Sulphureous Attitude
Third Person
In the dim, volcanic light of the dragon lands, a small form darted between mounds of sand and gravel. Back and forth they ran, occasionally raising their head and scenting the air. Disappointed grumbles could be faintly heard every time they paused for a few seconds. Boiling water splashed as they ran through it without care, continuing in their search. Occasionally the small wings on their back would flutter as though trying to fly, however the creature only ever seemed to glide short distances.
The dim light slowly grew brighter as they approached a more volcanic area and left the geyser field behind. Entering a ravine, they scented the air once more. “Yes!” An excited whisper echoed out between the mountains, and the figure winced at the noise they had caused. For several minutes, they stayed completely still and listened for any kind of sound. When none came they quickly continued down the valley, pausing to smell the air every few seconds. Navigating between lava flows and deep pits they finally lay eyes on a small cave in the cliff wall. Drool was practically dripping from the small creature's mouth as it gazed up at the wall with longing.
Suddenly seeing movement they ducked down behind a rock. Narrowing their eyes, they spotted some strange creature they had never seen before in the cave. It was on four legs, covered in dark grey fur, and had a weird floppy tail. It didn’t look very threatening, despite the small fangs, so the small form prepared to climb up to the cave and claim what was theirs. The plan swiftly changed when two more of the creatures joined the first. Quickly slinking back behind the rock, they decided that three against one wasn’t a fair fight. Deciding on a different course of action, they backtracked down the ravine a short distance. Once the cave entrance was out of sight, they jumped onto the cliff wall and began to climb.
The small shadow slowly climber higher, careful not to dislodge any gravel with their claws. Once they were high enough to be above the entrance to the cave, they began making their way up the ravine again. Slinking around lava streams and loose stones, the process was taking far too long in their opinion. They shouldn’t be sneaking around. The strange creatures should be bowing before them! Cowering, even! Despite these thoughts, they continued quietly approaching the cave.
A head cautiously poked out over the top of the entrance once they arrived above it. Looking down, they spotted the three furry things before yanking their head back as one looked up. A silent sigh escaped them as no sounds of pursuit were heard. Grabbing a piece of gravel, a tiny claw hurled it across the ravine with a loud, echoing, clatter. “What was that?” One of the things below asked the others. Momentarily surprised by understanding them, and the fact they could speak, they shook themselves free of such thoughts. Darting over the edge of the entrance while the things below were distracted, they scurried across the roof deeper into the hollow area.
Halfway in they paused and looked down in confusion. A giant bird was sprawled out on the ground below, though that was the least unusual thing about it. Its feathers were a strange color, with pinpricks of light glowing faintly across its body. Eyes squinted in more confusion as a white ball slowly crossed the bird's body, trailing dust behind it. Shaking itself free of confusion again, it continued its journey deeper. There were more of the furry creatures laying on the giant bird, so they stayed as quiet as possible. Spotting a smaller opening at the back of the cave, they raced forward and disappeared into the darkness.
A few body lengths in, they had to suppress a squeal of excitement. Crystals dotted the walls in clusters, dark red and smelling of the most delicious meat imaginable. Positively giddy, they went deeper down the tunnel, hoping against hope there were more further in. Excitement quickly turned into amazement as the walls slowly transition into solid crystal. A quiet squeak of excitement was cut short before anyone could hear. Their eyes roamed the walls, trying to decide the best spot to begin eating.
A distant shocking roar put an end to those thoughts. They knew that sound, the sound of someone bigger who had smelled the banquet in front of them. Their happy smile turned into one of expected disappointment. Slowly spinning around, they tried to commit the sight of what they almost had to memory. A claw reached out and trailed across the glass-like walls. “Some day.” The quiet statement was followed by claws sinking into the crystal and pulling out as big of a shard as they could comfortably carry. Tucking the prize under their wings, they quickly made their way out of the tunnel. Once in the main chamber, they jumped up to grab the roof again. Right as they sunk their claws in, a much closer roar sounded out, startling them enough for the crystal to slip from their wings…..
Night Wing
Sleep was stolen by a deep roar and crystalline clatter. Eyes snapping open, I tried to stand and assess the situation. Only to be reminded of the pile of thestrals on me. With a cacophony of yelps and groans, I shoved the still-awakening thestrals off with my magic. While the roar had woken them, they were still half asleep and I had no desire to wait for them to fully wake. Silver was the first to gain her senses and joined me with the three guards at the entrance.
“What’s going on?” All three thestrals straightened their backs at Silver’s tone.
“Something big is out there, ma’am!” The thestral that answered was looking around nervously. “It sounded close, way closer than I’m comfortable with.”
‘Have you seen anything?’ Pearling into the ash and smoke outside, nothing strange met my eyes.
