XIX - Crooked
XIX
Crooked
- - -
Mirror Image had never seen so much gold in his life.
The doors were easily thirty feet tall, and each one stood at least twenty feet wide. Their surfaces were studded with rubies and opals, diamonds and sapphires that made no particular shape so much as an intricate pattern of glimmering, spiraling light that seemed to beckon one’s eyes toward the nigh-imperceptible crack between the two doors. When compared with the rough volcanic rock they were set into, they seemed altogether like the entrance to another world. He would never have expected to find something so beautiful so far beneath the jagged spires of Krennotets.
“I guess this is the place,” Eldest Sister noted flatly. “The gates to Peschera. Do you know how to open them, Princess? They look a little heavy.”
Luna stared at the gems for a moment, and then without warning sent a brief flick of her magic toward one of the diamonds on the wall. The result was blinding; dozens of gemstones flickered with internal light filling the small and otherwise dark space with a merciless barrage of flashes.
When it finally subsided, Mirror Image rubbed his brow. “A little warning next time, Princess? If you wouldn’t mind?”
“My apologies,” she answered. “This is a puzzle door. My sister and I use them to protect a few of our secrets in Canterlot, but Krenn was always fond of them. This one, it seems, asks only for Arcana, in the right order on the gems.” Then she frowned. “But I do not know the order.”
“Is there a way to find out?”
Luna nodded. “By testing slowly, and watching the lights that follow. Magnus would be amused, but I have little patience for this sort of riddle.”
Image sat down on his haunches, staring at the ostentatious doors, now once more lit only by the glow of Luna’s horn. “I don’t get it. Why put something like this on the doors to a city? I mean, I would get a bank vault or something, but isn’t the point that the dragons can come and go as they please?”
Luna turned toward her bodyguard, one brow peaked. “You may wish to close your eyes.” Image obliged, and a torrent of lights flashed through his eyelids as the Princess answered his question. “In the past, at Krenn’s city of Drath… Dralt…” Luna huffed once. “I have never learned to say it; truly, its name lends itself to a forked tongue. Regardless, in his old capital, it was his habit that the only dragons he permitted in his company were those who had proven their merit. To return to the capital one either had to solve the puzzle of the door, or offer Krenn a substantial hoard as a prize he could add to his own collection.”
Eldest chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to get a big pile of gold, I guess.”
Luna shook her head. “The gold has little value to him, and the gems are nothing more than snacks. He has told me as much, rather bluntly, in the past. It would be enlightening to hear from his own tongue what his hoard consists of.” The alicorn scowled. “But first, we need to get past this door. I don’t suppose either of you are skilled at puzzles?”
The thestral looked to Mirror Image, and he looked back at Eldest Sister. As one, they broke into muted chuckling. It was the stallion who finally replied. “Sorry, Princess. I’ll help how I can, but patterns look an awful lot like math, and that was never my strong suit.”
Luna’s head tilted to the side. “But surely when you studied magic…”
Image tapped the edge of his horn, indicating its cracked surface. “You must have me confused with somepony who puts a long list of letters after their name, Princess.”
“Our apologies.”
“I got over it a long time ago. Honestly, sometimes I wonder what it is about having a scar that makes ponies assume I have some sort of deep, brooding emotional issues.” He turned his head to the door. “I guess the first place I’d think to start is this: Princess, how would somepony good at puzzles solve this?”
“Hmm.” Luna’s silver-shod hoof gently graced her chin, leaving a spot of ash from the Tartaran environment. “Well, I have no doubt that Starswirl would have arrived already knowing to expect the door, and brought a set of attuning stones to solve it easily. Twilight Sparkle would likely encourage me to examine the gems themselves; that would take hours, but far better than the weeks random guessing would require. If my pupil, Cloudy Mirror, were here, he would likely try and approach it in terms of a different problem.”
