• Published 1st Aug 2019
  • 5,470 Views, 398 Comments

Sharing the Nation - Cast-Iron Caryatid



Wherein dragons begin to flood into Equestria for some unknown, completely mysterious reason.

  • ...
16
 398
 5,470

Chapter 11

— ✒ —

Surrounded as he was by five beautiful dragonesses, Spike couldn’t decide where to look or what to think. He had been raised from a very young age not to stare too much at mares, but Ember’s lack of modesty had been teaching him that dragons had different ideas about such things, and now he was suddenly on the other end of that paradigm.

So he stared back.

In addition to Ember’s turquoise, his vision was filled with scales of red, orange, green and black. They had all been changed with the Ring of Ashmund to match the same template, which he didn’t think was one that existed in nature. The ring, he remembered, had been said to be able to change the size, age and maturity of any dragon, and from what he was seeing, it could change each one of those independently.

Yesterday, Ember had been a head taller than Spike, barely eye-to-eye with an adult pony. Now she was nearly twice as tall as she’d been before, maybe as tall as Princess Luna standing upright. Unlike the dragons that size that Spike had met before, however, the dragonesses surrounding him were a lot more… developed. They weren’t quite full adults that had been shrunk down, but they would definitely deserve a second look if they were placed side-by-side with somedragon else the same size.

Oh, and they all had wings.

Spike glanced over his shoulder. He had wings. He wiggled them.

So that was what that felt like.

— ✒ —

The distraction of waking up with wings didn’t last very long with five girls surrounding him watching him play with himself. Eventually, the awkwardness reached a critical mass, and he tossed the bedsheet aside, mumbled something about fixing breakfast, swung his legs off the bed and proceeded to throw himself face-first onto the floor.

His second attempt at locomotion was wobbly, but marginally more successful. He still toppled over once on his way out of the room, but rather than flop, he managed to catch himself on his arms… or, perhaps they were his front legs, as they seemed to function just fine in that role. Another two steps and he was upright again, slamming the door behind him.

Hoo boy. He had to stop at the top of the stairs just to take a breath and collect himself. It was more difficult than he’d expected it to be. He thought that living with Ember had desensitized him at least a little to that sort of thing, but the fact that he was tempted to take a peek back into the room for another look trampled all over that assumption like… a big stompy thing his brain didn’t have the room for right now on account of all the images of scaled curves that were driving him to distraction.

Ironically, it was only looking back that he realized that Ember had been wearing a ring. The ring, obviously. It had to be the Ring of Ashmund, if only because it was something of value and she hadn’t eaten it yet. Part of him wanted charge back into the room to demand answers… and for only that reason… but in hindsight, all he was likely to get was a deadpan look and a sarcastic comment. After all, why wouldn’t a ring with the power to reshape its wearer also reshape itself to fit? That wasn’t really the important thing.

The important thing was that she had it at all. It was good that she’d managed to hide it before the fire patrol had shown up, but he barely trusted her with a bowl of soup, let alone an artifact of power that would allow her to rule dragonkind more certainly than any crown. Ideally, he would have been the one to hold onto it so there would be at least some checks and balances to prevent her from just doing the first thing that crossed her mind, but as evidenced by the crowd of dragonesses in the next room, that ship had sailed and was halfway to Zebrabwe. If Ember ever gave the ring up willingly, Spike would eat Applejack’s hat.

— ✒ —

Spike wasn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten roped into fixing breakfast for five dragonesses, but at least they weren’t giving him those weird looks any more… much. Once in a while, one of them would poke their heads into the kitchen and giggle, but he tried to ignore it.

The easy thing about cooking for six dragons was that there didn’t actually need to be any cooking if you were feeling lazy. In most situations, making a good first impression to four drop-dead gorgeous members of his own species wouldn’t be the time to be lazy, but this wasn’t most situations. He wasn’t in the mood, the pantry was nearly empty, the ‘first impression’ he’d made probably involved sucking his thumb in bed and as much as he couldn’t get the sight of them out of his head, he was feeling contrary and wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to encourage them in the first place. It was all just too much.

It took three uncertain trips to load the table up with various gems, crystals, rocks, ores and metals to feed the lot of them, the last of which was a bucket of rebar offcuts that Spike dropped next to himself. “Okay,” he said, retrieving a piece of rebar and chewing on it like a candy cane. “Explain.”

Ember had already claimed the bowl of gems and finished half of it. “Explain what?”

