Rainbow Dash seems to have one of those faces. The kind that makes ponies stop and ask her for directions, no matter the situation. Ordinarily, she doesn't think much of it, especially when she's busy setting everything up for the coldest autumn day in Ponyville history. Until a rather unwelcome face shows up: Garble accosts her, demanding she show him the way to the cave of the dragon the Bearers evicted. Realizing that he won't react well if he finds out that Spike lives here, she reluctantly concedes to his demands.
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Tropes found in this story include:
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Apparently, it's normal in dragon society for young dragons to go after their own parents in order to steal their hoards and fuel their own growth, an attempt that will result in their parents killing them if they fail.
- As Garble lets slip, there's only so many hoards to go around...
- Chekhov's Gun: Garble's insistence on walking/climbing up the mountain turns out to be a two-fer; it keeps him safe from the anti-dragon wards he knows will be placed there, but he's also too small to cope with flying in such cold weather. (There are hints here and there: he admits that he doesn't know how to fly at high altitude yet, his wings are described as huddled against his back, and he uses all of his pre-cave flame on his own body, desperately trying to keep himself warm.) In fact, he nearly dies from the cold on the way; only the excess heat being stored in the cave and Rainbow Dash's help saves his life.
- Downer Ending: Absolutely nobody comes away from this story with what they want. Garble fails to get the hoard he needed to become big enough to protect his friends, and is humiliated by the fact that only Rainbow Dash's influence kept him from getting killed by his own father. Rainbow Dash learns a lot about dragons... very little of which she can share with Spike, because she doesn't want to traumatize him by revealing his race really are monsters where things like family members killing each other over their hoards are accepted as normal.
- Foil: Garble is set up as one to Rainbow Dash, to the point that in many ways, she is the more level-headed and patient of the two during the story. The author outright states in a comment on the final chapter that they envisioned Garble as, essentially, "Rainbow Dash who never had any moderating influences or learned any personal lessons." In that sense, he's also her in-story Expy, and it seems the phenomenon is recognized in Equestria: towards the end of the story, Twilight introduces Rainbow to the concept of the speciaganger — someone from one of the other sapient races who's basically living your life as it would have turned out should you have been born among that species. Rainbow pretends to not understand the implications, immediately talking about a griffon version of Daring Do — but finds herself lying awake in her bed, unable to stop thinking about it.
- Hidden Depths: Garble's desire to claim the hoard is rooted in a revolutionary new idea; finding a way for a dragon to keep his friends after growing bigger, instead of disbanding out of paranoia. Also, when using focus on his friends to control the wave of sapience-stealing greed-rush after claiming the hoard, he actually admits (under his breath) to potentially considering Rainbow as part of that group.
- Mundane Utility: The reason for the unseasonably cold day? Ponyville is suffering from a plague of fleas and ticks, so the pegasi create an early hard freeze to kill them off. This is suggested to be a tremendous effort, with a ridiculous amount of heat needing to be both shifted and stored so it can be used to restore the normal fall weather once the special conditions are over. Of course, that means needing places they can store it in.
- No Sense of Direction: Garble, temporarily. From what the red dragon says, there appears to be an internal compass sense which the unusual cold has shut down: in the first chapter, Garble asks Rainbow to point out a basic compass direction — and Sun's already been raised.
- Power Crystal: In an unusual variant that crosses with Gemstone Assault, dragons are able to use certain gems — emeralds and rubies at the very least — to store magical energy and become land mines, which they use to guard their lairs against other dragons. Fortunately for the Bearers, they don't seem to really be able to detect ponies — or at least, the ones on the mountain were only enchanted to pick up on intruding dragons. Rainbow figures out the first part on her own, realizing that numerous ponies used Dragon Mountain as a vantage point to watch the eclipse, and would have both passed and set off any number of stones.
- From what Garble says, the gems must be at least partially exposed in order to work, which makes it possible to scout out traps. However, by the time he and Rainbow reach the top, he's in no condition to spot the white jade scattered among the boulder fragments.
- Power Source: We learn several new uses for gems by dragons — and which have effects on dragons when consuming them. Eating a black diamond, combined with an unidentified second gemstone placed between the fangs, allows a dragon to produce super-heated flames that can melt rock. White opals are used to fuel teleport-triggering flames that allow dragons to easily move their hoards. (This turns out to be the normal use of transit flame: it sends treasure to a backup location when an intruder is getting too close. However, the dragon has to be "attuned" to the hoard, and Garble's words suggest this isn't exactly instantaneous.) White jade can be enchanted to alert the caster of someone approaching their hoard.
- Worldbuilding: This story sets up a lot of lore about dragons in the Continuum.
