Ten Years Gone

Chapters

1. Inevitability
2. The Calm Before...
3. The Invitation

1. Inevitability

Ten Years Gone

Chapter 1: Inevitability

If I was to recount my life up to this point, where would I begin?

I could start with my life before everything changed, except that there's nothing worth mentioning about my old life. I was a middle-class kid growing up in New Jersey who had all the book smarts but none of the common sense. The most interesting thing about me was probably the number of bizarre accidents I would get myself into—and that might just be the very thing that brought me here.

I had just turned twenty when it happened; when I went to bed in my room and woke up not only in a place I had never seen before, but as a bipedal dragon of the opposite sex. It's easy to imagine the crisis of identity that would certainly follow this revelation, and to be honest, I hadn't handled it too well. It was only when the moon rose that night that I figured out where I was—the Mare In the Moon is unmistakable to anyone who knew the show well enough.

Except that this was a very general approximation, as I soon discovered that Equestria was halfway around the world from where I stood. I had to weigh my options, to question if it was really worth it to make that kind of journey in such a state as I was in; confused, penniless, with nothing but the clothes on my back. It took me a few months to scrounge together enough resources to make ends meet, but even then, what would I do if I chose to make the move? For one, I had shown up seven years before that fateful thousandth year where Luna would make her dramatic return, and even then, what was there for me to do?

Of the scant few fanfiction stories I'd read that typically involved a more favorable variation of my current situation at the time, most of those human characters ended their tales as residents of Ponyville, seemingly having no greater ambition than to sit there for the rest of their lives. I figured out that this wasn't what I wanted for myself. There was a whole new world beyond that small, not-so-peaceful town, and I just so happened to be standing in the thick of it.

My luck doubled when I met a small group at the local bar who were just starting out their career as globetrotters of sorts—travelers who explored both the civilized world and the untamed wild beyond. Their leader, a griffin who went by the name of Grizelda, offered me a chance to come along so long as I could pull my weight, and I couldn't help but jump at the call. The next few weeks were some of the roughest that I had ever gone through, but I never regretted having made my choice. It was then that I truly made the transition from a beleaguered college student into what I've now become.

Equestria itself may have had a quantity of strange and wonderful things, as far as whatever the show itself had covered, but the rest of this new world took the lion's share and ran with it. I traveled through nations comprising of species and cultures I never thought I'd see with my own eyes, explored lands far more alien and breathtaking than anything I had ever seen on Earth, and learned things that even the pioneers of my time still could only ever dream of. I took to the arts of swordplay and magic, listened to and read of countless tales chronicling the lives of gods and mortals alike, and made discoveries with my newfound friends that gave us a reputation in several nations that according to Grizelda—Grizzly, as I'd nicknamed her—was on par with that of Daring Do in her own homeland.

I had experienced more in ten years in this world than I would have in an entire century of my previous life, and I had to ask myself: Would things be the same had I moved to Equestria and stayed there? Fittingly enough, in the decade I had spent with Grizzly and the others, Equestria was never on our list of places to go. I was told that they had already been there shortly before I tagged along, and I never felt compelled to go there myself. I already knew what to expect, after all, and where was the fun in that? Of course, most fans of the show would have pointed to the novelty of meeting individuals such as the Mane 6, Celestia, and so on...

But the world beyond those borders proved to be far more compelling, with its allure of vast flying cities, colossal beasts reminiscent of the Ursa Major, landscapes that were said to have been carved into shape by gods...

In truth, once I grew used to living as an explorer, I was now afraid to go to that very place I had spent several sleepless nights wishing to wake up to a new life in. In a sense, what had once been my greatest symbol of escapism had now turned into a representation of the mundane that defined my old life, but not in the sense of settling down in one place. Rather, that of being forced to follow the same old routines that had left me feeling isolated from everything going on around me.

What summed it all up the best was the one nightmare I had where Twilight Sparkle figured out what I was and immediately teleported me back to Earth. That scenario in itself was both unlikely and stupid, however, and under any other circumstances, the worry I had would have been purely irrational. But for one very simple reason, I had good cause to want to steer clear; it only took one look in the mirror for me to see just how much I resembled the only civilized dragon in Equestria. I looked enough like Spike—sounded enough like him, for that matter—that it was guaranteed both he and the Mane 6 would assume I was some long-lost older sister of his, and all it took for Princess Celestia herself to get involved was for Twilight to tell him to take a letter, if he hadn't yet contrived to sending one on his own. The results would be instantaneous.

Long story short, I had no clue of knowing where things would end up at that point, and I had no intention of finding out.

For the first seven years, all of my worries were relegated to the back of my mind, as something to sometimes ponder when a quiet moment came rolling by. But for the last three, things began to happen which renewed our group's interest in the goings on of Equestria proper. It all started when the Mare In the Moon vanished, and news of Princess Luna's return spread like wildfire. More recent tales of Discord's short coup, the Changeling invasion during the royal wedding of Shining Armor and Cadance, and the return of the Crystal Empire only made things worse. Especially news of the Crystal Empire; when the others heard of how a young dragon had played a pivotal role in saving the city from King Sombra, I had to make a conscious effort to make my arguments look like a valid expression of disinterest. I couldn't afford to be questioned about it if I started acting passionate about not wanting to go.

But alas, the deal was sealed when word reached us of Twilight Sparkle's transformation into an alicorn and subsequent coronation. There was no talking them out of it this time.

"Why the long face, Kaz? Isn't today your birthday?"

The sound of Grizelda's scratchy voice pulled me out of my reverie, and I had to force myself to pull my gaze away from the landscape rolling by through the train's window. I let out a sigh, watching a few small tendrils of smoke floating upwards from my mouth. The reason for my bad mood was obvious; the train was taking us straight to the heart of the one place I wanted to stay away from. Before I could craft together some vague answer, another spoke up.

"You just said it yourself, Grizzly. The poor girl's just turned thirty, and you know as well as I do that we all wind up having those moments." The old minotaur's voice rumbled, deep enough to give the locomotive a run for its money. I chuckled to myself; of course Alcaeus would know the ins and outs of a midlife crisis, given he was twice my age when we first met. At the sound of my own laughter, he too grinned. "See? Nothing a little humor can't fix."

"I wouldn't say all of us..." muttered the only unicorn in our gathering, and the rest of us snorted at him. It was left unsaid how the albino-tailed colt had five years to go before he was in my position, and probably for the better, with all the challenging glares he started shooting our way. "Why are you all acting like thirty's an old age, anyway?" Whitetail demanded, turning to Alcaeus. "What about you, Mister Fifty-Two? Have fun tossing a dozen patrons across the room during that bar brawl last week?"

"Yeah, and enjoyed being sore all over when I woke up the next day," came the gravelly retort. The conversation between the three of them wore on, and I crossed my legs at the ankles and folded my gloved hands into my lap. Out of boredom, I studied my current attire, smirking to myself at the sight of the bizarre mix between mage's robes, the jeans that were all that I had left over from my old life, and the ornate sword that was buckled to my belt. Odd? Definitely, but it was a perfect representation of how I came to see myself these days.

