We Are Dragons

by SwordTune

Chapter 5: Defences

The letter crinkled in Ember’s claws as the sandy wind blew by.

The edges of the page weren’t even singed. What kind of magic did Spike’s fire have?

Ember scanned over the words on the paper again and felt the same wave of relief she felt the first time she read it. While she spent the better part of a day and a night recovering from her injury, Spike had spoken to Twilight. According to him, it was a hard-fought debate, but he eventually won the Princess over.

With some exceptions.

Spike could stay, but Ember was going to have to accept a small garrison of Wonderbolts at the Ash Citadel. Spike didn’t write why, probably because he was too embarrassed to admit that Twilight only wanted her elite pegasi to watch over him.

Ember would have preferred a less conspicuous crew of ponies, but it was a small price to pay to have Spike at the Citadel.

With that out of the way, she folded the letter and tucked it away into her bag, nestled beside the Bloodstone Sceptre and a wrapped package of oysters for the journey to the aqueduct.

In the end, she had to take a sand skipper. It felt humiliating to be hauled around, but the scales on her burn had only just begun to poke out over the skin, and the injury was still soft and sensitive. Flying only stretched and irritated it even more. So she finally agreed to a skipper, though not one pulled by griffons.

Undoubtedly, a team of flyers would have no problem crossing the length of the aqueduct in a day or less. But griffons were more numerous in the Citadel, and most of them worked in some kind of shipping or receiving. Most of the Citadel’s griffons only stayed for a few days at a time until they were ready to leave and escort more shipments.

No, griffons could spread rumours of her weakness too quickly and easily. That left the jewel jackals. Though they could not fly, the subterranean canines were remarkably fast on the sand. Their paws, Ember had noted years ago after they first appeared in the mines, were soft and wide and able to spread their weight across the loose sand.

Slender and long, their bodies were uniquely suited to slither through the tight spaces of their underground tunnels where they hoarded jewels for decoration. At least, Ember assumed they were for decoration. No one truly knew. Jewel jackals never let outsiders into their tunnels, they only came out and worked with the Citadel whenever jewels were offered.

An added benefit to their narrow bodies was their speed. When they ran on all fours, jewel jackals could be described as snake-like compared to other mammals. Their agile and flexible spines coiled up and whipped out, giving them unimaginably long strides.

When well paid, a team of jewel jackals could pull a sand skipper across the length of the aqueduct faster than even the swiftest griffons could in the air.

In the back, Burnt laid on his side, staring out at the endless horizon of dunes and shrubbery. Though he had duties piling up back in the Core, he promised to make sure she rested during the journey instead of jumping out halfway to prove she had recovered enough. Ember promised she wouldn’t, but he didn’t believe she could control herself. And neither did she. Beside him, Rosebud sat, playing with a spear she had taken from the hedgehogs’ camp.

After her return, the doting father barely let his daughter out of his sight. To her displeasure, she and her entire cohort of guards had been reassigned to safer positions within the Core or elsewhere in the Citadel.

The jackals pulled them fast, but the trip west still felt long and slow. Nothingness was the key feature of the desert. The odd vulture here and there perched on the pipes or a cactus in the dunes were the only interesting things in sight for those long hours.

When they finally arrived, the sound of crashing waves signalled them. The coasts close to the Citadel were tall and rocky. Sheer cliffs shot up out of the water with only a few sandy beaches below to stand on. Instead, storage rooms and homes for fishers were built inland with winches and elevators to shuttle creatures and hauls up and down the cliffs.

The aqueduct itself cut through the middle of the fishing village and descended to the shore, slowly reaching out beyond the sandy shore and to a steel platform erected above the waves where seawater pumped.

“It’s about time,” Rosebud said and jumped up on the edge of the skipper. “I’m dying for some grilled fish.”

“The Dragonlord isn’t here to dine.” Her father held her back. “We’re here to assist and offer directions, it’s been years since she’s visited.”

“Since the aqueduct was first built,” Ember said, “but I don’t need both of you to give directions. Burnt, check with the fishers, dragons and non-dragons alike. Ask if they’ve seen anything unusual, and make sure there’s nothing we need to worry about when it comes to our food supplies.” She turned to Rosebud. “Think you know your way around this place?”

The wingless dragon nodded and pointed to a small tower, a mesh of steel scaffolds barely taller than the stores and houses. “Stood watch right there for weeks with my cohort.”

Ember stared at it, wondering how relaxed their security had gotten just because they thought dragons were untouchable.

