Sharing the Nation

by Cast-Iron Caryatid

Chapter 21

— ⭗ ✹ —

Sitting with her twin sister on the sidelines of a children’s party, Celestia Corona felt as if she’d lost control of her life. “What are we doing here, Candesca?”

“You are the one who delegated the entire matter of the event organization to Pinkie Pie,” Candesca reminded her.

“I rather think that dealing with everything that just happened takes precedent, don’t you?” Corona said.

“Yes,” Candesca admitted, sipping punch out of a paper cup with yellow, orange and red balloons on it. “But I’m informed that one does not go back on their word with Pinkie Pie, and you have to admit, the fact that there is cake and a definite lack of hooves to shake automatically makes it more pleasant than most of the events in my memory.”

Corona let out the weary sigh of someone who just… what was it the fillies say these days? Ah, yes. She could not ‘even.’ Giving in, she levitated a small plate over from the desserts table, stabbed the sponge cake with a plastic fork and took a large bite.

“You realize, of course, that it is not the party that has you upset,” Candesca asserted. “We could be discussing any number of things right here. It doesn’t take a stuffy room and twenty ponies to make a plan of action.”

“No, but it takes ponies to enact them,” Corona grumbled, stuffing her face full of more cake.

“It does say something about us that we have been in power for so long that we’ve forgotten how to get anything done without resorting to orders and royal decrees,” Candesca mused, to which Corona gave a huff.

“It’s more than just that!” she snapped, crushing her empty paper plate in her magic and grabbing another one. “We aren’t talking about things one can do with their hooves. Every day, more ponies flee at the sight of us. Do we even lead this country anymore? How can we claim to do so when our castle is all but empty?”

“We can only lead the willing, sister,” Candesca reminded Corona. “They may be few, but they do exist. Just look at the events of today. Things didn’t go so badly, did they?”

“Didn’t go—!” Corona stopped herself and took a deep, calming breath. “No, they did not go badly,” she admitted, settling down. “Yet it seems as if we have facilitated a coup of a foreign power without even ordering it.”

Candesca paused a moment in the process of sipping her punch. “Ah, you noticed that, did you?”

“The sudden appearance of a forty-story tall dragon was difficult to miss!” Corona quietly hissed, doing her best not to attract any attention.

Candesca was calmer, but no more happy about it. Still, she played discord’s advocate for her sister. “So it’s certain that it’s the same ring? She called it something else.”

“You recognized it just as well as I did,” Corona responded, rolling her eyes. “You’d have done so even if she hadn’t used it.”

“I didn’t, though, until she used it,” Candesca said, and asked, “Did you?”

Corona shook her head and grabbed another plate of cake. “I must admit that I was a bit distracted at the time, and hardly expected the difference in size.”

“I suppose that we will have to talk to Spike about it, then. That is not a conversation that I will be looking forward to.”

Corona’s face softened at that. “No, it isn’t. Theft is theft, and it would not be a kindness to let it slide.”

“And yet here we stand, celebrating a trio of star-stealing cutie marks,” Candesa reflected.

Corona prevented herself from looking too displeased by shoving nearly an entire slice of cake in her mouth. “Ahem. Indeed. It is fortunately not our place to get involved in that,” she said, looking over to where Twilight and Luna were talking. “Do you think that’s what they’re talking about?”

“What else could it be?”

— ✶ —

Luna was wearing a smile that looked like it had been left out in the sun to dry into a stiff mockery of the real thing. “I did not see you telling Pinkie Pie ‘no,’ Twilight.”

Twilight quickly copied Luna’s smile for a brief moment as the… ex(?) Cutie Mark Crusaders walked by with paper plates piled with cake. Once they were gone, the pasted on smile turned into a grimace. “You don’t ever tell Pinkie Pie that you don’t want to go to one of her parties. Besides, she has a point; a cuteceñera is a once-in-a-lifetime event. It’d be a shame to ruin it.”

“Wise words,” Luna said, looking over to where the mare in question was setting up a special game of Pin the Tail on the Pony for the trio of fillies involving their new cutie marks instead of the traditional tail. “And what of the cause for this celebration? I imagine it would rather ruin the mood if you suggested that they give back what they stole, and yet three fillies with that kind of power…”

That was, admittedly, an issue, and Twilight said nothing for a good ten seconds before she finally responded, “…I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Luna raised an eyebrow at that.