"...And hey, you'll cheer up once we take the next train to Canterlot. The view from that city is one-of-a-kind!" Grizzly reassured me, or tried to, anyway. I just gave a nod and a smile in return, even as a small part of me was crying out in frustration. "It's a shame we wound up missing the coronation, though. That would've been a sight to see." The griffin tittered in her disappointment, and the others chimed in with their own agreements.

"Probably for the best, though. Did you guys hear about that recent incident involving the Everfree Forest?" Whitetail asked. I couldn't help but to raise my eyebrows, and as we all shared disconcerted frowns between us, I was back to pondering a part of my old life once again. That incident had been the two-parter that opened the show's fourth season, and the last two episodes I ever saw before I was snatched away to become a part of the world that it depicted.

Hear about it? More like saw it playing out as if I was right there when it had happened.

It was at this moment that we felt the train begin to jolt as it slowed down, and realized that our first pit stop was mere moments away. I could already make out some of the buildings as we came around another hill, and wasted no time in standing up and stretching my limbs.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll let my stomach speak for me on this one," I announced. Right on cue, I felt—as well as heard—a loud rumble coming from my gut, eliciting bemused stares from my friends and a few nearby passengers. "On the off chance that you didn't understand that message—"

"Yes, I get it, Kaz. We're all hungry." Grizzly deadpanned, her mood turning sour. "Thanks for reminding me that Equestrian ponies never have any of my favorite kinds of food in stock."

"Well, hey. Coming here was your idea, and since you always warn us before every trip to pack our own food... Guess you should start following your own advice, am I right?" I gave my best insufferable grin as she bristled at my tease, huffing as she tried and failed to come up with a proper comeback. It all became moot anyway when we felt the train come to a complete halt—by then, as we all filed through the exit with the other passengers, the only thing on our minds was making up for the breakfast that got skipped this morning.

The first thing to greet me as I stepped outside was a warm summer breeze, accompanied by the sight of a town that hearkened back to my early childhood daydreams of the colonial era. The next was the sheer amount of brightly-colored ponies going about their day; either my memory of the show had faded, or it was easier to ignore the fact that their coat colors alone gave the place a bit of a festival atmosphere when it was all coming from a computer screen. For a moment, my anxiety was alleviated as I became swamped with nostalgia. Perhaps I'd forgotten that coming back to something familiar wasn't entirely a bad thing. All of which got shattered when Alcaeus snorted at some thought of his own.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... a town with a name I can't even remember," he deadpanned, clearly unimpressed with his surroundings. "We're leaving first thing tomorrow, right?"

"We can discuss that when I stop mistaking Kaz's stomach for an Ursa Major." And there was the comeback, late as it was. "Let's just split up and find a place that cooks decent meals. It shouldn't be too hard to find each other afterwards," Grizzly added, and we stepped off the platform and went in separate directions. Such was our first order of business every time we came to a city we hadn't been to before; scout out restaurants, food courts and the like, and then figure out between ourselves whichever struck our fancy at the moment.

I didn't have much of a hard time finding anything, as I soon found myself walking down a street packed with all sorts of stalls. It was just like any other open air market, but once again, all the ponies going about made me feel like I was walking through some sort of festival. And for whatever strange reason, as I watched them passing by, I felt as though I should've recognized some of them. I knew for sure that I was getting a lot more staring from the passerby here than anywhere else I've been. No hostility, just curiosity, and sometimes mild surprise.

"Hey, are you—?"

"Sorry buddy, but spinach makes me gag," I cut in, interrupting the stall owner who spoke up. It became a bit of a trend as I went from stall to stall, where some of them would open their mouth to speak and I would tell most of them I'd probably be back soon with my friends. I didn't stick around long, and I felt a little relieved when I finally stepped out another street and away from the crowd. I was starting to get uncomfortable with all of the looks they were giving me.

I had to wonder, what was the name of the town I was in? As if in answer, the street opened up to a space that was occupied by a large, hollowed-out tree, with a sign at its door marking it as a library. I felt like I should've recognized that as well, but with everything that had gone down in the past decade of my life, I'd forgotten a lot of the smaller details from the first twenty years. So it was against my better judgment that I stepped up to the door and opened it.

I felt my gut bottom out when I saw what was inside.

"Welcome to the library! I'll be right with... you..." Standing by the shelves and staring at me like deer in the headlights were the last two individuals I had ever hoped to meet. Who else but Twilight Sparkle in all of her alicorn glory, and her number one assistant, Spike? The book she had been holding with her magic fell to the floor, and a quill slipped out of the little dragon's claws. For a long and painfully quiet moment, the three of us continued to stare at each other like we were ticking time bombs, when Spike opened his mouth and stumbled over his words. I squeaked, cleared my throat, and nodded as I regained control of my own voice.

"Sorry, got the wrong day. Lemon gave me houses. Have a nice life," I babbled, and as calmly as I could, I eased the door shut... After which I took off sprinting like the one time I had blundered into a nest of hydras. I was halfway down the road when I heard the door fly open and the two of them calling out to me, at which I decided to pull a Ferris Bueller and take a shortcut through other ponies' back yards. I could hear a few of them yelling at me through their windows as I jumped multiple picket fences and ran through a few twisting alleyways. By the time I got back to the street, I had no idea where I was, and that was good enough for me.

"Hey, Kaz!" I jumped in shock, until I realized that it was only Whitetail that had called for me. "I just found us this amazing little bakery not too far from here. You've seriously got to check this place out!" He motioned for me to follow him, and by instinct I complied, scanning my surroundings as we went.

"Indoors, right?" I asked, and the unicorn looked at me like I'd lost my marbles.

"It'd be odd if it wasn't..." I nodded and inwardly gave a sigh of relief. They wouldn't find me so easily if I was indoors, or so I reasoned. As we moved back onto the busier streets, I grew more wary, and couldn't help but to look at the surrounding building with new eyes. Whitetail shook his head at my displays of anxiety, muttering something about giving me a sugar crash.

Of all the towns we had to stop in, it just had to be bloody Ponyville. Well, it was nothing that couldn't be solved, if it was done fast enough. The sooner we left of the country, the better.

"Alright, here's the place. So what do you think?" All I could think in my current state was that I'd lost my appetite, and the fact I was being led to a giant gingerbread house lookalike wasn't helping. If I wasn't being nudged forward, I'd have stopped in my tracks, because I was getting yet another sense of familiarity. But once again, I was too shaken up to come to a decision, and it was together that we walked into that dubious sanctuary. "See, Pinkie? I told you I was just leaving to bring in a friend of mine!"

Pinkie... Pinkie... Oh dear God, PINKIE.

Sure enough, the mare running the cash register let out a massive gasp, and I resigned myself to the fact that I was now face-to-face with the only thing worse than who I had just fled from: the Blue-Eyes Pink Menace herself.

Author's Note

I got Writers Block with my other work, so I got mad and decided to slap this thing together in the span of 24 hours. Enjoy this product of sheer frustration from yours truly. And remember: Only YOU can prevent nuclear waffles.

2. The Calm Before...

Chapter 2: The Calm Before...

"Whitetail?" I muttered, staring sidelong at the little albino-tailed snivel-rat who had just walked me straight to the gates of Hell. The atmosphere in the room was about as tense as an impending nuclear blast, with its center being that impossible pink pony who now stood gaping at me, as still as a rock. At least until she started buzzing with excitement—literally. I wouldn't have been surprised if the universe about to implode right then and there.