“Good. Take me to Caldera and her cohort, and then we can think about getting something to eat.”

---

The village was sparsely populated, but it was large in terms of land. Stretching north and south along the coast, Ember guessed that she probably couldn’t fly from one end to the other without stopping for a break. But most of the homes and shops were built for non-dragons.

Along the cliff face, dragons lived in natural or dug-out caves. Most of them were richer dragons with precious hordes to hide away and were willing to pay a tidy sum to claim a real cave for themselves, away from the unnatural feel of a cramped steel false-cave.

Caldera was among those dragons. Ember found her sticking her head out of her cave and overlooking the beach as she glided over the village, holding Rosebud tight in her arms. A few younger dragons in their smaller alcoves noticed their shadows passing overhead and took flight to give Ember her space.

“You’re just in time, Dragonlord,” the silvery dragon called out, only flicking her eyes up to track Ember as she landed on the ledge jutting out from Caldera’s cave.

“For?”

“The first lightning rod test.” Caldera gestured with the tip of her nose to a tall metal structure rising out of the sand of the beach below.

Ember wondered about the name. It looked less like a rod and more like a fake tree. A long cylindrical metal scaffold stretched to hold up a net of wires. Slender steel arms spread apart at the top like the leaves of those palm trees Ember had heard grew in the tropical places of the world.

Rosebud watched with intense interest, standing precariously close to the edge for a wingless drake.

“How are you going to test it without a storm?” she asked.

Caldera peered down at the young dragon. “Wondered that myself, until I remembered that pegasi can control the weather. I hired one of them to fetch a storm cloud from Equestria.”

“Hired?” Ember asked. “How much?”

“Enough to make his little eyes bulge,” Caldera chuckled. “But don’t worry about it. I didn’t have time to run the extra cost by Skullfang, so I paid out of my own hoard.”

“You should be reimbursed.”

“Don’t fret it,” Caldera waved her claw. “It’s as they say, Djormundsormir doesn’t notice a few dropped scales.”

The test went surprisingly well. The pegasus had brought a massive storm cloud, slow and fat like an overburdened airship, with such a strong electrical charge that Ember could feel her scales tingle despite being hundreds of steps away. Strike after strike, long arcs of lightning flew from the cloud directly into the rod’s metal net.

It would take weeks to place lightning rods like that all over the village and along the aqueduct, but Caldera assured Ember that her cohort was already forging the steel pieces they would need. As long as the miners produced the ore, the Ash Citadel would have its protection.

Satisfied that the rods would work, Ember asked Caldera to show her where in the village she planned to place them. Small buildings that used metal in their walls or roofs could be just as easily protected, Caldera assured, by placing smaller versions of the lightning rod design.

The major targets, like the storehouses for fish and clams, the management centre for the village, and the shipping bay where skippers were loaded with goods to take back to the Citadel, would have to have lightning rods with wider canopies to account for their larger areas.

Placing them only where protection was needed was easier than simply creating a shield-like grid of rods, which was what Ember originally had imagined. Even so, major and minor buildings were scattered across miles and miles of the coast. It still seemed daunting. But a little bit of challenge was good for a dragon. Their kind was too prone to laziness, too happy to sit on top of a hoard and wait for something to enter the cave.

“It’s a good thing we’re near the coast,” Ember said to Caldera. “Clams and water, your dragons should be happy to have fresh-caught meals after a day of hard work.”

“Managing them is a pain in the hindquarters though,” Caldera replied with a chuffing remark. “They’ll do the work, but not without asking how soon until their next meal break. Oh, you should’ve seen them when that whale rolled ashore this morning. Young whelps, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut.”

“A whale?” Ember asked.

“Dead on arrival on the northside of the village. I heard the ponies wouldn’t touch it and the griffons wouldn’t butcher it unless they were paid for every pound. A team of dragons should be carving it up now, but most of it should still be there if you want a fresh piece.”

A whale, now that was a catch. Even two or three adult dragons would have a hard time catching a grown whale. Fire was useless, and the massive beasts were surprisingly fast and agile in the water, diving deeper than any dragon could hope to reach. It took keen hunters and efficient teamwork to have a chance to hunt a whale.

At least it would, if not for the other kingdoms. The megalithic beasts were protected by demands from Mount Aris and Canterlot. According to Queen Novo hippogriffs and seaponies had a deep respect for whales and their role in nature. The business ponies in Canterlot seemed less interested in nature but swore on their hearts that whale watching was a million-bit business.

