Everything, Including the Stars, Is Falling
Twilight Sparkle struggled to stay aloft as the freezing winds whipped around her. Not for the first time, she wished she could have pulled rank and ordered the pegasi to reschedule the snowstorm for a more convenient time, but her journey had long since taken her far afield of their jurisdiction. Indeed, the desires of an Equestrian princess counted for little in the Dragon Lands, even under the best of circumstances, and the best of circumstances had passed years ago.
To be honest, Twilight wasn’t entirely certain that it was actually snowing. It was certainly true that white powder was buffeting her from all sides, but here in the mountains, it could easily have been the wind blowing around snow that had fallen days, weeks, or perhaps years ago. If there was any silver lining, it was that she had at least heeded Rainbow Dash’s advice to bundle up before setting out from Equestria, though she was starting to wonder if turning down her friend’s offer to fly with her was wise.
Twilight shook her head rapidly as she banished the thought from her mind. Rainbow Dash, after all, wasn’t an alicorn, and she didn’t have the benefit of extended youth—and though she’d never admit it, she was no longer as spry as when she was flying with the Wonderbolts. Besides, there’d be more than enough trouble if one pony was caught in Draconian airspace, and Twilight was not about to risk a scenario where one of her friends was forced to stay in hostile territory as “collateral” for a hastily drawn-up bargain. More importantly, though, she wasn’t sure how Spike would react... assuming she could find him out here.
Of course, in these conditions, Twilight couldn’t help but wonder why she was even bothering to look for him in the first place. True, she was the one who had asked her closest advisors to come up with a potential solution to Garble’s apparent desire for conquest, but she hadn’t expected Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer to suggest anything like this. Indeed, if they hadn’t presented the idea together, Twilight almost certainly would have dismissed it as a thinly veiled attempt to trick her into revisiting one of her own friendship lessons, this time as the student. Actually, now that I think about it, they probably are hoping a friendship lesson happens.
Twilight sighed and tried to shove her friends’ unfounded optimism to the side, because she had to admit that the more practical aspects of the plan were certainly feasible enough to warrant a genuine effort. Celestia, Luna, and Cadance certainly thought so, but of course, they’d been deferring to her judgment on foreign policy for more than a decade. Still, Spike had been a well-regarded Dragon Lord before his political undoing, and there was every reason to think that he still had a support base among his former subjects, especially considering his successor’s belligerence. Even if he wasn’t thrilled to see the pony who’d hatched him (and he almost certainly wouldn’t be), surely he’d be willing to consider a plan that could return the Bloodstone Scepter to his claws, right?
As if in response to her internal monologue, a sudden updraft unbalanced the princess and sent her crashing into a snowbank on the side of one of the larger mountains. Ugh, Twilight thought to herself as she stood up. Why am I the one who’s doing this? Surely we’d get a better response if Rarity made the offer.
But then, Starlight had already considered this option during the original proposal. “Setting aside the fact that she can’t fly, if you send Rarity, Spike will probably just see that as a blatant attempt to manipulate his emotions, and I doubt he’d take kindly to that.”
And naturally, Sunset had a follow-up at the ready before Twilight could raise any other objections: “Besides, if this plan is going to work at all, we need to be certain that he won’t change his mind after he starts working with you again, because you will need to cooperate with each other. If this plan is a non-starter, it’s better to know it right from the beginning.”
The reasoning had seemed sound enough at the time, but that was before she’d gained first-hoof experience with the local weather. Twilight stretched out her wings to take off, but winced as a twinge of pain shot across her left side. Great. I must have pulled something. Right now, she needed to find a place to rest, at least until the winds calmed down. Twilight tightened the scarf around her neck and began to trudge through the snow, searching for anything that might provide her with some adequate shelter.
As her teeth chattered in the chilly air, Twilight’s thoughts turned back to her early efforts to locate Spike. She’d actually begun with a thorough search of Equestria, since there hadn’t been any reason to assume he would stay in the Dragon Lands after his abdication, and Equestria was where he’d been born and raised. With the assistance of the kingdom’s domestic intelligence services, she’d scoured every obscure corner of the land, looking for signs of the dragon. She’d canvassed the the deserts, trudged through swamps, trekked through mountains, canyons, and forests, and she’d even mapped out the subterranean network of caves beneath Equestria, searching for unexplored nooks and crannies that could comfortably fit an adult dragon, but Spike was nowhere to be found.
