Fang and Flame

by horizon

Blood

I fear my first hunt will be a grand build-up to a quick, ignominious kill. I have a perfected body, an obeisant bloodstone, and a pack enormous beyond counting, all focused upon a single terrified beast.

I needn't have worried.

The winged pony darts away like a bolt of lightning, and by the time I have crested the valley, he is already far in the distance. It is enough to make me hesitate; there are some prey which one must take by surprise before they flee out of reach, and perhaps I have chosen our target poorly. However, my pack is no longer wolf, but dragon — and once the bloodstone's hunt-lust has them on the scent, they rise to the challenge.

Long, thin serpents rise from my ranks, beating enormous wings that jet them forward with startling speed, and charge toward the stallion. They close the gap quickly, then as one, dart out to one side, overtaking him and driving him sideways. He adjusts his course, and again they spread out and overshoot, forcing a tighter turn. He glances back at the greater mass of slower dragons toward which he is being herded, and curses, and suddenly plunges into the midst of his harriers.

That is when we find out our prey is also a fighter. He twists through the air as a group of wing-snakes dive at him, lashing out with a hoof to send one reeling and dropping from the fight. He expertly weaves between two others, baiting them into colliding in midair. A fourth lunges for his outstretched wing, only to be buffeted by an errant flap. The rest begin circling, darting in occasionally when they think they see an opening.

The wing-snakes are light, frail things, capable of little more than this sort of harassment. None are lucky enough to do damage — but regardless, every clash slows the stallion down and gives the rest of us time to close in. He breaks through the cloud of wing-snakes toward open air; they regroup and use their faster speed to overtake him again. He veers away; they let him, and stay on the far side of him from the larger pack, so that the best the stallion can do is circle us without gaining distance. And all the while, he tires.

The vanguard of my larger fliers is almost within striking distance when the stallion changes strategy. Abruptly, he plunges into a steep dive, hurtling into gravity's embrace with such momentum that not even the wing-snakes can keep up. I am not far from his impact point, in my position near the front of the ground-runners pacing the stallion's harried flight, and my pulse quickens as I veer toward him — only for adrenaline to flare as I realize his true intention.

Suddenly, I am upon the lip of a narrow, jagged canyon snaking its way through the shattered landscape. The stallion dives past me and plunges in, heedless of the unforgiving walls a claw's width from his wingtips. My only option to avoid an ugly crash is to leap, putting as much of my weight on my left leg as I can to angle my jump. I land heavily on the far lip of the chasm, tuck my wings, and somersault through my momentum, leaping out of the shoulder roll back to my claws. Nearly without breaking stride, I resume my sprint, curving back toward the gash in the earth.

The bravest of the wingsnakes plunge into the canyon after the stallion — only to collide with the walls en masse, their greater wingspans snagging the rock. A few of the scrawnier fliers take their place, lithe enough to maneuver, but the leather of their wings doesn't give them the stallion's precision, and they quickly begin falling behind as they struggle for a safe flight path. Two enterprising dragons change tactics, putting on a burst of speed and diving into the canyon in front of the stallion — and the rest veer sharply away when the stallion body-checks them straight into solid stone. The interceptors tumble flailing down to the canyon floor, shrieking until impact and then lying there whimpering.

Soon, the majority of my hunters are circling uselessly in midair, doing little more than waiting for the pony to flee his cover. On the ground, we fare little better: only I and a few of my fastest runners are keeping up with him, sprinting along the canyon lip and bounding from side to side in giant wing-assisted leaps whenever the canyon swerves too sharply.

Then our prey pulls one last trick from his reserve. When the canyon straightens out for a moment, and he can focus on something besides maneuvering, he lifts a forehoof and then sharply jabs his elbow into his side. And the canyon behind him erupts into fluorescent, foul-smelling smoke.

None of us are close enough behind him to catch a mouthful of it; the most it accomplishes is forcing the runners and I to veer cautiously away from the canyon's lip. But then the stallion flares his wings, kick-flips during a momentary stall, and doubles back. Immediately, he dives, vanishing further into the chasm — leaving nothing but a long, roiling cloud of overwhelming scent to mask the canyon's opening.