But a beached whale, and an already dead one at that, well, there was nothing that could be done for it. Except, of course, making use of its remains.

“I won’t pretend to have intimate knowledge of these lightning rods,” Ember said, “but it seems like you have some clear plans to start with. I’ll have to wait and see how it goes, so for now…”

Ember turned to Rosebud. “Why don’t we get something to eat?”

---

She couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

On the northern side of the fishing village, where a length of the narrow sandy beach stretched a little further out to the sea, a flower of blood splattered across the sand and spilt back into the sea.

The cracking of bones and squish of muscle and sinew being cut from their bonds was a messy affair, but a precious one. Dragons happily ate seafood, but thousands of generations of raiding and burning and pillaging did more than just build up hoards of gemstones.

As Ember flew closer to the beach, with Rosebud on her back, some ancient predator instinct in the back of her brain made her mouth water. But dragons, as it turned out, were not the only ones with an appetite to fill. If she came any later, Ember wondered what other mess might be lying around on the beach.

Surrounding the young dragons working on the whale, who were cutting flesh and bone with circular powered saws purchased from Equestria, were hungry vultures. The black-feathered birds hardly seemed to care about the saws or the flames being breathed on some of them.

The vultures that got hit with flame took a dive into the sea and simply swam back to shore, ready to take their pick of the whale’s carcass.

Ember scanned around before she landed. Was Marrow among these vultures, or were they a different group? After a moment, she pushed the idle wondering aside. How would she know if Marrow was among them? That bird was a little bigger than the rest of his kind, but that wasn’t enough to single him out in such a big flock.

She blasted the sand below her with a short jet of fire, scattering the vultures and giving herself space to land beside the whale.

“Dragonlord Ember!” one of the butchers waved to her. “What are you doing here?”

“Just a little curious,” she answered, “it’s not every day you find a whale on the beach. And one already dead, too.”

“Now we won’t have to send it back,” he laughed. The butcher wiped the blood and fat off of his face. He was a pale, lime-green fellow with a rather sharp and protruding nose. Did he use it to poke around carcasses?

“Too bad luck seems to balance itself out though,” he remarked as he struggled to keep his face clean. Before he could finish his thought, a group of vultures dove down to finish it for him.

Another butcher breathed fire into the sky to chase off the birds, but they simply weaved out of the way as they neared the whale. As one focused on pulling the dragon’s attention, the others stuck their beaks into the exposed whale meat, pulling strips off the muscle and blubber, flying away to a safe distance to eat.

“Trouble?”

“Just see for yourself,” the lime-green butcher said. “They’ve been here since this morning. We just can’t chase them off.”

“I’ll handle it,” Ember said, sauntering out to the crowd of vultures standing just outside the reach of dragon flame.

Some backed away, eying the distance carefully so that they could stay as close as possible while still being safe. Others instantly fled, crowing about how they were going to be fried. Out of the flock, only a few murmured in horribly poor attempts at Draconic.

“Lord,” they cawed, lowering their heads timidly, until finally a tall vulture, tall for his kind at least, walked up and met her halfway.

“Marrow?” Ember checked with him, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was unsure.

“Lord! Come to make promise good?” he asked. “Fly-lizards stop us, no listen to the promise.” His speech could never pass for a real dragon, but it was a marked improvement from the croaking, cawing, and squawking that the other vultures made. He was definitely Marrow.

“Hold on,” Rosebud said sharply, recoiling slightly and looking at all the vultures with some kind of newfound disgust. “They can talk?”

Ember tilted her head, about to remind Rosebud that it was a couple of vultures who had helped drop the stone potions on the storm dragon. But she remembered that Rosebud had been hit hard during that fight and probably didn’t have enough sense at the time to even realize the vultures were speaking.

“I’ll explain later.”

She turned back to Marrow. “Now you, I don’t remember promising you all this,” Ember circled the whole whale in one wave of her arm. “And I definitely didn’t say every vulture from here to Kludgetown was invited to the Citadel.”

“T-this is family. Brothers and sisters, and children of brothers and sisters. Sire’s sister’s family here also.”

All this in one family! It looked like a flock had awoken from the desert just to strip an entire whale bare. If this was one family, how many vultures in total drifted across the desert’s winds?

“Oh no, that’s not what I agreed to,” Ember said. “You and the other vultures that were with you that day, you can eat what you like around the Citadel because you helped. I didn’t make a promise to every vulture in the desert. They didn’t earn my word.”

