Children of a Lesser Dragon God Boy Whelp Thingy Guy

Chapters

The Dragon God Who Wasn't There
Water into Whine
Gods and Squirrels
Wrath of the Virgin
His Noodly Materials

The Dragon God Who Wasn't There

Chapter 2: “The Dragon God Who Wasn’t There”

A familiar figure went hopping up Ponyville’s streets in a blur of pink, treats at the ready.

“Hi!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing in place. “Who are you?!”

She bounced and bounced, staring up at a particularly unwholesome looking dragon. It stared down at her balefully, its spikes rattling across its back and across its scales in a way that seemed to give it any number of horrible lacerations.

“I am Gothrang the Destroyer! I am he who casts mountains to the sea!” the dragon spoke, the flame in his eyes hovering over the pink pony. “It is I who spreads his fire across fortress walls! It is I, Gothrang, who drove the entire nation of the Drijn into ruin! It is I who threw down the seven ancient lords of…”

“Neat!” said Pinkie, and then she pressed a cupcake into his open claws. “Have a great day, okay?”

Gothrang stared at the pony as she bounced away, a happy song lifting from her as she introduced herself to other dragons. The massive drake looked down into his clawed hands, and there witnessed the single most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He reached out his tongue, lapping at the frosting of the diminutive, almost invisible cupcake held in his claws. At once the taste of it spread through him, and all of his senses went wide-awake, filling places inside of him that he had long thought dead with a golden glow.

His jaw trembled, and soon great wet tears were falling to the streets below…

… washing away several market stands and compelling Twilight Sparkle to summon raincoats for Rarity, Spike, and herself.

“Do allow me to introduce Kenbroath, a dear friend,” Celestia said. “Spike, will you not come meet him?”

The little dragon waddled forward, rubbing one arm with the opposite hand. He looked at the ground, remembering his own past encounters with grown drakes. He stopped short as the massive form of the dragon bowed before him.

“Greetings to you, Spike. Greetings, Author of the Code, you who we name The Lawgiver,” Kenbroath said. In a moment the dragon had lifted his head. The big drake extended his claw forward, remembering the pony custom, and with a wink he added, “Though I must say that ‘Spike’ is a fine name all by itself, don’t you think?”

Spike blinked, looked down to the claw, and them took the tip in his own little hands. “Heh,” Spike laughed. “Yeah…. heh. Oh, ummmm… hi. Hiya!” As the little whelp and the big drake made small talk Celestia looked on happily, noting how their frames shared the same hard points. Perhaps, perhaps today was the day to tell Spike that…

No, she realized. Today would be filled with enough surprises, and hard understandings, for the little dragon.

“My, my, Spike! I must say that I’m jealous of the company you keep!” Kenbroath said, laying the charm on so thick that it threatened to sweep Rarity and Twilight down the streets. “Will you do me the delightful favor of introducing me to these lovely mares?”

“Oh, sure!” said Spike, something in the little dragon seeming to come alive. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but having a big drake like this Kenbroath fellow seem so articulate and… well, nice, made him a little happy. It made him very happy, actually. Just the thought that all dragons weren’t big dummies or jerks… well, that was what he’d been hoping all along.

Spike bowed to Rarity, and as she blushed he gathered up her hoof.

“This,” Spike said, presenting her to Kenbroath and the assembly of dragons at large, “is my dear, dear friend Rarity. She’s super talented at dressmaking, she owns her own shop, and she’s graceful, and she’s generous… and beautiful–”

“Lady Rarity,” Kenbroath said, leaning down far to kiss her offered hoof, the unicorn blushing demurely as the massive lips touched to her hoof gently.

“–and, and pretty, and she’s just so awesome,” Spike concluded, little hearts popping over his head, his eyes going soft as he spoke of Rarity’s better traits.

It did not take the assembled dragons long to note the way his eyes settled across the unicorn, and as a group they passed their judgment.

“Hail the Consort of the Lawgiver!” the dragons cried.

Rarity’s jaw hit the ground.

“Oh, oh no,” she stammered. “No, no, no. I’m afraid that you’ve misunderstood the nature of the relationship that I have with my dear Spi…”

“Hail the Consort of the Lawgiver!” the cried once more. “Shower her with gifts and baubles!”

“I’m okay with this,” Rarity said softly, washing back into the library on a wave of precious gems.

“Huh, anywho,” Spike continued, stepping over the pile of trinkets. “This is Twilight Sparkle! She’s my very best friend,” he said, bowing before her and then gathering up her hoof. Twilight giggled a little, surprised that he’d present her so formally.

He passed Twilight’s hoof into the offered tips of Kenbroath’s claws.

“Miss Twilight,” the drake said, once more bending down and affixing a kiss as well as he could without swamping the pony with his lips. “I’ve had the pleasure of hearing all about you from your mentor, my Lady Celestia. She has spoken of your talents, and I am most impressed.”

Twilight blushed and looked away before returning to his gaze with a sheepish smile.

“Twilight is so super amazing, and super strong, and super cool and, and, and she’s even the one who hatched me from my egg and stuff!” Spike called, the little dragon becoming more and more excited as events unfolded.

Kenbroath’s eyes went a little wide. “Extraordinary! Does that mean that you consider yourself Spike’s mother?”

“No!” Spike and Twilight called in unison, and then back up to each other in a mix of surprise, hurt, and embarrassment. A steady, fluttering stream of comments followed.

“Well, it’s kinda like she’s my sister…”

“I do my best to take care of him…”

“But it’s not like she actually is my sister. I’m actually not sure…”

“I admit that I haven’t always done the best job…”

“She treats me real good! Well, except when she makes me work late…”

“I do really love him, it’s just that I have issues stemming from an interpersonal social disorder that developed in my childhood.”

“Sometimes she throws me against the wall.”

The dragons looked on aghast. Well, mostly. Gothrang was still crying his eyes out.

“So, ummm, we take care of one another,” Spike said. “It’s a little bit of everything, I guess.”

“We’re a team!” Twilight said, forcing a small laugh.

“Hail the… Mother-like Sisterly Very Best Friend Thing of The Lawgiver!” the dragons cried. “Shower her with gifts and baubles!”

Spike’s eyes brightened, and he extended his arms in anticipation of receiving another small mountain of gems. Instead, he felt something extraordinarily heavy placed in them, and he fell forward to find a large book in his grasp.

“Yeah, what else would they give Twi,” he mumbled.

Twilight, for her part, took the gift very well. Namely, she quickly snatched it up, spinning with it around and around while squealing like a filly on Hearth’s Warming Day.

“Yes, yes, yes!” she giggled, prancing around and around, the tome waving back and forth in her magic.

“Look, Spike!” she said, lifting him into the air, joining her dragon to her prize in orbits of her very happy body. “Omigosh! It’s a hardbound copy of The Dragon Tales! Omigosh, there’s only like two of these in the world!”

She danced her hooves in excitement, and then turned back to face the dragons.

“Thank you all so much!” she exclaimed, making little leaps in her excitement. “The Dragon Tales are so old and so rare that they’ve never been compiled in one place except for once or twice! I only ever got to see the compendium once, and it was during a special event. They say that the principal authors–”

“Ask her if she’s a virgin!” came a dragon’s voice from deep within Ponyville.

“Ah! Good question!” answered Kenbroath. “Miss Twilight, have you ever known a stallion conjugally?”

“–whaaruu ahhhua rawwwialllyy,” Twilight concluded, her ability to articulate decreasing as a blush erupted across her face.

“The only reason we ask is because it’s quite impossible for a maiden dragon dam to hatch an egg with her innate magic, so if you are still unspoiled then that must make you extraordinarily powerful, as we have reason to believe,” Kenbroath continued, not noticing how much redder Twilight was becoming.

“Rewwahh greeuuurrrr, dagggghhhh,” Twilight continued, struggling to form words as her raincoat burst into ash at the power of her embarrassment.

“Oh dear,” Celestia said, rising to her hooves, noticing how the blush across Twilight’s features had become so warm that it warped the paint on the nearby Golden Oaks Library sign.

“Well, yeah she’s that powerful!” Spike answered. “Sure she is! She’s amazing and stuff, and the closest thing to a stallion she’s ever been with is in a box in her nightsta…”

At once the library sign erupted into flames. “Kitchen!” the unicorn called, wrapping Spike in her magic, bouncing him off the doorpost as she retreated inside.

“Do give us a few moments,” Celestia said, following the sounds of a heated discussion as it disappeared within the tree.

As the door closed, the dragons were left outside. In their midst the good citizens of Ponyville did their best to go about their business, their eyes wide as they tried to maneuver around the draconic obstacles that had appeared overnight.

Silence hung around Ponyville, the only truly noticeable sounds being the slow crackling of the flames that were consuming the library sign and Gothrang’s continued wailing.

“Verily, she’s a virgin,” said one dragon.

A chorus of agreement arose from the assembly.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

Inside the library, Princess Celestia discovered Rarity humming happily as she stacked and counted her gems. Her happy tones were somewhat muffled by the bickering voices of Twilight Sparkle and Spike as they discussed the disparity between dragon and pony cultural mores.

Spike seemed to be making the argument that the dragons thought that she was amazing, and that she had nothing to be embarrassed about.

Twilight was making the counterpoint that, whatever the dragons thought of her, the little secrets that they knew about one another weren’t the kind of things she wanted shouted out where all of Ponyville could hear!

“I don’t get it, Twi!” he answered in a huff, folding his arms. “Why is it such a big deal that you haven’t started dating yet? Everypony knows how busy you are and stuff, it’s not like it’s a surprise or anything.”

Twilight stopped in mid shout, literally hovering in the air.

“Dating?”

“Yeah, ummm, isn’t that what ‘virgin’ means? Somepony who isn’t married, or has never been on a date?” he said, dancing his fingers together anxiously.

“Spike,” Twilight said softly, thudding to the ground, “you think ‘virgin’ means… oh. Oh! Well, yes, I suppose… I mean, under ideal circumstances…”

Spike helped her back to her hooves.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Isn’t that what it means? That you haven’t found your special somepony yet? Twi?”

He rubbed her foreleg, and Twilight saw the struggle for understanding that was falling through her little dragon.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it means… right?” he asked, tilting his head as he searched through her eyes. “It means that you haven’t found the stallion who’s gonna be great to you, who is gonna take care of you? Right? The one who’s gonna love you, who is going to treat you as wonderful as you deserve to be treated? It means you’re waitin’ for that special stallion–”

Twilight’s eyes watered, and she gathered her great little guy into a tight hug. Spike’s arms came up around her sides, embracing the pony that meant the most to him in the world, the one he desperately hoped would find true love in her life… that she would find somepony who would make her as happy as she truly deserved to be.

His embrace told her this, and in response to his hopes her muzzle fell down to the top of his head, nuzzling there tenderly.

“Awwww!” squealed Rarity.

“Awwww!” sighed Celestia.

“D’aaawwww!” whispered the dragons that were staring in through the windows.

“–and that you’ve never had sex,” Spike softly concluded, hiding a smirk.

“What?” Twilight said.

“I said, ‘and so what comes next?’ What do they want from me, Twi?” he said, releasing her from his embrace.

“I… I don’t know,” Twilight said, running her hoof through his frills. “Please, Princess, do you have any idea what is going on?”

“Oh, it certainly is all quite easy to explain,” began Princess Celestia. “It is simply that the dragons are aware of Spike writing The Noble Dragon Code. Kenbroath broached the subject, you see. Now, in their minds, this makes him the living incarnation of a spiritual figure that is supposed to bring them back to the state of glory and honor that they held millennia ago. This Lawgiver, it is said, will return them to the point before their society collapsed. They are simply here to receive high, sacred knowledge.”

“Oh,” said Spike with the slightest of whimpers.

“In short,” Celestia said, smiling down over them, “there are some of them who believe Spike is something akin to a god.”

“Oh,” said Spike, this time with a much louder whimper.

“B-But Princess!” Twilight said, her hooves dancing in place. “That’s ridiculous! I mean, wow, he’s just a little whelp! This, this is ridiculous! That’s almost as ridiculous as… as me becoming an alicorn!”

“Hey,” Spike said with a laugh, “it’s not that ridiculous!”

“I know, right?” Twilight said, giggling at her little joke.

“Good one, Twi!” the dragon said with a chuckle.

“Oh, darling, what an image!” Rarity said, her delicate laughter joining that of her friends.

“Ha!” laughed the assembly of dragons that stood at the windows.

Celestia smirked a knowing smirk.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

The occupants of the library recovered from their hysterics, and after a short while their attention turned back to the smiling figure of the alicorn.

“Princess?” Spike asked, walking up to Celestia sheepishly. “Why… w-what do they want me to do? I mean, jeez, I’m no god. I’m just an assistant, ya know?”

“I did explain as much to Kenbroath,” Celestia said, hiding a withdrawn sigh. She let serenity settle back upon her features before continuing. “He believes that there is simply too much to gain from letting Spike explain the code to let the opportunity slip away.”

“P-princess?” Spike asked. “I know that ponies don’t… don’t know much about dragons, but… well, what is there to gain?”

Celestia smiled down over him once more, and then turned to the many eyes that stared in through the windows. Her head bowed slightly, and some of the light seemed to come out of her.

“The draconic peoples have always been a… shall we say, shy race,” Celestia said, her voice falling. “We may not know much about their biology, and they have not been inclined to share.”

The eyes in the windows all blinked in unison, making a rather noticeable noise.

“But, Spike, the brighter a star shines, the more attention it gathers, you see.”

Celestia lifted her head, as though pondering the vast living oak into which the library had been set. A single contemplative note lifted in her throat, and soon the sweet melody of the alicorn’s voice began to lift around the room.

It was a song, a ballad. As Celestia’s words began to fill the room, Rarity swept her sofa from beyond wherever her magic stowed it. Rather than fall over in a bit of unnecessary melodrama, she instead patted the cushions, offering Twilight and Spike a seat.

To his great joy Spike felt Rarity wrapping him with her forelegs, placing him in the hollow between her chest and barrel.

The Daybringer’s sun streamed in through the few spaces between the eyes that peered in through the window, catching her in shafts of light as the dragons heard her words, and more than a few of the eyes that gazed upon her went misty.

Procer Celestia Invictus, The Daybringer, The Firstborn Alicorn, lifted her song around the library, her sweet notes filling the room. There was a deep bass thrum, the dragons adding their own voices, holding a deep tone that fell through the library.

It was a ballad of ancient days and forgotten realms. It was a song about high places upon young mountains. It was the song of the fall of the dragons… the great lament of their kind, the Difetha.

Held tightly to the pony he adored, caught in her delicate perfumes and scent, Spike could be forgiven for letting his mind wander… for letting it get caught up in the images that the song lifted around the library.

In his mind, Spike saw the great keeps of the dragons of old. These were polished halls where immense dragons came and went, each one arrayed in ornaments of gold, silver, and gems too fantastic to be named.

The song showed him great councils held above the clouds, showed him lords and ladies in their draconic majesty. The song showed him vast storerooms of precious things… but, more importantly, it showed him much more than these petty baubles.

It showed him dragons winging across continents, learning and knowledge falling behind them as gifts over a young world. It showed him legends and myths made real at the brush of a clawed hand. The song opened the world to him, and the dragons lifted above it in nobility and grace.

He heard the songs of the dragons, of his ancient kin. He saw ranges of mountains, each snow-capped peak embraced by a dragon that lifted their melody, adding it to that of the others until the world below was filled with the music, as it rolled through valleys and thundered across the plains.

The dragons were singing, their long-lost voices echoing down the millennia in the song that passed Celestia’s lips, on the deep thrum that sank through the library. Spike saw them, heard them, and deep within himself he felt his own song lift to match theirs… to add his voice to the harmony.

Celestia’s voice changed, and the song shifted.

The shafts of light that fell around the room seemed to dim, and with it some of the beauty came out of the words. Instead, loss filled the alicorn’s voice, and sadness gathered in her tones.

Greed, avarice, and jealousy… these crept into the music, but it did not begin where Spike suspected it would. As the song progressed, even the unicorns gasped in amazement, and he felt himself pulled that much closer to their warm coats.

Ten thousand races gathered, their armies filling the savannahs and dry riverbeds, spilling across the woodlots and farms.

Great vast machines, horrible and black, rumbled up the stone roads. Metals he could not name tipped them, and he knew they must only have one purpose… the slaying of dragons.

The song that lifted from Celestia threw every stereotype upside down, flipped Spike’s perceptions of his own kind as thoroughly as if he’d been kicked down the stairs.

The armies stormed the mountains, devastated the halls, and laid siege to the keeps of the dragons. Their horrid machines sprang to life, and bolts went through the air, stealing out the lives of the dragons that swooped upon them.

Dragon’s fire rolled out across the plains, and their enemies died by the thousands. Yet, on they came in tides of anger, of hatred fueled by lies, until the very aeries of the dragon lords were deluged by an onslaught of flesh, armor, and steel.

Roars of dragons mixed with the cries of languages lost to time, and images of warriors streaming into nesting warrens fell out of Celestia’s lips. Mother dragons fell to the cold stones, their lives stolen out as their eggs were smashed and their fingerlings cried and mewled.

The stereotypes were reversed. It was greed that drew these races, that made them stoop to gather up great handfuls of the dragon’s gems as they pushed forward into the stony keeps. There, the last High King of the Dragons clashed with his tormentors… and his vast crown went rolling along the passages as his head hit the floor, the purple of his blood gathering in pools beneath his still form.

Fire erupted across the mountaintops, and a powerful magic drew itself across them all. From a mountain nearby a witch looked on, her two daughters at her side, and she smiled at the victory of her treachery.

The song spoke of the exodus of the dragons, the draconic peoples escaping their desecrated aeries, the survivors fleeing far and wide. They found small hollows or caves in forgotten places. They flew on and on, hoping to escape the wrath that had fallen on them from nowhere.

They became less… they simply began to hoard for themselves, became solitary creatures that invoked the very image of the greed that had destroyed their realms.

Spike’s eyes watered, and he wiped his face against Rarity’s legs as the song presented him with the fall of the dragons, of the cataclysm that turned them into animals.

At once, a strong resolve passed through the whelp, and he lifted himself from Rarity’s embrace. If… if there was a chance that The Noble Dragon Code could help them, make them go back to that world… to help them stop being jerks…

“Princess?” he said, stepping forward. “I’ll do it. I’ll…”

There was a splash, and Spike fell forward into the great reservoir that had developed in the library while the princess had sung her song.

“Very well, Spike,” Celestia added, clearing her throat as she floated on the table that held the unicorn bust. She looked to the eyes that peered in through the widows, each one filled with the tears that had found their way into the library.

The front door of the library came open, washing the couch and its occupants out into the street. The great flood of tears extinguished the smoldering library sign, and left the two unicorns, the alicorn, and the little dragon god staring up into the blubbering faces of a few hundred dragons.

“Umm,” Spike said nervously. “Okay, yeah. Do… do you all wanna hear about the code thing Twi and I came up with?”

Great cheers erupted from the crowd, and soon more rain of tears fell over them, this time of joy… of great sopping bucket loads of joy. Spike groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. In a moment, Twilight had stepped forward, placing the raincoat she had summoned earlier around the dragon.

“Hail The Lawgiver!” the dragons cried as Kenbroath lowered his tail, lifting Spike upon his back. “May his words bring solace! May his code prove true! May his adorable widdle rain hat stay firmly affixed to his cute widdle noggin!”

The god sighed and put his head in his hands.

Twilight stepped forward, and Kenbroath scooped her up as well.