My dragons screech in outrage, pulling back. I silence them with a glare. Listen! I think through the bloodstone, and they are flooded with the anticipation of outwaiting a rabbit thinking himself safe in a bolt-hole. A hush settles over my pack, and I set my ears to straining for clues within the smoke.

The stallion is too winded to make it a challenge. His heavy gasps comes from near the center of the cloud — and several body-lengths below it. As I am building a mental picture of the canyon from the subtle echoes of his motions, I hear a few pebbles dislodge amid the tap of hooves on stone; he has found a tiny ledge to brace himself on, and is resting to regather the energy for another sprint. (That's less prudent than it is necessary; were it not for the bloodstone singing within me, I, too, would have been pushing myself to my limit in our chase. Even my dragons are settling in to the rock, tongues lolling out; the ones still in flight are wheeling wide, lazy glide-circles on thermals.)

But as his labored breathing finally begins to slow, it silences for a moment, and a voice rings up through the mist.

"Ember!" the stallion shouts. "You don't have to do this."

Hisses of amusement ripple through my pack. Now that the fire is in their blood, they recognize his words for the absurdity they are. There is nothing but the hunt. It is as much a part of life as the breath he wastes.

"Princess Twilight worried something like this might happen," Soarin shouts. "The crown's instinct magic taking someone over once in dragon claws."

I flex my hindclaws, drawing them up to prevent them clicking on the rock, and pad forward to the cliff-lip in silence.

"But we can fix it. If you're still in there, if you can hear me … take the crown off."

I leap.

I burst through the smoke directly above him, claws extended. He yelps and flinches, and the motion causes his hoof to slip. His wings jerk open to compensate, and his body lurches off to the side. It saves him, if barely.

We collide, roughly bouncing off the rock and then plunging down the canyon in a flailing, spinning mass which not even instinct can control. I lash out with fang and claw. He flails hooves. My wings flex, his beat, they tangle. And then a flailing elbow jars my head for a moment, and my back slams into a rock outcropping, and I tumble down toward the earth as the stallion's wings catch and flare. I manage to open my wings enough to slow my descent, then lash out and stab my claws into the cliff wall, leaving long gouges as the rock screeches in protest.

Far above, the stallion struggles to a hover, staring wide-eyed as I halt my descent. I snarl at him, tearing giant hunks of power from my bloodstone as if it were a fresh kill, then gather energy in my legs and spring out from my wall-perch. I careen toward the opposite wall, leaping again, zig-zagging up toward the stallion with a burst of speed that shocks even me. He curses, flapping heavily to dart up into the smoke, and that is where I catch up to him again.

This time, the collision is purposeful, and I am ready. My sequence of leaps has given me the momentum of an upward-falling tree, and I tuck my wings and slam straight in. I hit the stallion off-center, plowing into his flanks and upending him as we burst out of the cloud. He bucks, but all that does is send us whirling apart; meanwhile, I spread my claws and rake, and carve a huge gouge out of his left wing as I spin up toward the top of my trajectory.

He flaps to right himself, finds one wing catching no air, and spirals to a hard, bouncing landing on the ground nearby. I, too, land hard — but directly on my hindclaws, sending all the impact into the earth, a shockwave of new fractures spreading out as I spring back out again.

The stallion struggles to his hooves and glances up halfway through my leap. All he can do is rear, throwing the sharp edge of his forehooves in my path. I howl and whip my arm down — battering his legs out of line — then ram him, bearing us both down to the stony soil. He wedges a leg in the crook of my neck and heaves, rolling us over to reverse my pin. I grip his shoulder — he winces as the claws dig in — and slam him into the ground alongside me, sending up an explosion of dust.

He shrieks as something breaks, and I take the opening and lunge with razor teeth. It's only his desperate flail of legs which makes my teeth snap shut shy of his neck. He tries to roll away, but he is pinned by my claw, and I push down with much weight as I can bring to bear, drawing my other arm back for a killing blow.

The power of my bloodstone surges, howling and laughing within me, and I feel it replenishing at the wide-eyed terror which is the last thing the stallion will ever feel. But then his pupils shift, and his eyes widen even further as he looks up over my shoulder.