“Don’t give me that look,” Twilight said and proceeded to defend her lack of reaction. “At least this way they won’t have to hire a pegasus carriage to bring Apple Bloom into the city after Applejack moved her farm out into the mountains. I swear, that mare has only gotten more stubborn since I made her a demigoddess.”

Luna shook her head. “And I’m sure your arguments with Applejack over immortality have nothing to do with it.”

Twilight cringed. “Actually no. That’s not a conversation between the two of them that I want to be a part of.” Just from the look on Luna’s face, Twilight could tell that she agreed, at least about that.

“Still,” Luna said. “Are you really going to condone that set of cutie marks?”

Twilight looked over to the game of Pin the Mark on the Pony that the fillies were playing. “…It’s probably fine,” she repeated. “And even if it wasn’t, there really isn’t a whole lot that I could do about it.”

“You are the goddess of the stars,” Luna countered. “There is quite a lot that you could do about it.”

Twilight was silent for a moment. “Okay, point. There may be a lot that I can do about it, but there isn’t a little that I could do about it. My options are to either cripple or kill them, and those aren’t options.”

Luna grimaced. “No, but you could at least prevent them from becoming immortal.”

“Can I?” Twilight asked. “Because, again, Scootaloo has a cutie mark for stealing stars. I imagine if I took back their excess, she’d just go get more and that’s not a game I want to start playing.”

“If you leave her be, she will be stealing stars regardless,” Luna pointed out. “You were listening to her joyous ramblings, were you not?”

“I was,” Twilight said. “And she might have a point, you know.”

That seemed to surprise Luna. “Really?”

“You probably don’t know this,” Twilight said. “But for as long as I’ve known about her, Scootaloo has had a condition that prevented her from flying. Her wings are small, sure, but after years and years of trying, she more than makes up for it in beats-per-minute. The problem was always her magic.

“Look how light she is on her hooves now, though,” Twilight said, gesturing with her horn at Scootaloo hopping towards the picture on the wall, blindfolded, with Rainbow Dash cheering her on. “I don’t think she’s properly realized it yet, but she’s not going to have any problems getting into the sky any more. How could she, with as much magic as that star has?”

“That… is a much better answer,” Luna said, her eyes following the bouncing filly with a small smile.

“You changed your mind fast,” Twilight said, but Luna shook her head.

“I didn’t disagree in the first place,” Luna claimed. “They are your stars to do with as you wish. I just didn’t wish to see you forced into something you don’t want.”

Twilight chewed at her lip, looked over to her and asked, “Do you still miss them?”

Luna blinked in stunned silence at the question. “After everything we both went through over them, you ask that?”

“Feelings are complicated,” Twilight said. “You’re allowed to be conflicted on the subject.”

“I told you before, Twilight,” Luna said, laying her wing over Twilight and pulling her closer. “They’re right here.”

— ✒ —

Though it was actually fairly short, the party seemed to drag on from Spike’s perspective, though to his relief, it did eventually come to an end.

With the amount of power that Pinkie Pie had these days, that wasn’t actually a given.

Still, normally he would have felt guilty for wanting to skip out on a Pinkie party, but between Slag’s injury and Ember having just declared herself empress, he thought it was fair that his heart wasn’t really in it.

Just as he was excusing himself to go find Ember and the others, though, he found himself cornered by all four alicorns. Given his distraction, he could also be forgiven for forgetting that this conversation was coming.

“Hold a moment, Spike,” Corona said, placing herself between him and the door. “I believe we have something to talk about.”

Previously, he would have found four alicorns all looming over him rather intimidating, but eye to eye… actually, it didn’t help. He still felt like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he wasn’t even sure what it was that they wanted to talk about.

“Would you care to explain how it is that a certain young dragoness appears to have come into possession of the Dragon Emperor’s Toe-Ring?” she asked.

“Come to think of it, it does sound like the artifact you described,” Luna observed.

“The Dragon Emperor’s what now?” Twilight asked, apparently not having been filled in on the subject of this conversation.

