9. Sacrifice Fly
Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Sacrifice Fly
“Loyalty to your commander is the greatest asset of the Praetorium.”
— Commander Hurricane
Twinkle was not a betting pony. In Unicornia whenever the festivals came around with their games of chance and skill, she would attend with her brothers and watch as they exercised their talents to the feigned awe of whatever mares they were escorting around. They always made her promise to stay quiet during the festive outings, although that was difficult when she would see one game of chance or another severely leaning on the rules of probability. There was no real reason for spending the tips and shards of their allowances on the chance of getting some stuffed animal for less than they could have just purchased one, but she trailed along anyway and often found herself carrying an unexpected prize or another.
It probably related back to the way other normal unicorns used ‘things’ to recall memories. Twinkle’s mother had a glittery paper star hanging on their bedroom wall which Obsidian had given to her as a present once, and Peridot could just cast a single glance at it before her eyes would well up with tears and she would be sniffly most of the rest of the day. Twinkle was an expert at using small clues and slips of the tongue to unravel the most hidden mystery, but she had never been able to work the story of the family heirloom out of her parents.
She had no problem reading the story of the Dragonlord’s children.
The first of them had not made it more than a short distance away from the valley before his siblings had ripped him nearly in half, leaving the bloody corpse spread across a hilltop. Claws and teeth alike had torn one wing off, and although he had fought and decorated the ground with colorful scales from several of his attackers, they had worn him down in the end.
The Dragonlord landed a short distance away, but not far enough to avoid getting blood on his claws. He almost dropped Twinkle in his haste to examine the body, leaving her in the blood-soaked wreckage of a bush with strangely enough a few golden trinkets of apparent Minotaruian make under a root. She levitated them up in her magic for closer examination while the Dragonlord fumed over the body of his son. How the golden trinkets got there was another mystery in a long line, but one that was fairly easy to theorize an answer.
When Brass had used his fire magic on the family wagon and when Ruby had used hers to carry the piles of branches up to the cave, they had breathed out across the treasure and then breathed the smoke back in, presumably storing it in some sort of secondary stomach. Upon his death, the Dragonlord’s son must have breathed out that magic fire, letting it coalesce back into the treasure that had been stored inside.
Before the Dragonlord could snatch the golden baubles away, she let them fall back to the ground and stepped off to one side. He was not in a stable mental state right now, and to provide any excuse would mean her death before she could lure him far enough into the Windigo’s clutches to kill them both. She settled for holding herself in the stiff rigidity of the terminally terrified, and did not say anything when the enormous dragon grabbed her and bolted to the north again without a word.
Of course she had questions that she wanted to ask the Dragonlord during the long trip, but she was not stupid. Talking would reduce the probability of her plan working, and most probably the deaths of many, many ponies. Plus she was going to die anyway, so there was no reason to satisfy her curiosity and endanger the rough plan she was trying to follow. Still, an hour or more later when the Dragonlord curved his path downwards to land next to two more of his children who had killed each other, she could not keep her mouth shut.
She bent her neck down, closely examined the small cluster of flowers sprouting up from the snowdrift she had been dropped into, and took a tentative nibble.
“Buttercups,” she murmured to herself as she took another larger bite. They looked similar to the flower, but they tasted like sweet butter, freshly churned and salted just a bit for flavor. The exodus most certainly had not encountered any such plants, although the pony’s path had not been through this exact section of grassland, so it was not impossible for her to have missed this species before. Her mother had loved plants, and her special talent was flower arranging, so Twinkle’s home had been filled with plant books, all of which she had read, of course.
Before the Dragonlord had finished bellowing and making threats over the corpses of his two dead children, Twinkle had harvested the few plants that stuck up out of the snow and held them close while they swept back up into the sky.
Just because she had a task that would save the lives of many ponies did not mean she could not also try to unravel a different mystery.
- - Ω - -
“Where is my treasure!” howled the Dragonlord, squeezing Twinkle until she could barely see the fading sunlight. “I’ve been flying forever! Show me the treasure of your kind!”
There was a vague sensation of being shaken, then the crushing pressure released except for a sharp pain in her side that was most likely a cracked rib. Twinkle sucked in welcome air and staggered to her hooves in the Dragonlord’s palm, looking out across the snowy ground for a recognizable landmark. What she saw looked vaguely familiar, but just as weird as the buttercups she had eaten a short time before.