Even through the haze of my crown's glorious bloodlust, something deep inside me screams a warning. I whip my head back, and as such, I get a momentary glimpse of myself hurtling straight toward me before my world explodes.

For a moment, everything is a blurred, tumbling mess. The sky and ground are flipping somersaults around me, and my body is being buffeted by enormous impacts from every angle. Then there is an especially potent collision, a weight lifts from my back, and I see an ice-blue form tumble away along the horizon. Gradually, the world's spinning slows, and then gravity reasserts itself with a lurch. The horizon snaps back into place, and I am skidding along the ground, leaving a billowing trail of dust behind.

Finally, I come to a full stop, ears ringing and body screaming in protest. Gingerly, I sit up. My skid-trail leads back toward a small pile of rock, and beyond that are a series of impact-scars and craters, and finally a wide-eyed, wounded pegasus. In the corner of my vision, another me sits up as well, her own skid-trail leading back at a crazy angle to the shattered boulder we both plowed through as we were bouncing across the landscape. And surrounding all of us is a horde of wide-eyed, confused dragons.

The other me — Ember — staggers to her claws, brushing dust from her shoulders and glaring at me. "You invade my world," she snarls, "you steal my people, you try to murder a pony. You dog." Her voice rises in rage. "Do you have anything to say for yourself before I bring you to heel?"

Fury at this duplicate boils in my blood — swooping in to steal my kill and then having the gall to be angry at me for leading the hunt. But even more, fury rises at my packmates lolling around in shock. They are better than this! They are mine! I felt their needs burn with mine, felt the bloodstone's song quicken their pulse, heard our voices unite in the howl. And I'm not about to let anyone — not even myself — take that away from me now. I have been in Father's shadow long enough.

Kill, I project, reaching into the bloodstone and sending a wave of desire exploding outward.

Nothing happens. I realize, belatedly, my head feels lighter than it should.

"Ember!" Soarin shouts, pointing to some spot in the dissipating dust between us. "The crown! Don't let anydragon touch it!"

The other me glances at the stallion, and I am already in motion. She glances at the outstretched hoof to orient herself; I follow the whisper of my crown. My head start is insurmountable. But then I hear a grunt, and a boulder twice my size streaks toward me from my double's direction, and I realize racing me might not be her plan.

I fling myself sideways out of the path of the rock just in time to see a second hurtle my way. I leap it, then roll under a third that was aimed higher than the other two. There is a brief lull as Ember sprints toward more ammunition, and I dig my claws into the earth and accelerate toward my bloodstone — only to see lame-winged Soarin galloping at it, too.

Even without the burst of extra energy from my crown, I am a step ahead of him. I lunge inward, and my claws close around the metal. But Soarin is charging at me, not the circlet, and this time he is the one weaponizing momentum. All the breath goes out of me as he plows into me shoulder first, and the circlet ricochets away as I find the world spinning again.

This time, though, I have the presence of mind to repeat my canyon trick — lashing out a claw and dragging it through the stone like an anchor. My arm jerks taut and my tumble immediately stops, turning my recovery into an all-fours skid. At least until a boulder clobbers me from the side.

The world spins again, and I tumble, and I come to rest with a great weight atop me. More irritated than injured, I heave — and the stone rolls away, and I spring back up. (It is amazing how much harm dragons can shrug off, some part of me marvels.) I am turning back toward Ember when suddenly the world washes out, slowing to a crawl — and every fiber of my being lights up with a single message:

Someone has touched my crown.

---

It is a sensation I am familiar with, but from the other side. Never have I felt it when in control, and it is an exotic and exhilarating rush. I know without looking that it is the stallion who picked the bloodstone up, dipping his head to the dirt and clamping lips around the metal. (Out of the corner of my eye, in fact, I can see just that as part of the frozen battlefield tableau.) And despite the pony being prey rather than pack, I can feel his core. For the first time, the emotions of prey are mine to dissect and digest.

He is afraid.

