Chapter 15
— ✶ —
Rainbow Dash found everyone looking at her with varying levels of exasperation as she propped Fluttershy’s unconscious body back up in her seat. “What?”
The rainbow-maned Celestia cleared her throat. “Moving on,” she primly said. “I think we have cleared up the chain of circumstances that has brought us here. We have two injured dragons and one violent offender who is inexorably tied to one of his intended victims. The question is, where do we go from here?”
For a moment, no one said anything, so Twilight decided to get one thing out in the open. “Just to be clear, Fluttershy did nothing wrong and shouldn’t be punished.”
“Punished?!” Rainbow Dash squawked. “Why would she be punished?”
“I just said she shouldn’t be, Rainbow,” Twilight rebuked.
“I’m not certain that I understand,” the fiery-maned Celestia said. “Are you saying that you believe she normally would be punished for something, or are you saying that this burden of dominion over a dragon that tried to kill her not once, but twice, is a punishment that she should not be required to bear?”
“The former,” Luna surmised, looking to Twilight for confirmation, which she got. “She did, after all, force her will on another, but the fact that she did so in a medical emergency mitigates almost all of this.”
“Almost?” Twilight asked.
Luna nodded. “I would say that, given the situation and the knowledge she possessed at the time, her actions were entirely justified. Now that we understand the true ramifications of her actions, however, I would not rule the same way a second time.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Twilight guessed, glancing at Fluttershy, who was slumped over onto the table. “I very much doubt that she’s in any way happy with this, which leaves us with the problem as was mentioned, that she should not be required to be this dragon’s jailer.”
“It won’t be a problem,” came Fluttershy’s thin and reedy voice from the figure on the other side of the table, curling her forelegs around her head. “I… I won’t ever do it again.”
“That may be for the best,” the rainbow-maned Celestia said with quiet solemnity. “Though as Twilight said, that leaves us with what to do going forward.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Fluttershy all but whispered.
Luna and the Celestias immediately all glanced in the direction of the window, though there was nothing to see from their angle. Twilight took a little longer to understand that something had happened to remove the dragon from the equation. “Oh, no.”
Suddenly, half the table was in the process of getting up, when Fluttershy said with a wheezy voice that Twilight realized meant she had been crying. “Don’t. Please don’t go outside. I’ll… I’ll clean it up.”
“The hell with that!” Rainbow Dash shouted and shot up out of her seat, only to have Fluttershy grab her by the foreleg.
“No,” Fluttershy insisted, pulling with both hooves on Rainbow Dash’s foreleg, forcing her to sit or risk hurting Fluttershy by losing control of her manifestation. “There are some things you can’t unsee, Dash.”
Rainbow Dash wavered, looking uneasily at the window, but she rallied herself. “Well, you shouldn’t have to, either! Look at you! You’re shaking!”
Fluttershy was shaking… but she was also shaking her head. “It’s not… that,” she said, gesturing outside with her head. “I don’t mind the blood. It’s that he did it because of what I did to him. I put him in a position where he had to decide between his life and his autonomy.”
“You can’t think like that, Shy,” Rainbow Dash insisted. “You wouldn’t be you if you were the kind of pony to just let someone die if you had the ability to stop it.”
Fluttershy turned away. “At least he would have died naturally.”
“By taking a lightning bolt to the face?” Rainbow Dash asked, then corrected herself, “Chest. Heart. Whatever.”
Fluttershy let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, Rainbow Dash. By taking a lightning bolt to the face. There aren’t very many ways to die that I wouldn’t choose over clawing my own heart out… or… not my heart, from his perspective.”
Rainbow Dash gulped, looking a little green as she took yet another glance at the now more ominous seeming window. “Is that… That’s really…?”
A white hoof descended on Rainbow Dash’s shoulder. It was the Rainbow-maned Celestia. “It is best you not ask. It truly is a sight that would not easily leave you.”
Fluttershy looked briefly startled, then she slumped. “That’s right. You can see anything the light touches, can’t you? You’ve seen it, then. I’m sorry.”
The other Celestia, the one with the fiery mane, had to walk behind the others to reach Fluttershy. Mimicking her sister, she placed her hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “There is nothing to apologize for. Believe it or not, I have seen worse.”
