• Published 26th Sep 2020
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Harry Potter and the Crystal Empire — Intermission - Damaged



Hogwarts castle has landed in Equestria—and the foundations of the Crystal Empire with it. The stir this caused in both worlds resulted in an exodus of magic and magic-users to Equestria.

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Dragonrider

The change from human to crystal pony had been slow enough for Charlie that neither Whistlewing nor Norbert considered him any more like food than normal. He'd shrunk a little, but he was still the one who brings food for them, which made him not-food.

However, with his body having become an almost perfect, living diamond, he had drifted right into the possession category for Equestrian dragons.

"I don't want you going outside." Rake's position on Charlie was firm—she didn't want him in danger. Her instincts reinforced that given they considered Charlie as being her property. "If anyone else sees you, they'll try to grab you. If you're lucky, they will be old enough to want to hoard you."

"Are you done?" Charlie asked. When all Rake did was blow smoke out of her nose, he considered that was the case. "I am not going to live the rest of my life in your treasure room. For a start, I need food, I need to take care of Whistlewing and Norbert, and I need to help the Bent-Twigs settle in." Having stared down walking, flying death before (in the form of Earth dragons), Charlie stood his ground and glared at Rake.

Rake was furious, though it was mostly at herself than at the small creature before her. Well, it could be traced back to Charlie, but her reactions were mostly all instinct and that instinct said she should chain Charlie up in her treasure room.

Clenching her talons into tight fists, Rake walked over to a wall and started punching it. Dragon limbs were made for slashing and cutting. They were nigh-indestructible weapons that could shred anything. Using them as punching weapons robbed Rake of most of their power, but gosh was it a satisfying way to work out her anger.

When a hoof pressed to her side, Rake froze and turned to look at Charlie. "What?"

"You're breaking the wall. Come on outside, I want to get this"—Charlie gestured to himself and his almost-completely-a-pony state—"over with."

"You can do magic in here just fine." Rake was following Charlie, though. There was something beyond the raw allure of a giant, walking diamond that interested her. She realized, however, that what sparked her initial words was the desire to keep him here—safe. "Ugh. We both need to get out of here. I'm going hoard-crazy."

"I'm a wizard, Rake, crazy is a benefit to my kind. Speaking of, we need to tell Torch about this. Why not tonight, after I've finished changing?" The hidden tunnel that led out of Rake's lair was familiar to Charlie, who had used it many times now.

Outside, it was mid-afternoon in the dragon lands, which meant it was hot. It was always hot, even in the dead of winter. It was hot underground too, but the heat-haze that met Charlie's vision implied it was an extra hot day. "Where would be a good place to do this? I don't want to call attention to your lair."

Away from most of her hoard, Rake was thinking more like a smart dragon and less like a dumb lizard—or so she would say. "That's why I like you, Charlie. You get this stuff. You must be the only pony ever to just understand how a dragon thinks. It's kinda freaky."

"I keep telling you, I'm not a pony. I'm a wizard, and wizards are humans." Taking Rake's lead, Charlie tried to keep clear of the lava pools—his own heat-tolerance had gone way up since he became a walking diamond, but his clothes were still limited by their fabrics (even if those were enchanted to be more resistant to flame).

Rake shrugged her shoulders—something that was getting harder as she aged into adulthood. She knew it was coming. Soon she wouldn't be able to walk upright at all. "Yeah, yeah. You look like a pony, and that's as far as most dragons will get."

"You," Charlie said as he dodged another lava pool, "are not most dragons. I can see why Torch is keeping an eye on you."

"Huh?"

"You don't see it? Why do you think he saddled you with me? That was a setup. He's testing how you react to situations outside your normal day-to-day stuff. He wants to see how you handle yourself when things don't go how you want them to go." About to continue with his litany, Charlie paused at the sight of Inferno and Beatrice Bent-Twig both running toward them. "What's u—?"

"The portal's gone!" Beatrice said. "Like, gone-gone. We went up to take a look at it, and when I threw some stones at it they went right through. It should have sucked them up!"

Turning to look at Rake, Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, alright. Get on and let's go take a look. At least it's a distraction from bugging the Dragon Lord." Lowering her talons to the ground, Rake dropped one shoulder to let Charlie climb onto her back.

Having never been given the honor of riding on her back before, Charlie was dubious at first, but when Rake didn't move, he decided he might as well march up and climb on. Her scales were warm, but not unbearably so, but once on her back he realized there was another problem. "Uh, how do I hold on?"

"Carefully, duh." Rake spread her wings on each side of Charlie and then started pumping them to launch herself and her passenger upward—judging Charlie's shouting to be not-quite panic-filled enough to worry about.

Snapping his mouth closed, Charlie grabbed onto Rake's shoulders and did his level-best to keep from being thrown free. Part of him kept panicking while the rest tried to reassure it that Rake would catch him if he fell off. It seemed like no time until Rake was doing a slow spiral, her wings held wide but steady. "What the hell was—Ack!"

"Oh, hey, ash-moths. Not all that tasty, but fill your mouth all the same." Rake chewed on the mouthful of bugs she'd got when she'd opened her mouth. She could hear Charlie spitting and cursing up a storm on her back. "Your portal should be just about here."

The wind had died down, but Charlie knew he should have been feeling a pull toward the portal. "Is it gone or just tiny?"

"Best way to find out, I guess…" Turning on a dime, Rake pumped her wings and flew right through where the portal should have been. Banking and settling back into a circle, Rake shrugged her shoulders. "Nothin'."

Scrabbling to hold on again, thanks to Rake moving her shoulders, Charlie waited until he had a good hold before speaking. "So it's gone?"

"Let's land before you fall off." Rake tipped her head down and entered a dive—grinning all the (short) trip back to the ground. Even as she leveled out and landed, she was smiling.

Flopping sideways off Rake's back, Charlie dropped to all fours and didn't make any attempt to stand up on two legs. "I almost fell off."

"What? When?" Rake asked.

"From the moment I climbed on to when I managed to get free of you." In his head, Charlie was chanting I won't throw up, I won't throw up, over and over. When his body finally believed the chant, he slowly lifted himself to two legs. "So the portal's gone."

"That's what we said." Inferno walked beside Beatrice with only a hint of his former worry. He'd been terrified of hurting her when they'd first met, and even been weirded out by how much she hung out with him, but even that had seemed normal after a while. Besides, she thought he was awesome.

Charlie was about to reply when he spotted something that distracted him completely. He saw Beatrice's pink hands—not just human-flesh pink, but gemstone pink. "You've been using magic?"

"Only a little! Don't tell Mum!" Panic hit Beatrice. She shoved her hands behind her back to hide them, but it was way too late.

"Hey!" Stepping forward and putting himself between Beatrice and Charlie, Inferno jutted out his chin and glared. "Cut her some slack or I'll—" He froze as he realized Rake was standing up beside Charlie, then a spurt of impudent rage spurred him on. "… I'll get angry."

Seeing Rake about to start stomping forward to champion his cause, Charlie barely managed to shout, "Wait! Bea, I won't tell your parents—so long as you tell them."

"What kind of a deal is that? They'll find out either way, and—" Inferno only stopped when he felt Beatrice's hand on his shoulder. "What?"

Beatrice let out a sigh of defeat. "I-I was going to tell them anyway, but—I know Mom was only using magic to help us, but I really wanted to show Inferno some cool stuff." Pulling back the sleeves on her robes, she revealed the pink crystal now covering them all the way to her elbows. "It's kinda cool. I can almost pick up lava with them."

"Pick up—" Charlie lifted his right hand-hoof to his forehead and almost knocked himself out with the clunk of it instead of the soft palm that should have hit him. "Ouch. Look, you need to be more careful, also, we need to talk with your parents about more than that. The portal really is closed."

"We already said that." Inferno put a wing around Beatrice and pulled her protectively to his side. Part of him had no clue why he was doing it, another part was confused as to why he was protecting anything, but the part that held sway insisted she was worth protecting and the rest of him could just shut up and blow lava-bubbles.

Feeling more sure of herself, and a little flustered at the tight grip of Inferno's wing, Beatrice nodded in support of his argument, but knew she was defeated. Charlie was an adult, and adults usually cheated to get what they thought was the right thing. "Alright. I guess we all go, then?"

As they walked toward the edge of the literal active volcanic area, Charlie was surprised to see the makings of a log hut. Working on the hut was Simon and May, each lifting a new log into position to make another wall.

Spotting Charlie and his daughter approaching, Simon smiled a little wider and heaved the log up to help May get her end lined up. "You got it?"

"Yes."

"Okay, ease it down and… done." Simon nodded in the direction he'd seen company approaching. "We have visitors."

Stepping around the wall they were building and out the doorway, May's eyes widened a little at seeing two dragons, Charlie Weasley, and her eldest daughter approaching. "I'll put the kettle on," she said and then raised her voice. "Would you like a cuppa?"

"I'd kill for one." Charlie put on the best smile he could given his pony muzzle, and looked sideways at Beatrice.

She was defeated. Beatrice wished she could just run off with Inferno and never come back. Then she could use her magic and look awesome too… But that wouldn't work. "Mom, I've been using magic."

"I know, Bea." May had, of course, known. Her daughter had been hiding her hands, and the only thing she could think that to mean was she'd been using magic. A glance at Charlie's face told her he'd probably had to drag her here to confess. "I'm not sure how much you'll believe us, Charlie, but we don't intend to go back. This place is untouched by the petty squabbles between witches and wizards that drove us out into the back-country. I assumed my children would start using magic anyway, sooner or later."

Staring at her mother, Beatrice groaned and pulled her sleeves up to reveal her arms were pink halfway to her elbows. "I wasn't doing any big spells. Just little stuff. I just wanted—"

"I wanted to see what magic was all about." Inferno looked almost as surprised as he felt at taking the blame. It was all stupid, anyway. It wasn't like it mattered. Beatrice liked using magic, or so she'd told him, so she was going to turn into a pony sooner or later.

Looking from her daughter to Inferno, May realized something was growing there. Her motherly instinct wanted her to poke at the friendship, but the part of her that remembers how she'd been treated for dating her husband—Simon the Squib, as he'd been called—beat her metaphorically with a hammer. "What's done is done."

Charlie had to marvel at the poise and attitude May Bent-Twig deployed. He looked at his hands—now hooves—and wished he had a measure of that acceptance.

After a cup of tea that did a lot to sooth him, Charlie and Rake left the Bent-Twig home-to-be and made their way toward Dragon Lord Torch's lair. Charlie had picked up a little lore on the dragons, and one piece had been that while young lairing dragons would need to protect their home from others, the dragon lord feared not for their hoard. No dragon would be so stupid as to risk their lives on such folly.

So while everyone knew where his lair and hoard were, no dragon would ever steal from him. On the plus side, it meant we could find him easily enough. Of course, as we approached, he wasn't there.

"We wait out here, right?" Charlie asked.

"Yeah we do. Never go into the dragon lord's lair. Ever!" Rake snarled a little, then recoiled from her own anger. "Sorry, I just—This is not easy."