The two short mountains the pony exodus had passed between on their way south had been replaced, one with a recognizable sculpture of some sort of snake-pony-dragon-bird thing, and the other by a massive pile of unknown colorful spheres. It actually took her a few moments to recognize the snake-creature from a book she had read, although it was supposed to be fictional.
“Draconequus,” she said out loud despite her best efforts. “A mythical creature of disunion, chaos, and strife.”
“How much is it worth?” chuffed the Dragonlord from nose-length away.
“It doesn’t really matter since you can’t carry a mountain,” pointed out Twinkle. “That wasn’t there before. Nor that,” she added, pointing at the giant pile of colored spheres. “Anyway, one of your children has died here, and the other gone north to Unicornia.”
The Dragonlord’s eyes narrowed into slits and he blew a puff of smoke over Twinkle. “How can you tell?”
Twinkle waved a hoof until she had enough fresh air to breathe, then pointed down through the Dragonlord’s claws at a discolored spot at the base of the mountain of colorful balls where a spreading stain marred the brilliant image. A short glide later, the Dragonlord scowled at the single clawed leg sticking out from under the massive house-sized spheres and the red pool around it. He poked a sphere with one claw, then stuck Twinkle up to it with a bellowed, “Tell me what that is, pony!”
A few theories she had crafted during the glide were casually disposed of, replaced by an idea that was pure insanity. She leaned forward, sniffed the sphere, then hesitantly licked it.
“Tutti-frutti bubblegum balls,” she said. “The size of houses.”
The Dragonlord was just as flummoxed as Twinkle, but hid it worse. He leaned over, took a bite out of one of the spheres, chewed, then spit out the gum onto the corpse of his child.
“If you’re frightened, we can go back,” said Twinkle.
The Dragonlord let out a primal growl and closed his fist around his captive unicorn before launching himself into the air, headed north. Inside her crushing prison, Twinkle Twinkle shivered from the growing cold and the thoughts of meeting a creature who could kill a dragon so casually.
- - Ω - -
Despite the clutch of the dragon’s claws, there was only cold surrounding Twinkle’s thin coat and trembling body. The cold of the ice, the chill of her hopeless condition, and the blowing snow that leaked in through the narrow gaps between sharp talons. She had never felt the bitter bite of death so close to her heart before, even curled into a tight ball to conserve every flicker of warmth she could manage to squeeze from the sweet warmth of the odd buttercups in her belly. She could hear the Dragonlord bellowing again, loud enough to shake her numb body. Something about treasure. Something about… fire.
Fire surrounded her, small flames that curled against her mane with the stench of burnt hair. And with that fire came heat, blessed heat that washed over her like a wave. The pain was worse than the cold, but it was good pain, an agony of thawing limbs and frostbitten ears.
“Awaken, worthless beast!” snarled the Dragonlord in a burst of welcome hot breath. “What deceit are you planning? What kind of sick joke is this land that you have guided me to?”
“Cold,” murmured Twinkle Twinkle, still curled up in a ball despite her growing warmth. The longer she could delay the Dragonlord here, the sooner the Windigos would freeze him solid. It took very little effort to continue trembling, even after the dragon breathed across her several times until sweat began to run down the back of her neck.
“Get up,” growled the Dragonlord, hooking the tip of one claw under her belly and lifting. “Pathetic little bag of skin and bones. Explain how your kind did this!”
Twinkle opened her eyes and was unable to suppress an abrupt gasp, sucking in a breath of air so cold that it carried icy needles into the depths of her lungs. The word for the moment was ‘White’ but the context was anything but what she expected. The blanket of snow covering this part of the world was carved into trenches and slopes with colorful flags denoting paths down the foothills of her mountain home and the faint hint of vanilla on the breeze. Of the mountains, there was no sign except gaping holes of their foundations, a scattering of tiny golden glints around the area, and the distant thunder of something massive crashing and bashing into the ground.
“I don’t know.” The words escaped Twinkle in a cloud of white as the air froze her breath almost before it left her lips. “It’s madness. Nothing makes sense.”
“Oh, of course it does,” purred a voice from around Twinkle’s left ear. “We have all kinds of scents here at Discord’s House of Perfume.”