Image scratched his own chin. “So we think of it as Tourmaline’s Chest?” The look on Eldest Sister’s fanged face made her confusion obvious enough that she didn’t need to ask. “It’s a classic magical test given to young unicorns seeking to earn an apprenticeship from an established wizard. Basically, you take a chest, and lock the key inside it, so that the only way to get it out is with magic. There are a ton of possible solutions, though the classic one is to use a bowl of quicksilver or a crystal ball to scry through the keyhole, and use that sight as a focus to teleport the key out.”
Luna nodded. “Alas, Krenn’s magic is strong enough and his mind clever enough that I shall not be able to simply teleport us past these doors…” Very slowly, a smile dawned on Luna’s face, creeping up her cheeks until her slender expression had become an almost frightening grin.
“I take it you thought of something, Princess?”
She nodded, and tilted her horn to point at the stone wall just to the side of the door. “I shall use the same method that my sister’s old student embraced to best Tourmaline’s Chest.”
Her horn flared. A beam of blue shot into the stone, unleashing a cloud of dust and gravel that cut through Image’s coat and stung his flesh. As the debris settled and the last ringing echoes of the blast faded away in the tunnel, Luna took a single step toward the gaping hole her magic had created.
“What…?” Eldest Sister looked confused, her slitted eyes dancing between Luna and the hole. “How does that have anything to do with a treasure chest and a key?”
“A great deal of time ago, I bore witness to an argument over whether a talented wizard was defined by their knowledge of magic, or the brute power of their Arcana. It was quite heated.” Luna’s smile returned briefly. “I recall it was Clover the Clever who argued that brute force could never bypass Tourmaline’s Chest. In response, the pony on the other side of the argument ripped a solid steel chest in half, pulled out the key with his… or maybe her teeth, and then stuck it into the keyhole.”
Mirror Image cocked his head. “Do you remember who the pony was?”
“No, there were so many would-be archmages in those days. I can’t imagine it was Starswirl since he was nearly our peer the first time we met him, and of course, Clover was representing the opposite cause. But then there was Gale, as well as Diadem, Mortal Coil, the elk Cal’vathron…it honestly isn’t even worth the effort. We can ask Celestia when we return. Now, come. Let us see what Krenn’s new city is like.”
Two strides through the debris revealed the answer. By any measure, just that first glimpse of the city put the gates to shame. Peschera was a city of gold and fire. Canals of magma as wide as the gates were penned in by streets paved in precious metals, with each brick bearing the shape and texture of a dragon’s scale. Though they came in various sizes, they seemed to fit together perfectly, giving a strange sensation to the first step Mirror Image took into the city proper.
The air was heavy, yet Luna’s spell made it easy on her companion’s lungs. In the place of a strange gas, and in the brief adjustment of his eyes to the accost of shimmering wealth, his body focused in on the churning drip of magma, flowing in and out a thousand times deeper than the crash of the ocean’s surf. It was as if the mountain had a heartbeat. Image’s hoof tapped on the scaled streets in time with the sound as his vision began to return, and his eyes focused on the specifics of the city’s glories.
Little bridges offered passage over the fiery canals, with railings of solid emerald shaped into the forms of vines and other gemstones set apart in a strange and beautiful imitation of flowers. At times, the stone plants continued from the railings, wrapping their way around the gilded but rough walls of the draconic homes and shops that filled the path. No two buildings were alike in shape; they seemed to have once been natural cavern walls, left with their rounded, twisting shapes and simply plated in solid gold. Into and out of their doors came the city’s denizens.
The dragons were as colorful as their city, their bright scales so varied that they were almost distracting. They varied in size from half of Image’s size to a single specimen easily forty times his length. Some wore curved horns on their heads, while others walked with proud fins and crests rising from their backs. Still others did not walk at all, preferring to drift through the canals with the propulsion of their powerful tails.
No shortage of those who had been moving, however, had stopped at the sound of the wall’s destruction.
“Пони?” One asked, her draconic words possessing an artistic and alien quality that seemed absent in the similar Stalliongradi tongue.
Another, twice the size of the first, replied. ”Должны ли мы уведомить Кренёного?”
”Они найдут путь к нему, со временем.” The voice of the giant wyrm rumbled in the air, disturbing even the magma. The green scales of her muzzle came down close to the group of ponies, and her reptilian eyes drifted slowly over Eldest and Image before finally stopping on Luna. “Many years has it been, Queen of the Ponies, since you and I last spoke.”
