Night was falling when I made my approach to the Northern Oasis. A couple of hours ago, Firstclaw had requested my assistance with assessing Ruby. As much as I needed to prepare for the Migration that is coming tomorrow evening, Ruby is the daughter of Quartermaster and She of Hourglass, my clanmates, and I would do anything I could to help her. As I made my descent, circling as I did, I could see a red dragon whelp that had to be Ruby, asleep outside.

I had heard the descriptions of her, but to see her with my own eyes was a sight to behold. And I must say, she was quite beautiful, definitely got that from her mother. I can see why they called her Ruby, with such rich, red scales. And her hair-like reddish orange spines accented her scales wonderfully. I snapped out of my gawking to try and remember what I was here for. I pulled out the scroll that Firstclaw sent me.

Scorpion,

I need your help. Ruby has arrived at the Northern Oasis, but she is suffering from a debilitating existential crisis manifesting in her dreams. These dreams entail her hunting and killing a deer that ends up morphing into her brother. If this was all, I would have helped her with the guilt of what she accidently did to her brother, which is obviously manifesting it. However, recently, a voice has entered the dream. (The second scroll is a detailed description of what she saw and heard. I don’t want her having to relive it, but it may help you.) I suspect that it’s her wyrm half trying to speak to her, but it’s only frightening her further.

Given your abilities of hearing one’s Soul Song, I’m hoping you can help her while, hopefully, avoiding setting her off, which is really easy to do. (She found my advice on the dream to be less than helpful.) And if she does go off, cool her rage, so she can at least think over this in a logical manner. I would prefer to take it slow, but with the approaching Migration, I don’t need to tell you the risks for her to be near it. (I just hope that the Northern Oasis is far enough away.)

I sighed as I rolled the scroll back up and put it away. I could at least listen from a distance to her Soul Song, but, to get a better reading, I would have to be right on her, and the last thing I want to do is scare her by having my massive head up against her whole body, if she were to suddenly awaken.

Suddenly Ruby shot up, screaming, startling me. I backed up as quietly as I could, hoping that I didn't wake her and/or get caught by her and scare her. But when I looked harder, and listened, I could tell that she wasn’t even aware of me being here, which meant she must have had another nightmare.

“That smell…” Ruby mumbled as she gazed about the oasis.

Smell? I’m upwind, as well as hidden. I also don’t eat meat, so it can’t be my breath… ah crap… the lava baths…

“Hello? I know you're out there… I remember that smell from the Everfree… I just want to thank you… as it was you that helped keep the predators away, wasn’t it?

Interesting… Firstclaw must have contacted He of Everfree for assistance. Well, since she knows I’m here, I can at least start the conversation with her before I make myself fully known. <That was not me.> I projected my thoughts to her. I would talk, but, given my voice’s ‘controlling’ nature, it might anger or frighten her.

Ruby practically jumped out of her scales. “Are... are.. you talking with your mind!?”

<It’s not wise for me to talk out loud.> I explained.

For a while, Ruby just stood there, doing nothing. After a few minutes, she looked stressed and starting rubbing the sides of her head. Why is she… oh wait… I think I know what she is trying to do, but the spell that allows me to speak to her in her mind does not work the other way.

<If you are trying to talk to me with your mind, I can’t hear you.> You know there are times when that gets old, but this is just too rich. If only Quartermaster or She of Hourglass could see her now… Wanderer, not so much… He would never let his little sister live this one down. Oh who am I kidding? Blackmail material right here… or get out of a prank free card... <It’s one way.>

“Who are you? Where are you?” Ruby looked around the oasis to try and find me. Luckily, I had learned a few tricks from Wanderer to mask my very reflective white and electric blue scales, though, with a dragon looking for me, I wouldn’t last long. Sadly, I couldn’t get down the invisibility spell that Firstclaw uses.

<Call me Scorpion.> I had to fight not to laugh, giggle, or do anything noisy to give myself away. Which was really hard with the way that Ruby was frantically looking for me. <I’m nearby, I just didn’t want to scare you.>

“Well, at least you aren’t as big of an idiot as that DragonWyrm Heart character…”

DragonWyrm Heart, an idiot? I pondered Ruby’s insult. Okay, what in the Voice did you do, Firstclaw?

