Bloodstone

by Drag Orion

Razing Garble

“It looks like we lost her,” commented Gorge as he turned back to check on Smoulder as they flew.

“We did?” asked Ax as they stopped flying forward and remained stationary as they flapped their wings to maintain their altitude. Looking all around them, they couldn’t see any sign of their orange pursuer anywhere in the blue sky around them. “Yeah, I don’t see her. Guess she really can’t keep up with us now. So, should we see what’s in the box?”

“It was more fun getting a rise out of her,” admitted Xena. “But might as well see what she didn’t want to show us.”

As they turned their focus on the box, Smoulder was above them, quietly looking down from a small cloud drifting overhead. Patiently, she watched and waited for her chance to strike. As they got in close to open the box, her muscles tightened as she saw her opportunity. Going into a full nosedive she dropped straight down on them as fast as gravity could take her.

“That’s mine!” she shouted down to them as she shot straight down between them and grabbed at the box. She had hoped to snatch it away, but Ax held on tightly, falling along with her and the two suddenly found themselves in the middle of a freefall tug-of-war. “Ugh! Let go!”

“Wow, you really don’t want us to see this,” he chuckled, her struggles only spurring them on to not give it up. “You can’t even give your friends a little peek?”

“No!” she snapped pulling harder as she dug her nails into the box, threatening to tear right through it. “What kind of friends would even do what you’re doing?”

“We’re just messing around, like the good ole days,” Xena told her. “No need to get your spikes bent out of shape.”

“Bent out of shape?” she shouted at them. “All you’ve been doing since you found my yearbook is bend them out of shape! Now let go of my box now!”

“Fine,” Ax conceded and released his grip, causing it to fly out of Smoulder’s claws as she kept on pulling with all her might. The box tumbled through the air till it opened up and the tumbled dress out, getting carried on the breeze as it made its way to the ground, the area below littered with pools of lava, some with dragons relaxing as they soaked their scales in the molten rock.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Smoulder chased after her new, blue dress, desperate to save it from getting dirty of melted before she even had a chance to really wear it. At their current altitude, she had more than enough time to snatch it midair, as well as all the accessories that had been carefully tucked away with it. Then, opening her wings, she did all she could to slow her decent, before she ended up a pancake on the ground below. Luckily, she was able to bring herself to a full stop a few mere feet off the ground and was able to safely drop to the ground the rest of the way from there. Breathing hard, she quickly looked over her dress, making sure it wasn’t damaged or dirty and to her relief it appeared to have weathered the incident.

“Thank the Dragon Lord, you’re safe,” she smiled and hugged her dress, feeling happy before realizing her friends had been watching, along with the dragons soaking in the lava pools.

“This is what you were so worked up about?” asked Gorge. “Uh, what is it?”

“You wanna know?” groaned Smoulder, her cheeks pink with blush as she put it on including the ribbons and the tiara to show it off. “It’s a dress, my dress. Look at me! I’m pretty and I like it!”

“You like being pretty?” questioned Xena. “Since when?”

“Since always,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t tell any of you that. You were right. I’m not the same dragon I used to be. When I first went to the School of Friendship I thought it was going to be lame, but, you know what, it was anything but that. I had a really great time. I made friends with other creatures and learned there was more to me than just being a big, strong dragon. Now I see I don’t fit in like I used to. Coming home… Coming to the Dragonlands was a mistake. I should just go.”

“But Smoulder,” Xena tried to say, but their orange-scaled friend flew off, her dress fluttering in the breeze as tears ran down her face.

“Did we take things a bit too far messing around?” asked Gorge as he and the others looked at one another, a concerned look on each of their faces.

“Don’t we always?” replied Ax. “Only, this time we did it to our friend.”

“Over a dumb dress?” he asked scratching his head.

“It wasn’t dumb to her,” replied Xena. “Or that book or her new friends. Maybe we really can’t understand Smoulder anymore.”

