Undying

My fate is forever changed…

I see ruins of a once proud civilization…

I see ponies who were once great artists, musicians, and explorers…

Now, they are lost to all, and their minds decayed to nothing…

But can they be restored?

I suppose only time will tell…

“Wake up, Aegis. We’re nearly there.”

Aegis had been sleeping for the past three days as he was transported in a barred and reinforced automated carriage to the western asylum, where he would spend the rest of his days. Or so they thought. Unbeknownst to them, Spike had planned an escape, and was now putting things in place to rescue Aegis from the asylum.

“You should have fried him, Jazz,” Aegis said softly. He realized that he would never see his home again. Whether he was successful or not, he was an exile. That single solitary thought nearly broke his heart. “Now… well… now I will never hear your voice or see your smile ever again…”

The ponies operating the rusted relic conversed among themselves, but Aegis caught snippets of what they were saying. From the voices, it sounded like a male-female pair.

“It’s not right…”

“He got what was comin’ to ‘im”

“Just because you didn’t like him…”

Aegis sighed. “Time to play my part.” He got up on his hind legs and threw himself at the rear door.

CRACK! The door splintered as Aegis collided with the wood. He reasoned that his strength might have been enhanced by the curse, or the wood was rotting. One of the two. Regardless, he reared again, only this time to be greeted by swords.

“Finally…” He hissed, leaping over the drivers. They spun around, swinging their swords at Aegis’ knees, but he vaulted over the blades. He smiled at them with a disturbingly feral smile. “Want to know why you can’t beat me?”

The drivers glared at him. They couldn’t kill him, since he’d just get back up, but he could take a lot of punishment and still live. They charged at him, swinging wildly. Aegis slid under their blades and leapt onto the male’s back. “You just don’t have the range of movement when you hold a sword in your mouth, and you lack the agility to fight like I do.”

The female tackled Aegis to the ground, but he threw her off easily. The mark on his forehead flashed underneath his mane and his eyes glowed bright blue as a piece of wood broke off the carriage and floated in front of Aegis, surrounded in a magic aura that was the same colour as his eyes. “Shall we?”

Spike walked up to the drivers. “I’ll take it from here. Aegis, you’re going to the asylum, even if I have to knock you out and drag you there.” The dragon winked at Aegis.

“You’ll have to catch me first, Gramps!” He yelled, sprinting off into the night with Spike hot on his heels. Once they were a sufficient distance away, they stopped. “I don’t think that was part of the plan.”

“No, but it worked a lot better than the original plan would have,” Spike said.

“How so, Gramps?” Aegis asked.

“Because those two would have died, and unlike you, they wouldn’t get back up. Anyway, do you know what you did back there?”

Aegis thought for a moment, and realized what happened. “Yeah, I felt like a part of me, an invisible wing or hand, was reaching out and grabbed hold of that plank of wood. “

“That was telekinesis. When I last did research into it, everypony with telekinesis always described it as an invisible hand reaching out to grab the object they focused it on. Princess Twilight also used it to defend herself on occasion by compressing air and shooting it at her foes.” Spike noted Aegis’ excited expression and quickly added. “I wouldn’t try it, hotshot. It’s a difficult spell, and Princess Twilight tended to shoot nearby objects at her foes more often than compressing air into tiny balls of pressure.”

“Does that work better?” Aegis asked.

“Considering it takes less energy to pick up something and throw it than it does to actually make the projectile, yes. Unicorns last longer by shooting rocks than shooting lightning bolts. But it’s not a matter of power or longevity. It’s about how wisely you use your power.”

“Words to live by. Where to?” Aegis asked, eager to get going.

“Don’t be in such a rush, hotshot. If you go blindly rushing in, things tend to get messy,” Spike said. He then pointed towards the mountains. “That way. When you see a city wrapped around the mountain, that’s Canterlot. It’s called The Cursed City now, because ponies these days are so intelligent…”

The road was long and their destination always seemed to be out of their reach. Aegis hoped that he was doing the right thing, and thought that Spike’s decision to leave was surprisingly out of character. Spike didn’t get along with the elders, but he had never wanted to leave before. Aegis decided to press for answers.

“Why did you say you were being called home, Gramps?” Aegis asked.

“I just said it was a feeling,” Spike replied.

“Why?”

Spike sighed. “Because it has to do with my past. I have told you stories about the past, but I never told you my past. And we’ll leave it at that.”

Aegis stood in front of Spike, refusing to let the Dragon past. “No, we won’t. You’re hiding something, and if there’s one thing I learned from the elders, secrets can get a pony killed.”

Spike frowned at the Pegasus. “Oh, and what makes you think you deserve an answer like that out of me? Just because I raised you after your parents died does not mean you can pry into memories from five hundred years ago. Seriously, Twilight, just leave it alone!”

“Twilight?” Aegis asked, puzzled.

“Nothing. Let’s just get moving. The sooner we get there, the better.”

They didn’t speak again for a solid hour, by which time, Spike was holding a golden necklace with a blazing red ruby set into the heart shaped pendant. His eyes were filled with sorrow and longing.

“Gramps? Are you ok?” Aegis asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah… I was just remembering somepony special to me. She was beautiful and elegant. She was also selfish and stubborn at times, but her heart was always in the right place. I gave her this ruby, and she said that she would treasure it always,” Spike said.

“What was her name?”

“Her name was Rarity. And she certainly lived up to her name. Nopony will ever be like her.”

