Rainbow Dash has a problem: no matter where she is, ponies who are lost will presume she's a native and pester her for directions. As it turns out, it also works on a particular arrogant teenage dragon looking for a certain familiar cave..
It's the deliberately coldest autumn day in recorded Ponyville history and Rainbow Dash, who's setting up the last of the weather conditions, has the town pretty much to herself as every other pony huddles indoors, hiding from the chill. This would normally mean a morning where nopony takes a single glance at her and decides she's a talking map with nothing better to do than personally guide them wherever they need to go, no matter how many hours it takes. And in fact, nopony does.
Just one familiar, arrogant jerk of a teenage dragon who wants to know how he can get to a certain cave -- and believes Rainbow has nothing better to do than take him there...
(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group. New members and trope edits welcome.)
It was meant to be the coldest day on record for a Ponyville autumn, it was totally on purpose, and it was entirely Rainbow Dash's responsibility to make it work.
Normally, the Weather Bureau forecast for the day would have been -- well, normal: the same old boring sameness dictated by the stuffy standards of the settled zones. There would have been a little bit of chill in the morning, maybe a brisk breeze to remind everypony of the approaching winter while giving Rarity faint hopes of a scarf sale or two before the Sun was lowered. Then a slow warming trend throughout the morning -- very slow -- until, at just about two hours before sunset, there would be a single moment where ponies would feel totally comfortable, happy to be outside, warm and cozy in a haven of crisp air and seasonal scents -- before the temperature plummeted again. The kind of day where those few local ponies who favored clothing would claim they needed to leave their homes with sixteen different layers just to have any chance of comfort -- then spend the entire day shedding and re-donning, which meant they never got much of anything else done. (Rarity had confessed to Rainbow that it was the period she most dreaded designing for, as there was almost no way to make that many garments coordinate without blending into monochrome -- and given that, a truly brisk fall could lock the designer into the Boutique with a confining force equal to six bad mane days.) A little over three moons' worth of autumn to create the weather for, and at least a third of the days within would be just like that. Rainbow could set up the conditions for one in her sleep, and often had.
But this day... well, it was an emergency, one which had been allowed to go on for far too long, and the forecast had been altered to finally clean up the mess. They were halfway through autumn and the consequences of summer were still lingering about Ponyville. They were generally to be found in pony coats. Within the ears was an equally popular location. Or worse. 'Worse' was something Rainbow really didn't want to think about. She'd had two 'worse' so far and this day was the only means of preventing a third.
Summer had created a parasite invasion. Rainbow wasn't sure the loss of the P and R made any real difference in the resulting suffering.
Somehow -- and Rainbow took no responsibility for any of it, she typically got her almanac schedule from the central Bureau and followed it to the overly-precise letter right up until the moment it started looking extra-stupid -- the warmest moons had led to an explosion in the flea and tick population. Ponyville had been swarmed. It wasn't just the tall grass which bore the danger: it was the shorter blades plus the bases of trees, most of the lowest branches, and you couldn't even stick your snout into a flower without having something waiting within the pistils to latch on. Generally, standard grooming and a few special soaps were enough to keep everypony's coat insect-free throughout the season and prevent the squirming, open rolling around on the ground, and biting at one's own flanks which indicated a personal hygiene standard that wasn't quite up to the rest of the population. And it had continued to do so -- right up until the increased demand had led to the shops periodically running out of the soaps. Ponyville had turned into a twitching, snapping, totally-infested zone of bite-covered residents who forced themselves down the streets one jittery hoofstep at a time while trying not to openly rub up against every building wall. Some dunked themselves in the central fountain in hopes of temporary cool relief. Others stayed there.
Lotus and Aloe had converted the spa to a mainly-grooming facility, which meant they spent most of their time getting bitten: the steamy conditions of the sauna meant personal protection wore off six times a day. They'd never completely given up, they hadn't resorted to barricading the place --- something which would have been the final requirement for an incredibly itchy Rarity's ultimate nervous breakdown -- but they'd been overbooked to the point where even their most loyal customer had to schedule two weeks in advance and couldn't be let in more than once per day. Both Applejack and Fluttershy had nearly been driven into collapses of their own: one desperately trying to keep her tenants free of the infestation lest they take the price for their lessened living conditions off their rent, the other spending nearly every waking hour scrubbing down her friends and trying to find some form of protection which wouldn't wear off or wash away under rain. Most of the protective soap in town had ultimately wound up at the cottage (after the animal caretaker had emptied the fringe of the herbs which would substitute -- and not for long enough), which had the twin side effects of driving Fluttershy that much closer to the bankruptcy she was forever a single bad moon away from and making the town residents consider raiding the place to get some of it for themselves. (Nopony had gone that far. Several had gotten together to Make Plans -- but then somepony had remembered the bear.) Pinkie had developed so many itchy twitches as to nearly lose track of the ones from her Pinkie Sense: unfortunately, those watching her couldn't tell the difference between a bout of scratch suppression and the sequence which indicated multiple large falling objects about to impact everypony around her, which had certainly added a certain screaming, diving-for-cover something to the epidemic. And Twilight had labored mightily until the librarian had been convinced she'd created a spell which would locally extinct both insect species in a one-gallop radius, taken it out into the field for testing -- and now Ponyville didn't have a daffodil to its name, although Twilight had a few dozen angry complaint scrolls to hers. It hadn't been much in the way of compensation, especially once the small-claims lawsuits began coming in.
For Rainbow's part... well, it was a sad truth of pegasus existence: you had to touch down sometime. And even when she hadn't, it was truly amazing just how high some of those fleas could jump. Plus the things she cras -- inadvertently came to unscheduled stops against were almost guaranteed to have their share of crawlies and while they just fell through her floor once she got home and scrubbed them off, short sharp showers of ticks had won her and the rest of the pegasi population no friends, along with several field-boosted deliveries back to cloud level.
Ultimately, there had been only one cure: an early hard freeze. Get the entire town scrubbed, make everypony as insect-free as possible -- then set up a single full day of conditions which would put ice crystals in every local tail, open all the windows, huddle beneath as many layers as possible (which still hadn't done much for Rarity's sales, as most had chosen blankets), and wait. Twenty-four hours of early winter, just enough to kill every biting and blood-sucking leech in the area. But in order for it to truly work, the weather team had needed to cover not just Ponyville, but the fringe of the wild zones around it -- and beyond. Conditions had been set up in the Everfree (with Zecora's blessing, as she'd been just as sick of the infestation as everypony else), which had been no fun whatsoever for anypony involved and nearly wound up bringing back things worse than mere fleas and ticks. A truly ridiculous amount of heat had been shifted, and they'd needed to find places where they could shift all of it to. And Rainbow had been responsible for every last moment of it...
...but now the setup was almost over. It was down to her, a few last lingering early morning clouds, and the thick boots around her hooves to go with the fluff-filled merry red feather-fringed vest Rarity had custom-fitted to her torso. (She'd left the matching earmuffs behind. Hearing was more important than warmth, plus she had to have some standards.)
The temperature was well below freezing. Applejack and the other farmers had wrapped up the last of the late harvests for everything which had been fully-grown in time: anything still above ground was being sacrificed, anything below didn't stand much chance of making it through -- but the earth ponies had agreed to those losses as part of the necessary price to pay. Fluttershy had been (repeatedly) calmed and was ready to make rounds of her own, telling those friends subject to hibernation that this was not the time to get an early start. The rest of the weather team, exhausted, had scrubbed down one last time and retreated to their homes for their blanket-buried rest. Rainbow was personally clearing out the last of the clouds above Ponyville because cloud cover insulated the ground and they couldn't afford to keep a single degree. And besides, she'd personally overseen far too much of the process, struggled through the labors required to set up the unseasonal conditions as an all-at-once necessity instead of the slow seasonal trend, especially given that heat-shifting had never been her strong point and even working with the team to move so much of it...
She was seeing the process out just to make sure it was gone. And after one day, it would all have to be reversed.
Fun. In the really sarcastic sense.
With the last cloud dispelled, she flew down to ground level, near the library-- and didn't quite touch down. It hadn't been cold long enough yet.
Look at this place. It's like I'm the only pony in the world...
The streets were completely empty. Nopony was peeking out their windows, as doing so just put them that much closer to the flow of cold air. Not a single pet roamed through the town: they were huddled next to their companions -- at least, after they'd been given one last scrubbing. She had Ponyville all to herself. A Ponyville which might as well never have had anypony living there, a Ponyville which almost seemed as if nopony would ever occupy it again. It was the sort of image which led a pony to deep thoughts.
I could set up like a thousand pranks right now, totally out in the open, with nopony around to stop me.
As deep thoughts went, it was -- encouraging. She was tired, she'd labored all night under Moon in order to direct the last of the arrangements -- but with that kind of opportunity openly waving a hoof at her and inviting her in for wake-up juice, she wasn't that tired. Just how many traps could she rig within a few hours? All those ponies had to emerge from their homes sometime, right?
So something should totally be waiting to greet them. Say, over their doors. Buckets of water -- no, that won't work, it's gonna freeze and dumping ice blocks on pony heads is kind of leaving casual fun behind, not to mention any other part of the continent which isn't behind bars: the police chief swore if she thought I'd crossed the line one more time... I should totally set something up by her place first. Except that she'd know it was me: who else is still out here? Which means I need -- what did that one passage in Canon #12 call it? -- oh, right! An alibi! Tank can totally cover for me and say I was home the whole time! Except he's all curled up in that little pocket of heat Thunderlane set up for him and he can't set one foot outside it without going all the way into his shell and falling asleep. So in his story, I'd have to be next to that sphere the whole time. Well, at least it'll be warm. So warm that I should just go next to him once I get home and scrub off for the last time in this stupid infestation, just stay there and let him warm me up until I fall asleep -- no, I've got to do something with this! A whole town of ponies who'll never see me getting ready to prank them and --
-- nopony around to prank.
I'll have to wait for them to come out. In the cold. And I can't be everywhere at once. The first one will go off, and I probably won't be there to see it, so I'll hear it and rush over, which means I'll miss the second, and lose the third while I'm tracking that...
...maybe curling up and sleeping next to Tank's heat pocket really is the best idea...
Rainbow sighed. No, the pranks wouldn't work out. It was just a perfect day of solitude -- which meant there was nopony around to watch her show off. To compliment her. To see how awesome she was, in the event that she came up with something awesome. A day with nopony around sucked. What was the point of being a performer when there was no audience?
Fine. Whatever. Go home and sleep it is --
"-- hey, stupid! I've been calling you like, ten times! Don't those stupid pony ears ever hear anything, or are they just good for sitting on top of your head and twisting around to catch anything those pie plates you call eyes miss? Come on, dummy, I'm talking to you here!"
Rainbow maintained the hover as she spun around, got her wings and hooves into a fighting position because anypony who talked to her like that was just begging for a beatdown and that was just the sort of activity which would warm her up --
-- but the speaker wasn't a pony at all.
And Rainbow knew him.