“All hail Twilight Sparkle! All hail the virgin!” the dragons cried, their voices lifting high and settling over Ponyville in exactly the right way to make sure that all of the ponies heard each and every word.

Twilight groaned in frustration, hiding behind the hoof she had placed over her eyes.

“All hail her unblemished beauty! All hail her uncorrupted nature! All hail her untouched perfection!” they cried, not noticing how close to death by embarrassment Twilight was coming. Kenbroath chuckled, and then settled her upon his back.

Rarity stepped forward, quite impressed by the lovely titles. She lifted her forehoof and let her mane catch in the sun, the elegant twist of her hair falling out behind her. The dragons caught the sultry motions that came so easily to her, and their eyes shifted back and forth to one another.

The dragons lifted their voices. “All hail Rarity!” they said in unison. “All hail the Consort of the Lawgiver! All hail… well, ummm…”

An uncomfortable silence followed, and a mumbling Rarity settled upon Kenbroath’s back, looking very put upon and disappointed in their critical response to her life choices.

Before long Celestia had joined them, and together the assembly made their way to a nearby meadow. The Mill Creek Bridge gave a small “Eep!” as dragons gingerly made their way across the stream to find a place to sit and listen to their adorable new god.

Spike scrambled up Kenbroath’s scales, stopping only to huff and pant and lay aside his raincoat.

A familiar dragon stood in the crowd, watching the whelp with a judgmental stare.

“This is stupid,” Garble said.

“Dude! C’mon, just… cool it!” replied the white dragon at his side, another juvenile.

“Naw, this is crap!” Garble announced, throwing his arms up in the air. “That’s the little kid who tried to impress us during the migration! The kid didn’t know one thing about being a dragon, and now we’re supposed to listen to his rules?”

“Uh, hey,” answered another adolescent, a sturdy looking one. “Like, maybe that’s the point… and stuff?”

“Heh, what?” Garble said, rolling his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Dude, maybe that’s what will make this work, okay?” the white dragon continued, stretching his arms forward, looking to Garble with the shadow of hope in his eyes. “I mean, maybe the fact that he’s… well, different, maybe that makes all the difference?”

Garble grabbed the white drake by the shoulders, spinning him around.

“Oh, shut up!” Garble said, pointing his clawed finger directly into the white dragon’s face. “You wanna give up the good life we got, give up living like a real dragon? Huh, Treble? Fine… be a pussy.”

“Hey, dude, that’s not…” Treble stammered, shrinking back under Garble’s words.

“Hey!” Garble continued, thrusting his clawed finger against Treble’s chest. “You wanna be a pony? We’ll call ya Tea Cozy! We’ll get ya an apron so you can go to your parties with their namby-pamby, pretty-witty, sparkly-warkly princesses, you great big fruit! I bet…”

“Ahem,” said a female voice, and a great shock of magic went across the scene with a thunderous rumble. The dragon’s faces went gaunt, and as Princess Celestia walked among the adolescents her voice was soft, her eyes fluttered, her words drifted over them in giggles…

… and her toilet plunger hung in her magic with a formidable, rubbery presence.

“Thank you very much for calling me ‘pretty’, and ‘witty’,” she said, her mane tickling beneath Garble’s nose, driving of shock and fear through him. “Unless, perhaps, I failed to understand the context?”

The plunger drifted along, hovering at the edges of his vision. Garble’s breaths became shallow, his mouth hanging open to draw at each one as panic rose behind his eyes.

“I was not mistaken, was I?” she cooed, batting her eyes at him. “You do find me ‘pretty’, do you not? You do believe me ‘witty’, I hope?”

Her tail draped across his stomach scales… and her plunger traced the length of his tail. Inside his own mind, Garble began to scream as the worst nightmares of his race came alive before him.

“Y-yeah,” he said with a shutter, watching as the other dragons cowered in the presence of The Daybringer, their eyes looking upon her plunger, knowing of the millennia of rumors that surrounded it.

“That makes me very happy, young drake,” Celestia said softly, leaning against him tenderly… the plunger lifting and falling against his arm in wafts of her magic. “You said that my mane was sparkly. Thank you so much for noting that, as I do try my hardest to keep it so. Do you like my mane, young drake?”

Garble shook his head as quickly as he could. He would have done it faster, but doing so probably would have caused his Adam’s Apple to explode out of his throat. As the rubbery defiler traced across his shoulders he nearly swallowed his entire larynx in alarm.

“I want to hear you say it, young drake,” Celestia said, lifting her muzzle to his ear, her giggle falling down into a demanding hiss.

“I… I, I uh…” Garble began, feeling the long, yellow handle of the plunger slowly tickling the back of his neck, moving in agonizing inches that seemed to take days to complete. White flashes of terror shot through him, and he fought for words.

“I really like your mane!” he bellowed, tears falling from his eyes.

“How wonderful! Thank you so very much,” Celestia giggled, holding the notes as they fell among the horrified crowd. “Now, I am sorry that you are dubious as to what is transpiring here, but if you are not able to, at the very least, listen to ideas that challenge your beliefs…”

She slowly drew the plunger around his body, tracing his arm until it gently pressed against the scales on his chest.

“… then I can think…”

She tapped it to his chest, and then dropped it down a few inches across the quivering, shaking dragon’s body.

“… of some other ways…”

Horrors bred horrors, and as the instrument of untold generations of terror touched to his body, Garble fought to breathe.

“… to pass the afternoon.”

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge, the sound of its cry being drowned out as Garble pelted across it. He went screaming down Ponyville’s streets, so mortified and terror-driven that he seemed to forget that he knew how to fly.

The assembly of dragons watched him go until he became a single speck on the distant horizon, his cries following him, and then turned back to Celestia. They gazed upon the princess with no small amount of worry painted across their features.

“Oh, my,” she said with another giggle. “I can only assume that he was not enthusiastic about either prospect.”

She sat in the spot that Garble had vacated, directly in the middle of the group of juvenile and adolescent dragons. Her plunger came down gently at her side, and as the solar winds continued to drift through her mane she sighed an inward sigh, and then let serenity fill her features once more.

“I suppose that it falls to the rest of us polite dragons to sit and listen with a modicum of respect, does it not?” she asked the crowd at large.

“Yes, Ma’am!” came a chorus of replies, and with that the assembly went silent, staring directly towards Kenbroath, and great big sweat drops appearing on the faces of the decidedly attentive adolescents.

All the dragons went silent… except for Gothrang, who was still cradling his tiny cupcake and pouring great wet streams of tears.

“Oh, okay… ummm, hiya!” Spike said, waving to the crowd.

“It’s a blessing!” a voice cried from within the assembly. “A blessing from the…”

Spike quickly retracted his hand.

“Oh, never mind!” concluded the voice.

Spike wiped the sweat from his brow, and then tried once more to engage his audience. He paced back and forth across Kenbroath’s head, the tip of his finger in his mouth.

“Okay,” he said, spinning back to the assembled dragons. “Now, you all came here to learn about The Noble Dragon Code, right?”

“All hail The Lawgiver! All hail the Author of the Code!” they cried, their winds knocking him from his perch.

“Whoa!” Spike said as he dangled precariously off of Kenbroath’s head. The large drake arched an eyebrow, helping the whelp regain his place. “Okay, whoa… alright, ummm. Okay, let me ask ya all this, how many of you have, well, read the code?”

Kenbroath raised his massive clawed hand into the air. It was conspicuous in its solitude.

“Well, Spike,” Kenbroath said, a self-conscious shadow falling across him, “to be fair, the single copy did cost me seven-hundred thousand bits…”

“Wow, what? Whoa! I only got, like, three cents in royalties!” Spike said in a huff, crossing his arms.

“Well, the code only cost me two bits, forty-seven cents,” he said, his eyes straining to lift themselves up high enough to see the whelp. “The rest went towards the repairs of the bingo hall–”

“Archive,” Celestia said.

“–archive, as I had some troubles finding a door, you see,” he concluded.

Spike pinched the bridge of his nose and grumbled. “Okay,“ he said, “I’ll read you the code, and then we’ll go back and talk about the important stuff. Now, any dragons out there wanna take notes?”

Quite a few clawed hands went into the air.

“Okay! That’s good! That’s great!” he said, hopping in place. “My assistant, Twilight Sparkle, will get you each a pencil, and…”

“What?” came the voice of the unicorn, sounding very flat and uninspired.

“Please, Twi, this is really important and stuff,” the dragon pleaded, literally folding his hands to her. “Just do it for me, huh, please?”

Twilight Sparkle grumbled, and in a flash their familiar old pencil sharpener had appeared before her… along with about five hundred boxes of fresh, new pencils. The unicorn gave a single grumble, and affecting a disinterested gaze she began sharpening the pencils one at a time.

“Ya know these are going to be way too small for them, right?” she called up, barely lifting her eyes from her grumpy gaze of industrial grade grumpiness.

“Must you make fun of all the stuff I do?” he said, sighing once more.

Rarity stifled a giggle as she listened to the exchange between her friends, and held another as she watched Grumplight Grumple work her way through the boxes of bright yellow pencils.

“And my lovely assistant, Rarity, will bring you all some notepads!” he said to the assembly.

“What?” the elegant mare asked, and in an instant Twilight’s magic washed over her, burying her in a few hundred notepads.

The two unicorns stuck their tongues out at once another as Rarity gathered the pads in her magic. After fluffing her mane, she turned out towards the crowd, and high above Spike began his exhortations.

“Now, umm, what I want ya to know is that… well, this is gonna be tough.” He began, lifting his hand into the air. “There’s a lot of hard, dirty work to be done if we wanna try to live by the code, okay?”

Spike cleared his throat, feeling a little more confident.

“It’s gonna take a long time to try to figure out what the code means for each of you, and you are gonna hafta try to give up a lot of stuff that seems like fun, and in the end the only reward is a life of poverty, charity, and abstinence. So, if that doesn’t appeal to you, then feel free to give up and fly–”

There was a great rush of wind, and the ponies and dragons were buffeted by it. The winds rolled across the hills of Central Equestria, climbing the mountains, rolling across rivers, and driving down the valleys.

Spike lifted his head to see more than half of the dragons already departing into the blue sky beyond.

His hands fell down at his side, hanging loose. His jaw fell open, and his entire body seemed to deflate a touch.

“–away.”

“Hooray!” called a voice from the noticeably depleted assembly. “Abstinence!”

Spike squeaked a wounded squeak.

“Remarkable!” said Kenbroath, all irony absent from his voice. “In one fell swoop you’ve managed to reduce the number of followers to the hopelessly devoted and the demented fundamentalists!”

Spike squeaked once more.

“Well played, Spike, well played!” Kenbroath said, genuinely impressed.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

Water into Whine

Chapter 3: “Water into Whine”

“And, so… well, that’s The Noble Dragon Code,” Spike said, setting the index cards down at his side.

The assembly of dragons stared back at him.

“So, ummm… any questions?” he asked, dancing his fingers together.

An awkward silence sat around the meadow, one that hovered there as the dragons blinked, each one lost in the high, holy sacred mysteries that had just been read to them on index cards written with crayon.

“I have a question,” Grumplight Grumple said, still unmoved from her stare of heavily grumpified grumpiness.

“Ummm, yeah? Twi?” he said, staring down to her. He couldn’t help but notice all of the pencils, and the small mountain of pencil shavings, that sat upon Kenbroath’s back.

“Ya know that you totally read the whole thing before I had a chance to pass out pencils, right?!” she said, her voice filling with several varying degrees of grumpiness not previously known to ponykind.

“Oh… well, it doesn’t matter, they were too small for them to use anyway, ya know,” Spike said, turning back to the assembly.

Twilight’s cry of frustration was largely ignored as Spike once again asked the crowd, “Okay, any questions, really?”

“Oh Spikey-Wikey!” came Rarity’s voice, floating up to him on the happy tones he adored. “I should just like to note, just in passing, that you didn’t let me finish passing out the notepads, either!”

Spike looked down to her, and as her right eye twitched he recoiled in horror.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh, once more pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, any dragons out there have a question about the code?”

A lot of silence, and blinking, met him. Spike arched an eyebrow, and gazed down at Kenbroath. The massive drake shrugged his shoulders at the little whelp… sending Twilight tumbling amid her pencil shavings.

“Really?” Spike said, addressing the crowd. “You all came here and none of you even… okay, fine. Just, just tell me what ya think is wrong or stuff, okay?”

There was a polite cough, and in the back a rather yellowish dragon raised his clawed hand into the air.

“Forgive me, Lawgiver, Author of the Code, Spirit Walker… forgive me, oh he who is the Truth Speaker, the Coursefinder,” the dragon said.

Spike twisted his body left and right, his eyes panning around him, wondering who in Equestria the dragon could possibly be talking to. After a moment, Spike realized it was no creature other than himself.

“Oh, ummm, yeah, go ahead… ah, what was your name?” Spike asked.

“Vulgar the Unmentionable, Lawgiver,” the dragon replied.

“So, ummm, Vulgar, what is it that…” Spike began.

“Please don’t mention my name, Lawgiver… it’s unmentionable,” the dragon added, staring to the ground sheepishly.

“Ohhhhkkkaaayyyy,” Spike said, arching his eyebrow another few degrees higher. “What is it about the code that bothers you… nameless dragon guy.”

“Well, forgive me my Lawgiver, I do not mean to invoke your high, holy judgment,” the dragon said, bowing low.

“I… I, okay, wow. Yeah, you don’t have to worry about that too much,” Spike said with a sigh, placing his face in the palm of his hand.

“Merciful is The Lawgiver!” cried the dragons.

Spike sighed again. He lifted his spare hand, rolling it through the air as though attempting to conjure the rest of Vulgar’s commentary.

“Well, Lawgiver, it’s simply that the code, well,” the dragon began. Vulgar stopped, coughed politely, and then darted his eyes around the group. “It’s just that the code, well… seriously?”

Spike’s arms hung low in front of him, and he eyed the crowd with a sort of distant disapproval, as though hoping that they’d all somehow spontaneously combust, be swallowed up by the earth, or be sucked into an alternate dimension filled with shopping lists and properly spell-checked erotica.

He grumbled a little grumble, and then picked up his index cards once more.

“Look,” he said, lifting them up, the crayon-strewn holy texts dancing in the perceptions of the adherents below. “I know that it’s all really kinda weird for you, as you’ve lived the way you have for like… I dunno, millennia? Eons? Centuries?”

The assembly lifted their clawed hands, wavering them about and giving a collective “meh”.

“Okay, the whole point of The Noble Dragon Code is to give dragons a chance to be, well… better, ya know? I know these were really specific, but when ya look at what they mean when we put ‘em together, they tell us bigger things, okay? Like, they make bigger thoughts about how we should act, what we should try to be, you see? Like, for example, if ya take these here…”

He tried to pull out a few selected cards, but soon a jumble of paper appeared in his hands. As he snatched a few out of the air, Spike continued his thoughts.

“Like, okay, if you put some of these together, they become bigger truths, right? For example, if we talk about these, they show us-”

“All hail The Lawgiver for giving us his larger truths!” cried a dragon.

“All hail The Lawgiver for giving us his individual laws in the code!” cried another.

The two eyed each other.

“Indeed, great are the truths, but the laws are what guide us,” the second said with a baleful rumble.

“Verily, but it is the truths that supersede the laws,” growled the first.

“Sacrilege!” cried the second.

“Blasphemy!” cried the first.

At once they were on each other, their claws flashing, their teeth snapping. Great brown clouds of dust rising into the sky as they tumbled across the meadow, their tails lashing out, their wings going wide as they fumed, hissed, and bit.

“–avoid conflicts, and getting into fights, and stuff,” Spike said, his voice betraying a tremor as it drifted off in disappointment.

The assembly watched the two dragons tussle, the cries and growls of their battle interrupted only by the sound of Spike slapping his own forehead.

“Ahem.”

The two dragons slowed their fray, and as the plunger of Celestia Invictus floated before them they both gulped, and then retook their seats, looking slightly worse for wear.

“Like I was saying,” Spike continued, a rumble in his voice, “there’s bigger ideas in here than just rules, okay?”

He flipped through the index cards once more, and more fell from his grasp as he tried to place them in some kind of order. He moaned, and then leaned down to pick up as many as he could.

“The most important thing, ya see, is how we treat others. Creatures only look on us as, well… jerks. Do we wanna be jerks?”

“Yes!” the assembly cried.

“No! No we don’t!” Spike yelled, jumping in place upon Kenbroath’s head.

“No we don’t!” the assembly cried, correcting themselves.

“No, we want to be noble dragons, like we can be! Like we should be!” Spike implored. He opened his arms wide to them, their pudgy-cheeked god offering them his exhortations.

“Listen, what do you guys know about ponies?” he asked, turning to the crowd.

“They’re delicious!” called an anonymous voice.

The entire population of Ponyville felt a cold chill go up their spines.

“Ummm. Or… so I’m told,” came the same voice, sliding back into anonymity as it noticed the looks upon the faces of The Lawgiver and his friends.

After the nightmares finished screaming inside Spike’s mind, he returned to the task at hand. This was, of course, the unenviable task of attempting to turn his entire race back from the animalistic brutes they had become, which was an awful lot to fit one little dragon’s hand, truth be told.

The largest mass incident of dragon-eyebrow-arching in recorded history transpired as Spike strolled back and forth across Kenbroaths’s mighty brow. As the dragons watched, Spike hummed contemplatively, his finger upon his lips.

Their eyes slowly shifted back and forth as Spike paced up and down Kenbroath’s nose, the massive dragon going cross-eyed beneath him as he made his thoughtful noises. For a few minutes only the song of birds, Gothrang’s continued wailing, the rush of the waters beneath the petrified Mill Creek Bridge, and the continued grumblings of a grumpified grump of a unicorn (and the whirl of her pencil sharpener) rolled across the scene.

“Okay… okay, ummm, why they should listen to the code?” Spike pondered. “How do I show them what it’s like not to be greedy or be big dummy jerks?”

Spike’s eyes lifted to the village of Ponyville. Despite the substantial increase in the number of dragons in the streets, it was still a remarkably happy place, even if the denizens seemed a touch more wide-eyed than usual.

Spike’s mind lit up, and a smile went across his features.

“Oh, hey!” he called, giving a small, enthusiastic leap. “What I want ya all to do,” he said, pointing to his draconic adherents, “is take a good look at the ponies, okay?”

Davenport lay upon his back, the cool, smooth paving stones of the street brushing against his coat, driving coldness through him. His heart pounded, his breaths became shallow, and great streaks of sweat and tears poured down his face.

His hooves pawed at the stones weakly, the stallion’s mind racing as he felt himself pressed further into the unyielding cobblestones.

Above him, a dozen vast, reptilian eyes peered down over him. They were immense, and they filled his vision. The dragons peered down across him, drove their sight through him. The dragon’s eyes gauged him, picked apart the fibers of his being, their irises like scalpels that vivisected his very soul, which ripped apart…

“C’mon! I didn’t mean for you to literally look at them, ya know!” Spike cried.

“Oh,” mouthed one of the dragons, and soon they had returned to their spaces in the green meadow, leaving a tearful, heaving Davenport awash in his thoughts about predation, quills, his mortality, sofas, his loved ones, and other various and sundry mixed imponderables.

“What I meant was, what is it that makes the ponies so much different from us?” Spike said, crossing his legs as he sat on Kenbroath’s nose.

The dragons scratched their heads. They looked at one another and made uncertain sounds before awkwardly turning back to their adorable little god.

“Hooves?” volunteered a rather stark crimson dragon.