Of death, yes, as all creatures are; but also of something greater than death. He is afraid of what I will do next. He is afraid for his herd. I probe the fear, magnifying it, and my jaw waters at the thought: ponies so far beyond counting that my valley of dragons is like a drop in the river. Endless hills and plains of ponies, weak and lacking vigil. He fears my dragons swarming his herd like insects on carrion, gorging ourselves until they are stripped down to clean bone.

It is a beautiful fear. It is a beautiful dream. The hunt will be endless.

Hello? his panicked voice echoes through my head. Anypony? Where am I? What's going on?

The mewls of prey have never concerned me. However, the rush of exploring this new sensation prods me into reaching back out. Fear, I think — and take my iron grip around my crown, smothering him in it, seeing if I can choke the life out of him through sheer weight of emotion.

He notices me, then — and though a battering hailstorm of emotion is blasting away huge chunks of him with every passing second, he still struggles to form words. Stop! Please!

I hesitate — now as if playing with a wounded mouse, unable to escape but perhaps capable of providing amusement. Why? I ask, mentally prodding at the exposed bits of him I have stripped away.

His pain flares up, and the tinge of desperation in his words grows. This isn't you.

It is the me I should have always been, I counter. The bloodstone's gift.

The bloodstone is bad, he says.

I try to wrap my head around that for a moment. Then I ask again, bemused: Why?

His response is not immediate — as if he is trying to puzzle out what he feels from me, and poke a claw into my core in the same way I'm probing his. But he finally says: Because it makes you hurt your friends.

I don't recognize the word. But a sensation comes along with it — one that feels like packmate, but foreign and nebulous.

This confuses me. The hunt is for the good of the pack. How would the bloodstone hurt them?

… Is this one trying to say he is part of the pack? He looks nothing like the dragons. On the other claw, back at home, I looked nothing like Father, yet the pack taught me to hunt, and brought me to meat before I learned to catch bugs and mice for myself. And with that memory, my decision is made: I will take this horse and make a hunter of him.

I stop stirring his prey-fear — and, with swirls of gratitude and caution, his resistance collapses all at once. Then he seems to read my shift in intention, and I feel a surge of new panic spike. Undirected feelings, unformed words, surge my way. I brush them off.

You will learn the howl, friend, I say. And then my energy floods into him and his needs are mine.

---

The world snaps back into focus. My packmate Soarin's head jerks upright, the crown in his lips. His muscles are twitching at odd intervals, and his eyes are unfocused and tinged with red. I can feel the magic of the crown seething within him — far more than I've ever put into anyone before. Perhaps I overdid it.

"Soarin!" Ember shouts from the distance, jabbing her claws into a boulder half again her size and hoisting it overhead. "Get outta here! I'll cover you!"

Soarin stumbles over to me — craving my hunt even more than he craves the breath of life — and obediently spits my crown out into a waiting claw.

And deep inside Ember, I watch a spark of hope die.

Then rage flares out, rage and fear. She screams, flinging her boulder away and charging me. But rage and fear are my domain. I taste this dragon's hungers, taste the struggles that led her to this moment, see her flailing against the loss of all she has built as the jaws of fate close around her throat. So I simply push those feelings harder. Rage drains the coordination from her movements, urges her to commit everything to each strike, telegraphs her motions; fear locks her into her path. I easily sidestep a wild swing, and then Soarin is leaping at the other me, burning with desire to protect his pack from this interloper. I watch, tail lashing in amusement, as they begin battering at each other in blind rage and blind obeisance.

But I find their battle taking a surprising amount of my focus. Some part of Ember is resisting — in a way I have not felt since Father's repudiation of my control, but also wholly unlike the way his hard-honed instinct overpowered mine. All I know is that Ember is not wholly mine. It is as if there is another whisper stirring up opposing desires within her…? But no, not actively; and no, not an instinct-whisper, I can say with certainty. My control over instinct is comprehensive, and regardless, there is a part of her which is … protected.

I tune out the fight and the surrounding dragons, feeling instinctively that something here is important. It is maddening. That feeling of opposition is growing, sharpening. It is right at the edge of my senses —

And then my concentration is shattered by a wave of power which staggers me. Bloodstone power.

Another bloodstone's power.

