Pilot Chapter - Dinner by Dawnstar
Dawnstar was aptly named for the sky above it was perhaps its only defining feature, with breathtaking fields of stars and the magnificent swirling curtain of aurora light. Beneath its windswept skies, however, there wasn't much more than snow, snow, maybe some snow. Oh, and rocks. And there's the sea of ghosts, of course, you can't really miss it, not with how the waves roar against the howling winds in the distance. And if daily life in Skyrim has rendered you deaf (which is one of the lesser hazards of life here) then you can't miss the strong briny scent carried in the swift night breeze. Aside from that, there's just ice, cliffs, oh, and snow.
The pale blue moon rose to swim amongst the aurora. Every night Spike would breathe a sigh of relief at the sight. It meant princess Luna was alive, somewhere, somehow, wherever she was in this icicle. Except tonight. Tonight Spike was too busy trying to negotiate with his latest foe. And it was a task he did not take lightly, for so deadly were the creatures that infest these lands that he had long since given up listing them. In fact, it was easier to list the harmless creatures which, at the moment, stood at one - chickens, and he wasn't even all that sure about those foul fowl.
How he wished Fluttershy was here. Or the others. Sometimes he couldn't help but wonder what's happened to them all since the Exodus. But the fact is Fluttershy wasn't here and it fell upon him to fend these beasts off his meagre party.
"Look, it's not all that complicated. All I'm asking you to do is to turn and walk away and nopony will get hurt." Spike said, levelling a stern glare down upon his latest nemesis. "Or siddle away, or waddle, or shuffle, squirm, glide, bounce, or whatever it is you do."
All he received in return was a blank stare. Possibly hostile, mostly blank.
"Awww, c'mon!" Spike threw his claws up in the air before falling back on his tail in frustration. "Don't make me repeat myself in Dragon!" He growled. And boy, could the young but tall and lanky dragon growl. If the dragon clad in heavy nordic armour bearing a zweihoofer didn't scare you, his growl would. Except all this seemed entirely lost upon their latest foe for some inexplicable reason.
"How is the 'pleading for our lives' going?" A voice asked nonchalantly from behind him. "Think we'll live to see another moon?" The pale moonlight pink mare behind him looked up from the map in her hooves. Her jet black tresses rustled gently in the sea breeze as she turned to eye Spike with her golden eyes glowing eerily in the gathering dark. Her leathery lilac bat wings fluttered idly as she began to slowly rock backwards and forwards, a sure sign of gathering boredom. The rather oversized scroll slung over her back swung about dangerously with her rocking. "Think he will?" She added, with just a hint of menace.
Spike knew that if he didn't take care of their pursuer and soon, this bat pony, Serana, will take matters into her own hooves. And blood shall be spilt. Arguably needlessly, but nopony listens to his feeble arguments. "Our lives are not in danger, not as long as we're up on this nice, safe rock." Spike said, as reassuring as any leader should be, or so he thought. He patted the tall snow-covered outcropping of rock they were all sitting on for emphasis. "Those things can't climb up here."
"I tell you, I tell you, the dragonborn runs~ Atop a rock he leads his party in the setting sun~ The moon doth rise as they huddle atop their rock so mighty~ As the stars twinkle their foe awaits below patiently ~ Meanwhile the dragonborn's party camps and feasts upon dirt ~ By Akatosh's light mayhaps the foe learns to climb and...." The mint-green mare strumming the lyre paused, her lyre somehow managing to give out a vinyl scratch. "Hey, guys, what rhymes with 'dirt'?"
"Eats the lyrebutt." The dark shadowy form of their resident changeling assassin said as she looked up from her field alchemy set and her latest attempt at refining mammoth cheese into something edible. Or more destructive. Neither were mutually exclusive pursuits.
"That works." The unicorn said, throwing her white and cyan mane over one shoulder as she strummed her lyre. "Eats the....HEY!" She snapped. "I'm the lyrebutt!"
"Well spotted, friend Lyra." The changeling said. "You have begun to gain an awareness for your place in this herd - that of the loud live bait."