A draconequus only slightly larger than her shoulder practically oozed around the Dragonlord’s claws, holding some sort of bottle in its lion paw and squeezing the bulb sticking out of it with its eagle claw. A puff of apple scent sprayed right into Twinkle’s eyes, followed by a squirt of lemon, nettle, blueberry, mint, ragweed, guava, and a whole series of scents that Twinkle could not separate out, except for the last squirt of skunk.
The Dragonlord gave a bellow and grabbed for the strange creature, clutching it in his other clawed hand and squeezing. Twinkle could not see exactly what was happening due to the tears streaming down her face from her nasal passages being nearly swollen shut, but the claw she was on lurched violently several times, and she found herself clinging to one talon as the massive dragon swatted and breathed fire at the other creature.
“Whoa, there! Hold on, big fellow.” A rope coiled around the dragon, binding his forelimbs to his chest and nearly crushing Twinkle against his furnace-like neck. “Ah don’t think you’re really gettin’ the hang of this, pardner. You see, you’re the entertainment, and I’m the entertainee.”
Somehow, the odd creature was now hovering in front of the Dragonlord, sitting on a wooden chair with a gigantic hat stuck over his horns. He spat to one side and flipped a coil of rope over the Dragonlord’s mouth, which had just started to open in order to breathe fire again.
“Hello, sir,” said Twinkle as politely as she could. Just because a creature had unimaginable powers, did not mean they needed to be treated rudely. “My name is Twinkle Twinkle. We were looking for the Dragonlord’s last child. Have you seen him?”
“A dragon, you say? Hm…” The creature drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, which drummed its fingers on the arm of the creature in turn, then rang a brass cymbal. “I do believe I saw a dragon playing Mountainball just a short time ago. But enough about such boring things. All dragons do is shout and blow fire. What kind of creature are you?”
With a poof of magic, the chair vanished and the draconequus reappeared directly in front of Twinkle’s nose, still holding the rope. He leaned closer, his glowing yellow eyes nearly closed in a cruel squint as he examined Twinkle from ears to tail, then gave out a delighted squeal.
“Oh, I do love playing with my toys. When that pesky dragon let me out of my prison, I was looking forward to seeing what you ponies had been up to, only to find you all gone.”
“They’re all dead,” said Twinkle as the bitter cold of the area began to soak into her coat again. “They froze. I’m the only one left.”
“Really?” A series of strobing signs appeared above Twinkle’s head, all flashing ‘Liar!’ in rainbow colors. “I’ll bet all of those delightful toys traveled somewhere warm, and forgot to bring me along. Well?” The draconequus cocked an eyebrow, which aimed a sharp tiny spear at the Dragonlord’s nearby eye. “Are you going to try to talk me out of tracking them down?”
“It doesn’t really matter what I say,” said Twinkle. “You’re going to do whatever you want. I could never stop you. Even the Dragonlord could not stop you.”
“Oh, come on!” huffed the creature while thumping one foot against the Dragonlord’s chest. “You’re supposed to fight, like old Scalebutt here or his pesky little child. How about we play a game? If you win, I’ll leave the ponies alone, and if you lose, I get to do whatever I want with them.” He extended an arm, which had a number of colorful gambling machines on it along with decks of cards and a tiny little crane dipping into a glass box full of goldfish.
“You’ll cheat and win,” said Twinkle through chattering teeth. “You’re too strong and unreliable to be trusted, or the unicorns would not have locked you away. You didn’t even tell us your name.”
“I’m Twinkle Twinkle,” announced the creature in Twinkle’s voice, then shook his head and thumped his forehead against one claw until a number of tiny unicorns fell out of his furry ears. “I swear, that whiny little voice of yours gets into your head and just won’t leave. My name,” he pronounced boldly, sweeping into a bow, “is obvious.”
By this time, Twinkle had curled up as much as she could to save heat, and could barely see above the dragon’s claw that was holding her to the Dragonlord’s chest. “H-hello, Mister Obvious. C-could you let us g-go now?”
Obvious laughed, a cruel and heartless kind of amused that Twinkle had only heard before from a pair of small colts who liked to pull wings off flies. “I like you,” chuckled the draconequus. “You’re pleasantly stupid. For the record, my name is Discord,” he announced, holding up some sort of music player that ran on black disks and a wind-up crank.
“Hello, Mister D-d-discord,” said Twinkle while shivering.