They all looked back towards the dress clad Smoulder going further and further away from them. As much as the three of them wanted to go after her, they had no idea what to say that wouldn’t have likely upset her even more.

“How long do you plan to keep going after me?” grumbled Garble as he looked back to see Spike flying after him.

“As long as it takes to understand you,” Spike answered. “If I ‘ruined you’ as you put it, then you can at least tell me what I did.”

“Will you stop trying to help me if I do?” he conceded and descended to the ground once more.

“I’m helping Spark,” corrected the purple dragon as he landed next to his red-scaled foe. “But to do that is entirely up to you.”

“But that is entirely up to you,” mocked Garble, making Spike glare at him. After taking a breath, he began in earnest. “Well, it all started when we first met at the dragon migration. Back then, my life rocked. I was king of the horde, the best of the best. No dragon could compare to me. My little brother even looked up to me as his hero…”. As he said that last part a smile spread over Garble’s face, but it only lasted till he remembered he wasn’t by himself and tried not to look like it meant so much to him. “Uh, which was nice too, I guess. He was always curious about everything I did too, but who can blame him for wanting to be like his big bro? Anyway, everything was going great…” After saying that, and trace of a smile vanished from his face. “And then you showed up. I doubt I need to go into detail about that.”

“You mean all that hazing you put me through?” recalled Spike, the memories of that time not as fond as he would’ve liked for meeting fellow dragons for the first time. “Yeah, we can skip that part.”

“Still, that was an epic belly flop,” he laughed. “Well, at around that point, I was actually starting to like you a little. Sure, you were a runt in over your head, but you toughed it out and I had to respect you for that.” Garble chuckled a few times, as he thought back, but his smile faded again as good memories once more turned to bad ones. “Then we went out on a hunt and that’s where all my troubles began.”

“You mean how we disturbed that phoenix nest and you tried to get me to smash Peewee’s egg?”

“Peewee?”

“That’s what I named the phoenix after it hatched and I took care of it for a while,” Spike explained. Looking at Garble, Spike let out a sigh. “Why did you tell me to smash that egg? What reason could you have possibly had to even suggest that?”

“It was a matter of pride,” he answered. “We couldn’t let those birdbrains get the better of us. If some punk hits you, then you gotta hit them back harder, where it really hurts.”

“Did your dad teach you that?” figured Spike as he saw Garble tense up from saying that.

“Well, what else was I supposed to do?” he question the small, purple dragon. “It was that or show weakness. But that didn’t even matter in the end because you and your pony pals stood up to me and got away too. To think that some runt would get the better of us like that. It was even more embarrassing the second time.”

“Forgive me if I don’t exactly feel sorry for you,” Spike spoke flatly.

“Good. I don’t want any pity from you,” the big, red dragon scoffed. “We ended up getting back to the migration grounds to find out some other dragons must have seen the whole thing and started gossiping about it. Needless to say, it reached my father’s ears and my brother’s.”

“What is the meaning of this?” fumed Crag as he approached his son.

“Dad, it-it’s nothing,” he answered, cringing against every word his father spat at him. “Everyone is just making a bigger deal out of it than it really is.”

“It doesn’t matter if it is a big deal or not,” he replied. “That it is being made into such a big deal is the real issue. Now, who is this dragon and why haven’t you put them in their place yet?”

“I don’t know,” answered Garble. “It was some small dragon I’ve never seen before. He had purple scales, green spikes and his name was, ‘Spike.’ And, for the record, I was going to, but then some ponies showed up and they managed to get away from us. They’re probably long gone by now. Heh, I doubt they’ll even want to show their face in front of me again. I bet this whole thing will probably be long forgotten in a few days.”

“Excuses are the crutch of the weak, Garble,” Crag retorted. “That was not how I raised you to be. The day when Dragon Lord Torch will select his successor will be upon us before we know it and I will not allow you to go soft of me, not now, after all that work and effort. Think about what we’ve set out to accomplish, our goal. Do you understand me?”