“Oh, I know,” Fluttershy said, calming down a little from the contact. “Nature is… nature. Like I said, it isn’t that that bothers me.”
“Be that as it may, there is no need for you to bear this alone, or at all,” she told Fluttershy. “I can deal with it in a much quicker and simpler manner.”
Fluttershy blinked, then flushed in embarrassment. “Oh. Yes, I suppose the other dragons wouldn’t appreciate it if the body was… um… scavenged. Do dragons cremate their dead, then?”
“Ah, no,” Luna admitted. “Not exactly.”
Twilight, for her part, winced. “Do you remember how the second two reacted to the lightning burns on their brother?” she prompted.
Fluttershy’s ears flattened. “Oh. Yes, I do. Um. Is this what you call… sending a message, then?”
“Is that the message we want to send, though?” Twilight asked.
The fiery-maned Celestia shook her head. “Actually, no,” she admitted. “But I believe it would be preferable to the message we would be sending if we returned to them the remains of a dragon who had clawed his own heart out.”
“Ah,” Twilight said, a shiver running down her back at the mention of his fate. “Good point.”
Fluttershy shuffled in her seat before speaking up. “If I can ask… how do dragons deal with their dead?”
It was the fiery-haired Celestia again, who answered. “For the most part, they do not.”
Twilight frowned, and said, “I don’t know if I can believe that. They might not have industry, but they aren’t animals. Even goats and cows honor their dead.”
“There are several factors to remember, Twilight,” Luna said, speaking up. “First, contrary to the events of today, dragons are, in fact, very difficult to kill, and simply do not die very often.
“Second, through not dying, dragons tend to grow very large, and the largest of them eventually become part of the landscape, trading flesh and bone for the rock and earth on which they feed. These ancient dragons sleep for longer and longer until eventually, they go to sleep and do not wake. It is not true death, but for those left behind, there is little distinction.
“It is quite understandable, then, that the practice of letting dragons rest as they died is as much a part of their culture as letting them die as they rest. Of course, it is also not uncommon to bury them or throw them in the nearest volcano, for those where such things are practical, but, again, such cases only rarely arise.”
Fluttershy closed her eyes, let her head drop and said, “I see.”
“Actually,” Spike spoke up from where he was sitting in a chair near the kitchen, holding his own cup of tea. “There, uh, might be another option?”
Luna frowned, clearly attempting to recall anything else she might have heard or seen. Apparently coming up blank, she glanced over at her sisters, but they shook their heads.
“Is this something that one of your harem mentioned, Spike?” Twilight asked, curious. Obviously, information directly from a modern dragon would be the most reliable.
The rainbow-maned Celestia cocked her head. “Spike has a harem?” she interjected.
“I do not have a harem,” he vehemently insisted.
Luna’s lips slipped into a smirk, “You do realize, Spike, that it is more normal for males to claim the existence of a harem and for others to disbelieve it?”
The rainbow-maned Celestia left Rainbow Dash’s side to walk over to him, apparently ignoring his byplay with Luna. “You have my congratulations,” she told him in a formal manner, dipping her head to him in the slightest of bows. As she lifted her head, she looked over him and frowned, commenting. “You are taller than I remember. Candesca? Can you…?”
Twilight’s eyes widened and Luna’s head jerked up at the sound of what had to be a name. As fast as she could, Twilight lit her horn and cast a spell, preventing anypony from making a sound in hopes of the clearly distracted Celestias letting slip the other one.
The fiery-maned Celestia revealed to be named Candesca quickly joined her sister by her side and just as quickly joined her in frowning. “He is,” she confirmed furrowing her brow. “Oh dear.” She looked back to the table of ponies, double-checking something. “Everypony here is immortal. I hadn’t realized… This must be at least a hundred years of growth.”
“At least,” the rainbow-maned Celestia agreed.
“This is bad, Corona,” Candesca said, sounding scared while Luna, with a glow of magic around her hooves, silently shot out of her chair, and celebrated. “Very bad. It would be problematic enough to lose a century, but searching my memories from before our genesis, I can’t think of anywhere the missing years could fit. They’re still working on Twilight’s tower, aren’t they?”
