For the fifth time in a very short time, I was smacked by Ruby for zoning out. I couldn't help it; I had too much on my mind. I was still struggling with the changes in Ruby… The heartsong helped a lot… but there were things that Ruby did now that were still jarring, and only reminded me that the Ruby I knew was gone... Then there were the words of History Keeper, whose name was still bugging me, that kept echoing in my mind: ‘Magic Dowser, the ways of dragons are strange and unusual... even barbaric, at times, but for the sake of the love, you and She of Hourglass have to give them a chance and be patient. You will not find a more loving set of dragons, or people, than the ones that you see here…’

“Sorry, Ruby...” I whispered out. I just didn't have the energy, anymore, to get angry. I really didn't have the heart for anything, anymore. Well, more just tired of everything than anything… “So much has happened in the last few days, I guess I’m just burnt out at the moment… and yet, I still have so many questions...”

Climb. Ruby suddenly ordered after a moment of silence.

With sad sigh, I climbed onto Ruby and sat on her head. Ruby slowly got up and, on instinct, I grabbed some of her head spines. I knew she wouldn’t allow me to fall off of her, but it's still unnerving to be up this high. I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to ride Ruby that first time... Stupid adrenaline…

Ready?

“Yes.”

With that, Ruby proceeded to walk back towards the city, much to my chagrin. I really didn’t want to go back there right now. Too many dragons milling around, staring, fighting, whatever. At least in the orchard, there was only the occasional dragon that came by to grab some fruit to eat and leave. Kinda odd for a clearly mostly carnivorous people, but I could see the appeal. The fruits, even the non-extoic ones like apples, were the best I had ever tasted.

Since I had no idea where we were going, and talking to Ruby while on her head was really not a viable option, I decided to take a good look at the city. After all, this was really the first time that I was able to get a chance to really absorb my surroundings. The few other times, either I was too focused on finding Ruby, or it was too dark to really get a good look. And the less said about my entanglement in Ruby’s hair spines, the better.

The colorful painted geometric designs on every building reminded me of the art of the buffalo tribes that roamed the deserts to the southeast of Castle Town. Whether it was inspired by them, or vice versa, or even a happy coincidence, I knew not. Though the strange band of etched metal that went around each building was a bit odd, especially considering every building was stuccoed, and not sided.

I was reminded again that Ruby seemed to know her way around the city as if she had lived here for years, not two days and three nights. There was no hesitation at any street juncture, just smooth, confident walking, even as she seemed to go in what appeared to be random directions. Unless she was just wandering for the sake of it… I really was just guessing, like most of the past few days, really...

Suddenly, Ruby stopped and growled. Figuring we had arrivaled wherever Ruby was taking me, I jumped down onto the cobbled street and looked around. There was only one building nearby, surrounded by a park/gardens/forest. I had no clue why Ruby brought me to this particular building, which I assumed was a home from the size, and the fact that we had passed hundreds of buildings of a similar size. Lastly, we were on the outer edge of the city, and, assuming that this city was planned like most towns and cities, the outer edges would be mostly homes, while the center would mostly contain businesses and government types of structures. The one exception to this line of thinking was that nearly every dragon I'd seen were closer to Ruby’s size than DragonWyrm Heart’s, and this building, like most we have passed, was nowhere big enough to hold a dragon of Ruby’s size, much less for one to live in it.

“Why are we here?”

Ruby’s only response was to lightly shove me towards the door. Given that I knew that there was no way to get out of this, I knocked on the door. A pink aura enveloped the door, and it opened. If I was not mistaken, that meant that this was the home of that pegacorn, Twilight, though it could also be the mysterious Phoenix Wave’s home instead… Of course, there was a chance that they were hiding more ponies around...

“Good afternoon, Magic Dowser, what can I do for you?” Twilight welcomed me as I stepped through the threshold of the door, and into a den. I didn’t even blink when the door closed behind me. Twilight was sitting on a cushion, reading a book next to a crackling fire. No surprise, as every inch of wall space had shelves with books or scrolls on them.

“I’m not sure…” I sheepishly replied, rubbing the back of my head. “Ruby kind of shoved me in here.”