Surprisingly, Marrow nodded instantly. “Yes, yes, tell family to leave then? Marrow stay and eat?”

That easily? What wouldn’t this vulture do for food? Ember made a mental note to never be outbid when it came to dealing with these animals. It seemed even family loyalty meant very little.

“Yes, tell them to leave or I’ll put a bounty on their heads, ten bits each. That should get some griffons on their tail feathers.”

Marrow hopped back to his kind, swapping his voice and regressing into a series of guttural hisses and sharp sounds that almost sounded like a dog’s distant bark. Most of the vultures turned their featherless heads toward Ember and stared with fearful eyes before bolting to the sky. Others started to fly away, but Ember could see them come back down and land on the edge of some roof or shop, staring and waiting.

Well, every kingdom had its share of pests, Ember thought. It was good to know that hers wasn’t any different.

---

They ate whale-blubber bacon, delicious dripping fats flowed down Rosebud and Ember’s tongue that morning. The enormity of the whale was something to behold.

Not wanting to turn an eye away from protection, Ember stayed in a small residential cave for two weeks, watching and inspecting the work Caldera and her dragons did and enjoying butchered whale. Rosebud, not used to the village’s remoteness, insisted on eating breakfast every morning with her.

Burnt was furious when Rosebud had insisted that she stay at the village to help. Ember wasn’t there to witness the argument between a father and his teenage daughter, but whispers and rumours said Rosebud hurled words at Skullfang as if she was a fully-winged dragon trying to leave the home cave for the first time.

Most dragons would do anything to protect their children, and Burnt was no exception. But Ember sympathised with Rosebud as well. Every young dragon dreamed of exceeding their parents’ shadow, or at the very least to escape it. That said, Burnt was the Lieutenant-Governor of the Ash Citadel, and though he was needed back at his office to govern, his shadow stretched a little longer than the average parent.

A day after his return to the Citadel, Rosebud’s entire cohort was suddenly assigned as guards to the fishing village. It was a little overbearing, Ember admitted to Rosebud, but she didn’t mind the added security while the threat of the Storm Army loomed in the distance.

“What would Spike think about this?” Rosebud asked, holding up a piece of whale before sticking it in her mouth. She ate ravenously, swallowing a thick strip of whale bacon. They baked the cuts of fresh belly with dragon fire, eating quickly while the fat still bubbled and dripped from the meat.

Ember blinked and pulled herself from her thoughts. She gave the young whelp a bittersweet smile.

“What do you think? He’d probably be repulsed,” she replied. “It’s no wonder he’s such a small dragon, even at his age. Those ponies have been feeding him nothing but their own diet. Tasteless vegetables and mushy fruit.”

“Repulsed?” Rosebud blinked and looked at the sizzling strip of whale she had tightly pinched between her claws. “But… we didn’t even kill it. Those vultures would have eaten it anyway.”

Ember smiled at the drake’s hesitation. Though she had to admit, she never imagined any dragon would be flustered over what Spike thought. But it was just a fact of youth to think so much about one’s peers.

“I’m sure he’d come around to it, he’s eaten clams already,” Ember said. “I doubt he could ever bring himself to go hunting, but he’d probably understand the importance of efficiently using what comes to us.”

After all, a bit of fat was good for a dragon’s health, or so said conventional wisdom. Though dragon flame didn’t seem to burn any kind of solid fuel when it was breathed, the energy for such fire had to come from somewhere.

At some point, a great dragon thinker must have noticed how much energy animal fats stored and reasoned that the oily substance supplied the energy for fire inside a dragon’s body. Over time someone’s idea took hold and became a popular reason for dragons to indulge their appetites.

Ember wasn’t always thoughtful, not in the same way scholars were when they started asking obscure questions about nature and such, but she admitted she was curious about how much truth was behind that common wisdom. A dragon’s fire was integral to who they were. It wouldn’t hurt to know a little more about it.

But that was a question for another time.

Over two weeks in the fishing village, Caldera had made good on her plans and then some, working ahead of schedule and constructing the foundations for guard towers along the aqueduct. Each one was to be within eyesight of its neighbours’ smoke signals so that an attack at any point would alert the next, continuing until the Citadel itself.

But Caldera insisted there was still more to do in the village before she felt it was safe against the Storm Host’s threats. Rosebud took an immediate interest, Ember noticed. Perhaps it was her way of escaping her father’s shadow, simply escaping into the world of blueprints and prototypes instead of being surrounded by guards claw-picked by Skullfang.