The rainbow-maned Celestia named Corona chewed at her lip. “Well, it is government work?” she suggested. “That probably wasn’t the best idea, in hindsight.”
“Vindication!” Twilight cried, breaking the silence spell and throwing her hooves in the air as everypony else’s muffled snickers and outright laughs suddenly became audible. Immediately, something else occurred to her, and she shouted, “Double vindication!”
Corona and Candesca turned to share a look, then craned their neck back to look at the table of laughing ponies. “Ah,” Candesca said. “I believe we have been had.”
“Double vindication?” Luna queried. “You are referring to your sour grapes about the palace deconstruction on the one hoof, I assume. What, then, is the second factor?”
“Proving that it’s completely normal to see Spike after his molt and assume that a hundred years have passed,” Twilight declared with pride.
Luna considered this for a moment before calling judgement, “Fair enough.”
“Would somepony please explain what is going on?” Candesca asked. “You’re saying that this,” she gestured at Spike, “is the result of a molt?”
“That is the only explanation we have,” Luna agreed. “We believe it has something to do with—”
“—The harem that was mentioned,” Corona concluded for her. “Yes, I can see how that might happen. A uniquely fascinating situation that would unfortunately not be sustainable for dragons as a whole.”
“Unfortunately?” Twilight Sparkle asked, curious. “I don’t recall you—or, um, Celestia?—ever promoting harems, no matter what ponies say about the Royal Guard. In fact, I think Celestia was generally against it.”
“In the general sense, I am,” Corona agreed. “At least, as most would describe it. Similar to responsibility, it is rarely the one who wants it that should have it, especially when such a person mistakes either one as a mandate to impose their own self-interest on others.”
Twilight considered that. “So it’s because he didn’t go looking for it that you approve?”
“Yes,” Corona confirmed. “I would not even say that Spike has a harem.”
“Thank you,” Spike exclaimed.
Corona smiled briefly at Spike. “Rather, it is a… Hmm. I am not certain what the appropriate collective noun for a group of dragons would be, and that is the problem.”
Twilight and Luna both stifled their private chuckles while attempting to maintain looks of polite interest.
Corona raised an eyebrow at their behavior but she continued to speak. “Dragons are largely solitary, but I have always believed that they would be better off with stronger family ties. I would be very interested to see how this… den of dragons develops.”
Spike froze, his previous relief turning brittle. “Uhh…”
Corona, however, was caught up in her thoughts, nodding to herself. “In fact, I believe that I would like to sponsor them in some manner, don’t you think, Candesca?”
Candesca, was not quite as enthused, but seemed to approve after giving it some thought. “Yes. It wouldn’t hurt to have a good example for other dragons to follow.” She scratched at her chin with a cloven hoof.
Spike gave a weak, “But…”
“Of course, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you or any of the girls you have found yourself with, Spike,” Corona reassured him. “But I would appreciate it if you would at least consider broaching the subject to them? That is, if you think there is any chance that they would be interested.”
Spike grimaced. “I think I can safely say that… Tinder, at least, will be absolutely thrilled.”
“Ah, yes,” Corona said, her ears perking up. “You were going to mention something we might do about the… unpleasantness outside. Is it this ‘Tinder’ who spoke of it?”
“Um, yeah. Tinder,” he said, scratching the back of his neck and mumbling, “Not that I even know the others’ names…”
“We are open to suggestions, though I recommend we not delay too much longer. Corona has cast an illusion for now, but—” Suddenly, Candesca stopped mid-sentence, blinked and cursed, “Oh fie.”
Those words immediately got everyone’s attention. “Has something happened?” Luna asked.
Corona’s eyes went white for a brief moment, but she came back uncertain. “I do not see anything out of the ordinary. Candesca, what—oh.” In one breath, she deflated. “Fie indeed.”
Frustrated, Twilight turned to Fluttershy, but the demigoddess was clearly as clueless as the rest of them.
Ironically, or so it seemed to Twilight, it was Rainbow Dash that clued the rest of them in. “Their names,” she said. “They just realized they’ve been using their names for the last five minutes.”
“Indeed,” Corona confirmed with a bit of a sulk.
“Well, since that has been spoiled, I suppose we ought to do it properly,” Candesca said, standing straighter, though it was Corona who actually took the lead.