Red scales across the majority of his body, but with a few lighter spots on the face which would pass for freckles on many other species. (The color of those spots could have been called 'pink' by anything which had an immediate and overpowering desire to become a lump of charcoal.) Taller than she was -- the hover put them more or less on eye level -- nearly twice her own height and significantly taller than Spike, even more so than before: he was clearly in the middle of a growth spurt, and his limbs were rendered oddly slim-looking by it. Front fangs and side ones protruding from his mouth on strange angles which had only gotten worse since their last encounter: he looked as if he could start eating something a full hoof width before it reached his actual mouth. Wings huddled far too tightly against his back, almost as if they were trying to burrow within. Orange crest seeming half-wilted. Yellow eyes (matching the scales of his chest) under thick clusters of narrow black spiky protrusions which would have been eyebrows on just about anything else. Angry yellow eyes.
The last time Rainbow had seen him, he'd been chasing her, and those slightly-less-protruding fangs had been trying to snap at her tail with intent to --
-- but his friends weren't with him this time. It was just the teenager, her, and an empty Ponyville.
Which meant it was the perfect time to start making up for the insult of having had to run.
"You're talking to me?" she challenged. "You really think you can just walk into town and start talking to me?"
"I must be talking to you!" he yelled back. "I don't see any other stupid pony here! Where are all you freaks today, anyway? And why --" he started to shiver, realized it, stopped himself through a visible surge of will "-- is it so cold here? It's fall! I know you wimps can do tricks with the weather, so why is this cluster of future fireballs an icebox? I should light a few places up just to make it habitable! Or hospitable. A dragon, a noble dragon, the highest of the races, drops by this collection of wusses, honoring you with his mere presence, and you can't even be bothered to make the place homey for him! Look, I called you, like, twenty times! Or maybe twice! Just tell me what I want to know so I can get out of this stupid place?"
Rainbow blinked.
He -- didn't know her.
He didn't remember her.
Admittedly, for most of the time she'd been around him, she'd been hiding within the world's most ridiculously gem-encrusted dragon costume (or so she'd thought until she'd seen the actual dragon who matched the thing, it turned out Rarity had been consulting a few books on the side and spotted that rare subspecies lurking near an index), and once she'd come out -- well, it had been a fairly dark night, most of his view would have been of her tail and while that sight was fairly distinctive, this dragon had struck her as having most of his brains in his claws.
But still... it was just one more insult.
I could have taken you! If it wasn't for Spike running and everypony else going right behind him, we couldn't just let him go off by himself -- and how dare you forget me! I oughta --
-- he -- wanted to know something.
And then he would leave.
Rainbow forced herself to take a slow breath. "What do you want?"
He ignored nearly all of the tone. "Good. That's how a namby-pamby pony should act. All cooperative and junk. I'll keep it simple so your puny little herbivore brain can keep up with me, okay? There's this cave. Cay-veh. Somewhere outside this stupid town. Up a mountain? And there used to be a dragon living there. A big one. Not even you idiots could have missed him, not with that asthma making him blow smoke in his sleep all the time... Stupid weak doofus of a -- anyway, I need to know how to get there. There's some stuff I've got to do. So tell me how to get there already so I can get out of this iceberg!"
The -- cave?
Oh, Rainbow remembered that cave. Speaking of places where she'd had to run...
...but that one had been a little more justified.
"Dragon Mountain?"
"You named it after him? How could you -- okay, fine, yeah, Dragon Mountain, okay?" What passed for lips on his face pursed, and he blew a thin stream of fire across vicious-looking claws: it took Rainbow a second to realize he was trying to keep them warm. "You know how to get there or what?"
Rainbow tried not to openly groan. It was happening again. Even with a dragon, it was happening...
On her better days, she told herself it was a side effect from being so confident. She gave off an aura which dominated whatever setting she found herself in (or so she could very easily convince herself), and so everypony automatically assumed she belonged there. And if she belonged in a particular location -- then naturally she had to know her way around it.
Rainbow had Direction-Face.
There was no cure.
Out of all her friends, only Pinkie truly understood, for Pinkie had Retail-Face. With the exception of Canterlot's super-high-end establishments -- and not always even then -- ponies who ran into Pinkie in practically any kind of shop would often assume she worked there and treat her accordingly: queries on prices, checking on sales, orders to head into the back room and fetch something for them from reserve stock. And Pinkie, being an accommodating sort of pony, would often do her best to help them -- no matter what it took. She had taken stores apart in her quests to find that one right piece which would make her non-customer happy while satisfying her not-boss as to the quality of her non-employment so she might one day get a not-raise in her never-salary. Ponyville's residents had, over the course of several years, picked up on the painful lesson: Pinkie works at the bakery. Do not assume anything else. But when the Bearers traveled to a settled zone which was considerably less familiar with the group -- well, Pinkie had nearly found herself selling grooming wares for crystal coats. What had worried Twilight was that the baker had almost managed to pull it off.
With Direction-Face... ponies would pick Rainbow out of a crowd, any crowd of any size, and ask her how to get -- anywhere. It could happen within ten seconds of her flying into a new settled zone for the first time. It had happened in Appleloosa, and the pegasus population in town had been a very temporary two. And for those areas she knew, she would internally groan, sigh, lash her tail twice, and then attempt to help those ponies --
-- but having Direction-Face didn't make her any good at giving the things.
Rainbow navigated Ponyville's streets more or less on instinct. She never thought about how she was steering: she simply turned as she needed to and let the landscape flash by below her. She generally didn't pay attention to what she was overflying. Sometimes she barely gave any notice to what was ahead of her, and new construction frequently registered in her memory at the exact moment the first wooden beam made its presence known against her skull. She knew how to get everywhere: by flying there. Reviewing the process was like thinking about flying itself: a strictly unnecessary exercise which just ruined the entire experience.
She would try, though. If somepony seemed truly lost -- and with all the new residents who had seemed to follow Twilight into town, ponies still arriving virtually every moon, there were a lot of ponies to get lost -- Rainbow would search her mind as best she could in a desperate attempt to translate instinct into stupid thought. She would then try to give directions. And for two-thirds of the population, those directions were ultimately useless, because giving instructions to unicorns and earth ponies along the lines of "...and just keep going forward through that perpetual west flow, the one with the slightly higher humidity, I can't ever get permission to do anything about it and the Bureau reverted it back the last five times I -- anyway, go forward through that, never mind what it does to your coat, and when you get the first hint of that one stupid thermal that's always coming off Flankington's, I swear I don't know what he's doing in there to make that happen and I don't want to, orient on the cold surge from that part of the troposphere, you can't miss the thing, and head right for it..." came across as being oddly uninformative. Even other pegasi would glare at her as she cross-referenced atmospheric events with local gossip and threw in tidbits on just what part she'd played in making those stories happen, which frequently led to recounting the entire story.
But they almost never gave up on her. Hardly anypony sought out a new talking, flapping map. They persisted. Because if Rainbow couldn't tell them how to get there (and it was so clear that she knew), she could just take them. Through leading them there.
Flying just a little bit ahead.
A tiny amount off the ground.
Very.
Slowly.
Twilight refused to believe in the condition without study and Rainbow wasn't about to let the librarian set up the testing grounds. Every painful story of excruciatingly-slow flight just made Rarity giggle all the harder. Applejack rolled her eyes. Fluttershy shivered and made open thanks that it wasn't her. Pinkie had advised her to just carry maps with her at all times, which was clearly stupid due to a reason Rainbow hadn't thought of yet but when she did, stupid would be proven. And ponies just kept asking her for directions everywhere she went.
Ponies -- and one dragon.
It gets him out of town... There was one very good reason for doing that extremely quickly. And as directions went, this grouping almost couldn't be simpler.
"Fine," Rainbow forced out. "Happy to help. Follow the west road out of town --"
"-- which way's west?"
Magenta eyes blinked. The Sun's been raised... Admittedly, it wasn't doing much except showing east and west for anypo -- anyone who cared to look, but it was certainly doing that. She flared a wing in the proper direction.
"Okay, fine," the dragon said. "West. What happens after that?"
"There's going to be a mountain ahead of you on that road," Rainbow gritted out. "It'll twist and turn a little, but it'll skirt the edges. When it feels like you're about to swerve away from it, you'll see a side path. Leave the road and follow that: it'll take you to the base. Then fly straight up to the cave. It's near the top. It'll look like a big dark hole in the rock. Bye." She watched him carefully, just to make sure he left.
The teenager's head turned slightly, just enough to let him glance over his left shoulder at the huddled wings. Back to Rainbow. "Yeah, I'm never gonna remember all that. You're gonna take me."
Her exposed ears, which hadn't missed an unbelievable word, did something her eyes couldn't manage: went straight back. "Not remember? It's a mountain! You can't miss it! It's the big rock thing that's gonna be right in front of you! How can you miss a --"
"-- can't be bothered," the dragon rudely cut her off. "Words coming out of a pony mouth -- you should be honored that I'm even stooping so low as to talk to one of you pegawusses at all. You're all so short, that's bent over double just to start!"
Each letter was forced out between her teeth as a single strained unit. "Pegasus."
More fangs were displayed, which required some small opening of the mouth. "No."
It felt as if the air was becoming warmer in the space between their eyes. Ticks near death might be flocking to the spot just to take advantage. "It's a mountain. You can find it on your own. I'm not taking you."
The yellow eyes became brighter. Rainbow could see the first flickers of fire at the back of his throat, which were easy to pick up on because the serrated mouth was just that far open now. Scales were angling up, and the edges looked more than a little jagged, much more so than Spike's even ones...
But she didn't move. She never gave up sky unless it was absolutely well beyond what other ponies would see as necessary, and that applied to ground as well. She didn't back off.
Just try something, you stupid -- when it's just you and me --
-- he didn't blink. He just shrugged.
"Fine," and another shrug. "Whatever. I'm sure there's some pony in this dumb flammable town who's just barely smart enough to realizing helping a noble dragon might be, you know, one of those good ideas? I'll just start knocking on doors until I find one. Or breathing on them. Hey, maybe there's one in that big dumb vulnerable tree..."
He turned away and started walking towards the library.
The teenager hadn't remembered Rainbow, probably wouldn't recognize Rarity or Twilight either.
Rainbow didn't think he'd have any such problem when it came to Spike.
"Wait."
He stopped.
These letters emerged in pieces. "I'll -- take -- you."
The dragon turned back to face her. Grinned. It had to be a grin: only an attempt to consume would have shown off more fangs. "Guess you're not as dumb as you look," he told her. "Not that anything could be. So lead the way."
She flew towards the west road.
After a few seconds, she glanced back to see how the dragon was keeping up, expecting him -- based on what she was insisting had been an experience which wouldn't have counted on familiar territory under Sun out in the open -- to be right behind her.
He wasn't right behind her. He was at the very edge of her vision -- still standing in front of the library.
She flew back.
"Look," she said with the best diplomacy she could muster, "are we going or not?"
"We're going," he spat, and a glob of flame landed on his claws: he rubbed it across the scales until it went out. "But I'm not flying there. One flap and I'll be a full migration past the thing and you'll spend the rest of your stupid pony life wondering where I went. I'll walk. It's the only way your pitiful tail's ever gonna keep up."
In the time it took her to draw the next breath, forty truly offensive things which could emerge upon its exit flashed across her mind.
She rejected all of them.
Spike -- I have to keep him away from Spike, and that means getting him out of town. And if I don't get him all the way there, he could come back and look for somepony else...
