The Dragonriders of Equestria

by Dawn-Designs-Art

Hospitals and Conversations

The forest seemed unending as the strange group ran, galloped, flew and floated towards what the ponies had called a 'hospital'. If not for her worry for T'fern, Sierra would be questioning the pair non-stop about what they were, how they could fly, why they were so oddly coloured, how did they build a town with what appeared to be hooves, what else could Twilight Sparkle do with that magic glowing horn of hers, why did only Twilight have a horn, were there any other types of pony other than pegasus and alicorn, but it appeared that the blue and rainbow one, Rainbow Dash, had no such inhibitions.

"So you and your dragon talk telepathically, and that's why you had that far away look on your face before? That's so cool! Okay, now, what's with the clothes?" the pegasus asked, flying beside Sierra.

"When we go Between on our dragons, there's immediate, bone freezing cold, the thicker your clothes the better... Hey, I thought you said you couldn't fly here?"

"Eh, as long as I'm below the trees it's fine, see?" She proceeded to do a loop. "Anyways, I meant why wear clothes when not doing that? We only wear clothes for special occasions, though the snooty, stuck up, high class of Canterlot wear clothes a lot more, you aren't stuck up and high class from where you're from are you?... Also what's Between?"

"Rainbow," Twilight spoke up, "now is not the time to play twenty questions, that will come later, after we know her friend will be okay. Now do you remember what I told about the Mirror World? The humans there have a strict nudity taboo, and I believe that to be a common human trait now."

"Thank you Twilight, but I don't mind answering some questions, it's taking my mind off things honestly... Now, there isn't quite as much of a taboo on nudity for dragon folk as there is for Hold and Hall dwellers, but we still wear clothes the majority of the time." Sierra hadn't even been thinking about why the ponies weren't wearing any clothes, but then decided that they mustn't need them, seeing as they were covered in fur and all.

"Right, okay... You know, Rarity's gonna love you two, creatures that always wear clothes, that's so many outfits for her to make."

"I'll definitely need some new clothes soon, all I have with me is what I needed for the Fall..."

"The Fall? What's..."

"We're almost there now" Twilight said, interrupting the pegasus, and sure enough, they'd finally reached the edge of the forest. "It's just over there," she said, pointing a hoof at a large building. Sierra shuddered instinctively at the sight of it, all that wood would be devoured in no time by Thread.

"What's wrong?" Rainbow asked, seeing the look of worry on Sierra's face.

"Well..." Sierra sighed as they continued, now walking. "Where I'm from, there is a thing we call Thread, it falls from the sky, the Fall, and it devours everything organic in sight once it reaches the ground, so we live mostly in caves, and if we have to build buildings, it's out of stone, so seeing a wooden structure just kind of freaks me out."

"That sounds super dangerous, but the name isn't very scary," Rainbow said.

"It's named for how it looks, silvery threads drifting down to the ground, anyway, the whole reason Dragonriders like T'fern even ride dragons is to burn the Thread in the air before it can reach the ground. At first I'd thought that this place must be the Southern Continent, and somehow a forest had survived despite the devastation of Thread, but there's no way this is the same world..."

"Wow... wait, what about you and..." Rainbow scrunched up her face for a moment.

"Melrith," Sierra supplied, finding the expression rather cute.

"Yeah, what about you and Melrith, why'd you just say Dragonriders like T'fern?"

"Melrith is a Queen dragon, golds and greens are the only females, but greens mate much more frequently than golds, we'd be over run by dragons in no time if they were always clutching, so they chew firestone to render them infertile, so only the golden Queens can lay eggs, and since they can't chew the firestone to breathe fire, their riders, like me, use flamethrowers like this one to burn any Thread that makes it past the rest of the riders." Sierra gestured to the flamethrower strapped to her back. She got the feeling that Twilight was bursting to ask her own questions, but was just being polite.

Soon enough though, they reached the hospital. Inside, Sierra was met with stares of shock and fear, until the ponies in the room saw who she'd come with, after which they calmed down. Looking at the ponies, Sierra could see two more pegasi like Rainbow, one whose wing was bandaged, and what she had at first thought to be two more alicorns like Twilight, until she realised that they didn't have wings, just horns. She also saw three ponies with neither horns nor wings. One of the horned ones, white with dark blue mane and tail, who wore a white coat and a weird metal disk on his head, walked up to the group, giving Sierra and the floating T'fern a weird look.

"Princess Twilight Sparkle, to what do we owe this visit?" the pony asked, definitely male from the voice.