"Gee, thanks, Shadowmere, you flatter me." Lyra smiled, rubbing her mane sheepishly. "NOT! Your mammoth breath's the Draugr-magnet around here!" She levelled an accusing hoof at the changeling.
"Friend Lyra. I used to know an adventurer like you." The changeling's eyes glinted a fiery, menacing red. "Then I stabbed him in the knee."
"I'll stab you with my lyre!" Lyra threw her lyre at Shadowmere. " Return your holey flank whole to Mephala's glorious spiderey butt!"
"Mephala can get in line." Shadowmere said, calmly catching the lyre in a burst of green changeling magic. "Behind Sithis, Nocturnal, Discord, Ahuizotl and 7 other daedra lords I've promised my socks to." She got up onto her sock-clad hooves as she shook her wild aurora-blue mane free. "Now, going by your name, Lyrebutt, there is only one place this lyre belongs."
"Bring it, torchbug-...ulp!" Lyra's cry was silenced by a roll of alchemy-enhanced mammoth cheese unceremoniously shoved down her throat, followed by a tackle from the changeling assassin.
"Is this really the right way home?" Serana asked, returning to her map, satisfied that the entertainment was over. A few discordant lyre notes and chunks of mammoth cheese flew out of the rumpus behind her. "Just so you know, I think somepony tried to draw a moustache on this map...in blood. Hmmm, blood." She licked her lips. "Smells like O positive." She sighed, dreamily.
"We're not heading towards your home, Serana." Spike sighed, clutching his throbbing headache in case it started growing a second head. "We're heading to Winterhold. There are rumours that somepony's taken over the library, evicted the orc who runs it and has barricaded herself inside. And before you ask, no, I'm not off hunting nirnroot. Again."
"Huh? I thought you're taking me home, Spikey-Wikey." Serana blinked, cocking her head to one side. "Pleaaaaase, Spikey-Wikey?" She pleaded, putting on her most grating beseeching voice as she batted her massive golden harlequin eyes up at him.
Spike couldn't help but wince at the nickname. It reminded him of a certain alabaster unicorn probably lost and alone out there somewhere in the tundra. It didn't help that Serana looked the splitting image of Rarity, save the black mane and the bat wings. In fact he suspected the bat pony somehow knew of his one weakness. Worse still she seemed to love teasing him about it. "Nope, nuh-uh." He asserted, sternly. "Your dad, Harkon, sounds way creepy. And that's without going into how he's got a pony for a daughter who was entombed underground for one thousand years."
"It was only five hundred. I'm not that old." Serana pouted. "And Molag Bal, father of vampires, really likes ponies. I made the perfect adopted daughter."
"I really didn't need to know all thaaaaat." Spike groaned. He knew he'd never be able to unhear how the daedric prince of debauchery is into ponies.
"Hey, I'm back." A mare fell bodily atop Spike, pinning him into the rock. "Miss me, my thane?" She whispered in his ear, the mead strong in her breath.
"Gah! Berry Punch, I didn't even notice you were gone!" Spike gasped for air as he struggled to get out from underneath the grape-violet earth pony. "Where did you go, other than the nearest brewery?" He said, carefully keeping his flame breath in check. One careless flame and the very air will probably erupt in flames, never mind his perpetually inebriated housecarl.
"Well, another brewery and a tavern." Berry said, tapping a hoof on her chin thoughtfully. "The rest was a haze, but I did get us some food from Dawnstar." She said with a big grin as she rolled off Spike to set down her saddlebags.
"Wait, how?" Spike looked up at the sheer icy mountain hugging their safe little rock on three sides. "There's no way off this rock."
"I climbed." Berry said, shrugging nonchalantly, pointing at the rock face behind them.
"Climb?" Spike balked. "Working off the Starswirl Theorem, that's at least an 80 degree incline." Spike pointed a claw at the mountain. "How in Discord did you manage to climb that?!" He demanded.
"We're ponies." Berry shrugged. "That was just a stroll."