“I see…” Twilight responded, putting down the book she had been reading. “The last few days have been difficult, haven’t they?”

“Yeah…” I sighed. “It’s just… It’s like my whole world has been turned upside down, and I was given no chance to process it, and no one seemed to care...

“Yeah…” Twilight nodded, looking down. ”DragonWyrm Heart could have, and should have, handled it better… but he does care more than you realize. The entire clan does…”

I snorted at Twilight’s assertion. Both DragonWyrm Heart and Wanderer were jerks. Wanderer for the ‘bitch’ comment and DragonWyrm Heart for, well, everything… “No they do not..”

“Do you really believe that?” Twilight questioned, raising a brow. “Scorpion would not have done that heartsong, and Dragon FireWyrm would not have healed you by taking on the scars himself, if they didn’t care. But… I doubt that is why your sister brought you to me specifically… is it?”

“I hope not.” I growled out, my irritation climbing. Two out of five or six is not the entire clan. I sighed as I looked out the window to see a wall of red scales. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down; I was here for Ruby...

“I can tell that Ruby is still there… within that mass of red scale… But then there are things... that are odd… mannerisms that are not like her and more beastial… like when she tried to calm me down by licking me...” I glared at Twilight, who was trying and failing to hide her snickering. “Then there is the weirdness of how she seems to know her way around the city…”

“She of Hourglass is probably drawing from her Clan Memories.”

“Clan Memories… as in the Dragon Heritage Memories?”

“‘Memories’ are somewhat of a misnomer, but basically, the same, but much narrower in focus. When a dragon joins a clan, information related to the clan is imprinted into their minds. This includes, but is not limited to, all of the Hoard Names of their clanmates, information on the clan's territory, and history.”

Well that explains how she knew her way around so well…

“I have a book that I think you should read as a starting point…” Twilight spoke up after a bit, startling me. I looked around to see that she had started to rummage through her extensive book collection. Extensive putting it lightly, as I saw books flowing in numerous lines in the air, coming in and out of the the two doors that lead further into the home, as well as the open window next to the fireplace. I’m sure that, if the fire wasn’t going, there would be books coming out of there too.

After a few moments of this, she apparently found the book she was looking for, as a book was pulled out of the line, and the rest were quickly returned to the shelves. “Here. It’s a bit late now… but…” Twilight hooved over a curious smelling book. I blanched and nearly dropped the book when I realized that the cover was real leather. I’d run into books that used real leather like this, before, in the University archives. Sometimes old spell books, especially ones with advanced spells or dangerous spells, used real leather. It was a great defense from wandering eyes.

“How to Raise Your Dragon: A guide to raising a dragon from hatching to Choosing. Approved by the Dragonwyrm Clan.” Approved by the DragonWyrm Clan?! Is this the book that was referred to before? Before when…

“Yeah, it was written to help non-dragons, if they ever ended up raising of a dragon via adoption or hatching an egg, like you did.” Twilight explained, interrupting my train of thought.

“I, uh… okay.” I wasn’t sure what to make of it, given that, so far, the clan had proven to be less than helpful, and that was putting it mildy. Still, something was bothering me, and, just like with the name History Seeker, I was blanking out. Damn it...

“Come,” Twilight gestured for me to follow as she got up and headed down a hallway to the back of the house. “I have a garden in the back where you can read it and ask any questions, as the book is merely a guide, and not a tell all.”

I hesitated for a second unsure to follow her or not. I just could not process what the hell was going on. Twilight apparently noticed my hesitation as she stopped and turn back to me calling out. ”You coming?”

I paused a second longer, but I remembered that Ruby seemed to think that Twilight would help, so I followed her. Her home was much more cozy than I expected, as the hall only went a small way until it ended at a sliding glass door. As promised, it led to a small patio garden.

“Ruby!” I called out. A second later, the red form of my sister peeked up over the home. Ruby’s head tilted in confusion as she slunk around and joined Twilight and I. “Twilight gave me this book to read…”

Ruby eyed the book that I lifted up for her to see. Book will help.

