Twilight paced the hall outside of the dragon barn. Fluttershy and Spike were taking their sweet time, and it was scaring Twilight to death.
Twilight had meant what she said when she told Celestia she'd keep the secret, but it had weighed heavily, and visibly, on her. "What's wrong, Twilight?" Sunburst asked, "you've been staring at that page for ages."
"Hmm? Oh, nothing. Just tired."
"Really?" Sunburst said in a concerned voice. Twilight furrowed her brow. Her husband knew her too well.
"Fine, it's...royal stuff. Top secret. Can't tell you."
Sunburst nodded. "Okay. Well, maybe we should do something to cheer you up." He began tickling her stomach with his muzzle, his tried-and-true way of initiating intimacy.
"Oh, stop it, you!" Twilight said, but she couldn't help but roll over on to her back. She liked it when he did that. She liked Sunburst. And there'd never been a single secret in their marriage before. Twilight rolled back into a more dignified position and sighed. "I don't want to keep secrets from you," she began. "The truth is... I had a nightmare last night. It was that I found a barn full of these dragons that Celestia was keeping. It was like protective custody, but they were cut off from so much of life. They were small, and stunted, and dependant. And I didn't know how to help them."
"Hmm..." Sunburst got up and walked up to the shelf, looking thoughtfully at it before picking out a book on dream interpretation. Twilight let go of breath she didn't know she was holding. Sunburst had bought the lie.
"I don't think that's it. Just... Since I woke up, I've been thinking... it could have been Spike. If I did find something like that, do you think I'd owe him the knowledge?"
"I don't know, Twilight. I know that you two used to have a mother-son relationship, but I don't know all the details. From what I know about him though, well... he trusts you to know what's best. What do you think that would be? Have you ever lied to him before?"
Twilight told Spike. Spike told Fluttershy. Fluttershy wanted to see. And Twilight made plans to show them. She knew she was digging herself deep, but she didn't know how else to do this. Twilight knew Fluttershy. Her loyalty was to kindness before reason or country. She might tell someone if she thought the dragons were abused and felt helpless to stop it. At very least, Fluttershy had agreed to let Spike go with her for her protection. Fluttershy had been living with dragons for decades now. She knew how aggressive some of them were.
Finally, they emerged. Spike's face read concern. Fluttershy's read determination.
"We should talk this out," Twilight said stoically. It was her instinct: that phrase had saved her from a number of prickly political situations.
"Twilight, we... um" Fluttershy hid behind her mane momentarily before looking up again, assertive force in her eyes, "We have to let them go. Trapping them here is wrong."
"Yes. I know. But our alliance with the rogue dragons-"
"-Unconverted dragons," Fluttershy corrected. Twilight winced. Fluttershy only cared about semantics like that when dealing with someone who might actually think of dragons as wild beasts. She must not have seen that as Twilight's mere misspeak. She continued nonetheless.
"Yes, unconverted dragons- is really tenuous. Dragon Lord Garble is already just itching to attack us. Fluttershy, if this gets out, dozens of dragons and hundreds or thousands of ponies are going to die. I'm sorry. They have to stay."
Fluttershy looked down, and Spike put a comforting claw around her. Her silence lasted a few seconds before Spike spoke up. "You snuck her in here once. Maybe you could do it again. Even... Regularly?"
"But why?"
"So that Fluttershy could visit them and increase their quality of life. A compromise."
"I don't know..."
"Twilight, do it or I'll tell!" Fluttershy nearly yelled.
Twilight sighed. "Celestia has meetings with the Canterlot board of directors every Tuesday from one to three pm. Then. That's when you come." Her secret had once again become more tenuous.
"It's a deal," Fluttershy said.
"Hold on. We need to set some conditions. First of all, I need to make sure that you don't bring anything in there. At least, nothing you won't bring back out. At 1 pm, I'm going to come here and magically search you. I'll make a list of every item you bring in. I'll do the same at 3 pm. If there's any difference, I'm never letting you in there again. Second, both Spike and I are going in with you. Maybe, eventually, I'll trust you enough to go in there just with Spike. Thirdly, don't ever threaten to tell anyone again. Fluttershy, I really don't want to threaten you, but there are memory erasure spells in the library. They won't hurt, but they might cleave out memories I don't mean to. I don't want that to happen. Please make sure I don't have to do it." Twilight paused a moment. "That's everything. Deal?"