"Stroll?" Spike blinked. "You just stroll up rock walls?" And all this time he thought she was just drunk.
"Mommy! Lookie! Lookie!" Berry's daughter, Berry Pinch, called out from where she was standing on the sheer rock wall, giggling at that silly thing called gravity. She was even bouncing up and down, perpendicular to the rock wall, just for the hay of it. Such was their party's one and only mage (for want of one, not from actual qualifications), her daily mischief breaking the very laws of physics itself.
"Good girl, Berry Pinch." Berry Punch was quick to lovingly nuzzle her giggling daughter. "And you realize, that aside, half of us have wings."
"Huh, true that." Spike conceded. "And you didn't get help?" He asked, mock-hopeful.
"Do we look like we need help?" Berry Punch gestured around her at the occupants of the rock, the bat pony rocking backwards and forwards out of boredom, the bard-college-dropout and the changeling assassin busy brawling the cheese out of each other, their little mage filly, their pyromaniac chef trying to start a campfire fire in a corner, and her own inebriated self. Oh, and there's the DovahFriend, Spike, of course.
"You want the truth or the sugarcoated glaze?" Serana offered as she hopped over to the nearest saddle bag.
"Y'know what, I'm not dealing with this." Spike sighed, eyeing Serana as she nosed through the saddle bag. "I thought you only drink blood."
"I also like mangoes." Serana said without looking up.
"You're expecting to find mangoes in this frozen icicle?" Spike raised an eyebrow.
"Eeeeee! Mango!" Serana lifted her head to raise her mango-ey prize into the air in her wings as she made happy bat pony noises.
"How'd that get in there?" Berry Punch frowned, "Yep, you know you had good skooma when random horseapples start appearing out of nowhere."
"I have the blessing of Molag Bal." Serana explained with a proud smirk.
"He helps you find mangoes in random places?" Spike asked, feeling another headache come on.
"And durians." The bat pony nodded happily. "Molag Bal is also the daedric prince of random tropical fruit."
"Remind me not to let you raid the chests in the future." Spike murmured, looking into the saddlebag himself. "Wait, is this all you got? There's barely enough for a day in here."
"Well, uh..." Berry Punch gave a nervous smile, "I kind of got over-encumbered by the weight on the way back, you see. That mead really was quite strong."
"So you ate the food?" Spike asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes."
"To lose weight?" Both eyebrows in the air.
"Yes."
"Most cunning." Shadowmere paused in her tumble with Lyra to comment.
"Yeah. I'm gonna need to write a song about that." Lyra said, before quickly resuming their fight.
"Leave it to me, your highness." Their incumbent griffin master chef said from where he was stoking a camp fire, the light glinting off his violent red imperial armour. Nopony had even noticed him go off to set a fire up. There wasn't even any firewood. Such was his skill with setting fire to things. In fact there are stories of him setting fire to a frost atronach once, just because he can. "I can make a feast out of even cave moss and troll fat, or my name is not Caesar Salad!"
"It isn't. It's Hale Caesar." Spike pointed out, dryly.
"Er, yeah, Hale Caesar, right. I didn't change my name to become a soldier or anything, nope." The golden brown eagle-folk Griffin said, picking through the saddlebags. "You can rely on me. I'll have a feast worthy of the Dragonborn Emperor ready before you can say 'Hurldurgurldrungaru'."
"Which is, like, never." Spike said, shaking his head to dislodge the word from where it had gotten stuck in his ears.
"What is that...whatever word that was? Some kind of griffin dish?" Serana asked, pausing in between nibbling on her fruit.
"Well, when a mommy griffin and a daddy griffin...." Hale Caesar began.
"Dunwannahearit." Spike quickly said, shaking a claw in panic. "And for the last time, I'm not the 'Dragonborn'. I'm a Dragon."
"Hahahah, my Emperor, I didn't know Argonians were such jesters." Hale Caesar guffawed heartily. "The Dragonborn, a dragon! That's rich! It's alright, it must've been all the skooma you Argonians get into. With my one step detox plan with my secret moon sugar mix, you'll be right as rain in no time."