"...Yeah?" He looked a little nervous when he responded to my inquiry. Good, that meant he could see the murder in my eyes. But by then, it was already too late, for the Pink Apocalypse had arrived at last.

"Ohmygosh!" My world suddenly became a whirlwind of pink and high-pitched noise, and I learned then and there that it was indeed possible to speak ten thousand words per second. It was downright impossible to make out everything she said, so I just tried to filter most of it out, standing at attention like an army recruit who was getting ripped to shreds by R. Lee Ermey. I had to wonder, what would be the results of a shouting match between the two?

The gist of it was more or less Pinkie introducing herself, thinking about throwing a party, being excited to see a new face in town, planning on throwing a party, commenting on my infernal resemblance to Spike, talking about throwing a damned party, mentioning something about an emergency stash of elephant tranquilizers... My head was pounding from me trying to keep my gaze on her as she bounced all over the place—forget that her voice was like a jackhammer to my eardrums. Taking in a deep breath, I spoke my next words as calmly as I could, given my current situation.

"Leaving now!"

For my completely rational decision, I turned around and vaulted through the nearest open window—opening the door would've taken me too long—landing onto a table outside and sending it crashing onto its side. I hardly registered the commotion as its contents scattered or the shocked exclamations of the two mares that occupied it, though I took pride in the sound of Whitetail audibly choking on his own spit as I scrambled to my feet and ran off into the street. I didn't care which direction I was going in, so long as it took me as far away from that bakery as possible.

Unless Ponyville happened to be a black hole in the sense that every direction only took one closer to its center—I've heard of prisons in Canissia South which were spell-crafted to work that way.

Street by street, I kept up the pace, and only slowed to a walk when I glanced back saw no trace of the bakery or a pink whirlwind coming after me. So she wasn't chasing after me like Twilight was; I didn't know whether to consider that a good thing or a bad one, because that could've meant just about anything. What I did achieve was another quiet moment to myself, with nothing but me and my thoughts as I took one step after another, surrounded by quaint buildings and ponies whose names I either never known or had long forgotten.

In a sense, it was all so very ironic; being here now brought me back to a time when I had seen this town and its inhabitants once a week through a flatscreen monitor. I knew for a fact that quite a few people would commit murder to be in my position, and yet here I was, making plans to put an ocean's worth of distance between it and myself at my earliest convenience.

What those hypothetical people didn't seem to acknowledge was that ponies had an instinctive phobia of the unknown. In this regard, I was lucky to have been receiving stares from them at the worst, for I already looked enough like someone they were already used to seeing. Had I woken up on the first day as a human in this very town, I wouldn't be running from them—they would be running from me. And that would become the very least of my problems.

But as my breathing grew steadier and my heart rate slowed to normal, I had to wonder if I wasn't blowing things hilariously out of proportion. I mean, sure, my uncanny resemblance to the only other civilized dragon in the entire nation was going to warrant quite a few questions, but that didn't mean the Element Bearers were going to tie me to a chair and interrogate me...

Well, I wouldn't put it past Twilight Sparkle to do just that, but as for the others? Pinkie was hardly more than a physics-defying chatterbox, and I just made a fool of myself in front of her, Whitetail and just about everyone who was walking by the bakery just then.

"I'm never going to hear the end of it..." I huffed. Knowing him, my stunt was probably going to be the butt of his jokes for a few weeks in the least. But if that was the worst that would come of our rest stop before the trip to Canterlot, I would gladly leave it as such. In the meantime, I tucked my hands into my pockets and tried to admire the scenery.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself back on the street with the market stalls, and my pace slowed to a stop as I observed the town in the golden glow of late afternoon. For a moment, I felt as though I was back on one of many camping trips in the Appalachians. A slice of my old home, and one that I still cherished as deeply as the memories I had of my family.

The crowd from before had gotten smaller in the short time since I had last been here, but perhaps that was more due to some of the stalls closing down for the day. My hand moved to my gut as an innocuous pang reminded me of what I was doing wandering around Ponyville to begin with... And I just fled from a bakery of all places.

I resisted the urge to plant a hand to my forehead and shrugged to myself, moving into the now-thinning crowd for a second time. It probably wouldn't matter much, given that Canterlot was bound to make up for it in spades, so I walked up to a nearby stall that was laden with apples and—

Apples? Let me take a wild guess...

And sure enough, when I looked to the stall's owner, it turned out to be none other than Applejack—trademark stetson and all—and she turned to me at the same time, eyes widening in surprise as she took in my sudden appearance.

There must have been a bored deity out there somewhere who thought it would be hilarious to put me through this ridiculous series of events—from Twilight to Pinkie and now to the mare right before me. The only way this could get any more contrived was is if Rainbow Dash tackled me through What's-It-Called's window and had Rarity and Fluttershy cart me to the hospital in a wheelbarrow. Perhaps I should make changes to my current strategy while I still could... I was getting hungrier by the minute anyway, so I gave the vendor a smile and tried to clamp down on my growing anxiety.

"So how much do you charge for a half-peck?" I asked, digging into my pockets for whatever spare change I had stuffed into them. She blinked at me a few times before shaking her head to come to her senses, mumbling something under her breath as she adjusted her hat.

"...It's three bits, sugarcube." Applejack snatched up a paper bag from the side of the stand and tipped into it over a dozen of her fare, and I managed to excavate four coins from the pocket lint. We silently made the exchange, and I made a mental note to find Grizzly to take back some of the money I left with her. Alas, I only took two steps away with the bag in hand when she spoke up again. "So what brings you to Ponyville? We don't really get dragons stopping by 'round these parts," she inquired, western drawl and all. At least it wasn't unpleasant to listen to.

"It's more or less the last rest stop on my trip to Canterlot. I'm taking the train out first thing tomorrow morning." I could see where she was trying to lead this, but where was the harm in telling a few truths and evading whatever hit too close to home?

"So soon?" I nodded, crossing my arms. And now for the million-dollar question... "I don't mean to jump to conclusions or anythin', but I was thinking you were here to visit someone. D'you know that there's a baby dragon in town who looks just like you?" I raised my brow, and was in the midst of putting the finishing touches on my list of excuses when I saw a familiar old minotaur wander into view, and he had apparently just gone on a shopping spree to boot. I burst out into giggle fits at the mere sight of him.

"Alcaeus, if you were carrying any more bags, I'd swear you were trying to outdo my grandmother." When he stopped to look at me, the expression plastered on his face made me regret the fact that it was Whitetail who always lugged our camera around. The resulting picture would've been priceless—and knowing him, he would've been ready for it too.

"Well, that's hardly fair. I'd never be able to compete with someone who can sit down and flatten a house," he retorted. I had to hold a hand to my gut to keep myself from doubling over at the mental image he just gave me. My grandmother was neither a dragon nor heavy by human standards, but I was reminded of a joke my dad told about the bags she always took with her on trips; one which involved that one theory about dropping a penny from the Empire State Building.