“Uh, nope,” answered Spike.

“Manes?” asked another.

“No,” Spike answered flatly.

“Is it their penchant for bursting out into elaborate and intricate musical numbers,” a dragon asked, “ones that seemingly would have involved months of rehearsals and seem to include the entire population of these cities?”

“Yes!” Spike called. In an instant he startled in place.

“Well, no, not really, but that’s kinda closer,” he said, rolling his hands through the air. This both confused those dragons that had no idea what they were talking about, and disappointed a few others… specifically, those who had long-hidden secret desires about starring in musicals.

“Listen!” Spike said, interrupting their daydreams. “Look, what makes the ponies so different from us is the way that they treat one another. They care about one another, they treat each other the way… well, the way that they would want to be treated. I grew up raised by ponies, and I’ve observed this my whole life, okay? It’s kinda become just a regular, natural way of doing things for me, and I think that the code could help us…”

“All praise the intrinsic kindness of The Lawbriger!” roared a familiar voice.

“All acclaim the glorious gentleness of the Author of the Code!” answered another familiar draconic rumble.

The two eyed each other.

“Indeed, great is his gentleness, but it was his innate kindness that first appeared,” the second said with a baleful rumble.

“Verily, but without the gentleness of His Holiness–”

“His Holiness? Really?” Spike said with ample doubt.

“– the kindness would have faltered,” growled the first.

“Sacrilege!” cried the second.

“Blasphemy!” cried the first.

Once more the two massive dragons went rolling across the meadow, their teeth and claws bared, their great long tails whipping about horrifically.

“So, like… like I was saying, the ponies care about one another. They treat each other real good,” Spike said, his voice slowing, falling into a shadow of disillusionment as the two battling dragons tore great holes in the earth. “And they don’t get into fights… yeah…”

“Ahem,” lifted Celestia’s voice once more.

The two larger dragons stopped in mid-tussle. The particularly prominent form of a toilet plunger once more stood before them, and the repentant creatures once more took their seats. The sweat that cascaded off of them added a salty tang to the air, one that made Rarity gag discreetly. As they did, their faces, and all of the other draconic faces in the crowd (and the ponies as well, not to forget them), all turned and looked at the figure that sat on top of Kenbroath’s head.

He was unhappy. Their little purple god was unhappy.

“Wow, really?” he said, putting his hands on his hips in a way that was supposed to communicate deep disappointment, but which instead made him wobble unsteadily.

“Look, what’s different about the ponies is that they do three things. They treat each other the way that they want to be treated, they play by the rules, and they show respect to those who have earned respect,” he said, tapping his finger into the palm of his other hand. “We, well… we don’t. Now, if you had lived with the ponies the way that I had…”

“Blessed is the foresight of The Lawgiver!” cried another dragon. “He has bid us to live as Equestrians!”

“Great is the insight of the Author the Code!” agreed another. “His Holiness offers us life among the Clan of Canter!”

“We hafta live with the ponies!” called a less articulate one, and soon the assembly of dragons was once more racing through the meadow and down into the rather surprised streets of Ponyville below.

Spike, watching them go, seemed to lose the ability to articulate rational thought, simply repeating his finger jab over and over until he lost all co-ordination and collapsed in tiny pile of dragon god upon Kenbroath’s head.

“Live with the ponies?” Kenbroath asked. “Interesting. I attempted that once before.”

“There are still stains that might, magic, and all-purpose cleaning solutions have not removed from Canterlot,” giggled Celestia, looking up to him.

Kenbroath only smiled in reply.

Smiling was not particularly the first thing crossing the minds of most of the citizens of Ponyville at that moment. In reality, the first thing crossing most of their minds was, “How do I avoid being eaten by/steer clear of getting crushed by/set up renters insurance for these dragons?”

That would of course imply that the ponies were using their rational minds, which would be a wholly inaccurate statement to make. Many ponies were, in fact, screaming, running around in circles, and flailing their hooves over their heads.

They were, of course, upset.

The dragons, having taken wild liberties with what their purple god had been about to say, began doing their best to live with, and as, Equestrians.

Almost immediately a juvenile dragon went running up the street, his face painted with almost obscene amounts of joy. Beneath either of his arms, a rather wide-eyed Lyra and surprised Bon-Bon listened in a combination of horror, fear and bemusement.

“We’ll go to the park, and have a tea party, and fly kites!” the young drake called, leading them off on some grand adventure. “We’ll have a seven-legged race, and we’ll go to an ice cream social…”

The two simply stared ahead, unspeaking.

Meanwhile, at Sugar Cube Corner, one dragon stuck his head in the second story, entering just about where Pinkie’s suite was located. As Gummy chirped in reptilian solidarity, the dragon pushed his head all the way through in a desperate attempt to determine where the guest lavatory was located.

This concluded when he accidentally pushed all the way through the building, his head emerging on the other side.

This had the effect of thrusting Mister and Misses Cake out of the second floor ahead of their newfound tenant. They landed quite safely, as they had been in their bed at the time, and it had softened their fall. That did present the situation that the Cakes, having taken advantage of the emptiness of their home that day, had been partaking in marital relations at the time.

Cup Cake looked up to discover that she and her husband were now upon their rather crumpled bed and in the middle of the street, she laying above her husband as deep blushes came over their faces.

A rather red-faced Cup Cake threw her hoof over her mouth to conceal her rather libidinous vocalizations. She looked down at him, and after a moment they realized that they weren’t attracting a particularly great amount of attention, namely because most other ponies were screaming and running around in circles as dragons began investing in real estate.

Therefore, all other concerns being put aside for the moment, she smiled a naughty little smile and then pulled the sheet back over her spouse and herself, and simply carried on from just about where they had been interrupted.

Not far away, another dragon sat with his head buried deep within city hall.

“No, seriously,” rumbled the immense dragon, his clawed hand gesturing a questioning wave while his words fell out into the streets.

“Seriously,” he asked once more, apparently having cornered the mayor at her desk, “what is it that you actually do?”

The wails of market ponies, the screams of town ponies, and the jubilant cheers of realtor ponies masked the mayor’s reply.

“Wow… oh, wow. Really. That… wow,” said the dragon. “And the Mistress of the Plunger knows of this?”

If one had been listening closely, once could have heard the mayor, her mind racing with terror, relay all of the horrible truths that being mayor of Ponyville truly entailed. If one had been listening closely, one would have heard the poor mare impart the secrets that came with the title, the unspeakable truths and desperate responsibilities that consumed her office.

Though, if one had been listening that closely, the sounds coming from a bed in the middle of the street would have probably garnered more of one’s attention, if one were being honest with themselves.

“Gosh,” whispered the dragon, the horrors that she had been revealing thudding across his perception. On the outside, one could see the dragon seem to deflate, as though even his ancient frame could not absorb the painful, horrific truths that the mayor revealed.

Outside of the dragon, few could see the sacrifices of mind, body, and soul she had made to keep her word to defend her city.

Outside of this dragon, none could see the terrors that presented themselves with her words.

Inside the dragon, it was too dark to see anything, really.

“Gosh,” he whispered once more.

Around city hall, ponies screamed, wailed, flailed, and held open houses with little tea cakes and the like while they gave tours and pointed out the number of bathrooms on the property to the eyes that stared in the window.

Finally, after a long moment, the dragon spoke again.

“So,” he asked the mayor, after recovering from the ordeal, “is that your natural hair color?”

Pinkie Pie went bouncing along, a song on her lips, a smile plastered across her face, as was pretty usual for her. She called out to friends, waving to them as she merrily made her way up the streets, bringing delight with her presence and being oblivious to the larger concerns of the day. This, of course, was typical for her as she made her way through Ponyville.

Gothrang the Destroyer, a massive and powerful dragon covered with jagged spikes and unsanitary-looking piercings, bounced along behind her. He held his tiny cupcake, a vast smile playing about his face as he tried his best to copy her jubilant notes and happy leaps… which wasn’t something typically seen in Ponyville’s streets by any stretch of the imagination.

At a nearby restaurant, a large dragon had somehow managed to seat himself at an outside table, notably by squashing all of the other tables flat in the process. He fumbled through a menu, gingerly picking at it, and peering down at Haute Cuisine from time to time as he did.

Haute Cuisine, showing the calm, practiced professionalism that had always been his trademark as a waiter, stayed stoic and a staid in the face of the unfolding crisis. To anypony that could cease their screaming and flailing long enough to look at him, he appeared cool and collected… which is to say that he was only panicking inside his own mind.

“If sir is having difficulty with the menu,” he said, lifting his eyes and noting how the dragon was fumbling with the tiny menu in the tips of its claws, “then I would be more than happy to suggest something for sir to enjoy.”

The dragon grumbled, snorted, and then turned its implacable will upon the waiter.

“Very well!” the huge drake announced. “What is it that you shall summon for me from the kitchens beyond, Banquet Master!?”

Haute Cuisine coughed a little, both in astonishment over the dragon’s labeling and at the creature’s breath, and at once returned to his polished demeanor.

“May I suggest the dandelion sandwich and the hay fries, sir?” he said, not bothering to look back up to his colossal customer.

“Intriguing!” bellowed the dragon. “And how has it come to pass that you have selected this meal to place before me, Food Lord!?”

“Because it was already upon the serving tray when you suddenly planted yourself at my restaurant, sending the pony who ordered it screaming and flailing through the streets, sir,” Haute answered.

“Practical!” answered the dragon in a great, vast, rolling tone. “Present it to me, that I may feast upon it! I now partake of the food which nourished The Lawgiver!”

“Indeed,” Haute answered, placing it upon the table. The stallion recoiled slightly as the dragon’s head lowered, and its mouth came open. As tall, dirty teeth came into view a massive tongue snaked out of the dragon’s head, filling the waiter with disgust.

“And how does sir find the meal?” Haute Cuisine asked, watching as the dragon attempted to take bites out of the dainty sandwich.

“Deplorable!” replied the dragon. “I have never been afflicted by such a repugnant consumable!”

He nibbled upon the tiny plate of hay fries.

“Appalling!” he wailed. “Bring me fifteen thousand or so more, that I may commune with The Lawgiver and the horror of pony gastronomy which he suffered!”

“Yes, very well,” answered Haute, the waiter looking more than a little put-upon. “I shall let the chefs know that they will be working overtime for the next few years. Meanwhile, may I suggest that sir try applying some variety of condiment?”

“I heed your recommendation, Food Lord!” bellowed the dragon. “Place such before me, that I may… what’s this?!”

“It is called ‘mustard’, sir,” Haute said, lifting a fine silver bowl from the remains of another table nearby. The dragon stared down into the bowl, transfixed by the pool of yellow that sat there. His massive nostrils inhaled the scent of the mustard, and a pegasus known as Thunderlane who had the extraordinarily bad luck to be flying past at that moment, in a single massive snort. As the confused stallion sat partly lodged in one nostril, the dragon swam in the scent of the condiment.

“Amazing!” cried the dragon, his roar freeing his sinuses of both the scent of the mustard and the emotionally compromised pegasus. “Not since I tore open the great storehouses in the castles of the Tybrish kings have I smelled such exotic and powerful smells! Tell me, Dining Master, what is the purpose of the Mus’ Tardh?! Is it a weapon?! Is it enchanted?! Speak now!”

“Sir places it on his dandelion sandwich, or any other such foodstuffs as he might enjoy, as a way of increasing the pleasure of eating such,” Haute Cuisine answered the dragon, passing a napkin to the trembling and snot-bestrewn figure of Thunderlane as he did.

“Remarkable!” the dragon exclaimed. He lowered his claws, gently plucking the bowl of mustard off the table. A glint of silver caught in the spring sunlight, and then the sound of a dragon fumbling with a mustard service (something, admittedly, which was not often heard) fell over the scene.

“If it would please sir, I am more than happy to apply the mustard,” said Haute, watching the silver jar as it flashed amid the dragon’s massive fingers.

“Oh, Celestia!” wailed Thunderlane. “It’s in my eyes!”

Haute passed the pegasus another napkin, and then repeated his offer. “I say again, sir, that I would certainly apply the mustard, if it would be more convenient for sir…”

“Nay, Feast Master!” raged the dragon, his concentration narrowing on the tiny serving spoon that sat within. “I shall afflict the sandwich with the Mus’Tardh of my own accord, or not at all! As our Lawgiver would say, ‘I’ve got this one’!”

Haute Couture looked up to the dragon dubiously. He was pretty sure he’d never heard Spike say that… and he was pretty sure that Spike had never had a fight with a mustard jar, either.

“I must insist, sir, that you allow me to assist,” Haute Couture said, raising his hoof.

“Nay, Food Lord!” answered the dragon. “As the Author of the Code would say, ‘I’m all over this one, yo!’”

Houte sighed once again, quite sure that Spike had never said anything like that, at least not in public where he could be properly ridiculed for such.

At once there was a metallic ping, and Houte looked up to see the mustard jar go flying through the air, describing a wide arc that sent it flying across the village.

“Unfortunate!” cried the dragon. “Perhaps I was not as ‘all over it’ as I had assumed… yo!”

“Most assuredly not,” answered Houte. Together, the dragon, the befouled pegasus, and the waiter watched the silvery glint of the mustard service as it flew through the air…

…and finally fell in the meadow, releasing its contents across Twilight Sparkle and her pencil shavings.

A grumpy shriek of maximum grumpiness lifted into the air.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

There was a flash of light across the city, and the dragons felt the heat across their scales.

“Hear me!” came a powerful female voice. “Heed my words, you of the greater and lesser clans, you of the ancient lines! You who have taken to the streets of my city! Hear me, you drakes both ancient and powerful!”

The dragons felt their pulses quicken as Celestia appeared above them, her sun at her back, her eyes alight, her plunger rubbery.

“Knock it off,” she concluded.

A very solemn line of dragons began to sheepishly proceed out of the city limits of Ponyville. The very relieved citizens, and distraught realtors, watched them go. Celestia followed along behind the last dragon, her plunger swinging back and forth like a metronome, humming happily as she corralled the dragons like a very adept shepherdess… if shepherds corralled dragons, which they generally don’t. As she went she took tiny nibbles out of the largely uneaten dandelion sandwich, enjoying it immensely despite the lack of any mustard.

Once the dragons had been reassembled in the meadow, they sat there under the gaze of a very disappointed looking adorable purple god.

“Seriously?” he said. “You didn’t even let me finish! I was gonna say that I have friends who will help you learn about this kinda stuff! You keep assuming stuff, and changing what I say! Don’t do that, okay? You know what happens when you assume, right?”

“It leads to you discovering vast caverns of wealth, vast hoards of glittering jewels, and…” announced one dragon, the massive creature falling over in a kind of covetous rhapsody.

“No,” Spike said unequivocally. “It makes an… you know what? Nevermind. Just… jeez, just actually listen to what I’m saying rather than applying your own meaning, okay? Please?”

The dragons smiled, their toothy grins offering less reassurance than he would have hoped, instead setting up nightmares for the ponies that witnessed it for any number of nights to come.

“Okay, okay,” he said, rubbing his forehead with the back of his thumb. “My friend Applejack agreed to help us out.”

Spike raised his head. Even as he did the familiar orange frame and blonde locks of his earth pony friend appeared on the horizon. Looking past where Twilight still sat grumpily among her pencil shaving and mustard stains, Spike put his hand over his eyes and spotted the next part of his plan.

A flock of chickens followed along behind her, coming down the road in a great poultry-based tide.

Kenbroath raised his hand, and soon he had lowered Spike to the ground. “Kenbroath?” Spike said, lifting her hoof into Kenbroath’s claws. “I’d like to present Applejack! She’s such a good friend, and she even saved my life once!”

“Miss Applejack. Thank you so much for coming!” answered the massive dragon.

“Well, howdy!” she said, taking his clawed finger, giving it a massive shake.

“All hail the Lifesaver of The Lawgiver!” roared the dragons. “Appreciate her folksy demeanor!”

“Whoa Nelly!” answered Applejack, chasing her hat.

“Now,” Spike said as Kenbroath once more lifted him upon his perch. “Applejack, or A.J., as we all call her… she’s cool like that, has brought you each one of her chickens. A.J.?”

Applejack walked forward, her flock of chickens following along behind. She lifted her hat to the first dragon amid the assembly... a bright blue one. The blue dragon returned the gesture with a great, vast, toothy smile, one that earned him a place in her nightmares for days to come.

Behind her a fine, large rooster walked forward, the yardbird making prideful strides towards the dragon. It lifted its head, looking upon the dragon, the avian and the reptile eyeing each other with a mix of emotions.

Applejack moved to the next dragon, greeting it and receiving another polite, and nightmare inducing, smile for her trouble. She presented this dragon with a large, fluffy hen as Spike continued his sermon.

“Now, the ponies care about one another. They worry about one another… they put the needs of others first!” he said, pounding his fist into the palm of the other hand. “So, well, to help us learn to be caring, Applejack is introducing you to one of her chickens. Now, your job is to take care of the chicken. You are going to learn all about…”

“What if we’ve already eaten ours?”

Silence settled over the meadow.

“W-what?” asked Spike.

The eyes of the entire assembly shifted to the bright blue dragon, and as a few rooster feathers fell from its lips the mouths of the ponies and dragon whelp fell farther and farther open.

“I already ate mine. Sorry. Can I have another?” the bright blue dragon answered.

Silence sat heavily around the meadow, the birds going silent in horror at what had just transpired with their avian cousin.

Rarity gave a concerned whimper, placed her foreleg across her forehead, and then fainted away. So did the Mill Creek Bridge.

“Is that a ‘no’?” the blue dragon asked, confusion hanging in its voice.

“He…” began Applejack, her voice breaking slightly as rooster feathers settled around her. “He… he only had ‘bout three weeks until retirement!”

“So,” interrupted another dragon, the one she had just given the hen, “are we or aren’t we eating the chickens? ‘Cause I could go either way on that, honestly.”

Though not the smartest creatures, chickens do have some power of perception. What they perceived, in that moment, was that they were in immediate danger of being consumed alive by a rather large group of dragons.

Understandably, the flock immediately began to squawk and bawk, and then immediately crossed the road in a mass panic to escape being consumed by theologically inspired dragons, proving at least one third-grade joke book correct as they did so.

Applejack retreated from the scene, pursuing her errant fowl as ten thousand nightmares floated through her mind. As the flock fled, great clouds of feathers arose from them, marking their hasty departure.

Grumplight Grumple sat grumpily. She already was dealing with having the ashes of her raincoat digging into her coat, and they had been joined with the pencil shavings not long after.

The mustard had been unexpected… but then again, with the way the day was progressing, it was hardly a surprise.

As the chicken feathers settled over her as well, she simply stared forward grumpily. Now, properly mustardized and befeathered, Twilight simply took deep breaths.

“Hi Twilight!” Pinkie said, leaping past her friend in her typical happy leaps.

“Pppfffttt!” Twilight replied, blowing a suspiciously sincere raspberry.

“Oh, hey!” Pinkie said, hopping around Twilight in a tight circle. “You’re all covered in mustard and feathers and pencil shavings and why didn’t ya invite me!? Ya know I’m all about that type of party!”

“Pppfffttt!” Twilight repeated.

Pinkie stopped mid-leap, and then settled upon the dragon’s back. In an instant she felt herself being led forward by Spike.

“Kenbroath, Pinkie!” he said, shoving her along, the little dragon quickly reaching his wit’s end. “Pinkie, Kenbroath!”

“Charmed!” said Kenbroath, rolling his eyes back to get a glimpse of the mare as Spike pushed her up the larger dragon’s neck.

