She spoke slowly, choosing every word carefully. It seemed as if too many words in rapid succession would bring her home falling down around her.

"It has. My dad called for a Gauntlet of Fire a few months ago, and I came out on top!" she boasted proudly.

"Ahem," Spike interrupted, arms folded.

"Er, I mean I came out on top with some help from my friends."

The elder dragon seemed intrigued. "Friends? Who are these 'friends' that aided you in the Gauntlet of Fire?"

Ember motioned to those beside her. "The small dragon is named Spike, and the pony is named Twilight Sparkle. Without their help, I wouldn't be here."

The laughs of the elder dragon threatened to collapse the cave. "And here I thought you'd brought me a snack!" She turned to Spike. "And you, are you Ember's hatchling?"

Spike's cheeks flushed a furious red. "No! I'm the guy who helped Ember get the Bloodstone Scepter!"

Ember seemed just as embarrassed as Spike. "Gam-gam, Spike's of my generation. He just..." she paused. Dragons were creatures that lived for a long time. Most of the elders were rooted in the draconic traditions of their ancestors. Ember decided that to tell of Spike's true upbringing might not be the wisest course of action. "He hatched late. That's why he's so much smaller than me."

"Ah," Balgok replied. "Tell me then, youngling: to what line do you belong?"

"Uh... I'm, uh..." He looked to Ember, but found no answer. Before either of the two dragons could come up with one, Twilight answered for them.

"I hatched him when I was a filly! Princess Celestia gave me his egg to hatch as an entrance exam to her school for gifted unicorns. I did, and I've been raising him ever since!" she completed happily, totally oblivious to Ember behind her, who had had just applied her palm to her face.

"Hmm... so you were the price we paid..." Balgok murmured, staring at them intently, getting only inches away from Twilight. All it would take was one quick bite, and Twilight would be a snack before she could even think of protecting herself. The teeth bared before her were nearly the size and length of trees.

"Gam-gam, please don't eat my friends!" Ember pled.

The large dragon turned her head to her. "Fear not, my youngling; no harm will come to either of them." She raised her head and blew a stream of fire against the wall, the flames catching and racing across a ledge that circled the room. Soon, there was enough light to see the front half of a huge dragon, the other half buried under mountains of gold and jewels. She was easily Torch's size, if not possibly a bit smaller.

"Now, tell me, what brings you here?"

Author's Note:

Grammatical editing by the illustrious son_of_heaven176.