“You mean your goal,” thought Garble, knowing any backtalk would only infuriate his old man more than he always was. Taking a breath, he answered him. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, but to make certain,” he continued. “I’m going to make work you twice as hard till that day to ensure nothing like this will happen again. You’d best enjoy the rest of the migration because after this, you’ll be living, sleeping, and eating training.”

“Ugh,” groaned Garble liking all this less and less. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, then you’re dismissed for now,” he instructed his son and turned to walk away, leaving Garble in a worse mood than anything prior to this had caused him to be in.

“Stupid dad,” he mumbled walking away, kicking a rock as he did. “Stupid Spike, putting me through all this grief, after all I did for him.”

“Hey! Hey, bro!” called Spark as he hurried over eagerly to Garble.

“Huh?” he replied, barely paying much attention to the world around him as he brooded, but noticed his brother running over to greet him. “Oh, hey, Sparky. Are you having fun?”

“Uh huh,” he giggled. “And is it true?”

“Is what true?” wondered Garble, seeing his brother unable to keep from snickering.

“That you were chasing a phoenix dragon and it tricked you into flying headfirst into some trees?” he snickered and held his sides and laughed till smoke leaked out of his nostrils.

“What? No. We just had some trouble with a phoenix and then a some runty dragon named, ‘Spike,’” he groaned. “Ugh, glad to know that the story of what happened is already being blown way out of proportion.”

“Still, it must’ve been very funny,” he snickered.

“Yeah, a real hoot,” answered the older brother as he rolled his eyes.

“So, all that happened because of me?” asked Spike as Garble finished. “Not that I regret what I did, but you’re the one who brought it on yourself.”

“I just wrote it off as a bad day and tried to move on,” he explained. “Clump got stuck in a narrow cave entrance trying to get some gems and ended up making everyone else forget about the whole phoenix hunt. Well, everyone save for dad and Spark. If dad is nothing else, he’s a dragon of his word and the second we got home he started my training just as hard as he promised it’d be.”

“What kind of training was that?” wondered Spike.

“To start, I had to wake up before dawn and have a light breakfast before he made me haul boulders up a mountain. After that was done, I had to fly them all back down. Without taking a break after all that, I then had run laps around the entire border of the Dragonlands till noon and come home for a meal consisting of whatever my dad’s Super Protein Shake was made of. After that, I’d be swimming laps in the lava followed by pushups and sit ups till it got dark. I’d have some dinner then fly laps around the border till I was absolutely exhausted and go home to sleep till the next day and repeat it all.”

“I feel sore just thinking about doing all that,” commented Spike as he rubbed his biceps.

“Well, it was all to get me in the best shape possible for the Gauntlet of Fire,” he explained. “Everyone else was getting ready too, though nobody was working harder than me. Heh, I can only imagine what kind of lame pony training you were going through.”

“I actually didn’t even know that was a thing until the summoning came,” admitted Spike. “But I did carryaround Rarity’s luggage when she traveled. Oh, and taking seven hour bubble baths was probably good training for when I had to swim to the flamecano.”

Garble looked even more irked upon hearing this from Spike. “How did I lose to you in the Gauntlet?” he groaned.

“I wouldn’t have stood a chance if it wasn’t for Ember,” he pointed out. “We beat you as a team, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember that,” he nodded. “I also remember that stupid order you gave me that only made things a million times worse than they already were going to be for me because I lost.”

“You mean when I made you hug every dragon on your way home?” snickered Spike only to get a beastly snarl from Garble. “Uh, you were saying.”

Crag stood outside his cave, a less than pleased look on his face as he awaited his son’s return. He could already see him flying in, his body slowly growing larger as the distance between them diminished. As Garble got close enough, he could see by his father’s posture and expression that he already knew he wasn’t bringing home the Bloodstone Scepter and the title of Dragon Lord.