“Hiya!” Pinkie answered. “Hey, Spike? Whatza matter with Twilight?” she asked.

Spike looked down to find that she had somehow appeared beneath him, and was now carrying him along on light, bouncy trots. “Oh, ummm,” he said, looking back to the monumental grumpus of a grump that had a slight resemblance to his best friend. “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She just missed breakfast.”

Having reached the top of Kenbroath’s head, Spike introduced Pinkie to the assembly of dragons. “Now,” Spike said, lifting his hands to show the pink pony off, the mare grinning widely, “this is another of my good friends, Pinkie Pie! I can’t think of anypony better to teach…”

“Yyyaaaaaaayyyyy! Ppiiiinnnkiiiiiieeeee Pppiiiiiieeeeeee!” roared Gothrang the Destroyer, his scales tensing, his spikes rattling, his piercings clattering.

“Hi!” she called in her bubbly voice, waving to Gothrang. Soon the dragon was waving back, protecting his tiny cupcake as he did. Other dragons were joining in, waving to Pinkie.

“Great are the friends of The Lawgiver! Great are the blessings that they give!” called a familiar voice.

“Blessed are those who bless us in the name of The Lawgiver! Blessed are those who he calls friends!” answered a second familiar voice.

The two eyed each other balefully.

“Oh no!” cried Spike. “Not you two again!”

“Indeed,” continued the second argumentative dragon, not noticing the invectives of his little purple god. “Great are his friends, and the blessings they give that well from within them.”

“True,” growled the first combative drake. “But it is the friends that originate the blessings, as he has deemed them fit to do so.”

“Blasphemy!” roared the second.

“Wickedness!” snarled the first, and soon the two were off tumbling through the meadow once again.

“I was gonna say that Pinkie was gonna teach us about kindness and sharing,” Spike said, his arms hanging in front of him, the whelp drooping in disappointment, “but that kinda, well, seems moot now, huh?”

“Sharing! Neat!” called a crimson dragon. With that, it snapped its jaws, devouring Gothrang’s cupcake in a single bite.

“Thanks man!” it called. “Got any more?”

Gothrang lifted his claws. As the sound of the two fighting dragons lifted across the meadow, an understanding went across the massive drake. He no longer had his cupcake.

This made him upset.

This made him very, very upset.

And, noticeably, when dragons become upset, they do not flail their arms and scream. They roar, rage, and bathe the landscape in fire.

And Gothrang the Destroyer, being a dragon, did just that.

Spike looked upon the spectacle, his demeanor falling farther and farther away into hopelessness. “Really!? Seriously!?” Spike called to the air, waving his arms around frantically. “C’mon, what in the Well is it going to take to get you all to try to live by the code?!”

“It will take a miracle,” answered another dragon, this one hiding behind Kenbroath, sheltering from Gothrang’s rage behind the larger dragon.

“I know… that’s what it feels like,” Spike said, giving a great sigh. He crossed his arms in front of him, and to his surprise the sounds of combat died down. He blinked twice, still staring to the sky overhead.

Rainbow Dash went soaring by. She gazed at the scene below, and then wisely decided that she wanted nothing to do with anything that seemed to be happening.

Watching her go, Spike blinked again, and he noted a complete lack of dragon sounds.

“No, really, Lawgiver,” rose a single solitary draconic voice. “That’s what it will take.”

Spike lifted his head, and he found himself looking down into Kenbroath’s upturned eye.

“What?” Spike asked. He looked out over the dragons. The two had stopped fighting, and even though locked in the mutual embrace of their combat they stared towards him. The rest of the scattered dragons peered at him from behind the shelter of Ponyville’s homes and businesses, and even Gothrang and the charred victims of his cupcake-less rage all peered back at the little whelp.

“I think they want you to perform a miracle, Spike,” Kenbroath said, his eyes still lifted to the whelp upon his forehead.

Spike blinked.

“What?” he asked.

“What?” Rarity said.

“What?” Twilight added.

“Neat!” Pinkie laughed.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

Gods and Squirrels

Chapter 4: “Gods and Squirrels”

“Whoa!” Spike cried, waving his arms before him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

He paused for a moment, watching as all the dragons blinked in unison. Some small part of him wondered if they had all met to practice their synchronization, but given the evidence before him he doubted it sincerely.

“Whoa!” he called again. “What? You want me to do a miracle?!”

“Well, yeah… you are The Lawgiver, after all,” answered Vulgar the Unmentionable.

“’Tis but expected of thee, Author of the Code,” added a snake-like drake.

“Ya know… typical god stuff, nothing special,” rumbled the blue dragon.

Spike wiped his hand across his face. He peeked at them from behind his fingers, regarding them malevolently. After a moment his hands lowered, and Spike waved them through the air as though he were juggling handfuls of fetid spaghetti noodles.

“Look,” he called, “even if I could, that’s not what this is about! You should want to try the code because it’s gonna help you be noble dragons, not because I can do tricks!”

The dragons blinked once more, their uniform syncopation grating on his few remaining nerves. The dragons, being in an anticipatory state of theological awareness, focused on his last few words.

“The Lawgiver can perform blessed trickery!” one wailed, swooning dramatically.

“His Holiness can perform miracles!” another cried, raising his arms in the air.

“All hail The Lawgiver!” they cried. “He bestows us with miracles!”

“No.”

The dragons stopped in mid-jubilation. They turned their faces back towards their adorable purple god… or, in reality, their angry purple god.

They beheld him in his magnificent fury, his arms all crossed, a pout upon his face.

“Listen!” he said, stomping his foot.

“Ow,” whimpered Kenbroath.

“Sorry,” Spike said, quickly turning his attention back to the gathering of dragons.

“Seriously?” he said, dropping his gaze across them. “You all wanna miracle? Right now I’m thinkin’ that getting anything done today will be the miracle! Have you heard anything I’ve said? When did I ever say that I can perform miracles?!”

“The Lawgiver said he can perform miracles!” repeated the swooning dragon as it… well, swooned once more. As it fell to the earth the cataclysm made an old windmill that sat nearby fly off its foundation. As it settled back to the earth, it landed in a position that was actually 1.476% more wind-efficient than before, so lucky thing that.

“Perform miracles for us, Lawgiver!” called the dragons, unaware of the feat of civil engineering that that had just transpired.

“No, no, no!” called Spike, stamping his feet and leaping about in an outburst of frustration.

“Ow,” whimpered Kenbroath.

“Sorry,” Spike said, massaging his temples. He sent one more look of detached sadness over the crowd, and then sat down upon the immense head of the drake. He let out a single huff, and then listened to the litany of their dejection.

“The Lawgiver refuses to give us a miracle…”

“The Author of the Code has forsaken us!”

“The Coursefinder withholds his blessings from us!”

“Truth Speaker! Hear our prayers! Do some awesome stuff for us, we beg of you!”

“Nu-ugh!” Spike cried, shaking his head, turning around so that his back was to his adherents.

The sound of dragons wailing, a cacophony not unlike a vast, untold number of housecats being taught how to yodel, filled the meadow. Spike felt his resolve fraying as the dragons began to howl their lamentations.

“The judgment of The Lawgiver is upon us! We are accursed!”

“These are the end times! All is lost!”

“The Holy Verdict of The Spirit Walker is upon us!”

“Spirit Wa… Oh, come on!” Spike moaned, falling over on his back, his hands over his eyes. He rubbed them until they began to send colors and starbursts across his perception.

He opened his eyes to see Rainbow Dash once more appear overhead. As the sound of the dragon’s despondent yowls reached her, a noise not unlike thousands of howler monkeys reciting bad poetry, she covered her ears and took off once again. As her trademark rainbow trail faded, Spike sighed and reached up for it with trembling claws.

“Go,” Spike said, waving his hands through the air with weak motions. “Save yourself, Dash. Remember me fondly…”

Beyond him, his erstwhile worshipers continued their refrain.

“What will become of us?!”

“We are to be punished! The Lawgiver is bringing his decision upon us!”

“We… we are going to suffer at… ummm, at the hooves of the Mistress of the Plunger!”

The crowd moaned in unison.

“I am sorry?” Celestia said, lifting her head from the dandelion sandwich. “What is this, now?”

The eyes of the dragons went wide, and they inched away from where the alicorn sat upon the grass.

“The Lawgiver has abandoned us! And now, now she’ll come for us, and drag us off!” cried an orange dragon.

“I am quite sure that I am simply eating my sandwich,” Celestia began, opening up the slices of bread, displaying the contents.

The dragons gasped in horror.

“The Mistress of the Plunger will claim us!” cried the orange drake. “She’ll haul us off to… to…”

Silence once more fell over the meadow, and the slightly more efficient windmill went around and around as the dragons held their poses of mindless fear. This continued until it became quite painful to do so, and one dragon ventured to speak.

“Drag us off to where, exactly?” he asked.

“I dunno, I haven’t gotten to that bit yet,” the orange dragon answered.

“I hate you all so much,” Spike said, putting his hands back over his eyes. “I can taste it. I can just kinda taste my hate right now…”

“Oh! I know!” answered the orange dragon. “Plungatory!”

The crowd looked at him doubtfully.

“Plungatory?” one asked.

“Plungatory!” the orange dragon answered.

The dragons looked at one another, small words falling between them. At once, they all leapt back into their poses of horror and shock, and then once more wailed their cries of despondency.

“We are doomed to Plungatory!”

“Our doom of doomiest doomy dooms!”

“We are subject to plumbing-based fates!”

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

“The Mistress of the Plunger vexes us!”

“No, dears, I do not think I do,” Celestia said, trying to paint some concern into her voice. “I am most certain that I am simply finishing my sandwich.”

“Spike,” said Kenbroath, bowing his head in the slightest, “take a look at this… it’s hilarious.”

“I don’t wanna,” Spike replied.

“Come now,” Kenbroath said.

“Nope,” the whelp answered.

Even as they spoke a rather snake-like dragon worked his way forward, throwing himself upon the ground before Kenbroath and the little god upon his back.

“Oh, Master!” cried the dragon. “Return your blessings to us! Do not leave us to the horrid touch of the Mistress of the Plunger! Restore us to you, we beg!”

“Horrid touch?” Celestia said, more than a little hurt showing in her voice.

“Fine!” Spike called, lifting his hand, giving a quick wave before retracting it again. Immediately the dragons rejoiced, their sounds of jubilation lifting into the air with the cascading ring of an infinite number of bowling balls being tossed into an infinite number of washing machines.

“We are free of Plungatory!”

“Plungatory has been overcome!”

“We no longer need to worry about the plunger!”

“Let us not get ahead of ourselves,” Celestia said, lifting the plunger into the air. As it floated before them there was the sudden sound of a few hundred dragons gulping, and then a silence settled over the meadow once more.

“I can’t believe you guys,” Spike said, his back still turned to the assembly. “I don’t get it! You… you want me to punish you? Really? You think that I would?”

“Well my Holiness, Pathfiner,” hissed he snakey dragon, still supplicating himself at Kenbroath’s feet. "Spirit Walker, Lawgiver, Truth Speaker, Author…”

“Spike!” the whelp called, stomping his feet. “My name is Spike!”

“Ow,” said Kenbroath.

“Sorry!” Spike cried, more frustration than penance in his voice.

The serpentine dragon clicked his tongue, and to Spike it seemed like something done out of worry, like dancing one’s fingers together. Seeing the dragon’s lack of fingers, that made sense at some level.

Though, truth be told, the level he was working at them moment was “utter frustration”, which wasn’t all that useful for determining dragon mannerisms. Spike once more turned to his warped worshippers. All things considered, he wasn’t having very much fun being a god.

“Punishment? Is that what you really want? Really? Really?!” he cried. He lifted his hands to them, pleading with the dragons. “Isn’t the way you live now punishment enough, huh? Isn’t knowing that you’re well… being jerky jerks and greedy monsters enough? Isn’t knowing that there’s something better, that you can try to become noble dragons, isn’t that all it should take to make you want to try the code? Please? Please, please, please? Isn’t that enough?”

The dragons looked at one another, looks of deep theological, philosophical, and plumbing-centered inquiry passing over their fierce faces.

“No,” Vulgar answered, speaking for the majority of the group. “We’d rather have Plungatory. It’s a lot scarier!”

“Also, give us a miracle!” answered the blue dragon.

“Yes!” most of the dragons cried. “A miracle!”

“A miracle?! The miracle would be any of ya listening to me!” Spike wailed. “There’s no Plungatory, and I can’t do miracles!”

“Oh! Sorry!” answered the orange dragon from before. “What’s it called, then?”

“We’ll wait for the miracle, Lawgiver, that’s fine…” replied another.

Spike began to breath heavier and heavier. Once more he took off, running around and around in a circle upon Kenbroath’s head. He began to make little sounds of exasperation, ones that rose higher and higher until they became whines of vexation. The dragon went around and around, eventually collapsing in a pile with a dejected thud.

“Ow,” Kenbroath said.

“Sorry,” Spike said. “I’m so sorry… sorry for all of this. I’m sorry that…”

“Spike?” Kenbroath began, his voice full of concern. He was interrupted as a new scene began to play out at the edges of vision. The big drake turned his head slightly, revealing a small drama playing out alongside the pond.

“My Brother in The Lawgiver?” came a familiar voice. “You seem troubled? What ails you?”

Spike sat upright. His eyes flashed at the voice. It couldn’t possibly be…

“Yes, I am troubled. Why is that you speak to me with kindness? All of this long day you have been, as The Lawgiver has said… been a ‘jerky jerk’. Why now do you approach me in these quieter tones?” asked a second dragon.

Spike’s eyes went wide. It was the two dragons that had been committing wanton acts of religious discourse all morning. Spike blinked, not believing what he was witnessing. Could, could they really be… wow, having an actual conversation?

God forbid.

Actually, strike that, the little god encouraged it… hoped for it, longed for it…

“Well, it does but take two to have a fight, friend,” said the first dragon. “But, The Lawgiver does call on us to see to others first. Tell me, what worries you?”

Spike put his hands on his forehead, amazed at what he was witnessing.

“There’s… there’s just so much to ponder. I am at a loss! Will the Author of the Code not give us a miracle? Is it because we are not worthy, or is it because it is not time? Now, knowing that there is no Plunagory–“

“I don’t believe there was a Plungatory five minutes ago, either,” Kenbroath interrupted.

“–how am I to go on? My faith has been shaken,” the second dragon continued. “How are we to keep on?”

“Strength, my friend! We all have moments of doubt!” answered the first dragon. “When Kenbroath came to me and told me of the coming of The Lawgiver, he took me to his right side, and ever after that, I too have had to…”

“Wait, brother! You are a Right Sidist as well?” answered the second.

“Indeed!” said the first with a smile.

Spike covered his eyes with his hand. He peeked out from behind his fingers, not believing that they could possible be agreeing.

“Tell me, Brother Right Sidist, did you become one of us at the Sacred Thurber Woods, or the Holy White Swamp?” asked the first.

“The Thurber Woods,” answered the second, his face turning up into a smile.

“Me too!” replied the first.

“Really?! Amazing! Have you taken to cursing Left Sidists in the morning or at night?” asked the second.

“At night, you?” answered the first. “It’s the only proper way to do so!”

“Agreed!” said the second, dancing his clawed feet and hands happily.

Spike was literally chewing on his own fingers, hoping against all hope that, in some little way the code had actually helped bring these two together, to help them find some common ground which…

“This is amazing! I was so hoping to find some dragon who shared my views!” the first one said. “Why, I was gathering green gems, in deference to The Lawgiver, yesterday when I was thinking how hard it is to find correct-minded…”

“Excuse me, brother, but are we not supposed to gather purple gems in honor of The Lawgiver?” the second said, a stern look passing over his face.

The two eyed each other.

“Oh, drag me to the Well!” Spike cried, seeing very clearly where it was now heading.

“Die, heretic, die, die!” called the first dragon, pouncing upon the other. “Infidel!” roared the second, and soon after great clouds of dust rose from the meadow as they engaged in theological discourse.

Celestia stood, her plunger at the ready. Spike waved her off, pinching his nose, some dragons mistaking it for a blessing as he did. As the sounds of the two dragons lifted around the meadow Celestia returned to eating her sandwich, and Spike fell over, landing with a resolute thud and a moan of dejection.

“Ow,” whispered Kenbroath.

“Sorry,” Spike answered.

Spike stared up to the sky once more, just barely aware of the sounds of religious “discussion”, the wailing of the dragons who were still awaiting their miracle, the cries of those still bemoaning being sent to/rejoicing being saved from Plungatory, and the continued muttering of his grumpy, mustard-stained best friend.

The little dragon sighed heavily. His tummy ached, and he felt a strange throbbing behind his eyes… his first migraine headache. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the images of the noble dragons of old, the ones that had populated the song that Princess Celestia had sung in the library, the Difetha.

He closed his eyes tighter, trying to picture the courts of the High King of the Dragons, of the aeries now lost to time. He closed them tighter still, fighting to image the ancient dragons, arrayed in majesty, might, nobility and grace.

Sounds like the inhabitants of a circus train receiving colonic irrigations arose from the meadow, making him grit his teeth and think rather horrible things that a boy of about twelve shouldn’t really be thinking. He chuckled a sardonic snicker. Nobility? Grace? He’d be lucky if any of these clowns could spell those words, let alone approach the moral understandings possessed by of, say, a piece of rotten, moldy banana, or the contents of the pig trough at the Apple farm…

… or a fan fiction author. Same thing.

He huffed again, crossed his arms in front of himself, and let a scowl settle over his face. Being a god sucks, he thought, summarizing his day to that point rather concisely.

He sighed again, and stared to the sky above. Pathetic little moans of disappointment, anger, frustration, and gastric distress escaped from the whelp, from the supposed god lying there atop the head of an ancient drake. What can I do? he thought. I’m no god, I’m just dragon whelp… boy, thingy… guy…

As he struggled with what vocabulary to use to define his self-image, Spike turned his eyes back towards the sky. He was surprised when it seemed a little bluer than usual. He was even more surprised when it blinked back at him.

“Whoa,” he breathed.

“Whatcha doin’, Spike?” Pinkie asked, still staring down into his eyes. “Are you thinking about stuff? I can tell that you’re thinking about stuff because you get all sad and start to moan and stuff like that when you think and I’ve seen you think about stuff before and you know that I don’t like to see you sad so what’s up?”

“Ummm, yeah,” he said, bopping her nose with his finger. “You’re still here, Pinkie? I guess you saw how ‘not good’ things are with the dragons, huh? Where’ve you been? Whatcha been doin’?”

“Oh,” she said, sitting down beside him, “I’ve been talking with Twilight!”

“Oh, how’d that go?” Spike asked, looking down at the forlorn figure of his best friend, Twilight still sitting grumpily on Kenbroaths’s shoulders.

“Pppfffttt!” Twilight answered.

“Spike,” Pinkie said, “she’s got mustard, ashes, chicken feathers, and pencil shavings all over her. She’s had to sit here all day listening to the bickering and caterwauling of dragons. I can’t understand why she isn’t having a great time!”

“Pppfffttt!” Twilight repeated.

“Oh,” Spike answered, lifting himself up onto his elbow. He looked at Pinkie Pie, remembering all of the ways that she had always shown so much marvelous concern for others, the way she had always seemed to put the concerns of others first. No wonder she had inspired that index card of The Noble Dragon Code.

Heh, he laughed to himself, she makes a better noble dragon than most of these dragons put together!