“If you say so Ruby…”

A dragon pair will have only one clutch of between two and four eggs. Once laid, the eggs are fully developed, and are ready to be hatched. It is uncommon for the parents to hatch them immediately, as there is no rush, as a dragon egg will be viable for an indefinite period of time. Also, it is difficult, so difficult that a dragon will only be able to hatch two in their entire lives…

...The dragon’s sex is determined by the sex of the one hatching them. A male dragon will always hatch a female, and conversely, a female dragon will hatch a male. Whether the sex and number of times hold true for non dragons is unknown, due to the differences in magic between races.

Okay, that makes no sense… I shook my head in disbelief. I could get that the dragon within the egg would be in some sort of magical suspended animation, given that Ruby’s egg had been in the family for some time, but that magic determines the sex?! This book is almost as bad as some of those wacky theories that those whack jobs had over Ruby...

Out of irritation, I flipped ahead a bit in the book. Luckily, Twilight had returned to her own book, and didn’t notice my frustrations. Ruby noticed, however, but thankfully did nothing. I was not in the mood for a debate, or answering pointed questions.

At the age of three, a dragon hatchling goes through a rapid magic-induced metamorphosis into a dragon whelp. In a matter of seconds, a dragon will grow, both physically and mentally, into the equivalent of an adolescent. Physically, they will grow to about triple their hatchling size, and will grow wings. If the dragon is a sea serpent, they also will go from bipedal to quadrupedal. If raising a dragoness, please see female mating, page 197, for important information on female whelps.

Finally getting somewhere! As much as I appreciated some of the information so far, such as what type of dragon Ruby was, what I really wanted to know more about were more recent events, and, more specifically, anything to do with ‘wyrms.’

Wait… I zoomed back onto the word whelp. I knew that she was a whelp; my whole family used that word right off the bat… how did we know that? Nopony knew what she was...right?

...Female whelps produce a magical type of pheromone that attracts only the type of males that could become soul mates. (The term ‘soul mate’ here is literal, unlike the more figurative usage that is used as an idiom.) As mentioned in an earlier chapter on the lifecycles of dragons…

I was half tempted to slam the book shut right then and there. It was a bunch a overly romantic love at first sight or smell, and, while I can see it being a possibility, as I have run into a few couples that were love at first sight, there is no way that it could be that common and necessary! Not wanting to read anymore of that drivel, I decided to check the table of contents for a chapter that I hoped would be somewhat insightful or helpful. Luckily, I saw a chapter that should prove helpful, so I quickly flipped to it.

A Short Overview of the Wyrm

The Wyrm is the one of most misunderstood aspects of dragons. Part of this can be attributed to the somewhat mysterious and hidden nature of the wyrm…

I snorted when I read that line. Wyrms, mysterious and hidden? Try the whole fucking race!

What funny? Ruby questioned me, as I started laughing hard. Twilight, too, was looking at me like I had gone crazy. I thought I had gone crazy. To think I would get any help from these…

“This book claims,” I gestured to the page that I was reading, while trying to control my amusement enough to speak coherently, “that ’The Wyrm is the one of most misunderstood aspects of dragons. Part of this can be attributed to the mysterious and hidden nature of the wyrm…’ No offense, Ruby, but everything about dragons, nevermind ‘wyrms,’ has been mysterious and hidden! I have yet to get a straightforward, honest answer out of any of them!”

Ruby titled her head, clearly confused. Dragons know much. Not all need know... not safe all know… like prey hatchlings from home...

When Ruby mentioned prey hatchlings from home, I knew to whom she meant, and I shuddered. Some of the things I’ve heard about those two. How they haven’t died a million times over is a mystery to me… “Chainsaw juggling emblems…” I shook my head at the stupidity. “I mean what the fuck!? The ideas those two come up with on their own, I don’t want to know what they could come up with, with the wrong information! Now that I think about it, that would explain the odd new ‘restricted’ section at the library when I came home...”

That still was a poor excuse; I was not those two foals, nor some egotistical madpony, nor cutthroat businesspony, nor anything similar. I was, and am, Ruby’s brother! I was not going to argue with her at the present moment, as there was still more of the book to go through, and I wanted to see if they would eventually tell me what I was supposed to know. If not, I could use it as fodder to choke them to death with.