"And you're forgetting something important, Kaz. It's going to take an entire day for our train to scale that mountain. That means food which isn't going to stink up the train by the time we have breakfast the day after tomorrow." To emphasize his point, he spread his arms out, displaying each and every one of the paper bags that hung from both of them. To me, he looked like a giant hairy bat with its wings ripped, and Applejack looked at him like he had grown a second head.

"If you don't mind me sayin', that looks more like a week's worth of food than something to last a day..."

"That's because we've got two others coming with us whose stomachs are bigger on the inside," I half-joked, wondering at how abruptly I came to feel more at ease. Then again, maybe it was just the fact that I could always count on the minotaur to pull me out of the metaphorical fire. The next smile I gave the farmpony was genuine this time around. "Speaking of food..." I began, pulling an apple from my own bag and biting into it. And as far as apples went, it was definitely one of the best I've eaten in terms of overall quality. The look of pride on the mare's face wasn't lost on me as I chewed a few more bites with relish, and I decided that it couldn't hurt to fan that pride a little more. "You know, I haven't tasted an apple as good as this in forever—"

"FOREVER!"

At that same moment, something erupted from the stand, sending a number of apples flying as it emerged from its depths. Something that was pink all over and staring at us with a wide grin. I didn't stick around to see who it was, putting myself behind the graying minotaur like the world's most effective meat-shield. But I still had to ask one very important question:

"For the love of God, Pinkie! Why?!"

"I'm more concerned about how you snuck into my cart without me noticing!" Applejack huffed, bending down to snatch up what had fallen from the stand.

"And I'm more concerned about what you are doing in there to begin with," Alcaeus deadpanned. With the bags still on his arms, he stepped forward and hoisted the Pink Menace from the stand, setting her gently back onto the ground like it was just any other day for him. "Now, would you care to explain yourself, ma'am?"

So she did.

"I hope you learned your lesson well, you old bull."

"What lesson? That if you ever need something in a pinch, just ask the pink mare who works at the bakery?" Alcaeus guessed, motioning to the trolley cart that trundled close behind, now laden with three times as much as what he had been carrying before. Half of it was now food from the bakery, and with the odd addition of a classy suit tailored to a stallion's build. He apparently caught the scowl I gave at his answer, even with the evening sky getting steadily darker in the last moments of the sunset.

"That you should under no circumstances ask Pinkie Pie to ever explain herself. That tangent took long enough for what's-her-face to pack up and leave, and for Whitetail here to catch up to us while carrying his own weight in baked goods!" I snapped, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the cause for today's crisis. The unicorn in question let out a chuckle that came out more as a pained groan as he hobbled along.

"Yeah, remind me not to try that again. I really underestimated the weight of those cakes..."

"You just need to learn to tolerate others better. And I mean inwardly, Kaz. Keeping your mouth shut doesn't do much if you feel like you're going to go flying off the handle at a moment's notice. Speaking of which..." Alcaeus trailed off, turning to face the silhouette of an approaching griffin. And from the way she was moving, I could tell right off the bat that she wasn't happy either.

"You probably can't see it right now, but I just got a massive bruise on my cheek from being sucker-punched for the worst of reasons." Grizzly's words came out clipped and laced with a sarcastic tone, which I came to understand meant that the perpetrator got off lightly for their transgressions. As she fell into step with the rest of us, I took a small, selfish comfort in not being the only one who had a bad day.

"Trust me, we can see it just fine. The question is, how'd you manage to earn that in a place like this?" Whitetail asked, his laughter now sounding much less like an expression of pain. Which was a perfectly valid question, considering that the worst I ever got from any of the town's residents was a glare from some brown pony with an hourglass for a Cutie Mark that had been downright terrifying—and he happened to be the lone exception to the rest of the town's residents.

"Oh, I didn't have to do much. I just happen to bump into some wallflower pegasus who starts freaking out at the sight of me, and then her wildcard friend just so happens to mistake me for another griffin she knows and sees that as good enough reason to slug me in the face! I swear, if she hadn't had the decency to apologize..." And as she continued to vent her indignation at us, I found myself guessing the names of the two pegasi that had crossed paths with her. For a moment, I felt tempted to ask if one of them had a rainbow-colored mane and flew like a fighter jet, but it would've only served to further complicate things.

"So, first thing tomorrow then?" Alcaeus interjected, an innocent grin plastered on his face, and the griffin gave him a passionate nod.

"Yes. And be glad that you stocked us up on food supplies, because we're not stopping for anything tomorrow morning. And I mean anything: It's straight to the train station for us," Grizzly declared, and I could've jumped for joy. In truth, Whitetail was the only one who looked disappointed at this news, and he mumbled something about a mare he wanted to invite to a local restaurant. So was that how a suit ended up with a bunch of our groceries? "Anyway, I rented us a place for the night, and funny enough, we're all headed more-or-less in the right direction. So let's try to make the best of what's left of a bad day, shall we?"

"So you actually got her name?"

"I sure did, and the names of her companions too!"

Twilight and Spike both exchanged looks of excitement at Pinkie Pie's news, mingled with relief that their fruitless search had finally turned up a lead to go on. She shook her head as Spike pulled out a quill and a scrap of parchment; they had spent over an hour searching across the whole town, and it turned out that the stranger hadn't gone nearly as far as she assumed. It was like one of those puzzle mazes where the endpoint was on the most straightforward path, but she had never noticed it until after getting fed up with every other option.

"Ready when you are."

"The dragon's name is Kaz, and there was a pony called Whitetail and a minotaur called Alcaeus, I think. Though there might've been another whose name I didn't catch, but..."

"S'good enough for me!" A smile grew on the little dragon's face as he wrote down all he needed to, but there was something about hearing those names together that gave Twilight a feeling that she had heard of them before. And the longer she dwelt on it, the more she felt she knew where to look to find the answer. Something involving a recent discovery and the vague beginnings of a backup plan at the time of Nightmare Moon's return, somewhere to turn to in case the Elements of Harmony hadn't worked...

"Just a heads up for you two; they're taking the train to Canterlot tomorrow morning. You'd best be quick if you want to catch up to them!"

"Well, at least we'll know where to look. Thanks, Pinkie!" Wasting not another moment, she levitated Spike onto her back and sped off, hardly noticing as his ankles dug into her sides to keep balance.

"Whoa! What's the rush?"

"I just remembered something when she brought up those particular names. Trust me Spike, it'll be worth it," she reassured him. Running through the darkened streets, she could almost picture another figure sprinting away far ahead of her, and once again, the alicorn silently repeated the same line of questions that had plagued her for the past hour. Why did that dragon Kaz run away the moment she saw them? She and Spike clearly had some sort of blood relation; had she already known? What did it all mean, now that there was a solid link to the origins of Spike's egg? All of these things, only the stranger held the answers to, and as much as she didn't want to put anypony through a hassle just to hear them...

With the library in sight, Twilight slowed her pace enough to allow Spike to hop off, before flinging the door open and hurrying inside. She didn't stop at any of the shelves; most of those books wouldn't have had what she was looking for to begin with. Instead, she made her way to the door that led to the basement.

"The basement? What's down there that's going to help us?"

"Newspaper articles," Twilight answered, flicking the light switch and taking the steps two at a time. "Remember all those boxes we brought in from our old home in Canterlot?" Without another word, she trotted over to yet another door, this one leading to what had become a sort of storage space that was now packed full with stacks of boxes. Each one had been clearly labeled on its side, and it didn't take long to find the one that was marked Newspaper Collection, Year 1890. And as soon as she pulled the box from the stacks and pulled off the lid, she knew exactly what she had been searching for.