Charlie reached out a hoof and petted at Rake's side. "Yeah, I can tell by the smoke coming out of your nose. Relax, I'm not going inside, and I sure as heck don't want to start a dragon civil war."

Coughing, Rake spat out a glob of flame that burned a soft shade of blue on the stones in front of her. Watching the flame wrought of volatile chemicals spit and hiss as it melted the outer layers of the rock, she let loose her anger. Charlie, after all, was still hers. "You know, the angrier I get at all this stupid hoard stuff, the worse it gets."

"Have you tried not getting angry at it? I mean, you're a dragon. You're supposed to want to hoard stuff."

"Stuff. Not—not people." Dragging her foot across the stone, Rake was marginally pleased that her almost-adult talons lived up to her name and left three deep rents in the stone. "Dragons aren't the smartest because we don't need to be. We have claws and scales and fire—you can't out-think those—but even I know wanting to own you is wrong."

"You need to lighten up, Rake. Don't get angry, just make sure you remember that one thing. Even if your instincts tell you to, you don't have to follow them." Charlie reached down and ran his hoof along the gouge in the volcanic rock Rake had made. "Why is he putting up with us? Humans—well, ponies I mean."

"Dragons have few enemies once they reach adulthood. There are tales of entire nations that decided they needed to attack us and take our land. Those nations aren't around anymore. It's a matter of pride for the great dragons of the world to gather from all corners of the world when our breeding grounds are threatened. Dragon Lord Torch is just one, and though he's the mightiest dragon there is, there's a lot more of us. He can call them all and compel them to fight, but the truth is a dragon doesn't ever need to be compelled.

"What I'm getting at is there's nothing that can hurt an adult dragon." Rake looked at Charlie with a significant glance. "You get the idea?"

"You give this little creature a lot of our secrets, Rake." Torch's voice almost blew both Rake and Charlie away. "It worries me that you don't understand fully how short-lived they are. This creature will barely…" Trailing off, Torch saw Charlie's hands and his eyes narrowed to dots.

Flaring her crest right the way down her back, Rake stepped between Torch and Charlie and puffed smoke out her nose. "Charlie is mine!"

Flexing his claws, Torch pondered the dragon before him. She wasn't even a quarter of his size. She was practically an ant to him, and despite her growing her adult scales and almost reaching that point where a dragon fears nothing—she should still fear him.

Torch had heard legends of ponies that were made of gems. He never thought he'd see one, but here he was and he was more curious than desirous. "Turning into a crystal pony?" At Rake's gasp, Torch rumbled with laughter. Few were the hatchlings that grew a brain before they left his immediate domain. "There are old stories, passed down from dragon lord to dragon lord, of ponies made from gemstones. Becoming one is new. What of the other creatures that arrived?"

The sound of Torch's voice was accompanied (in Rake's mind) by her confidence evaporating. He wasn't just a step ahead of her, he was three—and he had more control of his need to hoard. "They're turning too. It's using magic that does it."

"Interesting. We should probably contact the ponies and ask them what they know of this. Regardless, how are you feeling about it?" Torch watched as Rake's expression turned from guarded to actively-looking-for-a-reason-to-fly-away. His size was such that he could reach around her—toward Charlie. When she blew white-hot dragonfire at his talons, Torch laughed.

Realizing she'd just attacked the dragon lord, Rake panicked. "I didn't mean—"

"You've got guts and a big problem." Nodding toward Charlie, Torch smirked. "Hoarding."

It was a relief to finally get caught in the act. Rake slumped her shoulders and wings and nodded. "I can't help it. He needed somewhere safe to sleep and I offered my lair. Next thing I know I just can't stop thinking of him as mine."

"Well, that cinches it. What you claim, you keep. He's yours." Torch rolled his shoulders and then wing joints. "Now, I'm going to—"

"But I don't want that!" Scratching up another triple-line of stone, Rake blew flame out of her mouth and nostrils. "It's not right!"

Rounding back on Rake, Torch crouched down so he could show her how tiny she was compared to him—she wasn't even as big as his head. "You, Rake, are a dragon. Only dragons decide what is right for dragons. Dragons take what they want, they keep what they want, and they own what they want. Make your choice and be a dragon!" His voice rose again and again until he was shouting.

Flicking her wings and bracing against the roar of Torch's voice, Rake snarled. She had no idea what to say, though. Charlie couldn't fight her if she did decide to claim him as her hoard, but she still felt that was wrong.

Having been hiding behind Rake, Charlie stepped around her now. "So any dragon can claim something as theirs so long as they can hold it against others?"

"Yes, little pony-creature," Torch said.

"Then it's simple. All of us humans who arrived belong to Rake."


"Why did you say that?!" Rake was literally spitting flames. It was bad enough when it was her own instincts telling her that the giant, walking diamond belonged to her—hearing the diamond itself say it haunted her like the dragon lord's laughter after Charlie had made the announcement.

"Because now no dragon can mess with us. And because I trust you." Finally, understanding the laws of dragons, Charlie felt safe revealing himself. He lifted the cowl of his robes down and let his horned and crystalline head stand free.

"What are you doing? Cover up or—"

"Or what? The other dragons will see you have a giant gemstone that belongs to you? I'm surprised they don't all turn green with envy."

His words lit a different flame inside Rake than she had been dealing with. Pride boiled through her blood, and as she looked down at Charlie and saw the light of late afternoon playing through the facets of his head, more rushed up. "This is stupid and it's working."

Laughing, Charlie bowed to Rake as he walked. "That is how almost all magic works, so I guess that makes you a witch." When Rake stuck out her tongue at him, Charlie knew he'd scored a minor victory.

A piercing shriek cut through the air—too high-pitched for normal dragon noises. When Charlie turned his head to look, he was almost pulled from his hooves as Rake took off and started pumping her wings.

"What's going o—Sod it." Leaning forward, Charlie broke into a sprint from a standing start. More dragons were flying toward the origin of the shout. Finding an extra gear of speed, he leaned forward further as his legs flashed under him.

The closer Charlie got to the gathering of dragons, the hotter the ground got. The dragons were each holding eggs—huge things as big as Charlie's head—except for one dragon.

Clutching at broken eggshells, a red-silver dragoness wailed again in loss.

"What happened?" Charlie asked, adrenaline pumping in his body as he looked for a threat. When no dragon answered him, he ran up to Rake. "What happened?"

Holding an egg aloft, Rake's attention was on the ground under her feet. There was the slightest motion. "Lava wyrms. They—they burrow under our nests."

Realization sank in. Charlie looked between all the dragons holding eggs and the one clutching at just shells. His blood ran cold (or as cold as it could while standing on rock that's just above a magma flow). They ate the unhatched dragons.

Thoughts and ideas ran through Charlie's head. The dragons, for all their might and power, were vulnerable the younger they were. "Wh-What do they look like?"

The ground trembled again, but this time it was from the roar of a dragon. Torch landed—scattering the gathered dragons and Charlie. "This hatching ground is compromised!" Reaching up with a talon that was a bigger weapon than any living creature should possess, he brought it down in an arc and ripped through stone, magma, and a worm. "Revenge!"

While Torch worked, Charlie could only watch on in amazement. What had been a section of rock surrounded by lava pools that only varied in height by a few feet was now a crater with lava pooling at its base—and still he dug.

The dragons around Charlie were all cheering and roaring in excitement, but he noticed they still clutched the eggs and wouldn't put them down. When Torch finally stopped digging and climbed out of the crater that was rapidly filling with lava, Charlie turned to Rake. "What now? Where do you put the eggs?"

"There is no alternate hatching ground at the moment. Each dragon will take an egg and keep it safe until the dragon lord finds somewhere new. This"—Rake gestured to the new lava pool—"was too much. Any dragon lost is too much."

Standing silently as the dragons dispersed, Charlie turned with Rake and started walking back to her lair. Normally they'd take a more indirect route, but no dragon was feeling their oats enough to try raiding another lair, nor did Rake feel the need to dissuade anyone.

Charlie watched as Rake curled up on her treasure hoard—coiled around the egg—and climbed up too to lay against her. There was no magic between them that Charlie could discern, but even so he wasn't focusing on that.

How can I help them? Charlie thought. What can I—can any of us—do to keep the eggs warm and away from the lava wyrms?


For six days Charlie and Rake guarded the egg. They each curled around it when they slept to be sure it didn't get cold, but no matter how hot their bodies were—the egg needed to be hotter.

"You care for them too." Rake sounded only mildly surprised. "I mean, you were kinda showing you were, but you really care for them."

Still with the egg against his belly, Charlie looked up at Rake. "Of course I do. They deserve a chance at life. What can those lava wyrms burrow through? Rock? What about actual lava?"

The questions made Rake think. "They burrow into the lava tubes right under our eggs, so they don't fear lava. They have diamond-hard teeth, but the rest of them is soft. Why do you want to know?"

"I want to know so we can stop them. So we can make a hatching ground that's safe from them." Standing up, Charlie ran a hoof carefully over the egg. "I need to test some things and I'll need some help. Can you get another dragon to look after this egg?"

Rake grumbled. "It's an honor to be given an egg to look after."

"Those eggs—those young dragons—that died… I want them to be the last ever." Looking at Rake, Charlie felt a fire boil up inside him. "And I will make that so with your help."

The cold, raw certainty in Charlie's words shocked Rake to her core. It was true nothing could harm a dragon once they had their adult scales, but she realized she might have to revise that to exclude the words of wizards. "Yeah, I can. And it will probably be the same place you'll want to go to at some point, so let's go there first."

Charlie had been a little confused at first, but when he walked with Rake to the Bent-Twig home, he realized Rake's words had been correct in all ways. Beatrice Bent-Twig was holding her wand between her teeth and slinging fire spells at Inferno, who dodged, deflected, or just bore them before sending his own flame back at her.

Rake admired the dance the pair were doing. It wasn't like normal dragon roughhousing, but she could appreciate that her little brother preferred using his flame over his fists. She looked at Beatrice with a little focus and realized she was more pony than when last they'd seen each other. "Hey, Inferno?"

Turning his attention away from Beatrice, Inferno looked at his big sister just as a firebolt slammed into the side of his head. "What's up?"

Noticing Beatrice had been firing off lots of spells, Charlie was amazed she hadn't changed more. Her hands and feet were hooves, her face was now drawn out into a snout, and she was now completely made out of pink crystal, but unlike Charlie it seemed to have stopped.

"Can you look after this egg for us?" It stung Rake's pride to have to ask it, but at the same time she could see the value of helping Charlie work on his solution. "I trust you to take care of it while we figure a way to stop the magma wyrms."

"Wait, you trust me that much?" The concept of such trust was alien to Inferno—at least so far as his sister was concerned. "I mean, sure. What's your plan with the wyrms?" Walking up to his sister, he reached with a wing and his arms to take the egg and cradle it. He might be young and impulsive, but eggs weren't something you messed with.

"We need to find something they can't burrow through but that we can heat." Charlie walked closer to Inferno and looked up at him. The realization he'd shrunk a little more in the last week hit Charlie, but he shoved it aside in favor of the current problem he could solve.