...Dragons are more attuned to their animalistic side than most races, so much so that
their psyche is actually split into two distinctive parts. The wyrm half has been described as feral, savage, wild, beastly, or animalistic, but all of these descriptions are a bit one-dimensional, and none of them paint the full picture of what the Wyrm is.

I shook my head in disbelief. This book can’t make up its mind between being a simplistic, easy to read guide, or being a university level thesis, or being some sort of hippy creed. Sadly, the rest of the chapter really didn’t go over what I wanted to know, and that was why Ruby had to lose her sentience. I could ask Ruby, but that would be a exercise in futility, given the language barrier… At least the book has filled in some gaps… still…

...During particularly difficult or stressful times, the wyrm can come to the forefront, such as in a life-or-death defense of their hoard, mate, or hatchlings. There are two times, however, when it will not only come to the forefront, but overwhelm the dragon: Mating, and Choosing. This switch is a type of protection for the dragon psyche during what can be a very dramatic and intense magical transformation, during which the Dragon Heritage Memories are imprinted into the mind of the dragon. So dramatic is this that, even when the wyrm withdraws in the moments after Mating/Choosing, the dragon will still seem ‘wyrm like’...

...Most dragons will withdraw and hoard during a period after Choosing. During this time, the dragon is mentally unstable and easily irritable, until the settling of the mind and personality of the now adult mind. Some comparisons can be made to the adolescence period of transition, particularly to the period sometimes referred to as puberty, but at a much more accelerated rate. This process usually lasts about 30 days…

I blinked in confusion after reading that. I mean, I could get the whole unstable thing, with the Dragon Heritage Memories. From what I could recall, it had to be a lot of information. And if I suddenly had tons of information downloaded into my brain, I would probably become unstable for some time… I remembered when I lost large sections of memory, that I struggled for some time. But Ruby didn’t exhibit those symptoms, and the way the book was presenting it, it sounded like Ruby should have. The only time she had really shown irritability was her being herself, and not exceptionally irritable. Also, nothing on why her sentient half, or dragon half, had to disappear forever; if anything, this is saying that it should have only faded to the background, and only for a few moments...

...Mating differs a bit from Choosing in this matter. Given the souls of the two dragons having merged, the female dragon does not go through this process… Though she will be imprinted with the Dragon Heritage Memories, just like her mate was at Choosing, the mate will ease the burden of the changes through the connection they share as soul mates...

Okay that explains that… I continued to read and still found that there was nothing on why Ruby had to lose her sentience. Not even a single line on it. I quickly used a skimming spell I used during study sessions at the university to see if maybe I missed some mention of it, but, as I glanced over every other instance of the word wyrm, I found nothing to explain what happened to Ruby.

“Magic Dowser,” Twilight spoke up, seeing my frustrated page flipping, “As I said before, Magic Dowser, the book is merely a starting point, and a guide, not a tell-all. Your sister so elegantly put…”

“What the fuck are you pulling?” I cut Twilight off; I knew where she was going, and I was not happy for it. I was not a young foal in need of coddling.

“Excuse me?”

“The ‘it’s like comparing apples to oranges routine!’” Twilight opened her mouth, clearly to object, but I put a stop to it by shutting her mouth with my magic. “If you want to play that game, then fine. But I think I’d prefer the getting the truth from a dragon’s mouth game. Ruby, shall we?”

Ruby hesitated a second before lowering her head, allowing me to climb onto her head for the ride to DragonWyrm Heart. I was, and always would be, Ruby’s older brother, and helped my mother raise her. We should have had this book. We should have had the help it would have been. I could understand not showing up in the Equis Nation for fear of spooking everypony, but not finding a way to get this book, or a copy, to us!?