“Hey, Pinkie?” Spike said as he lifted his hand. As he ran it up and down her foreleg he let her know how much she was appreciated. “If there’s any way to make Twilight feel better, you’re the pony to do it. You always treat others the way you’d wanna be treated, and you try so hard to help others. You’re great!”

“Awww! Thanks Spikey!” she said, nuzzling him.

Out among the dragons, amid the cries and shrieks, one set of eyes had turned, and had taken in the scene that had played out atop Kenbroath’s head. His mind raced at what he had just seen and heard, and he looked to the ground, pondering it as the sounds continued to buffet the meadow.

“Heh,” he said, blushing slightly as he returned her sign of affection. “I just wish that these dragon’s would learn the same thing! None of ‘em seem to wanna do anything other than be miserable…”

“That’s a great idea!” Pinkie cried. “We’ll take care of both at once. You’re a genius, Spikey!”

At once Spike, who had been leaning into her nuzzle, found himself sprawled out face-first across Kenbroath’s forehead. He looked up to discover Pinkie already at Twilight’s side…

… or, more accurately, at her posterior.

The earth pony was shoving the unicorn up the sweep of Kenbroath’s neck, pushing so hard that Twilight’s rear hooves had actually come off the ground. Despite her sudden state of transit, Grumplight Grumple remained in a grumpified state as Pinkie shoved her up to Kenbroath’s head, a few chicken feathers falling from her as they went.

“C’mon, silly!” Pinkie called. “We have to show the dragons what it means to be real friends!”

“Pppfffttt!” Twilight said, mustard dripping from her mane.

“I know, right!?” Pinkie giggled, interpreting the act rather optimistically. “C’mon, we’ll do the Happy Squirrel Dance!”

“Pppfffttt!” Twilight repeated.

Spike watched as Pinkie shoved Twilight forward, her haunches still held high in the air on Pinkie’s head. Twilight’s face was still staid and impassive, looking upon the scene below as though she wished any number of horrible diseases upon the draconic populace of the meadow.

“Hi again!” the earth pony cried, waving her forelegs through the air. “It’s me, Pi…”

“Yyyaaaaaaayyyyy! Ppiiiinnnkiiiiiieeeee Pppiiiiiieeeeeee!” roared Gothrang the Destroyer, his scales tensing, his spikes rattling, his piercings clattering, and a spray of spittle escaping his exuberant lips.

“Hey big guy!” she said with a giggle. “Okay, so, you all need to learn to share, to care, to respect, and not to reduce the countryside to smoldering ash in tides of your cascading flames and stuff, and you Auntie Pinkie Pie is gonna tell you a story about a squirrel who learned all of that kinda thing! Well, except the fire bit.”

Pinkie took a breath, giggled, took another breath, and then continued on.

“Who’s ever seen a fire-breathing squirrel? Well, except for that one time of course!”

The dragon interest was piqued as only the image of a volcanic tree-dwelling mammal could pique it.

“Now, we’re gonna do this as a dance! The Happy Squirrel Dance, and you’re all gonna join in!”

A squeal of glee came up from the crowd, revealing at least one dragon whose fantasy of being in a musical was soon to come to life.

“So,” Pinkie continued, lifting Grumplight Grumple up to present her to the crowd, “to help me is none other than our good friend Twilight Sparkle, who is so good at The Happy Squirrel Dance that she volunteered…”

“All hail the Mother-like Sisterly Very Best Friend Thingy of The Lawgiver!” the dragons cried. “All hail the virg…”

“Shut up!” Twilight cried, her face turning a bright red, drying some of the mustard so that it flaked off her face and fell to the top of Kenbroath’s forehead like so many delicious lead paint chips.

“Okay!” Pinkie said, hefting Twilight upright. “Now, Twilight and I are gonna demonstrate the dance–“

“I don’t wanna,” Twilight said.

“–and then you join in, okay?” Pinkie concluded, gathering Twilight up once more, hefting her around as though she were as unresponsive as a sack of month old potatoes, which are not known for their responsiveness by any stretch of the imagination.

“Okay, here we go!” Pinkie said, receiving more squeals of delight from the more theatrically inclined among the dragons.

With that, Pinkie took off into her song and dance, spinning around and around with a rather morose and comatose Twilight in her arms. Together, the two ponies spun about, and the words of The Happy Squirrel Song escaped Pinkie’s lips, musical accompaniment appearing out of the ether as it always does when the earth pony began such theatrics.

The Happy Squirrel Song lifted from Pinkie in its happy tones, regaling the dragons with its tale of a simple squirrel that, once greedy, soon discovered the joy of sharing, and of taking care of others… of being nice to one another.

Spike listened in, hoping against hope that the message, one that reflected The Noble Dragon Code, would resonate with his draconic peers.

His eyes went over the crowd of dragons, gauging their reaction. Their eyes seemed to betray everything from a detached interest, bafflement, and even a few tears as Pinkie’s words revealed the forest in which the squirrel had lived soon becoming an overflowing wellhead of sharing and caring… a woodland socialist utopia.

“Phew! Okay!” she said with a laugh. “It’s your turn now, alright? On your feet, you big, scary dragons!”

The entire mass assembly of dragons stood, looking at one another anxiously.

Pinkie peered out into the group. “Okay!” she cried. “I see Rarity is still out there–”

“All hail the Consort of The Lawgiver!” the dragons cried, Rarity blushing a bright red as they all peered at her.

“–and Princess Celestia too!”

The dragons went stark still, and deathly quiet, as they peered at The Mistress of the Plunger and her rubbery implement of unspeakable horrors.

“They’re gonna be doing the dance too, so if you get lost, just look at where they are, okay?” Pinkie said, grinning widely.

“Oh, Pinkie, I don’t feel that–“ Rarity began, still blushing.

“We would be delighted!” answered Celestia, leaping to her hooves with startling enthusiasm.

“–that… that I’ve not had nearly enough opportunities to be a squirrel recently, as it were!” Rarity said, changing her mind as she looked at her sovereign with a toothy grin.

“Okay! Here we go!” Pinkie said with a bounce. The dragons took their starting positions, each one seemingly prepared to go through with it.

Spike put his hands over his mouth, looking out across the assembly of dragons with pleading eyes. This might just be… just might be the last chance…

“And a one,” Pinkie said. “And a two, one… two… three!”

A cataclysm such as those unseen since ancient battles ripped through the Happy Valley in which Ponyville lay befell the meadow.

Dragons tripped over dragons. They crashed across each other, toppling into one another. Their tails and wings became entangled as they began the very first movements of the dance, and they became hopelessly twisted.

Soon roars lifted from the crowd, and jets of fire began to erupt from the dragons in myriad colors. Soon pushing, and wailing, and cries of battle began to lift from the grassy knolls. The thud of many draconic bodies hitting the earth thudded across it, Ponyville, and the pond beyond… lifting the windmill off its foundation and settling it in a new position that was 0.654% more efficient than before.

“Huh,” said Pinkie, peering into the crowd. “That wasn’t supposed to happen!”

The sounds of bickering, arguing, battling dragons arose for a great long while, revealing the rather startled Rarity and Princess Celestia sitting wrapped tight in each other’s forelegs in the gaps between writhing dragon forms.

“I do not believe that this is how the dance goes at all,” the princess said.

“Most certainly not!” answered Rarity, burying her head in the alicorn’s chest.

The high roars of dragons continued for what seemed like an impossibly long time. The sounds of earth being tore, of scales crashing against scales, of claws scything through the air, and the few hopeful tones of those dragons who refused to give up on their dreams of being in musicals, filled the air.

One tone grew louder though, and it raised higher and higher, beginning to dominate all of the others. Soon dragons began to cease their own battles, end their own cries, and turned to face the sound.

Soon one cry alone, one draconic voice, held sway over the landscape of the meadow. Soon all other sounds ceased, all except the one that held their attention… that caused all of the dragons and ponies to slowly turn their heads to face the forlorn figure from which the pitiable sound arose.

Spike was crying, screaming. It was a horrible, heart wrenching mix or tears and anger. It was a miserable tone, and that one dragon whelp alone could produce it filled all who looked upon the spectacle with a deep sense of unease.

“Spike?” Twilight said. The unicorn fell out her state of grumpiness, the sounds her little dragon were making deeper parts of her awaken. She lifted her hoof to him, but was surprised when he stormed to the edge of Kenbroath’s nose.

“What is wrong with you?!” Spike screamed, sending the dragons reeling back a step. Kenbroath’s eyes crossed, the big drake trying to focus on the fuming, wailing, crying, screaming figure of the whelp.

“What in the Well is wrong with all of you!?” Spike screamed again. “I told you that it wasn’t going to be easy, but you’re making friggin’ impossible!”

Spike trembled, shook.

“I only asked you to try three things! Three! Things!” he called aloud, the tears streaming down his face. “To keep to the code, to try to treat each other how you’d wanna be treated, and to respect those who deserve respect!”

The boy pointed out over the crowd, the finger dropping accusation across his adherents.

“Instead… wow! Wow! Really? Really!?” he said, his voice beginning to crack. “Instead you focused on the little stuff, instead of what I was actually telling you, and used it to get into fights… which is the exact opposite of what the code is about!”

The Lawgiver dropped his gaze across the two dragons that had engaged in “theological discourse”. Realizing that they were being stared at, they stopped their tussle, and looked at the ground sheepishly.

“Rather than listening to what I was actually saying, you ran off and did your own thing, completely ignoring what it was I was tryin’ to have you do and stuff!” he said, wagging his finger at the dragons who had suddenly marched off into Ponyville. “You put your own ideas first, and tried to use what I was sayin’ to jusri… justri–“

“Justify?” Twilight volunteered.

“– justify them!” Spike cried.

More of the dragons looked at the ground.

“Lawgiver!” wailed the orange dragon. “You are mad at us! Please, do not abandon us to Plunga…”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Spike shrieked, jumping up and down.

“Ow,” whispered Kenbroath.

“Sorry,” Spike answered.

“Why?” the little dragon asked, turning back to the crowd. “Why can’t you want to live up to the code just because it will make us better? Why did you have to invent Plumberatory, Plumbr… whatever!?”

The little whelp leveled them in his sight. “If you’re here because you’re more afraid of being punished than because you want to live by the code then… then you’re doing it wrong!”

The orange dragon’s jaw dropped open, and his eyes fell away.

“And… and when things went wrong, you gave up! You went right back to being jerky jerks of maximum jerkiness!” Spike moaned. “When anything went different than you expected, you just gave up, and went back to your old ways! Back to fighting, back to being awful to one another… back to being animals!”

The dragons looked at him, some blinking, some with their eyes cast down.

“You… I told you it would be hard, but most of you never even tried. You didn’t even try! You showed up, sure, but you fought, bickered, and used the code as an excuse to do things your way,” he sighed, losing steam. “You just gave up on it when it was easier to be the old greedy, scary, awful creatures we’ve become.”

“You never gave The Noble Dragon Code a chance. You never really wanted to be noble dragons. You just wanted me to be a god, to be your Lawgiver, because it would mean that you’d get the reward of getting the ancient world back. You wanted me to perform a miracle, when you could have done one yourself, but you never gave it a chance,” he whimpered, putting his head back in his hands.

“Ya don’t get it at all. Ya just don’t get it. I said it would be hard... I said that it would be hard,” he said, turning to slowly pull himself up Kenbroath’s nose.

“We could have been noble dragons. We really could have, but you… but you suck at religion.”

Silence held sway over the meadow. The dragons sat quietly, pondering their little god. The whelp sat atop Kenbroath’s head, his arms wrapped around his legs, his face lowered into his knees. Deep sighs, and a few whimpers, arose from where he sat.

“Spike,” Twilight whispered, and soon she and Pinkie were beside him, nuzzling the drake. He did not move. Silence once more filled the meadow, even the Mill Creek Bridge ceasing its shaking as the whole assembly waited, wondering what would occur next.

“So, ummm,” came a dragon’s voice from amid the assembly. It cleared its throat, and then spoke again. “So, well… does that mean he’s not going to do a miracle? ‘Cause I have this thing I could be doing…”

Spike’s scream rocketed out into the air, bowling Pinkie and Twilight over, and making Kenbroath startle, sending them all tumbling. Emerald light shone from Spike’s eyes, and his teeth grit together, sending sparks flying from his clenched jaw.

The boy screamed again, throwing his arms wide over his head, as though he had suddenly begun to believe that he could summon the doomiest of doomy dooms, as though he wished to crush the theologically-impaired dragons down into the very stone foundations of the world… without asking the stones for permission first, even.

At once he turned away, and as a steady stream of elementary-grade curses fell from his mouth he slid down the back of Kenbroath’s neck as though the drake were little more than a playground attraction.

More malicious murmurs escaped his lips as he disappeared through the crowd of dragons, his progress marked by their slowly turning heads and the little black cloud that seemed to hang over the fuming god.

“Oh, Spike,” Twilight whispered. “Spike…”

Another murmur arose, and Twilight’s head spun to see what it could be. There, amidst the dragons, a few moved, and she peered at them. To her surprise, they lifted themselves to Spike… to follow him.

Twelve… an even dozen. Of the legions of dragons that had swarmed around Ponyville that morning, only twelve lifted themselves to pursue the whelp. Of the hundreds that had swarmed around the city that morning, only a dozen trailed their little leader.

“Oh, Spike,” Twilight whimpered.

The assembled dragons, ponies, and windmill sat there in the meadow, basking in the afternoon sun. There was some small talk, and some sounds of stretching and basking. Dragons rolled over on their backs, the scales of their stomachs standing out in sharp relief against the grass of the meadow.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

They also seemed to be reluctant to leave.

“Well!” cried a rather boisterous one. “I am certainly not leaving until I see a miracle.”

“Oh, agreed,” hissed another. “We deserve a miracle, for coming this far…”

A collective mumble arose from the draconic crowd, and soon voices began to rise. Soon there was the sound of massive fists hitting the ground, and soon the earth began to rumble and shake, a cacophony beginning to roll through the meadow, the reverberations of it shaking the foundations of Ponyville and crashing all the way to Canterlot beyond.

Twilight watched as the distant windmill bounced in the distance, revealing a whiff of semolina flour and freshly baked noodles, sending unpleasant memories through her mind. Those memories were quickly beaten up, tossed into the street, and given a firm talking to as her mind opened up to the realization of what was happening.

The dragons were stomping, thrusting their fists against the earth. Pinkie Pie and Twilight bounced around atop Kenbroath as the reverberation went up and down his body. They were creating a chant, and their voices arose in unison once more.

“Give us a miracle, Lawgiver!” they cried.

“Oh, and lunch would be nice, too!” one voice said. “I mean, well, we came this far, after all.”

“Yes!” the dragons cried. “Give us a miracle of food! Feed us! Feed us! Feed us!”

“Now, I hardly think,” Kenbroath began.

“Silence, Kenbroath!” answered the snake-like dragon.

Uh oh.

“Rarity,” Celestia said in a forceful whisper, her eyes moving slowly across the scene before her. “You must get away. Go to Spike.”

“Majesty?” Rarity answered, fear falling across her features. She looked up to find her sovereign’s mane being tossed in the cries of the dragons… and a horrible light beginning to grow in her.

“Go now, my little pony… you must get away,” the Princess of the Sun repeated, her features growing grim.

Rarity gave her one last look, and then slipped off into the crowd of dragons. She bobbed and weaved, avoiding the crash of limbs around her. Rarity felt her breath go heavy, felt an unladylike glow begin to fall around her. As the demands of the dragons became more feral she saw hungry glances in their eyes. She pelted on, a horrible realization growing in her.

Twilight saw it too. She saw them becoming more demanding, more avaricious... greedy.

Her eyes went to her mentor, to Celestia. In an instant Twilight Sparkle realized the change that was coming over the alicorn. Her eyes went wide, and in an instant she felt her vision retreating. Twilight felt a deep magic moving around her teacher, one immense and horrible. “Oh no,” she whispered.

“Oh no!” Kenbroath replied, seeing the same thing.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

Wrath of the Virgin

Chapter 5: “Wrath of the Virgin”

“Feed us! Feed us! Feed us!” chanted the dragons.

“Feed us, Lawgiver! Bring us a miracle of food!” they called.

“Brothers!” Kenbroath called, rising to his feet. “Brothers! Calm yourselves!” As he did Twilight and Pinkie were treated to the new vantage point… and a scene of hundreds of dragons chanting and pounding upon the earth.

“Brothers! Please, heed me!” Kenbroath called again, but they did not listen. The dragons did not heed him. They did very little heeding at all. They simply kept up their chanting, and soon it reached a fever pitch.

“Feed us! Feed us! Feed us!” chanted the dragons.

“Feed us, Lawgiver! Bring us a miracle of food!” they called. “Feed us… or we will feed ourselves!”

Ten thousand horrible thoughts went through Twilight’s mind as she realized what the dragons were thinking, and it stole out her breath. These nightmares took on a horrific reality as the heads of the dragons turned towards Ponyville… and then licked their lips.

One venturesome dragon lifted his clawed foot… and stepped towards the border of the city.

There was a snap, a coursing reverberation of light and power. A sphere of the deepest types of magic collapsed upon itself, and the living image of sunlight appeared before the dragons... Procer Celestia Invictus.

“I believe that you have stayed in my realm long enough,” she said, her voice echoing around the hills. “I bid you leave while we are still on good terms, and I shall forget the threat you just made against my little ponies.”

The dragons wheeled back, but soon the venturesome drake tilted his head. After a moment he leaned forward, a horrific snarl across his visage. “You are powerful, Mistress of the Plunger, but do you truly think you can fight all here gathered?”

“Are you volunteering to go first, my friend?” she asked, and in an instant the plunger appeared beside her, light falling from it in cascading tides.

The dragons shrank back in fear, the venturesome one skittering away with his tail between his legs. There was a moment of palpable indecision, and the meadow awaited the next move of those gathered in the grass and beside the pond.

“We, as one, can take her!” called a dragon voice. “She is alone!”

Celestia hid a withdrawn sigh. She was becoming upset.

“I assure you, young drake,” she said, purposefully eyeing the direction the voice had arisen from, not particularly caring if the owner of the voice was young or not, “that I am not alone. My long-time companion is with me.”

Twilight Sparkle watched, her mouth falling open, as the few clouds in the sky parted in an ever-expanding circle above the meadow, Ponyville, and all of the Happy Valley…

… and the golden orb of the sun sat behind its living avatar in the world, as it prepared to answer The Daybringer’s call.

“Oh no!” Twilight screamed. “No!”

The light in Celestia’s eyes grew brighter, and a great thrum began crackle through the air. The windows of Ponyville began to shine, glinting in the growing daylight.

It is just after High Noon, Procer Celestia Invictus thought to herself as she stared down the legion of dragons. We shall have to angle your declination, my oldest friend. Alas, I cannot risk my children, and the village is far too close. I must take as many as I can with your first brush, for they will be on me soon after. It seems that this valley will feel the warmth of your touch once more, my love.

The static hiss of ozone frying away lifted through the dragon’s ears, the scent in their nostrils. They lifted their wings, tensed their limbs. Yet, still… they may have called Spike a god, but the radiant mare that now hovered before them in a shimmering light fit the more traditional vision of a supposedly immortal and apparently divine being by a long shot.

Still, a free lunch was a free lunch. They prepared themselves, gulping hard… smirking harder.

“My Lady! Celestia, no! No, Tia, please!” Kenbroath called, pain and worry filling his voice.

Celestia’s eyes flew to him, and for only a fleeting moment they were soft.