It was impossible to miss; it was the January 1st article, sitting proudly atop the rest, its front-page title boldly announcing 'INTREPID EXPLORERS REDISCOVER THE LOST SUNSPIRE', with a black-and-white picture directly beneath displaying four strangers huddled together against the backdrop of what was called the discovery of the century. Standing there with one arm around the minotaur's shoulder and the other forming a V-gesture with her fingers, smiling away at them without a care in the world, was the same dragon who had walked into the library earlier that day. Right down to everything except for the odd jacket that she wore in the photo.

"Wow, she's a real-life Daring Do?" Spike breathed. She scanned the front page for the first time in eight years, and started to flip to the page which continued the news story when that failed to bring up what she was looking for. It was with a sigh that she gazed at the personal interviews that the journalist had taken with each of the four—she had been so caught up in the actual discovery back then, and didn't even bother to read more about the ones who discovered it.

And there were the names, just as she had suspected; Grizelda le
Aurélie, Alcaeus of Minostead, Whitetail of Equiferus, and Kazimira 'Kaz' Blackwell.

"Do you see that, Spike? It was what the unicorn tribe pooled their magic into so that they could raise the sun and the moon, at least until the Windigos forced them all to relocate. I remembered this just now because the Sunspire was going to be my second option if the Elements of Harmony didn't work when Nightmare Moon returned. I never really had the chance to make an actual plan, but..."

"But look what it just led us to," Spike finished, hushed and wide-eyed. She lowered the newspaper to the floor, and together in silence, the duo read the interview from eight years past.

"Right, thank you for speaking with us. Could you tell the dragoness it's her turn on your way out?"

"Of course! But just a heads-up for you, Mister Prose; we aren't kidding when we're saying that she's a shy one. So be careful not to spook her too badly, yeah?" With that forewarning, Grizelda stood up and walked out of the room, and Purple Prose grabbed another roll of parchment with his magic and readied his quill. By the time the next interviewee stepped in, he had already started writing yet another preamble. But when he looked up, she was still standing by the door, shuffling from foot to foot with an anxious look on her face.

"There's no need to feel nervous, ma'am. Would you please take a seat?" he offered, taking care to heed the griffin's words and spoke more gently than he normally did. The way she reacted made Prose wonder if a ghost hadn't slapped her in the face.

"Right, sorry about that, I was just..." she trailed off, hurrying over to the chair that sat across from him. The dragoness sat down on her own tail in her rush to be where he told her to go, and though she jumped back up with a scowl, it seemed to make her less jittery. She broke into a rueful grin. "I'm only nervous because they're all telling me that our discovery's going to make us famous. I've always had a bit of stage fright, you know?"

"I understand completely, Miss...?" he began, noting silently how she seemed to flinch at being called Miss. Widowed, perhaps? Or was it something else?

"Call me Kaz... Or Kazimira Blackwell, whatever floats your boat."

"To be honest, Miss Blackwell, it truly is a staggering discovery. The Sunspire's location has been lost since the founding of Equestria, and it's been an outright myth ever since the Days of Discord. You may not become an outright celebrity, but I can say for certain that you and your friends have just earned yourselves a spot in the history books that can be found in every school." To his surprise, Kazimira burst into laughter at his last sentence.

"Real charming, sir. Little foals will be cursing my name for the rest of time as they're forced to write essays about me. I'll die happy knowing that one."

"So you feel accomplished, then? You're the second dragon to play a big part in recent history, you know," he said, making a smooth attempt to put the interview back on track. Humor was all well and good, but it still had to go somewhere by the end of it all. Kaz's mirth was replaced with confusion for a moment, and then realization.

"Oh, you're talking about Spike—!" Again, she flinched, and seemed to be in a panic before finding her words again. "But yeah, it's an accomplishment. Please go on." Purple Prose kept himself from grinning as he continued to write—her body language spoke volumes, and he was having a field day with it. Just as soon as I jot down that interesting little tidbit, my dear...

Twilight lifted her head from the article, finding Spike gazing back at her, looking just as speechless as she was. For a moment, they both simply sat there in silence, which grew ever so deafening before she took in a deep breath to speak what they already knew.

"So... She knew about you all along. And she never once thought to..." she trailed off. That dragoness knew for a fact that Spike was growing up alone among ponies, and not once did she even think to come along and offer him any insight into his own heritage? Not after at least eight years, not even after his greed-growth, identity crisis, and everything else along the way?

How dare she?

"What does it mean, then?" he asked, still looking half-stunned. Fuming, Twilight took in another deep breath, slowly let it out to calm herself down. She already knew what it meant, and she was going to make that dragoness regret every single year of it.

"Take a letter, Spike. It means that we're going to have a little royal chat with this Kazimira. And I won't take no for an answer."

Author's Note

Blegh, I had Chapter-Two-Syndrome when I was writing this, so if you guys perceived a drop in quality, well... Bollocks to my writing process. It was either this or spend another two weeks staring at the monitor.

I can guarantee that the next chapter's going to be a big one, though.

3. The Invitation

+++

"We're not getting out of this one so easily, are we?"

The looks on my companions' faces told me more than words ever could. Each and all of us, cornered into some rundown shack and peering through the boards. From the crack which I was crouched by, I could make out some of our assailants; diamond dogs, and each carrying a vicious-looking weapon in their... hands? Paws? They certainly looked big enough to crush a person's neck without any effort.

"They've all got crossbows, and I think a few of them have breech-loading rifles. We'll end up like porcupines if we try to fight our way out," Whitetail muttered, jerkily pulling his gaze away from one peephole and moving to the next. His face was set in determination, but his breathing was audibly shallow—the always-brash unicorn was as scared as the rest of us.

"Let's face it. We're as good as dead if we try to pull anything... That isn't helping, Kaz!" Grizzly hissed, and only then did I realize that I was whispering the same expression of denial over and over again. I had to bite down on my tongue and force myself to breathe deep, but the hammering of my heart refused to subside. In desperation, I turned to the one person in the shack whom I had come to believe was impossible to shake. And, in that level-headed manner he always had, Alcaeus frowned and shook his head.

"I have a few ideas, but not the kind that any of us should stake our lives on—"

"You've got nowhere left to run! Come on out or we'll take you out in pieces!" We all flinched at the sound of that harsh, throaty voice, for we had been on bad terms with its owner for two years. Who else but Lycurgus the Sixth, the mercenary commander who had crossed paths with us to the point our encounters always left a trail of burning wreckage? Only now, it seemed that our funeral pyres had finally caught up to us. "Better yet, why don't you just stay where you are? Give us a reason to use the dynamite we borrowed!" For a moment, we froze at the mention of dynamite; it was an outright miracle that he hadn't just lobbed a few at us and called it a day, but even so...

"Dynamite... Are you thinking what I'm thinking, my little fire-breather?" Alcaeus murmured, a tight grin forming on his face. In the dim light, it looked as vicious as his current line of thought probably was. I gave a smile and a nod of my own, a sense of giddy anticipation mixing in with the fear when I understood his intentions. Whatever the outcome would be, I was going to make damned sure that something exploded by the end of it.

