My Little Kirin: The Lost Tribes

by Soothing Stone

Royal Summit

As much as Twilight and Spike wanted to stay close to Kunzite, it was proving to be a problem with the town they chose to stay in. Las Pegasus was the closest city to the village, true, but they stood out like a sore thumb among the crowds. Everypony in town swore they were here for some kind of residency tour, and they got asked all the time when and where the next show was going down. There was no show here, just concerned parents looking out for their daughter.

It only got worse when they had another unit of guards come in for protection. Every letter Kunzite sent was worse than the last one, and they needed to be prepared for the worst possible outcome at this point. Yet, their arrival only convinced more ponies that they were doing a show. And then they got a letter from Ember and Fizzle to meet someplace else to discuss what was happening. Yeah, it was time to leave. The sooner the better.

Thankfully, there was a mountain range less than an hour away from Las Pegasus. In fact, it was a little closer to the village than the town. It would be perfect for a little get together, to pass the time while they were worried sick for their kids. There were worse things to do than meet up, while you hope to Celestia and Luna that the next letter was better than the last.

The area was prepared in advance. Twilight and Spike helped the guards have the base of the mountain ready when the dragon royalty came over. After an half hour of work, a few tents were set up here and there, all bearing flags with Twilight’s symbol or Spike’s. A table was set up in the middle, with the custom mix of pony food and gems set into place. Spike had to stop himself from snatching a few of them for himself, but he resisted the temptation for now. All that was left to do was wait.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t write to Kunzite again, just to make sure it’s not so bad as she made it seem?” Twilight asked worriedly.

“I’m thinking about it,” Spike admitted. “She’s got a lot of friends to help her out, but it doesn’t sound good. I just don’t want to destroy her confidence.” He had no idea how bad things had gotten just yet, as it was late that afternoon. Kunzite didn’t spill the beans on the identity of the current Dragon Lord just yet.

“That might be what we’re going for, but if it gets any worse, I say we go in there and take a look anyway. Just say hello and make sure it’s fine. It doesn’t sound too bad.” Even then, she was halfway certain it would do the opposite of what she hoped for.

Right after they got settled, they saw two figures swoop in from the horizon. They’d recognize the blue and white dragons anywhere, and they rose up from their chairs to greet them. The Dragon Lord might not have cared that much about manners, but that wouldn’t stop them from doing so anyway.

“Hi, guys!” Twilight greeted them. “Long time no see!”

“It’s only been a month, you dorks,” Ember noted. She and Fizzle did their superhero landing impressions on the ground, cracking the floor a bit. Then she caught a look at the spread they made for the dragons. “Oooh, are those emeralds? I haven’t had any in a while.”

“It’s nice to see you again. How were Kunzite and Moonstone, the last time you checked?” Fizzle greeted them. “Moonstone’s last letter wasn’t...a happy one.”

While they took their seats around the table, Spike sighed and rubbed his forehead. “So you got the bad news, huh. I don’t know about you guys, but I wasn’t expecting it to be all sunshine and rainbows. Still makes me sick to hear what happened.”

“Grrr, wish I could teach them a lesson with my bare hands,” Ember grumbled. “Nobody makes fun of my son like that and gets away with it!” Fizzled placed a hand on her shoulder to make her feel better. It barely worked.

“We’re all on edge at this point,” Twilight continued. “It’s why I brought Wildfire over with us. Where is he, anyway?”

It turned out to be perfect timing, as the kirin was just waltzing into the campground at that time. He had a jar full of flowers in his hands. “Errr...this was a bad time to go picking flowers, wasn’t it?” he asked, noting the meeting taking place before him.

“Actually, we just got started. Take a seat.” Twilight patted an open chair between her and Ember, and the group was relieved to have someone like him on board. Nothing like a little wisdom and experience to round out the meeting.

“Very well, excuse the flowers.” He placed the jar down in the middle of the table. With the wide range of flowers and colors he accumulated, it actually worked with the imagery. Rarity would be proud of the color choice in particular, if she was here. “I presume this is about the case of Kunzite and Moonstone?”

“Yep, that’s pretty much it,” Fizzle agreed. “Here’s my thing. Moonstone’s going through a really hard time right now, and the only thing that would make it worth it is if this was his special destiny, or whatever you call it. How do we know if this is actually it?”

Wildfire thought about it for a moment, and he glanced over to Twilight. “Twilight, your species have cutie marks when you figure out what your special talent is. Tell me, when you got yours, did you foresee that it was going to happen?”

Twilight shook her head. “It just came to me when it needed to. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have found my future husband.” She clasped a hand around Spike’s, and he returned the favor with some good old fashioned nuzzling.

“Exactly. I know Kunzite went to the village because she thought this could be it, but you can’t force yourself into situations just to make it happen. You just do the right thing at times. For instance, when I faced down Torch, I--”

“OH HO HO, I KNOW THAT FACE ANYWHERE. IF IT ISN’T THAT guy THAT STARED ME DOWN A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. HEH, YOU’RE STILL JUST AS PATHETICALLY TINY AS YOU WERE BACK THEN!”