Luna cocked her head. “Do I… know you?”
The dragon roared in her face, and Mirror Image’s horn wasted no time in lighting up. The roar stopped at the light, and started again abruptly. Four more times the sound began and ended, until the deafening noise could be seen for what it really was: a laugh. “Oh, Luna, have you truly so far fallen? I fought at your side a mere millenium ago. Rystar' is my name.” Her head slid slowly toward Eldest Sister. “You still have your thestrals, I see. Not much, then, has changed. Tell me, fallen mare, do you know who I am?”
Eldest Sister took a step back toward Luna, and her flank brushed against Image’s side. “Uh, Princess, what’s he talking about?”
“She has mistaken you for one of the thestrals who I used as my army one thousand years ago, when I fought my sister.”
“Oh…” The thought left Eldest’s ears drooping slightly, and her head hung low in a show of obvious discomfort. “No, uh, I don’t know you. I’m only thirty years old.”
“Thirty?” The dragon lifted its head up toward the roof of the cavern and released another deafening chuckle. “Oh, and here I thought the chance to share in glorious recollection of battle might have been had. And you lack the horn and the pale coat of the one who survived. Alas.”
Luna cocked a brow for just a moment, and then shook her head, her own ears slowly falling backward with growing displeasure. “I’ve done away with my memories of what I became, and all of the thestrals from those days are gone.”
“Oh, I know about the culling,” Rystar' replied. “But they did not all leave this world.”
Luna shook her head. “Even if the Honor Guard hadn’t killed them, they would have died without my magic.”
“Do you truly believe you were the only combatant in the War of Twilight that could twist such magic together?” Rystar’s serpentine eyes rolled in their sockets. “You bore me with what you have given up, Luna. Even those ponies who came for Razdor were more intriguing. Go, and see Krenen, as you have surely come to do. But be mindful; his temper has been foul since his awakening.”
Luna’s hoof moved to her cheek, where her draconic peer had struck her. “Believe me, Rystar', I know all too well.”
The dragon shrugged, slinking into the magma of the canal. “To the center of the cavern, and Krenen shall be found.”
Luna watched the last of the vibrant scales disappear with a slight ripple of magma. Then her attention turned to the path. “Let us go.”
As the group took its first steps further into the city, Eldest Sister dropped down to walk at Luna’s side. “Mistress, what did the dragon mean about mares coming for some dragon?”
“Not a dragon,” Luna replied. “Razdor is the draconic name for Discord. When the Bearers of Harmony ‘redeemed’ Discord, he decided that his best course of action would be to visit the only living beings that would remember him. What he did not count on was the cold reality that Valdria, Magnus, and Krenn would not be as forgiving of his antics as my sister and I were.”
“I heard about this,” Image noted. “The Commander sent the Bearers on some sort of secret mission, right?”
Luna nodded. “Valdria and Krenn each demanded that we give up the Elements of Harmony, so that they could be used against Discord. There was talk of breaking The Pact if we did not give them up.” This time, Luna didn’t need another prompt to recognize the looks of confusion on the faces of her companions. “Millenia ago, after a particularly vicious war between Magnus and Valdria, we six came to an agreement: we would not interfere in one another’s rule, and we would not use our powers against one another.” Luna sighed. “After so much effort, we were forced to return Discord to stone, not for any sin of his own, but as a way to protect Equestria. The six were unwilling until we explained the stakes. Even now, I know the yellow one holds some great measure of anger toward Krenn. I hope today that we see a better side of him, though I wonder if perhaps his gentleness is lost forever.”
The harshness of the phrase stole Image’s attention away from the cavern city and its populace, and Luna’s pace left him struggling to keep up. As his hooves beat against the golden street, he noted the way her ears were folded back, and the pinch between her shoulders that told of discomfort in the way she carried her wings.