The silver dragonelle took Rosebud’s interest quite well and instructed her on the basic principles of mechanics and motion, followed by long bouts of welding pieces of metal together into spring-loaded traps and other contraptions. Ember supervised the work but quickly lost herself in the details. The simple motion of objects slowly shifted to lessons in air currents, pressure differences, buoyancy, and even simple Equestrian alchemy. All too much for Ember to take over the course of a few days.

She had to question how much Rosebud actually learned. For all the young drake sat through, she seemed to apply little more than the basics. But no harm, no foul, as the pony saying went. The Ash Citadel could benefit from more educated dragons, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Rosebud to learn at her own pace.

Caldera’s lesson that day was on the various properties of metals and their alloys. As soon as she moved beyond bronze and steel, Ember decided that was enough for her. She left Rosebud to her new hobby and left Caldera’s workshop, a massive warehouse in the middle of the village, and made herself familiar with her subjects. She kicked the dirt as she paced around the village, passing by young dragons buying fresh caught fish or griffons unloading tools and building materials from sand skippers.

“Dragonlord,” some dragons acknowledged her as she walked by. It was a refreshing quiet compared to the market in the Citadel. Every seller seemed to move at their own pace rather than hawking at strangers to look at everything in their stores. Above her and the squat homes and shops, lightning rods cast their shadow over the streets. A few young griffons, probably kids who came with their parents, hid from the sun in their shade, fanning each other with their wings.

Some shade would be nice. Ember held her claw over her eyes, shielding herself from some of the light. The desert heat didn’t bother her one bit, but the cloudless sky made the sun’s glare an oppressive presence, forcing those below to squint in pain from its brilliance.

And then, as if on cue, a shadow came from overhead. A long, unwieldy shadow. Ember turned, her first instinct telling her a dragon was flying overhead. Instead, she looked up to find a distant blanket of storm clouds rolling over the sea, covering the sun’s light. A figure emerged with two broad wings and a bloated, fat body. Ember clutched the Bloodstone Sceptre reflexively, but let go as soon as the image above her drew closer.

Wings made of cloth unfurled in the wind, hauling a wooden body suspended below a leather balloon bloated with air. It seemed the Storm Army had not been slacking either since their last encounter. And as much as she dreaded the fight to come, her dragon blood boiled with excitement. Before her was a real airship, not some rusting, sun-dried corpse of one hiding in the desert. And she could finally see what it was about these ships that made the rest of the world fear the Storm Army’s wake.

“Guards!” she called, her heart almost skipping a beat as she raised her Sceptre. “Take flight!”

---

Bursts of fire erupted into the air as dragons across the village signalled one another of the coming attack. Those who simply lived and worked in the village ran at the sign of the signal, grabbing their hard-earned gems and bits and scampering east towards the Ash Citadel, following the path of the aqueduct. Those who remained were either the guards or merchants with too many goods to carry and too little sense to leave it all behind.

“Dragonlord!” Ember recognized the voice calling to her. Sandbiter sprayed sand through the village streets as he rushed to find her. “Where’s Rosebud?” he asked, his face painted with anxiety.

“Safe with Caldera.”

“Hammerclaw? Unless she built a new weapon already, that old lady can’t protect Rosebud. I have to find her.”

“Fix the real problem first.” Ember snagged him by the collar and pulled him back to her side. “Take half of your best fliers and see if you can’t burn their ship down. If this airship’s anything like the wrecks we know, there should be plenty of wood for fire.”

“What about the storm dragon?”

Ember hesitated to answer. She didn’t have one, to be honest. But now wasn’t the time to sound unsure. “If one of those storm dragons shows their face, just watch out for where they aim. You’re smaller and faster, so don’t get caught.”

Sandbiter nodded, standing a little taller now with the words of his Dragonlord. Even his scarred eye, a ghastly-looking streak of poorly healed skin, seemed to brighten up.

Without wasting another moment, he took off into the sky, flicking his tail in rapid side-to-side motions as he signalled his cohort to join him. Ember watched their flight path. They were going to charge the airship head-on.

She doubted it would be that easy. Even if the ship was crewed by stubby hedgehogs, their spears and bolas were designed to bring down a dragon in flight. They would need support.

She had to figure out how to provide it, and fast, for the airship made the first move before it even flew over the shore. A volley of heavy spears whistled through the air, meeting the dragons halfway and forcing their retreat. One of Sandbiter’s dragons, who was more slender and agile than the rest, managed to slip past the first few shots. But even they were eventually repelled by the second volley. Then the third. And by the fourth, they were turning back to try approaching from a different angle.