“No sir, nothing but ash and rock all night.” Another answered. Scanning the sky, my eyes caught strange holes in the cave ceiling. Narrowing them, I stretched my head up higher to get a better look. Tiny holes, in sets of fours, were evenly spread in a trail across the roof. Following them I caught a glimpse of a small, blue-grey tail disappearing into the magma tube at the rear of the cave.
‘Keep watching, I think we have an uninvited guest.’ Motioning for Silver to join up with me, I started for the back of the chamber. Silver motioned for a few more thestrals to join us, and I noticed Greenhorn stumbling awake by the wall. I guess even he can’t sleep through all this. Slowing down as we neared the back, my head lowered to peer down the tunnel. Seeing nothing at first, I crept closer.
“Hah!” Flinching back at the yell, I didn’t react fast enough to catch the blur that leaped from the hole. Landing on my head it jumped again, shoving my head down while it soared over the group behind me. Landing by the thestrals guarding the cave it spat out a small plume of flame, startling them into falling over. Finally stopping long enough for me to get a good look at it, my suspicions as to what it was were confirmed. A small, grayish, dragon hatchling stared mockingly at our group. “You should guard your hoard better, ya Freaks! Hahaa!” The, judging by the voice, male hatchling taunted us in a distinctly non-threatening voice. Incredulous gazes followed the dragon as it prepared to jump down into the ravine outside.
Just before he committed fully to the leap, a wall of flame blocked the ravine from view. An ear-splitting roar followed, shaking dust from the ceiling. The small dragon let out a surprised hiss and changed directions, running back toward us. With a little magic on my end, he floated off the ground mid-stride. “What the- What’s going on!” The previously brave little dragon, half the size of a pony, started panicking and struggled against the black aura surrounding him.
‘Calm down, you little maniac.’ The text seemed to elicit no response other than continued struggling. A glance at Silver got an eye roll in response.
“Calm down, we aren’t going to hurt you.” She glanced outside. “I’m pretty sure we all have a bigger problem than you, brat.”
“Where are you little runt!?” A deep male voice shook the earth. “I smell you around here somewhere. Still looking to get bigger? Come on out and let me end your suffering, this is a big dragon's world. No place for you in it!”
“You know that thing?” Silver asked the little dragon, never looking from the entrance. A long, narrow head, covered in yellow scales, leaned down into the ravine, taking up the whole exit.
“Well well, what do we have here? It’s a little far south for your kind, isn’t it?” A large red eye scanned over the group of thestrals. “And I haven’t seen one of you before.” His gaze fixed on Greenhorn. “I wonder what you taste like. A little bony, but I’m all for new foods.” The eye settled on me and the hatchling. “And aren’t you an interesting one?! So packed full of magic, you’re practically made of the stuff! Oh yes, you’ll taste wonderful. And I see you’ve already caught the runt for me!” The ‘runt’ seemed to shrink in on himself, trying to become smaller. “You should have stuck to eating frogs on the outskirts boy. Always trying to grow up and carve out a place for yourself. Where’s that gotten you now huh!? Ha!”
The head vanished from the opening with a whoosh of air. “I’ll be able to sleep for years off this meal! All I have to do is burn you out.” A dark chuckle echoed through the valley before an orange glow lit up the outside. Dropping the hatchling, I pulled everyone to the rear of the cave and threw up a black barrier at the midway point. A torrent of fire came in the next second, blocking the view of the outside world. On the other side of the transparent shield was a sea of orange and yellow.
“We’ll, we found the things you were looking for I guess!” A glare was directed at me by Silver. “Now what!?”
“Uh, guys, it’s getting kinda hot in here.” Strawberry and the other Thestrals were panting, along with Greenhorn, as far back from the barrier as they could go. The crackling of the fire died out as it receded back outside.
“Heh, easy as ev-“ The giant head ducked back into view with a grin, one that quickly turned into a frown when he noticed we were still alive. “Wait, none of you are the ones with horns. You shouldn’t be able to-“. He cut off again, eye locking on me and pupil contracting. “Ah, you.”
I stretched out a wing. ‘Yep, me. We were kinda busy dealing with your little friend here before you interrupted.’ I returned his stare evenly, not particularly worried. We could always portal out if need be. ‘Do you want to continue trying to kill us, or would you rather talk it out?’ The eye squinted at the glowing text for a moment before another chuckle was heard.
“You are a strange one.” A clawed hand reached in beside the head and poked at my barrier, not hard enough to cause me much discomfort. “Strong too. In other circumstances I would be tempted to chat with you a bit. But, I’ve recently awoken from a long nap, and I am quite famished.” The arm drew back and slammed back into the barrier, shaking the ground a bit. When it didn’t break, the dragon frowned. “Why does prey have to be so stubborn sometimes.” He mumbled to himself. He drew his arm back again and punched back toward the shield.