“Celestia Corona,” the so-named alicorn with a rainbow-mane announced with a bow.
“Celestia Candesca,” her fiery-maned sister followed.
Luna hmmed and said, “I approve,” before looking to Twilight to see her response. Twilight, however, was looking back at Luna with a certain level of consideration. “What?” Luna asked.
Twilight smirked. “Oh, nothing,” she assured her marefriend. “I’ve just realized that we’ve gone from me being the only alicorn with two names, to you being the only alicorn with just one.”
Luna gave a single breath of laughter. “I suppose that is amusing,” she agreed, though Twilight didn’t let her smirk lessen one bit.
Luna eyed Twilight with some trepidation. “What? Why are you—” suddenly, she stopped, then followed up with a flat, “No. Absolutely not. Twilight, I love you, but I am not taking your second name. You hardly even use it yourself.”
Spike loudly cleared his throat, interrupting their byplay. “So, uh… about the thing?”
Luna took the out gladly while Twilight put on a show of pouting—not that she had been at all serious.
“I guess you could say it came from Tinder…” he said, then hesitated. After a moment of visibly waffling over a decision, he shrugged and clarified, “She… actually has a book about some old dragon empire. Like, old old.”
Twilight’s eyes lit up at hearing that. “She has a book on the dragon empires?! Do you think she would let me borrow it?”
Spike’s immediate reaction of wincing dashed all of Twilight’s hopes. “She’s very… ownership-oriented?” he hedged.
“That is unfortunate,” Celestia Candesca said. “But that is a matter for another time. What is it this book says about the funerary arrangements of the dragon empire?”
“Well, it’s…” he really didn’t seem too fond of the idea himself. “Basically what Fluttershy was going to do? I mean,” he quickly amended, “I don’t know if they let animals do it or anything, but they basically strip it down to the bone and save the… uhh…”
“The skull?” Twilight provided, easily guessing the obvious. “That’s not too different from some of the old pony traditions, actually.”
“Sorry, it sounds really bad actually hearing it out loud,” Spike admitted. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just that Tinder has this way of getting super excited about the weirdest things, so it came up…”
“No, no,” Twilight reassured him. “I think it’s a good idea, actually. It can’t be more insulting than cremation, and it’s less fragile than an urn would be, too. I think we should do it. Anyone else?”
“It sounds reasonable,” Celestia Corona said. “But are we sure that Fluttershy can even do this? Dragons are truly resilient creatures, and their magic lingers even after death. I fear that even a team of bears would have little effect on a dragon this size.”
“I’m sure I could produce some tools that would do the job,” Twilight offered, though she was a little wary. Luna had warned her once about manifesting a weapon out of herself, and this was very similar.
Twilight paused at that thought. Actually, what was the difference between manifesting armor out of stars and manifesting other things out of her magic? Obviously, her stars actually produced magic but—
“Um… I don’t think there will be a problem,” Fluttershy said just as the room went dark and a low rumbling could be heard.
Everyone got up and slowly approached the window.
Everyone but Rainbow Dash, that is.
“Rainbow?” Twilight prompted.
“Nope!” Rainbow Dash said, crossing her arms and hunching down in her seat and maybe a little closer to Fluttershy, ironically. “I have enough nightmares about flesh eating beetles from reading Daring Do and the Scarab Scabbard. I do not need to see the real thing.”
“Rainbow,” Twilight said, exasperated. “We just learned that you are literally the world’s most powerful bug zapper!”
“I don’t care,” Rainbow Dash retorted. “I’m not looking and you can’t make me.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Alright, fine,” she said and joined the others at the window. When she finally got there, she stopped next to Luna and… stared. “Um. Well. Fortunately it’s not flesh-eating beetles?”
“So it’s something worse?” Rainbow Dash asked from her place at the table.
“Ehhh…” Twilight rocked her hoof from side to side. “Kinda?”
Rainbow Dash tried not to, but eventually gave in and had to ask. “Alright, what is it? What could possibly do… that… to a dragon?”
Twilight gulped. “Well, they’re…” she glanced at the others, hoping someone else would say it.
“Fuzzy,” Celestia Corona provided.