I am sorry, Kenbroath, she thought. I had to give them the chance, to give Spike the chance. They deserved it. But, my dearest, despite what we have shared, you cannot ask me to let your children consume mine. Forgive me.

Twilight Sparkle saw all of this, sensed it all, saw the glimpse that flew between the two. Her magnificent mind flew to work as she saw an understanding fly between the alicorn and the drake.

In an instant Kenbroath had grabbed for the two ponies that had sat upon his head, and then dived behind the adjoining hills, seeking shelter from what now was about to happen.

“Keep down!” he called, opening his clawed hands. To his shock he only found Pinkie there, the earth pony looking up to him in a sort of startled amazement.

“Heya!” she said. “What’s up?”

“Your sovereign is about blast this entire valley to glass with the power of the sun that sits inside of her!” he cried, feeling around for the missing unicorn.

“Oh!” replied Pinkie. “Ohhhhh… that’s bad.”

“Yes, indeed. Miss Twilight!” Kenbroath called, looking for the absent pony. “Miss Twilight!”

Twilight Sparkle was nearby, standing next to the old windmill beside the pond, her mind still reeling from both teleporting out of Kenbroath’s grip and searching for a solution. She found shockingly little at her disposal. Her eyes flew around, but in her disheveled state it appeared that nothing would help her.

The last fragments of purple magica vasto had not even faded away from her flash through the ether, but already her eyes were flying around. Twilight searched through her memory, trying to think of something, anything that could save her mentor from having to unleash the power of her mark.

Her own locks interrupted her thoughts. They fell across her face, dirty with the ashes of her raincoat, mustardized and befeathered from the day’s events.

“Gah!” Twilight called, lifting a bang out of her eyes. “Stupid must… mustard!”

Mustard. Chicken feathers. Raincoat. She had danced the Happy Squirrel Dance.

Her magic snapped to the window of the mill, gathering a few thin strands of freshly prepared pasta.

Twilight charged her horn as she laid the noodles before her, wiping the detritus from her body, smearing it across the pasta. A mighty smirk went over her face as she did, as she strained harder to gain more magic.

This would be sweet.

Back at the border of Ponyville, a scene that had not been witnessed in millennia was playing out. The Invictus, The Firstborn Alicorn, was facing down a dragon… many dragons, hundreds of dragons, in fact.

Her sun grew radiant, ready to answer her call in an instant, to speed to her heed, just as it had in times long passed. Yet, despite that, the dragons came nearer. Their ferocious gaze fell across her, and in tiny movements they drew closer to the alicorn. Some even looked past her, towards Ponyville beyond, already imagining what awaited them there.

Still, a few older faces in the crowd remembered the old stories, and uncertainty washed across their features.

“I say to you again, leave now that we may part as friends,” Celestia said, her sun streaming behind her as her eyes filled with its light, the plunger ready by her side. “Less you never depart here alive.”

A rolling chortle lifted from the group, and the audacious drake from before lifted his voice again. “And why should we not be friends, Mistress of the Plunger? Come now… join us for lunch!”

The dragons stepped forward, crossing the line that Celestia had drawn in her mind. At once she drew up higher into the sky, and her eyes went ablaze with light. A great surge of sunlight began to envelop her, and at once great streaming arcs of radiance lifted from her.

“I tire of being named as Mistress of the Plunger, young drake,” she said, her voice catching across the meadow, her wings going wide. “Do consider the fact that I have a much simpler name. I am the Sun.”

There was sizzling sound, and the air grew warm.

“I am the Sun!”

A great tide of light lifted, and at once it began to fill the sky. The dragons eyes went wide, and then they winced in the light, covering their faces with their hands. The sun entered her, communed with her, and Celestia’s voice boomed.

At once a great, vast…

“Hey, Ugly!” called a female voice from beside the pond.

At once all of the dragons turned to face it, shielding their faces from the light of the sun to gaze into the distance.

“Really?” said Kenbroath, peeking from behind a distant hill. “You all answer to ‘Ugly’?”

“I know, right?” Pinkie said, peering on from beside him.

“You’re all hungry?” Twilight Sparkle said. The dragons looked upon her, and the unicorn too shone with magic. “You wanted a free lunch?!” she said with a smile. “Here! Have a little of this! Don’t forget to tip your wait staff!”

That was when the linguini attacked.

A great, vast rolling wave of noodles roared up from the pond. It was massive, taller than any dragon present by multitudes, taller than the roofs of Ponyville.

It was immense, and it was made of all sorts of noodles, pasta, and spaghetti. The noodles roared higher, lifting over them as a squishy, wet-sounding blanket. The dragons had no time to scream, no time to do anything but be consumed by horror and shock and concerns about the amount of starch in their diets.

At once it was upon them, and soon it was washing over them.

“Oh no!” the orange drake cried as he was slowly pulled beneath the flow of noodles, his eyes wide with fear. “It’s a miracle!”

Twilight looked on from beside the pond, just high enough to avoid the deluge of rigatoni, fettuccini, and penne that she had unleashed. She smirked to herself as she watched it begin to roll the dragons away. To her delight, Celestia settled beside her, the powers of the sun having quickly departed her. Twilight felt the gentle touch of the princess, and she looked up to discover her smiling down over her tenderly.

She had found a way.

“Aaarrgggghhhh!” called the dragons, being swept away in vermicelli, calling for their complimentary bread sticks.

“Waaaaahhhh!” some replied, their mouths and noses filling with spaghetti as they wailed for white sauce instead of red.

Together, Pinkie, Kenbroath, Celestia, and Twilight watched for a great long while as a seemingly endless flood of noodles washed down the valley, punctuated at times by wailing, flailing dragons that seemed both horrified and satiated by the act of the unicorn.

Soon enough it began to diminish, and as the last few dragons were rolled out of the Happy Valley, one summarized the catastrophe.

“We have upset the Mother-like Sisterly Very Best Friend Thingy of the Lawgiver! Her judgment falls across us!” he yowled, ramen falling across his face as he did. “We face the wrath of the virgin!”

“The wrath of the virgin!” the dragons howled in time, and then were gone, disappearing over the distant horizon towards the lands beyond Equestria’s borders and to their noodly fate.

“Wraaatthhh of the vvviiiiiiiirrrgggiiiinnnn!” echoed their cries, the sound fading away across the hills, meadows, farms, and streams of Central Equestria.

“Buck yeah my wrath!” Twilight said with a little leap and a satisfied smirk, taking a few deep breaths as her magic subsided. “All of that, and I didn’t even have breakfast!”

There was a regal giggle at her side, and Twilight blushed brightly, suddenly remembering that her sovereign and teacher was standing at her side.

“Princess!” she said, her face burning brightly. Suddenly, Twilight was very happy for all of the mustard, feathers, and ash had covered her, as it hid her from Celestia’s gaze. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t very modest... and kinda salty on my part…”

She felt her bang being lifted, and Celestia’s hoof brushed across her forehead.

“That is quite alright, my favored student,” the alicorn said. “You did marvelously. When I could only use my oldest advantage, you found a way to win without harming any creature. I am so very proud of you! You only continue to prove yourself, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight smiled, her grin answering the one that already sat across her teacher’s face. Her eyes shifted to those of Pinkie and Kenbroath. They smiled at her in reply. “Indeed,” the drake said. “My Lady’s confidence in you is well placed.”

Twilight blushed a little brighter.

“I do have one question, my faithful student,” Celestia said, wiping a few of the feathers from Twilight’s mane. “How did you come to learn this spell?”

“Oh,” Twilight said, a small giggle escaping her lips. “Spike and I had a… discussion, about which one of us does a better job of making dinner a few days ago, Princess. To make a long story short… he won.”

“You used chicken feathers instead of duck,” Celestia said, pawing at the evidence that she had wiped from Twilight’s mane. “An error of translation.”

Twilight gasped. “Y-yes! How, how did you know, Princess?”

Celesta rolled her eyes, giggled, and turned her gaze to Kenbroath. The drake chuckled warmly.

“Interesting things occur when those words are mistranslated, my dearest Twilight,” Celestia said, smiling as she did. She continued smiling happily, a small blush across her own face, until finally falling down into something more contemplative.

“Twilight,” Celestia said. “Spike…”

Twilight’s expression dropped, and at once her eyes flew out over the valley. She scanned it up and down, her expression going wider. “Spike!” she called. “Spike!” she called again, her voice filling with worry.

“Oh, no, my student! He is well, I assure you,” the alicorn said. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as Celestia continued. “He went to console himself after the dragons revealed themselves to be averse to spiritual self-improvement. I do believe that he is near the Mill Creek Bridge. I asked Rarity to tend to him when I saw that this was becoming… unpleasant. But, Twilight,” Celestia said, painting her voice in a softer tone, “I do think that, given what has happened to him this day, he would appreciate the comfort of someone a little more dear to him.”

Twilight blinked. “Gosh,” she mouthed.

“Yes,” Celestia said. “I can assure you that the first time you disappoint those who have taken to seeing you as something akin to a god is the most difficult.”

Twilight blinked again. As she did she saw something of a pained memory fly across the face of the alicorn. Celestia’s face quickly lifted, but the smile that sat there now was tempered by something else.

“Gosh,” Twilight whispered again. At once she turned, and as her magic gathered to her she took a few long strides. At once a ball of light collapsed around her, and purple wafts of magica vasto showed where she had flashed off to the side of her Number One Assistant.

After a moment, Kenbroath spoke. “What an extraordinary young mare,” he said. “I can see why you all cherish her so.”

“Oh, yeah!” Pinkie replied with a chuckle. “Twilight’s really, really neat and really, really smart… though she does go cuckoo crazy every now and then, but we love her a bunch anywho!”

Celestia could only smile. Together the trio made their way down the valley, moving back towards Ponyville proper. To their surprise, they came across two dragons, the pair somehow managing to escape Twilight’s virginal fury. They were further surprised when the survivors turned out to be the tussling, argumentative pair who had driven each other into theological combat over the tiny details of Spike’s code and words.

“Gone! Gone are those who sought the code! This is all the result of the heresies of purple gem gathering!” called the first, leveling his accusations across the other.

“No greater a sacrilege than gathering green gems, you infidel!” answered the second.

They eyed each other maliciously.

“Ahem,” announced a familiar female voice. The two dragons stopped in mid “debate”, looking towards Celestia as great wet sweat drops appeared on their foreheads in exactly the way reptiles aren’t supposed to be able to do.

“It is quite a shame, really,” the princess said, flipping her plunger around in her magic. “I do hate bringing it out without giving it a chance to fulfill its purpose.”

The dragons sweated even more profusely, not knowing that the manufacturer’s warranty did not cover the plunger’s use on dragons.

“How about this as a topic for further discussion?” she asked, lifting the plunger before their eyes. “You should consider the complications and implications of the question ‘Who gets the plunger first, and why is the other being forced to watch?’ How does that strike you as a conversation piece, my dear drakes?”

The dragons threw one look to the plunger, and then to one another. With a great gust of wind they were in the air, winging their way out of Equestria.

Celestia settled the plunger against her side, making a little “Schickt” sound in her own thoughts, as though she were sheathing a sword. She let serenity settle back into her features, and affected her trademark smile, happily knowing that the rumor of her plunger had been preserved, and that now another horrible reality had been added to the mythos of the dragons. Now, coming to Equestria unbidden meant now not only facing a rubbery judgment, but also meeting a noodly fate.

She couldn’t help but smile a little wider. Her reflection was interrupted as Kenbroath’s sighs settled over the trio.

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Pinkie asked over and over, bouncing around and around the large drake.

“Kenbroath?” Celestia said, touching her hoof to his foreleg.

“Alas!” he said. “Even in the company of such charming mares, my mind can not help but ponder what fate awaits the dragons… though the beauty of the company certainly helps put my unease at rest.”

Pinkie blushed and giggled. Celestia blushed and hid her face behind her hoof.

“You have always been a charmer,” she said, batting him with her booted hoof. “Fear not for the dragons. You shall soon gather them up, and we have not yet seen where this day will lead us. Come… let us see what is transpiring at the Mill Creek Bridge.”

The trio walked off, leaving the meadow to the birds, flowers, and slightly more efficient windmill.

Far beyond Equestria’s border lies The Badlands.

The name, though unimaginative, was startlingly accurate. There was very little of value to find there.

Chief among the things of little value was the queen of the changelings. Or, at least, that’s how she’d been feeling of late.

More than ample time had passed since her defeat in Canterlot, and through her struggles she had managed to make something of a life for her kind here among the blasted rocks and drifting sands.

Chrysalis looked across the hive they had built. It was nothing… it was a shadow of the vision that had driven her months of planning. It was a hollow, empty place upon which she cast her vision of Equestria bent and broken, the ponies serving as thralls for her hive to feed upon.

She had wanted so much more. She could taste how close she had been. All that she had wanted had been so close, her plan almost perfect. All that she had wanted was to forever enslave the ponies. All that she had wanted was to encase them alive inside horrific cocoons, feeding off their purest emotion. All that she had wanted was to use the ponies to fuel her hive, to grow it into a great black buzzing mass that would use Equestria as a starting point for world conquest, until all creatures capable of love were forever encased in her will, feeding her as she painted all black with her horrible will.

Is that so much to ask? she thought.

She kicked a drone as it buzzed around in front of her, hissing as it looked up to her with palpable fear. Left alone in her thoughts once more, Chrysalis let her mind go back to the state of affairs before her.

"Still, I suppose I should be glad that we did not fare far worse,” she thought, curling her lips at her predicament. “And the one advantage of our current state of affairs is that there are no more nasty–”

Something plopped on her head. The changeling queen lifted to her hooves as two more soft, squishy objects fell across her.

She completed her thoughts as she peered at them. Noodles?

“– surprises?”

With that, hundreds of thousands of tons of pasta crashed through the hive, revealing hundreds of rather upset dragons at the core of the wave, popping up out of the deluge like the worst breakfast cereal surprises in history.

The collective moans of changeling and dragons coalesced, and after a few more moments all went still. Soon a teetering, tottering Chrysalis fought her way to the surface of the great well of spaghetti. She looked around the remains of her hive aghast… and found herself staring into the large, hungry eyes of a rather unpleasant looking drake.

“Wonderful, simply wonderful…”

Back in Ponyville, Kenbroath, Pinkie, and Celestia arrived to discover an unusual scene.

Twelve dragons, those that had followed Spike away from the assembly in the meadow, sat very near the Mill Creek Bridge. The bridge itself was shaking uncontrollably, undoubtedly due to the reaction of the pegasus who still was wedged up under its abutments.

Gothrang the Destroyer, Vulgar the Unmentionable, and the orange dragon who had invented Plungatory sat in the assembly. With them was an ancient dragon, one whose scales were bent and twisted with age. Obviously older than even Kenbroath, the ancient dragon’s eyes were milky… but they shone with something special as he watched his Lawgiver nearby. Another dragon sat with what appeared to be a castle gate firmly embedded and screwed into his eye socket as a patch. There were juvenile dragons, too. Treble, the white and pink one who had pleaded with Garble to give it a shot, and his stout friend.

Twelve dragons sat there, which was odd enough.

Odder things than that were transpiring nearby, and not just the continued horrified spasms that were shaking the Mill Creek Bridge.

Pinkie trotted forward, leaving Kenbroath with Celestia, and joined her friends at the fountain. All of the eyes followed her, settling across the ponies and single dragon whelp that sat around, and in, the fountain.

The warm rays of the spring day had warmed the waters… helped along, no doubt, by the awakening of the sun as a rather firm tool of dragon abatement earlier that day. Now, Twilight Sparkle sat in those warm waters, the little sounds of its trickles flowing around her and over her, washing the pencil shavings, mustard, feathers, and general sense of having had a bad day from the unicorn.

Before her sat Spike, slowly drawing the washcloth up and down her coat. Up the length of her body and down again. He lifted his hand, and Twilight lowered her head into it, letting his washcloth gently wipe any evidence of the day from his dearest friend.

“This couldn’t have waited until we got home?” she said, her voice not chiding, merely inquisitive. Her eyes closed, and he cleared the feathers and mustard from around them with gentle, tender strokes.

Rarity’s magic came alight, and a bottle of mane shampoo came out of the same ether from which she would summon her couch. The elegant mare leaned across the edge of the fountain, not minding the soft splash of the warm waters that reached her from time to time.

“I’m sorry, Twi,” the dragon said. “I’m sorry about everything today. I’m sorry that I got you into this. I’m sorry that… that I wasn’t good enough.”

He rubbed the shampoo into her mane, letting the suds fall away, clearing away the last of the debris. Twilight smiled a sheepish smile, letting her words gather in her mind, her public bathing spectacle going to the back of her mind as she tried to console her baby dragon.

Rarity beat her to it.

“Nopony honestly expected you to be a god, Spike,” Rarity said, leaning forward to rustle his frills. “We all love you for who you are, and if any creature expected any different, then that was their own error, darling.”

“You’re awesome the way you are, you’re awesome the way you are, you’re awesome the way you are!” Pinkie sang in a sing-song tone, splashing through the balmy waters of the fountain as she did.

Spike smiled back to Rarity, touched her foreleg, and then turned back to Twilight. He waded forward, lifting handfuls of water to her. They spilled down her mane, across her face, until finally she was free of the shampoo, and her purple eyes came open. As they did they met the emerald of his.

“You’re a great little guy, Spike,” she said, leaning forward. As she did she saw the reason he’d selected the fountain. The lapping waters hid the little tears that were rolling down his face. She smiled at him, letting her eyes fill his, and then whispered to him once more.

“I’d rather have my Number One Assistant in my life than some dragon god anyway,” she said, nuzzling him.

“Heh,” he laughed, feeling the tickle of her touch, and with that Spike, Rarity, and Pinkie helped a gleaming Twilight Sparkle from the fountain. As they wiped the towels across her, summoned as they were in Rarity’s magic, Spike pulled the brush through her mane and tail, making sure the strands fell lightly and perfectly parallel, just the way he knew that she liked them.

She had thought herself cleaned up, and she had blushed a little when she saw the assembly of dragons, and her teacher, looking at her softly. But, to her surprise, she felt the boy lightly tapping at her side. Looking down, Twilight saw Spike with another towel, and she realized that her legs were still wet.

He started with the right rear, and then the left, before walking before her. He smiled up to her again. He pressed against her chest tenderly, and as she seated herself on the pile of towels he took her forehoof into his hand, slowly wiping the water from it.

“I don’t know why you’re still here, if I’m gonna be honest ‘bout it,” Spike said.

Twilight’s mouth came open in shock, but in an instant she realized that she was not the one he was speaking to.

“I don’t know why you all followed me,” he repeated, hearing the dragons lean in a little closer. He let them lean closer, made them lean closer, and wait as his mind tried to come up with the words. Twilight tilted her head, looked down at the mixed emotions that were going across his face, the child struggling to make his words paint the picture he desired to paint.

So, the dragons leaned, watching as their god washed her hooves.

“I didn’t ask for all these titles and stuff,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a problem, to make dragons fight and cause you to hurt each other… and, and I can’t help but feel that if more dragons had listened to what I was really saying, then all the trouble that happened wouldn’t have, well, happened, ya know?”

He rested Twilight’s forehoof on the ground. He lifted his hands, and she placed the other in them. He continued to dry her as his words spilled out.

“I hope… I really, really hope, that you want to live by the code. But, wow, but it’s hard to do,” he said. “It means living for others… it means, it means being a servant.”

Twilight blanched, almost stopping him. That word. Did he think that she saw him as a servant? As… as a sla…

His hand rested across her hoof, as though suspecting her worry. He patted her a few times, and then let her hoof go to the ground. Spike drew a deep breath, and then turned to face his adherents. He put the towel over his shoulder, and drew his eyes across them.

