Steel.

by Petrichord

Fade into view

The crowd had begun to disperse, but not fast enough for Ember’s liking. The larger dragons, jaded from centuries of successions, took flight to their own business. But the teeming mass of adolescents and youth stayed, cheering her presence, revelling in the cutting edge of her sword and words alike.

It would have been nicer if they could have revelled somewhere else.

Pointedly, Ember reached down and hefted up the sword’s hilt again. It carved a shallow furrow into the ground as she walked, and Ember tried not to imagine it forming a makeshift gutter for blood. It wasn’t easy to forget what she had specifically done only a minute ago, and trying to push out even the concrete images - the blood, the head, the weight of the sword, the sound of shattering bone - felt utterly insurmountable. The images lingered in a visceral cocktail of justice and disgust, and Ember realized the only way to dismiss the thoughts was to supplant them with work.

For the first time in her life, Ember was profoundly thankful that she had plenty of work to do.

“Bookworm.” Ember said, tilting her head slightly towards a teenaged dragon waiting at the mouth of the cave. Clutching a grimy notepad and a blunt pencil - one of the luckier bits of post-warfare salvage they had recovered, Ember decided - the dragon tossed his head in a vain attempt to sweep his fringe from his eyes.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” He replied. There was something...different...about his voice, though Ember couldn’t place what it was. Maybe she had simply forgotten how reedy it was, back when his name was Fume and she was only her father’s impudent hatchling. She hadn’t bothered to pay attention to his voice’s timbre all that well when she changed his name: all she cared about was the quality of his work as her assistant, and he had certainly assisted her well enough.

It didn’t matter. She’d ponder that mystery after her work was done. With a jerk, she tossed her sword to the ground at Bookworm’s feet. “Take this to my hoard. Call a guard if you can’t lift it by yourself, but don’t let it drag on the ground.”

Bookworm looked at the sword, then looked at a guard who had detached himself from the riotous mob and was trudging back towards his post. The two of them made eye contact, and the guard nodded his head - but not before giving Bookworm a contemptuous stare and self-satisfied grin. “Of course, your majesty.” Bookworm replied, and Ember dearly wished that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“But before you do that, give me today’s itinerary. In full. I can’t afford to be indolent for even a second today. You understand, of course.”

“Of course.” Bookworm cleared his throat. “10:00 AM: Meeting with the Elders about our recent reclamation of rockland in the eastern quarter, in the Elder’s Caverns.”

Ember frowned and rubbed her eyes with one hand. “This again? We’re going to need the space for mining and gem production. Tell the Elders that if they’re so keen on wasting my time over expansion issues, they should probably go fly off to some other continent and grab all the sleeping space they want somewhere else.”

Bookworm smirked. “I’m sure they won’t find that insolent at all, Your Majesty. I’ll do my best to remember those words while they’re toasting me to cinders.”

“Good one.” Ember returned his smirk with a toothy grin. “One point.”

“Thank you, your Majesty.” Bookworm flipped to the back of his notebook and jotted down another tick mark, before tossing his head again and flipping the notebook back to the beginning. “11:00 AM: Meeting with His Former Majesty Torch about your cultivation research, in his personal quarters.”

An uncomfortable chill ran up Ember’s ribcage, and for a second Ember fought to regain control of her lungs. “That’s...understood. Message received. Anything else?”

“1:00 PM: Proposal from Lord Reginald about-”

“Dismiss him with prejudice. I’m not sending troops to help him raid a potential ally just to soothe his precious ego, and I’m way past the point of caring about his stupid hoard any more.” Ember rolled her eyes and snorted, puffs of smoke drifting out of her nostrils and dissipating into the air. “I don’t even care if he tries to attack me at this point. I don’t care how big he is, I’ll still claw out one of his eyes if I have to.”

“...Noted.” Bookworm’s arm jerked stiffly as he scribbled down Ember’s response, as if he was gripping the pencil tighter than was necessary. “One drake still out of commission from an arm injury. You said that you wanted to be updated on medical reports, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll pay Clump a visit. Least i could do.” Ember sighed in relief. Playing the “good guy” was dozens of times more pleasurable than actually administering anything. Of course, relaxing in her cave was dozens of times more pleasurable than administering anything, which was probably the reason why the dragon kingdom hadn’t gotten anywhere in the past few centuries. Luckily for her, she only had to burden herself with the fate of her subjects until she died. And if she was very, very lucky, that meant that she only had to burden herself for a few hundred years.

Bookworm cleared his throat. “One last thing. The diplomat from Ponyville arrived this morning.”

Silence.

A breeze kicked up two pebbles, which bounced on the ground as they rolled towards the cave.

Bookworm’s tail twitched. “Your Majesty?”

“When did he arrive?” Ember snarled.

“A-about ten minutes before the execution, Your Majesty.”

“Where. Is. He.”

Bookworm gulped. “Behind you.”

Ember spun around. Spike stood there, arms hanging limp at his sides and expression unreadable on his waist-height head. A flash of red caught Ember’s eye, and she tilted her gaze just enough to see the scarlet footprints left in Spike’s wake, and the errant splash of color that had washed up on his left ankle like seawater from the rising tide.

Comments

[The Great Derpsby]

Spike calling Ember out?

Oh, this is going to be interesting!

[Vaalintine]

8466048
I don't know about callong her out, Garble DID just try and commit regicide. That's usually a big freaking deal.

[The Great Derpsby]

8467191
It is, but so is the death penalty, and it was a gruesome one at that.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Ohhh dear. This could go very, very bad indeed.

Looking forward to it.

[Bennet001]

So... is no one gonna talk about how Spike was implied to have been next to Ember the whole time? He was splashed with blood so he must have been there since the beginning and no shout or gasp he was as quite as a church mouse. Spike.exe has stopped working and I doubt a soft reset is gonna do anything about that.

[DarkDMan]

This should be interesting. Please continue.