"Whatever," she hissed, and began to fly just ahead of him.
Very.
Slowly.
Her wings ached from the lack of speed.
"Stupid Direction-Face..." she softly muttered to herself.
It wasn't soft enough. "Hey! Is that your name? Most dumb ponies are named after their stupid jobs, right? Well, you're stupid, you're giving me directions... yeah, that's you all over!" Laughing behind her, the slapping sounds of claws impacting knees. "Stupid Direction-Face!"
She spun around just in time to see him double over even further with mirth. "That's. Not. My. Name."
"Yeah, you're right," he admitted, wiping a thin trail of what appeared to be lava from the corner of his right eye. "Not even ponies are dumb enough to name their own kids 'Stupid'. So lead the way -- Direction-Face."
She fumed. She raged inside her skin. She thought of a thousand ways to bring the dragon down.
It was amazing, really, just how slowly the dragon was (barely) moving. It had felt as if they'd needed twelve minutes just to get near the edge of town, two more for the bridge -- Rainbow swore he'd lost some speed in going over the bridge -- and from the moment Ponyville had started to fade into the background, his pace had begun to drop still more, as if he'd only been keeping up the faster march just in case there were ponies watching. (She didn't seem to count.) Rainbow didn't get it. He was a biped: he was supposed to be made for moving on a mere two legs. Shouldn't he be better at it?
"How much longer?" he demanded as if it was somehow all her fault, keeping the pace -- a snail could keep the pace, as long as it didn't get frustrated and race ahead -- on her right flank. Another, smaller glob of flame was rubbed into his hands.
"I don't know," she gritted out. "I usually fly there. I don't know how long it takes when someone's moving over the ground..." Which was a lie: she had a rough idea, based on how long it had required the Bearers to reach it as a group -- but that was for ponies trotting, not dragons moving their walking claws along the path as if every movement might make one break off. "We'll get there, okay?" And would he bother flying once they'd reached the base, or would she wind up sacrificing more time under Sun just to get him up the thing with the false companion she'd never wanted and couldn't even remotely stand, with his barely-moving on foot...
No. He had to fly at that point. Who wouldn't?
She glanced over just in time to see him shrug. "Whatever."
Companion: even as a dark joke, it was still a word which made her sick. This bully, this utter jerk who'd tried to make Spike into a potential murderer in the name of having the little dragon prove himself, and all Spike would have proven was that he was as much as a bully, jerk, and potential murderer as those he'd been trying so hard to impress... What would have happened if Spike had smashed Pee-Wee's egg to the ground? Would the baby phoenix have survived the cracking of the egg? Would the shell have absorbed enough of the force from the impact, or would that have caused injuries by itself? Spike had felt sick for weeks, scales losing luster every time he thought about what he'd nearly done, and only the return of the infant to his parents had stopped the guilt from the near-crime. A crime the dragon at her side thought was funny...
The dragon. She needed a name. It would let her hate him on a more personal level.
"So what's your name, anyway?"
The pupils of the yellow eyes went wide with surprise. "Why does some stupid pony want to know my name?"
"If something happens and I have to yell out a warning --" now there was a disgusting thought "-- I can't just call you 'dragon'."
"Why not?" His chest swelled with pride. "I'm the only dragon here, right? I'm the only dragon you've ever met and the only one you're probably ever gonna meet -- and live. 'Dragon' should work fine. 'The dragon' is even better! Only one of us needs a name, Direction-Face, and that's just because it's so much more fun than calling you 'stupid pony' -- at least for now..."
He's got a giant ego: we all saw that the whole time. He wants everything to be about him. How do you work with someone like that? A moment of thought -- and then she forced the words: "Because -- someday, I might tell somepony the story of the great noble dragon I escorted, and that pony's gonna want to know which great and noble dragon it was." The original plan had been to add more, something like "And your legend would have spread --" but her mind had choked up at that point and her voice hadn't even made it that far.
His torso expanded to the point where it seemed as his body mass was actually increasing on the spot. "Good point, even for a stupid pony. You can tell them you once spent a day helping the great and mighty Garble. Not that he needed help, other than never having been around here before and just needing directions."
"Okay... Garble." No fire emerged when she half-spat the words, and it was a pity. "And --"
-- she almost told him her name. Because she was Rainbow Dash, and she was pretty great herself. The creator (reviver?) of the Sonic Rainboom, one of the Element-Bearers, Wonderbolt In Training, all-around ace and incidentally, the greatest authority on the Daring Do cycle the world had ever seen outside the original author and Rainbow wanted to meet her one day just to thank her for all the books and make sure she had a few interpretations right. But... well, it wasn't as if the Bearers were that well-known outside of Equestria: in fact, it often seemed as if she and the others were still pretty much annoyingly anonymous most of the time, unless being so would work for their benefit. And this was a dragon who didn't care about ponies or think what they did meant anything. Telling him her name just to get rid of Direction-Face would probably mean nothing to him --
-- but there was a chance he would figure it out one day. Make a connection dozens of moons from now. He might even remember the sight of a prismatic tail making speed ahead of him (but not too much of it because she'd had to keep pace with the others, they'd had to flee as a unit just in case they wound up fighting as one) and realize it belonged to the pegasus currently at his side, she was waiting for that to happen and had actually been making plans for how to deal with it --
-- the name would probably mean nothing today, or tomorrow, and the moon after that. But on the day it did mean something -- a day when he might somehow link it to other events...
It'll probably never happen. He's too stupid. He'll never come back looking for Spike just to punish him for being with the Bearers.
Probably.
...anyway, even if I told him my name, this jerk would just keep calling me Direction-Face.
"-- I'll remember that name," she hissed. "As the -- only dragon I ever got to escort. So... why do you need to go to the cave, anyway?"
"That's dragon business," Garble smirked. "It's nothing any dumb pony would understand."
A horrible image flashed across her mind. "You're not -- moving in, right?" Posters all over the cave walls. Never, ever cleaning up the debris from the parties, which would be thrown every night with all his friends invited over, something which passed for music among his species and just qualified as ear-withering noise for everypony else blasting down from the mountain during every hour under Moon -- no, come to think of it, this one would clean the cave, he would clean it by flying over Ponyville and dumping off all the garbage there, laughing at every impact of foulness into the fur of a once-clean coat, he'd think it was a prank --
-- admittedly kind of a funny one especially when she pictured some of the ponies it could happen to, but...
"Nah," Garble dismissed the idea, waving his right claw through the air as if trying to push it away. "That cave is just stupid. No real dragon would live that high up. I heard he only did it because the altitude helped with his dumb breathing. When I settle into a place of my own, I'm gonna go underground. Something nice and close to a lava flow -- someplace with built-in heat."
Rainbow thought about the volcano and all the heat she'd been desperately shifting away -- something which had been all the harder to do without having her wings ripple the costume's skin in unnatural ways -- to keep the group conscious during their time within, accompanied by Twilight's constant attempts to remove 'trace elements' from the air and make it pony-breathable -- something the librarian had experience with, she'd mentioned something... oh, what had it been, something about needing to take Spike to a volcano once a year ever since he'd hatched, he needed the trips to stay healthy... yeah, something like that. Anyway, it meant Twilight knew an air-purification spell, but she couldn't do anything about heat -- there was some sort of medallion for that, but it only worked once a year -- and she'd had to keep her field hidden the whole time while they were within the costume, which apparently had a way of making spells not quite work right and in this case, had given the purified air an aroma normally only found in bathrooms during asparagus season. (Rarity had nearly fainted. Five times.)
But all Rainbow said was "So you really like heat, huh?" She wished she had some of the volcano's output with her. Anything she could shift in.
"I'm a dragon," Garble proudly declared. Another short burst of fire ran across his claws: he rubbed it into the scales, seemingly without noticing. "Just because stupid ponies burn from the puniest amount of heat... Yeah, a river right through the middle of my place. I'll swim any time I want, not just once a year during the dumb migration. I can splash around a little, send some up to the ceiling and see what kind of rock icicle it makes when it drips... and then if anyone breaks into my place? I can just whip my tail into the wall and BAM!" His left fist pounded his right palm in perfect crescendo with the shout. "All those rock spikes come down on them!"
And then he winced -- before his expression went angry.
"Spikes..." he muttered. "Yeah. Spikes."
And Rainbow knew his mind wasn't on stalactites.
I have to keep him out here. If it comes down to a fight, I have to beat him so badly he doesn't go back to town looking for another pony. I'd have to make him afraid of ponies...
The easiest way to get rid of him -- the one with what seemed to Rainbow to be the least potential for disaster -- was still through giving him what he wanted. But if she was wrong...
I'm doing this for Spike. I have to keep Garble away from him because his little scaly butt isn't up to handling this jerk yet. He's brave and he thinks he's ready for a lot, but he's not up to a challenge this big. He can't just go charging in screaming and expect it's gonna work. Some things are just too major for him to handle and once he admits that, we're all better off.
I have to put up with this for Spike...
The extended silence seemed to be confusing him. "So what's that stupid look? Bored or something?"
Were words supposed to feel like they were sanding down the interior of her throat all the way out? "It's a long trip." And I've seen rocks move faster than you.
"You know what makes trips pass faster?" he asked, and his tone was almost -- conspiratorial. There was a distinct gleam in the yellow eyes and somehow, it almost didn't seem to be a hostile one.
Wings? It took a moment before she could force any attempt at feigning interest. "What?"
"Stories!"
And then Rainbow reluctantly had to admit, she was interested. How many ponies had heard dragon stories, especially directly from the source? Sure, she had Spike -- but anything Twilight's little brother told her ultimately came from books: not dragon parents, grandparents, their ancestors -- stretching all the way back into the wisdom of the ages. Garble could know about lost great feats of the past, legends nopony else had ever heard of... A good story or four (because at this mind-breaking lack of pace, there was time for at least four) just might salvage some part of the day, even if they were coming from a jerk with a giant ego.
Garble, without bothering to wait for any response, began to tell Rainbow a few.
"...and then I grabbed his wussy little tail and, you'd better believe this because I made it happen, I tied it around his neck! Now maybe that doesn't sound all that spectacular to a stupid pony because your tails are pretty much nothing but hair after you get a little past the rump, but ours have meat and bones and stuff in them plus we've got a lot of body to get past along the way, so we can't do that! Unless you're me. It's called the Screaming Tailstrangle, and I was the first dragon in centuries to make it work! You know, I wouldn't have believed someone could scream like that with a tail around their neck until I saw it happen? Go figure, right?"
"...so he said to me 'I know you can't grab all those gems in ten seconds flat!', and I was all like 'Yeah, I can!' and he was 'Nuh-uh!' and I was totally 'Uh-huh!', so he, if you can believe this, dared me to prove it! Count to ten. Go ahead, count to -- can stupid ponies count that high? Never mind, I'll just do it for you. One, two -- something that comes after two -- four..."
"...which brings us to the Best Young Flamers competition. And let me tell you something, if that one guy hadn't grabbed that supposed magic mineral which makes your fire hotter and brighter, stuck it between his teeth and gone around the whole place showing off his multicolored blasts... of course, when you get that gem a little too close to -- but am I getting ahead of myself or what? Maybe it's because the only way you can keep up with my awesomeness is by knowing how radically everything turned out in the end, am I right? Of course I am. Because I'm a dragon. So anyway, he sticks the mineral between two of his teeth, and the things were so far apart he could have jammed a whole mountain in there before anyone noticed..."