They were a motley crew. They were warped or twisted, bent or bowed, aged or too young. His eyes settled on the only “normal” looking one, a fine drake. Something moved beneath him, and soon a tiny figure peered out from beneath his legs.

To Spike’s surprise he found himself looking into the eyes of a whelp his own age… a girl, the first female dragon he’d ever seen. He smiled to her, and she blushed, waved, and then disappeared beneath what he could only assume to be her father once more, her two orange eyes blinking at him from the dark.

Spike pondered again, and then lifted his eyes to the crowd.

“It’s hard. It’s so hard, but it’s so worth it!” Spike said, some small enthusiasm showing in his voice. “It’s how I’ve come to live my life, and I’m happy… I really am. I have creatures in my life who love me, and who I love a whole bunch.”

He looked back over his shoulder at the ponies. They smiled to him.

“If we want to be noble, we have to serve,” he said. “There’s no point in greed if we just end up living the same way, if we end up miserable animals. The ancient dragons… they brought gifts to the world, they helped others learn, they spread knowledge. We can do that too… it just takes putting others first, living for others, ya know?”

Spike hummed, and a familiar tune developed on his lips.

“Oh, a dragon is the noblest creature ever,” he sang. “There is more to them than guarding treasure…”

It was his song, the one he had begun to sing to Applejack. Now it was fully revealed, a completed work. It was a child’s song, filled with words that sort of rhymed if you didn’t think about them too hard, and puns so cringe-worthy that Pinkie fell to the ground in a full-body spasm.

Hope lived in the words, and the refrain caught in the imaginations of the dragons gathered there, laying next to the quaking bridge.

The song ended, and soon Spike simply stood there, looking at the dragons, a pleading look in his eyes.

“Ummm,” said the stout juvenile dragon. “Well, uhhh, if we don’t get greedy… how will we grow? How can we ever get all big and stuff?”

Spike opened his mouth… and then quickly shut it. Oh… he hadn’t thought of that. A familiar voice interrupted his thoughts.

“By desire, my fine fellow,” Kenbroath answered. “By wanting to grow as a dragon rather than grow a hoard, rather by desiring to do well by others than by ourselves.”

“Will that work?” Spike and the stout drake asked in unison.

“I say to thee,” answered the ancient dragon, his scales creaking as he spoke, “try it… thou shalt but like it.”

Spike’s face alit. He wrapped his arms around themselves, and then lifted his face to the dragons once more.

“That’s all the Noble Dragon Code is, really, ya know? All the rules come down to being good to one another, worrying about each other… and, I know it sounds corny, but love one another, okay? That’s all I’m asking, three things. Follow the code, treat others like ya wanna be treated, and respect those who have earned respect. It’s not gonna change the world in a single weekend, but… but you guys are a good start.”

He smiled at them.

“I’m… I’m not going to give up on The Noble Dragon Code. I’m gonna keep trying, and I hope you do too. That’s it, really. Thanks… thanks a bunch for hearing me out.”

He wiped his hands through his frills again, and then looked back to them with a blush.

“That’s all I really have to say,” he said, rocking on his heels.

“Twi? Can we go home? I kinda need a nap,” said a drowsy little former dragon god. In a moment, the soft feel of Twilight’s nose was pressed against his back, and he lifted his face up into her nuzzle. Soon he was riding his best friend across the Mill Creek Bridge, the dragons lifting their hands to return his wave… to return his blessing.

With that, he and Twilight ascended into the sun… turning down the High Street of Ponyville as spring afternoon sunlight sat in their eyes, an unfortunate side-effect of poor civil engineering on the part of the city founders.

The dragons watched them go, the little female waving to Spike long after he was out of view. Her father scooped her up soon after, and each in turn said their goodbyes to Kenbroath and the Mistress of the Plunger. They looked over Ponyville one last time before lifting away into the air, and into a world where they would have to make hard choices… to attempt to be noble dragons or not.

“I must say, they work quite well together, Spike and Miss Twilight. Quite comfortable with one another, too,” Kenbroath said, laying his head on the grassy patch next to the bridge, placing it as close to Celestia as he could. “Reminds me of the old days. Do you still have my basket?”

Celestia wiped her face along his, and a tender kiss fell to the side of his lips as she giggled. “Of course,” she said, leaning against him. “I keep it in the south tower, west annex, third floor, fourth room on the left. It is right in the middle of the room in a big wooden chest marked ‘Hamdingers’”.

“Hamdingers?” he said in a questioning tone.

“Well, it was the only thing I had available at the time! I mean to put it in a proper box, and I remember to try every few millennia, but things simply keep coming up,” she said, resting her head atop his as best she could.

Together they sat there, each enjoying the warmth of her sun and the company of the other.

“You were right, Kenbroath,” she said.

“Of course I was!” he quickly replied. “What about, in particular?”

Celestia giggled, and batted him with her hoof once more.

“About letting him reveal his code,” Celestia said, returning her head to his cheek. “He was faced with a challenge, and he rose to it. Even after all of his disappointment, he truly wishes to be a noble dragon… even if he defined what that means himself.”

“Indeed,” Kenbroath answered, tilting his head to hers. “I can only wonder how it will all turn out. You wouldn’t happen to have any guesses… or gambits, would you, My Lady?”

“I am not inclined to share,” Celestia said, her head still resting upon his.

“Your silence speaks volumes, Tia.” He said, sinking farther into the warmth of her sun. “Among other secrets, I take it that today is not the day we inform him that he is…”

At once there was a soft yelp, and their heads came up immediately. There, at the Mill Creek Bridge, a dragon was seen to be splashing through the water.

“Whoa, hey… yeah, I thought it was kind of weird that a bridge was bouncing around like that. What are you doing under there?”

Kenbroath and Celestia lifted their heads. There, beneath the bridge, stood Treble, the white juvenile dragon.

The Mill Creek Bridge jumped, and a series of horrified yelps arose from it. Kenbroath rose to his feet, but Celestia placed her hoof upon him, motioning for him to watch.

“Whoa, whoa!” Treble called, sinking to his knees. “It’s okay! I’m… okay, yeah, I am scary, aren’t I?”

They watched as he turned away, listening as he talked to himself.

“Treat others as you’d want to be treated, right?” he told himself, not knowing that Kenbroath and Celestia were looking on. “I don’t want to be afraid, or scared. So, ummm… so I don’t want her to be scared. Okay… well, right. How do I… wow.”

He spun, looking back at the bridge. As they watched he went down on all fours, making himself as small as possible.

“Hello?” he asked the bridge.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

“Ummm, hi… hello,” he said. “Are you okay? Why are you so scared?”

A series of high-pitched whines went through the air, syllables just barely audible in them. They did not escape the drake’s keen senses, and he looked down into the waters of the stream and then back up to abutment of the bridge.

“Yeah. Yeah, there were a lot of dragons here… but they’re all gone now. It’s only Kenbroath, who’s a friend of your princess, the Lawgiver, and me.”

More shrieks and whines rose from the bridge.

“The Lawgiver? He’s a little purple guy. Lives with a lavender unicorn, I think… yeah, I think so.”

The bridge yelped.

“Oh! He’s a friend of yours? That’s cool. So… umm, why are you afraid of me, and not him?” Treble asked.

The bridge released a series of pained moans.

“Oh, because he’s just a baby dragon… god, thingy, guy.”

The bridge wailed.

“Yeah, I suppose you could say he’s cute,” Treble replied. “But, hey… my momma said that I was a cute fingerling, too!”

There was a momentary pause, and then a softer tone arose from deep within the abutment of the bridge, still faint, but more calm.

“Well, yeah,” Treble said. “Of course I had a momma! Doesn’t every dragon… or pony? She was pretty, and nice, and I miss her a whole bunch…”

As Treble painted a picture of his mother with his words, Kenbroath and Celestia sat there listening, waiting to see where it would go. Soon the dragon had finished, and he turned his attention back to the bridge abutment.

“How about you… ummm, miss?” he asked.

There was a whisper of a voice, one that almost seemed lost amid the babble of the brook beneath the bridge.

“Miss Fluttershy,” he repeated. “Gosh, that’s a pretty name. How about you? Any family?”

Fluttershy’s voice just barely became audible. She stuttered, stammered as she often did when worried or scared. But, as the dragon simply sat and listened, as he showed her concern, her voice became stronger.

“Oh!” he said, a realization falling across him. “You like bunnies, and hedgehogs, and mice, and cute stuff like that. I can do cute! Watch!”

With that the young drake rolled over on his back, lifting his hind legs and forelegs, wagging his tail back and forth… looking more like a playful puppy than a ferocious dragon.

A single laugh lifted from the bridge abutment, and slowly a yellow coat and a pink mane and tail revealed themselves. “Oh! Oh… y-you look so s-silly!” she said, covering her face to hide her smile.

“Bark!” called Treble, and at once Fluttershy was giggling. Her demure little smile sat on her face as her wings lifted her up to the deck of the bridge.

“Oh, oh do come out of there, you’ll c-catch a cold,” she called. Slowly Treble lifted himself out of the creek, and set his head on the railing.

“T-Thank you,” Fluttershy said, “I was so scared of all of you that I… I didn’t stop to think that you could be, well, nice.”

Treble shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m a terrifying dragon, goes with the territory, ya know?”

“Oh! Oh dear! Oh dear oh dear!” Fluttershy cried, looking around her. “Look at the time! It’s so late! It’s so late! I haven’t been to the market, or gotten supplies for my animals, or made my appointments…”

“I’d… I’d be happy to help you out, if you’d like me to,” he said.

“The code,” Kenbroath whispered. “’A dragon lends a helping claw’. Index card five.”

“Oh, would you?” Fluttershy said, lifting and falling on her wings. “That would be so very… nice.”

Treble fell back on all fours, trying not to look too scary, and together the smiling pegasus and the noble dragon went into the remains of the market… blushing as they passed a bed and its occupants that still sat luridly in the middle of the street.

Together, Celestia and Kenbroath watched them go, and a shadow of hope flit across them.

“It’s a miracle,” Kenbroath breathed.

Celestia giggled, and then lifted her face to the sweet spring breezes. They rolled around the princess, drifting through her mane.

A hint of change was in the air, carrying on the gentle winds.

End.

His Noodly Materials

“Children of a Lesser Dragon God Whelp Boy Thingy Guy”
Written by The Descendant
Cover art provided by UltimateUltimate/ZantyARZ.
Edited by Future.

Dedicated to GiantMako, in the hope that it cheers him up a bit.

O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Idylls of the King”

Chapter 1: “His Noodly Materials”

Generally, when ponies begin running around in circles and screaming, it is because of something rather upsetting. When their forelegs flail through the air, and their eyes go wide with unrestrained terror, it is generally assumed that they are upset about something.

Upsetting, though, is a relative term.

For Celestia, who had seen pretty much all the screaming and flailing there was to see at least three times over, “upset” took place on different levels than most ponies. To her, it generally meant hiding a withdrawn sigh, letting serenity settle back upon her features, and asking her little ponies whatever could be so wrong.

Her general response to most crises were as follows:

First, affect a motherly gaze, and encourage one of her loyal students to handle it, as doing so would help that pony build character/reveal any underlying mental instability.

Second, offer kind advice. This was a solution that, considering her millennia of knowledge, was akin to destroying an attacking army by crushing it under the weight of professional journals, textbooks, and crib notes.

Third and finally, waft the unending power of the sun across her foes, bleaching the landscape to glass as their ashes began to drift on the solar winds that cascaded around her imposing countenance.

The last option was generally more effective against monsters, armies, and witches than it was, for example, in selecting a new prime minister, deciding what to have for breakfast, or helping a foal get her kitty out of a tree.

Live and learn.

There were, in fact, three distinct answers that her ponies could scream that would make her do more than the above.

They were, in declining order of severity, as follows:

“The Heart of the Mountain has been breached!”

“A dragon!”

… and…

“The plumbing’s backed up again!”

Oddly enough, the most practical answer to two of those nightmare scenarios involved a toilet plunger.

The Daybringer walked through the archive, receiving nervous stares from the staff as her plunger hovered in her magic. Making her way across the ancient library, Celestia hid a withdrawn sigh, let her abundant serenity fall across her, affected a motherly gaze, and then looked to the staff as they huddled in the corner behind the circulation desk.

“Do not fear, children,” she said, letting her smile drape over them. “All will be well. I have a toilet plunger.”

Celestia held it up in her magic, letting them see the implement in its rubbery majesty. She moved towards the most ancient part of the archives, guardsponies falling in beside her as she went.

“Yay?” replied one of the librarians, voicing the confusion of those who crowded beneath the back issues of mixed periodicals. The context of the dilemma was completely lost on everypony in the room who was less than, say, one thousand years old.

Since there was only one in the room who could make such a claim, bewilderment held immutable dominion over all.

“Majesty?” asked one of the guards, the Officer of the Watch. The pony had suddenly found his morning slightly more exciting than he had anticipated, and his mind raced to deal with the unfolding situation. He could not quite decide which should garner more of his attention: the foe in the catacombs below, or his princess and her plumbing tool.

“I do not mean to sound… dubious,” he continued, “but do you not require more assistance?”

“No, thank you,” she replied, her eyes set on the stairwell beyond. “Please do keep my little ponies calm, though. Alert General Gambit, and have the pegasi regiment set up a cordon around the city, just in case our guest is joined by others.”

“Very well, Your Highness,” the guardspony replied, nodding to his own officers, sending his pickets and messengers off to execute her orders. He cleared his throat, and then spoke to his sovereign once more. “My Princess, are you sure that you wish to go on by yourself? I mean, it is a dragon, after all.”

“No, dear, thank you,” she repeated. “I do have a toilet plunger. Had I forgotten to mention it?”

She held it up to him in her magic, revealing that one of the few things that could make a guardspony reel away and squeal like a filly was the thought of coming into contact with icky-sticky toilet plumbing thingies of maximum grossness.

Or, at least this one did. The snickers of an entire company of guards sounded out around the library as they looked upon the officer, his blush growing redder and redder as his sovereign stared over him with her familiar smile.

“Uh hum, well, Majesty,” he continued, shooting daggers at his subordinates with his glare, “all I mean by that is… well, it is a dragon, and that is a toilet plunger.”

“Oh, yes, I am quite aware of that,” she said as she slowly turned away. “I promise you, I shall try my best to be merciful with it, though I can not be held responsible if the plunger itself decides otherwise…”

She raised the toilet plunger over her head, letting it come alive in a spectacle of golden illumination. The entire assembly of the room was bathed in awe as light cascaded off of it, and as their princess departed the main hall of the archives they all squinted, trying to behold the plunger in its rubbery awesomeness.

Having turned the first corner out of their view, Celestia let her light fall out of the plumbing implement, and at once it returned to being a simple device of rubber and wood… a perfectly standard toilet plunger by any stretch of the imagination.

Excepting, of course, that this toilet plunger had been designated as the one she used to fight dragons… something that may or may not have been in keeping with the manufacturer’s recommended uses.

Celestia turned to a circular stairwell, one hewn of fine marble. Though she continued to wear her typical smile, the marble blocks may have noticed how she took a deep breath, and then seemed to sigh inwardly as she made her way down the stairwell.

What was more startling to her little ponies was that the princess seemed intent on battling a full-grown dragon with a toilet plunger, a fact that was at once disconcerting and awesome. What they could not know, and what had made Celestia draw her inward sigh, was that she’d spent centuries training the dragons to fear her plunger.

Once upon a time, Procer Celestia Invictus had made a point of engaging in single combat with the ancient dragon lords, demonstrating her power. Lost to history were the tales of the sisters, and later Celestia alone, defeating dragons that wished to threaten her children. Many of those stories had passed into legend, or were remembered only by the rocks that she’d blasted to bits with her sun while charring the dragons to ash.

It had not been a happy end for those draconic peoples who had challenged her, and the rocks most likely hadn’t been too keen on it either.

Contrary to her intent, it only seemed to make more dragons rise to challenge her. Like massive, scaly moths the dragons had come to her consuming flames, each one believing that they could be the one to destroy her, to win fame and honor forever.

So, one fine day, she did highly inappropriate things to an unfortunate dragon with the toilet plunger.

Or, at least, that was the rumor she had spread.

The story had been simple. She had just decided, after defeating one of the last dragons to cross the mountains, to tell the next one to appear that she had done something unspeakable, unmentionable, and unethical to that last dragon with the plunger.

She had then held it up, watched the dragon’s eyes go wide, and then looked on with satisfaction as he had gone scampering back across the mountains with his tail, quite literally, between his legs.

The effect had been immediate.

Defeating a massively powerful, supposedly divine, and apparently immortal alicorn goddess in a titanic battle to the death? The rewards for that were immense. Those few who had survived their encounter with The Sun and escaped to lift their charred, broken bodies back over the mountains had become heroes on that fact alone. Those who had died were worshipped in songs. There was too much honor in it, and it drew them to her flame.

The plunger had changed that.

For a dragon, facing a giggling, sparkly-maned princess and an uncomfortable encounter with a toilet plunger didn’t quite have the same panache. All that awaited any dragon that dared come into Equestria unbidden now, so the rumors said, was a long recovery period and endless jokes told about them for the remainder of their days.

The number of dragons coming over the mountains had dropped precipitately. Now it was only risked by the sick that could not traverse any other course across the continents, those allowed to do so during their migrations, and the deranged that were into that kind of thing.

Now, as Celestia descended the stairs, she ventured a guess as to what kind of dragon had come to Canterlot. The dragon had come not to challenge her personally, or to threaten her children. No, it had other purposes. It had reasons to come here, to the archive.

It must be an older dragon, perhaps as old as herself.

Something in her moved at the thought. Something inside The Daybringer remembered the dragons of old. She remembered the majestic, ancient races of dragons that had once come and gone across the lands she protected. She remembered them, and how they had lived before the calamities that had reduced their aeries and had driven them from their lands.

Once upon a time, the dragons had been an articulate race, governed by their own traditions and their own lords. Once upon a distant and forgotten time, they had sung their own songs. They had spoken their own myths, and had written their own histories.

Now, they were little better than animals. Now they lived baser, more feral lives, and the survivors of the cataclysms that had devastated their kind lived in solitude, hoarding to answer an instinctual drive, rather than add to the culture and greatness of their kind.

Now, the only dragon Celestia knew who lived a life that was even close to what his race had once enjoyed slept in a basket that lay close to the bed of the alicorn’s dearest apprentice. That dragon sent Celestia happy messages in his schoolboy handwriting, had adventures, made friends, ate ice cream, and kept her faithful student from devolving into fits of adorable insanity.

But, there were still memories of that older time, and as a dragon’s warmth met her, Celestia heard one of those echoes clattering around her.

She sighed inwardly again, the marble blocks which lined the stairwell sympathizing with her in exactly the way they aren’t capable of doing, and pulled her plunger closer to herself. She lifted her proud hooves, and went silently down the stairs.

The red light of her dawn rose from one room at the far end of this most ancient stretches of hallways. She soon realized what section it was lifting from, and her hope of finding any sort of intelligence hovering around the dragon dimmed.

The Royal Canterlot Archive & Bingo Parlor prided itself on being the single greatest repository of knowledge in Equestria. In fact, it had dedicated itself to knowledge so thoroughly that it had entirely dropped Bingo from its name and function several centuries ago. She alone was probably the only one who recalled the vast games that had been played in these halls.

Luna had never come with her, as her younger sister had preferred keno.