With a glare, I opened a hole in the barrier just big enough for the claw to pass through, then closed it on the arm, locking it in place. “Wha- Release me!” The cavern shook as he braced against the cliff and pulled. “You vile creature! Your friends shall burn for this!” Fire once more filled the space in front of me.
“Is this part of your plan!?” Our resident deer shouted over the roaring of the flames.
‘Well, I was hoping to have a peaceful introduction to the dragons…’ My grumbling was lost in the crackling of melting stone. This is why we can’t have nice things. Summoning a spike of ice, I jammed it into the arm stuck before us. Or I tried to. Once again mist formed in the shape of what I wanted, but nothing more. The air must be too dry. Thoughts of how the environment was affecting my magic were interrupted by a drop of blood sliding down the barrier. The arm had been getting pulled and yanked on this entire time and a few scales had broken off. Well, there’s my water I guess.
I didn’t need to use ice, I could have just used a portal to sever the arm. But, while I was in this environment, I might as well experiment with my magic’s limits. The arm wasn’t just sitting still, it was grasping around for anything to crush. Thus, I need to subdue the thing first. A black aura formed around it, and I grunted at the effort of trying to grasp such a large, squirming object with my telekinesis. Doubling down on my magic, the arm stopped moving as the aura around it got thicker. The flames outside turned a few shades lighter in response. With a flap of my wings I was on top of the arm, and with a little flexing of will the scales under my claws started creaking and cracking.
“Ah!” The flames stopped suddenly and the large head filled the entrance once more. “What are you doing!?” Ignoring him, I clenched my claws on the arm harder and focused. The scales started shattering and flying off, trailing a cold mist. The flesh below was rapidly turning blue and hard. “St-stop! Cease! You’ll regret this vermin!” Grunting at the blustering of the dragon thirty times my size, I continued, not even considering stopping. As the cold spread up the scales appendage I used less and less magic to hold it in place. After thirty seconds I stopped restricting it entirely. “Gaaaah! Please! I yield! I’ll leave you alone! You can keep the bloodstone and the runt!” Ignoring him, I watched in fascination as the stiffness of the arm seemed to spread further up the limb, closing in on the shoulder.
“Night!” My gaze snapped over to see Silver standing in front of several uncomfortable-looking thestrals. Greenhorn was looking away with a grimace. “Stop torturing them. There is no point!” Pleading eyes held my gaze for a few seconds before I yielded with a sigh. Dropping the barrier, the arm hit the ground and shattered.
“Ah! No! Wh-what did you do!?” The dragon reeled back, clutching at the stump that ended just below his shoulder. Shards of yellow scale and thawing meat covered the cave. Greenhorn retched behind me, but I ignored the group in favor of ending the dragon a bit quicker.
“Keeear!” A screech tore from my throat as I launched from the cave and dug my claws into the eye socket of the yellow behemoth.
“Aaah! Noo!” The dragon rolled away from the cave, swatting at his face with a large claw. Shields popped into existence and deflected every strike, causing them to tear rents in the scales around me. I enjoyed the feeling of digging my claws into the flesh of an enemy after so long, but Silver’s words drug me back to reality again. Growling, I concentrated on freezing the flesh around my claws. “I won’t die to the likes of you!” The scales around the eye socket were starting to crack, and the eye itself was already a bowling ball sized chunk of ice. He slammed his face down into the rocky ground, spraying gravel and molten rock everywhere. A shield blocked the blow as he started rolling across the ground, trying to dislodge me. With a gust of wind, his wings lifted us both up out of the ravine before slamming us back down on the ground. “No! I-I won’t…” His words and struggles began to slow down as the ice went deeper into his skull. With a final great wheeze, he collapsed on the ground, throwing crushed rock across the mountain we had stopped on.
Holding on for a few more seconds to be sure he was dead, I pulled my claws out with a grunt of effort and some shattered ice. Out of the cave, I could finally see the dragon in all its glory. Thick yellow scales covered its body, thinner ones around the joints, and red spikes trailed down its back from the top of his head to the end of his tail. His bat-like wings had a lighter yellow membrane, fading into red on the trailing edges. He was beautiful. If only it didn’t have to end this way. Turning away from the sight, I huffed and glided back down the mountain to the ravine.
“Get back here!” Looking down below the cave, I saw a group of thestrals chasing after the hatchling. I totally forgot about him. Just before I intervened one of the thestrals flew up and dropped on him, slowing him down long enough for the other to catch up and help. One of them grabbed him from behind and held his muzzle shut, just in time if the smoke that puffed out of his nose was anything to go by. Landing beside them, I shook my head at the struggling child.