"Whatever you're planning, you'd better make it quick. Or we'll be roasting in pieces," Grizzly urged, treading over to the door. For a moment, we waited there at the exit, unwilling to take that final step into the uncertain end. Beyond those doors stood two dozen armed mercenaries, and here we were, this little ragtag band with nothing but what we scrabbled together over the past few days. Only that and each other, so it seemed. But I felt that was better than dying alone.

So this was what a last stand felt like—knowing that I was about to take a few steps forward and experience what may be the last few seconds of my life. Seconds seemed to stretch into hours, and every small detail made itself known to me, from the smell of damp wood and gunpowder to the individual hairs of Whitetail's orange coat, black mane, albino tail...

And then, as their eyes all turned towards me, I came to realize; they were waiting for me to make the first move. In being the only one capable of lighting the dynamite fuses, everything was riding on me. But I ignored the panic in my gut and sheathed my sword, willing my arcane power to the palms of my hands. And as I felt the presence of energy building up, I saw Whitetail readying his own magic, Grizzly and Alcaeus loading up their crossbows. Despite myself, I managed one more grin, one last chuckle.

"Let's give the world a story they'll never forget," I whispered, placing my hand to the door. Together, we pushed it open and stepped out into the blinding light...

+++

Chapter 3: The Invitation

...And as we rose further, the horizon ceased to exist. I beckoned to the pinpoints in the sky, the vast and infinite void. This was to be ours, an inheritance given to us from the moment we left the collective cradle on our own determination. And as my passenger looked on as we moved ever further, and the whole universe shrunk to a dark canvas of cosmic dust motes, her star-studded mane blew in an unseen wind.

But then she looked to me, opened her mouth to speak—

In an instant, the world froze in place and melted into blackness like the afterimage of a light in my eyes. I felt a powerful jolt run through me, along with a staggering sense of vertigo as electric fire ran through my nerves. It took a few moments for me to feel my limbs again, to feel the weight of the blanket against my scales.

There was no mistaking it; I was waking up for real this time.

With the pins-and-needled still arcing through my body, I slowly rolled over in my bed, and spent a good while lying there on my back as I shook off the last remnants of my most recent journey through the bizarre world of my own mindscape. And as I spent the last few moments trying and failing to blink away the insurmountable wall of grogginess, a certain phrase came to mind, one that was as good as any to begin the day with.

"Christ on a crotch rocket..."

I let out an odd cross between a chuckle and a yawn at the resulting mental image—a sound that would've passed for a Wookie's laughter—and looked to the nearest window to see that the sky was just beginning to show a glimpse of the oncoming dawn. Lucky me that I woke up at the day's start, because I wouldn't have been able to go back to bed anyway even if I'd wanted to. So it was with a hefty breath that I tossed the blanket off and dragged myself out of bed and padded over to the door, floorboards creaking beneath my feet as I went to snatch up one of my robes.

Force of habit, that one; just because dragons had nothing to hide didn't mean I was comfortable with following the majority in the practice of being nude everywhere I went.

I stepped into the front hall of our rented home, greeted by little other than silence, with only a light coming from the kitchen to signify that anyone else was awake. I stood there for a moment, feeling as though I was back at my relatives' home in Delaware. For but a short moment, the scene gave me a sense of nostalgic comfort, for I knew that much of the rest of the day would be packed full with my cousins' antics.

But it didn't last; I remembered where I really was, and I felt a pale shadow of the feeling that haunted me for months after my father passed away. Shaking my head, I put it all to the back of my mind yet again and continued my early-morning journey to the kitchen, where I found Alcaeus sitting at the small table placed by the window. He looked up from the cup of tea cradled in his hands, a tired smirk working its way onto his face.

"Hm. Never took you as capable of waking up before six on your own," he rumbled, shifting in his creaky chair as he gestured to a kettle sitting on the stove. "There's tea if you want any," he added. I shrugged, taking him up on his offer.

"I wake up early because it means having a quiet morning. That's my well-earned reward for waking up before the crow and the parrot," I said, and we both broke into chuckles as I grabbed the kettle and filled a mug. It was a little in-joke which had its roots from Grizzly stubbing her toe and Whitetail emulating the noise for a good fifteen minutes—up until she threatened to rip his tail off and use it as toilet paper. I felt that I needed the humor anyway as I slumped into the next available chair and downed some of the would-be scalding tea.

Or rather, it was scalding hot, but it didn't actually burn my mouth, if that made any sort of sense. Not that Dragon biology itself made sense to begin with.

"I had a bit of an odd dream just then. Woke me up and kept me up, you know?"

"So what happened when you were dreaming?" Alcaeus asked, leaning back in his seat. I leaned the opposite way as I thought back to that bizarre spawn conceived between my subconscious mind and the astral plane, resting my elbows on the table when I came up with a way to begin.

"I don't remember much, but I'm kind of glad for that," I admitted, leaning ever so gradually further in my tiredness. "Most of it was just a bizarre reenactment of my childhood, and it ended with me flying through space and having this weird conversation with someone. And that's on top of feeling like I was being watched throughout the entire thing... God, I just want to go back to sleep." I sighed, propping my head against my hand. I was sorely tempted to retreat to my room and climb back in bed, but I just lifted my head to fight it off and take another rejuvenating sip of tea.

Today already felt like it was going to be one of those days, where the world would turn into a sitcom at everyone's expense and the only one still laughing by the end of it would be Whitetail.

"O' calamitous dreams, such spawn of Discord. What we would do without ye..." Alcaeus muttered, and we gave a toast to that, clinking mugs and downing the rest of our drinks. In the minutes that passed afterwards, as we refilled our drinks and made a breakfast of some of the fruit we had bought, the outside world continued to brighten as the sun readied for its journey above the horizon. The thought that such a thing as the cycle of day and night was truly dictated by mortal or quasi-mortal beings still struck me as odd, even to this day. Discovering the Sunspire had put a few important questions to rest, but it also created quite a few others just as significant as the last.

Answers, answers... All I wanted from the world were a few answers, but I never received any of them.

But it was all a train of thought for another time, for I soon heard the sound of something falling to the floor, followed by Grizzly living up to her nickname. My poor, poor ears.

"...Do you think she might have some bear in her genes?" I asked, and the minotaur shrugged. Whitetail had since joined in, and the two inevitably fell into a shouting match that was enough to make my head pound. What was worse, in the moment that followed, they came waltzing into the kitchen, still railing at each other over something I couldn't have cared any less about. Alcaeus let out a long-suffering sigh, and slowly raised his hands.

I covered my ears just in time for him to bring his fists down on the table. The noise that followed sounded much like a rifle going of, and they jumped clear off the floor at the sudden crack!—Whitetail was halfway to diving under the table when he realized his life wasn't in danger—and gave us sheepish looks as we gave them our best glares. The minotaur beat me to the punch with the obligatory disproportionate threat, though he got the point across much better than I would've.

"It's six in the morning, you know. If you're going to be screaming this loud, you can count on me to make sure you have a very good reason to be screaming."