"Detox?" Spike said, voice dripping with skepticism, "With moon sugar?" He rubbed the spines on his head, "Whatever. Just don't try and detox Berry Punch. I prefer her with skooma."
Their conversation was interrupted by none other than Berry Punch and her daughter singing. The little unicorn filly sang a whole octave higher than her mother as she practiced summoning a miniature frost pony atronach. "Winter wrap-up, winter wrap-up," The little filly did a little dance on the tips of her hooves, her little horn sparking merrily. "let's finish our holiday cheer!" She and her little frost atronach did a little twirl.
"Exactly what this place needs." Spike said, eyeing the endless icy tundra that stretched before them. "A winter wrap-up. Or an apocalypse. Oh, wait, we already have the latter. A whole dragonbutt-load of it." He sighed, recalling the little dragon infestation problem plaguing the land.
"Equestrian songs are considered Celestia-worship and are banned by Imperial law, just as Luna and Talos-worship are." Hale Caesar pointed out gruffly. "It's punishable by life imprisonment or extradition to Aldmeri Justiciars."
"Hey, Hale Caesar?" Spike said over his shoulder.
"Yes, my liege?" Hale Caesar replied, quickly.
"Who's Emperor around here?" Spike asked, casually.
"You are, my liege, O'great dragon-slaying dragonborn descendant of Tiber Septim." The griffen declared, eloquently. "My life for the rightful Emperor. I shall not rest until your most holy purple rump is sat upon the Dragonfire throne."
"Yeah. Well, the Emperor happens to like that song." Spike said, pointedly. "I sing it in the shower. All the time."
"Very well then, my liege, the song shall be sung and sung and sung some more in your honour! In all the showers!" He turned to face Ditzy and Dinky. "You two! Sing! And teach me to sing too!" He barked commandingly.
Spike could only sigh, rolling his eyes. "Serana, what are you doing?" He asked the bat pony who was amidst climbing up the only tree gracing the little rock.
"Getting ready for bed." She said, trotting upside down across the tree's only branch before hanging upside down by her rearhooves. "Seeing as we're going to be here until you've won your little staring contest."
"Don't worry, I got this." Spike said reassuringly as he turned his attention back to the matter at hoof, the nemesis still haunting the base of the rock. "You!" He said, pointing a claw down at the creature. "Go away before I go all Ysgrammor on your flank! I mean it! I'm a journeypony at two-hooved arts! Don't make me prove it with your face!"
"Let me translate for you." Serana called out, "He's gonna Dovahbust your balls."
"There are balls to be dovahbusted?!" Hale Caesar, number one Dovahkin fangriffon, perked up at this. "I'm so in!" He leapt out, quickly unslinging his heavy warhammer. "It's time to say goodbye, it's winter we must clean!" He sang as he sailed through the air, warhammer akimbo.
"Hey! No fair! I've been holding back all evening!" Berry Punch cried out, planting her shield-helmet on her head before biting her mace. "Hurldurgurldrungaru!" She gave out the only war cry she could muster with a spiky implement of doom in her maw as she leapt after Hale Caesar.
"I agree!" Serana leapt off her branch, bat wings flaring magnificently in the aurora-light. "It's bat-tle time!" She dove after her comrades.
Lyra and Shadowmere, meanwhile, just continued fighting as they tumbled after Berry and Hale.
"Uh, guys, I was still trying to talk it out and avoid bloodshed. I mean is this even necessary? I mean, we could...." Spike raised a claw, before giving up with a sigh. "Why'd I even bother becoming a Master of Speechcraft?" He sighed. He looked around at Berry Pinch. The little filly was hopping in place excitedly, looking up at him with expectant eyes. "You might as well. Go ahead." He said, waving a hand for the filly to join the fray.
"Yippeeee!" Berry Pinch squeed, her horn crackling as she conjured up a baby frost atronach. She hopped atop it and pointed a hoof at the rumpus ahead. "Charge!" And she was off.