Inferno was staring at the egg in his grip, having unconsciously pulled it tighter against his body and increased his body temperature to protect it. "They can bite through anything. Stone, lava, even ore is easy for them."

"Wait, ore? How do you know all this?" Rake asked.

"Kinda messed with 'em a few times. You know, dig one up and put it on different stuff to see what it would do. Never saw anything they couldn't bite through."

"Including young dragons, you idiot. Okay, so it's a bust, then?" Rake looked at Charlie only briefly, but she immediately felt a need to protect him from threats.

"There was one thing they didn't like. It didn't stop them burrowing down, though." Inferno stretched his other wing out and around Beatrice's back when she walked close enough. "I'm not going to make you yell at me to tell you, because this is—"

Rake's patience ran dry. "Just tell us! Ugh!"

Inferno smirked. "Sand. They had to quickly shove it aside, but they had trouble because it got all over them. I figure if they have trouble burrowing down into it, they might have trouble burrowing up through it."

"We need to test that." Charlie's mind raced ahead, trying to imagine how to use the sand against the wyrms and still keep the eggs hot enough. "Where can we find some of the wyrms?"

"Wyrms… There's some by the old quarry. There're some birds nesting there and the wyrms try to get to them before the birds can flap away." Giving Beatrice a little squeeze, Inferno looked at his sister. "I heard about what he said, you know. Every dragon did."

"Yeah, well, I told him he was an idiot for saying it. It's stupid and messed up and—"

"And it will work. Apart from Dragon Lord Torch, you're the biggest and baddest dragon around here. You know half of the others know where your stash is, right?" The moment Inferno said it, he realized he'd messed up.

"They know where my hoard is?!" Spreading her wings and spilling liquid fire from her mouth, Rake spun around to look in the direction of her lair.

"Yeah, and they wouldn't touch your stuff in a thousand years. You're the only dragon here who just walk up to Torch with a problem and not have a reasonable expectation of dying. You look tough, sis, because you are tough. Watch the flames, by the way."

"How long have they known?"

"Since way before these guys showed up. It wasn't Charlie that gave you away. You know, don't you, that if you pull this off and work out a way to protect the eggs—no dragon would ever touch your lair ever again. They"—Inferno nodded to the Bent-Twig cabin—"would be so far off-limits to mess with no dragon would even look them in the eyes."

Getting her anger under control took a few moments, but Rake had been getting a lot of practice lately. She looked at Charlie. "Yeah. Great. Come on, let's find that spot." Walking up to a surprised Charlie, Rake crouched down and lowered her shoulder.

Scrambling up onto Rake's back, Charlie looked back at Inferno with some surprise. The younger dragon had made no attempt to hide his affection for Beatrice, which either meant he didn't fear her mother and father (doubtful) or they were okay with him (Charlie would have thought this was equally unlikely, but after May's comment about becoming settled here, he had to admit it was a possibility).

The moment she felt Charlie get secure on her back, Rake spread her wings and launched into the air with her powerful back legs.

Beatrice tilted her head and inhaled the sharp, metallic smell of Inferno. "You'll let me ride on your back when you get a bit bigger, right?"

"So long as you shrink a bit. I thought you said casting fire spells all day would turn you into a pony?" Letting go of Beatrice, Inferno took a few steps away and braced himself again.

"I don't get it. We've been doing this for two days now. How much magic does it take?" She drew her wand with a hoof, somehow managing to hold it with the crease under her hoof. "You ready?"

"Let me have it, Bea."

Charlie turned his head back from watching Beatrice unloading fire spells at Inferno just in time to see Norbert and Whistlewing swoop in to flank Rake. "Hey, guys, how's the hunting today?"

Neither Norbert nor Whistlewing were truly intelligent, but they'd learned fast enough that Equestrian dragons were not to be messed with. Nothing either had done—in the rare moments they'd actually gotten to test their claws on one without repercussion—had ever managed to hurt an Equestrian dragon, and for alpha predators that was annoying.

Whistlewing ignored the dragon she couldn't so much as hurt and scanned the ground below. She'd learned a few things about the dragons—one being that they didn't scare prey away because they didn't hunt! She spotted a rabbit and stooped into a dive.

There was no hope for the bunny. One moment it was looking around for some tasty grass, the next it had been jerked from the ground so quickly that its neck had broken from whiplash.

Norbert grumbled at Whistlewing getting a snack, but then Charlie tossed a piece of meat into the air and hit it with his wand. Swerving gleefully, Norbert grabbed the venison leg out of the air, missing Whistlewing getting her own. Not that he cared she got a joint as well since he'd learned to share—mostly.

Spiraling down to the cliffs under her, Rake saw the bird colonies in little nooks and crannies, but there were too many birds for the choice niches on the cliff. Some of the birds had been forced to less desirable perches on the flat ground at the bottom of the cliff, and that's where Rake saw the ground start to twitch.

"We need sand," Charlie said.

Pointing with a forelimb, Rake jinked her wings a little and made a sharp turn to the side of the old quarry. Landing, she stomped her feet a few times. "Doesn't seem to be any wyrms here."

Dropping down from Rake's back, Charlie crouched and ran his hooves through the sand. "This will do, but we need the wyrms over here or the sand over there." A sinking feeling filled him as he knew this was going to need magic. "A modified Gouging spell should do the trick."

"Giving you some room." Rake stepped back from Charlie, but not so far as she couldn't pounce if one of the wyrms decided to make a meal of him. She watched as he gestured with his wand, shouted something, and gestured over his shoulder.

Normally the spell would clear rock and dirt from around a target, but Charlie had targeted the quarry itself and singled out the sand as being not wanted. Magic was all about patterns and intent, and he was pretty good with the former and right now he was focused on the latter.

A veritable fountain of sand shot into the air, but tilted toward where the wyrms were ambushing birds. While that happened, the magic force pouring through Charlie was enough to finally seal the deal. His spine and legs shifted just a little—enough that he'd be stuck walking on all fours as the default now. The biggest problem for this was that when he fell forward, his hoof came down hard on his wand.

The sound of snapping wood caused Charlie to lay his ears back flat and yanked a whine from his throat. "My wand…"

"You really needed that thing?" Rake asked.

What surprised Charlie was that his spell was still going, but rather than his broken wand, it was pulling at his magic through his horn. "I—I thought I did. You said ponies do magic with their horns?"

"Something like that. I don't think they wear 'em for decoration." Rake froze when she saw the first movement of a wyrm in the sand among the bird roosts. "Jump on, I think it's working."

Sucking up his loss, and grabbing the two broken pieces of wand to shove in his robe, Charlie jumped up on Rake's back while she walked over to where the sand was twitching and shifting. When a wyrm poked its head out (expecting a bird to eat), the sand rushed in on top of it. More and more sand poured into the tunnel and the wyrm was left no option than to burrow back down its tunnel.

"That worked." Charlie was about to jump down and look closer, but realized how unwise that might be. He might look like he was made of stone, but these wyrms chewed through stone. "Can you lean down closer, Rake?"

Peering close, the sand didn't just annoy the wyrm, it poured into its tunnel and literally chased it away. "This is great. Look how they wig out and try to get away, but the sand follows them down."

The sight of the wyrm trying desperately to get away from the sand brought a sadistic smile to Rake's lips. "So we have dragons constantly pour sand around our eggs?"

Smirking, Charlie shook his head. "It's a start. The sand will even be a good way to keep the eggs warmer. The best bit? That nesting ground Torch slagged will be perfect to fill up with sand."


Asking dragons to do something that didn't directly benefit them, Charlie discovered, was never going to get them to do it. It wasn't long until he realized why—they were all young dragons. While they had an instinctual need to guard the eggs, helping with Charlie and Rake's project wasn't so hard-wired.

"You're not doing it right. Can I do it my way now?" Rake had spent an hour lashing her tail in annoyance at Charlie asking all the dragons to help fill the old hatching ground's crater with sand.

"Alright. You ain't half pushy, Rake." Walking beside her, Charlie considered his options. "We could just tell the dragon lord what—"

"No. If we tell him, we look good in his eyes and every other dragon resents us. We get it done without him and he finds out what we did, we can say 'All the others helped'," Rake said.

"Help with what?" Ember landed beside Charlie and looked between him and Rake. "I've seen you two talking to a bunch of dragons. What's the deal?"

Charlie hadn't heard Ember until she'd spoken and startled a little at having another dragon just suddenly there. The effect was worse now that he was stuck on all fours. "W—"

Reaching out carefully with her wing, Rake folded it over Charlie's head. "We need to get a few more dragons to do something important. You know anyone you can get to do it?"

"How important?"

Pulling her wing back from Charlie, Rake blew out an annoyed gout of flame and rolled her eyes at Ember. "Protecting the eggs important. You know anyone or should I find a dragon who knows their duty?"

"Keep your scales on, Rake. I'll find some dragons to help. What are we doing?" Intrigued now that Rake wasn't trying to take all the glory, Ember was intensely curious. She well knew her father didn't plan on being dragon lord forever, and she was planning to snatch that victory. Part of that would be making sure Rake didn't want to be dragon lord.

"You're not going to believe me if I tell you, but what the flame. We're moving sand into the crater Torch made. We need a lot of sand, which will be easier to deal with if we have a lot of dragons moving it. I don't want anyone who's looking after an egg, so you might want to organize the other younger dragons." Rake didn't bother waiting for Ember's reply, she turned her head and started marching away.

Left to either follow Rake or hang around with Ember, Charlie trotted to catch up to Rake. "You dragons really don't do much that isn't selfish, do you?"

Rake laughed, loosing a blast of flame from her mouth in the process. "It's the dragon way. Dragons are born only doing the bare minimum to get what they want, and it gets worse with age."

"You're the biggest dragon here apart from Torch, aren't you?" While Rake nodded, Charlie tried to work out how to say what he needed to and not offend her. "How big do you need to get before you leave?"

"It's not about size." Size was something Rake had on her mind lately, though. Since finishing her last molt, her skin was flexible enough and her scales densely packed enough that she could grow more fully—and grow she had. She could feel her gait having become a little more purpose-built for quadrupedal, so much so that now she stuck to that. "It's about mindset. A dragon isn't truly an adult until they have a—until they get it fixed in their mind that nothing else really matters than themselves."

Wincing, Charlie looked up at Rake, trying to get an idea of what she was thinking. "And you?"

"Torch has been trying. At first he alienated me from the other dragons—which wasn't that hard to do given my size. I think he's the one who told 'em all about where my lair is. That's backfired, though, because most of 'em wouldn't even want to get into my lair and the rest aren't that stupid. You know, I think he expected you to screw up or something so he could kill you after we'd become—" Rake bit back the word. It wasn't a draconic word at all, but she had to say it in case Charlie got the wrong idea. "… friends."

It shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did. Charlie had been living with the dragons for a few weeks now. The depths of their practical ruthlessness shouldn't surprise him, but he was an optimist. "Harsh, but I get where he's coming from. What about you? You don't seem—" Charlie tried to fish for a word that meant exactly narcissistic. When he wound up collecting three sentences to describe it, he gave up. "… narcissistic."

"What's that mean?"

