Shattered Harmony

Shattered Harmony

I

   The dragon laid amongst the mountains of riches he’d acquired over the past several centuries, contemplating another decade of sleep while he shoveled an enormous claw full of gems into his mouth and began chewing. The gems had long since lost flavor in his mouth, and though they did nothing to sustain him, he continued eating them out of a lack of things to do.

His life had once entailed excitement, happiness, and even love. however, those days ceased to be thirteen-hundred years ago. He stopped to try to remember what those days were like, but as always, they could never come to him. His memories of fonder days clouded by the suffering and hatred of a brief period of time. One that was long lost to the history books. Trying to recall her face, he sees nothing but shattered corpses. When he tries to remember her scent, he coughs from the memories of acrid smoke. And when he beckons his mind to remember her touch, fire is all he can feel. Now he lies with a gut full of meat and precious stones, but he feels empty. Empty is all he’s felt ever since, and empty is all he would ever feel again, or would it?

***

   An odd feeling began to arise from his stomach, something he hadn’t felt in ages, but he knew what it was and this filled him with dread. “What could she possibly want?” he thought to himself, “Why after all these years?” The answer would come to him soon enough, the feeling was rising quickly through his throat, before he exhaled a gust of fire as a tiny letter bound with a black ribbon floated to the floor from his mouth. The dragon gingerly grasped the parchment with two claws before it began to rapidly grow to where he could hold it in his palm, “It’s her, she’s even using our old trick with the letters.” The dragon pulled the now giant piece of paper up to read it, unrolling in out to find the short and precise message, “I would have an audience with you. Your presence is required at my tower in a day’s time.” With the royal seal, a black silhouette of an alicorn looking straight ahead, reptilian eyes looking forward into the reader’s soul with wings unfurled straight out and hooves pressed together straight down as if it was standing at attention. With a heavy sigh he rolled over on his piles of loot and stood up to shake free the lodged coins and trinkets from his scales.

   “I’d best not leave her waiting.” He said with a gust of smoke from his giant maw. At that he began towards the exit to his lair with a tired shuffle. His thundering steps shook the ground around him and displaced stalactites from the roof as he passed, the ones that had been forced downward crashed with his bony scales and shattered like glass against them. The feeling of dread that first came with the letter had not left him since its arrival. What could she possibly need him for now, it had been more than a millennium since they’d parted ways, and from what he could see, the lands were doing well enough under her rule, he never found a shortage of food or treasure when he went out to his hunting grounds. His answer would have to wait until he arrived. Reaching the open sky above the mouth of his cave he squinted as his eyes quickly dilated to adjust to the sudden burst of intense light. The fires in his cave were sufficient to see, but always left his eyes to suffer a brief moment beneath the sun’s intensity. It was winter and upon his mountain the snow only compounded into great drifts that covered the ground around his lair. Taking a deep breath he exhaled a large burst of flame that melted the snow and boiled the water into steam, clearing the grounds at the mouth of his cave. Taking a step onto the flattened area at the entrance he carved a rune into the ground, a six pointed star surrounded by a circled before prying off one of the scales from his tale and placing it into the center. The circle and the scale seeped into the ground and out rose a towering stone Minotaur that stood twenty five feet at the shoulders bearing an almost equally large stone axe.

   “You are to guard this cave and its contents; none shall pass but the queen and I, understood?” The Minotaur slammed a huge stone fist into his chest and grabbed his axe before heading inside. “I’ll have to thank her for the guardian when I see her.” He thought before stepping out to the edge of the platform outside his cave. Making a quick shake throughout his body he began to unfurl his wings, a ring of air blasted the ground around him kicking up snow as it passed over, taking a few steps backward he charged to the edge of the mountain and leapt off aiming himself towards the ground to get air beneath his wings before turning up into the sky to flap them for altitude, the snow drifts obscured his vision, but he’d done the jump so many times before he knew exactly when to pull up to avoid crashing into the ground. The journey would not take long, but he would not have much time to rest if he wished to be there in a poignant manner, and he knew she hated to be kept waiting. Time and horrors may have dulled his memory to other things, but his memories of her are crystal clear in his mind.

***

   The flight was not hard it was merely time consuming and cold, but in the eyes of an elder dragon, a day of flight was practically like blinking, and cold was something he’d grown used to feeling. The snows had cleared from the sky as the tower came into sight before the rest of the town did. Canterlot was mostly the same as he remembered it, tall ivory spires topped with gold, hundreds of compact streets, and the old castle that had long ago been made into a prison that to this day holds the same prisoners it’s held since its change from a castle.

   And beside the old castle now sits the tower, the new seat of power for Equestria. The tower was immense in stature, easily one and a half times larger than the tallest spire of the old castle. It stood apart from the rest of Canterlot as the only structure that was not white with gold, rather it was constructed of black marble, and polished iron, the tower’s base held the castle court with the throne at the end of a long great hall, with a spiral staircase at the back of the room behind the throne. Only the queen and royal guards were allowed in the upper portions of the tower, and the lower floors beneath the throne room were sequestered for the empress alone. Only with her permission could you follow her down, and her permission normally meant you would not be coming back up.