“Caw!” Silver glided down from the cave and landed nearby. ‘Get him to calm down, tell him we aren’t going to hurt him.’ Leaving that to her, I flew back up to the cave. Greenhorn was still up there, watching everything from a safe distance.
‘Get back to the boat.’ A portal opened in front of him. ‘We’ll be along shortly.’ With a silent nod he walked into the portal, disappearing from sight. The portal shut with a thought, and I proceeded to the crystal tunnel before me. Hunched down, I made my way down into the earth. When the walls were completely crystalline I stopped and thought about how to go about taking the crystals. Bloodstone, he called it. While I didn’t know why the dragons desired it so much, it was probably a powerful bargaining chip. Now how do I take it?
The obvious thing to do was use a portal, but how to get it through the portal was the question. I couldn’t just shove the portal into the wall. Can I? Portal weren’t sharp normally. It would be a disaster if someone tripped and lost a leg. But maybe I could make them sharp. I opened a portal to a storage room on the boat with barely a thought. Moving it to the wall I pushed at it, but nothing happened. Concentrating for a movement I tried again. To my immense satisfaction, the portal sunk into the wall, leaving behind a perfect circle. Not wanting to punch a hole in the ship, I opened another portal to watch my first portal through. Ah, portals. Magic makes everything better. As I watched the pillar of crystal extend out of the portal I tried to guesstimate how thick the crystal was. After the pillar got around three feet long, it started to be replaced the black stone. That’s a lot of crystal. I looked around the tunnel, which I could only assume was all made of three-foot thick crystal.
Ceasing the portal's forward movement, I closed it to cut off the tube of crystal. Without a sound the crystal was cut cleanly through. The landing was not as soundless. I had forgotten the shard we found was mysteriously heavy, and that came back to bite me at that moment. With the sound of splintering wood and rushing water, the blood-red column turned and sunk halfway through the bottom of the ship.
“What the-!?” A unicorn rushed into the room to see what the commotion was.
“Chirp.” I stuck my head through the portal and winced at the damage. The unicorn just sighed before plugging the hole with a barrier.
“It’s fine, just, please try not to do it again Captain. We only have so much wood.” With a nod, I closed the portal. So, where can I put all this?
Thirty minutes later I rejoined the others outside. I had cleared out the majority of the crystal in the cave, deciding to drop it on the land I had purchased for the sister so long ago. I had never actually given it to them, always distracted with little things. I’m sure Celestia knew about it at this point anyways, it was in the land records, so it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.
It seemed the little drake had calmed down in the time I was gone, thankfully, so I went ahead and opened a portal to the boat. ‘Let’s get back to the boat everybody. Silver, tell the hatchling he can come if he wishes. I’ll give him some crystals if he does.’ With a glance back at everybody I headed through. On the top deck I watched as the thestrals filed out of the portal, Silver coming out last. After a minute, a nervous hatchling scampered through after her.
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It's scary how Night is still experimenting with his magic, imagine how powerful he will actually be, once he reaches his skill ceiling....
Please tell me the hatchling is a young torch
Yes
Will this story reach the beginning of G4 events? At this pace, it would be several hundred chapters till it could reach that point. Not that I mind that many chapters to read, just want to know the direction.
11486429
Time skips. Many time skips. Large, time skips.
For a second there I was expecting Celestia to find a large mound of crystal in the castle XD good chapter
Oops, another bout of psychotic sadism!
11486413
Guess you’ll have to wait and find out!
11486678
whoops just a bit of murderhoboing
11486816
the dragon likely would come after them for revenge later so not much off a coiche there really
11486339
I’ve heard some people say plants have emotions. Does that mean changelings can feed off plants?
11486339
I’ve heard some people say plants have emotions. Does that mean changelings can feed off plants?
P.S. IDK why it posted this comment twice.
11486404
Well, his current body was created by a godlike entity to quickly solve a major problem they had.
11487269
Well, where you’re at he’s still new to the body.
Well there he goes killing again. I'm honestly rather bemused as to how else he thought this was going to end.
11487192
I'm intrigued how you said 'current' body there, sounds to me like his body is subject to change.....
Man the dark side is powerful with Night. After collecting a bunch of crystals he can make a lightsaber with Bloodstone. it was kind of cool seeing the two Immortal birds meeting each other, a Phoenix and it's opposite,
Interesting where Night would go next. This has been a good story so far.
11487599
I just meant he used to be human.
11487497
Eh, I would say acquaintances maybe. They didn’t know each other for very long.
11487864
I assumed so, I was just being asinine I guess, sorry can't help it sometimes. 😅
11487993
No, I enjoy all the comments I get. Please, theory craft to your heart’s content.