“Yellow,” Celestia Candesca added.
“Carnivorous,” Luna pointed out.
Leaving Twilight to finally say, “Parasprites.”
Rainbow Dash’s head hit the table and said, “I shouldn’t have asked,” she said. “I really should not have asked.”
— ✶ —
“This really is a mess,” Twilight groaned, slumped over next to Luna on a couch that smelled like racoons. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were still at the table, while the Celestias remained at the window, impassively watching the tail end of the… clean up.
“We spent so much time dancing around what to do with the… body and its condition… that we never actually addressed what it actually means,” she said, growing more uneasy as it really sank in. “Reduced to the bear essentials—we killed someone today. Someone who wasn’t even a danger to any of us.”
Luna pulled Twilight closer with her wing around Twilight’s back. “You didn’t know that,” Luna reassured her. “And more importantly, neither did he.”
“More importantly?” Twilight asked, slightly incredulous. “If he’d known what his actual chances were, he might not have been so eager to attack us.”
“Yes, but he did attack,” Luna explained. “And he did so violently and repeatedly. The fact that he believed to the end that he outclassed us, and he still did what he did, means that, though a non-violent solution would have been preferable, his death is also not a great loss. In fact, if this is the character and calibre of dragon that the dragon lord is purposefully sending into Equestria to search for his daughter, this might be a more serious problem than we’ve been treating it as.”
Twilight thought about it and realized, “You’re right. It’s only one… but the other two didn’t really act any differently beforehoof. What are we going to do when they wake up and become violent because their brother is dead? We need to make sure this stops here and now.”
“Okay,” Luna said. “How?”
Twilight’s head drooped. “I have no idea. Find the dragon lord’s daughter and return her?” she scoffed. “Even if we knew that to be the right decision, which I have doubts about, that would still leave us full up on dragons anyway. Things could get ugly very quickly.”
Luna reached up and bopped Twilight on the tip of her horn. “Don’t get all fatalist on me now, Twilight, it’s not nearly so bad as you’re thinking. It’s true that we have had some difficulty with the dragons that have come to Equestria, but as the pony whose job it is to mediate disputes and pass laws to prevent them in the future, I can tell you that, if nothing else, they are trying. Even if they were drawn here by my sisters’ magic, they are here because they want to be, and that goes a long way to smoothing things over. Far from being one day from violent unrest, many of them were quite dissatisfied with things back in the dragonlands are looking for a new start here,” she explained.
Twilight sighed, and then chuckled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the old, jaded one?”
“I was,” she admitted, leaning into Twilight’s side, leaving the rest unspoken.
They sat that way for a while, but Twilight inevitably gave in to the urge to plan things out. “I guess, if there’s anything about this situation to take from all that, it’s that we should definitely make sure we have a Celestia on hoof when they wake up, and you probably agree that we should leave the issue with the dragon lord’s daughter be?”
“To the latter, that depends,” Luna demurred. “Most likely, yes, but it would not do to simply assume a situation we know nothing about. It might be that some of those fleeing here have foalnapped her and are holding her hostage in order to prevent the dragon lord from acting against them. We know not her age, her temperament, her ideals or anything about her.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Twilight agreed. “Just because we know her father’s an asshole doesn’t mean she isn’t an asshole too. In fact, it’s likely.”
Across the room, Spike choked on his tea.
Luna weighed Twilight’s words for a moment before saying “Close enough” and following it up with a shrug. “As to having a Celestia on hoof when the dragons awake… actually, I am surprised that they have not yet done so, but dragons have a strange relationship with sleep at the best of times. At this rate, I think it will make more sense to do things the other way around.”
“The other way around?” Twilight asked. “You mean, make sure the Celestias have them around?”
Luna nodded in the affirmative. “Once dusk comes around, you should have little difficulty transporting them to Canterlot. It would be the smart thing to do anyway, as we will all be there anyway for the coronation tomorrow.”
Twilight froze. “Wait, the coronation is tomorrow?!”
Luna was perplexed. “Yes? You are the one who received the invitations, are you not?”
“There is a reason I make checklists!”