“Mind if you show yourself? I really am not in the mood for bodiless voices coming from wherever, and whatever, you are right now…”

<Very well.> I was planning on making myself known eventually… and this may give me a chance to get a good hearing of her Soul Song. I released the masking spell, and stepped through the palm trees, and into the moon's light.

Ruby backed up instinctively as I did. I paused for a second, as I didn’t want her to flee, but her song indicated that she was more shocked than scared. I guess that is to be expected; I am the size of a decent-sized house, after all. Now knowing that she wasn’t scared, I walked the rest of the way into the oasis and sat down.

“Oh great, a dragon that looks like a fucking stereotypical wannabe rocker.” Ruby snarked after she got a good look at me.

I couldn't decide whether to facepalm, blush, or roll my eyes. I would have normally bristled at a comment like that, but I could see a mischievous glint in her eyes, and, even though the tone of her voice was sarcastic, I could detect a bit of awe in it too. Oh my Voice, she is just like her brother, with just a dash of her father.

To be fair, with my title being Scorpion, the jacket, my spikey hairlike head spines, and the metal sand scorpion ocarina on my neck, I can see why she (and anyone else for that matter) would think that. I doubt she could see my scorpion shaped guitar on my back. Which is a good thing, as I think it would only reinforce the ‘stereotypical wannabe rocker’ look that I have, and something tells me that I would never hear the end of it… Scratch that, I know I will never hear the end of it...

DragonWyrm Heart went back to sleep shortly after Ruby left, requesting that we wake him when she returned. Apparently, according to him, he was still exhausted from not sleeping the night before. I guess the nerves got to him, or something. But my question is, why would our arrival do that to him? I had been okay with his earlier explanation of Ruby being a curiosity because of being the only dragon in the E.N., but now, I’m thinking that maybe it's more than that. He had to be hiding something, and now, my curiosity was piqued.

“Gah, you are worse than Twi!”

Oops. I froze sheepishly. I wasn’t even aware that I had begun pacing. “Sorry…”

“Well, we might as well get this over with.” DragonWyrm Heart stretched and yawned. He looked like a large, scaled cat doing that. “What are your questions? If it's within my power to answer, I shall.”

Questions? I didn’t say… was I being that transparent? Well, I was pacing...

“Why are you so interested in Ruby? The truth this time.” Minty sat up straighter; apparently, she must have been wondering as well.

DragonWyrm Heart sighed. “You picked the one with a long answer, but the short of it is, I knew her parents...”

I frowned when I heard him say that he knew Ruby’s parents. I always figured that Ruby’s egg was either stolen from her parents, abandoned, or, finally, orphaned. From the inflection of the way DragonWyrm Heart said ‘knew her parents,’ I knew it must have been the saddest of those three: orphaned.

DragonWyrm Heart’s expression turned sadder as he continued. “They were killed in the closing hours of the Keeper War…”

“Keeper War?” I wondered. Something about that name was familiar, but I could not remember why, or where I had heard it before.

“It was a cataclysmic world war that occurred roughly twenty one hundred years ago.”

“That's roughly the around the same age as the Crystal Tree Castle, and the how long the city on Canterhorn has been in ruins!” I exclaimed. The only reason why I knew that was because that those two had such strange magic signatures, beyond what I, or anyone else, could comprehend. The Ruined City has been studied quite a bit, but the castle has not, as it had an odd way of allowing some in some locations, some in all locations, and some in none. Or at least, that’s what I can recall.

I could have gotten tons of grants by studying either, but neither are as important right now as the Everfree problem. I’m interested in dealing with real problems that are going on right now, not how we can build cities on mountainsides! Or how to build homes for rich ponies using crystal! Such hubris! We are not in such dire straits as to need to build cities or homes like that. While the Everfree is deadly, and moving away from it would rid us of its danger, I have concerns, as do some in the academic community, that pony magic may be holding it back.