“The Dragon Emperor’s Toe Ring was something that was discovered in the mountains of the minotaur lands seven hundred years ago, still worn by the petrified form of its previous owner,” Candesca explained. “It was an intricately carved band that you could ride a small cart through, and according to local legend, possessed the ability for a dragon that was wearing it to be as old or as young as they desired.”

“A legend that apparently understated the truth of the matter,” Candesca added. “We had the ring rushed to Ponyville as part of a last-ditch effort to send Astri to Tartarus before you rendered the matter moot.”

“I see,” Twilight said, looking to Spike as she considered the situation before her attention shifted to Luna. “And I suppose that in all the mess surrounding the destruction of the tower, it got put away and forgotten with all the salvage?”

“I honestly couldn’t say,” Luna admitted. “But that does sound likely.”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, nothing we can do about it, I suppose.”

The Celestias stood blinking at the casual response. “What do you mean there’s nothing we can do?” Corona said, sounding oddly peeved for one of the Celestias. “The ring was stolen!”

“I doubt that,” Twilight said, causing Corona to sputter in disbelief. “I probably gave it to him.”

“You what?!” Corona asked. “What do you mean you probably gave it to him?”

Luna, who’d had her brow furrowed, suddenly perked up. “That’s right. I remember those papers passing my desk a few days ago. You gave Spike the pick of the salvage stored in site A, didn’t you?”

“He needed new furniture,” Twilight said, nodding in a self-satisfied manner as if that explained everything. “Though with the current situation, I can’t imagine they’ll be staying in the old library—oh! I didn’t think of that! I can build them a proper lair and then move back into the old library!”

Corona’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t reward him for this!”

“Why not?” Twilight asked.

Luna shrugged. “It was quite clever.”

“It’s not like we had any other use for it,” Twilight pointed out. “He’s pretty much the most trusted dragon in Equestria, isn’t he?”

Luna nodded.

Candesca placed a hoof on Corona’s withers to calm her down, but the rainbow-maned alicorn shook her off. “Twilight. He gave a powerful magical ring to a foreign national.”

Twilight was nodding as if this was quite the normal thing to do when she suddenly gasped. “Ohmygosh, you’re right!” she said, her eyes widening in realization as she turned to Spike and chastised him.

“Spike! How could you get engaged without telling me?!”

“I—buh—what?” Spike stammered.

— ⭗ ✹ —

“Please tell me that didn’t just happen,” Corona pleaded, massaging her temples with her hooves just down the hall from where the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ cuteceñera was still winding down.

“We taught them well, didn’t we?” Candesca said, pulling her sister up onto her hooves and leading her into a quiet side room.

“What do you mean?” Corona asked with a frown.

Candesca eyed her sister with a slight amount of disbelief. “You do remember being the one to instigate such games in the past, don’t you? We used to be quite playful in how we approached our duties.”

“That was different,” Corona insisted. “We…”

“We were the ones in control of the situation,” Candesca finished the thought for her. “It always is more enjoyable when you are the one having fun at others’ expense.”

“But—”

“Be honest, Corona,” Candesca said, returning her hoof to her sister’s withers. “If Twilight as a young filly had managed to requisition something in the vaults from right under your nose, how would you have reacted?”

Corona felt the corners of her mouth twitch up in the ghost of a smile before could force herself to keep a straight face. “I… maybe,” she admitted. “But if it was the hammer of Baron Gloryhoof and she gave it back to the minotaurs…”

“If she gave it to a young minotaur who was as driven to redeeming his race as much as that young dragoness is to see her people civilized, you’d consider it a fine time to let it back out into the world,” Candesca said and, well… she wasn’t wrong.

Corona sighed and didn’t speak for a while. “Candesca?” she quietly said.

Candesca’s ears perked up to better hear her sister. “Yes?”

“I feel like I am becoming the angry sister.”

“That’s…”

“I don’t want to be the angry sister.”

— ✒ —

Spike had eventually needed to leverage his concern for Slag to get away from Twilight and her teasing about his ‘engagement.’ It was hard to argue with her when he didn’t actually want to describe the very much unromantic series of events that had resulted in Ember taking possession of the Ring of Ashmund… or just about anything that had happened since then.