"Stop!" a high, male voice thunders from midair, and every being within sight halts as if paralyzed.

I whirl around, hissing, and reflexively reach for the core of this new interloper — only to find that grasp wholly ineffective. If my control over Ember was muted, then here it is as if I am reaching into a hole and groping blindly at air.

I blink and refocus my eyes. The new dragon is a purple whelp with huge green spikes and tiny wings, holding an ashen staff twice his size. The staff explains everything. The bloodstone mounted at the top of it is enormous, and the surrounding air is boiling with the overflow of its power.

It's not just his bloodstone, either. Now my own crown is beginning to resonate with unimaginable potential. And I know — without knowing how — that this is the crown's twin, the other half of a pair never meant to be separated. Their powers are surging now that they are once again in proximity, enough so that I barely need to think to tug at the cores of every dragon within sight. That apparently works both ways; I can feel that this whelp's claim on the scepter is tenuous at best, the reward for a challenge long past, yet even that was enough to let him stagger my pack.

It is magnificent. If I possessed them both, my power would be absolute.

With a passing thought, my pack is filled with need. Their every instinct is telling them I can bring them an eternal hunt; all I require is the scepter. And as one, every head within sight swivels to the purple whelp. (Spike, I suddenly realize: he is the one who accompanied the ice-blue wolf when he and my other foe invaded my forest.)

Spike swallows nervously. But he holds the staff up, and his voice thunders again, magnified by its power: "Lie down!" And the dragons bracing themselves to crouch and leap suddenly drop boneless to the ground.

We hunt! I think, and my quiescent dragons immediately stir — their needs drawing on something far more fundamental within them than the decision to go prone.

"Uh," Spike stammers, sweat spotting his forehead scales, and shakes the staff as if that increases its power. "Dance!"

The area erupts into motion, as dragons begin shuffling, wriggling, and spinning to no particular rhythm. Rage begins to simmer within me as I blast apart the frivolity in my pack's cores and replace it, again, with hunger. This whelp is losing the power battle, and we both know it — but with just a word, he can dissipate my pack's instincts for a crucial moment, and I can no more affect him with my bloodstone than he can command me with his. I will have to bait him to the ground, perhaps even formally challenge him for the pack, find some way to bring him within reach —

And that's when Ember grabs my tail.

It takes me a moment to realize it, because at first all I feel is a hard jerk on my hips, and then the world is somersaulting backwards. There's a thunderous boom as I arc into the ground head-first. Dust erupts everywhere, and then I'm jerked from the cloud and slammed down again.

They are the sort of blows that should cripple me, or at least stun me. But with the bloodstone singing at such intensity, I merely sit back up. Ember blinks, unbelieving. For a moment, as I reorient, we simply stare at each other.

Then she screeches in wordless frustration and lunges for the crown. I spring as she charges. We collide, and the fight turns ugly.

My teeth sink into her shoulder, leaving dents in the scales. She wraps her hands around my throat and squeezes. I slash with four limbs' worth of claws — which does little until a flailing arm gets within an inch of an eye, making her flinch and jerk her arms back. I release my jaw-grip, dropping below a clumsy grab attempt and headbutting her stomach with my horns. When she doubles over onto my back I wrap my arms around her leg and push the wrong way. She stiffens and brings an elbow down hard on my back; I howl as stars burst into my vision. I put my full strength into the leg hold, and she screams as her knee pops out of joint.

That moment of pain gives me all the distraction I need. I dart between her legs, leap up to her back, and lock my legs around her waist. She reflexively buffets me with her wings — which flexes them to right where I need them. I grab a wing-joint with one claw, driving the other deep into the leathery membrane, and there is a sick ripping sound.

"Separate the Embers!" Spike shouts from behind me, and a sea of claws grabs for me before I can reach past the useless wing to choke the life out of my duplicate. Neutralizing Spike's interference is the work of a moment, but it's a moment of stolen focus which allows Ember to thrash free. She kicks me in the chest as she goes, which staggers me long enough for her to whirl around and face me. I am back on her in an instant, regardless, and this time I do go for the throat, gaping my jaws and diving down at her.