The guardspony’s eyes flicked between the streets as his outright gallop caught up to her rather forceful trot. For three blocks, he held his tongue, brushing by dragons of every shape and color and feeling with every step as though he had escaped from a zoo. After those three blocks, however, he found a bridge above another of the canals pleasantly devoid of prying ears.
“You look stressed, Princess. Are you alright?”
Luna stopped abruptly, and then released a sigh that accompanied a sag in her shoulders and her wings. “My memories trouble me,” she whispered. “Or rather, my lack of them. What your Commander said is true, you know―”
“Don’t listen to him, Princess,” Eldest Sister directed, butting into the conversation. “You’re a great pony.”
“And yet my past keeps rearing its head.” Luna frowned. “I don’t even remember that dragon, yet she speaks as if she expects me to turn against my sister again. I find myself wondering if I would be a different pony, had I kept my emotions from those days.”
“Does it matter?” Mirror Image’s blunt question left Luna blinking in minor shock, but he donned a more sensitive tone as he continued. “Would I still be a guardspony if my horn hadn’t been broken? What’s the point wasting time on what could have been, when you can’t change it? If you want to worry about whether or not to take your memories back, we can deal with that issue when Rainbow and the Commander get back to Canterlot, but right now, we’re in the middle of a volcano, and Equestria needs you to be at your best so we can defuse this situation with Lord Krenn.” Image nodded his cracked horn forward across the bridge. “Can we count on you, Princess?”
Luna’s cerulean eyes locked with Image’s, and they grew hard; unflinching, unmoving, and unwavering. She didn’t say anything, but then, she didn’t need to. Her hooves pivoted on the golden floor of the bridge, and with long forceful strides, she continued on her way.
The rest of Peschera’s streets passed with the same glittering glory, though it could not compete with the sheer shock of the first view. The next site of interest that caught their attention was not gold, but magma. Sitting in the center of the city was what could only be called a lake of fire. Seven canals of magma poured together into a swirling whirlpool of orange and gold and black, churning thicker than tar and hotter than Tartarus. Around its edges were no railing or protection of any sort, and the edges of pool itself were arrayed into the shape of a seven-pointed star.
“Careful!” Eldest Sister yelled, as Luna approached the lip of the fire.
“He is here,” Luna replied, staring into the fiery pit. “I can feel his magic.” Her eyes briefly flickered across the hole. “Amusing that he would use the symbol for magic here.” She took a slow breath, and then her voice echoed at an impossible volume, filling the cavern. “Спайк, I come to speak with you.”
Krenn’s response was almost immediate. The magma in the star-shaped pool spun faster and faster as its center grew thinner and thinner. After little more than a moment, what remained was a spiraling tube of magma, and at its center, facing flat into the ground, a hatch of black stone nearly forty feet down.
The feathers of Luna’s right wing extended out from her side, and from their surface, a cloud of smoke began to form. With each passing moment, it grew darker and denser, until at last both the wing and half her torso had been shrouded in the cloud. With a flick of her body, however, it moved away, draping out over the open space and descending amidst the still-swirling magma. In a matter of moments, it had formed a spiral down to the obsidian door. With a flick of the same wing, Luna finished her work, and the loose smoky spiral became misty, ethereal spiral staircase.
“Come.” Her hooves moved to the edge of the first step. “We should not keep Krenn waiting.”
Image moved hesitantly toward the Princess as she began her descent, but stopped before his hooves touched the smoke. “Uh, Princess, I can’t walk on clouds.”
“You will find this smoke solid, Bodyguard. It is a rarer skill for an Empath, but at times very useful. I have put enough of my Empatha into the steps that anyone will find them just as solid as my hooves do.” Her horn flicked briefly upward. “It is how Krenn keeps flying dragons from entering this city through the top of the volcano.”
The guardspony was hesitant, and he began with a single hoof on the smoke. Slowly, he increased the weight on the step, but no matter how hard he pushed, it held strong.
“No need for fear,” Luna told him. “Had I not intended you to join me, I would have simply flown down.”