“Die!” bellowed the Dragonlord, who had managed to get the rope off his muzzle. He breathed out in an intense fiery blast that encompassed Discord and wiped the creature away like a scrap of parchment in a furnace. The Dragonlord’s wings snapped out and he climbed up into the frosty sky, still holding Twinkle in one clenched fist. She did not mind too much, because his crushing embrace was at least warm and helped put out the smoldering fires in her coat from where she had been just a little close to the blast of fire that had destroyed Discord.
“You, I don’t like,” sounded a voice from nowhere and everywhere at once. “Tell you what. Why don’t the two of you get to know each other while I go reintroduce myself to the rest of your kind.”
There was a sharp snapping noise, and the world went mad.
- - Ω - -
Twinkle was falling. She had fallen before, but this was a special kind of fall, with a lot more of her going through the process. By instinct, she rolled and spread her wings as wide as she could while being careful not to drop the precious little squishy thing in her… claws. The shock of realization made her do something she had never done before in her life.
Don’t panic! Wings out to glide! Don’t crush the me in my claws!
Her heart was beating just as hard as it could inside her gigantic chest, a cavernous space filled with churning fire, heaving lungs, and the weirdest sensation of tension. She turned her head and looked around with short, jerky motions, trying to spot the odd creature who had…
...who had…
She was a dragon now. No, Twinkle was in the body of the Dragonlord, which by process of elimination, meant that the Dragonlord was in the body of—
“Die!” screamed a tiny voice from inside her clenched claws. “Die and give me my body back! Burn in infinite fire! I’ll tear your liver out!”
From this altitude, and with dragon eyes, Twinkle could see forever. The mountains which made up much of Unicornia were missing, but by squinting a little, she could see far away where they had gone. A group of them were actually dancing around in a circle, with a limp dragonic form held triumphantly overhead. Er… Overpeak? It appeared as if they were playing some sort of violent game, an opinion only reinforced when the mountains broke into teams again, lining up with the dead dragon being put down on the open field between them. When the mountains rushed together, the dragon was kicked even further away, and a mad scramble started, which shook Twinkle out of her distraction by the emotion she felt rising in her chest.
She was frightened. For the first time in ever, Twinkle was afraid. She had always been a smallish and weak unicorn, but in this huge, fierce body, she was absolutely terrified. She was afraid at how far from the ground she was flying, afraid that she would somehow crush her frail unicorn body in her clenched claws, afraid of… being afraid.
Ordinary ponies must feel like this every day.
The sun promptly plummeted out of the sky and the moon rocketed up to the apex of its travel, while the stars spread out in the forms of various profanities in the Griffon language. It could only have been the action of that strange Discord creature, particularly since one of the bands of stars spelled out ‘Discord’s back!’
Neither ponies or dragons had the power to fight Discord alone. Not even if they managed to gather together with all the other intelligent races of the world. The magic he had shown was totally unlike anything Twinkle had ever seen before, but there was one hint to his origins that she had to face despite the fear which clenched her bowels.
She angled her glide to the rocky gaps where the bases of her childhood home had once been.
- - Ω - -
To reach her destination, Twinkle had to fly over the Great Chasm at the base of the former mountains. The Bridge was gone, of course, centuries worth of unicorn construction and improvement wiped out by an errant mountain foot, but the crevice remained. Her acute dragon eyes could see down the sharp slopes deep into the looming darkness where a few shattered wooden fragments of the Royal Wagons stuck out of the endless snow, but nothing else. She had hoped in some corner of her new draconic heart to see an indication that there had been survivors, maybe a hoofprint, or a fire for warmth. The absence of any such evidence of life drove a painful spear into her chest, sharper than the icy cold, much like the Dragonlord must have felt when seeing each of his dead children.
She took a moment to mourn in a way that she never could have before. Sorrow was far too closely related to anger and fear for her to understand before Discord had swapped her defective unicorn body with this powerful but just as deeply flawed creature. She hovered there for a short time, giving little puffs of warm breath over her cold claws whenever the unicorned Dragonlord began to run low on profanity, then turned to deal with the main reason she had remained in this frozen and dead land.