By the time they reached the base of the mountain, Rainbow knew all about everything Garble had either ever done, ever dreamed of doing, ever lied about doing or somehow, someway, despite the fact that it should have been impossible, all three at once.
It was infuriating. He'd kept the topic on himself throughout the entire endless trip. His dreams. His aspirations. His delusions. She had no idea how anyone could stand to be around someone whose lone subject of conversation was himself. How did his dragon friends put up with it? How could anything with a brain? If it could think for itself, it would know to run after the first two minutes, forget about hanging around through hours which had been dragged through slime, coated in glue, chained to her ears, and had everything else done to the suffering things which would make them slower than the rock.
She was long-past the point of wishing she'd worn the earmuffs. A blocked syllable or two would have gone a long way towards saving her sanity. And the frustration wasn't even making her warm.
"...and then I thought I'd put a little expansion onto the Burning Lands, you know? Nothing too big. Maybe five times the current size. I mean, it only makes sense, right? Dragons get big. I'm gonna be bigger than any dragon ever, I know that already. I've got all the signs. So I'll need that much more room and if a few other whiny things have to clear out so I can stretch my tail, well, better they move than I bring it down on top of them, right? Anyone can see that. Even a stupid pony should be able to work it out!"
Rainbow went with what had become ninety percent of her journey vocabulary. "Uh-huh."
"Of course, I've got to have room for my friends. So maybe seven times. Because I'll be big enough to keep my friends. No dragon's ever been that big! And if I have to take up half the continent just to make sure they've got some room, if my tail has to block rivers all by itself while my breath scorches a whole forest, then that's how big I'm gonna be."
"Uh-huh -- what?"
He sneered. "What part of big did you miss?"
"Big enough -- to keep your friends?"
And the next words emerged before thought could block them. "Well, you know, there's only so many hoards to go around --"
-- Garble stopped. He stared at her. She looked back, confused, not understanding --
-- just long enough for him to decide he'd gotten away with it. "Yeah. That big." And switched to staring up at the mountain.
Rainbow, free of his attention for a precious moment, remembered.
Spike during the unnatural growth spurt. According to Twilight, the last word to remain in his diminishing vocabulary had been "Want!" Keeping every stolen object away from everypony -- including the mare he'd very literally known all his life. Companionship hadn't mattered. Friendship had meant nothing. Family connections -- crushed under greed. It was all about his hoard: acquisition and defense. Nothing else.
What if every adult dragon was the same way? Smarter, because they would have reached their size the normal way and not given up all rationality and control along the way -- but keeping to themselves? Every other dragon a rival, someone who would be after their hoard, trying to add it to their own. Coming together -- reluctantly -- just long enough to mate and breed? And then the hatchlings would team up, would play together -- but as they aged, as the instincts started to come in...
What if the only way to have friends was to be so big they could never pose a threat to you -- or big enough that no other dragon could ever question why you were willing to have other dragons around you outside of the migrations, maybe that's even when they breed -- big enough that you could set your own rules?
...no. That couldn't be right. Garble was just a jerk, and jerks didn't have depth. They were jerks. Plain and simple.
"So this is the right mountain?" the jerk demanded, still looking at the upslope which marked the start of the base.
"I know where I'm going," Rainbow spat.
"Well, your stupid wuss pony talent is for directions, Direction-Face. It's just asking a lot of a dragon to trust wimpy pony magic." He glanced at her flank. "Is that cloud with a weird lighting bolt coming out of it really for directions? Shouldn't you have a map there or something?"
She tried to come up with a workable lie and after a moment, found one about safety symbols for air paths which she was sure Garble had never seen, much less used. "It's showing --"
"-- yeah, whatever. So let's start climbing."
The lie shattered under the weight of disbelief. "...climbing?"
"You know any better way to get up a mountain?"
The pressure also forced the word out. "Wings."
He glared at her.
Rainbow was also long-past the point of caring. "The cave's near the summit. You really can't miss it. If you flap so hard you overshoot, just glide back down. You're at the right mountain, that's what counts here, the directions are down to one word which I know a noble dragon can remember, and that word is up. Just fly, you're there, it's been -- interesting --" 'nice' had died in her mouth and judging by the taste on her tongue, the corpse was decomposing rapidly "-- meeting you. See ya."
She turned to leave.
And from behind her, got "You're not going anywhere but up the mountain with me, Direction-Face. Until we hit the cave, we're not there. So your job's not over."
Rainbow spun back. "Fine! Then just fly with me! I'll lead the way! Hold back a little bit of that incredible noble dragon speed which you were talking about for over an hour and you'll be fine!" Oh, she'd heard about his speed, the speed which had only allowed him to keep up because she'd had the others with her and was moving through unfamiliar forest, needed to keep low to stay with them, slow in order to spot and avoid the trees, if she'd just been by herself and higher up, she could have shown him just who the speedster was and how he possibly could have kept going for over an hour just on flying speed...
He glanced over his shoulder again and this time, spat a little fire onto his own wings. It dribbled down the smaller scales in weak rivers and mostly went out before it hit the ground. The last surviving drops perished evaporating a tiny amount of frost from the rocks at the mountain's base.
"You wanna fly there now, huh?"
"Yes!"
"You really wanna fly?"
"Yes."
Garble smirked. "Good. Then we're definitely climbing. Show me where we're starting. Like, you know, now."
Rainbow looked up.
The mountain hadn't gotten any smaller since the Bearers had made their first visit. In fact...
Hours. At the rate he's going, we might not reach the top before the Moon is raised. And that's assuming we don't stop to eat -- no, he isn't carrying any supplies, and it's not like I've got much beyond a few snacks which he'll probably just grab for himself... Hours and hours with this jerk, and he'll just keep talking about himself the whole time like nothing in the world matters except him...
She wasn't seeing any clouds. She and the rest of the team had done a good job clearing them out -- in retrospect, too good. Virtually all the moisture in the air had gone solid on the ground: a dry cold. There wasn't any ammunition waiting for use above her, she couldn't weave when the humidity was this low...
Rainbow thought about Spike again. It helped. At least, it brought her to a point where the next sounds came out with just enough growl to let them still pass for speech.
"This. Way," she just barely got out, and headed for the start of the path.
Behind her, Garble spat a little more fire into his claws, rubbed it in -- she could hear both actions: there was a crackle and fizz she'd come to loathe -- then followed.
She crossed her forelegs. The boots made it feel slightly weird.
"How is it getting colder?" Garble demanded. The little spurts of claw-warming flame were getting smaller every time she glanced back towards the distinctive I-am-about-to-hack-up-a-scroll sound. This one had been particularly weak.
"Because we're heading higher," Rainbow told him, and there didn't seem to be much point in blocking the irritation. "You told me about what a great flier you are. Didn't any of those stunts take place at altitude?"
"No --" and he froze again, stopped moving up the cliff face. He hadn't been quite as slow there: as it turned out, there were some areas where claws could actually be an improvement over hooves, and climbing was one of them. He didn't have to search every inch of rock for the ledges which would allow a pony some chance of purchase: he could simply score the cliff with a hard swipe and lock his claw tips in at the end. They'd actually been picking up a little time on the initial slope (but not much of it) -- and now he'd stopped again.
"No?" It was actually kind of refreshing to hear him talk about something he hadn't done. "Why not?"
"There's -- more obstacles at low levels. It's more challenging. Not like a stupid pegawuss, who thinks going through a cloud is some big accomplishment..."
She bit back fifteen particularly choice comments, flapped again. After a moment, she heard him put another clawhold in the rock.
"How's that vest?"
"Huh?"
"The dumb vest," he clarified. "Is it warm?"
"It keeps me nice and cozy," Rainbow half-lied: it helped with short-term exposure, but she'd been outside too long, and no clothing could help with her wings: she refused to let anything cover them. To do so would sacrifice some degree of flight, and Rainbow had her priorities in order.
"Where'd you get it?" The curiosity seemed to have a degree of sincerity behind it.
"From a friend."
"Back in town?"
"Yeah."
"Bought it for you or made it?"
"Made."
Another too-long moment without any movement taking place.
"Bet she'd like to boast about making something for a noble dragon."
The horror nearly sent Rainbow's wings back against her body. Is he talking about going back? All the way to Rarity, that's another pony he might somehow recognize out of nowhere even if he hasn't done it with me yet and even if he doesn't, it's more chances for him to spot Spike, especially if she's in the middle of making something for that noble dragon. If we get away with that, I'll have to come back here with him tomorrow and do it all over again...
"...but we should get this done today," Garble finally decided. "You've held me up too long already, Direction-Face. So if everything goes okay -- I'll just hit her place on the way back. And I know you can show me where it is." She turned back just in time to see the grin. "So come on. Onwards and upwards..."
She wished for Spike's trick, that she had the scroll and ink on her along with the fire which would send it all into the aether. Some way of sending a warning -- but she didn't need one. If he was serious about it, all she had to do was put on one burst of speed as they crossed the bridge back into Ponyville and reach the Boutique ahead of him. Claim she'd wanted to give Rarity some warning about Garble's colors and sizing so the designer could start working before the dragon ever got there. It would give them enough of a chance.
"The red looks good," Garble commented, pulling himself up again. An even smaller trickle of flame followed that announcement.
"Thanks."
"My scales look better."
"Wow..."
"What?"
"Someone really sucks at slash-gouge-claw."
"So what happened here?"
"Huh?" A bare hiss of sound.
Garble was staring at the mound of debris. "This wasn't in the scouting report. It said something about a rockslide zone..."
"Yeah, well... this is what you get after the rockslide," Rainbow tightly whispered. "And keep your voice down, unless you want another. I don't think the mountain is used to your noble dragon volume. Or, you know, we could fly..."
It wasn't the rockfall which Fluttershy's scream had set off: that one was higher up the mountain. There had been several of those danger zones during the climb, and they'd only managed to trigger the one. But after their mission... well, other ponies used the mountain sometimes, and the mayor had decided it would be safe for everyone if there was nothing left to fall, mostly because it would have all come down already. Several carefully-projected bursts of thunder later, the trail was as safe as it was going to be -- but every storm and season created the chance of something new to fall.
He looked up at the unsteady-seeming cliff rocks. The yellow eyes widened. "No. You fly over it -- but stay low. Real low. Don't go more than a few feet over the base. No matter what happens. You hear me, Direction-Face? Low and slow. Say it back to me so I'll know you've got it."
"Why? Because you need me to direct you over each pebble one at a time? Let's start now: left, up, left, up, up, up, and up..."
Garble shook his head -- and for the first time, the gesture didn't seem to be a dismissive one. "How's your eyesight?"
She was a pegasus. "Good. Why?"
He pointed a claw. "Right up there. See it?"
She followed the line on instinct --
Softly, "-- what is it?"
Garble was still staring. "Green? Emerald." A huge one, about half the size of her head. "It's gotta be a little exposed or it won't work... but I'm guessing the rockslide uncovered it a little more. Big one, too... so stay low."