The voice made Wildfire gulp, and he was afraid for the first time in a long time. “Is that...him?”

Ember sighed and planted a hand on the side of her face. “It is. He wanted to tag along and stretch his wings. I’m sorry for anything he’s about to say.”

Sure enough, the former Dragon Lord was hovering above the mountaintops, his frame just as large and encompassing as it ever was. In the years since Torch stepped down from his spot, he gained a few scars here and there, one series of claw marks just barely missing his eye. The amount of wind made by his wings nearly threatened to blow away the entire camp. The tents nearly came off from their posts, for example.

“Huh, you’re still really tiny, but I couldn’t crush you with my pinkie anymore,” he noted about Spike. “Still, you were Dragon Lord for five minutes? And you’re…” He noticed the banners all around the tents. “...an Equestrian Prince? Bwa ha ha ha! At least you’ve grown up since you were summoned.”

“Nice to see you too, Torch,” Spike muttered. He didn’t enjoy his visits with the big guy much, if at all, but he mellowed out in the years since then, thank goodness. At least he was taking it easier than Fizzle, who came this close to hiding below the table.

“So we meet again,” Wildfire stated calmly. He forced his mind to quiet down as he met the dragon face to face. “Tell me, did you come to roast us, figuratively or literally, or did you come here to show off again? We all know what happened the first time you tried to ‘roast’ me.”

Torch stared him down for a second, and even in his old age, he could still be terrifying. However, he just smirked and carried on. “Why would I need to do that? I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. No title, no glory, nothing to worry about. My daughter has done a great job leading the Dragons, and you better listen to her. OR ELSE!”

“Daaaaad! I said we weren’t going to do that anymore!” Ember complained.

“It was just a joke. Maybe I went a little too far.” He noted that one tent was almost on its side from the impact of his voice. Still, he was curious about Wildfire. “No hard feelings between us?”

“None at all.” Wildfire didn’t dare say the first thing on his mind, that if they fought again, he’d win a second time.

“Very well. I have no further business with you. Ignore me, I’ll be showing off at the peaks!” Torch spread out his massive wings and flew up to the sky. It didn’t take long for him to get there, so the tents wouldn’t be blowing around in the wind again. Twilight still held the plates and cups down, just in case.

Fizzle finally had the courage to come back out from underneath the table, and his breathing was shaky and erratic. “That guy still scares me. I don’t care if I’m strong enough to fight him, I don’t want to.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Ember said. “You gotta admit, he’s not as bad as he used to be when you fought him, Wildfire. Right?”

“Oh, you have no idea. The fact that he was even willing to crack a joke says the world about him,” Wildfire agreed. “Just be grateful that he was able to change at all. Which...does bring me to you two…” He turned his gaze to Twilight and Spike. “It sounds like there’s still some hard feelings over his past actions, judging from what your daughter’s been telling us about this village.”

“You weren’t the only ones to be upset over it,” Spike said to Ember. “I hate that they’re treating Moonstone like that. It’s really hard to avoid going down there and showing them how things are like now.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Ember shouted. “Look, Torch wasn’t the best Dragon Lord. We all know that. But you’ve seen how things changed since I took over. We do hugs now!” She hugged Fizzle to prove her point. Fizzle gasped for air from how tight it was, but he was more than happy to hug his mate back.

“Still, if it turns out that this is part of their special destinies, we’re probably not supposed to be part of it,” Twilight countered.

“And if it’s not?” Wildfire butted in. “There’s always a chance of that happening.”

“Then we do the very thing we’ve been preparing for all this time,” Spike responded. “We take all of these guards and confront the village over their action. We’re not leaving anything to chance.”

Ember, Fizzle, and Wildfire took a serious look at the campgrounds to see what he meant, and there were guards everywhere. Some of them were in the middle of training drills, others were sharpening spears, and a few more were gazing at a map of the terrain the village was set in. This was a tightly run ship.

“Heh, if anyone was going to prepare for the worst case scenario, it would be you,” Ember mentioned to Twilight. “You’ll keep in touch if things go south?”

“Certainly. No matter what happens, I hope your son doesn’t have to deal with this anymore. He’s got a good family around him, but he deserves good friends that accept him for who he is.”

Fizzle realized how sincere they were, and he responded with a smile. “He already has.”

“Awww, that was adorable,” Spike gleamed. “I didn’t know they were that close already. We’ve always encouraged Kunzite to be a good friend to him, but we had no idea it went that well.”

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be busy getting all the sugar out of my system from that,” Wildfire joked as he stood up. “You’re always a wonderful audience, but my heart can’t take just how pure and innocent you guys are. It’s almost enough to get me out of my cynical mood. Don’t worry, I’ll still be around in case you guys wanna chat.”