His nostrils filled with the scent of fire as he took his first step, and as he descended, the heat in the air became almost palpable. By the time Image reached the ground, Luna’s magic had already grasped onto the obsidian hatch, and Eldest Sister was hovering nearby. At Luna’s tug, the doors came open, revealing a rather plain staircase of the same volcanic stone. After the onslaught of sparkling gold on the ponies’ eyes above, the near-total darkness was almost a welcome relief.
Only a dozen strides into the room, the orange glow of the lava disappeared when the doors slammed shut. Luna’s horn replaced orange with blue, and in the newfound light, Mirror Image leapt in front of the Princess.
Ahead, a simple arch of stone separated the end of the stairs from some flat-floored room beyond. Flanking the opening in perfect stillness and silence were a pair of young dragons. Their slitted eyes watched the three ponies closely. One, a brown scaled male with a webbed crest over his head, was unfamiliar. The other, however, with her almost demonic horns and pale white-blue scales, was immediately recognizable.
“Princess,” the latter greeted. Ice, as she was called in Equiish, nodded curtly, though her eyes remained hatefully locked on Image. “Krenn was expecting you to come alone.”
Princess Luna replied with the beginning of a long discussion about the presence of her company. As her words began an earnest dialogue with the dragons, Eldest dropped to her hooves and walked slowly over to Image’s side. “What’s the deal with that dragon?” the thestral whispered.
“The Princess and Lord Krenn didn’t quite get along in Stalliongrad,” Mirror replied in a similar tone. “Remember the Changeling cell in Baltimare?”
The unicorn had been expecting a nod or a whispered response; instead he received a rather chilly nuzzle from the undead pegasus. “Here I thought you’d forgotten about us.”
Image scowled, pulling away. “Eyes on the mission, Cannon.”
“Cannon?” Eldest smiled, baring no small number of her harsh carnivorous fangs.
The stallion chose to ignore the slip of his own tongue, instead stepping aside as the Princess moved to step forward through the arch and into Krenn’s lair.
What Mirror Image saw in the light of Luna’s horn surprised him for its utter normalcy. In place of vast halls and massive piles of gold from storybooks, Krenn’s quarters rather resembled a Canterlot manor’s parlor or art gallery, albeit with dark stone walls in place of windows and intricately patterned wallpaper. A number of small tables and shelves of some rather light stained wood sat about the room, displaying trinkets and baubles of every size, shape, and material the pony could imagine. His eyes flickered between picture frames and necklaces, a plain wooden flute sitting beside a rather ornate goblet, and a number of books held upright by an equine skull. Hundreds, if not thousands of such items filled the shelves in the room, so wide that the unicorn almost jumped when his hoof met the comfortable feel of plush carpet.
Luna had come to the center of the room, where a decorated rug of red and blue thread played host to a large table, and a large cushion of similar colors. At the far side of the room’s central feature was the one piece of the room that could be called truly draconic: a fireplace shaped out of the natural stone instead of bricks or the work of hooves or magic. A fire roared in its mouth, lit from four large logs. In the glow of the flames, a single dragon could be seen, staring into the pile of logs and away from his guests.
Laying on his belly, with his three good legs and his still-present wing against his sides, Image was shocked at just how small Krenn was. The eldest of the dragons wasn’t terribly longer than an average pony if one discounted his serpentine tail. At the approach of the three ponies, his almost feline ears twitched once.
“I was surprised when word came that you were here so soon, Luna. My kind are still not used to seeing ponies on the ash plains, even after last year’s visit.”
Luna drew in a slow breath and forced herself to take a single tentative step toward the black dragon. “Krenn, we need to speak.”
“We are speaking.” He didn’t bother to turn his head back toward her. “Look at this, Luna. Tell me what you see.”
Krenn gave no indication to the subject of his words, so Luna was forced to assume he meant the fireplace. That Krenn had shaped it himself was obvious; no other creature in the world could match his ability to sculpt solid stone. Within its confines, three logs were stacked plainly on an iron rack. Little balls of sap cracked and popped, and a few pieces of lingering green needles gave rise to a great deal of smoke, which disappeared up into the chimney above, but still managed to fill the chamber with a distinct scent of fresh cedar.