— ✶ —
In spite of Twilight’s panic over the date of the coronation having snuck up on her, there wasn’t actually much that she had to do to prepare for it. Or anything, really. All she had to do was be there, though there were a few minor issues of scheduling involved in going with the rest of the girls as a group.
None of this prevented her from panicking about it.
“Twilight, calm down,” Spike said, shaking his head. “You’re just going to Canterlot for a day trip. It isn’t as if you can even get worked up about seeing Princess Celestia since she’s right over there,” he said, pointing at the two white lizard-alicorns by the window. “Both of her.”
“Calm down?” Twilight repeated. “That’s easy for you to say! It’s not like you have five other…” Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized that Spike did have five others to consider.
Spike immediately figured out where her mind was going and he didn’t appear to like it one bit. “Oh, no,” Spike said. “Twilight, no. There’s no need for them to come. They probably wouldn’t be interested.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Spike,” Twilight chided him. “They’re dragons. Of course they’d be interested in the coronation of the ones whose power drew them here.”
“Twilight,” he said, putting his claws together as if he were praying. “I seriously don’t even know their names! This is a terrible idea!”
Twilight reconsidered. Spike’s opinions did usually turn out to be well-reasoned and she hated to push him into anything he didn’t want to do, but… “Spike, think of it this way. How would it look if I didn’t invite them? And I don’t mean to the public. Buck the public. Think of how it’d look to them.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ll understand I don’t have tickets for them for an event taking place a day after I’ve met them,” Spike deadpanned.
“So you’d rather start your relationship with them by lying?” Twilight asked.
Spike crossed his arms and looked down on Twilight, since he could do that now. “That’s low, Twilight. Why are you so invested in this, really?”
“Um… I really want to meet your harem—I mean, your den?” she tried, but her uncertainty ruined it before it even had a chance.
“And the real, real reason?” he asked.
Twilight puffed up her cheeks and pouted. “Fine! The more I worry about your problems, the less time I have to worry about my problems!” she admitted.
“You don’t have any problems!”
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10117117
Noted, though I have some bad news for you about Chapter 15…
10117129
actually chapter 15 was better done and easier to follow, I was able to fairly easily sus out what happened and the jump cut at the end was a little jarring but not to bad, all in all better flow than 14
These two chapters. These. Two. Chapters.
I’ll admit that I’m actually feeling a little lightheaded from how long and how hard I was laughing, but I need to ask: are you sure this is still a romance and not a farce?
Heh
So Torch will crash the coronation and demand his daughter back, Ember will reveal herself and refuse, give the Ring of Ashmund to Spike while declaring him the Emperor as well as her mate?
HA Spike's suffering is sweet nectar to me...I want more!
And another nice pair of chapters. :)
10 out of 10.
10117663
And the four others as his concubines.
10117260
It cant be both?
10117663
right up to the point where she gives spike the ring, nope she keeps that for herself usest it to turn her dad into a hatchling spanks him senseless, declairs herself ruler of all dragons and takes spike as her bound concubine...which she ocasionly shares with the other 4....
I'm looking forward to Ember asking Spike what a "hair-rim" is.
There's really only one answer, here. A Destruction of Dragons. As in, "they'll drive Spike to..."
Or you could go for the mundane, domestic option. So not-dragonish.
Shouldn't Celestia be tagged twice?
10126738
I would love to be able to do so, but, unfortunately, that is not how the tagging system works (barring Principal Celestia, which would be incorrect to include)
Speaking of tags, hrm…
10117260
You have a point, actually. I'm not sure if the romance tag is appropriate for the story as it stands.
Then again, Sharing the Night did take a while to get to any actual romance bits, too…
What an absolutely magnificent story. I love it so much and its one of the original fics series I followed into the fandom. Thanknyou so much
Damn! I caught up and have to wait with everyone else for more. Oh well. Loving the story, and dying of laughter every time someone makes a blunt observation and breaks Twilight's brain.
I think a group of dragons is/should be called a flight.
So... just how dragon-y are the Celestias, exactly? In appearance, that is. Only a bit of scales or some other small feature? Something more? Not at all?
I feel like this was addressed but I just can't seem to remember.
10191230
The best description of a group of dragons I've heard is a thunder of dragons from the Inheritance cycle.
I'm partial to "a conflagration of dragons", myself.