“Canterlot, and the Friendship Castle?” DragonWyrm Heart tilted his head at what I said. I wasn’t aware of those names… though apparently that must be what he called them, or maybe it’s what they used to be called. “Well, Canterlot fell into ruin during the Fall of Equestria, which occurred about a hundred years later… the Friendship Castle…’grew’, I guess would be the ‘correct’ word, prior to the war, and was home to the Bearers of Harmony...”

“Wait!” I interrupted DragonWyrm Heart, as something he said casually finally hit me. “You said you knew of her parents, and they died twenty-one hundred years ago!? How long do dragons live!?”

“Dragons, barring injury or illness, are essentially... immortal.”

Ruby is not going to like hearing this...

<So, tell me why you came all this way.>

“Well you see we followed this compass…”

<No, I don’t care about the Compass, I care about why you came all this way.>

“I guess, I want to know what it means to be a dragon… to maybe find out why I was abandoned, or whatever exactly happened for me be hatched by Magic Dowser, my brother...”

‘What it means to be a dragon?’ Why does that sound familiar? The first question would take way too long to answer now, but, at the least, I could answer the second one.

<The first question is way too long for me to answer right now... I can, however, at least tell you where you came from, as I knew you parents quite well… they were clanmates of mine…>

“Were?”

<Your parents, along with two of your clutchmates, were… killed in the final hours of the Keeper War… only your brother remains...>

“My parents and siblings were killed?” Ruby’s expression fell, along with her song. To be expected, when you find out that your parents, and two of your three siblings, were long dead, much less killed. “They why did you abandon me to the ponies…? I mean, aren’t clans family?”

<Technically, true... but dragons don’t reckon family in the same way that ponies or other races may.> Scorpion countered. <Besides, we didn’t abandon you…Your egg was given to the care of your grandfather, only sixty years ago. We had tried to find a suitable family to hatch and raise you for well over a millennia beforehand.>

“But why ponies? Why couldn’t I have been hatched by my brother?” Interesting… she latched onto the question of why she was given to History Seeker, and not the implied longevity… either she didn’t quite catch that part, or she needs to know why she was under the care of ponies more...

<It didn't have to be ponies… It’s just how it came out to be… As for why not your brother, a dragon can only hatch two eggs in their lifetime. A dragoness lays but one clutch in her lifetime, and the number of eggs in the clutch can vary between two and four. And if your brother adopted you and his mate laid four…>

“That would leave one… but couldn't you have gotten a mated pair that had less than four to hatch me?”

<That would require Wanderer, your brother, to disown you, as a dragon can only hatch their own eggs…>

“That doesn't make any sense!” Ruby yelled, to the point of almost roaring. “Maybe I can get that a dragon could only hatch two eggs, thanks to what Dowsy can remember on how he hatched me…but needing to disown me!? What kind of fucking logic is that? ”

Ugh, Elegant Prose! Why did you have to be so stubborn!? If you had at least kept the dragon raising book, I wouldn’t have had to answer these types of questions!

<Ruby, dragons are creatures of immense raw magic. We are so close to magic itself that our language, our bodies, our names, our culture, our memories, our code, our families, our everything are tied to that!> I could see that Ruby was losing her patience with me but I had to lay this groundwork down so that she could understand. <Uh...how to explain this...>

Think, Scorpion, think! What do you know about ponies that would apply here, and would be easy to explain? <How familiar are you with pony magic mechanics?>

“Just the basics… most of it goes way over my head.”

<Well, do you know what ponies have to do to cast a spell together as one?>

“Sort of…”

<They have to get their auras to resonate in harmony with each other…> Okay that lost her. <It's similar to chords in music.>

Ruby’s eyes brightened, and her song cleared up. There’s the light bulb I needed, she understands now.

<That is what is needed for the magic flame that a dragon produces, in order to hatch a dragon egg. Of course, it's much more complex than a simple musical chord… Magic resonance between dragons can only occur within family, so, when I mean your brother has to disown you in order for a mated dragon pair to hatch you, he really has to disown you… completely... Your brother just could not do it...>

“So, in order for another dragon to hatch me, he has to disown me, no take backs?” Ruby grumbled in annoyance as I nodded a yes. “That’s fucking stupid…”

<Yeah, I guess it would seem that way... But there was one way to bypass this issue, and that was to have a non-dragon hatch you. That, itself, is difficult because of the massive amount of magic needed to overcome a dragon egg’s natural resistance to hatching, outside of the special dragon hatching flame.>

“But if that was all, then why didn’t you have that non-dragon someone hatch me, then you raise me afterwards…?”