Neither was he located in the territory of any of Equestria’s allies—assuming, of course, that those allies had been truthful when they claimed that Spike was not within their borders. But Twilight was fairly certain that she could trust them. The yaks would have disdained Spike’s decision to relinquish power without a fight, and would probably have banished him from their realm if they really believed he was present. The griffons would have dropped vague hints that Spike’s location could be exchanged for a larger aid package, but they hadn’t bothered to pretend that it was even a remote possibility. And as for the Saddle Arabians, well, they had conceded that they didn’t know whether or not Spike might be hiding within their lands, which was why they had permitted Twilight to conduct a search herself (accompanied by a retinue of dignitaries). However, all Twilight found in Saddle Arabia was, as expected, sand and oil, which was why she had now turned her attention to the Dragon Lands themselves.
In retrospect, this had been the obvious starting point. The last place Twilight wanted to be at that moment was the Dragon Lands, which was why it was the most likely place for Spike’s hermitage. At least her current location wasn’t a complete shot in the dark: Spike was almost certainly not living near any population centers, or else there would have been more sightings of him. As it was, though, the most recent report of a dragon matching his description was several years old, and placed him in a northern volcanic mountain range, where the sub-zero temperatures mixed with the heat radiating from the active cones to create some of the nastiest weather Twilight had experienced in a very long time.
That weather wasn’t any less nasty on the ground as it was in the air, and Twilight’s search for shelter became a search for anything as the winds whipped flakes of snow off the ground and began blowing them all around her, making her feel like she was walking around with a white bucket on her head. Her teeth started chattering as she considered her options. The easy solution would be to use her unicorn magic, but Equestria’s intelligence services still hadn’t determined whether the dragons had acquired the means to detect it, so that would have to be a last resort if she wanted to keep her presence here a secret. She could try making a snow shelter, but compacting the snow here to the right consistency without magic would take far too much time. Of course, there was always the option of ignoring the pain in her wing and taking off, but that—
Twilight Sparkle’s inner musings were abruptly cut off as she tripped over a large rock beneath the snow and plunged down a crevasse that she hadn’t noticed before it was too late. She managed to beat her wings a few times before the pain in her side was joined by another pain in the back of her head as she collided with the side of the cliff. In the split second before she blacked out, one thought passed through her mind: Damn it....
———————
The first thing Twilight noticed as consciousness returned to her was the hard surface beneath her body. The second thing she realized was that the air felt much warmer than it had when she’d fallen, and more to the point, it felt like air, rather than a pile of snow. Twilight opened her eyes to get a look at her surroundings. She was in a cave of some sort, though at first, all she noticed was the light coming from the entrance, where the storm was still raging. Soon, though, she started noticing more details—stalagmites, stalactites, columns of limestone. As the walls came into focus, she saw veins of other minerals running throughout, but these were easily lost among the jagged shadows of the limestone cave features.
I don’t think I would have tumbled this far into a cave by accident, she thought to herself. Did someone bring me here?
For a few moments, she simply stared at her surroundings, until she thought to wonder what light source was actually allowing her to make everything out. Almost as soon as she began to raise her head to get a better look, she heard a smooth, resonant baritone behind her.
“You’re awake.”
“Spike?” Twilight said with obvious surprise as she scrambled to her feet and turned around. “Spike, is that you?”
He didn’t need to answer, now that she could see the large, purple dragon sitting by a roaring fire. Yet, despite all that had happened between them, Twilight couldn’t help but think of the adorable baby dragon she’d hatched decades ago, even though Spike barely resembled his youthful self. To be sure, his scales were still purple, and his spines, eyes, and underbelly were still various shades of green, though all of his hues had become slightly darker and bolder with age. His neck, however, was much longer, as was his tail, and when he hit puberty, he’d finally sprouted an impressive pair of wings, with a span wide enough to cover four stalls in the Ponyville farmers’ market before he’d finally stopped growing. He may not have been the biggest dragon Twilight had ever seen, but he’d certainly turned out to be one of the most visually striking.
It wasn’t long before Spike had left Twilight to live on his own, largely because he was too big to comfortably fit through the doors of her castle. Between that day and this one, Spike’s appearance had changed very little. Oh, to be sure, he had acquired quite a few more scuffs and scars through the years, including a prominent scar on his left eyebrow, but none of them detracted from his overall appearance. He still exuded an air of authority in his bearing that gave the impression that he was a natural leader—which is precisely what he had been before everything went sour.
“You’ve been looking for me,” Spike said with no expression visible in his face.
Twilight nodded. “Did you already know that, or was it just an educated guess?”
“A little of both,” Spike replied as he shifted his weight to lean back against the wall of the cavern. “This cave system is extensive enough for me to come in contact with packs of Diamond Dogs every now and again. I occasionally trade gems from my personal supply for information.”