Desperately, the defeated dragon wanted to turn tail and fly away to avoid this encounter, but he had been ordered to return home and hug every dragon along the way. Garble couldn’t refuse the command of the Dragon Lord no matter how badly he wanted to. As he came close enough home to land, his desperation only grew as he father walked towards him with likely another lecture to give him.

“You had one job to do,” Crag spoke with great dissatisfaction in his voice. One job, to win the Gauntlet and become Dragon Lord and you-” He was suddenly speechless as Garble did as Spike had commanded and gave his father a hug. Doing so quieted him for a moment, but only made him all the more furious as a result. “Garble! What in blazes do you think you are doing?!?”

“H-H-Hugging you,” he answered, feeling his father’s body heat rise as his anger was about to boil over.

“Why?” he asked, his voice calm, but his rage was just below the surface.

“I-I can’t tell you,” he responded, the answer very obvious from that remark alone.

“Completely useless,” spat Crag as he shoved Garble to the ground and turned to walk away.

“D-Dad?” asked Garble not as relieved as he thought he’d be to have his father merely walk off like that.

“We’re done here,” he answered stopping, but not looking back. “I have no more need of you. The trial for the new Dragon Lord has been decided and you failed me. All I can do now is wait for another chance at another time.”

“So you are going to wait for the next trial?” asked Garble. “What good will it do you to wait without knowing when the next one will be? Will it be the next generation or the one after that and you’d still need to have a candidate to compete. How can you do that without me?”

“Why do you think I chose to have two children?” he asked coldly. “I wanted a spare in case the first didn’t work out. I can see now my precaution was well warranted and at least I can ensure I don’t make the same mistakes I made with you. Even more than that, this age we live in is far too peaceful. Your generation lacks the drive and ferocity like our ancestor’s possessed and it is only going to grow worse with every one to follow. Our chance is slipping away right through our claws and only I am trying to grasp at it.”

“Then maybe you should give up on it too,” suggested Garble. “If it’s so obvious that you’re the only one that even cares about such things.”

“You just don’t know what’s good for you!” he roared. “None of you do! You possess the blood of dragons that could have conquered this world together and yet time and again the chance is wasted by those who lead us holding us back. But our time will come. I’ll make certain of it no matter what it takes. But for that, I do not need any dead weight. I do not need any more of my time wasted on the likes of you.”

Is that what you think?” growled Garble holding back his own anger and sadness. “Well, fine! I’m better off without you!”

“He just ended things like that?” Spike spoke in disbelief. “I mean, I could tell he’s not a very pleasant dragon, but to do that to his own child…”

“It was a good thing for me in the end,” admitted Garble. “I was finally free of him. He didn’t care about me, just what I could do for him. Now that I was worthless in his eyes, I never had to see him ever again.”

“But you’ve gone back, anyway, to see Spark,” commented Spike. “Because you were worried what he’d do to your little brother with nobody there to protect him.”

“Well, right now, there’s not much to protect him from,” admitted Garble. “Spark is still too young to train like dad trained me. He’s waiting till he’s reached the age he’s allowed to fight.”

“You mean once he’s molted,” figured Spike.

“Yeah,” nodded Garble. “Dragons are considered old enough to take care of themselves at that point, meaning Crag can do everything he’s done to me but even worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped him into a roc’s nest at the first stone scale just as a means to toughen him up faster.”

“If he’d do that to his own child then he really is a monster!” cried Spike. “If you knew all this then how could you just leave your brother behind? If you really cared about him then you should have taken him with you!”

“Don’t you think I considered that? Dad would have just gone after us and taken him back from me,” he told Spike, a mix of anger and fear in his words. I could fight, but what good would it do? I’d just end up losing and if I tried. I could never beat him when we spared against one another and he was holding back to avoid injuring me. He wouldn’t be so merciful to me anymore, especially if I did anything to defy him. And I wouldn’t dare defy him because-”

Garble couldn’t admit anymore than he already had. His body was trembling and he was starting to cry, like all the pain and fear he had been holding within him was leaking out. Seeing all this, Spike didn’t need him to finish his sentence to understand. Instead, he attempted to move the focus to something less painful for him to talk about.