Ember jumped out of the way as one of the stray spears nearly took off her head. Its forged steel tip scraped and fragmented against the walls of a small storehouse, blasting stone and shards of steel in every direction. Ember covered her eyes, letting the bits deflect off her scales.

She hoped every griffon and pony had made their way out of the village. Any non-dragon could have been lacerated to ribbons if they were caught in the shrapnel of the heavy spear. No, it was more than a heavy spear. These were much thicker and longer, too much for a hedgehog to even carry let alone throw so far. They were oversized bolts, the kind fired from a giant wind-up crank bow called a ballista.

In the distance, the sound of shearing metal signalled Ember that the attack was coming closer. Another bolt had broken through the roof of a building and soon they would be upon the village.

“No time,” Ember told herself, wishing she had prepared a better strategy against an air raid.

She spread her wings out and flew, dropping down along the cliffside and gliding across the sea. From a distance, she was told, the shimmering blue of the water looked a lot like her scales. Hopefully, it would be enough to avoid attention from the hedgehogs, at least long enough to go behind them where their crank bows could not fire. As soon as the shadow of the ship passed overhead, she pulled her head up and flapped hard, driving her body against the current of the wind to ride it higher.

This ship was clean. She could tell as she came near that it had never taken a full crew out of its port. The painted insignia of the Storm Army was still spotless and whole, without a single edge chipped. The steel frame that shielded a few vital parts of the hull still glistened in the sun with fresh lustre. It hadn’t even developed a layer of salt from exposure to seaprays. It seemed, at least on the outside, that this attack itself was an ill-prepared one. They were simply executing a desperate and hasty raid. Ember convinced herself of this, steeling her nerves as she landed on the helm of the ship. Without a moment to spare she loosed a stream on fire onto the deck, enveloping the hedgehogs in a blaze.

One of them ran up from the deck, dressed in a baggy cloak that would have obscured his form if it wasn’t for the wind blowing the hood from his head. He launched bolas at Ember first, charging in afterwards with a short spear aimed for her neck.

She ducked the chains on the bolas, but the spear struck its mark, deflecting off the scales of her neck. Ember grabbed the spear and spun with all her might, wrenching it out from his little paws and whipping him off the ship with a satisfying snap from her tail. Two other warriors attacked, throwing short spears with bladed tips to cut away at her wings. But their aim was off for both of them and the spears sheared off the scales across her head.

Not waiting for more hedgehogs to find their nerves and take a clean shot, Ember swung her jaw open wide and blanketed the deck in a curtain of fire. From the sounds they made, she struck true, but more importantly, the smoke that began to billow out from the ship blinded the hedgehogs, allowing her other dragons to approach.

The sharp hiss of hot air whistled above as Sandbiter and his cohort attacked the airship’s balloon, ripping the elastic material apart. She saw one of the dragons swerve below, burning a hole through the hull and smoking the hedgehogs out from the lower decks. Dozens of the furry little creatures fled above, only to find the rest of their ship on fire. Some came with filled buckets, but it was a losing fight to try and extinguish dragon fire. Every bucket of water that was laid down simply invited the dragons to layer more flames over the cinders.

All remaining ballistae were either abandoned, burning, or had operators too panicked to land a shot on the encircling dragons. Easily a hundred dragon-lengths in the sky, some of the hedgehogs still took their luck with the ocean, diving off into the salty abyss to escape the fire.

“Dragonlord Ember!” one dragon called out, the one who had come up from the lower decks. “The ship, we need to move it!” she cried, waving something in her claw.

Ember waded through the fire and approached the young dragon before the object she held cracked. By the time Ember came close enough to see it clearly, it was too late, the glass ball had coated its contents over the young dragon’s arm, seemingly seeping through the scales and into her muscles, slowly transfiguring her body into stone.

The young dragon screamed and let go of the glass bauble, falling over and clutching her arm as she tried to claw the stonified scales off. Without thinking, Ember reacted instinctively and swung the Bloodstone Sceptre at her arm, shattering the stone before it crept any further. The limb came off, leaving behind a dried and scarred stump where the muscle was in the process of hardening.

“Sandbiter!” Ember shouted. Dragons rarely ever shed tears, but the young dragonelle already had streams running down her face that sizzled away as they dripped down onto ashen wood. A lightning burn was bad enough, Ember couldn’t imagine what kind of pain she must’ve been in.