"What... what happens if I don't stay low?"
"Well... I don't know if it works with ponies," Garble admitted, and the sound of him saying he didn't know something focused her attention. "I don't think there's been any ponies stupid enough to come this far without a noble dragon escorting them. You know, given how dumb you all are, that's saying something... But that means I don't know if it detects ponies. If it does... it'll go off."
"Go... off...?"
No grin. All arrogance temporarily set aside. Nothng but whispered thought. "Well, when everyone's being all quiet and junk, you've got to have some way of setting off the rockslide..."
This time, she froze.
During the original trip, she had insisted several times on getting ahead of the group. Going back to town for a snack while the rest of them made their way up, then meeting them at the top. On flying, real flying, not what Fluttershy's panic attacks had forced Ranbow into as a non-substitute (which had still been much faster than she was moving today). Would any of her potential paths have brought her past the emerald?
"Something happened here, though..." Garble said. "It would have buried the ground ones, so we've just got to stay away from the higher stuff. We may not be the first ones through here, Direction-Face." The grin was a cruel one. "Been missing any ponies?"
And he started the newest leg of the climb.
She flew nearby, keeping up. Physically, there was nothing easier, if resisting the urge to truly fly could ever be described as 'easy'. "Emeralds set off rockslides."
"In that setting, yeah."
"Is there anything else -- which does other things?"
He nodded.
"Like what?"
"You'll know if it kills you." Another grin, with protruding fangs seeming to consume the air. "Keep those pie-plate eyes open, Direction-Face. You probably won't see anything before me -- but if you don't see anything at all, it'll be too late..."
Two rubies. One sapphire. Garble led them around. Two involved major detours: the third was a simple shift to the right. Apparently the detection radius had something to do with the gem's overall size. And Rainbow was searching her memory, trying to remember every bit of the previous course, she was sure they'd been within the supposed range of the big red spicule...
Maybe the gems didn't detect ponies. Or it was possible that they'd been luckier than they'd ever known. The dragon had defended his cave in more ways than simply waiting for an intruder he could snap at or flame...
How had it been done? How were the gems capable of triggering things at all? Was this dragon magic, something beyond the movement of scrolls, a little miracle which had become so everyday in its nature that Rainbow often casually asked Spike for the favor in the name of saving a stamp? And why was Garble trying to work his way past all of it? Some of the ground travel made sense now, along with the lack of speed: he was trying to make sure he saw everything and because most dragons could fly, the defenses almost had to be heavier against anything traveling through the air. But...
...it can't detect ponies! At all! We had ponies coming up here so they'd have a good place to watch the eclipse! Lots of them! Somepony would have triggered everything! I'm perfectly safe from everything that's been set up! It's just him who's in danger...
A lot of danger. Rainbow was sure she could fly away from pretty much everything in time, but with Garble... well, he couldn't be that fast, no matter what he said and especially because he'd gone to so much trouble in saying it.
Why was he taking the risk? What did he have to do in the cave?
Whatever it was, the goal was leading the dragon into taking what sounded like some major chances in the name of what was probably a really stupid and probably ego-ridden goal. And she couldn't set anything off... but if he did, she'd have to get out of range...
Just reaching the cave meant he had to take multiple risks.
There was still one he was reluctant to chance.
"I'm not jumping that." He gestured again, and the movement was slow, uncertain. Three tiny flickers were blown onto the extended claws.
"So don't jump! Fly!"
His wings once again seemed to be trying to find a new home within his spine. "I'll overshoot, I told you that before with the other stuff --"
"-- Then walk! It's narrower than your stride!"
Garble stared down at the gap which so many locals now called Fluttershy Point. Then looked at the very long plummet just below it. Seemed to be struggling for an arrogant excuse as to why he couldn't do that either. Failed.
The teenager stood there, frozen in several ways. One of them was shivering silence.
"It," Rainbow declared, "is a hop, skip, and jump. You can leave out any two of the three. So move your dragon rump."
The half-lidded eyes forced themselves open again. His head came up. The lower jaw chattered.
"Y-y-you can't t-t-talk to me like that..."
"So come over here and yell at me." She'd been on the other side of the gap for at least ten minutes. "Because a noble dragon should totally tell a stupid pony how out of line she is from close up. If you can even move..."
His eyes were getting brighter again -- but there was no flicker of flame at the back of his throat this time. There was only a single tiny curl of smoke. "I'm -- I'm gonna..."
"Whatever it is," Rainbow pointed out, "You'd better be able to do it from over there."
The glare was fury. It was challenge and defiance, with more than a touch of murder thrown in. And for a moment, with Garble motionless at the edge of the gap, it felt as if that was all there would ever be.
His right leg came forward. Touched the opposite side.
The claws spasmed.
The dragon screamed, a surprisingly high-pitched sound, began to tilt, the scrabbling claws misdirected the motion away from the faceplant which would have saved him, sent him to the right, towards the wider portion of the gap, more than wide enough to let a plunging teenage dragon through...
It seemed to take forever, and forever was more than enough time for Rainbow's instincts to take over in a stream which almost could have passed for stupid thought.
He's a murderer. Or he wants to be. He thought smashing those eggs would have been funny.
He would have hurt Spike.
He doesn't care about anyone or anything except himself.
He has friends and he wants to keep them, even if he's the only dragon who ever would have.
He's been telling me stories. About himself, but... stories.
He didn't have to tell me about the gems.
He --
-- she dove, her wings almost cramping from the upshift to full speed after so many hours of just barely flapping along. Her forelegs stretched out: Garble was considerably taller than a pony and would be heavier to suit: she'd lifted Spike a few times and the little dragon was surprisingly weighty for his overall size. Carrying Garble for any real distance might be a challenge. But momentum would be on her side for a while, and he wasn't significantly wider than a pony: she could get one foreleg on each side and then press in...
He was still screaming, and she tried to get ahead of the sound. His body twisted as he fell, the yellow eyes blazed towards her...
Garble blinked. There was just enough time to recognize it as one of pure confusion.
One second for all of it, maybe two.
And she had him.
She pressed tightly, heard him grunt as her forelegs ground against his ribs, felt his scales grating against her coat. Two small cuts came from extra-serrated scale edges: she ignored them. The momentum was directed, she pushed into the curve which would let her swoop up without too much of an extra effort, she couldn't afford to land too far above the gap because she wasn't entirely sure she could spot every last gleam from an embedded gem at speed, the Sun's position had changed too much from when they started and while she was confident in her eyes, there had to be something for her to see --
-- she got to within hover distance of the ledge. Put him down, and finally felt the cuts. "Ow!" Rainbow instinctively licked the little wounds. "Oh, that's gonna..." Well, not much of anything, really: annoying and they stung, but there was only a little blood, and Rainbow was better with that than most ponies, as she was better than others at just about anything which could be considered important. "...be fine before I even finish this sentence."
Garble was staring at her.
"Y-y-you..." His head went down into a very awkward angle, and a final wisp of flame lightly brushed his chest. "You saved me..."
"No, I didn't," Rainbow spat back. The thought was disgusting and like the dragon himself, she wanted to get rid of the thing before it did any real damage. "Because you would have flown. Hop, skip, jump, or step, you missed all four, the Princess only knows how -- but your wings would have done the real work. I just went after you before I thought about that." Because she really hadn't been thinking at all.
The stare continued. She gave it right back to him.
"...yeah," he finally said. "I would have opened my wings. I was just about to do that when you caught up.."
"I get that," Rainbow fumed. "Totally."
"You didn't do anything at all. Nothing I couldn't do for myself."
"I'm not arguing."
"So we'll just keep going."
"Let's do that."
He slowly began to move -- but not for long. "Hey, Direction-Face?"
The ruins of that one boulder were right in front of her. She was looking directly at them, with the last rays of setting Sun glinting off fragments of what was probably exposed silica. It had been fairly fragile anyway, Twilight had said, a mineral-glued collection of multiple clumps, and those who had impacted it had still been lucky, hitting the fracture lines in just the right way to leave them with nothing more than two weeks of slowly-fading bruises and frequent moans whenever they forgot that they weren't supposed to be moving in normal ways just yet...
Claws hooked the ledge on her left. Shivering tips gouged a final hold, and near-spent muscles eventually heaved the dragon's torso onto nearly-level ground.
"T-t-that's it..." he just barely managed. A little arm shift followed it, and he managed to get about a tenth of his hips to relative safety. "We... I did it..."
Rainbow nodded, still focused on the boulder. A reflection here, a refraction there, and any of it was better than looking at Garble. "Yeah. So we're done. That's your cave. And since you spent so much time learning the way up, I'm betting you know how to get down. Thanks --" mostly spat, and at this point, she was mustering exactly as much flame as he could "-- for the experience." Unless he suddenly decided he needed someone to walk him inside, or the cave mouth had somehow collapsed and he declared the job unfinished with destination unreachable, then ordered her to start kicking boulders...
She instinctively glanced up, because if that was the case, she needed to evacuate even faster than she'd originally planned.
And then there was nothing she could do except try to blink away the dazzle from a near-blinding, completely unexpected surge of something which wasn't exactly light, something only she could see...
Her forehooves came up, rubbed at her closed eyelids. It didn't help.
"Oh, horse apples," she muttered, and didn't care who heard, much less understood.
The weather team had shifted a truly ridiculous amount of heat. And they'd needed to find places they could shift it to.
In pegasus sight, the cave entrance flashed, surged, the energies stored within pressing against the woven border which had been invisibly and intangibly layered across the mouth. But that weaving had been done by multiple pegasi, and so the threads, while they connected, weren't exactly perfectly aligned. The more ponies who worked at a weaving, the more conflict would arise between slightly-differing styles and personal field signatures: it was an inevitability of pegasus magic, and one of the many reasons waterspout transfer operations were so hard to control. Any ongoing group effort performed in a small area for too long would ultimately, unstoppably see the weave distort into a tangle, and what happened after that could potentially turn into legend. The kind where there was only one survivor to tell the tale.
This... not enough pegasi, power, or time: they never would have attempted it if there had been any chance of coming up against the Weft Line. But it was still imperfect, and so the heat within attempted to clash against the cold outside, the two forever trying to even each other out. And with the energies of pegasus magic moving to intercept, turning it back a split-second before too late, the triple interaction created a conflict of energies more appropriate to the heart of a cloud as it existed a tenth of a second before the lightning surged forth.
Rainbow blinked again, and quickly looked away.
After a few seconds, her eyes started to clear, just in time to see Garble trying to force himself upright.
His arms slipped. Scales skidded across the dirt, bringing him something less than a hoofwidth closer to his destination. The last few rays of Sun played across his prone form, and they glinted there as well. Some of it could have been from little highlights in the keratin. Most was reflecting off near-microscopic granules of ice.
"Garble?" Not with concern. Never with concern, because the jerk didn't deserve any, and so it amazed her that she'd been able to verbally fake it.
"J-j-j-just... a f-f-few more... I... for my... f-f-f-f..."
Another push, claws fighting the ground. The dirt won.
He lay there. Breathing slowed. Eyes starting to close. And Rainbow, her mental focus still within those special bands of vision, finally saw how little heat was rising from him. The last of it.