“So, you just left without even saying goodbye to your brother?” asked Spike, searching his backpack for something Garble could use to blow his nose with. He had to settle for tearing a piece of scroll off to offer it as a tissue.

“Thanks,” answered Garble as he dried his face and blew his nose, causing flames to burst out and turn the soggy parchment to ashes. After that, his voice started to return to normal. “No, I actually did see him before leaving.”

Getting up, Garble turned to leave his till then home, storming his way off. Not too far away, Spark was in the middle of practicing fire breathing. Taking in deep breaths, he then tried to exhale flames, but the best he could manage was some embers before he started coughing up smoke.

“Ugh,” he groaned after he managed to hack out all the smoke in his body so he could breathe properly. He did so just in time to hear Garble grumbling and turned toward him.

“Garble! Garble!” Spark called out as he hurried over. “How was the Gauntlet? Did you win?”

“Does it look like I won?” he sighed before giving his little brother a hug.

“Then why are you hugging me?” he asked hugging Garble back.

“I can’t say why,” he told him. “Just consider it a going away present.”

“I’m going away?” Spark replied confused.

“No. I am,” he answered. “I’m long overdue to leave and with the trial over there’s no reason for me to stick around this place. Now I can go wherever I want.”

“But you’ll come back to visit us, won’t you?” hoped Spark as he looked up at Garble with big, sad eyes. “I’m still having trouble breathing fire and I was hoping you could help me. You aren’t going to be busy all the time with training now, right?”

“If I’m around and I feel like it, I just might drop by for a bit,” he told Spark with his usual uncaring swagger. “And, yeah, my training is all done so I’m free to do whatever I want. How about I start, but giving you a hand breathing fire.”

“Okay,” nodded Spark eagerly. “What do I gotta do?”

“Well, what trouble are you having?” he asked, rubbing his chin. “Just tell me everything you do.”

“I take the biggest breath I can and then I exhale,” he explained. “But then I just start coughing up smoke. What am I doing wrong?”

“The problem is you are stoking the flames, but you aren’t letting them out right,” Garble told him as he pressed a claw gently to his chest. “You are making a rookie mistake by only exhaling from your lungs, but you need to exhale all the way down in your stomach.” As Garble explained this, he moved his claw down to Spark’s belly, getting a giggle out of him. “Okay, give it another try.”

“Here I go,” nodded Spark as he took a big breath and tried to exhale all the way in his stomach. As he did, orange flames started to pour out of maw till he ran out of air.

“That’s my lil bro,” praised Garble as he gave him a pat on the his shoulder.

“I really did it,” he panted as he tried to catch his breath.

“Well, you did it once,” Garble instructed him. “You still need to keep on training. And not just to breath it, but properly control it so you can create flames as big or small as you want.”

“What about shooting fireballs and fire shaping?” he wondered.

“Focus on the size of your flames for now,” Garble replied. “Fireballs are an advanced technique. As for fire shaping, that’s even more difficult to do. You have to be a master fire breather to make create anything, but simple shapes out of your flames.”

“Then I’ll work very hard to be able to do that,” promised Spark. “Um, and you’ll still come by to help me out?”

“As I said,” Garble reminded him. “If I feel like it.”

“Hooray!” cheered Spark as he gave his brother another hug making him feel a bit better before he asked him the one question that he didn’t want to have to answer. “So, who did win, the Gauntlet of Fire, if you didn’t?”

“It was that pipsqueak dragon, Spike,” grumbled Garble as he finished telling the story.

“I’m surprised you’d actually tell him it was me,” commented Spike.