“Come on, you’re fun to have around,” Twilight responded. “Just stay for a bit. We haven’t even gotten the wine out yet. There’s a bottle in the back that’s even older than you.”

“Then I’m the only person in the world who can drink it without dying,” he noted. “Still, go have some fun without me. You guys might need it if things are going the way I think you’re going.”

Ember’s expression turned from smiling to frowning right away. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, things have the potential to go either really good or really bad. It’s hard to tell, but I’m sensing a pattern here. The discovery of the unknown, young people coming of age through adventure, all that stuff. That’s usually the sign that something big is going down. I’m not saying you should worry just yet, but I am saying that you should be prepared.”

He went back into the forest nearby, leaving the four of them puzzled and confused. What he said resonated with them, though. Twilight recalled her own cutie mark adventure, and the chain of events that led her to Ponyville, where she would meet her friends and stop Nightmare Moon. Ember remembered how she wasn’t supposed to be in the Gauntlet of Fire, but with the help of Spike, she ended the day as the Dragon Lord. Things had a tendency to sneak up on them.

If only they knew what they were in for.

------

The night was long, yet fun. Ember and Fizzle agreed to stay the night in one of the spare tents, Spike and Twilight doing the same in their own tent. Maybe it was just being able to hang out as a group again, after their lives changed so much over the last few decades. Granted, dragons didn’t age much over that period of time, and Twilight was turning out to be the same, alicorn and all. They still had time to spend together. Still, it was sweet when they were able to have moments like this.

However, it was time to call it a night. A patrol of guards would look over the camp as they rested that evening, and Twilight cuddled tight with her husband as they drifted off to sleep. It was a peaceful sleep, even with the weight of worrying about their daughter in mind.

It was a restful sleep, up until dawn. Then Spike found himself coughing. His chest wheezed from a clog in his stomach, and he had to sit up from it. It woke up Twilight from the noise, and she looked over him as he tried to get it out. “Are you okay? Do you need water?”

“I think...it’s a letter…” he struggled to say. He covered his mouth from the pressure, and it felt like he was going to throw up. And then it finally came out. He belched louder than any time he could remember, and a pillar of flame filled the insides of the tent. When it died out, a letter appeared in its place. It was a good five sheets long, the longest he had ever done. Each page was filled front and back, making it more bizarre.

“That was a letter? THAT?” Twilight picked it up and broke the seal in the middle. Spike leaned over and read along it with her, curious what this could be. When they were finished reading it, they burst out of the tent, wide eyed and freaked out over the moon.

“Where’s Ember and Fizzle?” Spike gasped. “We need to see them now!”

“The fourth tent on the right,” a guard pointed out.

As soon as they got the news, they raced to get to it and went inside right away. A few minutes passed, with some grumblings and questions coming from within. Once that was over, Ember and Fizzle exploded out of the tent, both angry and upset about what they learned.

“Kunzite should have kept her mouth shut if Cinder was going to be that way!” Ember raged.

“She literally said sorry twenty times!” Twilight recalled. “We’re not happy about this, either, but don’t put all the blame on her. We’ll do our best to fix this. We’re going down there right now.”

“Don’t bother. If that’s how Cinder is, she’s coming for us. We’ll be ready for it,” Fizzle countered. “Just...I’m not mad at her, personally. How could she know Cinder would do that?”

Ember shot him a glare and sighed. “Have your guards ready. I’ll be getting the Dragon Lands ready myself.” She took off and flew off to the Dragon Lands. Fizzle joined her right away, followed by Torch soon after.

Spike went to Twilight’s side and hugged her tightly. “We’ll get them out of this mess. Cinder’s not going to lay one hand on either one of them.”

“No, she won’t,” Twilight trembled. “If she lays one hand on my daughter…”

The letter rested on the floor of what used to be Ember and Fizzle’s tent. It was full of drawings, impressions of what Cinder looked like. It detailed who she was, what she was doing in the village, and other things. Wildfire went into the tent, curious about the source of all this discord he heard around the camp. When he saw what the contents were, he shook his head.

“Kunzite, this is why you don’t trust everyone you meet…”

She knows that Torch stepped down from his crown, that Ember’s the new Dragon Lord, who Moonstone is, all that stuff. It’s all my fault that she knows. And...I don’t know why, but I think she’s coming for Ember.

I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.

Kun--Kunzi--Kunzite

Author's Note:

So the last time I uploaded a chapter, I said the next two might come out on the same day. Those plans were shelved for two reasons. 1. This ended up being a good 800 to 1k words longer than I expected. 2. The plans for the chapter were chucked out the window. Originally, the five of them would discuss raising their children, things like that.

I changed it because that seemed redundant with the way things had gone, and what happened here was mostly improvised. That's one benefit to writing a later entry to a story: Sometimes, the characters tell you where the story needs to go, not what you already planned.

Either way, we're coming up to the end, and as you can see, it's going to be an intense ride to the finish line.

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