I could feel Dragon FireWyrm’s gaze follow me as I paced. The conversation I had with The Voice was odd. The Voice was usually somewhat cryptic in what he said. Sometimes, he was almost most as bad as Celestia and Dragon FireWyrm, before he became full wyrm… the make friends letter from just before Nightmare Moon’s return being the best example…

...suffer the consequences of your inaction… I would have thought that it would have been the scars on my back… the reaction of She of Hourglass, in hindsight, was too harsh for merely me killing her father, Quartermaster. She of Hourglass never knew her father. She came looking for answers….. Clearly, frustration boiled over… the pain of that dream, over and over… As I didn't usually keep my wings out, the scars would have been noticed by the dragons here on the Migration very quickly… and given my position as a DragonWrym…

Punish me while simultaneously helping She of Hourglass find a mate that would put her in a clan led by the very dragon she blamed, and rightly so, for all the years...

“HOW THE FUCK would Ruby be thankful?!”

“Oh no.” Ruby-Voice shook her head, “You want to find that out, you can ask me that personally.”

Why would The Voice say that? It made no sense. How would asking the now She of Hourglass about why she was thankful be any different than asking the Voice as Ruby? She of Hourglass wouldn’t care that I got that information from what was essentially herself… Unless there was something underlying… something that, for the moment, was just out of my grasp...

What are you trying to teach!?

“Gah! I take it back! This is worse than Celestia’s make friends letter. I can’t make tails nor claws of what The Voice was really saying!” I shouted in frustration. “I mean…”

I nearly jumped when a wall of white suddenly, and loudly, formed in front of where I was pacing.
It almost looked like Dragon FireWyrm’s old tail, with the way he was holding his currently three separate tails. Those three separate tail weapons almost looked like his old trident weapon.

Does dragon run when hatched? Dragon FireWyrm growled at me questioningly. I found myself fish breathing in response. Obviously, it was a rhetorical question. But I had not heard him speak like this in a long time. And here, he was doing it twice in a span of a few days. Even during the entire debate over Elegant Prose and She of Hourglass, he never said much, other than to cool both myself and Wanderer down. You without wyrm still learning. Dragon fall, get back up after fall and run.

“How…” A faint knock could be heard on my hoard chamber door, grabbing both Dragon FireWyrm’s and my attention, and ending my response.

The knocking was odd; if a dragon needed me, they would usually find a clanmate, Twilight, or Phoenix Wave, and a message would be sent via firemail. Also, most would shout out the standard “permission to enter a hoard” at the library entrance, not this far inside the library, even though I don’t ward the outer library in such a way to require permission to enter while the outer doors are open.

“Enter.”

Magic Dowser and She of Hourglass? I questioned as the siblings walked in. I was not expecting them until the end of the Migration. I had not figured out how to broach the subject of The Voice’s involvement in She of Hourglass’ arrival in Hourglass. Hell, I’m still processing what The Voice said, and didn’t say.

“What can I do for you, Magic Dowser?”

I had to resist the urge to gulp when the How to Raise Your Dragon manual slammed quite loudly to the stone floor. Thanks to that, I already had a feeling where this was going. The two things that were not addressed in that book were Wyrm Growth, and what happened if a female mated with a wyrm, such as Dragon FireWyrm. While I knew those two would come up, I was not ready to deal with it, as it would mean bringing up The Voice’s involvement, and, if the past few days were anything to go by, Magic Dowser could very well give Twi a run for her fiery pony manifestation.

“You are a bunch of oily, conniving snakes, you know that? And I am so sick of it!” I cringed when She of Hourglass smacked Magic Dowser. I really didn’t want to be defended, especially by her. It didn't seem to deter him, though, as he didn't even seem to notice the smack. If anything, he seemed more angry. “Always dangling a poisoned carrot, just out of reach!”

I sighed… and it goes on and on my friend... “Get to the point, Magic Dowser. I have carrots to poison.”

My quip managed to shock Magic Dowser, thankfully. As much I could see Magic Dowser needed to vent, I knew that he needed answers more. If the way his mouth kept opening and shutting was any indication, he was still formulating the question himself, or my ‘admission’ threw him off a bit more than I expected... “WHY!?”

And there, Magic Dowser, is the 64,000 bit question...

Author's Notes:

one.... whole.... month... Sheesh ... Anyway two more chapters before this arc is finished and we can get back to adventuring,

Also, got a Dragon OC? See this Blog