Spike could only watch as the disorganized but highly effective mob collectively stomped their latest victi-...nemesis into a shallow snowy grave. They then proceeded to exhume the grave with a fiery magical blast and defacing it with a crater.
"I call loot!" Lyra declared as they finally stepped back to survey their hoofwork.
"I believe you've called it last time." Shadowmere said, "I do believe it is by rights my turn this time."
"Over my dead lyrebutt!" Lyra barked. "That last one was a skeever! Skeevers don't count!"
"Alright. I will let you have this one." Shadowmere said, gracefully. "But I call looting your dead lyrebutt."
"Not if I loot your face first!" Lyra dove-tackled Shadowmere, quickly picking up where they left off.
"Oooh! I found a bit!" The enterprising little filly, Berry Pinch, had gone ahead and climbed into the crater in the snow to take a stab at the loot. "And a snowberry, a pointy axe thing and....a bottle of something sparkly?"
"Oh, that's mine. Well done, sweetie." Berry Punch patted her daughter as she grabbed the bottle. "Old Black Marsh vintage from before they even started calling'em skooma. Oh YEAH!"
"Well done, singing pony hatchling. Not bad," Hale Caesar nodded approvingly at the corpse now not only stomped into its crater but desecrated thoroughly as well. "Your highness, you want to eat its soul?" He looked up at Spike who was still sitting idly up on their rock.
Spike's face met his claw. "No, Hale, I'm not into mudcrab souls."
"Oh, more for dinner then." Hale said happily, taking out a barbeque skewer.
"Us one, mudcrab zero. Cheers to the Dovahfriend and his merry curb-stompers!" Berry Punch declared, raising her newfound prize into the air.
"Whahey!" The crew cheered, even the fighting ones.
Spike sighed, smiling a wry little smile at his little crew of pony friends. The young dragon had long since realized that the only time this particular company of discordant misfits play to the same tune is when they find something with a face worth punching. "Oh well, at least it can't get any worse."
There was a distant earth-shaking roar and a fierce flapping of powerful wings against the frosty gale. The sound alone was enough to send his party into a tight, silent huddle, their latest victory quickly forgotten.
"Yeah, I agree with you." Spike replied to the roar, standing and straightening up to his full, impressive height. He unsheathed his zwei-hoofer and twirled it about to warm up. "It's a good time for a chat."
Author's Note
I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing it.
So I played a bit of Skyrim yesterday and felt a massive flood of nostalgia. I especially couldn't help but fondly smile at all the oddities, such as all-terrain-horses, losing weight by eating, avoiding enemies by leaping atop rocks, my horse and companions all mobbing poor hapless mud crabs, Serana nagging me non-stop about going home, that sort of thing.
So I decided to write this. I had written it as a comedy one-shot. However I had come up with an elaborate back story to explain how Spike came to be adventuring in Skyrim and stuff and thought 'hmm, going by past experience (i.e. Legendary Pony Summoners and 1000 mares), some people are going to be on my case if I do this. Again.' So I'm leaving it as a pilot chapter and keeping the possibility of a further continuation open as a possibility if people are interested enough.
I'll explain away Serana's slight OOC by her virtue of being a pony OC. And she's more fun this way.
And now for a little bit of my usual shameless self promotion:
If you enjoy my brand of comedy you may well like King of the Night, the story of King Sombra getting a second chance at life as he sets out to find a place to belong. He ends up desperate enough to work for a McTrotnald's joint in downtown Manehattan, but quickly finds that belonging might not be a place, it might be the colourful and crazy band of misfits around him, including the mysterious part-timer Spitfire, his strange neighbours Octavia and Star Struck, and the humble seamstress upstairs, Coco Pommel.
Or if you feel like a straight up adventure and camaraderie-filled story following the misadventures of Luna's first order of knights and a young Windigo peacekeeper, you may like The Windigo Peacekeepers and the Frostfire Crystal Emperor.
Disclaimer: Skyrim is the property of Bethesda Studios. MLP is the property of the awesomeriffic Faust and Hasbro.
