The Rise of Demon King Spike

The cold and wet mountain wind howled and the skin of the tent rolled and cracked like a whip. Inside there sat a desk, and on that desk next to a pair hooves there was a lantern. In the comforting light from that lantern a bored grey pegasus attempted to amuse herself.

With a whip of her head the legendary archaeologist Daring Do swung the ball on it's string aiming for the cup it was attached to, only to strike herself in the eye once more. Eye closed, her utterance was muffled by the handle while she cursed whatever strange creature had designed this tool of self flagellation.

Adventurer grade archaeologists were required by the union at every major dig in the event that a small easily portable relic capable of destroying a sizable chunk of the known world was discovered. While this was an event that happened with distressing regularity in Equestria it meant that Daring Do and her kin had little to do on many if not most of their work sites.

Her study of the intrinsic mystical properties of the cup and ball discovered on site was going to the extent of her contribution for the summer.

Further past the distracted pony and the ancient relic was a trench that had been dug allowing access deeper into the dark and mysterious internals of the mountain. It plunged forward the ceiling first consisting of canvas soon yielding to native rock that would yield in turn to worked stone of unclear origin.

The worked stone formed passages of an unexplored structure. The accessible tunnels were only as tall as a pony but as wide as two ponies were long. Exploring them one would find nearly every path leads to a cave-in where the stone had been crushed under the weight of time and some rocks, but mostly time. Each such cave-in was a barrier far beyond the ability of this small expedition of hardy ponies to excavate.

But past the dead ends one single path opened up into a great ante chamber. This room was many times taller then a pony and it's length and width where obscured by piles of soft clay that had seeped slowly into the room over the ages with each spring rain for countless years amounting to a torrential flood of the sticky stuff.

This material, this was what two strong earth pony archaeological students where moving by the cart full out of the dig. This was the material a studious cream coated mare was digging away from the walls with utmost care and a handy trowel.

With sleepless eyes and sweat beading upon her brow intern painstakingly unveiled a piece of the past. She has cataloged and secured plenty of fragments of pottery but in truth that obligation interested her little. Sure it was the bulk of the real archaeological work, but there was something that interested her much much more.

The wall that she was so slowly unearthing had marks on it, carved into it. Written in a language she did not recognize comprised mostly of pictures. She saw symbols that she supposed were suns, moons, clouds, mountains, flowers, ponies, dragons and griffons.

Scritch scritch went the trowel and wall told her of the things that had happened long before it had been new and Moondancer struggled to understand.

Her heart beat faster as she passed a representation of faceless ponies offering up gifts or tribute to well detailed images of dragons. This suggested she was in a dragon ruin, but dragon's didn't build or write, at least not anymore.

This contradicted the narrow halls that lead to this location. An even half grown dragon could never hope to navigate those paths.

Days passed, the earth ponies moved in and out in constant motion, the work consuming them and their every waking thought.

Daring Do had managed to catch the ball in the cup at least twice though no one admitted to believing her and quietly wished she would black her other eye.

Exhaustion eventually forced Moondancer to release the trowel from her telekinetic field and grasp it with her mouth. Regardless without rest the unicorn dug on spurned by each promised fragment of secret knowledge that the wall offered her.

Moondancer swept away the now drying soil revealing row upon row of detailed images of dragons in every conceivable shape. Two headed dragons, dragons with and without wings, small dragons, big dragons, quadrupedal and bipedal and hexapedal dragons. Variations of dragons that she had never seen before and had never been cataloged by the hardiest or foolhardy of pony researchers.

Attached to each different and unique dragon was a line. Supposedly a lineage. Perhaps the dragons of this city where as interested as modern unicorns in proving their pedigree? Perhaps it was an indication that they had undergone some crazed purge of their supposed lessers?

Each line led through other symbols, names perhaps? But each line eventually wound it's way to a central point on the wall. Perhaps it was a legendary great mother of dragonkind? A real or theological origin of the species.

There Moondancer gasped as the clay fell away, for she recognized exactly what she was seeing.

She remember months before.

That one mare the one who was her only true peer at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns who had been the closest thing she had to a friend. The one who had proved to her that she had no such thing as friends at all when she left.

Always trailing behind her had been a dragon. A curious small dragon pudgy and unassuming, not like one would imagine a dragon at all. It followed that mare everywhere with pen and paper in hand ready to take dictation or lists of chores yet to accomplish.

Spike was it's, his name, she remembered at last. She had talked to him on several occasions and he had proven to be both polite and helpful as best as she could recall.

It was that personal knowledge that allowed to confidently identify the rendered drawing at the center the diagram as that of a dragon hatchling.