Twinkle Twinkle had heard about the storage vaults beneath the mountains of Unicornia, like all foals. She had even gotten a glimpse of an artist’s rendition of the layout. If she had been in her original body, there would have been no confusion at all in her search for the most secure vaults among the shattered remnants of stone and rubble, but this body held memories in a frustrating fog that only got foggier the further in the past she was remembering. It made her growl and shake the fist with her original body inside, which reminded her to breathe over it once in a while to keep the shivering unicorn warm. Thankfully, the Dragonlord’s child had left a trail by clawing his way through the maze of passages first, ripping into one vault door after another in search of treasure beyond his comprehension, until the last door which concealed something more than anydragon could be prepared for.
The room behind the torn-off door was a featureless white, a stark absence of color in a perfect sphere broken only by the hole created by the Dragonlord’s child. A being of chaos would have certainly found the imprisonment here maddening, if it had not been mad already. The bone-piercing cold only made it more obvious that there was no way any ponies could survive to entice the being back into its ancient prison and restore the seal again. Even her own chilled dragon body was sluggish, and anything that gained the attention of the playful mountains would certainly be squashed in minutes.
She had just turned to leave when a fragment of the broken door shifted and the corner of a frost-covered book was revealed. It was difficult to pick up without damaging since her claws were so large and she did not have her unicorn magic, and impossible to turn the pages. Since the book and the shattered prison were so close together, they had to be related in some way. Perhaps there was some history of this Discord creature concealed inside, a valuable treasure she could hoard away into her cave and keep forever—
Twinkle broke off from that enticing thought when a growing faint tremor moved up through her cold talons. The animated mountains were returning, so she spread her wings and climbed up into the icy skies. Quite obviously, if the book did contain some way of imprisoning the creature, dragons were the last species to properly explore the possibility.
Keeping the precious book clenched in one clawed fist and the cursing body of her former self in the other, Twinkle Twinkle took to the skies again and bent her path to the south, flapping for all she was worth as the sun and moon played tag in the sky.
- - Ω - -
The vast wings of the Dragonlord ate up distance with an unstoppable appetite. The ground below shifted from snowblown white to patchy green in short order, then to a black and white pattern of squares and parallelograms with herds of tiny creatures darting around them like mice. Well, not exactly like mice, because the mice below seemed to be the size of elephants, and the creatures being chased more like warped and distorted animals. Maybe cats. It would fit with the warped sense of humor she was beginning to recognize.
At the moment, Twinkle had something more important to deal with. Several golden-armored pegasi and griffons carrying spears were climbing up into the sky, obviously with the intent of intercepting her. To be honest, Twinkle had not really thought about the rest of the diaspora while she was flying here. She had been too obsessed with keeping her unicorn body warm, thinking about the book, and trying to come up with an explanation to tell Princess Platinum that would not sound as if she had lost her mind.
“Halt!” bellowed the front griffon in what was supposed to be an intimidating fashion, if not for the fact he was outweighed by an enormous ratio from the dragon he was threatening. “Come no further, dragon, or I will—”
“Get out of my way!” bellowed Twinkle Twinkle as a flare of unanticipated rage roared to life in her chest and burst out of her nostrils in the form of smoke. “I must speak with Princess Platinum!”
The armored pegasi and griffons alike were set back by her outburst, and scattered like pigeons when she followed it up with a massive wingblast of wind. Tucking her wings up, Twinkle barreled through the flying defenders and angled her precipitous plummet in the direction they seemed to be guarding. Even though the signs of Discord’s presence were all over the place, the green valley was filled with square shrubs and small trees around which the ponies clustered in small groups, one of which caught Twinkle’s eye.
Landing was much more difficult than flying, and Twinkle hit the ground hard enough she almost reflexively caught herself with both forehands, which would have been a very terminal ending to the unicorn mare held in her right claws. There was no doubt at all that the pony she had nearly crashed in front of was Princess Platinum, mostly due to the regal unicorn’s bearing under the unexpected visitor, but also because of the way her formerly white coat caught the sunlight and glinted the way a pony-sized lump of platinum would if given a brisk shining.
“Stop!” bellowed Twinkle at the sudden rush forward of the other guards, more than eager to sacrifice their own lives in defense of their metallic princess. “I have not come to fight!”
“Die! Die! Kill them all!” filtered out from between Twinkle’s foreclaws.
“Ignore that,” growled Twinkle. “I’ve come with an offer of truce between dragons and ponies.” She snaked her head up and looked around, then crouched back down into the growing circle of watching ponies to look the platinum princess right in the eyes. “We have little time before he returns. Here, take this.”