Charlie sighed. "Narcissism means loving yourself to the exclusion of all else in an unhealthy way."

"Well, for dragons it is healthy, and I do. Well, sometimes. You're just seeing my best side."

"Huh?"

Rake rolled her eyes, and when that wasn't enough she rolled her whole head. "Every time I look at you, Charlie, my brain clicks that you are my hoard. Having you as a—as a friend only makes me more narco—that word."

"Bull-crap, Rake. When we first met, you didn't have me as your possession, and you were still fine hanging out with me and talking about stuff." A dysfunctional dragon that was too nice to be considered an adult? Charlie had dealt with stranger people—he'd dealt with wizards and witches. "And don't tell me that was because you'd been ordered to."

"He would have—"

"I told you not to try that. We're friends, aren't we Rake?"

Looking around herself—left, right, behind, up—Rake hung her head. "Yeah."

"I won't tell anyone."

Jerking her head back to look at Charlie, Rake felt even more conflicted now. "Why?"

It was Charlie's turn to roll his eyes. "Because that's what friends do. They look out for each other. We have the perfect excuse to hang out, and no dragon would do more than think something bad about you, so why not just accept it and keep up the charade until we get out of here?"

"Huh? You're asking more questions than you're answering."

"Well, you don't want to hang around here any longer, do you?" Charlie gestured around with his hoof.

"N-No. But I—"

Charlie straightened up and started walking in the direction of a few young dragons hanging out by a lava pool. "Then let's get this done and leave. I don't know if the Bent-Twigs will want to leave with us, but they probably should. You definitely should. How long until Torch gives up?"

That made Rake pause and really think. The idea that she wasn't needed at the nursery wasn't new, but she wondered if Torch would actually fight her to get her to leave. It was, for her, terrifying. Torch could literally just command her to leave and she'd have no way of saying no—but he didn't use his power like that. "Yeah. I think you might be right. We—we should talk to the Bent-Twigs."

"You should talk to Torch. Tell him you're ready to leave. Tell him you're taking all your possessions and will find somewhere you can focus on being you."

Rake barked a laugh at that, spilling a little liquid flame from her throat. "Okay, I like that. He'll probably catch on quickly enough to be annoyed, but I think he'll just be happy to see the last of me. I was starting to wonder if he'd just make me dragon lord and leave himself."

"If you're right, he wouldn't do that because you're not an adult in his eyes." Charlie reached the edge of the lava pool and marveled at how little the intense heat affected him. His robes have long been enchanted against heat damage (given his profession, a necessity), but that didn't help his own body. A crystal pony, he was happy to discover, could tolerate extremes of temperature far better than a human could. "Hey, come and help make the new hatchery. We need to move a pile of sand to make this work."

"Now you're getting it," Rake said to Charlie. She turned her attention to the youngsters. "Come on, you runts, you're not looking after an egg, but that doesn't mean you get out of protecting them."

"Ugh, whatever. Come on, guys, let's do what Rake says or she'll sic her pony on us." Garble reached out and yanked his little sister from the pool. "You too, Smolder." Rather than handle her with care, like a pony would, Garble literally threw Smolder out of the pool.

"Why's it gotta be sand? I hate moving sand." A constant plume of noxious (even to dragons, though only adolescents) smoke trickled from Fume's snout—just like always. "Can't we just use lava and let it cool?"

When Charlie opened his mouth, he realized he'd been about to give a detailed description of why sand was the only thing that would work. No, he thought. Say it like a dragon would. "It has to be sand."

"Yeah, dumb-ass, of course it has to be sand." Garble punched Fume in the shoulder. "Didn't you hear Rake's pony?"

Biting back any reply he might give, Charlie had to remind himself that this was exactly why he'd made the pronouncement. They wouldn't mess with him because he belonged to Rake, and Rake was bigger and tougher than them. Pausing a moment before he walked off, he had to admit that Rake was also smarter and nicer than them too, but they were dragons. "Just follow us and don't screw this up. It's for the eggs."

There wasn't much that would actually rein in Garble's assholery, but that was one of them. "Yeah. Right." Even he barely recognized his voice as he said the words, but they were eggs. If there was one thing all dragons did, it was take care of eggs. Eggs were how a dragon started, and if another dragon hadn't cared about protecting eggs, no dragon would be around.

When they reached the crater, Charlie pointed at it with a hoof. "I don't care where you get it from, but we need this full of sand. It needs to be actual sand, not gravel, not a huge rock with a little sand on it—actual sand. There's some at the old quarry, but not enough. Any of you who can fly should probably go to a beach and start digging it up."

Rake could see Fume didn't really enjoy taking orders from Charlie, so figured she'd lean her weight in on his side. "Garble, take Smolder and get her to start digging up a beach. Bring back whatever she digs up and dump it in here. Fume, you can fly too, try and get as much here as you can. I don't care how you have to carry it, just get it here. Got it?"

The moment Garble, Fume, Clump, and Smolder left, Ember landed with a dozen dragons behind her. "What are we doing?" Ember asked.

"Filling that hole with sand. Dragons past their first molt can carry it from a beach, split the rest between staying at the beach to dig it up and being here to spread it out." Rake pointed with one immense wing in the direction Garble and his group went. "Garble went that way, if you go there, try to get it from a different section of beach."

As soon as that group of dragons had left, Torch picked that moment to crash his mass against the ground almost right beside Charlie. "We need to talk, pony." He turned and started walking away from Rake, hoping he didn't have to thump the younger dragon to make her realize he only meant Charlie.

Looking from Torch to Charlie, Rake felt conflicted. She got that Torch wanted to talk to Charlie alone, but her draconic instincts hated that her hoard was walking off with another dragon. That Torch was the dragon lord was annoying in the extreme because she had to follow his commands. Then there was a new side of her that liked having Charlie as a friend, and that part swore that if Torch hurt him, she'd hurt Torch.

Giving Rake one last look, Charlie walked off with Torch and finally stopped when the colossal dragon did. "This is about Rake?"

"Partly, but mostly about you ordering dragons around." Torch used his mass to shield his voice from reaching Rake. "Do it again and I'll kill you. Dragons shouldn't get used to being ordered around by anything but another dragon. Let Rake do the ordering. Got it?"

"Yeah." Debating with himself whether to say more, Charlie ended up going with his gut. "You've been trying to get her to leave, haven't you?"

Raising one eye ridge, Torch nodded his head slowly. "Rake is too attached to this place, too attached to her brother and you, pony."

"And what if I said I finally got through to her that in owning us, she is finally an adult dragon?" Charlie didn't bother looking up at Torch's head—the dragon towered over him so much that all it would do is give him a sore neck trying.

Torch thought on the idea and found it fit with what would cause an adult dragon to want to leave the spawning grounds. "Interesting. You say giving her something to be prideful and hoard was key? Yes, I can see that. So she's taking all of you with 'er?"

Charlie snorted. "She'll try. Can't say it'd be a bad idea. Having ponies around seems to have put you on edge. Nothing against you, Dragon Lord Torch, but I don't want to be within a continent of you on edge."

"Ha! Well put. It's good to see some ponies have sense. What are you doing here, anyway?" Gesturing to the direction they'd come—the new crater—Torch turned and started walking back toward it.

"Solving your problem with magma wyrms. They hate sand getting in their tunnels, so if you put the eggs on the hot sand, the wyrms won't get them." Walking back, Charlie could see the first few dragons arriving with sand. "I might need to cast a spell or two to keep the sand replenished, but that won't be a problem."

"Interesting, but we aren't going to test it with an egg. If you thing it works, why don't you sleep here?" Torch grinned, knowing that would be the ultimate test of the plan. "Damn wyrms are attracted to anything that isn't an adult dragon—so long as it doesn't move."

Rake, hearing the last of the conversation—at least Torch's side of it—felt her possessive side rise up and she looked at the massive dragon, snarling. "Why should I risk my pony?"

That was exactly what Torch wanted to hear. He grinned at the thought that Rake was—as the last of her generation still at the nesting ground—about to leave. "Then sleep out here too for all I care." Spreading his wings, Torch paused a moment. "You're leavin'?"

Glaring at Charlie, Rake nodded. "I think it's time to take what's mine and leave."

Torch felt pride that his plan of linking Rake and an outsider together had worked. It hadn't gone quite as he planned it, but the results spoke for themselves. "Well spoken, Rake. You are truly a dragon worthy of respect now." With that, he spread his wings and nearly knocked Charlie, Rake, and another adolescent dragon (running through the forest with its wings cupping a huge load of sand) over, Torch almost laughed. If it had only been Rake and Charlie, he would have.

Watching Torch fly off, Rake let out a long, deep breath. It would have seemed a very human gesture except a small torrent of thick smoke came out with it. "You told him." She should have been angry with Charlie, except she knew Torch would be happy with that.

"Not without getting information from him. Also, I think I made him more amiable about it. I still think he wanted you to kill me." Charlie walked down the edge of the crater and found the sand that filled the bottom. "If I'm going to use magic to do this, I need the crater to be full exactly as much as we want it to always be."

"Weirdly specific, but that's magic. Come on, we might as well help them carry this sand. It will speed things up." Rake lowered her shoulder and held out her forelimb to let Charlie climb onto her shoulders.

It took most of the day, but they eventually had the crater filled to the top with sand. Hot sand, now—the lava flows were close to the surface already, and they were steadily heating the sand up more and more. Walking out along the surface, Charlie could feel the growing temperature of the sand. "This will be perfect. Now for the curse."

"Curse?" Ember glared at Charlie. "What do you mean, 'curse'?"

"Just the type of spell. It's called a Gemino curse because it's normally a negative effect—a bad thing. My brother showed me this one because he had to deal with it so much. Check this out." Picturing the spell in his mind, Charlie drew his broken wand out with one hoof (he still had no clue how he managed to hold it, but he could), realized what he'd done, then aimed his horn at the sand pile under him. "The trick is making it so only the wyrm's cause it to trigger."

The spell, once Charlie had cast it, was extremely anticlimactic for Rake. She'd expected some big show of glowing lights or thundercracks echoing around the mountains. Instead she watched a pony do some kind of dance on a pile of warm sand. "Is that it?"

"Yeah. If any of the magma wyrms touch any of the sand, any sand they touch will duplicate—over and over again. Basically, it will chase them as far as they try to burrow until it drowns them in their tunnels." Even just standing on the surface, Charlie could feel the spell bubbling under him as it awaited a trigger.

"Well, let's get a wyrm and drop it on top to test it," Ember said.

Charlie stared at the young dragoness. That had been a stroke of genius that he hadn't considered. "Right. That's the best way to test it." Turning to Rake, Charlie smirked. "Looks like we don't have to sleep out here after all. Come on, let's find one of the wyrms at the old quarry."

One was optimistic. Every dragon that could fly rushed to the quarry and stomped around until a magma wyrm reached the surface. Apparently, Charlie learned, encouraging dragons to hunt wasn't a difficult thing.

Flying back, the group had managed to source five of the wyrms between them. Walking out onto the sand, Garble was the first one to toss his wyrm out. The moment it touched the sand, the gritty stuff started to bubble and boil around it. The wyrm screamed and tried to burrow into the sand, but this only buried it faster.