Without hesitation, Ember jams an arm into my mouth — wincing as I clamp down and fangs dig into her elbow. I shoot both my arms toward her throat instead, squeezing until I feel scales start to give. She makes a little gagging wheeze, and I dig a knee into her stomach to drive the air out faster.

Spike shouts something in the background. Not this time — not when I am so close! Still locked in the struggle, I snatch for the bluntest emotion I can, my burning desire to dominate, and hurtle it outward. It does not accomplish anything — the surrounding dragons merely jerk and twist as the opposing bloodstones buffet them with withering waves of power — but right now, neutralizing them works to my favor. Ember's eyes gradually widen as she realizes that her whelp's interference will not save her this time.

With a burst of desperate strength, she works her non-bitten arm free of our tangle of limbs — swinging at the inside of my elbow with all the leverage she can muster. It loosens my grip only long enough for a gasp of air, but it's enough — because as I start closing her throat again, there is a click from the back of her mouth, and I am consumed by a blast of fire.

I shriek and fling myself backward, deep instincts screaming. And by the time I realize I am unhurt — cannot be hurt by such a cheap trick, not as a dragon — Ember has rolled far beyond my grip and staggered back upright again, gasping for breath.

Desire wars with fear inside me. I need to finish her, need to prove myself and head off any possible dissent within my pack … but at the same time, my lupine instincts are absolutely refusing to leap forward toward this fire-lizard. Which is ridiculous. Dragon instincts yearn for fire, and those are singing inside me with equal urgency. I know which ones to listen to — but the bloodstone's power is to augment instincts, not suppress them, and I am drowning in my own power as I try to cage the wolf who fears. My body goes rigid as I struggle with whispers turned screams.

Ember, as desperate as her own position is, seems to sense my weakness. She clenches her fangs against her body's pain and lunges forward for the crown. But I wrestle control of my body back for long enough to snap my eyes open, dropping into a crouch and hissing. She flinches back, and we retreat to an uneasy stalemate.

As silence descends, instinct tells me to circle her — pace out the edges of our battleground while we look for weaknesses in each other. Given how much I'm throwing into neutralizing the wolf-fear, yielding to this urge seems like a good safety valve. So I let my body step into the spiral dance, and take the moment of relative calm to reassess.

It's obvious that Ember has gotten the worst of our exchange. I have been thrown around like a bug in a hurricane, and been used to smash open half the boulders of this chasm-wracked stonescape, and yet the overflowing fountain of the bloodstone crown has faded every bruise and straightened every dent. Meanwhile, one of Ember's legs is angled wrong at the knee, one wing is useless tatters, and several parts of her body are discolored almost to purple. I need no cunning here, no weaknesses to exploit: simply keep fighting, and push her past her breaking point.

Ember locks eyes with me, doing her best to match my circling in a shuffling one-legged dance. It is obvious she is performing a similar assessment — but then she opens her bloody muzzle and removes all doubt. "You're draining your bloodstone's power," she growls. "I can't hurt you like this."

I say nothing, continuing to circle while I finally begin to curb my fire-fear. Better that I bide my time until her guard drops.

"Distract her," Spike says from the air in the distance. "Maybe I can grab the crown —"

"No," Ember says sharply. "You're the only reason we're not being attacked by every dragon here."

"But Ember!" he protests. "You can't keep this up! She'll tear you apart, with that crown boosting her fighting instincts!"

(I take a step inward in to emphasize the point. Ember takes a cautious half-shuffle back, maintaining her distance. A murmur of excitement runs through my pack, ready with the slightest jostle to explode out into the electric thrill of the fight.)

We are silent for a moment as my opponent digests this. Then her eyes widen. She whips a claw out to one side, her eyes never leaving mine.

"Spike," she says with disconcerting calmness, "throw me the scepter."

Spike — who I can finally see out of the corner of my eye as our circles progress — blinks. "But you just said —"

"Spike," Ember says, and the urgency in her voice says all that needs to be said.

Spike swallows, glances at the scepter, and flings it forward.