With the most impeccable timing in the world—or maybe someone outside just heard the commotion—the doorbell rang, and we all stared out into the hall as we wondered what kind of sadomasochist would come knocking as early as this. For a moment, none of us moved from our spots, listening as the ringing came in periodic and persistent. I huffed as I realized that our unexpected drop-in wasn't going to leave us alone.

"I'll get it..." I growled, pushing my mug to the center of the table, and I made the effort to climb out of my seat. Why did I always have to get up to move just as I was starting to get comfortable? As I trudged on and the others followed behind me, I wondered at whoever was beyond that door, and whether I could get away with lighting their tail on fire.

My hand froze mere inches from the doorknob as I abruptly pictured Twilight Sparkle waiting on the other side, ready to descend upon me like the neurotic demigod she was. But I could feel my friends standing at my back, and I knew for a fact that they wouldn't just vanish into the blue when I needed them. I muttered a curse beneath my breath, shot them all a look of 'let's get this over with', and pulled the door open.

Imagine my surprise when I came face-to-face with a royal guard, decked out in gold-tinted armor and standing straight and tall as a trained officer would. It didn't change the fact that he had to look up at me like every other pony.

"Message for Kazimira Blackwell," he said, and as he pulled out an envelope, I was stuck wondering how anyone in the whole of Equestria knew my full name. But I felt my stomach bottom out when I made a few educated guesses. I didn't even need to read that letter to figure out who had it sent or what was written within, but nevertheless, I kept my silence as the guard handed it over to me. My suspicions were confirmed when I read the letter's contents out loud to the others.

"It is hereby decreed that the dragoness known by the name of Kazimira Blackwell appear before her majesty Princess Twilight Sparkle in the Golden Oaks Library on the 8th of July 1898, as in accordance with the wishes of Her Highness. Failure to comply will result in the appropriate consequences as dictated by Equestrian law... And that's the royal seal at the bottom."

I just realized; she knew my name. I couldn't figure out how, but Twilight figured out my full name within a day of me setting foot in her own country. The very thought sent my heart shooting into my throat and a cold knot forming in my gut. That hydra's nest was looking awfully cozy from where I currently stood...

"So this is a mandatory summons, then? On what grounds?" I demanded.

"I wasn't informed of her reasons, but do keep in mind that she is new to her position. All I can recommend is that you present yourself to her as soon as you are able. She is very interested in meeting you, Miss Blackwell." With another word, the guard gave a curt nod and marched off, leaving us to mull over everything on our own. Grizzly was the first to find her voice among us.

"So... Our li'l Kazie got an invitation from Princess Twilight?" Grizzly sang, audibly impressed with my so-called achievement. "I guess we'll have to postpone Canterlot for the day—"

"Yeah, failure to comply will result in a prison door slamming on my tail and all that. Were you paying attention at the part that screamed mandatory summons?" I emphasized, waving the letter about. I don't know how I kept my voice from quavering—I was two steps away from having an anxiety attack, and already I found myself pacing the front of the hall as I tried to get my thoughts in order. "Call me paranoid, but that little addition rubs me the wrong way, coming from someone who's supposedly the Element of Magic."

"After what Lord Balmer tried to do to us, anyone would be paranoid," Whitetail reassured me, but the mere mention of Lord Balmer only had the effect of making all of us shudder in remembrance of that psychopath's death course hidden away in his manor's catacombs. "Uh, what I'm trying to get at is that you may have a point, but you still have to remember that Princess Twilight is the polar opposite of him," he amended.

Polar opposite in terms of being dead and alive, most likely. I wasn't willing to hold her to any sort of standards involving a modicum of sanity.

"So I suppose we're sticking around for a little while longer?" Alcaeus asked, with the slightest hint of disappointment, but even he looked rather eager at the prospect of meeting Equestria's newest sovereign. That just made me want all the more to curl into a ball and cry.

"Like I'd leave town after getting an opportunity like this! It's part of the reason we came back to Equestria in the first place." Et tu, Grizelda? The griffin, unaware of my impending breakdown, clapped me on the side and rushed back to her room, uttering a stream of words that may have been along the lines of telling us to get ourselves presentable. As Alcaeus and Whitetail followed, I let out a frustrated groan that bordered on a pitiful sob.

How I wanted so badly to just tell them no, to run to the train station and flee this town in a moment's notice! But I didn't. After ten years of travelling the world and gambling our lives on so many crazy adventures, they would wonder why I was turning into a nervous wreck at a time and place like this. But it wasn't just because of them. After facing down monsters, mercenaries and so much more, was it anywhere near reasonable to be terrified by the presence of one of the most promising individuals of the modern era? It was more than a simple desire not to come here, it was the freezing knot in my stomach growing tighter just by thinking of her.

I suppose that I would feel a little better about it all after I had my sword buckled at my waist. Just a small reminder that I wasn't helpless anymore.

"Yes, the mayor assured me that this is the right address. And the recipient will be hard to miss; she's a dragon just like Spike."

With a nod and a salute, the royal guard—Flash something-or-other, Spike wasn't sure—turned and left the library with the letter he was to deliver. The little dragon didn't pay much attention to it nor the sound of the door closing after him. The newspaper article, particularly the image printed on its front, had taken his undivided attention since the previous night. He wondered at the picture of his kin, arm-in-arm with members of three separate species. That alone made her much different from the other teenage dragons he had met, and it solidified his belief all the more that he and Kazimira were related; they shared an outlook that every other dragon he knew didn't.

"Didn't you already read through that six times? I don't think you're going to find much else in there." He pulled his gaze away from the newspaper, and was greeted with one of Twilight's cheeky grins. A smile that briefly morphed into a distasteful scowl as she glanced down at the paper herself. Spike felt a small pang of worry for both Twilight and Kazimira; for even though Celestia's written response had convinced her to be more thoughtful in her decision-making, her first impression of the other dragon hadn't simply gone away.

"You're angry at her and you haven't even met her beyond those fifteen seconds she stood at the door. You didn't even give Trixie that sort of treatment until she came back with that amulet," he said, at which the alicorn bit her lip and puffed out a heavy breath.

"I know, what I said last night wasn't thoughtful. But if there's one thing that I won't ever stand for, it's abandonment." Once again, Twilight looked down upon the photo, brow furrowed as she fell into deeper thought. "If it isn't though, then why did she run away from us last night? How it would all fit together otherwise? I just want answers from her, Spike. We'll figure it all out once we've talked." She sighed, looking at Spike with an expression of concern bordering on pity. He resisted the urge to slap a claw to his face, choosing instead to toss the newspaper back onto the table and cross his arms.

"Just tell me you aren't going to jump her with a quill and paper the moment she walks through the door," he muttered. The sudden smile that graced her lips only made him worry even more.

"No, but I do have a better idea. Watch this." Twilight's horn lit up, and with a flash, she disappeared... Except, there was still a faint distortion from where she had stood. Tentatively, Spike reached out, and met an obstruction in the form of a fur-coated body. It hadn't been a teleportation spell, instead it was... "Invisibility spell, just learned it last week!" she boasted, for all intents and purposes a disembodied voice in the library. Where was she going with all of this? "Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling she'll be more open if she's holding a conversation with you rather than me. If she asks, just tell her that I'm out running an errand or two. I'll leave through the back door and come back in through the front if I have to."