"Doctor Spell, he needs urgent medical care, I had to use a stasis spell to prevent him from worsening," Twilight said, floating T'fern over to the doctor, which Sierra assumed meant Healer here, for examination.

"Okay, I agree he's in a bad way, but I don't rightly know why you brought him here, I'm trained to heal ponies, not to heal exotic... pets... I can tell you where a good vet is if you want?" He gulped, now noticing Sierra's scowl.

"T'fern is no pet! He is one of the finest Dragonriders in our Weyr and he deserves nothing but the best healing on offer!" Sierra snapped, catching the doctor off guard by her ability to speak.

"Oh, umm... I'm so so very sorry miss, and Princess, I had no idea these were foreign dignitaries!" The doctors responded, sweating in his nervousness at having insulted these creatures.

"They are in deed foreign, but please, T'fern really does need urgent care, Sierra is stressed out enough as it is, so if we could move to an examination room right now, that would be most appreciated, Doctor Spell." Twilight schooled her expression, not wanting to show her annoyance at the Doctor.

"Yes, yes! Of course, this way please, Princess, Sierra, and Rainbow Dash," Doctor Spell said, gesturing for them to follow.

"Uh, I think I'll wait outside, hospitals really aren't for me," and with that, the pegasus zipped out the door.

Twilight and Sierra followed doctor down a hallway, and into a room which contained many objects, the functions of which Sierra did not know. She felt unnerved by the total lack of Glowbaskets for lighting, finding the light from the strange hanging bowl things to be harsher than she was used to. She zoned out of the conversation, unable to to focus on the complicated foreign words they used while they talked over T'fern, who now lay on a strange looking bed which was too short for him, his legs mostly hanging off the end. She just examined the pictures on the walls and objects on the bench, trying to make sense of what all the pictures meant, and wondered how the Harper who made them could manage such detailed pictures and such fine script with brush.

"If he were a pony I'd be giving him a blood transfusion, but pony blood would harm him since he isn't a pony, as would her blood if it weren't the same type." Doctor Spell thought for a moment, then waved to get Sierra's attention. "What's your blood type? And do you know what his blood type is? If you have the same type we can use some of your blood to top up his."

"Err... No?" Sierra wasn't sure what he meant by types, but she did know that mixing the blood of one rider with another when patching them up after a Fall usually lead to the rider getting very sick. For some reason dragons never had this problem, and just as well, it'd be near impossible to clean all the ichor off before going to help the next dragon.

"Hmm, well I can know in a minute or two, a simple matter of casting a spell," he said as his horn lit up in a brilliant dark blue. First he placed his horn to T'ferns arm, holding it there for half a minute. He then moved to Sierra, and she felt a tingling up and down her arm as he held his horn to her wrist. He completed the spell with a frown, "their blood types are close, but not a match... I'll get Nurse Gold Heart to use a replication spell to temporarily replicate his blood until his body can replenish itself naturally. Now, if you ladies could please wait out in the waiting room, I'll get to healing that nasty wound of his."

Twilight nodded and headed to the door, "come on Sierra, let's leave him to his work." Sierra hesitated a moment, not wanting to leave T'fern in the hands, or rather hooves, of a stranger, but she ended up following.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So you guys talk to your riders telepathically, and you only let others hear you if you choose for them too?" Spike asked as he lead the huge gold and bronze dragons through the Everfree forest.

Correct, though occasionally a girl is born who can hear all dragons, whether we wish her to or not. Someone with that ability is always important to the Weyr Melrith replied. She was rather enjoying talking to this strange dragon who spoke vocally, rather than mentally, like her rider and other humans did.

Spike smiled, he was enjoying talking to dragons who were more like him, at least in temperament and attitude. The other dragons he knew were fine, but they were rough and tough, prone to crudeness, and most had violent tendencies, especially Garble, who'd never even attempted to get along with Spike or any ponies. The majority still weren't fully on board with being friends with ponies, despite all he and Ember had done to prove the benefits of pony-dragon relationships. He couldn't wait to tell Ember about these new dragons, she'd want to come and meet them, meaning he'd get to see her again sooner than they'd planned. He then pushed the thoughts from his head, turning his attention back to Melrith and Varoth. For the first time since leaving the clearing, he noticed that their eyes had changed colour again from the red to orange from before to an aqua blue colour for Melrith, and a grey tinged blue for Varoth. "Umm, if you don't mind me asking, what's with your eyes? I mean, why do they change colour?"