   The tower exterior was solid black marble with an iron band that spiraled up from the base to the top where the upper chambers were, stopping as it hit the floors of the tower’s keep. The tower keep was a basic circular design, with an iron band at the top and bottom, eight large semi-circular windows surrounded each story of the three-story keep allowing the empress complete vision of the surrounding area, and at the top was only a large circular platform with square battlements. He could remember the construction of the tower, though foggy, recalling a lot of ponies died in its construction, especially building the keep atop the tower that protruded outward from the central spire. But he also remembered he didn’t care, they were slaves he’d of rather seen dead anyways. The only difference stuck out like a black spot on white paper.

   Wrapping around the whole of Canterlot was an enormous wall that stood incredibly high, taller than any of the buildings around it save for the castle. The large blackened bricks used in it’s construction seemed to consume the light around them, and even through the fog he could see it was exceptionally dark on the interior of the walled city despite the sun’s reflection off every flake of snow. The wall also went right over the top of the railway into Canterlot without a gate and no exit or entrance was visible from his vantage point, guessing by what he was seeing, there wasn’t one. “I guess she’d gotten paranoid.” He thought to himself as he continued his flight.

   As he approached he could see her atop the tower, awaiting his arrival. Time may ravage a dragon’s memory, but his senses would never dull, even from this distance he could see her looking straight at him with her dark violet eyes from beneath a shroud, a sight that chilled worse than the freezing air. Making his final approach he leaned back in his flight and killed his forward momentum with a few flaps of his wings before descending onto the tower with a thunderous crash, the snow blew away from his feet but the tower didn’t even shudder it had been built for exactly such a situation. Turning about he faced the empress of Equestria and spoke his greeting.

   “Twilight.” he paused, “And to what pleasure do I owe this unexpected summons?” Twilight’s appearance had dramatically changed over a thousand years ago. Her body had changed from that of an average pony to that of a princess’. The long slender features with the cut jaw and extended horn were marks of a princess, her coat had also darkened to a deep eminence shade of purple rather than her old lavender, and despite her age she was still as beautiful as he’d remembered her being. Beautiful except for one thing, as she turned around her eyes came into view from beneath the black shroud she wore to keep the wind off of her.

   Gone were the bright, caring eyes of her past. Long ago they had changed into the cold reptilian eyes that the goddess cursed those who descended to darkness with and unlike Luna’s, without the elements of harmony her eyes would remain the same for eternity. Her voice had also changed from her old light hearted tone to something that starkly resembled nightmare moon’s voice when she returned from the moon.

   “Welcome back Spike. It’s been far too long, I’ve been meaning to write to you for some time now, and our last meeting wasn’t left with much… closure. We just kind of went our separate ways without truly discussing all that had passed. I even find that my memories before that awful time have been clouded by what had transpired.”

   “I’ve likewise found my memories of better days obscured.” It had been ages since anyone had called him Spike, or even addresses him by anything other than “dragon” or “beast” before shortly being incinerated. Spike’s voice had also deepened incredibly, his voice all gravel and smoke after so many years of fire and growth.  “Perhaps it’s time that we come to terms with it all. Perhaps it might be the key to our salvation from the hell we’re living. I remember you well enough to know that you and I are one in the same in this Twilight, we sacrificed our souls for vengeance those centuries ago, and we’ve paid for it ever since.” As they stood in the cold talking to one another, each could feel small bits of the warmth that had long been missing in their hearts for hundreds of years. Twilight had never known how much she had terrified Spike with what she had become, just as Spike had never known how much she’d missed her only friend over the past thirteen-hundred years. But now here they stood atop a tower of marble and iron together for the first time in centuries.

   “Come.” said Twilight, “let us go inside, let me open the door for you.” Twilight flapped her wings and hovered above the tower’s peak and charged her magic as Spike also brought himself to a hover on Twilight’s instruction. Twilight shot a beam at the floor beneath them and the marble slabs began to float out of the way in an orchestrated manner, revealing the keep’s interior. The tower’s keep was a three story design, but without a solid second or third story. Instead the middle was a large open circle with two walkways for upper floors, a design that had been intended for the very purpose of housing a dragon while still allowing living space for the empress herself in the same area. The roof was held in place by immobility spells that could be opened with magic to allow entry from the roof.

   “I never knew that it was so spacious in here.” Commented Spike on his surroundings, “And warm too, a refreshing change from the cold of my lair.”

   “You left before you could see it finished, it was my intention that you should stay here, with me.” Twilight’s voice was burdened with great pain, but she had only known pain for centuries so it went undetected by the dragon. Spike hung his head for a moment before looking to Twilight who had cast off her shroud. Her features remained the same since they’d last met. The elegant features, the darkened coat, and those cursed eyes.

   “I wish I had known, it would have been much nicer that a mountaintop cave.” Spike let out a deep, but hollow laugh that floated in the air moments before fading to nothing. Twilight just stood next to the hearth with a fire going, staring into the flames.

   “I never blamed you for leaving you know, I wouldn’t have wanted to of had to stay with me either.” Twilight’s somber tone was the product of twelve-hundred years of loneliness and regret very similar to Spike’s, but at least Spike had tried to lighten the mood. “Well,” said Twilight before Spike could respond, “Since you brought it up, maybe we should revisit our troubled past. Perhaps you are right; maybe there is some salvation to be had in this venture. Where should we start?”

   “Where it all began, the dawn of the red sun.”

   “No, just before that,” Said Twilight, “The day before bears mentioning, we’ll start there.”