<And make that person a glorified egg hatcher!? One sec.> I grabbed a spare scroll and quickly sent a message to Twilight. I knew how to help Ruby understand. I just hoped that Twilight wouldn't take too long.

A moment later, a small letter arrived through my fire mail.

<Read this letter.> I carefully handed over the letter.

“Dear Gramps, I hatched that egg today! A baby dragon, just like in your stories! I am now a big brother! I love my little baby sis. I named her Ruby…”

“I nearly killed my brother!” Ruby started to cry, dropping the letter. “I nearly flambéed my brother because of my flames… I don’t want to ever risk *hic* that again but I’m supposed to... supposed to use my flame!”

At that point, Ruby fell to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. I wrapped Ruby in a hug, and let her cry into me. I took advantage of this to get a good listen to her soul song. Melodies of pain and suffering, along with worry of hurting her brother… family. Whoa, it has been awhile since I’ve heard these soul song themes, and so loudly, too...

After some time of this, Ruby finally made a noise akin to an exasperated sigh. “No offense, but being a dragon sucks…”

<None taken…> I shrugged. I heard that line a lot from non-dragons, the one time I went on the Migration right after my Slumber. <You're not the first to state that, nor will you be the last… and that includes some dragons raised as dragons...>

That got an amused snort out of Ruby. Hatchling steps….

“Can you tell me about my parents?”

I wasn’t sure she could handle it, but, between her pleading eyes and her soul song, I relented. <Sure… but you must understand, it’s not a happy story...>

“So what can you tell me of Ruby’s parents?” I asked.

“Well, to begin with, Ruby’s parents were Quartermaster and She of Hourglass…”

“She of Hourglass?” I repeated. That didn't sound like a name… more like a very weak and foalish ‘title.’ “I don’t want to sound rude, but that is a strange name…”

“That’s because dragons rarely, if ever, reveal their names. Both Quartermaster and She of Hourglass are merely titles… Magic Dowser, you’ve studied magic, correct?”

I was about to question how he would know that, when I realized that, if he was spying on Ruby, he very likely already knew about what my talent was...

“Have you heard of the theory of true names in magic?”

Of course I did. It was the theory that everything, and everyone, had a magical ‘true name’, and that, if one knew that name, they could have complete control of them. It was quite controversial, to say the least. Understandable, too. “Yea…”

“For dragons, our names, are, in essence, true names. As such, dragons will use titles or territory locations, when addressing each other.”

“So DragonWyrm Heart is a title?”

“Uh no, that is my name.”

Okay, what the…? If what he said was true, why would he trust me with a name that, if it was really a true name, would mean I could control him, among other less than savory...things…? “But you said…”

“To explain it fully would mean explaining a part of dragon culture that you are not yet ready for… but I can say this: every adult dragon alive knows my name, so there is no reason for me to not use it publicly, anyway.”

“Okay, but I am not a dragon, much less an adult dragon.”

“Wouldn’t matter anyway, because you are incapable of speaking Draconic…”

Why do I get the feeling I’m back in class with a snarky, elitist professor?

<I won’t lie, your father, Quartermaster, was a jerk when he was young… He thought ponies were a bunch of weak namby-pambies. Though, to be honest, most of the Old Guard thought the same…> I had to stifle a laugh at the eye raise from Ruby when I said Old Guard. <The Old Guard refers to those dragons that had ‘Chosen’, or found out what their ‘true’ names were, … before the death of the ‘Nameless One.’>

“‘Old Guard’, ‘Nameless one’, ‘Chosen,’ ‘True names,’ those all sound like they came out of some sort of weird ass prophecy thingy... Am I hallucinating myself in a fantasy book?“