Showing all the poise expected for royalty, Princess Platinum floated the book out of Twinkle’s open palm and regarded it blandly. “A book?”
“The creature—” started Twinkle, not wanting to say his name “—was imprisoned by the unicorns some time ago within a cell in the Great Archives. He bears a chaotic magic greater than dragonkind and ponykind together. With that book, you may be able to find a way to fight him, to imprison him again.”
“Kill him!” fumed the unicorn in Twinkle’s other clawed hand. “Tear him to shreds!”
“Yes,” said Princess Platinum, looking a little distracted by the vengeful noises coming from the dragon’s clenched fist. “We shall need something more if ponykind is to trust you, dragon.”
There was a momentary hesitation in Twinkle’s scaled breast before the blazing fire of anger filled her again. “You dare doubt my word?” she bellowed, regardless of the possibility that it might attract the chaotic creature. “Do you know how much work I went through in order to keep your ponies safe? There are twenty two ponies taken by dragons that I managed to save.”
Platinum’s glittering eyes grew large. “My father,” she breathed. “Is one of them my father?”
“No,” said Twinkle, feeling the chill of that dark chasm again, and the small splinters of broken wood and tumbled stone at the bottom. “Your father is dead, as are too many ponies and dragons alike.” She tightened her grip on the angry Dragonlord to cut down on the frothing threats. “It is my fault that the creature was released. I sent the children of the Dragonlord to the vaults of Unicornia, thinking that the Windigo would kill them. Instead, they broke the seals and released it upon us both.”
“Then give us the ponies you have captured,” responded Platinum immediately. “Allow us to return them to their families so we can confront this challenge together. Show us that you can be trusted.”
“No.” Twinkle was not certain if the abrupt response came from her natural draconic urge to keep everything she could lay her claws on, or if maybe there was a logical reason. “They’re safer where they are now,” she continued out of reflex. “When you have dealt with your problem again, send us word and we shall talk. Until then.”
With one abrupt motion, Twinkle shot up into the sky, scattering pegasi and griffons in all directions, and leaving the pony settlement behind in a matter of minutes. Nothing could catch a dragon in full flight. They were masters of the air, with domain over the entire world. More powerful than—
Twinkle took a quick glance behind herself, thankful that the noise she had imagined was not the odd, overpowering monster who could destroy her without even trying. She flew on for a while, far too aware of the tiny unicorn in her claws, and how it would only take a single motion to reduce the fragile body to paste.
Bereft of her exceptional memory and thrust into a body which considered rage and physical violence a part of every conversation, she felt an unusual empathy for this ‘Discord’ creature. She could understand both sides of the coin, both the powerless and the powerful, the great and the small. It did not help her current situation any, but she could wrap her new draconic mind around it without hesitation.
Things were so much simpler as a dragon, but not any less dangerous. The detailed way Twinkle had experienced life before had turned flatter and more stark, much the same way the other dragons would turn on their former Dragonlord if they discovered she… that is he was actually a puny pony.
All of her life, Twinkle’s solution to problems was to remain out of the discussion while stronger and more verbal ponies argued about solving them. Only after they had exhausted all of their options was she able to slip a suggestion into the discussion and let themselves be convinced to the solution she had been able to see all along. That would not work now, because her mind was no longer the inviolate strict procession of rules and memories that made solutions leap out fully formed and ready for implementation.
Time. It all came down to buying time for the ponies to research the contents of the book. It was the only way she could think of to stop Discord, but during that time, the dragons would be drawn to his arrogance and whimsy. Dragons could not resist a challenge, much like moths could not resist a candle’s flame.
They would all die for his amusement, just like the Dragonlord’s children.
To save the dragons, she was going to need help, and there was only one place to get it.
As the Dragonlord.
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Twinkle steps up. And the end of cached chapters for now.
This story is earning a Dark tag, especially with that last thought of Twinkle's.
Oh, THAT put the cat in with the canaries.
Well holy damn. Can't wait to see what comes next!
I'm trying to imagine Twinkle's normal, Maud-like voice and totally neutral personality in the Dragon Lord's body, but especially since it's now being affected by the DL's natural mind processing, I'm having a hard time...
This is getting amazing, why'd you have to stop now?