She didn't think too much about it. As with so many other things in her life, it was one of those situations where thinking just wasted time.
Insistent, almost angry, and she also didn't bother thinking about why: "Can you get your arm up?"
His eyes opened just enough to let her see the glint of yellow. The serrated mouth opened, but neither words nor flame emerged.
The left arm shifted. All four of her knees bent in concert, and she pushed her torso against the rising limb, used her own momentum to force it across her back. (The claw tips scratched, but that didn't matter just now.) But the only place he had to grip was the edge of the wing, and with claws involved...
"Okay," she breathed, and immediately came up with a better plan, moving herself forward, feeling the trails of pain skid down her spine until they ended at the base of her tail. "Close your hand. I'll pull."
He didn't nod. There was nothing left for that. But palm moved against hair, and claws tightened.
Pushing against frozen ground, squinting away from the flashes, not thinking about what she was doing or why because doing so would be the best way to stop, Rainbow dragged him across the door into summer.
Of all those who had ventured within the cave during the attempts at diplomacy, flattery, and whatever it was Pinkie did, Rainbow had spent the shortest amount of time inside: just enough to... present her case -- before departing, and she'd never returned since: why bother to sightsee from a ledge when you could do it from the sky? But there was plenty of time to look around now, while Garble's breathing gradually evened out and the sweat spread through her coat, dripped down to briefly moisten the rock before evaporating, at least for that which wasn't steaming directly off her skin...
For the most part, what little she could see of the interior hinted at a giant dome, and what struck her as an oddly smooth one: she supposed the previous occupant might not have been into tail-whipped rock spear defenses and so had possibly melted off the rough edges in order to make things more comfortable. But there was very little to look at. For normal light... Sun was down, and Moon was very close to new: only a little bit of star-illumination made it inside, and not very far within the mouth: she imagined that for earth ponies and unicorns, it would at most be turning what would have otherwise been absolute darkness into a morass of semi-differentiated shadows. And when it came to seeing heat... that quantity which normally belonged to an autumn Ponyville had seen a considerable fraction temporarily stored within the cave, and it had created a near-uniform glow which made it impossible to determine fine details. It also made her instinctively want to fly until she saw a swimming hole (or even a half-frozen lake), dive within, and stay there, because submersion within liquid was far better than drowning in semi-solid baking air.
But she stayed for what had to have been nearly two hours, blinked the sweat out of her eyes, and watched Garble until he finally started to sit up.
"Better?" Not that she cared.
"Yeah..." His legs pushed, and he slid himself up the wall until he was mostly standing. "What... what did he do?"
Another blink, which helped with the sweat. "He?"
"He must have... I guess it makes sense when you're this high up, but I never heard about anything which would keep things warm..." He took a slow breath. "And you know what that makes him?"
Rainbow already knew that any attempt to explain that he hadn't been involved in any way would skid off unyielding scales. "What?"
"Stupid! If he didn't have this still set up after he left, anyone who got here in winter, forget whatever happened to what fall's supposed to be --"
-- dead stop.
He looked at her, and it seemed to be a more careful gaze than usual: it was certainly a much longer one, and considerably more evaluating. She glared right back at him, although it lost something for having to blink away the next trickle of sweat.
"Okay," Garble finally said. "So. We got here. You did your stupid pony job, Direction-Face. Took about twenty times longer than it should have, but we got here." He grinned. "Do you know what I think a really slow journey guided by a total pegawuss is worth?"
One permanent departure. She didn't care what he thought: she just wanted out, and as soon as she was sure he was done with her and wouldn't be coming back to town at all...
"I told you a few stories on the way up here," and the tone was almost conversational. "Know what you're gonna be? Part of a new story. The boring part which everyone skips over so they can get to the good stuff. But this is Chapter One in the legend of how I became the biggest dragon ever -- and we're still in it. You were the boring stuff, and..."
Handling claws idly scratched at the rock.
"...I would have gotten here if it wasn't for you. If I'd been here before and knew where I was going. A lot faster, too, what with stupid ponies being so slow. But I would have wasted time, looking." More softly, almost entirely to himself, "I might have lost my chance..."
Rainbow did something which surprised her. She stayed quiet.
"So... you're no threat." More steady breathing, and he seemed to be focusing on each one. "No stupid pony is a threat." The claws flexed, in and out. "You said you were going to tell ponies the story... so you're going to see the end of Chapter One." An abrupt grin, one which made the protruding fangs slash against increasingly-humid air. "And live! Stick around for the local finale, Direction-Face, and then you can head to your wimpy little vapor puff of a home, and I'll go to mine without ever having to think about that little collection of future tinderboxes ever again."
She wondered how long she could stay before sweat became froth. She'd been shifting heat away from her the whole time inside the entrance hall, and it still hadn't been enough to leave her at something fully temperate...
"So what's at the end of Chapter One?"
"The good part."
She couldn't keep the words inside. "Prove it."
The grin spread. Oxygen died.
"So we're gonna need light," he said. "Don't blame yourself for that: even if we'd gotten here on time, Sun doesn't reach all the way to the back, and you need to see, right? So let's find something which can catch, and then if you know any pony tricks for getting it going, I'd like to see that level of incompetence in action..."
Because he was out of flame: something she should have realized a little sooner than she had, but it was his fault for keeping her so angry and unfocused the whole time. "One or two." Especially with this much heat around: if they found some wood, she could just concentrate some into a catch spot.
It's almost over. After all the things Spike had done for her, she could do a little more for him.
She found the remnants of an old campsite outside, in the shadows of the mountain wall: at a guess, it had been from ponies hiking up to watch the Founder's Day fireworks. (Garble had refused to scout, staying within the entrance, and it was almost hard to blame him: crossing the heat border had been an unpleasant experience for her, and she suspected it would be worse for him.) She got the last few sticks of dry wood going a split-second before heading back inside, carrying them to Garble in her mouth with the just-smouldering ends as far from her fur as possible: the flame caught a few heartbeats after he took them. He wasn't being particularly careful about how he held them, but then, he didn't have to be.
They headed into the main dome.
"So, the thing is..." Garble casually said as he made his way towards the back, "ponies don't think."
She gritted her teeth as she slowly (still far too slowly) flew along, tried to pay attention to the play of firelight on walls, the odd reflections off the spots which seemed to have been melted into smoothness. "Don't think about what?"
"You live in that stupid town, Direction-Face. You had to see all the smoke when he finished moving in, right? Couldn't miss it."
Nopony had. "Yeah. So?"
"So you know he had asthma."
She did now. Not that it mattered. "So what?"
His groan was soft, that of a storyteller who knew that any normal audience would have seen the point of his tale by now and, if not for the joy of getting to educate the totally stupid, would have normally resented having to set up the educational appendix. "He tried to keep it a secret. He knew it made him weak, how many dragons would have gone after him if they'd found out. But when you spend enough time around him... when he's sleeping and can't hide it any longer..."
"-- is there a point to this?"
He stopped, turned to look at her, hovering about three body lengths behind him. They were about halfway to the back now, and the little dome of firelight failed to fill the larger one.
"The point," he shot back, "is that ponies don't think. He's got asthma, Direction-Face. It makes him weak, dumb and weak and embarrassing. He hides it from the other adults, but dragons... no matter who you are, there's always going to be dragons coming around. Testing you. He couldn't hide it forever. So he took himself, his hoard, and he went to where no other dragons would think to look for him. But he's stupid -- and the asthma gave him away. Then something chased him out of this hole. I don't know what. Maybe that one namby-pamby threw cold tea in his face until he ran for his life. He's so weak, that might have worked on him and no other dragon in the world. Or it was a neurocypher, or a rockfall of cockatrice, or six thousand manticores in one shot. Whatever it was, they didn't think. Not about the important stuff. And ponies, they're supposed to think, even if they're dumber than the stupidest dragon could ever be... and they didn't..."
Garble turned again, quickened his pace. The left arm held the cluster of improvised torches aloft. The right was moving along the matching hip, claws picking at scales.
Rainbow still didn't get it, and some of the anger at having to admit it (along with so many other things) made its way into the world. "What don't we think about?"
He didn't answer for a full minute, not until the curving shadow of the back wall was first touched by light.
"There's a dragon in the cave."
"Right."
Two more steps forward: one matching flap.
"And the dragon moves out. Fast. Less than a day."
"Uh-huh."
Again.
"Every pony down there saw him go, right?"
"Couldn't miss it." The departing shadow of huge body against clearing blue sky...
One last time, until he stopped at the edge of a wide patch of stone, one with ridges and solid bubbles and frozen mineral waves.
He turned again, grinned directly at her, and the blaze of his eyes nearly lit the entire cave.
"And not a single one of you morons wondered 'Where did the hoard go?'"
The tip of a claw tilted a particularly large scale away from vulnerable skin, flicked out two small objects which had been resting beneath the miniature pocket and knocked them into his palm. A single smooth motion brought them to his mouth, and the first one flew in.
Rainbow had just enough time to spot it before he swallowed: a black diamond, something Spike had never consumed, too rare to ever be treated as a casual snack, nearly impossible to get for even the most gourmet of meals. And it was followed by a sliver of something solid and glistening with an almost oily sheen, which Garble jammed into a gap between two protruding fangs...
He turned to face the floor. The yellow of his eyes fully ignited, cast their glow across the uneven rock. The flame followed suit.
She retreated. She had no choice. The multi-hued blasts were coming one after the other with only pauses for breath, the rock was glowing red and starting to run, fumes were rising from the liquefying mass and while breathing such vapors would have saved Spike the need for a volcano health trip, a pony doing the same would have only found a form of death which Twilight had saved them from once before. She did what she hated nearly more than anything and backed away for the sake of survival, getting as close to the cave mouth as possible without truly exiting so she would have fresh (and cold, cold enough to burn) air to shift towards her lungs while simultaneously moving the fumes out well past her private breathing flow, watching as prismatic gouts and bursts and rebounds of the most intense flame she'd ever seen tore through the cave, burning into the mountain, melting the mountain...
It took at least ten minutes, and that duration became her new definition of forever.
The residual glow faded away, let the illumination narrow back to torchlight. Heat didn't so much dissipate as add its weight to what had already been pressing against her coat, trapped by the weave, and she had to bring a personal airflow current deep into the cave with her to prevent fainting, most of which was negated by the time she reached him and left her back at that sweating stage again. But she paid very little attention to that part, as what was in front of her seemed so much more important...
Gold. Silver. Copper here and there. Brass, aluminum and that was hardly ever seen outside of drawn wire, plus crowns, necklaces, chalices, and gems, more gems than she'd ever thought could exist, more types than she'd known to exist, more than enough to put Rarity into either a drama faint or two-week coma, completely filling a pit which was nine body lengths in rough elliptical radius and who knew how deep, all of it completely untouched by the heat, without even a trace of molten rock on a single facet...
Garble's eyes were wide. Still glowing, a lambent yellow which reflected off those uneven fangs. Staring down as if there was nothing else to look at in all the world.