Well, dinner out had been nice, he supposed, and she’d probably enjoyed it too, considering she’d mentioned it in her speech.

Her speech in which she had taken over from her father.

Huh.

He guessed there had been a coronation that day after all, except for the lack of any actual crown being involved. They had Torch’s crown out in the courtyard, of course, but Spike kind of doubted that Ember would have any interest in wearing it even if it were her size or vice versa.

Spike quickly found his way to the castle’s medical suite. Compared to the last few days, there had been a strange reversal of fortunes in that he actually felt a bit of relief in getting away from Twilight and returning to Ember and the other girls.

It probably wouldn’t last, but the feeling was there.

The dragons, however, were not.

“What do you mean they left?” Spike asked the brown-coated nurse who was cowering away from him.

“Th—there wasn’t anything we could do for her!” the nurse squeaked out.

Spike sighed. He wasn’t trying to scare the poor mare, so he dropped down onto all fours so he wouldn’t be looming over her.

Unfortunately, it just made him look like a stalking animal and she backed away.

Spike really had to wonder how bad it had been up here in Canterlot if this was the reaction dragons were getting here. It wasn’t like this down in ponyville, but he supposed that being completely surrounded by dragons the size of the ones that had been searching for Ember was a different matter.

Still, it didn’t mean he liked it. “So you turned them away because they were dragons?”

“What?” the nurse said, balking, and hurried to correct him. “N—no! There really wasn’t anything more we could do! The injury was already sterilized and dressed just as well as we would have done it! They weren’t interested in staying here, so the doctor prescribed pain medication and a cold compress for the wound!”

“…Oh,” Spike said. That made a lot of sense, actually. No way Ember or Slag would want to hang out in anything resembling a pony hospital. “Um. I don’t suppose they said where they were going, then?”

“Out into the gardens?” the nurse guessed. “I think the yellow pegasus said something about it being the next best thing…”

With that information, Spike quickly apologized, excused himself and made his way out of the castle. It was amazing how quickly it was that just leaping up into the air and taking flight had become automatic, and soon enough he identified spots of turquoise, yellow, black, red, orange and green sitting underneath one of the larger trees.

As he came in for another slightly stumbling landing, he noticed that, contrary to his expectations, it was Ember that had her hands on Slag’s tail while Fluttershy sat by and watched.

Slag was doing her best to remain gruff and unaffected, but she was clearly in pain and uncomfortable with all the attention.

“I suppose there had to be something that that ring couldn’t do,” Carnelia hissed from where she was lounging in the sun. She really… didn’t sound sincere, but the way her tail wouldn’t stay still made Spike wonder if she was more shaken than she was letting on.

Or maybe that was just Carnelia, he thought as the flicking motion kept bringing his eyes back to said tail.

Fortunately, he had other things to keep his mind on track.

“Yeah, I guess,” Ember agreed, grumbling. “Maybe it’d go away if I could get rid of the tail entirely and put it back, but I can’t.” Belatedly, she also threw in a, “Hey, Spike,” which prompted a brief wave of welcomes.

Fluttershy, only moderately reticent, spoke up. “I have a suggestion, um, though you might not like it,” she said, looking apologetically at Slag.

“I don’t care what it is. If it’ll help, I’ll do it,” Slag declared in a way that reminded Spike of Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy was having the same thought, by the look of the faint smile on her face. “That’s wonderful to hear,” she said, then looked to Ember and held her hooves about a foot apart. “So, I was thinking that she should be about this big? About the size of a fat racoon.”

“Err, what?” was Slag’s bemused response. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Oh, not at all!” Fluttershy reassured her. “You see, the smaller you are, the smaller the wound is. Children also heal much faster than adults no matter the species, and you will be much easier to move if somedragon can just carry you.”

Slag looked unconvinced. “You know, on second thought… no. I can walk just fine.”

“How much faster are we talking about here?” Ember asked, rubbing her chin in thought.

Fluttershy looked the injured dragon over. “The difference in mass alone is about ten times, and a wound that small would be much less likely to leave any lasting sign.”