Seriously, the introduction of Discord is something I very much did not expect, and having him swap Twinkle into the dragonlord's body is perfect for a number of reasons. She's suddenly got all this power now, including flight, but doesn't care. Instead, she's complaining about her dragon instincts, new emotions, and memory problems the whole time. Even just the incongruity of her name is making me snicker. 'Dragonlord Twinkle Twinkle'; it's so silly!
Dragon society has a problem.
It's concerning that Discord has apparently chosen this moment to show up.
Arguably the opposite, really.
Classic Discord.
Huh, so sending the dragon lord's kids here might have been a mistake overall if all they really accomplished was wake up Discord. I suppose in the looong term he's fine, but that's a thousand plus years in the future.
Hopefully.
Use the tools you have, you know.
One damn big twist.
I wonder if the Power of Names will be relevant, since Twinkle Twinkle and Discord know each-other's, or if that detail on names having power was just window-dressing...
I wonder how the ex-dragonlord feels about not being able to feel anger.
This is a great deal less Scheherazadean than I was expecting, not that that's bad.
And suddenly, Discord.
SUDDEN ESCALATIONS!!!
Oh dear. this is going to get messy.
Darn it, nameless redshirt dragon! You had one job to do, and releasing Discord from who knows where was not one of them! You were supposed to just keep heading north until you froze to death! What was so hard about that?
So. Wasn't expecting Discord, but I'm sure as heck not going to complain. This twist has made an already intriguing story all the more intriguing.
Yep. Thought it'd be him. :D
Though I hadn't thought that the dragons had released him; I was expecting him to be working his way north from the new pony lands.
Well, more interesting times! :D
The Dragonlords reasoning ability is a trifle...underdeveloped.
Well. I wasn't expecting this. And I don't just mean that Discord showing up was a surprise. I mean that the swerve in fanfic direction feels like I read eight chapters of slice-of-life ponyfic, and then the spaceships landed.
Obviously it's too soon to start imitating the Flower Trio and/or gathering the pitchforks and torches from the Two Things Shopping District, but chopping off half of the protagonist's personality and hot-gluing on another, especially when the half that got cut off is so important, is a, let's say, bold move, and one I hope pays off.
Really, that's one of the better reasons to treat them politely.
Of all the chapters to temporarily end on... It will be very interesting indeed to see how Twinkle's mind adapts to the Dragonlord's brain, and vice versa. Still, this particular trick will likely he Discord's downfall. The time for subtle calculation has ended. Dragon tactics now apply.
Though I can only imagine how the others will react to this. Ruby will be more dumbfounded than ever, and I don't think Nova saw this coming.
9605405
If I remember my history, wan't it Celestia and Luna who used the Elements to petrify Discord after the exodus from the Windigos? Not sure if he gets stoned before or after the Windegos are "defeated" by the fire of friendship... unless the play is more farce than fact.
9607329
I haven't watched the last couple of seasons, but history is a bit hazy going back that far, and I think we're well in AU territory anyways.
9607973
Mmm, not necessarily. As stated, history is written by the winners/survivors but it's also twisted by time and retelling. As long as things aren't grossly divergent from what little is known about pre-unification, the author can write whatever he or she pleases. It's a bit like changelings, how their lore can be wildly different yet show canon has no say in the matter (it gets dicey when you consider the comics however).
I admit that I did not see this coming. Not the body switch or Discord. Now I'm wondering if young Celestia and Luna will be showing up.
Pretty sure it should be either 'deceit' or 'deception', though it wouldn't surprise me if the dragonlord simply got them mixed up.
9606985
Well, when you're the biggest, baddest lizard in town, there's rarely a need to exercise that intellect.
I say the ponies should construct an enormous pair of glasses for their new dragonlord with a few dozen cochatraces woven into the mesh, heads facing forward. Someone is in for a suprise next time they show up, provided she keeps her glasses fed and watered.
Fight fire with fire and insanity with even more insanity!
9608706 Huh. Gdocs didn't flag that. Or Grammarly. You're right, though. Fixed.
9608193 Could be....
9608190 History is written from the *memories* of the victors, which is a double-bending of the truth most certainly.
9607329 The Windegos were merely driven away by the fire of friendship. If they were defeated totally, the ponies could have just gone home.
9607221 "and I don't think Nova saw this coming." Yeah, particularly with that 'wife' thing he predicted earlier. She is smoking hot, though.