"They don't think," he almost whispered. "He has asthma. You see the smoke cloud and you know that. So he can't move it, not the right way. And it's so hard to move in the first place, so hard... but he can't do it like a real dragon should. So he's got to haul it the kid way, see? Physically. He was probably smuggling stuff in here for moons before he settled in, went to sleep, gave himself away. But whatever cleared him out... did it in a hurry. No time to haul it all back out. So you burn a pit. You get amber and tanzanite, enough to line the interior, about a claw thickness worth, and you treat them. Dump the hoard in, another treated double layer on top so that when you have to melt your way back in, everything inside is safe and you're okay for putting the molten stuff on to seal, too. And since no dragon knows where you were... they won't look. Why would they? They sure don't know you've got asthma. And anything else... they just see some melted rock. Maybe figure he smoothed out a rough patch, and they can't get through anyway. But he couldn't hide it from me, Direction-Face, and he tried, he did, but I heard someone talking about seeing smoke, I paid them to fly over without telling them why and that was still such a risk, but no one could think..."
He took a deep breath and once again, it was such that his mass seemed to be increasing on the spot.
And then it was.
"It's mine," he whispered as he slowly swelled, torso expanding, limbs thickening, claws beginning to curve. "It's mine, I wanted it, I wanted and it's mine, all mine, it's my right, it's what I was born to do and it's all mine..."
(She was only backing away to get some room between her and his expanding body. That was the only reason. It was.)
Abruptly, the dragon took a fast, sharp breath, one which added an extra fifteen percent to his height. His eyes slammed shut. And those curving claws flexed inwards again, into his palms. Pressed against the scales, skidded to the edges. Pressed harder, into the gaps between them. Drew blood.
The gasp was oddly soft. The next two words were not.
"It's... ours!"
It had been a shout. And it had been one of triumph, emerging with enough force to drive the launching body inward, the expansion began to reverse as the light from his eyes dimmed...
"It's... ours..." Garble softly said -- no, chanted, a mantra, one which visibly drove more of the madness away with every word. "It's ours. It's for us. So we can have an 'us.' So we can be the first to last, the first ever, it's for... all of us..."
He stood within the ash cast up from molten rock that lined his little part of the cave. Within the pit of his own footprints.
"Garble...?"
And the tone made it clear that he was speaking just to make sure there was, in fact, still something left which could speak at all. "It's... hard... it's so much pyrite-harder than I thought it would be, Direction-Face, it's hard, but I'm riding it, I'm surfing the lava and I'm not gonna fall off, it's just... so... hard..."
There was a single moment when she wanted to press her body against him. Rub against his scales no matter what little cuts might come, let him know there was someone else there, and she even flew forward a body length --
-- but then she stopped.
Garble seemed to feel her aborted approach. Turned his head just enough to see her, then faced the treasure pit again. Exhaled, long and slow.
"It's not bad," he decided, evaluating the contents of the pit with something close to total professionalism. "It's not great. Any real dragon would have done a lot better than this by his age. But... got to start somewhere."
Her own words felt oddly soft. "So what are you going to do?"
"Move it," was the immediate reply. "The right way. Which means I've got to start searching through this stuff. He's got to have white opals in here, because he can't use them. I mean, just because he can't use them is no reason not to collect them, right? They're part of a proper hoard. So he's even more likely to have them because there's no way for him to use them up. And besides, even if he didn't get them on purpose, put a lot of this stuff together and you'll find some. There's too much not to have a few just by accident. And it won't take that long to attune. After that, just get enough, load up my flame, breathe on this stuff, and send it to..."
He blinked. Five times. Focused on the treasure again, seemed to take in its raw mass.
"...well, yeah, like I'm gonna tell you that part. But I'm on my way, Direction-Face. So unless you want to stick around and help me find some, assuming you know what they look like and I know you suck at gem-spotting, I guess we're --"
He looked directly at her, then, and it felt as if he was doing it for the first time. Then back to the pit, and she just barely heard him whisper three words at the moment before he jumped in. Goblets fountained up in all directions, and she casually dodged a gold frame.
"Hey, Direction-Face!"
She glanced down.
"Does this fit any of your dumb pony legs? 'cause a noble dragon sure doesn't have use for it!"
His arm moved, and a silvery circlet flew towards her. Her right foreleg automatically slashed out, and it slid a little way towards her ankle. She shifted position just in time to keep it from sliding off her hoof.
The metal rested in place for a few seconds, vibrating. There was a drop of blood on it, glistening on the place where it had touched his palm.
"Keep that," he said. "Because it's pointless and simple and stupid, so if I hang onto it, all it's gonna do is remind me of you. Now if you're not going to hang around and help a true noble dragon ship off to his first fortifications, get home already! Because unless they're doing the grunt work, any dragon would have had all the pony company they could stand for one day. For one lifetime!"
Rainbow, who had heard all three whispered words, stared at him for a few seconds.
"So you don't need me?"
"I could use an extra set of eyes, but I already know those pie plates are only good for catching pies. What, you don't have any friends to visit? With your personality, that's not much of a surprise..."
"...fine," she ground out. "Goodbye."
"See ya around. But only, you know, if I'm the unluckiest dragon ever, and I just pretty much proved I'm not, so..."
"Right."
"So get out."
She started flying towards the cave mouth. Paused.
"Garble?"
"You're still here?"
"This cold's going away tomorrow morning. About an hour after Sun comes up. There's going to be... pegasi outside, working on the weather, and they're going to... well, the temperature will go up out there, but it's going to go down in here. It'll even out. They won't come inside: they'll just be by the entrance for a couple of minutes. And then you can go."
A long pause. "Oh... right, sure, a pegawuss weather forecast. The other thing you're good for, unless you want to be the first pony ever who gets a noble dragon lesson on how to see. Now scram."
He wasn't worth an insult, or a sigh (hardly anything was worth one of those), or a single extra moment of her time spent in his presence, much less any which might be used for thinking about those three words. He wasn't worth anything except a trip to the library, one which she had to make immediately.
Rainbow flew back towards the cave mouth, gradually accelerating up to a more standard speed (but not too quickly: at this point, it was more than begging for wing cramps). Her own personal set of directions was also simple. East and down.
The adult dragon's landing created an instant detour.
She just barely registered his arrival in time, felt the blast of wind from massive wings moving through the entrance hall, veered up to the point where she grazed the ceiling as his mass shook the ledge, he went through the intangible weave and under her, never seeing her, charging for the interior at full four-legged speed.
There was no time to cry out, and no words which would have reached anyone over the pounding footsteps, a small hill impacting the mountain with every racing, snarling step. There was only a gasp from the interior --
-- and then Garble finally flew.
He went under her, body tumbling, wings tucked close, left arm leaving a trail of blood from where the adult had bitten into it as a means of getting the flinging grip. Hit the ground about two body lengths from the weave, rolled the rest of the way out onto the ledge, not stopping until the last of the momentum left the limp form huddled against the remains of the broken boulder.
He clutched at the fresh wound, tried to sit up -- and then his walking claws spasmed, his body curled, his neck arched while his jaw began to chatter...
The laugh came from behind her. It was loud. It was somewhat bemused, with more than a little anger laced throughout. But more than anything else, it was bitter, and Garble shivered faster at the sound.
"TOO SMALL."
It was also getting closer. She was sweating more than ever, sweating almost enough for two, and Garble couldn't seem to focus, couldn't move, the injury on top of what had to be thermal shock, with the adult taking his time about closing in because he knew...
"TOO LITTLE FLAME YET," the red dragon said. "NOT ENOUGH FIRE BURNING INSIDE FOR THIS COLD, NOT ENOUGH TO FLY IN IT. SHOULD NOT HAVE EVEN ORIENTED, WITH ICE FREEZING THE MAP INSIDE. IMPRESSED, ALMOST, THAT YOU MANAGED THE CLIMB WITHOUT DYING. IMPRESSED, ALMOST, THAT YOU WOULD TRY SO YOUNG. TRY TO SUPPLANT. BUT ONLY ONE TRY. YOU LIVE -- SO THAT YOU CAN TRY. AND WE LET YOU. THAT IS THE WAY. YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO CHOOSE YOUR TIME AND CHANCE."
He was starting to move under her now, into what little Moon and starlight could reach the cave, his existence expressed as a giant shadow -- except for his face, lit by glowing eyes.
Rainbow had learned to read dragon expressions, even on one so large: being around Spike provided all the inadvertent tutoring she would ever need. This one was mostly smiling.
Mostly.
"YOU CHOSE -- POORLY."
He was too large for any amount of wind, not which she could raise in a hurry: for something else of this size, she could have tried to blind it for a moment with dirt, but he had those nictitating membranes. Carrying Garble meant a chase and she didn't know how fast she could move while bearing his surprising weight. The adult was too large to be affected by the cold as the teenager had been, no amount of heat she could shift in would hurt him and it wasn't her strength, she was hovering and sweating and making the mistake of trying to think...
...she was sweating...
"MISSED IT, OF COURSE," the adult continued as he fully passed beneath her. (She was barely paying attention to that now: her legs were shifting, moving in and out under her torso, gathering...) "PLANTED BITS OF WHITE JADE IN THE FRAGMENTS. THE ONES YOU TOUCH NOW. JUST ENOUGH EXPOSED. DIDN'T KNOW TO LOOK. SOME SECRETS ARE FOR THOSE WHO SUPPLANT. BUT STILL TOOK ME HOURS TO GET HERE, AFTER FEELING THE ALERT. IF YOU HAD BEEN FASTER -- MAYBE. TAKE THAT AS COMFORT IF YOU CAN."
And he was outside.
Garble was trying to move, and it seemed as if there was something oily and glistening between his trembling claws, but it was vibrating with the rest of his body, he hardly had any grip at all and his arm would barely work...
"ONE TRY," the huge dragon said. "BY BIRTH, BY BARGAIN, BY WAY. AND SINCE YOU WERE CAUGHT -- ONLY ONE."
It moved closer to the huddled form. It brought a foreleg up. What little Moon there was reflected off claws.
"BY WAY, YOU FAIL," it told the night. "BY WAY, YOU D --"
"-- hey, ugly!"
The claw froze. The red dragon turned its head. The blaze of its eyes illuminated her, hovering with her body partway across the weave. Her construct sitting exactly in the middle.
"YOU."
She grinned. She couldn't help it.
"YOU KICKED ME."
She nodded.
"OTHERS NOT HERE," it observed, and the light glinted off giant fangs. "YELLOW ONE NOT HERE. AND YOU... YOU, JUST LIKE HIM... HAVE MADE A BAD DECISION..."
"Wanna bet?"
It started to turn. Rainbow stayed on top of her construct. Legs still moving, for whatever extra assistance that might provide.
"OLDER OFFENSE," the adult told Garble. "THE NEXT BITE: YOURS. THE FIRST BREATH..."
She didn't move, except for weaving legs and hover-maintaining wings. Holding sky.
"You leave him alone."
Completely amused now. "OR?"
"Or I use this."
It looked at what she'd created.
"OH," it said, and it was so close to another laugh. "THE WORLD'S SMALLEST THUNDERCLOUD. PERHAPS A SINGED SCALE, FOR ALL THE LIGHTNING THAT YOU CAN LAUNCH FROM IT. WHICH, UNLIKE YOUR CORPSE, WILL HEAL. SO?"
It was small. It was half the size of her head, woven from the humidity created by her own evaporated sweat. And the dragon was right: under normal circumstances, she could do more by scraping boots across a thick carpet --
"So -- this."