“Really?” Spike asked, unamused. He made a show of looking around the table. “You can’t think of anything that needs explaining?”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Ember said with a mouthful of colorful gems. “This was your idea!”

Spike stared at her, unblinking. “What.”

“Oh come on!” Ember groused. “You don’t even pay attention to what you’re saying when you talk to me, do you? You said we’re supposed to show dragons by example that cooperation and honor and all that grit is better than rule of the biggest asshole, so I went out and got us some dragons to cooperate and do honor with! There’s gonna be so much honor in this tree that every dragon in the entire city will be jealous!”

There was so much to unpack in that declaration that Spike couldn’t even think where to begin. Quickly, he felt a headache coming on and decided that it wasn’t worth it. “Close enough, I guess,” he said, suppressing a groan. Looking around the table again, he shook his head. “I guess we’re starting a magic school, too?”

Ember blinked. “Oh, yeah! We should totally do that!”

— ✶ —

Twilight was having the best morning she’d had since the destruction of the Ponyville Palace. Admittedly, that wasn’t the most challenging metric to overcome, but that didn’t make it any less of a relief to be home and she very much wanted to hold onto that feeling.

“Come now, Twilight,” Luna chided with a well-intentioned chuckle. “You must eventually release me.”

“Dunwanna,” Twilight mumbled, sleepily rubbing her cheek into Luna’s side as she held on with a death-grip.

Luna let out a fond sigh, lightening up on her struggles in order to run a hoof down Twilight’s mane. “Really, now. There must be somewhere you have to be this morning, given your usual schedule.”

Twilight hesitated to say anything, but that was enough to get Luna’s attention

“Is there something wrong?” Luna asked, continuing to pet Twilight.

“I just feel so useless working on the palace,” Twilight admitted. “And it’s just going to be worse now that I could actually just dream the whole thing up in a day.”

“Well—” Luna began, but Twilight kept talking.

“I know that being productive isn’t the point and I get along with the ponies okay, I guess,” she continued, rambling a little. “And having this place set up relieves the immediate pressure of actually needing somewhere to relax, but I just… don’t think it’s the kind of ‘connect with the populace’ work that’s right for me.”

Luna hmmed. “Well, it is ultimately your choice. What about…?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. With how things are going, I don’t think we’re going to be able to drag Applejack any further into it either. We can’t get her used to the palace by including her in the project if we can’t even get her into the city.”

Luna blew a wisp of her ethereal mane away from her face with a huff. “Well, that is a pity, but it is what it is. Is there something else you’d rather do aside from lay abed all day?”

“Well…” Twilight gave it some thought. “Honestly, it might not be branching out as much as I probably should, but I liked being a librarian. It was a comparatively social job, and letting ponies come to me seems like a better choice overall.”

Luna remained quiet for a moment before she finally asked, “Can I please fire that damned mayor?”

“It’s an elected position,” Twilight casually reminded her. “But if you really want to, I think there are provisions for it. Even if you get rid of her, though, it won’t make much of a difference in the here and now. We don’t actually have a library any more and building a new one is a ways down the list of city projects.”

Luna tapped her chin with one hoof, thinking. “Is that a city project, though? I would think that, as you have yet still failed to actually dissolve the librararchy, such a project would fall entirely under the purview of thy nation.”

Twilight rolled her eyes at the mention of the librararchy. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would a new library have anything to do with the librararchy? It’s not like I own the blanket concept of an Equestrian library.”

Luna gave her a curious look with one eyebrow raised. “Did you think that I enumerated them? I believe the wording on the paperwork was ‘all the libraries in perpetuity.’”

Twilight returned Luna’s curious look with an incredulous one. “‘All the libraries in perpetuity?’” she asked. “You actually worded it like that?”

“That is what I said,” Luna confirmed.

Twilight curled up on the bed, burying her face in her hooves. “You’re telling me that my nation is founded on sloppy grammar?!”

“Is that really any different than it being based on sloppy lawmaking, as it already was?” Luna asked.

“…You might have a point,” Twilight admitted, relaxing and rolling over onto her back. “So, you think I could just raise a library?”

“You could, yes,” Luna sumized after some thought. “But I would not recommend it. In the end, a library is a public place and thus, belongs as much to the people as it does the nebulously legal foreign governmental entity that operates it. Getting the community involved would not be a bad thing.”

Twilight let out a huff of frustration. “Well, that just brings us back to square one, then, doesn’t it?”