"And you're spying on her for what reason exactly? You can actually leave, and I can just fill you in on what we talked about when you get back."

But before he could get an answer, the library's front door swung open, and in strode four figures that made Spike forget all about that half-baked plan of hers.

Once again, I pushed open the front door to the last place in the universe that I ever wanted to be. I allowed myself to relax when I saw that Twilight was nowhere to be seen, only Spike, whose mouth hung open in awe. My apprehension couldn't stop me from grinning at the sight of him; we often had that effect on a lot of kids.

No, it had nothing to do with the fact that he was a cute, chubby little toddler-sized dragon. Nothing at all.

"Sweet Minos, Kaz! I think we just found a member of your long-lost family. You're Spike, right?" The little dragon could only nod to Alcaeus in stunned silence, and was rewarded with a hearty clap on the shoulder from someone who had to bend down to deliver it. "I guess we know how he's the savior of the Crystal Empire. It must run in the family!" He beamed as he ushered Spike towards me, and I half-considered punching him in the nose for gutting my cover story before I could even spin it.

"You're... Are you my..." he started, seemingly unable to get his words past his throat.

"I'm not your mommy," I deadpanned, trying to squash the sudden mental image of him asking that question with his face fused to a gas mask. I didn't need to feel any sort of fear at the sight of him too; Twilight was more than enough to send me into a full panic.

"I was going to say sister..." he muttered, shooting a sidelong glance towards the wall.

"Now that wouldn't surprise me—you two even sound alike!" Grizzly chimed in, just to make matters worse. Before Whitetail could put the final nail in my coffin—and I knew he was going to, in that very moment—she pulled the letter out of her bag and held it out to Spike. "So where's Twilight Sparkle? She went to the trouble of having it sent straight to us by royal guard—at an admittedly ridiculous time, no less. The least she could do is to be present for her guests after making that much of a deal out of it."

"Well... We weren't expecting you this early, so she... She went to visit Rarity for something!" he stammered.

"Oh hey, she's who I bought my suit from!" Whitetail exclaimed, heading back towards the door. "Just give me a minute, I'll head there and let Twilight know we're here. Be back in a split!" He was halfway down the street by the time he finished speaking, way too far for me to set his precious tail on fire in retribution for what he was about to bring upon me.

"We should go after him and make sure he doesn't waste his money on another tuxedo," Grizzly murmured, earning a nod of agreement from Alcaeus. She looked to me, letting out a long-suffering breath at our youngest companion's whimsy "We won't be too long, Kaz. I'm sure you and Spike will want to have some time together, at any rate." And just like that, they filed through the door and left me alone with Twilight's indentured servant.

I could hardly believe at how fast everything seemed to go at the moment; perhaps I hadn't yet woken up completely. Or maybe time itself wanted this looming catastrophe to be over with as soon as possible.

"So why did you run away from us yesterday?" I sent Spike a sidelong glance of my own at this question. The kid went straight for the bite with that one, and judging by the look on his face, he did it entirely on purpose.

But that was the thing, wasn't it? I didn't even have to lie to make this work. It was just a matter of omitting some of the truth.

"To be honest, seeing you took me by surprise. I mean, I've heard about you, but I never saw you before yesterday came around." And technically, I was right. The Spike I saw in the show wasn't the same individual as the Spike standing before me. Feeling more confident, I soldiered on with my not-so-fabrications. "Thing is, I don't think straight when I'm surprised. I just needed to get my thoughts in order before I blundered into this, you know?" I asked, and he let out a mirthless chuckle.

"I wish Twilight shared that sentiment more often. It might've saved us all a lot of pain in the long run."

"Oh, you think you know all about pain, then?" I snorted, crossing my arms. I was probably grinning like an arrogant fool as I wondered where to begin with my long list of accidents. And then I had it; something that I knew Spike would relate with. "Do you know what it's like to be chased by hydras?"

"Do I? I was chased by a hydra once, myself!"

"Hydras, as in plural. An entire nest of them," I added with a tight grin. Right then and there, I had him sold, and so began the derailing that I was hoping for. The minutes stretched on as I recounted some of my previous adventures, like the bitter rivalry between my group and Lycurgus and getting shanghaied into the infamous Heist of Red-Eye's Hoard, though I steered clear of anything that had to do with Lord Balmer. That was a tale which wasn't meant for the ears of children—unless it was being penned by the Brothers Grimm. Nevertheless, somewhere along the line, we both found ourselves sitting by the table as we exchanged the highlights of our lives.

When Spike began to tell me of some of the adventures he'd gone on himself, I learned something very important. Apparently, though most of his tales correlated with the show's rendition of recent events at heart, I came to realize that he and the Element bearers had been through a lot more than the cartoon ever dared to portray. Like how Twilight's battle against Nightmare Moon had been an actual battle, or how his own journey to learn more about dragonkind had landed him in far more trouble than the antics of a few rowdy teenagers. And if his retelling of the Royal Wedding was anything to go by, the only thing that would do it justice was if someone got Arthur Conan Doyle and J.R.R. Tolkien together to pen a collaborative novel of it.

And as I listened on, I gradually came to see them all as fellow adventurers in their own right. In truth, I found that I was coming to respect them for their heroism. It made me wonder; what really went on in the Everfree Forest a few weeks ago, when the skies had been locked in half-day and half-night? I'd have to ask as soon as Spike wrapped up his retelling of the return of the Crystal Empire.

"Wait, so you went face-to-face against King Sombra at his best? How are you not dead?" I blurted out, wondering if he was embellishing a few details of his current story. At this, Spike looked both proud and sheepish, and then went on to explain.

"Well, I was riding on Princess Cadance at the time, and she did all the dodging. But if it wasn't for me keeping him at bay with my fire breath..." he trailed off, punctuating his sentence by drawing a claw across his neck, emulating the sound of a knife slash as he did. "But you should've seen it! We flew all sorts of stunts to shake him off our tail! It was—!" Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the rumbling of his stomach, and I laughed aloud when my own gut added its own complaint to the chorus.

"I'm starting to wish I met you years ago. We've certainly got our appetites in sync!" I said, and felt surprised that I meant what I said; for even though he wasn't my brother, I certainly wouldn't object to calling him a friend. But once again, my stomach demanded to be sated, and I stood up from my chair, looking around the room. "Say, where do you keep the fridge around here?" I asked, walking towards the nearest doorway. "I'll go grab us a bite to—!"

And then I saw it, an odd distortion in the corner of my eye, not unlike the floater in my right eye. The problem came when it began to move—the outline sent up so many red flags in my mind that I instinctively called forth my magic and lobbed a nullification spell in its direction. When it made contact, the intruder let out a distinctive, surprised yelp as the invisibility spell wore off. It was hardly the first time I've had to deal with this sort of thing.

But my triumph and anger vanished into the blue when the intruder whirled around to face me; it was was none other than Twilight Sparkle, having never left the library to begin with.

Author's Note

Well, so much for posting each chapter a week after the last. And you have my apologies for the cliffhanger. On the contrary, I am not cackling in evil glee at your suffering, but lamenting the fact that I don't have more time on my hands. And with that, I must now begin work on something due tomorrow. Or rather, today, because the clock currently says 2:29 AM.