"What happened?" Garble asked. "Did it get away?"

Charlie changed a quick spell and reached into the sand—grabbed the magma wyrm—and pulled it to the surface. It wasn't moving. "How's that?"

"Ha!" Garble snatched the wyrm out of Charlie's magical grip. "It got some of the sand inside it."

It hadn't occurred to Charlie that the wyrm's would breathe or swallow the sand, but when he watched Garble slice the wyrm in half with a talon, a pile of sand leaked out. "Wow."

"Nice work, pony." Ember petted Charlie on the shoulder. "This is pretty cool. The only thing left to test is if it's hot enough to hatch eggs. Even if it's not, we can always pipe some more lava here."

"Well, we did it, Charlie. Even if Torch wants to be a stick-in-the-magma, we made this place safe for dragon eggs. Let's go and see the Bent-Twigs." Rake lowered her shoulder automatically now.

Ember's anger flashed, which for a dragon meant that something was probably going to end up on fire soon. "What do you mean? What did my dad say?"

"Torch said he wouldn't let you put the eggs back here. Something about wanting to make sure it was safe by having a dragon spend the night laying on it." It was a calculated risk, Charlie knew, but he planned to be gone before Torch would be able to get angry about it. "Come on, Rake, I think I can work something out so you can bring all your hoard with you."

Propelling herself into the air, Rake made for the Bent-Twig's cabin without the slightest bit of delay. She could have bathed in the thermal updrafts of the active volcano, but she had business to take care of. When she landed, she could see Inferno and Beatrice sitting side by side talking—it was the perfect moment to destroy. Crashing into the ground with enough force to drive her feet into deep divots, Rake called out, "Hey, Inferno, I'm leaving today."

Twisting to look at his sister, Inferno could have growled, but realized what she'd said was more important than her interrupting what Beatrice had been trying to teach him. "What?"

"Torch wasn't going to put up with me for much longer, and I don't want to put up with him, either. So we're leaving. Where's your parents?" The last bit Rake said to Beatrice, having understood that in their family creatures' parents make the decisions.

"Huh?" Beatrice stared dumbly at Rake, then at Charlie as he climbed off her back. "You mean we're all going?"

"Well, if you don't, you'll need to find another dragon to claim you and fight for you," Charlie said.

"Inferno can." It seemed so perfect to Beatrice. "Won't you?" The last bit she asked of Inferno, but she watched the scales of his face pale.

"I-I mean, I could, but then if another dragon roughed you up or took one of you, I'd have to fight them. Rake—Rake's so far above all the others now they wouldn't dare mess with you, but if she leaves…" Inferno looked between his sister and Beatrice.

"Mom and Dad are back at the house. Come on." Beatrice felt betrayed, but at the same time she'd learned that dragons put a lot of stock into fighting. She knew that if Inferno wanted to, he could beat her up without much fuss. She also knew that there were other dragons that could beat him up.

Inferno stood up and held the egg he'd been looking after. He looked at it a moment then held it out to Rake. "You'd better take this back, sis. If Torch gets angry at you for something, he wouldn't dare hurt you for fear of harming an egg."

"You could come with us, Inferno." The words, Rake could see, caused shock on Inferno's face. "Oh come on, I've seen how you and Bea look at each other. It might be whelp-love, but it's still love. If they're coming with us, there's a spot for you too." Rake carefully tucked the egg up against her side with her wing.

When she heard a big dragon approaching her cabin, May looked out the door to see who it was. "Simon, it's Rake and Charlie." She stepped out and smiled—completely ignoring how her feet were now hooves. It had taken a little bit of spellcasting to get their home just right, but it was well worth it. "Hello Rake, Charlie."

Rake strained to keep back her breath from spilling out too much. "Hello, May." When she saw Simon come out too, she nodded to him. "Simon. I'm leaving the dragon lands."

"And hello to you too. Leaving? For a particular reason?" Simon wasn't a wizard, but he'd grown up as part of the wizarding world, and had a rough grasp of how things worked. The dragons of this world seemed to have their own system, but it worked on similar logic.

"Yeah. Torch'll probably kill me trying to get me to leave on my own, and Charlie gave me some pretty good reasons to get out of here. You can come with me if you want. We're—uh—not exactly sure where we're going, but now the portal's gone and Torch is angry, I figure we might just head east along the coast and see what we can find."

May and Simon both turned to look at Charlie. Given he was the resident dragon expert (even if they were a world away from the dragons he was strictly an expert in), they wanted to hear what he would suggest. Plus, if he was going too, they didn't want to hang around with a bunch of dragons they didn't have any ties to.

"I'm going with Rake. I don't exactly want to be around here when the next dragon gets to the point where I look like a big gem to hoard." Looking at Beatrice Bent-Twig, Charlie then looked back to her parents. "It was okay with Rake here, but you're all going to start looking like a combination of snack and property soon, and without an adult dragon here to tell the others to sod off, you could be in trouble."

Turning to look at the little log cabin they'd built, Simon Bent-Twig let out a sigh. "It was a nice little house, but I think we need bigger." He looked at his wife with a knowing grin and a pair of waggling eyebrows.

"What about you?" Charlie asked Inferno. "Coming or staying?"

Blowing out what would normally be a little smoke—but for him was a pair of blue-green jets of flame—Inferno tried not to glance at Beatrice. He failed, and found himself looking at Beatrice and felt a burning heat rumble inside him. "I guess I'll come too. All the dragons around here are either idiots or still hatchlings. Most of them are both."

May caught Inferno's look at her daughter and managed to keep her smile hidden until she could justifiably turn away from him. "So, when are we leaving?"

"As soon as I can test an idea for packing up Rake's hoard so we can bring it with us." Looking askance at Rake, Charlie saw her very excited grin. The amount of fangs she showed should have been terrifying, but it really didn't bother him at all. "And I need to find Norbert and Whistlewing."

"Well, we need to pack up all our things in here and get ready to start hauling them." Simon looked around at his family, then nodded at Inferno. "Do you have anything you want to bring?"

Again Inferno glanced at Beatrice. "Nah. I don't really have anything here, ya know? Only thing dragons usually keep is gems. Do you need help with anything?" It was novel for Inferno to offer his assistance to anyone, but something he'd learned from the Bent-Twigs was that working together could do some pretty amazing things.

"Thank you for asking, Inferno. I think I have something for a big, strong dragon to help me with." May knew teenagers were full of pride and had learned dragons were too—so playing to a teen dragon's pride, she understood, would get things done.


Flying on Rake's back had somehow become Charlie's new normal. He never once attempted to steer her—mostly because he hadn't worked out how to fly without a broom. As they circled down to land at the entrance to Rake's lair, Charlie could already feel something wrong.

All of Rake's attention was on the entrance to her lair. Her hoard, inside, sang an odd note in her mind—there was another dragon near it. "Stay close to me, and if I get in a fight, stay where I can see you." Unlike her brother, Rake didn't usually leak fire from her mouth most of the time, but right now she was so furious that blue-white flame tickled at the corners of her mouth. She started to stalk inside.

Garble froze at the sounds coming from the entrance. He had overheard Charlie and Rake talking to Torch earlier and, after seeing them fly away, figured he should take a look around an older dragon's lair. When he saw flashing light—from a breath of flame—in the outer cavern, Garble realized he may have jumped the gun a little early. "Rake! This isn't what you think!"

The voice echoed around Rake. "Garble? You picked a bad day to move fast. Where are you hiding, little dragon?" Turning her head, Rake looked down a dead-end tunnel that she made sure she trod as often as she could—just to be a fake-out. Inhaling deeply, she was about to unload when a red face poked around the corner.

The sight of his death, a bulging draconic throat and anger-filled eyes, had Garble shaking. "Rake! Please! I thought you'd left already! I heard you tell Torch you were leaving, and then I saw you fly off with your pony. I just—I just wanted to see what your lair was like."

The pleading tone combined with how small Garble looked—his face lit in blue/white flame from Rake's mouth—caused Rake to back off a little. "Stay here. If you try to fly off, I'll hunt you down—lair-thief."

Charlie was quick to take off after Rake as she headed down the series of tunnels and forks to reach her hoard room. He noticed her sniffing a lot before she let out a great sigh. "He didn't come down here?"

"He's just a runt. He should be the same size as me, but something is holding him back even more than I was. Wait in here and I'll drive him off." Rake turned, her body curling past Charlie but not quite touching him as she stalked back to confront Garble.

Turning toward the pile of gems, Charlie left Rake to her own devices while he did his thing. "First I need some light." A light spell was simple, but instead of making his wand-tip glow, he made his horn glow instead. He'd seen a few of the muggle-born wizards and witches using little lights attached to their heads to work on fine details. "Muggles have a lot of good ideas, and some of them can be downright sensible."

A shrinking charm, on non-living objects, was not a hard thing to cast. Making it affect a big pile of gemstones at the same time was a lot harder. "Well, might as well do this." Focusing down his lit horn, Charlie aimed the Shrinking charm at the center of the pile and started pouring magic into the spell.

The effect wasn't completely unlike watching popcorn burst, only in complete reverse. Charlie watched as gems the size of his hoof popped and became tiny little pebble-shaped stones. Unlike popcorn, there was no increase in the rate of the stones popping, just a steady effect until the entire pile was small enough to be scooped into the hood of Charlie's robes—which he'd cut free and fashioned into a bag with a bit of twine around the opening.

Rake, having taken care of Garble in the least-deadly-but-still-a-lesson-in-adulthood way she could, had watched the final moments as her hoard was reduced to a tiny pile of pebbles that could have fit in one claw. She felt lessened, though the link to all those gems was still strong. "We need to find a new lair quickly. I don't like not having all my gems to look at."

Securing the gems in his biggest pocket in his robes, Charlie walked over to Rake and grinned up at her. "Your hoard is safe, Rake. I will take care of it for you until you an find another suitable lair. As a wizard I promise to do everything I can to—"

The ground shook and stones started falling from the cave ceiling. "RAKE!"

Instinctively stretching a wing over Charlie, Rake watched as the entire cave was ripped apart by Torch. "What are you doing?!"

"What'd you do with your hoard, Rake?!" Torch didn't have a lot of delights in life, but the one greedy thing he allowed himself was to pick over the hoards of departing, newly adult, dragons.

Rake looked for the Bloodstone Scepter, but couldn't see it. He wasn't going to compel her to tell him. "What hoard?"

"You have spent three years guarding this lair. I've watched you digging in the old quarry, finding gems here and there and hiding them. Don't think I didn't! Now, where are they?" His eyes darting around, Torch looked for anything that might give away the location of Rake's hoard. "It's deeper, isn't it?"

Feeling on a high from dealing with Garble, still, Rake didn't so much as glance at Charlie. "You remember, Dragon Lord Torch, that you wanted me to act like an adult dragon? Well, adult dragons don't tell any other dragon where their hoard is—and I know you won't use the scepter to make me."