Luna gave her a strange look with a hint of a smile. “I wonder if I haven’t spoiled you a little too much.”

Twilight blinked back, a little indignant at the accusation after her previous issues. “What do you mean?”

Luna pursed her lips. “Perhaps it is just a blind spot, then. Twilight, why not just select a temporary location for a library? In a normal, existing building. Perhaps one of the warehouses that are due for remodeling. Not everything must immediately be a unique, purpose-built building.”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, then continued, abashed. “In my defense, I’m friends with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Applejack.”

— ✶ —

As much as Twilight would have liked to keep Luna in bed all day, she eventually had to let go of her so they could both get started on their day. Even with the decision to give up on helping with the palace, it didn’t actually free up her immediate schedule. If anything, she’d have even more to do that day in order to put things in motion for her absence.

Even so, she still spent a good hour or so trying to come up with a way to have running water in her temporary home so she could have a nice long soak. It was good practice and more of a challenge than she’d expected. Creating simple, static environments seemed to be the dream magic equivalent of unicorn telekinesis. Creating things that not only behaved in a certain way, but actually behaved while so behaving was more work now than it had been in her dreams.

In the case of her attempt at indoor plumbing, getting the water running was actually the easiest part of it. Creating either an endless waterfall or shower both turned out to be equally easy, but it only seemed willing to exist in a constant state. If she shut the water off at the faucet, for example, it seemed to break the underlying dream logic, stopping the water entirely. She doubted this was an actual limitation on dream magic, so it must be the actual dream logic that her visualization was invoking, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what she was doing.

That said, working around that particular quirk was easy enough. Any mechanical assembly she could picture seemed to work fine, so all she had to do was divert the water to bypass the showerhead when the shower was ‘off.’ With that solved, the only thing left was coming up with somewhere for the draining water to go, and that was where she spent most of the hour trying to come up with something simple, clean and safe.

The little pocket-sized black hole she came up with was at least two out of three. She guessed she’d have to warn anypony mortal that the event horizon might eventually creep up past the shower grate, but that seemed like a minor issue at the moment. She’d figure out something better later on. She wanted to figure out portals pretty soon anyway.

— ✶ —

Something seemed different about the ex-library as Twilight approached it from above. It wasn’t the pile of burnt straw out back, though that was odd. No, there was just a certain kind of feeling telling her that something had changed.

Specifically, the feeling was in her ears, because whoever was inside was being quite loud and she could hear a number of them.

Not for the first time, Twilight was tempted to snoop, and it was all the more difficult this morning for how blatant they were being. It could always be a Pinkie Pie party, but from what she remembered of her records, those were fairly rare at nine in the morning.

Well, there was one perfectly honest and valid way to find out.

Twilight knocked.

A dragon answered.

She stared, the blood draining from her face. “Spike?”

He scratched the back of his neck like he always used to. “Yeah?”

She couldn’t help but fall to a seat in shock. “Luna is going to kill me,” she mumbled, looking up… and up and up and up at her once-baby dragon assistant. “I—I must have accidentally slowed time inside my bubble of dream magic.”

Slowly, five more heads poked out of the door to get a look at the goddess having a breakdown on the doorstep.

“And he has a harem now!” she whined. “I never even got to meet the girlfriend he was hiding and now there are five of them!”

One of the dragons frowned and asked, “What’s a harem?” while Spike covered his face and blushed.

“Well, ponies called them herds, back when that was the traditional thing,” Twilight automatically explained. “I don’t know what dragons call them, but… oh, Spike… I suppose it’s something to be proud of. How—how long has it been?”

Spike looked like he was in pain, which only made her worry about the answer even more. “You let me off early after lunch yesterday, so about twenty hours, I guess?”

Twilight cocked her head to the side and blinked. “Err… what?”

— ☾ —

Luna was startled by a flash from under her desk. Curious, she wheeled her chair back to find… “Twilight?” She felt herself blush at the idea of having her marefriend under her desk as she worked, though that probably wasn’t what Twilight had in mind.

Then again, she did look embarrassed, bordering on mortified, so Luna supposed that she couldn’t say for certain that she hadn’t been taken by some strange mood. “So, ah… what brings you to my office today, Twilight?”

“Oh, you know…” Twilight said, attempting to sound casual, her expression looking rather fixed. “I just decided that maybe I don’t really need to ever interact with this generation of ponies ever again after all. Or this generation of dragons. I’m just going to sit here and pretend I don’t exist for a thousand years.”