Her forehooves tapped the surface.
-- unless that cloud was sitting directly on the border of interactions between heat and cold and magic, held every last erg and thaum she'd been able to tuck inside, along with everything surging naturally through as it lay across the weave...
Most of the explosion went forward.
Rainbow forced her head up, just enough to see one dragon body prone on the ground. It took a few more seconds before she could stagger to her hooves, another five breaths until she verified that all wing joints were no more than moderately bruised from the slam into the cave floor.
Slowly, she trotted forward. There was no point in pushing it yet.
Through the weave, into the frozen night. Approaching the body.
It took a slow, shuddering breath. Rainbow arranged herself to be in front of its near-broken gaze.
"I can do that again," she lied, nodding to the cloud: just enough left exposed around the edges of a flared wing to let the adult know it was there, more than enough hidden to keep the red dragon from seeing that it was mostly a broken lattice of fading wisps. "Any time, at the exact moment I see you thinking about trying to flame. I've had a couple of years to learn what a dragon who's about to flame looks like. There's this little nostril flare which you can't hide. So I think you're going to leave now. And you're not going to bother me, or my friends, or him. Ever."
The head came up. (Rainbow held her position.) The long neck curved. Huge eyes briefly rested on the smaller, shivering form. Back to her.
"PEGASUS..."
There seemed to be nothing she could say to that, although she found herself briefly surprised that it hadn't been "pegawuss."
"THE YELLOW ONE... SOMETHING IN HER EYES. SOMETHING... DEEPER THAN HER EYES. BUT... YOU...."
She wasn't moving. The concealing wing held steady. She had a nearly straight shot to Garble if she needed it.
"IT IS MY RIGHT," the adult said. "HIS RIGHT TO TRY AND... SUPPLANT ME. MINE TO TAKE THE PRICE... FOR HIS FAILURE."
Her own words felt too soft. "To kill him."
There was no hint of disagreement in its expression, and even less caring. "BETTER ME... THAT IT BE ME..."
And all her volume temporarily came back. "It's better that you kill him? How is that --"
"-- MY SON."
She stopped.
And now there was a new tone to the words. "DO NOT LEAVE HIM TO OTHERS... HE WILL TRY AGAIN, HE MUST, AND ME... IT WOULD BE QUICK..."
She knew the notes, the rise and fall in the syllables.
The red dragon was begging.
Her wing almost dropped. The feathers shook.
"Leave him alone." It was a whisper.
The huge eyes briefly closed.
"WE... BARGAIN."
It had very little to attack with. But her position was no better. And Garble was still too vulnerable to a desperate tail swipe: one sweep could send him off the ledge...
"What's the deal?"
"I TAKE HOARD. FAR AWAY. NO INTERRUPTIONS, NO SUPPLANTING WHILE IT IS MOVED. YOU DO NOT FOLLOW. THERE WILL BE NO PENALTY FOR THIS ATTEMPT. IF HE CAN FIND IT AGAIN... HE CAN TRY AGAIN. BUT IF HE FAILS... THEN IT WAS HIS CHANCE. AND HIS PRICE."
It stared at her, eyes half-lidded.
"I WILL SWEAR THIS BARGAIN, ON THE FIRST GEM, ON THE TRUE FLAME. THAT HE LIVES AFTER WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT, WHEN HE SHOULD NOT. BUT NO MORE."
It took her more time than she ever would have imagined to find the words. "What... what if he never tries again?"
"HE WILL. HE MUST."
She looked at the curls of smoke rising from lightning-blasted scales. It was so much easier than looking at those placid eyes.
"And if he tries it with you... and fails?"
"IT IS... THE WAY..."
And then there was something else she had to ask. "Garble? Does he... mean it?"
The shivering words took some time to emerge. "On t-t-the first g-gem... on the t-true flame... yes. If he s-s-swears... he can't break it."
She seemed to have too many whispers in her. "How do you know?"
"H-h-he'd die..."
And she went back to those huge, oddly patient eyes.
"Swear."
It forced its head up again.
"I WILL -- NEED TO FLAME. IT... CANNOT HURT YOU. ONLY ME."
And that had her lashing her tail into the bits of cloud, surrounding them and freeing up her wings so she could fly and land in front of Garble's prone form, that much closer to emergency evacuation.
The long neck twisted again. The giant face looked oddly amused.
"DO NOT TRUST?"
She nodded.
"WISE," it commented. "BUT FOR THIS... IT IS TOO LATE TO HARM YOU. SAID I WOULD BARGAIN, AND SO WE HAVE ALREADY BEGUN..."
It pointed its head away from them. The nostrils flared in a familiar way, and yet one she'd never fully seen before. It exhaled...
Darkness danced on the rock.
The flame was not black. The flame was what might have been left after black was removed from existence. It was a color which would allow no other colors to exist. It was a tiny hole flickering against the edges of the world.
Slowly, the red dragon forced itself upright. A line of smolder ran down one leg, to the scorch mark where the lightning had grounded itself.
"WE HAVE BARGAINED. MY TERMS... ARE ACCEPTED?"
Rainbow forced a single nod.
"THEN ON THE FIRST GEM, ON THE TRUE FLAME... I SWEAR."
It put its left foreleg into the flame, and the scream broke the night.
Garble managed to move his arms then, got them over the partially-shielded membranes which served as his ears. Rainbow got her hover going and freed up her forelegs, only to once again discover that hooves formed something less than a perfect seal. But neither could flee from the sound as it reverberated off the mountain, moved through the weave into the cave and echoed out again, every shift and change from impact with any surface only increasing the pain, and forever became the time for which the cry of agony had existed and always would...
...until it stopped.
The red dragon slowly put its left foreleg down. The flame was gone. A single scale shone with something more than black against the night.
"HE WILL NEED TO RECOVER," it said. "HE NEEDS WARMTH."
"It's... warm inside the cave," Rainbow managed after too many seconds.
"HAD NOTICED," the dragon dryly commented. "WE MOVE HIM THERE, UNTIL MORNING. IF HE CAN LEAVE ON HIS OWN THEN, HE WILL, UNHARMED. BUT I WILL GUARD MY HOARD. ANY APPROACH... IS A SECOND TRY."
It took some time to get Garble inside, even just within the entrance: Rainbow was hesitant to led the adult assist, especially in any way which would let it get a good look at what her tail was truly wrapped around. But eventually, it was managed, and the red dragon went further within. She heard metal shifting and guessed it to be from a still-unsteady tail getting a little too close to the pit.
She sat down in front of Garble, who had been propped into a semi-sitting, mostly-slumped position. Dim yellow eyes slowly came up to meet hers.
"We should clean your wound," she told him, nodding to his arm. "I can fly down and get some water. Or... I have a friend who kind of... got forced to learn something about how to treat --"
A single bare breath. "-- get out..."
"...what?"
His head came up a little more.
"...you... I would have done it if it wasn't for you..."
Part of her mind said Yeah, right, which was why she was surprised when her voice went with "Garble, you heard him, he took a couple of hours to get here. You just weren't fast enough. Even with warmer weather and no recovery time, you would have needed to have those white opals with you, plus whatever that 'attune' stuff is... I know you think you came in with a plan, and parts of it were pretty good, but you sort of rushed in here with half of what you needed. Sometimes when you... make up a stunt in the middle of the flight, you're gonna crash. You just got lucky, you had a crash you can fly away from, and if you just think this through a little more, I just bet you --"
"-- it was you! I would have had it started if it wasn't for you! I'd be on the way to keeping my friends! I don't screw up, I never screw up, and the only different thing here is you, you stupid... get out! I never want to see you again! GET OUT AND NEVER COME BACK!"
And she was gone.
It was instinct, at least partially. The decision to leave, made without true thought, and so it had been the right thing to do. But it didn't save her from hearing his last words.
"STUPID! STUPID DIRECTION-FACE!"
Or from having seen the first tears.
By the time she finished her story, Sun was less than an hour from being raised, and Twilight's little kitchen was completely out of wake-up juice. The last three mugs hadn't really done much.
The librarian closed her eyes, and kept them that way for what seemed to be a very long time.
"Twilight?"
"I don't know..." A deep breath expanded the narrow rib cage, as much as it ever could be. "I don't know what I can tell him, Rainbow. He... lives with so much already. After what happened with the growth spurt... it took him weeks before he really started sleeping again, practically moons. I know I have to tell him. I do. But... I don't know when. He needs..."
"He needs to know." It was as soft an insistence as she'd ever heard come from her own voice.
"He needs to be a child," Twilight quietly countered, a tired gaze now shakily resting on Rainbow's face. "For as long as he can be. I'll tell him, Rainbow. I swear I will, and I already know that the longer I wait, the more he... might hate me when he finds out. When he learns how long I knew. But... I can take that. He's my brother... so let me tell him. Please."
Rainbow stared at the library shelves for a while, or at least towards one particular area. Nothing new in the Adventure section.
"Maybe... maybe he doesn't have to do it," she offered. "He's a dragon raised by ponies, Twilight... by you. Whatever this way is, he's not part of it."
It got her a faint smile. "You're... probably right. But it's still going to be hard. Rainbow... I know you're tired, I can see you trying to keep your eyes open --"
"-- me? I could do this for another three days straight if I had to --"
"-- and if you just want to head for your bed, I'll let the rest of the weather team know -- not everything, but that you can't help reverse, you've got a good reason, and they can't go near the cave for a few days. But can I ask you two questions first?"
"Sure," Rainbow shrugged. "But I'm pretty sure I told you everything, so..."
"Maybe not. You said that before Garble jumped into the treasure, he said something. But you didn't say what it was. Did you hear it?"
"No," Rainbow lied.
"Oh... okay. And... I know this is a longshot, but... the griffons have a word, and I don't think there's a pony equivalent. Have you ever heard the term 'speciaganger'?"
"No," Rainbow admitted. "What's that thing mean?"
"It means... someone from another one of the sapient races who's sort of... living your life. The way it would have been if you'd just been born as a member of that species."
Rainbow thought about it for a while.
"That is one of the dumbest words ever. Seriously, how often are you going to pull that one out? Every three centuries?" But now that she really thought about it... "Although... maybe..."
Twilight's tones seemed oddly cautious. "So after tonight, it... means something to you?"
"Yeah. Can you imagine a griffon version of Daring Do? Because I just did! And then they could meet! I wonder if anypony's thought of that before this? Maybe I even beat the author to it..."
She wound up heading for home after she left the library, and she told herself it was because any weather team she was in charge of would have picked up enough incidental awesomeness just from hanging around to perform the full reversal without her. And once she was back on her own totally spectacular vapor mega-puff, she settled into bed. But sleep didn't come immediately. Two things kept going around in her head, the first of which was that 'speciaganger' nonsense. As words went, it had the chance to be something fantastic when dropped into her favorite novels, and... had absolutely no relationship to the real world. Not in any way that she wanted to think about, or could seem to stop.
And there were more words. Three of them.
Garble, standing on the edge of the treasure pit. A circlet resting on her nightstand. And syllables which would never have been spoken by a bully and jerk and potential murderer with no depth, and so she wished they never had been.
But there was no way to take the words back. Any of them.