“What is it, Dragonlord?” Sandbiter rushed to her side, freezing when he saw what had happened. “Carnelia!” He rushed to her side immediately, slinging her over his shoulder.

“Get her back to shore,” Ember ordered. His wings were already spread, ready to fly, but before he could get more than two flaps in the air, a spike of stone erupted up from below deck. Sandbiter stumbled back, dropping Carnelia.

“Is that what I think it is?” Sandbiter called out as he got to his feet.

Ember looked down the hole the stone spike had made. Dozens of barrels, all filled with the potions, were falling from the broken hull.

“That’s why Carnelia said we need to move the ship,” Ember’s eyes widened, looking out to where they were headed. “If this flies over the village, we’ll be hitting our own.”

Sandbiter looked over the edge of the ship. “We’re dropping fast, thank Djormunsormir. We shouldn’t hit the village at this rate”

“We can thank legends when this is over,” Ember growled. She looked back down to the hull and the sea. “That fluid can still damage the reefs and kill the fish.”

Ember turned back to Carnelia, who was still clutching her arm. “Change of plans. Can you still fly?” Carefully, the dragon nodded.

“Good. Go with Sandbiter and burn as many barrels as you can. Let’s hope dispersing it in the air will be better than letting them sink to the bottom.”

Sandbiter placed a claw on Carnelia’s shoulder but she shrugged him off. The dragon wiped her face clear of tears and jumped off the ship without a moment of hesitation, taking flight up to the top of the air balloon.

“Are you sure she can—” Sandbiter started.

“No, I’m not,” she admitted, “but there’s no time for doubt. Move.”

“At once, Dragonlord,” Sandbiter said with a grim look of acceptance. His scar knotted up for a moment, but was quickly replaced with a widened look of shock as he opened his mouth to shout. It was useless. His voice was overpowered by the booming crack of lightning.

Ember turned too late. A flash jolted from the clouds behind the airship and a single arc of lightning flew out. Only by Sandbiter’s quick action did she narrowly escape. He pushed her as he screamed, taking the full current to his chest.

Her ears were rung and her vision blinded by the flash, but she could just barely make out a muffled cry from Carnelia as she dove down, folding up her wings as she accelerated after a plummeting Sandbiter.

Ember blinked several times before her senses returned. She saw wings flapping away, Sandbiter’s cohort scattering from the electric arcs shooting from the black mass flapping within the storm clouds. The silhouette of a dragon staring straight at Ember.

She looked at her claw. Even dazed by lightning, her first instinct was to clutch the Sceptre. The blood-red stone at its head shimmered bright red, screaming out at her to use its power. Knowing it wouldn’t work, but desperately hoping their first encounter had been a fluke, she listened to the Sceptre. Ember projected her will with its magic, calling out to the storm dragon to surrender. It didn’t matter if she was too far to be heard, or whether she said anything at all, the Sceptre’s power could command dragons from across the world.

Just not storm dragons. The black mass slowly dipped its head out from the clouds, just enough to show its face to Ember. It wasn’t the scarred face of the dark-blue dragon she fought. She was younger, bright-eyed, and had a dark shade of grey that matched the storm clouds around her. And if she wanted to, she could land a solid hit on the Dragonlord.

Instead the dragon sneered and dove down, picking up speed before spreading her wings to catch the winds. She shot forward, past Sandbiter and the rest of his panicked cohort, flying for the village.

Ember wasted no time giving chase, ignoring the dull pain that lingered in her ears from the storm dragon's thunderclap and forcing all her effort into her wings. But she could not easily catch her. The storm dragon was larger and her wider wings caught more of the wind than Ember could ever hope to match in a straight flight.

Before Ember reached the shore, the first arc of lightning erupted from the dragon’s mouth. Smaller homes and shops shook, toppling over from shockwaves, while others the storm dragons simply crushed under her weight. If she had been urged to fight before, now Ember was infuriated at the sight of her colony squashed like an anthill. She folded her wings and aimed her stoop.

With the storm dragon distracted, Ember had a clear shot on the dragon’s temple, driving the end of the Bloodstone Sceptre as hard as she could. Sparks flew as the crystal staff scraped against scale, but it hardly seemed to bother the storm dragon. She jerked and whipped her neck around, throwing Ember off.

But anticipation pushed Ember back to her feet, in time to find the dragon’s open jaw aimed right at her face. Lightning flew out and Ember curled to protect herself, but the bolt never struck. Instead, the bright arc sparked against the metal cage behind Ember, one of Caldera’s lightning rods.