Luna tsked. “Come now Twilight, you should know better than that,” she chided. “A thousand years is not nearly enough time to outlive a generation of dragons.”

Twilight considered that for a moment. “Moon colony,” she suddenly declared.

“No!” Luna instantly rebuked. “Do not even joke about that! I’ll not have ponies walking all over me, treating me like a… a planet. I am no field to be ploughed!”

Twilight squirmed in place, chewing at her bottom lip. “So… how about just me, then?”

Luna’s blush returned, stronger than ever. “Twilight,” she said with a sigh. “I truly doubt that whatever happened is actually worth abandoning pony society for a far-off future.”

“I congratulated Spike on his harem!” Twilight blurted out.

Luna blinked. “Well, I suppose it is something to be proud of,” she reasoned.

“That’s what I said!” Twilight declared, vindicated if not for the fact that she was apparently embarrassed about it.

“So, what is the problem, then?” Luna asked. “Were you not eagerly awaiting the day that he introduced you to his housemate?”

“Well, yes, but…” Twilight went on to explain her mistake and the short exchange thereafter. “…So then I came straight here. Oh, he must be so—hey! Quit laughing!”

Indeed, Luna was having difficulty keeping her snickering to a minimum. “Ah, sorry, Twilight,” she said, not terribly apologetic at all. “Though this does remind me more of the sort of lighthearted problem you used to have when you were still writing my sister, which is preferable to the more recent sort.”

“Is it?” Twilight asked doubtfully. “I don’t recall ever having to deal with relationship problems before I—err—sorry, that came out wrong.”

The reminder stung, but Luna did her best not to let it show and it was becoming easier with each passing day. “I am curious, though. That is quite a change you described, even for a molt.”

Twilight perked up. “You’ve heard of it, then?”

“Mostly recently,” Luna clarified. “Though I vaguely recall it from the past, too. I wonder, though…”

Twilight looked curious. “You think you can explain the sudden change?”

“Well,” she said, considering it. “You said that there were several there, all the same age, yes?”

“I think so?” Twilight answered, a little uncertain. “It was a little hard to tell with how varied dragon morphology is, and I mostly saw their heads, but they all seemed to match pretty well, so that would be my guess.”

Luna nodded along as Twilight spoke. “Well, we know that the molt has a pheromonal component that normally functions to drive away competitors while the molting dragon establishes themselves, which predators have unfortunately adapted to seek out in search of vulnerable young. Pheromonal reactions can be strange at the best of times. What do you think might happen if, by some quirk of timing, biology or evolution, there was a sympathetic reaction instead?”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Six dragons, molting together, likely confined to a small space. Production of the hormones involved in the molt might go through the roof!”

“Yes, that was my thought as well,” Luna agreed.

Suddenly, Twilight’s ears flattened in distress. “Oh no. If that’s the case, who knows what other effects that mix of hormones could cause? If the molt is partially a nesting instinct, they might actually be bonded into some sort of harem that just formed overnight. They must be so confused! And I probably embarrassed them terribly! I… I have to go apologize!”

There was a flash, and Twilight was gone.

Luna blinked the spots out of her eyes.

Well, there wasn’t even the slightest amount of proof that any of that was what had actually happened, but hopefully it was close enough.

It was the sort of nested logic and blind guessing that had worked for figuring out Twilight’s ascension, after all.

— ✶ —

Twilight didn’t even knock this time, choosing instead to burst right through the front door into the ex-library. She was a little disappointed, then, to find only Spike, cleaning up what appeared to have been a large breakfast of decidedly non-breakfast items. Twilight chose to ignore all of that and flew forth to lift him up in a big hug. “Oh, Spike!” she cried out, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you in front of your awkward new harem!” It wasn’t until she was done apologizing that she realized that no actual lifting was happening. Slightly abashed, though nowhere near as much as she was for her previous behavior, she pushed herself back to leg’s length so she could get another look at him and guess at his response.

Mostly, he just stood there like a statue. Then he blushed. “Twilight! It—it—it’s not like that!” he insisted, backing away and glancing at the basement door. “They’re not—I don’t have a harem!”

Twilight drooped at his response. “Oh dear, I did it again, didn’t I? I’m sorry, Spike, I know that this is new for you. I mean, I know that now. I wish I’d known it ten minutes ago, or I wouldn’t have made such a fool of myself. It’s okay. You can call your multitude of live-in life partners whatever you want! I just want you to know that I’m here for you. I mean, how my relationship with Luna got started isn’t exactly something to emulate and I pretty much have my hooves full figuring out my own life, but I also unlocked my true power as a goddess yesterday, so if there’s anything you need, just ask!”