Energy surges without limit as the bloodstones draw closer together — but I am still wrapped up in wrestling with the fire-fear, and it takes me a moment to comprehend that this signals a shift in our fight. The scepter is already in midair by the time I jolt out of my inner struggle and begin drawing from the crown. It is almost to her outstretched claw by the time I send that endless power surging through my body, turning me into something only describable as the perfect predator. I am in motion before conscious thought can even parse my leap, but my claws have only barely left the ground when the scepter touches her outstretched hand —

---

— and the world wavers and freezes, its color draining back into the grey unfocus of the bloodstone. But this time, there is a tension, two crystals each trying to point their own spotlight, and I can feel my body and Ember's both frozen with the rest.

Everything fuzzes. Then even the grey blurs away, and I stir to consciousness alone in a familiar cave.

"Okay, I'm pretty sure this isn't real," Ember says from next to me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. There's my foe, inches from me, sitting casually against the wall of my home. She is exactly the dragon I was leaping at seconds ago — no, perhaps a little younger, a little thinner, with less focus to the determined edge I saw in our fight.

I sit up. I am a wolf. Not the wolf I was before my dream of fire — but a four-legged predator, ice-blue of fur, wiry and hungry.

Get out of my home, I say. I try to put malice into the thought, but I cannot feel any. My cave is a place of sanctuary, and my inner fire is, for the moment, distant.

"Funny you should say that," Ember says dispassionately. And a discomforting thought flits through the back of my mind: this strange meeting is in my home, but the fight outside is in hers. No wonder she fights me so desperately.

As I am processing that thought, her head flinches to the side. She avoids my gaze for a silent moment.

What? I ask.

"I didn't realize Dad was still leader where you came from," she says. Her voice wavers, and a strand of gentle thought whispers into my heart. Sympathy?

The comprehension of everything she stands to lose presses relentlessly into my head; and I, too, am suddenly, similarly uncertain. So I try to give her an out. Do not be the fool who would rather die than lose, I think. I felt the trust of your whelp as he gave you his bloodstone. Flee this challenge, and you could take him and go establish another pack elsewhere.

Her mouth twitches.

"Okay," she says softly, "I was about to say, maybe I could help you with your dad … but no. This is not your world. Not your dragons. So you take your consolation prize and stuff it."

I do not need another to challenge Father for me, I shoot back, fighting to reclaim the irritation I should be feeling. I need a pack. This is one I can take. So it is mine.

Our impasse sinks in. The cave around us grows darker. Wind stirs in the night outside. With it, I can finally feel the churn of emotions — distantly, like an approaching weather front.

"What are we even doing here?" Ember asks, finally seeming to take notice of her surroundings.

I do not mean to respond. But I am stirring up my heart to reach for the power outside, drawn to the comforting familiarity of passion and instinct, and my thoughts form into something shared: Bloodstone.

She is briefly silent. Then she responds, "I've seen enough weird pony stuff that I think I get this. The stones want us to be friends."

We are not pack, I snap back.

"No, not friends," Ember says, and it takes me a moment to realize she is not agreeing but correcting herself. "Okay. The bloodstones got all super-powered because they thought they were working for the same person. But we're not. And we're fighting. I think we're here because they don't want to blow each other up."

I snort. What a stone wants is no concern of mine.

"Yeah," she says after a moment of thought. "Same. Your crown needs to be destroyed."

You do not have the strength, I state, feeling the power of the approaching storm build. You cannot even fully embrace your own bloodstone. Die or submit.

Her muzzle curls into a sneer, and the wind outside howls all the louder. It is the sound of my inevitable victory … and I know she senses it, too. Her drive to conquer, her instinct to survive — those things come from my crown's domain. In the very act of fighting back, she adds to the power that perfects me.

But then an odd glint reaches her eyes. And the corners of her mouth begin to curl upward.

"You know," she says with an incongruous casualness, "I don't think I will."

Outside, thunder rolls. The stone around us shifts and rumbles. And then, with an impossible roar, the storm at the core of all living beings blasts apart our sanctuary. The cave begins to dissolve as I drink in the flood. I devour it, become it, casting away everything it is not.

Ember flinches at the wind, but braces herself and faces me.

I can only laugh helplessly. What do you think this defiance gains you? You are crippled. My body is unstoppable. When we return from this place it will already be too late to avoid my leap.