“It…” Luna let her initial thoughts trail off as she struggled to get into Krenn’s sometimes peculiar way of looking at the world. “It’s a fireplace inside a volcano. Why not just use the lava?”
“Because I enjoy the smell, and because the crackle of a fireplace reminds me of the Valley.” Krenn’s right arm stretched out, and his razor-sharp claws sunk into the surface of a log stacked in a pile just beside the fireplace. With little motion, he tossed the wood into the fire. Sparks erupted for a moment at the violent collision, but it soon settled back to the calm pops of a welcoming hearth. “But cedar trees do not grow on ash, and molten stone is a poor substitute for rain.”
The alicorn princess took three strides forward, stopping when she was close enough to reach out a hoof and touch Krenn’s back. “So where do you get them?”
“A pony’s nose is weak. You smell the breed of the tree. A dragon’s nose is sharp, deductive, and predatory. I smell the weather the tree grew in. I smell the soil it rose out of. I smell the tree’s home.” Slowly, the dragon’s head swiveled, until at last his slitted amethyst eyes were focused fully on Luna’s. “I smell our home.”
Luna’s even expression briefly cracked; for just a moment, Mirror Image could see pain and sorrow and regret, written as plainly in her eyes as any text. He knew Krenn could see it to. He took a single stride toward the ruler of the dragons, and toward his ward.
“The Valley is gone, Krenn.”
The corners of Krenn’s mouth moved upward, and his lips seemed to roll back on themselves. “Ah, but Luna, it doesn’t have to be. All I need is a bit more of the draconequus’ magic.”
“A bit more?” Eldest Sister asked, drawing the ireful attention of the speaking immortals. Image unsubtly drove his knee into the thestral’s ribs, but she pressed forward just the same. “You already have some of Discord’s magic?”
Krenn’s grin spread, revealing more and more of his fanged maw. “No more than your princess, nor her sister or our other peers.” The eldest of the dragons raised his hoof-sized claw, its fingers open and outstretched as if grasping at thin air. Between them, a visible aura of black magic crackled with green flames and purple lightning. The show of ‘alicorn’ magic lasted for only a moment, but it seemed to drain the dragon, leaving his shoulders slumping, his scaled brow tugged down over his serpentine eyes, and his sharp ears sagging. For his effort, an orb of perfect white light, about the size of a baseball, hovered an inch over his palm. “This is my immortality,” Krenn explained, before drawing in a harsh, wheezing breath.
“Krenn, what are you doing?”
“Educating your pet corpse.” Black scaled claws closed around the orb, and in a mere instant, its light was gone. Krenn’s nostrils tightened around a single, noiseless breath, and he regained his strength and posture. Purple slitted eyes once more focused on Eldest. “Eighty-eight millennia ago, Discord ruled this world. He moved the moon and the sun, he shaped the earth, he bent the winds; even the nature of time to bring about growth or death lay in his mismatched grips. In those days, only a place called the Valley of Dreams was safe from his touch. Your kind lived there; ponies, along with two guardians. Myself, and...” Krenn’s eyes flicked away, his expression growing distant. “...another.”
“Another dragon?” Eldest asked.
Krenn shook her head. “Her kind is dead. Slaughtered to the last as part of Discord’s revenge for what we did to him. We six who first wielded Harmony.”
At this point, Mirror Image found his brow rising toward his hairline. Rather than address the dragon, he stepped up to the mare he was somehow supposed to be defending. “Princess, does he mean the Elements of Harmony?”
Luna nodded. “Much as the mares of Ponyville, there were six of us. In those days, we were… more diverse. I carried Loyalty. My sister, Honesty.”
“Generosity was mine,” Krenn added. “Ottgam―the griffon you know as ‘Emperor Magnus’―carried Kindness. Lady Valdria of the Elk bore magic.”
Image found himself mentally ticking through the list of Bearers, but Eldest Sister beat him to the final count. “What about Laughter?” the thestral asked Krenn.