9605593 When given a hammer, all problems look like nails. When turned into a dragon, all problems look flamable.
9605546 Oh, her mind is subject to the same constraints as the Dragonlord right now. Remember, she *yelled* at Princess Platinum. When this is all over, if they both survive, she's going to have a lot of apologizing to do.
Loving the story so far. Are you experiencing writers block now? I noticed the regular updates have stopped.
Great finding this story after I got home from my trip. But, of course, I've caught up and the latest chapter ends like this. Grrrr.
9613891 I'm working, I'm working.
Awesome job writing. I look foward to see how Twinkle deals with both the lord of chaos and dragon.
I love stories that make me look at things from different points of view. And this story has done that. I will try to be patiently waiting for the next chapter. I should have paced myself, but your writing was just too enticingly good.
Pls more
Aaand I'm xaught up.
I have to say, I love how you have the body-swap affecting Twinkle Twinkle's mind.
Great story, but I mistakenly thought this was completed before I started, now I've got yet another great story that may never go further than what I've already gotten
9782748
I promise I’ll finish it.
I wish there to be more of this.
Twinkle uses blunt truth
It's super effective
Re-reading this has once again rekindled my desire for more.
10093717 I'm working. It's slow going with as many stories as I have on the fire. Here's a taste.
Twinkle Twinkle, Speaker to Dragons
Honesty, Sincerity, and Compromise
“Take whatever you can get, and come back for the rest.”
— Dragonlord Fang
Dragons were fire and fury, but Ruby had been all tense nerves since the Dragonlord had taken Twinkle and flown away. She had managed to get Brass dragged up the narrow path to her cave by way of brute force, a few kicks, and the unwelcome assistance of the ponies. They were worried about the big lug, and fussed about his injuries like… well, ponies. It left Ruby little more to do other than scowl and huff.
She missed the annoying little unicorn. Not just because she was worth so much gold, although that was a lot of her concern. Ruby had gotten lazy because of the little pinhead. Complicated solutions to complicated problems strained her mind now, and made her want to spend a few weeks snoozing in her treasure pool with her nose stuck into the cascade of cave water trickling down the far side of the pool.
Ruby always woke up missing a few gems when she did that, though. Sleep nibbling.
It seemed impossible that one little unicorn could kill the Dragonlord, of all things, but Ruby had watched while the tiny defenseless thing had used mere words to kill his six arrogant children. It was a one-way trip for Twinkle, though. The Dragonlord’s children might kill each other on the trip north, but the Dragonlord himself was far tougher. It was even possible that the Dragonlord might survive, a thought which drove a cold chill down Ruby’s shoulderblades, colder even than the Windigo Twinkle had spoken about. He would be weakened by the cold, furious beyond rational thought, which was the only way Ruby could kill him, tear out his bloody heart, and make the rest of Dragonkind follow her leadership.
Then?
Whatever was tossing the sun and moon around like a loose coin was dangerous beyond belief, but there was no chance of a new Dragonlord being able to force a large number of dragons to fight it. Ruby didn’t want to fight whatever it was either. And the ponies? That was laughable. They only fought when their tails were in a crack and had nowhere to run.
9607329
I realize this is rather late, but in my mind, the play is kind of like how every year my church puts on a production of the nativity story. Each year, different kids play the roles and the script and jokes are tweaked a little bit. I view the Hearth's Warming pageant the same way, it might be based upon something that actually happened, but just like in the classic children's game of Telephone, over a thousand years facts have a tendency to get muddled if not entirely dismissed in favor of storytelling. For another example there's a quote from I believe one of our world's most prominent authors of the 20th century..."history became legend, legend became myth, and for two and a half thousand years the ring passed out of all knowledge." Not an exact parallel to what is happening in this story, but it is pretty clear to me that the thousand years used in canon was a placeholder for the distant past, either that or a thousand years ago was one heck of an interesting year.
To Georg In any case, I hope that this story is continued at some point in the future, a twist like that definitely deserves more attention.
10106359 It's getting continued, no doubt. I write a little on it every so often between other projects. I've got a goal of bringing the emotional peak where the newly minted Princess Celestia and Princess Luna bring their armed forces to demand the return of Ruby's ponies (Ruby having been wounded) and Twinkle along with the captives refuse to leave her side.