The storm dragon seemed just as surprised. And in that moment of hesitation, Ember took her chance. She launched a spout of flame at the storm dragon’s eyes and nose, disorienting even if she couldn’t harm. Her opponent reeled firing another arc of lightning that drew straight into the lightning rod again.

Ember sneered and pushed harder, ejecting hotter and hotter flames. But without its lightning, the storm dragon was still a dragon, and Ember learned that lesson the hard way when a tail struck her from the side. She rolled with the force, but it still sent her crashing through a shop.

“Like a true dragon, you are!” hissed the storm dragon before leaping up and flapping to the sky. Ember raised up her Sceptre like a shield, expecting a dive, but instead the storm dragon simply hovered above the village.

Ember looked up, seeing the storm dragon circling, surveying the rest of the village with a closer eye now. Sandbiter’s cohort, carrying him back to shore, were only just beginning to set their sights on the fight, but the grey storm dragon didn’t seem to notice them. Instead, she flicked the tip of her tail as she flew, much in the same way dragons did to send unspoken signals.

Ember was surprised to see her using tail signals. Some motions were familiar, while other twists were meaningless. Was this an invitation to speak? To call a truce? The thought of ending the fight without winning was sour, especially with Sandbiter’s injury unavenged, but it was the smart option. She lowered the Sceptre, pulling her will from it and ignoring the seductive pull of its power, letting it know it was helpless now.

“Rethinking your invasion already? Your army was useless,” she mocked the storm dragon as she flew up to meet her. “You’re not Djormundsormir, you can’t swallow your enemies whole.”

The storm dragon simply smiled. “You are impressive, Dragonlord Ember. You made your move much sooner than I expected.” The dragon gestured with her tail around the village. “But metal contraptions can only buy you so much time. Like I said, we will have the empire we were promised.”

She thought the voice was familiar, but that confirmed it. “You’re the Storm Host, then?” Ember said, wearing a cocky smirk on her face. In truth, she did her best to burn the image of the storm dragon in her brain. The shape of her scales, her colour, and especially her size and strength. She was smaller than most adult dragons, but there was no doubt the Storm Host was fully grown.

Her tail, just as long as her body, swayed in the wind for balance and countered the motion of her neck as it flexed and bowed in the air. Being cloudy grey, she could completely vanish into a thunderstorm just by flying into the clouds.

“I hope I don’t disappoint,” the Storm Host replied. “I flew here despite the wishes of my brother. He has been restless ever since you scarred his face.”

“He shouldn’t have shot lightning at me,” Ember said firmly, trying her best to keep her composure. “Glad he remembers the lesson.”

“No need for threats, Dragonlord. We both know where we stand. You can fight as hard as you like, but the Storm Empire will have its day. You will see.” Then the Storm Host flashed a grin. “You know what? Why wait? You can see it right now.”

But the taunt flared her temper, and Ember flashed her teeth in a full snarl. “A few flattened buildings, is that your best?”

The Storm Host laughed, but when Ember readied to fly behind a lightning rod, instead the Host’s breath spewed storm clouds. Greyish puffs frothed and spewed, wrapping up Ember in the storm front until she couldn’t see the sun nor the sky nor the village or cliffs. Static danced on her skin, crackling down along the scales of her back.

A pair of glowing blue eyes flew by, taunting her as the Storm Host’s wings threatened to blow Ember out of the sky.

“You should scurry back to your desert jewel, Dragonlord,” the Storm Host said, hissing out another sharp, condescending laugh. “Head back and watch your precious Ash Citadel burn.”

An arc of lightning shot past Ember, and she responded with her own jet of flame. But when the heat evaporated the clouds around her, all she saw of the Storm Host was the whip of her tail slinking behind the retreating storm.

Her laugh echoed in Ember’s mind. What had happened to her Citadel?

Comments

[TasermonsPartner]

Lotsa anticipation and a good battle in this chapter.

Though the story is entirely from Ember's perspective, it'd be interesting to see what the conversation between Spike and Twilight was that allowed her to let him go. Then again, Spike had already flown off to one battle while at Ash Citadel and apparently Twilight barely noticed until it was pointed out, soooo...

Hmm, seems like Rosebud might have alittle curiosity, maybe even more, in regards to Spike. Assuming that she isn't a mole, it'll be interesting to see where that goes and why she finds him so interesting.