“Laughter?” Krenn cocked his head. “In our day, we called it ‘Mirth’. Regardless, it belonged to… our leader.” His hesitance begged questions from the ‘young’ ponies in the room, but the dragon pressed on without offering a chance for their curiosity to be fielded. “When Discord came to the Valley, we used the Elements to stop him. But, rather than petrifying the spirit, we simply stripped him of the powers we truly feared. Sun and moon. Wind and stone. Growth and decay. We had no understanding of just how much power he still had.” Krenn’s eyes turned to Luna. “And that power is what I need to heal my people, and to restore the Valley. I thank you for coming so quickly, Luna. If you will hand over the bag…”
Luna looked down at the dirty leather bag hanging loosely around her neck, and then back up at Krenn’s impatient expression.
“The bag is empty, Krenn.”
Thump
“What?” The room seemed to grow hotter and darker with the snap of Krenn’s serpentine tongue against his pale fangs.
Luna stood strong against the intimidating display. “I spoke to Celestia, but she doesn’t know what your hoard is, and neither do I. I had planned to ask you for the straight answer you seem to be loathe to give, but we have a more pressing concern.”
Thump, thump
“You are trying my patience, Luna.”
“Listen to me, Krenn. I have reason to believe that whoever was behind the attempt on my life several months ago is now intending to take yours.”
Krenn’s scowl grew deeper, until his brow was so creased that the scales covering it had begun to rise up, like the hair on a cat’s neck. His lips had peeled back fully, but there was no hint of a smile in his snarl. “This is what you tell me, Luna? That after my waiting, you come to me with some specter of a death threat?” The dragon rose up, unsteadily, before finding balance on his sole hind leg still capable of supporting his weight. Finally able to look down on Luna, if only just, he extended a claw in a dismissive wave. “Оставьте нас.”
The other two dragons in the room exchanged a careful glance, before Lyod addressed her elder. “Кренёный, думаем мы, что не хорошая это мысль оставаться тебе наедине с этими―”
“Удалитесь.” Though forceful, the word was delivered slowly and calmly. Were it not for the following noises, Image might have believed that Krenn was still relaxed.
Thump, Thump, Thump
Lyod and her companion left the room, the former sparing only a moment to shoot a hateful glance in Image’s direction. Only when they had shut the doors to the chamber did Krenn speak up again. “Discord took my leg and my wing, Luna. I have lived without them with few regrets. The third price he demanded, though, was my legacy.”
Luna cocked her head. “I’m not sure I follow…”
Krenn sighed. “He wanted my fertility. I asked for a day to consider his offer, thinking I could outsmart him. I was a fool.”
“What did you do?”
“I fertilized three eggs.” Krenn’s tired expression drew down into a scowl. “And then I sealed them with magic, so that they would not hatch until I was ready.”
“Three eggs?” Luna’s brow rose. “It thought you only had two.”
“Syn and Naslednik were the first two.” The dragon shook his head. “At first, I did not understand why you were so insistent to avoid progeny. When Syn died, I finally began to comprehend. Then, two decades ago, there came the war. Naslednik was young and ambitious, and sought to prove his strength. I had no part in the conflict, but your military leader came to me just the same, demanding that I end the war. He brought Tirek’s bag with him, carrying in it some bauble meant to appease me. I told him the blunt truth: I had no interest in stopping my kind any more than I had interest in starting them against Equestria.”
In a voice not nearly quiet enough to avoid interrupting the two demigods’ discussion, Eldest Sister turned to Mirror Image. “He means the Commander, right?”
Luna turned to answer the thestral herself. “I would assume so. I do not know who else has worn Hurricane’s Armor in recent years.”
“I don’t know,” Mirror Image told her. “When I talked to him, Princess, he said he was the one who came here. But that doesn’t make sense. Until the Battle of Treasonfang Pass, Steel Lining wasn’t even Honor Guard. He was a lieutenant or something in the Royal Guard. Commander Coil was the pony who had Hurricane’s Armor back then.”