Definitely Wanderer's sister…

<No, you are not hallucinating…> Note to self: get some poison joke for her to ‘smoke’. <The ‘Nameless One’ was a evil dark magic wielding spark dragon, DragonWyrm Heart is also a spark dragon by the way, that plunged the world into world spanning war, twice, and not only corrupted magic, but every race. The world still has only just begun to heal from it....>

“If I could, I would fucking shred his ass,” DragonWyrm Heart’s sparks turned a dark blood red as his rant continued. I tensed up as green fire leaked from his mouth, Minty leaning into me herself, shaking in fright. “I’d kill the motherfucking bitch of a fucking excuse for a lava shitting lizard again and again...”

That was the most curse-filled sentence I had ever heard… and there are several curses within that rant that I had only heard from my family… I’d rate it a ten for the rage, but a four for the childish use of them.

“Sorry about that…” DragonWyrm Heart suddenly snapped back to his normal self, I think, or at least what, from what I can tell, is his normal self. “That creature is one of only two that makes my blood boil… well more than usual…”

“The other is also a dark magic user… A dragon, that killed She of Hourglass, and smashed two of the three eggs she laid, Ruby’s being the only egg to survive… I don’t know the dragons ‘title’ and really don’t care… all I know is that Dragon FireWyrm tortured the dragon to death.”

I could feel my insides trying to come out at that…Minty had already thrown up over the side of the couch. I get that war is not pretty, and blood and gore are involved, but torturing someone to death!? That’s a bit ext… a lot extreme. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

“Considering that he slaughtered two fellow clanmates, one of those being Ruby’s mother, and her eggs, Ruby's siblings, just for the sick pleasure of it? And that is just the crimes against our clan... He got off easy.”

“Okay, so then, this ‘Nameless One’ killed Ruby’s father?”

DragonWyrm Heart nervously rubbed a paw across the back of his neck. I didn’t like the fact that he was being nervous about that question….

An angry roar caught DragonWyrm Heart’s attention before he could answer the question. It appears that Ruby pried the truth out of Scorpion. Damn it… Well I guess it's time… a little sooner, and not in the way I wanted...

“That sounded like Ruby…” Magic Dowser noted. He wondered what got her so riled up… He had not heard her that angry before… Maybe she had the nightmare again.

DragonWyrm Heart used his magic, and slid all the furniture to the sides of the den, hoping that the mess wouldn’t be too bad. Once he did that, he sighed. The final repercussion for my crime is upon me...

“Minty, Magic Dowser, move to far side of the room, and whatever happens, do not intervene.”

“But…” Magic Dowser tried to object. What in Tartarus is going on?!

“DO NOT INTERVENE.” DragonWyrm Heart snapped at the two ponies, who backed up and sat on one of the couches now on the far wall, shaking in true fright. “For your own safety, let whatever happens, happen.”

Both of the ponies nodded, still shaking as the sounds of something could be heard approaching the den.

DragonWyrm Heart laid as flat as he could, with his legs splayed out, the position of shame for a dragon. Whatever Ruby was going to do, he would take it.

The door to the den suddenly shattered, and Ruby stepped through.

“YOU MURDERED MY FATHER!?!” She roared, clenching her fists hard enough to draw blood.

Magic Dowser had never seen her like this before. Ruby was huffing and puffing angrily, a bit of her fire leaking out of her maw, and her wings snapped open in aggression. Ruby had been mad before, but never to this degree. Wait, murder!? He looked at the dragon who remained still as a rock in the face of this accusation.

“Is this true, DragonWyrm Heart?” Magic Dowser dared to question him.

<Do not interfere.> DragonWyrm Heart reminded Magic Dowser by speaking into his mind, startling him.

“Yes. I did.” DragonWyrm Heart sadly admitted, not moving from his position.

“RRRAGH!”

“Rub-mphsh...” Magic Dowser was suddenly cut of by a strange glittering aura, similar to what surrounded the drake.

After DragonWyrm Heart silenced Magic Dowser, he also paralyzed the two ponies. He warned them not to interfere. Ruby needed to release her rage, even if it meant his death. Right now, she was too far into rage to be talked down, even by Magic Dowser.