“He’d learn about it sooner or later anyway,” he admitted. “Besides, not like I needed the scepter to do whatever I wanted with my buds. At least, till the new Dragon Lord wanted us to all get along better and to, ugh, be friends with ponies. All of a sudden, my entire world was turned upside down. Before, I was the cool dragon that everyone wanted to be like and who all the little kids looked up to. I had all the best qualities a dragon could hope for, strength, fierceness, heh, good looks.”

“That last one is debatable,” commented Spike.

“But over time the changes Ember made were turning things upside down around here. Normally, I’d suggest finding some ponies to scare and every dragon would wanna come with, but now I’m lucky to get Clump and Fume to join me if they aren’t worried that Ember might find out. Then, there’s all the younger dragons. They don’t see me as a hero anymore. After the news spread about how you won the Gauntlet of Fire and made Ember the new Dragon Lord, suddenly, everyone started to become curious about you. They’ve completely forgotten about me. Now they’re only eager in hearing stories about ‘Gross and Horrible, Spike the Naive and Superfluous.’”

“That’s Great and Honorable, Spike the Brave and Glorious,” the annoyed, purple dragon corrected him.

“Whatever,” huffed Garble. “My point is, because of all this, now I’m like an outsider in my own home while you are the hero to everyone… even to my brother. And that’s why I can’t stand your guts.”

“Even if your brother sees me as his hero now, it doesn’t mean he sees you as any less than you ever were,” replied Spike.

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Hero,” Garble rolled his eyes at him. “I wish things could just go back to the way they were before.”

“You can’t turn time back,” stated Spike. “But you can move forward and see that, even if things are different, you can still find a place to belong.”

“And where is that?” questioned Garble.

“With your brother,” answered Spike. “He really wants you to be there for him and I’m sure he’d love it even more if we could try to get along.”

“You mean we gotta do things like hold hands and, ugh, sing songs?” groaned Garble rubbing his gut. “I’m getting indigestion just thinking about it.”

“You won’t have to do any of that,” he promised. “But if you can try to keep that attitude of yours in check then we can do something I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s no doubt that you’re still big and strong, right?” asked Spike looking a bit nervous as he spoke.

“Duh,” confirmed Garble as he flexed his arm to show off the rock solid muscle housed in it. Spike discreetly flexed his own arm too and could already tell he was outmatched even more than he expected. “What’s your point?”

“That we’re going to have a duel together,” sweated Spike as he continued. “So, you can win and impress your brother.”

“You mean, you want to fight me?” chuckled Garble as he rose up and grinned. “Oh, that does sound like fun.”

“In the arena,” specified Spike. “As an official battle with armor and-”

“Weapons,” added Garble as he cracked his knuckles and looked the happiest Spike had ever seen him.

“And witnesses,” Spike also added as he was already starting to regret even suggesting this.

“Yeah,” agreed the big, red dragon as he began to look earnestly excited. He slung his arm around Spike’s head, giving him his prefered version of a hug, a headlock. “So they can all see my destroy you.”

“You mean that metaphorically, right?” Spike wheezed out the words as best as he could.

“That depends on you,” Garble told him. “I won’t hold back and you better not try to go easy on me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of pulling any punches,” Spike told him looking a darker shade of purple as air was becoming scarce in his lungs.

“Then we’ve got a match,” declared Garble as he released Spike from his grip to limber up for the upcoming fight. The small dragon gasped for breath, the proper hue returning to his scales as his lungs reinflated. “But, wait. What happens if we fight and you win?”

“I really… doubt… that I… have any… chance… of winning,” panted Spike as he answered him.

Author's Note:

Next time: The Nature of Dragons

Comments

[Sunny Starscout]

Spike is undeniable helping a terrorist unknowingly

[Matthais Unidostres]

9398727
That's ridiculous. Garble is no threat here. Ember is still Dragonlord. Spike is just helping an angry pathetic grump reconnect with his little brother. That's a good thing. At the very least it will make Garble actually like Spike, or stop hating him, same difference.