Thump, Thump
“I do not care who the pony is. Understand this. That stallion stole my last egg, and then he killed Naslednik. He hid the egg in Tirek’s bag, where I could not scry it, and he threatened to smash it if I did not intervene to end the war. I was told it would be returned to me when the mutual bloodlust had died down. I slumbered for two decades, but now that I am awake, I find my one precious treasure has not been returned to me.” Krenn’s claw ignited in a smoky aura of Arcana, and he directed it toward a log on top of the pile by the fireplace. At his magical behest, it slammed into the fire, sending up a cloud of sparks and smoke that outlined the obsidian-scaled figure. “So I return to the race of ponies the offer that was given to me. Return my hoard, or I will restore the war I stopped.”
His claw moved for another log, but this one did not rise. Instead, a low humming issued from it, so subtle that Mirror Image barely picked it up. It was familiar somehow, though the pony had trouble placing it.
“What is this?” Krenn’s magic disappeared, but the humming only grew louder.
From the moment Image remembered the sound of a Void Crystal devouring arcana, he barely had time to react. A shield wouldn’t do him any good when the dust started to eat his mana. Instead, the stallion grabbed Princess Luna in his telekinetic grasp, and hurled her away from the fireplace and its stack of logs.
Then the room exploded. There was no fire, save the few embers from the fireplace. Only thick black ash hanging in the air, and the splinters and shards of wood and stone, and the sudden force of a thousand ponies bucking the stallion in the chest, all at once. Were it not for the pain surging through his horn from his brutal use of magic, he might have cried at the sensation of his ribs cracking from the shockwave. The chamber spun around him, before his horn collided with the floor. The sensation of its open wound scraping across the floor as he slid stole away all other sensation. Sight, sound, even smell were taken away. Only pain filled his consciousness. Then that too faded.
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...I have a sneaking suspicion as to where the third egg is.
4775433 Yeah, I think that's pretty obvious now. I kind of suspected it from the start.
Well it seems logical that "he" is the egg, but he might not be.
Man, I want to keep reading this, but the cast of characters, locations, and events have ballooned so much I have no idea who's who anymore.
"A fire roared in its mouth, lit from four large logs."
"Within its confines, three logs were stacked plainly on an iron rack."
There appears to be an inconsistency here.
Nice job with the door, Luna, very subtle.
Hmn, an elk in such a time and location that Luna associates it with the rest of that list of names? Fun.
Oh wow, so Luna really didn't know that her old band of thestrals is up to so much trouble in the afterlife? Now that she does know, I wonder if she can do anything about that.
Argh, that explanation about Discord. Urge to see something terrible happen to Krenn rising...
Ooooo, I'm assuming that means Mirror knows what Eldest's living identity was? Maybe that was covered in a previous chapter with the two of them.
Heh, I wonder if that skull belonged to any pony we knew.
That's a bit of detail about the Valley of Dreams that I'm not sure we had before.
Ah hah! The bag contained an egg as expected, and I bet real money that it was the one Twilight hatched into Spike.
And it seems Luna was right, someone is trying to kill Krenn. I'd cheer them on except for the fact that success would probably be really really bad for the overall stability of the world.
Wait so Discord is sealed back into stone? Where exactly does this story take place in canon? Or is it already into AU territory? I remember LL saying a while back that this was between seasons 2 and 3 or something...
4778839
It's between S3E10 and S3E12, if memory serves. You might not have noticed, but the characters all aged two years there. :)
4779134
Ah thanks. Did they age, really? I couldn't tell.
Also, I really like your "shorter but faster" chapters. Thanks for thinking of your readers and their insatiable hunger for your stories.
4779177
20 will be posted at the first lull in Bronycon, be that this evening or not until Monday.
This chapter was, to me, the most mellow one of the entire story thus far. I'm glad you put that little segment in the last chapter about what happens to a void crystal if it absorbs too much magic. Big explosions are fun, but I'm hoping everybody is okay after it. I'm even hoping Krenn is okay, but Image might not be all that well off. I guess that... shade, was it? I guess that shade was right about someone else going to try and assassinate Krenn. Good chapter that ended with quite the bang. On to the next now!
~SolidFire
If Krenn was Generosity, why did he have the symbol for Magic on his lava pool thingy?
4775433 I think we all do. Kren should have paid more attention to local events since he awoke.