“…No, seriously,” Spike said. “It’s not a harem.”

“Right. Of course it isn’t,” Twilight agreed with sympathetic understanding. “In order for it to be an actual harem, there would have to be things involved that you might not be ready for, and that’s okay. It’s good that you’re taking things slow, though it’s also important to remember that you are an adult now and things can happen if you aren’t prepared. It’s no longer my place to tell you what you can or can’t do, but please, promise me that you’ll be responsible.”

Spike’s only response was a befuddled, “Uhh…” and his continuing blush.

“Good,” Twilight said, taking the slightest grunt for an agreement as parents are wont to do. “Now, like I said, I don’t actually have much romantic experience, but I do have experience being a relative introvert surrounded by five other mares, which I think is similar to your situation. The truth is, they’re probably going to push you into doing things that you never thought you’d do. That’s not a bad thing. It’s important to have people in your life that expand your horizons, but you also don’t want to let yourself get caught up in things that you’ll regret in hindsight. The best way to cope, I’ve found, is to not fight it. If there’s something you’re not ready for, then the best way to regain control is to be ready for it…”

— ✒ —

“…And that’s why it’s important that you be extra careful about hygiene now that you’re living closely with others. Showers are nice, but they really don’t compare to manifesting your entire body at least once a day. You can’t do that, obviously, but I could set you up with a perpetual lava pit in the basement if you like, which should be almost as good so long as you remember to wash behind your frills…”

Spike was in tartarus, he decided. He must be, or he wouldn’t be stuck listening to—”Wait, did you say you can set up a lava pit in the basement?”

Twilight had already moved on, but she quickly backtracked, recalling what she’d just said. “Oh, sure,” she confirmed. “That should be easy, I think. It’ll produce a lot of heat, but I should be able to deal with that somehow.” Suddenly, she visibly winced. “Worst case, I suppose I can use a—eugh—heat sink to keep it from getting out of hoof, but I’d really rather not resort to puns if I can help it.”

“Okay, hold on,” Spike said, not sure if he heard that right. “I’ve listened to you rant about magic for my entire life. Math, physics, biology and philosophy have all come up over the years. Theology, topology and archaeology too. There used to be books on a hundred different scientific fields on these shelves. ‘The Power of Puns’ was not one of them.”

“I think it was, actually, come to think of it,” Twilight said, tapping her hoof on her chin. “I never read it, but Pinkie Pie did. It was probably just a joke book, but with Pinkie Pie involved…”

Spike facepalmed at the scatterbrained response. Then he realized that it might not be so scatterbrained. “Twilight, did you… figure out how Pinkie Pie Pinkie Pies?”

Twilight blinked then glanced away nervously. “Well… I guess? But only technically, in a roundabout way. I told you ten minutes ago: I figured out how to goddess things properly, weren’t you listening?”

“How to… goddess things?” Spike asked, slack-jawed. He hadn’t thought that he could be any more surprised or distressed by anything this morning, but he’d obviously underestimated Twilight. “Are you… feeling okay Twilight? Do I need to go get Luna? Because goddess isn’t a verb, and the Twilight I know would never use it as one.”

“I’m a goddess,” Twilight declared primly, still looking away from Spike. “If I can make you a lava jacuzzi, I can turn words into verbs if I want…?”

“Really?” Spike asked, not having missed the slight questioning tone at the end of her declaration.

Twilight flushed slightly. “Fine,” she relented. “I just realized at the last moment how silly ‘unlocked my true power as a goddess’ sounded and I had to come up with something to replace it.”

It took a few minutes for Twilight to explain about what she was calling dream magic, and for once in his life, Spike was not only listening to what she was saying, but actually paying attention.

“So, you just flood the area with fi—I mean, magic, and then you can just do whatever you want?” he asked, making tentative connections to his own recent experiments with magic.

“Pretty much,” Twilight confirmed. “We didn’t have enough time this morning to figure why Luna has so much trouble with it. It might just be that she was using mortal earth pony methods, but that doesn’t feel right to me.”

“And it’s not because you’ve basically seeded the entire world with your magic by having stars buried everywhere, creating a hostile environment that actively rejects the magic of the other alicorns?” Spike asked, curious.

Twilight opened her mouth, froze and remained that way for several minutes.

Spike went to the kitchen to make himself a soda.