Aegis leapt onto Spike’s shoulders. “Hey!” Spike exclaimed, keeping a hold of the pendant

“You’ll see her again someday, Gramps,” Aegis said.

“Maybe… Now get off. You’re not a foal anymore,” Spike said, grinning to himself.

Aegis and Spike couldn’t help but smile. I wonder, Twilight… Is this how you felt when I was in Aegis’ place and you in mine? Spike thought to himself. He may yet find out.

They stopped to camp in what used to be Ponyville. There were still a few liveable houses in the deserted town, even though nopony had lived there in hundreds of years. Needless to say, new tenants had moved in. And they didn’t take kindly to strangers.

“Back off!” Aegis yelled, throwing one of these tenants, a Timberwolf, into a fireplace. He charged into another, breaking through the wall of a destroyed house. The Timberwolf snarled at Aegis, who simply flared his wings open and tackled the Timberwolf to the ground.

Spike had his own problems. He had faced Timberwolves before, even far back into his youth. His face remained stoic as he fended off several Timberwolves. “We’re just passin’ through! Can’t you understand that?”

Seeing that his words wouldn’t make any difference, he relaxed his body, took in a deep breath, and brought forth a single beam of emerald green flames from his maw. The Timberwolves scattered, fearful of the fire, and rightfully so. Their inherent magical defences are meaningless compared to Dragon flames. Taking the opportunity, Spike sprinted through, grabbing hold of Aegis as he ran.

“Hey! Warn me next time!” Aegis yelled, indignantly.

“Didn’t you see the fire? That WAS the warning, hotshot…” Spike said. “Ponyville’s a bad place to camp.” He looked back only once, to take one last look at the biggest tree in Ponyville. The tree that had been his home five hundred years ago.

They only stopped running as soon as they had reached an old railway track. Plants had grown over it, as well as various mushrooms. Aegis prodded one with a stick, like a child would.

“They’re just mushrooms, not Timberwolves in disguise…” Spike said.

“I’m not taking chances out here,” Aegis said in response. He continued eyeing the mushroom. Spike rolled his eyes and plucked it out of the ground. He uprooted a few more and fashioned a pot out of a large nearby stone.

“I’ll show you what to do with these. These aren’t poisonous. Heck, even if they were, it wouldn’t bother you much, would it?” He grinned slyly at Aegis as he began cutting the mushrooms with his claws. He began taking some bags of herbs out of his travel bag, having switched from vials after realizing how fragile they were sometime after preparing to travel to Canterlot, and lit a fire under the stone pot.

Aegis sat by the fire, trying to catch the flames with his telekinesis. He thought back to his friend, Smooth Jazz, and the home he believed he would never return to.

“Hard to cope with, isn’t it?” Spike asked, correctly guessing what Aegis was thinking.

“How do you manage, Gramps? What stops you from becoming a wreck?”

Spike cast a spell to draw water from the ground to fill the stone pot. “I learned to deal with it a long time ago. For the first ten years, I wouldn’t leave the house. I stayed and cried. The next seventy years, I wandered around as an angry, depressed sword-for-hire, protecting Equestrians on their way to safety. After that, it just became another memory.” As the water boiled, he threw the mushrooms and herbs in, but he did not lose his melancholy expression. “The thing about Dragons is that we remember long after everypony else has forgotten. It’s truly the only thing I curse about being a Dragon.”

“Why?” Aegis asked.

“Because it’s one thing to remember a friend. It’s another thing to spend the rest of your life regretting that you were ever friends in the first place or wishing you were dead because you outlived that friend. A life measured in thousands of years is a terrible curse, Aegis. Remember that…”

Aegis wanted to talk more, but his hunger and a need to sleep won out this time. Once the mushroom stew was ready, the two of them ate what they could and slept lightly.

The closest to morning that ever came was the sky turning a dark pale blue, a shade that stayed until it turned black.  When Aegis awoke, Spike was preparing  some food. Aegis didn’t know what it was, only that it was white with a yellow spot in the centre.

“Morning, hotshot,” Spike said cheerfully.

“Morning. What is that?” Aegis asked.

“These are eggs. Chicken eggs, to be precise. There heaps of them runnin’ around. Logically, there’s nests nearby, too. Got lucky and found a few.”

“You eat eggs?” Aegis asked, repulsed at the thought.

“So did the Equestrians, five hundred years ago. You should brush up on your history,” Spike said, sliding the eggs off the stone slab into Aegis’ bowl from the previous night, except it was cleaned since then.

“We’re not far, are we?” Aegis asked, tentatively sniffing at the fried eggs.

Spike happily scarfed down his eggs, immediately looking to see if he had any more to cook. “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

Aegis frowned. “Are we or aren’t we?”

“We’ll be there by the time the sky turns black again. Fortunately, there’s nothing around here that will try to kill us. Not until we get into Canterlot itself, anyway…”

I remember the time when the Sun set for the last time, and eternal night took its place…

“Spike, take this and run. This is my last letter to Princess Celestia. Inside are all my notes and a theory on how to stop all of this.”

“Twilight, I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

“Neither do I, Spike. Please, keep this letter safe for me.”

“Don’t send me away. Let me protect you.”

“I appreciate the thought, but you have to go. Find a place to hide and keep that letter safe. Trust me.”

That was the last time I saw Twilight, and to this day, I still have that letter. Still unopened. Still waiting.

“Is that it, Gramps?” Aegis asked, pointing out the city wrapped around the mountain.

“Yep. The Cursed City of Canterlot,” Spike said with a sad tone in his voice. “It used to be so beautiful…”