Ember gave Slag a long, significant look and the gruff dragoness eventually gave in. “Augh, fine,” she spat. “Get it over with.”

Looking a little too pleased with the opportunity to turn one of her friends into a whelpling, Ember raised her hand, but was quickly interrupted.

“W—wait!” Fluttershy said, waving her hooves to get Ember’s attention

“What now?” Slag asked, not happy about the delay after she’d decided to get on with it.

“Sorry,” Fluttershy mewled meekly under the dragoness’ unkind gaze. “The dressings will come off when she makes you smaller, so just let me get some fresh gauze ready,” she said, making her way as quickly as possible over to a pair of saddlebags with a red cross on them that were sitting next to the tree. It was only a few seconds more before she was sitting next to Slag with a roll of narrow gauze under her wing and medical tape in her mouth.

“Okay,” she said around the tape. “I’m Ready.”

— ✒ —

“This is humiliating,” the baby dragon said, scowling at the world from on top of Fluttershy’s back as the group walked back to the castle. “Can’t you at least give me wings?”

Ember hid a snicker behind her fist. “Sorry, Slag. You heard the pony; it’s important that you be young, not just small.”

“Great,” she grumbled, holding on tightly to Fluttershy’s back, not used to the mode of transport at all.

No matter what Slag said, however, there was no doubt in anyone present that any humiliation was a small price to pay for the result. What had been a hoof-sized chunk missing from Slag’s tail was now no larger than a peach pit, and with how adorably stubby her tail had become, it might even be possible to stitch it shut. That’s where they were heading now—back to the medical wing to get a second opinion.

“So, uhh, I talked to the princesses about the Ring of Ashmund?” Spike said, changing the subject.

This immediately had Ember’s full attention. “And?”

Spike scratched the back of his neck uneasily. “It went… okay? I’m not sure what to make of it, actually.” And that was entirely apart from the whole ‘engagement ring’ thing, which he was not going to even mention.

“They’re not going to try and take it away, are they?” Ember asked, fidgeting with the ring on her finger.

“No, that’s not going to happen,” Spike said with a fair amount of certainty. “Even in the worst-case scenario, they wouldn’t dare undermine what happened today.”

“Did it go that badly?” Ember asked.

Spike waves his hands in front of him. “Oh, no, no. Like I said, it went okay. Twilight and Luna took it in stride and they were the ones who actually have reason to be offended.”

“So it was the sisters who dissented?” Carnelia asked.

“Yeah,” Spike confirmed. “It was weird. Celestia—you know, before she was two ponies—she was always the kind, motherly type who would always bend rules and make exceptions. I mean, the whole country pretty much runs on the phrase, ‘Celestia knows best’… or it used to, anyway.”

“I never got the impression that pony moms condoned stealing, though,” Drift said.

“It’s not like they were even that angry,” Spike said, defending himself. “I didn’t exactly expect it to go smoothly in the first place, it’s just weird that they took it worse than Twilight.”

“The sparkly one?” Ember asked. “Why? She seemed pretty laid back. Is this about her being the one to suggest they go out and yell at dragons?”

Was it? No, not really. “No, she just used to be… strict, with endless schedules and checklists covering every second of the day. And she would completely obsess over any possibility that she would disappoint Celestia. Geeze, I’m making her sound bad.”

Drift hmmed. “Still, sounds like she’s changed a lot. That happens sometimes.”

“Yeah, she really has,” Spike said, letting the subject drop as they began to approach the castle’s medical suite once again.

A short discussion had all of the dragons sans Slag waiting outside while Fluttershy went inside with the now much smaller and cuter baby dragon, which took a moment for Fluttershy to explain.

Listening from the door, Spike was not terribly impressed by the doctor, but at least he was polite enough not to offend any of the touchier dragons in their retinue. What it boiled down to, though, was that he knew nothing about giving reptiles stitches, but had some adhesive sutures that would work just as well. They weren’t able to get the wound to completely close, but it was better than nothing and took next to no time at all.

“So, Empress,” Spike said once they were done and on their way. “What are your plans now?”

Comments

[KatieBreeze]

I somehow didn't assume the coronation would go sideways. In hindsight, with this group of creatures, there really wasn't any other way it could go