Torch froze in his digging to look at Rake. Eyes as big as her head narrowed to slits as he felt his fire rise into his throat. "You figured all that out, didn't you?" His voice was low, though with how much lung capacity was behind it, it still echoed back at them like thunder from nearby mountains.

"If word got out that you used the scepter to compel another dragon to give up their hoard—you'd be the first dragon lord killed by his own kin." Turning, Rake started to walk away from what was left of her old lair. "Come on, Charlie, we have some flying to do."

Trying to ignore the fact that there was a dragon bigger than Hogwarts castle looking for the gems he was carrying in his pocket, Charlie climbed up on Rake's shoulder, then got secure on her back. When her wings snapped out, Charlie could only hope that Torch couldn't see all the magical enchantments his cloak was wrapped in had been joined by a new one.

Leaping into the air, Rake beat her wings to get away from the rocks and dust that Torch was still kicking up from the remains of her lair. Her draconic emotions sang in joy at how close they'd been to losing all her gems—only to get away.

Not that Rake was dawdling. Not with her whole hoard riding on her back. Maybe, she thought, a smaller hoard would be better. Safer.


Norbert didn't like it. Flying so much, without having a nice warm place to settle down, was unnatural for a dragon. But here he was soaring high above the slow-moving creatures and looking for things to eat.

It was surprising how many things were good to eat in this different world. Not the other, strange dragons—he couldn't eat those if he tried—but the various things that tried to chase the slow-moving creatures were good eating.

When Whistlewing heard Norbert let out a soft growl, she looked in the same direction he did and spotted the three big cats stalking through the grass. She let out a low whistle of excitement and started a slow circle that would put the sun at her back, while Norbert began a slow descent that would scare the beasts toward her.

Norbert loved his part in their games. When he saw Whistlewing was in position, he stooped forward and started to dive. Sometimes the creatures they hunted would see him coming, but sometimes (like today) they wouldn't notice the apex-predator until it had landed on one of them and snapped their neck.

The remaining cats knew when they were outmatched. A predator nearly five times their size had just ambushed them, and they wanted none of it. Turning to run, neither saw Whistlewing as she grabbed one of the cats around the neck with her jaws and caught the second with her talons.

Pouncing to assist Whistlewing, Norbert grabbed the one in her talons and dealt with it while she finished the third off.

Whistlewing had thought Norbert was a hopeless case. That he was a dragon without any of the right instincts to be a dragon, but she had persevered and found him quite capable. Whistling to him, surrounded by their coming meal, she leaned closer and nuzzled his neck—before turning to start eating her kill.

"What was that?" Stefan asked. He'd seen the two dragons swoop down behind them and hadn't seen them take off again. "What happened to Whistles and Norby?"

Charlie didn't need years of study to know that the dives the two dragons had used were textbook hunting attacks. It did make him smile that dragons only hunted in pairs when they were a bonded pair. "Well, they're big dragons, Stefan, I'm sure they can take care of themselves."

Stefan had learned something during their week of travel—Inferno would tell him all the details of anything the dragon knew, so long as he asked the right way. Easing away from Charlie, Stefan walked over to where Infero was walking beside his sister. The dragon was pulling a huge travois, the sticks crossing over just behind him dragging along the ground but supporting a whole pile of gear. "Hey, Inferno?"

Turning his head, Inferno looked back at Stefan. "What's up?" He knew Beatrice's family meant a lot to her, so he extended being nice to all of them.

"You know all kinds of stuff, why were the Earth dragons diving back there?" Pointing with his hand, Stefan indicated behind them.

"Probably something following us. Those Earth dragons are no match for me or Rake, but there's a lot of stuff here they could beat up easily." It worried Inferno a little that things following them meant predators following them, but he didn't want to show that he was worried. After all, if those good-for-nothing Earth dragons had become good-for-apparently-something, even better. "You should probably stick close."

All the adults, Charlie included, had their own travois. They carried all the various items that the Bent-Twigs had made for their cabin. The only exception was Rake. It wasn't that she refused to carry anything, but if something nasty appeared, she was best suited to deal with it. "Probably big cats. There's lots of small creatures around here for them to hunt. I guess you're all a bit of a bigger meal for them."

Rake had been learning to use her brain even more and, more importantly, follow her feelings. Raising her voice a little more, she called, "Stefan, do you want to ride on my back for a bit?"

Being 13 years old and getting an invitation to ride on the back of a dragon was something Stefan wouldn't turn down. He'd seen Charlie climb onto Rake's back a few times, and being size (if he were on all fours), he managed to get in place over her spine easily.

"Stefan," Simon said, "what do you say?"

"Thank you, Miss Rake!"

Rake made sure to keep her head turned slightly while they walked, always keeping one eye on the rear of their group. What she saw was Whistlewing and Norbert doing great work at killing and eating anything that followed them. Still, she put up with carrying the smallest of the humans on her back.

That night, with the Bent-Twigs all curled up together in a group, Charlie made his way over to Rake and Inferno. "Do you know what Norbert and Whistlewing keep hunting?"

"Rake was guarding all the Bent-Twigs, and I had to pull that damn pack all day." Inferno glared at the bound poles that formed his travois. "Whatever it or they were, they knew how to keep hidden while stalking us."

"Not from the air." The thought of the dragons he'd helped helping them made Charlie smile. "Tomorrow, can you pull my load along with you and I'll use an a spell to hide myself. When Norbert and Whistlewing kill the creatures, I'll know what they were."

"I don't like it." Rake had a double stake in Charlie—he was both her friend and the entirety of her hoard. "Your dragons are keeping them off us, that's enough."

"Not if we're going to be living near here. We need to know the threats and we need to keep moving. I can't keep you hidden with me, Rake. My magic barely even sticks to Inferno. I can look after myself, Rake." Though he appreciated her protection, it was starting to grate a little for Charlie.

Simon walked over to the trio and sat down with them—ignoring the way they all clammed up and stared at him. "What's the plan?" When none of the three looked to comply, he let out a sigh. "I know those two dragons—"

"Earth dragons," Rake said.

"… those two Earth dragons caught something today. What was it? It was dangerous?" Having faced no end of dangers in the wizarding world, Simon wasn't about to back down from learning the truth of things.

Charlie sighed and spilled the beans. "We think it might be big cat of some kind. If it was following us, it was definitely a predator."

"And we were going to settle on the far side of this plain. Okay, so how do we find out what it was? Use some kind of concealment and wait? Circle above and try to spot them?"

"The plan Charlie just offered was for him to wait with some kind of spell hiding him, then watch for any that pass. I don't like it." Rake had to focus to hold back her flames lest she start a fire that soured the grass plains.

"No one should do that alone," Simon said, gaining a nodding approval from Rake. "That's why I'll stay with him."

Rake tried to nix the idea on the grounds that Simon wouldn't be any help, but Charlie spoke up first.

"I don't want to have you out there too, Simon. You should be here, with your family," Charlie said.

"I think my family are safe enough with a pair of real dragons protecting them. It's you I'm worried about, mate. Too used to using magic by half. You know how us squibs survive all the madness the wizarding world has to offer?" Before any of them could answer, Simon produced a butterfly knife from his coat and flicked it around quickly so the business end was facing out. "They might be big cats, or wolves, or whatever—but your big and scaly pets proved they can bleed."

Inferno was the most taken aback by the difference in Simon. He looked at the human with a newfound respect—not that he didn't respect him already, but this was draconic respect.

Closing his eyes to think of the best way to say what he wanted to say, Charlie tossed all the thoughts out and spoke his mind. "I don't like it, Simon, but I won't stop you. Okay, so prepare whatever weapons you want to bring and be ready before dawn. Rake, can you—?"

"More load. Just make sure I can drop it in a hurry if I need to get serious." By this point Rake was resigned to the situation.


Early in the morning, about an hour before the sun was due to jump into the sky, Charlie and Simon were getting ready for the day. Charlie had planned to just use the heavy enchantments on his robes to turn himself invisible, but covering Simon too meant he would need something bigger.

In the end the pair had woven a grass mat and Charlie spent the last twenty minutes before sunrise enchanting it. It was neither an easy task nor a perfect result, but the advantage was that the mat already looked and smelled of the grass around them, so the spell would hold far better than it had any right of doing.

"That'll work? I don't mean to question you, but I have heard that invisibility enchantments can be difficult." Simon looked at the normal-appearing mat of grass as if it might actually bite him.

"It will barely last the day, and if we were anywhere but a grassy plain, I'd say it wouldn't work at all, but it will hold out here." Charlie didn't like the look of the spell either, but it was all he could manage. "What I wouldn't give to have my brother here."

"Good wizard?"

"At this stuff? The best. Cursebreaker by trade, but he was also pretty good at putting long-term enchantments and curses together, too." Casting magic through his horn had become second nature to Charlie, and it reminded him—every time he did it—that his family were an entire world away.

The sense of loss eased when a hand started rubbing at Charlie's head and ears. It shouldn't have felt so welcome and reassuring, but Simon's simple touch meant a lot to Charlie. "Thanks. I miss my brothers and parents."

"Figured. I don't know what I'd do if I lost May and the kids." Drawing his hand back, Simon still felt a little uncomfortable about petting another person. "Okay, let's pick our spot and settle down."

Their spot ended up being a depression in the ground near the overnight camp. The mat covered them over perfectly and left them somewhere to hunker down so that they would be even less visible. Charlie had only his magic and a machete he kept in one of his many pockets, while Simon had tied a short pole to the handle of a knife and held it like a short spear.

Nothing happened all morning, and it wasn't until an hour past midday when there was the first hint of movement in the campsite. Neither could see the creatures, but the silence of their footsteps was highlighted by the purr-like sound they were making. The addition of a strong cat smell was all Charlie needed to know what was out there.

Simon's nose wasn't as good as Charlie's, but he could draw his own conclusions too. He held very still as the big felines he knew were out there sniffed around the camp and explored the area just beyond their hidey-hole.

The cats moved so silently that neither Charlie nor Simon heard the cat behind their backs—just beyond the grass mat—until it's nose was inches from the mat.

Both sat motionless, not even breathing as fangs and claws and sharp nose were mere inches from them. They'd thought they'd gotten away with it, too. The cat stood up and seemed like it was walking away—only for its forepaw to come down on the grass mat and rip it away.

Charlie began summoning his magic to do battle or, at worst, apparate them away, only for Simon to bring his spear up and under the big cat and drive the dagger tied to the tip deep into its chest.

It had all happened so fast that Charlie was left stunned and shocked. Even as Simon freed one of his hands from the spear and brought it up—knife in hand—to slash the throat of the cat, Charlie was trying to work out what had gone so wrong.

The rest of the pride, consisting of two more females and a male, turned at the dying gurgles of the big cat that had uncovered Charlie and Simon.

When the male started moving (the first to do so), Simon tried to dig his spear out of the dead cat and get it ready to put between himself and the next attacker—but the knife was buried deep in the strong muscles of the cat's chest and wouldn't budge. "I hope you can do something with your magic."

Eyes widening, Charlie lowered his horn and prepared the first thing that came to mind—a stunning spell. Aiming at the big cat racing toward them, he discharged a bright red bolt from his horn that lanced toward the feline—which dodged to the side. The bolt, without the first target in its way, flew by and hit one of the female cats that hadn't started their run yet.