Still, Celestia pondered, it was probably for the best that books and scrolls had become the primary focus, as the knowledge gathered here had saved her domain many times over.

But, as she approached the section from which the light spread, she could only think that “knowledge” was a relative term.

The archivists had always played fast and loose with what qualified as worthy literature. It seemed that one of them had heard of some city now lost to time and myth where the only requirement for entry was that the traveler submit copies of all the written works in their possession.

The end result was a local library system that had copies of everything from the greatest stories ever written, a complete understanding of all the sciences ever put to text, musical scores from across the globe, the most complete biographies ever recorded… and a whole bunch of break-up letters, shopping lists, and grammatically deficient erotica.

Just how much knowledge that civilization had recorded was never fully known, as it seemed that it had collapsed upon itself under the weight of the paper and parchment. So great was the weight of those words that it created a singularity in the historical fiction section of its largest library, sucking the entire civilization into an alternate dimension… one where she could only hope that the erotica had been spell-checked.

The Equestrian archivists who set up the current system believed in the value of the written word, and as such they too had taken to accepting any submissions that even whiffed of “knowledge”. As she approached that section, her mind went over how shockingly low that bar had been set.

In a section marked “Flotsam, Jetsam, and Detritus” lay all sorts of horrible misuses of literature. Here lay the autobiographies of ponies that had done shockingly little with their lives, joke books written by third graders, and political tracts written by those afflicted with unfathomable amounts of unwarranted self-importance.

Here could be found cookbooks composed by minor celebrities, fiction stories written by left-leaning politicians that ended with right-leaning politicians stealing all of Equestria’s civil rights, and fiction stories written by right-leaning politicians that ended with left-leaning politicians stealing all of Equestria’s civil rights. Here were the ramblings of the insane, the ponderings of the degenerate, and fan fiction… all of the very worst dregs of the literary world.

She sighed, turned the corner, and there before a great vast hole in the wall sat the intruder.

“Bingo,” she said as she leveled her eyes, and her plunger, upon the interloper.

“Are they having a game right now?” answered the dragon. “I don’t believe I saw any tables set up.”

A small mountain of scales moved glacially, slowly turning to face her as a great, vast sweep of wings rose above the dragon. The wind of even these gentle motions knocked more “literature” off the shelves, sending one fan work entitled Daring-Do Verbs a Noun fluttering past her hooves. She rolled her eyes as it passed, and then settled them back on the spectacle that sat before her.

The dragon’s tail whipped around, the shimmer of it catching in the morning light. Morning light that probably should not be there, she noted, seeing that it fell from the gaping hole that had been excavated from the side of the archive by the dragon’s fierce claws, each one as tall as she was.

The dragon’s eyes finally came around, piercing orbs of luminosity cast in green, matching the frills that stood fiercely upon its head and back. There was a low rumble, one that seemed an earthquake inside the enclosed space.

Yes, most impressive. It was most impressive. She’d probably have been terrified out of her mind if this were not, say, the seven hundred and ninety eighth time she’d seen a display very much like it.

“My, my,” came a vast, rumbling voice. “I must say the librarians are quite fetching.”

She blushed slightly, but it ended as the dragon’s mouth came open, revealing teeth both tall and white, and which moved towards her perceptibly.

The plunger came alight in her magic, and in no uncertain terms the act announced her will. “Flattery will get you introduced to a plumbing implement,” it said. The sudden flash of insight, and restrained fear, that went across the dragon’s face told her that the rumors were still as potent as ever.

“Withhold your judgment, Invictus,” the dragon said, the light dropping out of his eyes. A softer expression glided across his face as he retreated a few colossal steps from the alicorn. “I am known to you. In fact, I’m quite saddened that you didn’t recognize me at once.”

Celestia could count on one hand all of the dragons that she had known well enough that they could dare presume speak to her in such familiar terms… even though that would be difficult, as she didn’t have hands.

The hands in question would be those of a dragon, which was convenient as they were the topic at hand… of the hand, as it were. That further limited the number of dragons Celestia knew that well to four, the number of claws that they had on each hand. That was also convenient, as that is the number that she had ever known that well, so it all worked out well enough in the end.

Two were separated from her, seemingly forever. They had been put beyond her sight by the veils of life and death, magic and myth, paternity lawsuits and income tax misunderstandings.

One was still asleep in his basket in Ponyville.

Which meant that this one was…

“Kenbroath,” she whispered.

“My Lady,” he said, bowing low. Even as he did, his wings brushed more imponderable bits of literature to the floor. The dragon’s eyes met hers, and he smiled softly. Now, without his fierce visage, she understood what he had meant to do. Celestia lifted her head to meet his.

With that, Kenbroath kissed her cheek gently, which was akin to saying that a house had been tastefully remodeled by shoving it off a cliff.

Celestia regained her footing and readjusted her tiara. The princess then raised her muzzle up to his cheek and returned the kiss. The small act of affection sent summer sunlight racing through Kenbroath’s perceptions in a way that stubbornly defied being made into a metaphor.

“And what is it that brings you back to Canterlot, or Canter House as you may recall it, Kenbroath?”

“Apart from your beauty, Celestia, I come in search of learning, and in search of larger truths,” said the dragon. His head went up, and his massive claws went back to the shelves.

“I see,” she said, watching him gingerly lift something from deep within the stacks. “And that was worth destroying the ancient walls of my archive, was it?”

She cast her eyes beyond the dragon, which was not easy, considering his size, toward where the stones that had once made up the wall had been cast asunder. The light of her dawning day came cascading across the mountain of displaced blocks.

One would suspect that the stones were not too happy about that, but suggesting such would make one guilty of taxing a joke beyond its ability to amuse.

“I assure you that I can pay for any amount of damage that I’ve done,” he said, gently lifting something from the shelf. “And, speaking of payment, what would it take to get a copy of this work?”

His massive claws made tiny movements, plucking something from the shelf and laying it gently upon the floor before her. He let his selection sit there as he folded his arms and legs beneath himself, looking quite like a contemplative cat.

Celestia’s eyed his choice. To her surprise, it wasn’t a book at all, or even a pamphlet or scroll. It was simply a stack of index cards, held together with a rather forlorn looking rubber band.

On the top card, a vaguely familiar face smiled back at her, drawn in purple and green with a child’s power of illustration.

“Two bits, forty-seven cents,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. “I shall have the librarians wave the processing fee, if you can agree to depart Canterlot without demolishing any more structures.”

“Agreed,” answered the dragon.

The stones rejoiced.

There were noodles everywhere.

There were noodles on the shelves, noodles across her equipment, and clinging to her coat.

There were noodles swamping her notebooks, sticking to the tree roots, catching in her tail.

Twilight Sparkle was awash in noodles. Rotini, spaghetti, rigatoni, they heaved back and forth across the basement floor in great waves, gently lifting her and lowering her on a tide of wheat-based humiliation. Twilight bobbled across these waves, floating around the basement of the library in nonplussed wonder.

Vermicelli, egg noodles, and ramen. Noodles of such amazing sizes, shapes, and varieties as she’d never seen before… all leaving wet stains across her basement, across her research, and sticking in her mane.

“Okay,” she said, eyeing a large lasagna noodle suspiciously, “that wasn’t right.”

There was movement nearby, and Twilight shifted her attention to a fin that appeared amid the waves. Her eyebrow arched as it came closer, looking very much like a shark amid the waves of noodles, like a semolina-based aquatic predator.

At once it was upon her, leaping up from the ziti… and touching its nose to hers.

“Yup,” Spike said as he emerged. “You were right, Twi, they were chicken feathers, not duck!”

Twilight moaned and put her head in her hoof and moaned in dejection. “Ugghhh!” she said, wiping more noodles from her mane. “I don’t get it! I was wearing a raincoat! There shouldn’t have been any mustard in the pencil sharpener at all, especially after we danced the Happy Squirrel Dance!”

Spike shrugged his shoulders, sending some rotini dropping off his frills.

“Look,” Twilight sighed, “I just want to forget that this whole… well, noodle incident ever happened. Let’s just get this all cleaned up, and I’ll figure out what happened to the spell later.”

“Oh, okay, Twi,” he said, placing his hand on her foreleg. “It’s okay, you’ll figure it out. I know ya will.”

She smiled a weak smile, and he replied with one of his own.

“So, ummm, how are we going to clean this all up?” he asked, swimming a bit to keep from being swept beneath the waves of spaghetti.

Twilight grinned devilishly.

“Dinner time, Spike!” she said, motioning to the vast sea of noodles around them. Spike’s hands instantly went over his mouth, and the dragon appeared to turn a little green.

Twilight laughed a little at her own joke, and was about to assure him that they wouldn’t have to eat their way out of the basement, when Spike sent a cascade of green flame cascading over the noodly waves.

There was a single glub, and Twilight frowned slightly as she fished through the waves with her magic, searching for her little dragon and simultaneously grabbing the letter out of the air.

“Spike!” she said, reading the words that lay on the scroll, reeling him in as he struggled against her magic like a marlin on a fishing line. “Spike!” she repeated, landing her prize in her open forelegs. “It’s for you!”

“What? Really, Twi?” the dragon said as he looked up into her eyes, settling back into her open forelegs to keep from sinking into the unfathomable depths of pasta below. “What… what does it say?”

The little dragon grasped at the letter, reading the words as Twilight held him close:

Dearest Spike,

A copy of your work from the “Theology: Other” shelf of the “Flotsam, Jetsam, and Detritus” section of the Royal Canterlot Archive & Bingo Parlor has been purchased. As such, royalties of three cents have been placed in an account on your behalf.

Congratulations on selling a copy of “The Noble Dragon Code”. You are now a published author. May whatever Providence you see fit to believe in have mercy on your soul.

Love,
Princess Celestia

“We did it, Twi!” Spike cried, spinning around and grasping the unicorn in a great, vast hug. “Somepony purchased a copy of the code!”

“Congratulations, Spike!” she said, returning his embrace.

“Awwww, I couldn’t have done it without ya, Twi,” he said as he nuzzled to her chest, dislodging some fettuccini as he did.

After a good long nuzzle, their eyes went wide, and they were momentarily sucked beneath the waves of rolling noodles. As they bobbed back to the surface, Spike grabbed at the letter, and once more leaned into the offered forelegs of his best friend for the comfort, joy, and buoyancy they offered.

The dragon re-read the letter, and then re-read it again. Twilight looked down to him as they bobbled along in silence, wondering what he was thinking.

“Hey, Twi?” he finally asked. “What does this word mean? And… and Twi, what do ya think the princess meant by that last line?”

Twilight looked at the word. “Theology” it read. Twilight’s eyes then fell across the last line of the letter, contemplating its meaning.

That was when the linguini attacked.

Two days later, the scents of starch, semolina, and shame still lingered around the library.

While the noodles themselves had long since disappeared, Twilight’s failure to command her spell had left them firmly lodged in her perceptions. When she thought about the incident, it brought many unhappy thoughts to her mind, the bitter taste of defeat to her lips, and a peculiar sensation of stickiness to her mane.

Twilight rolled out of bed, listening to Spike’s little snores as she made her way to the bathroom.

She blinked as she stared into the mirror, and then lifted the hairbrush in a waft of her magic.

Her eyes were distant, and her mind raced with a few thousand thoughts. She opened her medicine cabinet and rummaged through the bottles, searching through them with growing sounds of disappointment.

“Here’s your mouthwash,” said a dragon, poking his claw in through the window.

“Thank you,” she mouthed blearily, taking it from the tip.

“You’re getting’ pretty low on stool softener, too,” he added.

“Right,” she said, adding it to the mental list of things she needed to have Spike add to the very real list of things she needed him to buy.

She flossed, brushed her teeth, and then drew her hairbrush through her mane. In her mind, she still felt some of the stickiness from the pasta clinging to her hair, and she groaned at the thought of it.

She made her way past the bedroom. Spike was now awake. The groggy little dragon yawned and then joined her as they went down the stairs.

Twilight couldn’t help but feel that she’d forgotten something of importance, that there was some fact screaming for recognition in her mind. They settled down for breakfast, the unicorn and dragon whelp making their usual small talk as the grill sizzled, the milk poured, and great vast eyes peered in at them through the windows.

Wait, the two thought at once, arching their eyebrows at one another.

Spike and Twilight slowly turned their heads, and the windows all blinked in unison.

“Twwwwwiiiiiiiiii,” said Spike as he raced for her side, dropping an otherwise serviceable omelet on the kitchen floor.

At once, a massive tongue snaked its way in through the stove, bending the chimney at odd angles as it did. The tongue felt around for a moment, bouncing awkwardly off of tables, chairs, and a suspiciously empty spaghetti jar. After a moment it scooped up the omelet and disappeared through the ravished chimney.

“Twwwwwiiiiiii!” Spike cried once again, wrapping himself tighter to her leg.

“All hail the cooking skills of The Lawgiver!” came an echoing cry, one that buffeted the library. “Blessed are his utensils! Blessed are his spices! Blessed is his poofy chef’s hat!”

“Blessed is the omelet he prepared!” came one voice, reaching them with a contented purr. “It could have used just a pinch of pepper, but it was surely blessed!”

“Blessed are the slightly under-garnished omelets of The Lawgiver!” echoed many thunderous voices.

“Twwwwwwwiiiiiiii!!!” Spike called, hiding beneath her tail, peeking out from beneath it as the many eyes continued to peer at them. “What’s going on?!”

Twilight looked around at the windows, and in her mind she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

It proved remarkably difficult. She hadn’t had breakfast, after all.

Just as her mind had begun to stop running around in horror, shock, and disappointment over the loss of a perfectly good breakfast (even if it did lack pepper) there was a knock on the door.

It was followed by another knock, and then a rapid series of knocks.

Twilight hobbled to the door as best she could. Massive eyes peered at her through each window, and a baby dragon whelp pulled her tail down over his head and clung to her back leg.

Rarity had always been a rather perfect white, but the unicorn that stood there at the door, still slowly waving her hoof through the air as though she were still knocking, was so pale that she seemed only a few shades away from going starkly transparent.

“Twilight, darling, good morning,” mouthed Rarity, seeming so withdrawn that she did not so much meet Twilight’s eyes but instead had them sent by second day air delivery. “Did you happen to count the number of dragons in Ponyville today by any chance?”

Twilight blinked. “Uh, one?” she said, motioning down between her legs.

Spike looked up, saw the familiar outline of his ladylove, and sprung from the shelter of Twilight’s tail to great the graceful unicorn.

Upon getting a better look at Rarity, her eyes distant, her complexion faded, Spike slid slowly back beneath.

“Yes, well,” Rarity whispered, “I do believe that we have a slight increase in the population to report.”

Twilight stepped forward, Spike hanging from her leg once more, making her step awkwardly, like a cat would if it had a baby dragon hanging from its leg. Or a like a goat would, or a gazelle… any higher mammal, actually.

The point was, as Twilight stepped out the door she did so with the grace of a clinically depressed walrus, which typically do not have legs, but which make for extremely effective metaphors.

She looked up into the rays of the morning sun, her eyes fluttering as they adjusted to the light.

When they finally did, she lifted her hind leg, shook it, and let Spike fall to the ground. The dragon stood, wobbled about, gazed out into the streets of Ponyville… and then firmly grasped her front leg instead.

Dragons. There were dragons everywhere.

Dragons sat wrapped around houses. Dragons crowded the streets, they draped themselves across the nearby fields, and they sat lapping water out of the fountains.

There were enormous dragons, monstrous dragons, and pretty big dragons that would assure you that it’s not about size but quality. There were ancient dragons that sat quietly reflecting, adult dragons that looked about inquisitively, and juvenile dragons that seemed intent on lighting their farts on fire.

All of these dragons, from the massive to the large, from the ancient to the not quite so ancient, all turned their heads to face Twilight, Rarity, and (after another firm shake) Spike.

The little dragon peered up to his peers, only to go back diving under Twilight as a chorus of voices lifted around them.

“All hail The Lawgiver!” the dragons shouted in unison. “May his scales never fade! May his frills always stay sharp! May he always stay adorable as he snores in his wittle-bitty basket!”

“They were watching me sleep, Twi,” Spike said, his voice a little whine. “Why were they watching me sleep?”

“I… I don’t know!” she replied, leaning close to him and gulping. An embarrassed blush went across her face as she pondered what they might have seen when they peered through their bedroom window. “Spike,” she said. “Why don’t you try… well, anything? Try talking to them.”

Spike looked up to her in a sort of restrained panic, and then took a step forward.

“Ummm, hi,” he said, raising his hand to begin waving at the crowd of dragons. Heads appeared above nearby houses, and to his surprise they peered back at him in excitement. He gave Twilight a nudge, and she too began to wave, only drawing more excitement from the assembly.

The dragons stared at the pony and whelp as they waved, and then stared at their own clawed hands as though they’d never seen the gesture before. Twilight nudged Rarity, and soon the graceful unicorn had joined them in waving to the draconic masses.

Soon, the dragons began to wave back, timidly at first, but soon with massive enthusiasm. Soon the ponies, the little drake, and the throng of dragons simply stood there in front of the library, waving at one another with big false smiles like morons.

“Ummm,” said Spike after a long moment, raising his other hand to support his tiring arm.

“It’s a blessing! The motion is a blessing from The Lawgiver!” cried a large dragon.

“We are blessed!” called the dragons through the clenched teeth of their painted smiles.

“I’ve never been so happy,” one called through gritted teeth, tears streaming down his gargantuan face, “but my arm sure is getting friggin’ tired!”

“Twi, what in the Well is going on?” Spike said, not daring to drop his wave or smile, only his eyes showing the panic that was now going through him.

“I have no idea,” Twilight added as she continued to wave. Her eyes swept to Rarity. “Rarity?” Twilight said, some small panic showing in her eyes. “What in the Well is going on?”

“I’m quite sure that I have no idea what in the Well is happening,” Rarity said, an unladylike glow arising from her as she struggled to wave and smile. “All that I know is that I tried to take Opal to Fluttershy’s this morning. Suddenly, there were dragons everywhere.”

The three waved some more, sweat pouring from them. The dragons waved back, though they weren’t entirely sure why.

“Poor Opal lodged herself under Fluttershy’s bed,” Rarity continued. “And poor, poor Fluttershy had nowhere to escape to. You know how she is with grown dragons. So, well, she wedged herself under the abutment of the Mill Creek Bridge. Last time I saw her she was trembling so hard that the whole structure seemed to suffering from a fit of apoplexy.”

Twilight moaned.

“I do believe that I can answer your question, my dearest student,” came a familiar voice.

The dragons and ponies slowed their arms, sighing in relief when they were able to drop their smiles. Their eyes slowly moved towards where Princess Celestia stood, a strikingly handsome dragon very close to her.

Celestia walked forward, the dragon following behind. The dragons bowed to both, and after a moment the princess spoke. “You see, Twilight, these dragons seem to have the impression that Spike is a god.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Twilight said with a giggle. “That makes sense!”

There was a pause of a moment, as though several synapses in her beautiful mind had missed their cue to fire due to being denied the energy that would have been provided by, say, an omelet.

“No, wait, what?!” Twilight finally cried, her hair frazzling.

“What?!” exclaimed Rarity, jumping in place.

“Thud” went Spike as his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the street.

“Eep!” said the Mill Creek Bridge.

Author's Note

Future did some math. Apparently, it would take "roughly 1.3 x 10^33 pieces of paper, or 5 nonillion books to create a singularity".

So, roughly the same number of Pony Verbs a Noun stories as their are on FIMFiction.