"Yeah, sure," she says. "And your fangs can cut the world in half or whatever. But you've got the bloodstone that controls instinct. And I've got the bloodstone that controls intellect. You know what that gives me?"

What? I challenge.

She smirks.

"Tools," she says, "bitch."

---

The world swirls back into grey, then into frozen color. Half a second has passed. I am hanging in midair, a body length from Ember.

And in that half-second, she, too, has moved — her arms also accelerated by the near-limitless energy of the dueling bloodstones. Her body is twisted, muscles rippling, caught in a moment of consummate form. Her reflexes are not honed to my level — cannot be, by the nature of our powers — but they are sufficient.

Because in her outstretched grasp, the scepter — artificially extending her reach well past mine — is arcing toward my head. Searing, crackling, writhing with such energy that even within the infinitesimal crawl of this moment its outflow cannot be contained.

Time restarts.

And the last thing that I see is the business end of the scepter unleashing its built-up energy in a brilliant explosion of light.

Comments

[Wolfsong6913]

Oof - I do love how well you've written this wolf-child as running off of pure instinct- very little language or speaking, which works very well, and is very hard to pull off. Excited to see how this wraps up!

Also -

"Uh," Spike stammers, sweat spotting his forehead scales, and shakes the staff as if that increased its power. "Dance!"

That is so Spike. Well done.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I especially love how, on a metaphysical level, Spike is just giving Ember the scepter on loan.

Also the green-blue conflict of instinct vs. intellect. Especially when compounded with red to make pure, civilization-smashing rage vs. explosive creativity. If there's a better allegory for Ember's struggle to modernize the Dragonlands, I'd like to hear it.

[TasermonsPartner]

The other me — Ember — staggers to her claws, brushing dust from her shoulders and glaring at me. "You invade my world," she snarls, "you steal my people, you try to murder a pony. You dog ." Her voice rises in rage. "Do you have anything to say for yourself before I bring you to heel?"

Technically, Ember was the one who was a dog until she went back through the portal again. 😉

This was an epic fight scene, by the way. On of the mast enthralling I've ever read, on this site or elsewhere.

[horizon]

9935802
Thank you!

Wrt Ember, it was a fascinating contrast to write, because neither of them are as simple as their stones would suggest. Both of them basically ended up with the bloodstone that contrasts with them rather than complements their core strength.

Despite EqG!Ember's willingness to give herself completely over to the Bloodstone Crown and throw away her intellect (which ends up costing her the fight), look at how she behaves without it. Look at the first deer kill. Look at her rich inner monologue throughout, her continuous cunning and self-adaptation, despite her aversion to language. What she does in the last chapter is learning from her counterpart, yes, but it's learning to work with that part of herself instead of discarding it. Her big lesson isn't how to become non-feral, it's how to embrace the parts of her that aren't, to realize that being a wolf doesn't have to mean throwing away her advantages.

And Equestria!Ember, despite possessing the Bloodstone Scepter and its intellect control, is not the reflexively intellectual sort. We see this in the show, but also here, with how she's happy to just leap straight into the fray and solve her problem through violence, only reconsidering when she realizes she's on the losing side of the battle. What makes her Dragon Lord is her intellect, absolutely -- but her instinct is first and foremost to be a dragon, to try to be strong, and she adapts because she has learned she isn't particularly good at that; thinking outside of the box is what gets her what she wants. It's a lesson she'll probably have to relearn a few times.

9936541
I would be super curious to see what FIMtG cards come out of this! Do you have any plans to do an Imposing Sovereigns edition now that we're no longer getting new episodes?

9939330

Technically, Ember was the one who was a dog until she went back through the portal again. 😉

Ah, but she never actually saw wolfgirl Ember until Chapter 4! And all her indirect evidence suggested her counterpart was a canine.

This was an epic fight scene, by the way

Thank you!

[Bugsydor]

Yeah, this fic deserved to do well in the contest. A lot went into it, and it shows.

The epic fights don't exactly detract from it, either.

9936541
So would you say this is more Gruul vs. Izzet, or Gruul vs. Temur?