Simon hated the odds. The cats weren't as big as tigers, but even coming up to his waist they were more than enough to be a serious problem up close—and the first was about to be up close very quickly.

When the cat pounced forward—claws out and ready to grab Simon—he ducked under and rolled toward it. There was a horrible moment when Simon couldn't see the cat and had to hope it wasn't prepared to adjust its pounce.

When the cat and Simon fell into a close fight, Charlie had his chance to send a stunner at them or at the remaining female—and given said female was charging at them he knew what he'd rather do. Trusting Simon to at do as well against the male as he had against the first cat, Charlie sent a stunner at the remaining cat and hit it. The only problem was it had momentum, and while the stunner checked all its muscles at once, the thing slammed into him and knocked him over.

Except for Charlie's groan from being pinned under a cat and the sounds of Simon and his combatant fighting, the sounds of the plane had all stopped. Predators were fighting, and though there would be a feast for many once the fight was over—none wanted to be the first to disrupt the fight and possibly face the victor alone.

But two creatures were more than happy to intervene. Whistlewing landed beside the cat pinning Charlie and grabbed it with one talon. When she pulled it away from him, she let out a curious chirp sound at him before she started to shred the stunned feline.

"No. Help—help Simon!" Feeling like he'd been hit by a small car, Charlie tried to get his legs under himself and turned to see that the cat Simon had been fighting was slumped beside him, though Simon didn't look much better off. "Simon?"

The problem for Simon was that while he had two knives, using them meant putting himself in range of the cat's claws and its teeth. He hurt a lot. His side felt like it was on fire, and his arms had tears from his shoulders on down to his wrists where it had clawed at him. The one wound he knew would be a big problem, though, was the bite in his thigh. "Still alive, but not for long."

"Is any of that blood from the cat?" Filling his horn with magic, Charlie ran over all the spells he knew for healing. He'd learned several healing spells, all of them Charms, and had a good idea what needed to be done. "Hold on, I can help with this. First I need to close those wounds and prevent shock."

It was by no means a simple spell. Episkey Charm was, however, perfect for the first half of the healing, so Charlie built up as much magic as he could and started forming the spell. The moment he finished the preparations and formed the pattern, his magic rushed in to fill it and poured itself through the spell and into Simon.

The magic poured into Simon. He felt the pain ease and the darkness around his consciousness retreat somewhat. The tugging on his wounds should have hurt, but magic being magic meant it didn't.

What did hurt was Simon's forehead. "What are you doing?!" Lifting his hands to his forehead, he felt something starting to protrude.

Trying to cut off the magic of the spell, once it was cast and working, was impossible. Charlie could only stare in shock as Simon's body started to not just heal, but change. The skin on his scalp—along with his hair—grew shiny and crystalline and the pattern crept all the way to his growing horn.

"I—I didn't do this! It's just happening. Simon, are you okay?" Charlie was rattled. The spell hadn't been intended to turn Simon into a unicorn, but it was happening before his eyes—only it seemed to fizzle out with just the horn and a mane of equine hair.

The pain had gone again, though Simon could feel a tingle coming from his forehead as well as his face and neck. "Yeah. Uh, what's going on? Where are the other cats?"

Turning his head, Charlie saw that the other stunned cat was missing its insides while Norbert—with a big and savage grin—was swallowing something. "Uh, I don't think we have to worry about them. Norbert and Whistlewing turned up and…"

Reality sank in for Simon. This was no different than his wife or kids getting crystal skin or snouts and tails. "Okay, so we're safe. I still feel like shit, though. What else were you going to do?"

"Stamina charm. It would restore the blood lost and give you enough energy to get us caught up to the others. That might not be such a good idea n—"

"Just cast it. It's not like I stand out by looking like this, I just didn't—didn't think about it happening to me." Bracing one arm against the ground, Simon pushed himself to a crouch just as Charlie began casting the next spell.

This time the spell lacked any pain-killing properties, but the more it filled him with magic, the better Simon felt. The reserves he'd lost with his blood filled back up and he could feel a rush of returning strength. He could also feel the tingle as his body quickly soaked up the magic like a sponge and used it to give him a perfect sheen of orange diamond from the tip of his horn to the soles of his hoofed legs.

When the restorative magic cut off, Simon gasped and looked down at his feet. His shoes had just fallen off, though the thick woolen socks he'd been wearing were still covering his hooves and ankles. "I thought I had to cast spells to change?"

"I don't get it either. I thought it would be safe." Charlie wasn't sure what to do with Simon. He was worried about him, but at the same time they needed to get moving.

Seeing the worry Charlie had, Simon mentally grabbed himself and shook until he was thinking straight. He was in a tough situation, things had gone a little sideways, but Charlie had just saved his life. "Relax, mate. You saved my bacon. This"—Simon stood up and gestured to himself—"just means I match my family a little better. Come on, we need to get a move on, and I think these hooves are going to take some getting used to."

A little surprised by the no-nonsense attitude Simon took, Charlie walked at his side. He could see Simon was a little shorter now, but still nowhere close to the much reduced size of a pony. "You were pretty good with those knives. I know they weren't exactly lions or anything, but you still nailed two of them."

"When I was younger, I did some things I regret, right? I've tried to put it behind me, but when I get provoked like that my hands remember how to move." Looking down at his hands, Simon focused on the translucent quality of them for a moment before he realized something. "Hey, I don't have the snout."

"Maybe you're still changing?" Looking back on the former camp, Charlie watched as Whistlewing and Norbert cavorted around the remaining two cat bodies. It was close to playing with their food, but he recognized it as simply two dragons that were comfortable with each other.

"Maybe. Life changes fast here, it seems. Where do you think will be a good place to settle down again?" Still getting used to his hooves, Simon tried to get a stride going he could balance with. "How does Bea manage this?"

"You don't really need to roll your foot. Just step on it, let it take your weight, and lift it the moment you'd normally start to rock up on your toes. And, I was thinking we go until we're near the ocean. There's a lot of advantages to being by the sea. Fishing for one."

Trying the suggestion with his feet helped and meant his hooves weren't dragging so much. "I guess we can always fish then. I haven't done any fishing before." The topic was like a complete change for Simon. He could forget about the bloody mess he'd made and been and move on. "What's it like?"

"Depends on a lot of things, but it can be really relaxing if you are comfortably bringing-in food. I can do a few food charms that me mum taught me, so we wouldn't exactly be hurting for food if we could catch a fish or two a week. Getting a garden started would be more important." Charlie only had to remember his mum's garden and he was feeling tears well up in his eyes at the good memories.


"There's dad and Charlie!" Belladonna called, pointing a jeweled, yellow finger in the direction of the returning men. She was just about to run to meet them when Rake landed in front of her—and try as she might, Belladonna couldn't physically argue with a dragon.

"They smell like blood. Stay close to me." Rake loosed a wing on one side and let it hang a little free to hide Belladonna from view. The blood she smelled was a mixture of feline and human. "Cats?!"

Simon could see the wariness in Rake's behavior. He'd watched her take up a protective stance in front of Belladonna and it made him thankful to have such friends. "Big cats! Did a bit of a number on me, but nothing Charlie couldn't fix with his magic." As they got closer, he brought his voice down to a normal volume.

When Rake drew her wing in, Belladonna could see her father properly. "Uh, Dad?"

"Surprise…" Simon walked up to his daughter and it suddenly hit him how small he'd become. "Either you've grown, Bella, or I shrank a little."

Belladonna shook her head to ignore the state of her father. "You've got a horn, Dad!"

"Yeah. Turns out having a lot of magic used on me is about the same as using it myself." Simon walked along beside his daughter, Rake, and Charlie. "Are we stopping here for the night?"

"You don't get it, Dad. Charlie can cast spells through his horn like it was a wand." Gesturing to Charlie, Belladonna tried to make her father understand what she meant. "What if you can do that now?"

Simon froze. He'd grown up thinking he'd be a wizard. He'd reached the age of around ten, and when he still hadn't had a single magical break-out, he'd been pronounced a squib and told he'd never have magic. "That—that can't be right."

"Have you tried? You should try. Just think of it like a wand and—"

Holding up an orange crystal hand, Simon attempted to quell his daughter's overenthusiastic focus with a little down-to-earth facts. "Bella, sweetie, I've never used a wand, remember?" They were getting closer to where he could see May, his kids, and the dragons had set up camp.

Standing up from where she'd been preparing a fire pit that she hoped wouldn't start a grass fire, May looked in the direction of her husband's voice. She had to blink a few times before a smile creased her snout. "Simon, dear, what happened?"

Running to his wife, Simon wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. For several seconds he just held her and thought of how close he came to not doing that again. "They were cats. Our disguise worked for a bit, but one of them just got too close. Charlie saved my life, May."

"I'll thank him later, but for now…" Reaching up to grasp Simon's cheeks with both her hands, May pulled him in for a kiss.

Leaving the couple to their own devices, Charlie walked a little away from the middle of the camp and looked out over the grass. "Well, at least we know what we're dealing with. That was really close though, Rake."

Rake hadn't strayed from Charlie's side, though she did keep an eye on their camp. "What happened?" She listened while Charlie recounted the morning's events and then the fight. When Charlie got to the bit about Norbert and Whistlewing arriving, she breathed a sigh of relief. "They aren't as good as a true dragon, but they are fine beasts."

Lifting his head, Charlie regarded Rake with surprise. "I think that's the first nice thing you've said about them."

"What happened to Simon?" Rake asked, changing the topic.

"He almost got as good as he gave. He was bleeding out from a lot of gashes where it had clawed him, but the bite to his thigh was leaking a lot of blood fast. There's a big artery there. I cast healing magic on him, and while it healed him as I'd normally expect, it also started changing him. I'm not completely sure, but I think he's making his own magic now."

Rake mused on that. "Do you think he will change all the way, or stop at some arbitrary point like his children?"

"I've got a theory on that. What if how much you change is based on how strong your magic is?" Charlie lifted his left forehoof up and mused over it. "I'm the most powerful wizard, so I turned the most."

"Then why did Simon change at all?"

"Well, he has to have some magic blood in him. Back on Earth, there was a few kinds of people. There are the pure blood wizards—both their parents were magic users and usually could trace their heritage back through one family or the other. Half-bloods had a wizard parent and a non-wizard parent. Muggle-born are wizards that have parents who weren't known to have wizarding blood at all. Squibs were wizard-born that had no magic—though now I think it might be better to say they appear to have no magic. Finally, you have what are called muggles—they have no wizarding blood and no magic."

"You're pure-blood, aren't you?" Rake asked.

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't that make Bea, Bella, and Stefan pure-blood too?"

"That's the crux of it. With Simon being a squib, their kids would have been just half-blood, but now his blood has outed, it would mean they're pure-blood. But whether magic can backdate a curse, who knows. You want to take a look around from up there?" Tilting his head up, Charlie looked to the sky.

"You know, before all this, I wouldn't have let another creature ride my back and would have called you crazy to even suggest it." As she spoke, Rake dipped her shoulder and made a step with her foreleg for Charlie.

