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You are Twilight Sparkle, Pony extraordinaire. Personal pupil of Princess Celestia, and heir to the throne of Equestria.

At least, that's what you hope.

Maybe in a few years, if you study really hard and work at it like a gangster.

But right now there's a few more pressing issues at hoof than thinking about one's future and the potential to rule and empire.

Your assistant's in trouble!

Spike, your one and only sidekick and personal slave is in dire straits. Last night, he was kidnapped by a rather voracious lady-dragon, a thousand-year-old beast with extremely powerful magic that can counter your own easily.

And the only reason why you know this is because she was kind enough to send you a letter.

You run your eyes down it as you read it for the 24th time, just to be sure you've got it right.

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My name is Bertha. I am a thousand-year-old dragoness. I have liberated Spike from your dominating rule and have brought him to the cave at the end of Bertha woods.

I am telling you this because I want you to know that it would be incredibly foolish for you to come rescue him. So foolish, in fact, that I don't even mind telling you all this.

My magic is far more powerful than yours, and I can counter you easily.

Please don't come.

Yours,
Bertha the Cranky

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You have absolutely no idea how this happened without anypony else noticing, but it seems it did anyway.

Rolling up the scroll, you place it nicely in your saddlebags, which are deep enough to hold nearly anything you can think of. That's fine craftsmanship, that is!

From the moment you received the scroll, sent to you via Spike-flame, you hit the books to do what any pony should do in such a dire situation - research!

You found out from a book that Bertha the Cranky is in fact, exactly as she said, and has been ruling over a small piece of the Everfree forest which was later named after her, since she's a bit lazy and doesn't like to migrate like other dragons.

It might be a woman thing. Who knew? Maybe crankiness came with age. But then again, Princess Celestia…

Well, it wasn't worth thinking about at that moment.

Unfortunately, the entry on Bertha was remarkably short. The only other thing you could find out was that she was responsible for another vast Dragon liberation many hundreds of years ago, when thousands of dragon assistants, just like Spike, were freed from their pony overlord captors.

They were all then released into the forests for 'their own good'.

Of course, since all of those dragons grew up in and around ponies, they didn't develop the cojones required to survive like wild dragons did.

There were no survivors.

It was then when Bertha threw a might tantrum, blaming the ponies for this travesty, and promising that one day, all dragons will be born free.

For some reason, she seems to have targeted Spike.

Perhaps Princess Celestia should have said something before giving you like, the first dragon assistant since that little kerfuffle.

Perhaps she should have employed the element of forethought.

Ah well.

To make things worse, you realise you've been trapped in your own basement. In fact, you woke up here.

Bertha must have trapped you there so that you couldn't go chasing after Spike immediately. In fact, along with the letter, she must have been the one to have left the book there as well, as some sort of extremely unsubtle show of force.

But seriously, who does something like that?

Bertha must be one real bitch.

You've tried the door, obviously, to no avail. It's locked up tight. You can't push it open, buck it or slap it apart; you're just not strong enough. And headbutting it is out of the question.

Out. Of. The. Question.

And for some reason your magic doesn’t seem to be working right either. It must be some lasting effect of being in the dragon's magical aura.

Don't ask. It's a thing.

Either way, your spells aren't working right, so it's probably best to be a bit cautious with them.

You take a short look around the basement, trying to see if there's anything you can use in this situation to help you escape.

All the machinery that you used on Pinkie that one episo time is still hanging around, gathering dust. Turns out that after Pinkie, taking brain scans of normal ponies wasn't as interesting anymore.

Over in the other corner are a few crates. You've never really looked into these crates before. You've definitely never needed to. They must have been left here by the previous owner, which would make it Princess Celestia's crates.

Princess Celestia's crates.

Mmmm.

There are, of course, no windows in this room, since it's underground, and the light spell you cast when you woke up is slowly fritzing out. Sparks are jumping all over the place, and your entire horn is flickering around like a DJ Pon-3 gig gone terribly wrong.

Using your light spell isn't a good idea right now. You'd probably best find an alternate light source before your head explodes or something.

Roots are hanging down from above, the ones that make up the treehouse itself, and you doubt yelling would have any effect whatsoever. Besides, if a giant rampaging dragon didn't immediately make your friends seek you out for help, like they always do, the idiots, then they probably didn't notice.

What do you do?

>> Please enter command

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P.S.
To enter a command, it's real easy! Type it into the comments below! please preceed it with ">" without the quotation marks. This is so I can distinguish between actual commands and people just trying to yell at me.

Remember, the story can't proceed without your input and suggestions, so get typing!

To clarify: The list of quests isn't the commands you can choose from. Not at all. You can have Twilight do ANYTHING you want. within reason. The idea is to have you input to SOLVE the quests listed above, as a way of community problem-solving. You also have an inventory, of course, like many other games, and you can combine, use, eat, or whatver you want! Explore, discover, and go rescue the heck out of Spike!

Next Chapter: 2 - 3rd December Estimated time remaining: 6 Minutes