"Deal," Fluttershy said.
"Spike?"
"Deal."
"Great. Now, how's your garden doing this year?" Twilight said, going off on a tangent. She desperately wanted to preserve her friendship with Fluttershy, even in these odd circumstances.
They carried on their conversation, and in the passing months, carried out their plan. Twilight was surprised to find that Fluttershy was adored by the dragons. Even Fang came out to greet her. Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise. She told them all about the outside world. They were always full of questions. Twilight kept every promise she made, but Fluttershy never snuck in anything that could harm. A few books, some paints for Carver (though Carver, much to his dismay, had to give all his painted sculptures to Fluttershy so that Celestia wouldn't see.)
It was five months later that Twilight saw any consequence for her actions.
Twilight had been having a normal dream without much pattern, the kind where one is barely aware, that just moves with one's random stream of thought and would be forgotten by morning. Then, Princess Luna appeared, clear as day, and everything else faded out.
"Twilight Sparkle, You have to wake up!" She said. "The dragons are in grave danger!"
"No, that can't be! This has to be a nightmare. How would you even know?"
"I've been looking after Celestia's thoughts and dreams for years, how could I not? But she does not dream tonight. Look!" Luna used her magic to give an image of Celestia commanding dozens of royal guards in fire-proof dragonscale armor. There were bites and scratches on her neck. Twilight had feared that, and known it was but a matter of time before the trapped dragons began seeing her as a warden instead of a savior. And of course, Celestia couldn't put herself in danger for their sake. Extermination had become the only option. The thought shook Twilight awake.
Twilight thought about those dragons, safe and relatively happy in their protective custody before she had known about them.
"What have I done?" she asked Luna, who had been standing next to her.
"What you have done is show me that there's a better way to do things than what Celestia has shown. Truly, we cannot build a just society by trampling on the rights of sapients. Now, give me orders, Twilight. We will save them."
Hi, and before anything let me just say I enjoy your story. And please don't try to rush anything. It's good to set up your story world with either description/ character interactions.
I do have a few questions. One of them is how did garble become dragon Lord?
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I'm glad you enjoy my story! I was on the fence about publishing it, so it's nice to see that you, as well as a few others, liked it. I added a few things when I decided to release this, but apparently not enough if you found it confusing.
How did Garble become Dragon Lord? Long story short, Ember was forcibly overthrown.
Long story long, not all dragons, or even a majority of them, were big fans of being all friendly with ponies. For the most part, though, it was a political decision that didn't affect them, and they respected the dragon lord's authority enough not to do anything. A long series of decisions made these dragons increasingly anxious that their traditional way of life was threatened. Sending dragons away to Twilight's school was weird. When young dragons began coming back from it with their heads full of strange ideas, a whole lot of dragons were saying, "Ember, do something," and Ember did nothing, because she didn't see a problem with it. A few young dragons started the Civil Dragon Commune, and Ember did nothing. Traditionalists really didn't like the idea of weak dragons living a life as good or better than theirs, and, well, not all the dragons who went there were attracted to it by philosophy. There were those who just didn't fit in and weren't living well under dragon culture as well. They started seeing Twilight's school as poisoning them away from dragon culture, and Ember as a weak leader who was allowing the ideas of weaklings to thrive. This image was not aided by her small size. The kicker, though, was when she suggested beginning to trade with ponies. Dragons, even more liberal ones, do not like the idea of a gem they mined going anywhere but their mouths, and there was the added fear that she was transitioning them into the lifestyle of the civil dragons. Garble and a few other revolutionaries violently assaulted her in her sleep. Torch woke up and scared them off before she was seriously injured, but not before Garble had seized the Firestone Scepter. His first act as Dragon Lord was to banish Ember, and second was to forbid any dragon to attend the school of Friendship on the punishment of banishment. Ember went to the Civil Dragon Commune because it was either that or living alone in the wild. She probably holds a position of authority, as such things are earned by merit there, and she does have experience and leadership capabilities.
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Oh thanks for clarifying that for me. And please don't be afraid of posting stories. Trust me, it's worst to self doubt your self then to be overly confident
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Thanks.