"And now?" It was easy enough for Charlie to jump up onto Rake's back given she made a staircase for him—doubly so from all the experience he'd had at it.

"Now I value your eyes and what's behind them too much not to put you in the safest spot there is." Looking back to ensure Charlie seated himself, Rake nodded when she felt his hooves grip the usual places and she pumped her wings to gain altitude. "Also, you're my hoard."

Dragons, Charlie knew, could speak while they were flying. Their voices were so loud and their indifference to anything going into their mouth so immense that all the problems of a smaller creature like him talking while in the air were non-existent. Until Rake reached her gliding height, the conversation was limited to a monologue.

"But they're quickly growing to be part of that too. I don't want to leave Inferno without his own place, but I—I can't help it." Rake kept pumping her wings until she found a swirling thermal she could ride. Spreading out her membranes as far as she could, she started to lazily circle the updraft.

"There's something you missed." Charlie had to shout. With the wind still strong—but not hurricane-wings strong—shouting was the only way to be heard. "What if you consider all of us and everything we do your hoard?"

"Are you trying to make me into a monster?" Though she countered it, with the idea floated Rake couldn't help but start to think down that path. "And what about Inferno?"

"No, Rake, I'm trying to make you into a powerful dragon with people to lead." Leaning to the side a little, Charlie looked down at the world below them. The plains ended abruptly not even another day's walk from their camp. The edge was a cliff face with the sea beyond, but even from his current height Charlie could see a beach nearby. Not far along the shore was the start of a forest that stretched to the horizon. "You need to understand, Rake, you can own all of this because we'll let you. Don't think I haven't noticed you growing because of your perception of your hoard growing. That's how this works, isn't it?"

Rake froze suddenly enough that she lost altitude. Steadying her wings and evening her flight out, she wondered how to keep the conversation going—because right now turning upside-down seemed like the best solution. "Yeah."

"Do I need to beat the truth of this into you? You are already our protector. We're all fine with you thinking of us as your hoard. Your hoard, Rake, is what you care about—right?"

It was such a draconic idea that Rake easily replied, "Yeah."

"And you care about us, right?"

The logic of it was sound, but Rake still had misgivings about the matter. "You already put up with me being possessive. This will be—" She stopped herself before she finished. "I can't believe I'm thinking it, and I can't believe it's your idea."

"You saw how big Torch was. What do you think is in his hoard that lets him be that huge?" Charlie had seen enough to know that this location would be perfect, but he didn't want them to land before they had this issue sorted. "Look up toward the forest. We don't want to build there, but being a bit closer would be easier when it comes to getting wood."

"Everydragon knows Torch has a huge hoard. There are stories about how much he's gathered." As she spoke, Rake became more aware that Charlie had implied this was wrong. He was challenging her to think, and think she did. Gliding in the direction Charlie had pointed, she was surprised he kept his silence.

What did Torch value? Rake thought. Well, she knew he valued hoard—she'd had first-claw experience with that. There was more, though, and it took her until they reached the treeline until she realized it. "The dragons. He directly equates each dragon to the hoard they will leave him. He knows how much a dragon is worth. He can count dragons as gems."

"You're smarter than he is, you know."

"What?!"

"You don't need to weigh us as gems to know that one of our lives is worth a huge amount. When you accepted that I was okay being in your hoard, you grew huge. Let's go talk to the others about it."

Tilting her wings, Rake turned in a steep bank that had them snap around to face back toward their camp. Not wanting to hear more words that made her think, she pumped her wings to increase speed and minimize Charlie's ability to be heard.

The flight back kept them both quiet, but when Rake didn't slowly glide down to the ground, Charlie knew she was about to do something that would challenge his ability to remain on her back. When the camp was directly below them, he felt her start to pitch forward and knew she was going to dive.

Grabbing on to the spines along her back for all he was worth, Charlie quickly uttered a spell that would make it so if he hit the ground, he'd bounce.

As Rake hit the ground, her wings spread out wide to dump most of her speed into a strong wind that flattened the grass around her and left her with her claws only barely sinking into the ground. Despite what she thought of the idea, she breathed in the scents of all the ponies, Earth dragons, and her brother Inferno—it all smelled like her hoard.

Closing her eyes, Rake didn't want to allow herself to think it, but Charlie wasn't going to let up. "Why are you doing this?"

"Pushing you?"

"Yeah." Rake slowly folded her wings up and leaned down for Charlie to climb down.

"Because you saved my arse. Because you and your brother saved the Bent-Twigs. Because you care. Do you need more?" Charlie bounced down, taking each step at a running pronk. When his hooves reached the ground, he gave it a few taps with each hoof to remind himself what it felt like again. "Because I like you, Rake the dragon." Turning, Charlie started to walk back toward the little camp.

Dumbfounded, Rake took a few moments to chase the strange thoughts from her head before she chased after Charlie. It didn't work. The moment she looked at Charlie as he walked away from her, his words chased their way back into her head. "What do you mean by that?"

"What do you think I mean?" Charlie asked before turning his full attention to the Bent-Twigs—who were looking at him and Rake with some interest. "We scouted ahead, and have good news. The coast isn't far. There's a cliff along most of it, but some beaches as well, and not far toward the west is a forest."

"What about—?" Rake began.

"The other thing," Charlie said, "is we need to talk about dragons and hoards.

"A dragon grows based on their perceived hoard. Rake told me about a phenomena called greed growth which is where a young dragon overvalues everything around them and loses their head a bit. They basically wind up growing really quickly but without all the side advantages of actually becoming an adult. Right?"

Rake blew a little smoke from her nostrils. "Yeah."

"But adult dragons weigh up their possessions and understand their true worth. You've seen Rake growing quite a bit lately and that's because she saw more and more value in me." Sitting down, Charlie made a point of tilting his head back so he showed off the facets of his head and neck in the afternoon sunlight. "What I proposed was that we all swear fealty to her. She can be a bit like a queen."

Lifting his hand, Simon rubbed his slightly protruding chin. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but we left the UK because of all the crazy restrictiveness of the Ministry of Magic. Why should we let 'er make up the rules?"

"No rules." Rake growled the words out at Charlie. "I don't want to rule anyone. How would I even know if I'm good at that sort of thing?"

"Well said." Simon tilted his head to the side a little, trying to figure out the angle here. "So what you're trying to do is make Rake a figurehead so that we're all technically part of her hoard—so she can grow?"

"In a handful of words, yeah. But it also means she gets to be big. Bigger dragon means less things are ever likely to mess with us. Big enough dragon and even nations wouldn't try." A shadow passed over Charlie's head just then, and when he looked up, he spotted an owl. "What the—?"

Swooping down on silent wings, Hedwig landed on the ground beside Charlie. He didn't look or smell right, but this was the original creator of the wand Ronald Weasley had shown her. She could feel his magic, and that meant she could deliver a letter. Opening her beak, she reached down to the tube her left talon was clutched around.

"A messenger owl! This is unbelievable!" Charlie poured magic into his horn to grab the tube, only for Hedwig to let go of it and let him take it. The amount of magic it took to manipulate items using raw telekinesis was crazy when Charlie thought about it too much, but this world was bursting with the stuff. Opening the scroll, he froze in shock.

"What's it say?" Simon asked.

"It—It's from me mum. She—My whole family are here. Here in this world!" His eyes raced across the roll of paper with writing on it so fine that it almost ran together in places. "There was a fight with some evil wizard or something, and magic was being sucked out of Earth through the portals. Wait, no, she says that's what they thought was happening, but it was—Hogwarts! Hogwarts was the source of magic!

"Hogwarts was a city here. This is really confusing to read." Charlie shook his head as he tried to make heads or tails of the events his mother described. "Hold up I—Okay, I think I have this straight. So, Hogwarts was built on the remains of a crystal city that had been ripped from Equestria. It had some of its inhabitants frozen with it, but some had been tossed out of the spell and onto Earth. They—they were the first wizards."

When May and Simon both gasped, Charlie continued. "It was all because of an evil king. So, anyway, he pulled it back to Equestria—Hogwarts and all—and that left Earth without anything breathing magic into it anymore. Apparently there were portals like the one we fell through opening up all over but—but they're all closed now. All the portals are and no one knows how to open them again. We're stuck here."

"This changes things." Simon rolled his shoulders and stretched. "It'll be tough without you, Charlie, but we can—"

"I'm not going to see my family. I know they're safe, and I know one day I'll see them again, but it's more important we all get settled somewhere." It was hard to say the words, but more than ever before Charlie felt people depended on him. "Besides, Rake likes it here, and it's not like she'd want to fly all the way to—err, wherever. Right?"

"Right now, Charlie, you and what you're carrying is my hoard. My lair is wherever you stand." Uninclined to bail Charlie out of his little moral dilemma, Rake lashed her tail. "Unless you"—she looked at Simon and May—"are willing to go ahead with this madness?"

Looking at her husband, May Bent-Twig smirked at the way Rake had phrased the question. "I've been known as the mad witch of east-end before."

"I married the mad witch of east-end," Simon Bent-Twig said. "But there's still others who will come after us. For now, we will follow your lead and be your talons."

May caught up the thread Simon had started. "And given our children will make their own choices on the matter, I see no reason we can't work together. You know this world better than we ever will, Lady Rake, and I have learned to trust you at your word." Holding up her arm, May spat in the frog of the hoof her hand had become and thrust it out toward Rake.

Snorting with laughter, Charlie recognized the ancient ritual of deal-making. "Okay, Rake, spit something non-corrosive and non-flammable into your talon and shake May's hoof."

Staring at the offered hoof, Rake could see the trap she'd pounced into. Having come to them with Charlie to make the offer, she now saw her own freedom at stake. "You ponies are the strangest creatures I've ever met." Clenching her throat closed, she spat out some of her saliva onto the palm of her talon and grabbed May's hoof with it. "Just don't annoy me too much or I'll fly away."

Watching May pull her now sticky hoof away from Rake, Simon spat on his hand and held it out. "If we're such idiots as can drive a dragon away, we deserve everything we get." He was proud and more than a little surprised at how right this felt. It didn't half help that he'd had a thing for dragons when he was a kid—not dragons like the ones on Earth, but proper dragons. Brave dragons. Smart dragons. Fierce dragons.

Simon could see all those attributes in Rake, and let the adventurous little kid inside him jump around in excitement—still inside him.

"Guess I need to write Mum a reply." Taking up the paper, Charlie worked a quick cleaning spell on it before he reached into a pocket for a pen. Like many graduating wizards and witches, Charlie had quickly learned the joy of a ballpoint pen.

Dear Mum——

Author's Note:

Rod: What’re your deeper thoughts on becoming a changeling? On having access to a type of magic?

"I won't lie, it's all kinds of freaky. Being able to see in the dark caves is strange enough, but then I tried to pick something up and Azalea asked me something from behind me. I turned my head almost all the way around to look back at her." Rod shuddered, but had a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth. "The magic thing is something I'm still not sure of. I need to talk with Buzz some more, but I think I might be able to do some basic stuff."


So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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