My Little Pony: Zodiac Adventures
Prologue:
The Moon was high in the sky, casting its pale light over Equestria; the stars were nearly all invisible in Canterlot that night from the many lights of the Grand Galloping Gala. But far away from the biggest Equestrian social event of the year, in the Canterlot Sculpture Garden, the moon cast its light on the many statues held within, and the small purple dragon named Spike who walked among them, sad and alone. When Spike woke up that morning in Ponyville, he woke up from excited dreams about the day ahead of him. Tonight was the Grand Galloping Gala! He'd been looking forward to tonight for a long time now, not so much because of the Gala itself, but because of who was going to be there. Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbowdash, and Fluttershy would all be coming to Canterlot with him and Twilight Sparkle and he'd been secretly making plans about how the group of friends would spend the night of the Gala together having fun. Though he was nowhere near as obsessive about it as the purple unicorn that'd raised him his whole life would've been, he'd even made a small checklist of his own about all the best places to show his new friends on the tour of Canterlot! All these plans and excitement he had harbored made his current situation all the more depressing to the young purple and green dragon. After a, surprisingly good spontaneous musical number, his friends and pseudo sister/parent had…well…they'd pretty blatantly ditched him to pursue their own ambitions for the night. While he seriously doubted that any of them had done it with the intention of ditching him specifically, the fact that they'd run off while he was in the middle of exclaiming how much fun they'd all have together still hurt.
Left on his own, Spike had decided to go for a walk, going on a lonely version of his tour of Canterlot that he'd planned for his friends. Currently the baby dragon was strolling through the Canterlot Sculpture Garden, arms sagging at his side and head hanging low. "And this is the Canterlot Sculpture Garden Rarity! One of the most beautiful and artistic places in Equestria!" He said, miming displaying all the grandeur of the statues to an imaginary audience. Standing up straight and making big, sweeping motions with his arms with all the showmanship the little dragon could muster before returning to his defeated posture. He passed by some of the statues he'd planned to show Rarity, thinking maybe she'd like something artsy and beautiful like the statues and the Garden. He looked up as he passed a strange statue that looked like the sculptor had changed his mind about what animal to make the statue of with every part of the body and ended up with some kind of mash up monster. "Yeesh! Someone should really throw a tarp over that thing…" he said to himself with a slight shudder. Twilight had brought him to the sculpture garden a few times when they lived in Canterlot, mostly whenever she was reading something about one of the sculptors, and something about that statue just never quite felt right to Spike. Add to that that the weird, almost pained posture and lack of any kind of inscription on the base or record of who'd made it or placed it there and it just got more unsettling. He continued to wander through the Garden when he thought he heard a voice. "whazzat!...who's there!" He said as he suddenly spun around trying to find the source of the voice. He took a few slow steps back as he looked around, Spike had fairly good night vision as a dragon, but still he saw nothing but shadows and statues. He jumped a little when he heard the voice again, beckoning to him. "Come to me…little dragon…obey the contract…ssset me free…!" It was a quiet, whispering, almost hissing voice in the back of his mind that drew Spike off the main paved path and down a small dirt path to the side.
In no time at all he found himself in front of yet another statue, "sset me freee..." he heard whispered in his mind as if from the statue itself. This one was unusual as well, though less so than the mash up one. It was made of a yellowish stone and shaped like a disk. It was carved in a way that it greatly resembled a coiling snake seen from above, but all along the outer rim of the coils were a series of twelve octagonal indentations. The most striking thing about the statue was in the center of it. Sticking out from the very center of the coiling disk was a head that vaguely reminded Spike of the dragon he encountered in the Everfree Forest. "I've never seen this thing before…" Spike noted as he looked around, noticing that the statue was attached to a large grey stone cube with a glowing engraving of the sun, identical to Princess Celestia's cutie mark on each face of it. "…the talismans! ...return them to me! Set me free!" He heard the voice again, stronger and more urgent now as something compelled him to look down from the statue. Just in front of the statue at the base he noticed a pedestal with an engraving of the moon matching Princess Luna's cutie mark and twelve small rocks arranged on top of it. On closer inspection Spike noticed the small rocks had painted markings on them that vaguely resembled animals. He recognized a dog, snake, ox, rabbit, monkey, sheep, rat, pig, and rooster. There were three more that Spike couldn't quite place though, one vaguely looked like a pony except the head was just all wrong. Another looked vaguely like some kind of cat with two heads, and the last… "What the heck is this thing supposed to be, some kind of bearded snake?" As he stared at them, Spike realized something; these little rocks were about the right size and shape to fit in the little hollows all along the statue! Reaching over, he picked one of them up absentmindedly to see if he was right. The instant he lifted the little stone from the pedestal however, the moon and sun engravings began to shine brighter and the ground began to rumble. "Woah! W-what the hay?" There was an explosion of light that nearly blinded Spike, but he could just barely make out 11 trails of light in the sky sailing out in different directions. "NO! THE TALISMANS!" The voice screeched in Spikes mind. Fearful that he might've broken something and might get in trouble, Spike turned and took off running, never noticing the small stone still clutched tightly in his little claws, nor the blood red glow beginning to light up in the statues eyes as the shadows in the garden all slowly began to move towards it or the strange creatures that rose from them, "…but I am unbound, and I sshall live AGAIN!" and with those last unheard words, disappeared along with the statue into the darkness. He eventually wound up at a donut shop that Twilight used to take him to, run by Pony Joe, the events in the sculpture garden hazy in his mind. After several rounds of donuts and hot chocolate, it was all but completely forgotten, and feeling upset about being left behind was once more at the front of the baby dragon's mind. Spike reunited with his friends and the Princess of the Sun, who were in such a state that half of the baby dragon was glad that he'd missed the Gala and half wished he could've seen what happened himself, and left Canterlot for home in Ponyville, unaware of the darkness he'd woken up from over one thousand years of enforced slumber.