Our eyes show our emotions, changing colour to show how we feel. Red shows anger, hunger, or the passion of a mating flight, orange is suspicion, uncertainty, or panic. Yellow is fear, worry, or concern, while green is contentment, tranquillity, happiness, and blue is curiosity, mischievousness or excitement. Purple shows stress, and grey is great saddness, or pain. Varoth is curious about you, but his wing is beginning to give him pain again, hence the blue grey.

"Oh cool, that's so awesome, well, apart from the pain part... What happened to him anyway?" Spike asked, curious about the giant bronze's tattered wing.

I fought against our ancient foe, the Thread, and lost... Sometimes it is hard to judge how the Thread will fall at you, today it clumped suddenly, and that is the hardest to evade. The dragons voice in Spikes head was deep and rich, a powerful pleasant voice, though it was clearly tinged with pain.

"Oh... So what is Thread? It must be really dangerous if it can do that to your wing."

It looks harmless at first, came Melrith's softer voice, sounding rather like her rider Sierra. Silver ribbons floating gracefully down to Pern from the Red Star, but it devours anything living that it touches. Only fire, winter's cold and rain can destroy it before it does harm.

"Okay, yeah, that's not something I'd want to face." By now, they'd reached the edge of the Everfree, and now Spike needed to focus on getting them safely to the castle without having the townsponies freaking out over the sudden appearance of two huge dragons. Luckily, the castle was on the outskirts of Ponyville, so they could just skirt around the edge, rather than go through the town.

I've never seen so many buildings before, and none built like this Melirth said, curiosity clear in her voice and blue eyes. Are all those living here ponies?

"Well, not quite, we also have donkeys, cows and Zecora, who is a zebra." The dragons didn't seem to know what those were, but for right now, that didn't matter, somepony had noticed them.

"Spike! Why didn't you tell me you were having friends over from the Dragon Lands?" shouted the pink pony bouncing towards them.

"I, err, sorry Pinkie, I, umm, didn't know they were coming till they were here..."

Pinkie gasped, "a surprise visit? You're so lucky Spike!" She then turned to the dragons and waved. "Hey there, I'm Pinkie Pie, one of Spikes pony friends, nice to meet you!"

Hello Pinkie Pie, I am Melrith the gold said.

And I am Varoth

"Wowza! Weird names, but you guys can speak with your minds?! Spike, you didn't tell me dragons could do that!" she said said, shooting Spike an accusatory glance.

"Because they can't, or, we can't, these guys aren't from the Dragon Lands, they aren't even from this world..." Before Spike could say anything else, Pinkie gasped again.

"Alien dragons?"

"Kind of, I guess? Look Pinkie, I need to get them to the castle, Varoth's wing is causing him pain and we need to figure out something to help heal it in case Twilight doesn't know any healing spells that might help."

"Oh, do you want me to get Fluttershy? She's great with broken bird wings," Pinkie said, wanting to help.

"Err, I'm not sure that'd be a good idea, given how she panics around new dragons," Spike pointed out.

"Oh, right, well how about Zecora then? She knows all kinds of potions and stuff, and doesn't freak out easily," Pinkie suggested.

"Actually, yeah, she'd probably be more helpful than any pony doctors, if you could go get her, that'd be great Pinkie," he said. Pinkie then saluted and ran off towards the Everfree without another word. Blinking, Spike shrugged, then continued leading the metallic dragons to the castle without further incident.

Comments

[Da Fennec]

Interesting so far though the first chapter seems to be basically what every reader sees opening one of the pern books

[Kenshinryuu]

Very nice, I almost feel sorry for the first thing to attack Ponyville after the dragons have settled down and decide to protect it.

[Crescent Glaive]

Hmm... Now i wonder...

If Garble were to meet Melrith, Sierra and Varoth, i think Garble would get his ass kicked if he were to be even remotely like when he wanted Spike to smash the phoenix egg🤔

[Night_Moon60606]

8658973
Queen Dragons never r far from their clutch, and they have the rest of the Wyer to aid in that defense. its not perfect though mind, Rammoth has had her clutch raided once, and shes the biggest of all the Queens ever hatched on Pern, even if her Rider, Lessa, is one of the smallest ever...but dont tell her that, Lessa has a wicked temper on her and she remembers those who insult her even more sharply than she remembers her friends...

[oodisi]

so one month till clutch time where o where shall they be building the hatching grounds the mountain from the previously mentioned friend report maybe or will they go native but speculation aside I'm a happy reader may you write in peace