Twilight followed the gesture Spike made with his claws until she noticed the modest pile of gemstones in an out-of-the-way nook. “Just gemstones? No coins or any other treasure?”
Spike’s eyelids narrowed. “No,” he said. “I have no use in my hoard for anything I can’t eat.”
Twilight’s eyes darted between the large dragon and his meager cache. “Um, are you getting enough to eat?”
“That is my concern, not yours.”
Twilight winced. “I’m sorry. It’s just, well, I still... never mind.” She didn’t want Spike to think she was trying to play with his emotions, because that probably wouldn’t work.
“So,” Spike said as he lowered his head closer to Twilight’s eye level, “why, exactly, have you been looking for me?”
“You mean you don’t already know?”
“Off the top of my head, I can think of several possible reasons why you’d be spending so much effort to find me, but I don’t really have any basis to think that any of them is more plausible than the others.”
Twilight let out a sigh. “Well... we need your help.”
Spike’s face remained impassive, though he did raise an eyebrow questioningly. “Indeed? How so?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about Garble’s buildup of forces near the Equestrian border, and everyone knows how much he despises ponies. We feel that it’s only a matter of time before he invades, and there’s no reason to think he’ll pull any punches. He doesn’t want our resources; he wants revenge for a lifetime of imagined slights, and he’s willing to destroy Equestria if that will restore his own twisted sense of ‘honor.’ Right now, we’re... well, we’re facing a very long fight that could bring Equestria to its knees.” Twilight bit her lip, hoping that she hadn’t sounded too melodramatic.
“And what would you have me do?”
“Look, we know from our own... sources that not every dragon is on board with Garble’s plan. He’s been so focused on Equestria that he’s been neglecting local issues that are actually important to his subjects. However, at the moment, there isn’t really a strong opposition leader for those who disagree with him to rally behind. If you—”
Twilight was abruptly stopped by a stream of smoke that came blasting out of Spike’s nostrils; it was only now that she realized that his expression had transformed from indifference to disgust. “I should have known,” he said with a sneer. “Of course you’d only bother finding me to help with some political machination. And here I thought you’d come to your senses.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, her ears going flat.
“Well, in my infinite naїvété, I actually thought you may have finally admitted the error of your ways.”
Twilight managed to catch herself before giving the obvious response of “What error?” She knew exactly what Spike meant by it, but now was not the time to let the discussion get derailed by his distorted recollections. It took all of Twilight’s willpower to keep the hostility out of her voice. “Spike, Garble is a genuine threat—”
“Oh, don’t give me that nonsense. I know better than most dragons what ponies are capable of, and Garble doesn’t stand a chance. Even if he does start to make some headway, the moment the Princesses decide to get directly involved, it’ll be all over for him. He isn’t a threat; he’s an inconvenience. Or ar you seriously going to claim that you haven’t formulated dozens of contingency plans already?”
Twilight let out an exasperated sigh. “Of course, we have plans, but none of them can completely avoid hundreds if not thousands of ponies suffering before it’s all over, which is why I don’t want Garble’s invasion to start in the first place!”
“Oh, right, I forgot I was talking to the new Twilight, who only gives a damn about suffering when it’s happening in her own borders.”
“There never was an old Twilight.”
Spike reared up to his full height and began shouting. “Oh, no, there was definitely an old Twilight, because the old Twilight actually understood the importance of friendship!”
With that, any remaining restraint that Twilight had in reserve vanished. “That’s way out of line! Just because you made a foolish decision—”
“It was never about me, damn it! It was about Thorax! He had a real chance to change the entire culture of the Changelings, but he failed because you weren’t willing to do the right thing!”
“Spike, we’ve been over this. Equestria had a non-aggression treaty with the Hive, and Chrysalis had done nothing that was even close to breaking the terms of that treaty. There was no reason to risk retaliation by getting involved in their internal dispute!”
“There wouldn’t have been any retaliation if Equestria had supported the dissidents! Chrysalis would have finally been defeated for good, and the whole world would be safer!”
“You don’t know that. You put the entire might of the dragons behind Thorax, and it didn’t work.”
“Dragons don’t have pony magic. We can’t control the weather, we can’t coax plants out of the ground, we can’t devise all sorts of intricate spells, and our supreme ruler doesn’t control the damned sun! But none of that mattered, because you convinced the other princesses to stay in their castles!”
“A treaty is a promise, Spike! You can’t just break a promise without a compelling reason.”
“I just gave you a compelling reason! Chrysalis is evil, and she wasn’t about to reform. She needed to be stopped. If she actually believed you were going to hold up your side of that stupid treaty, that would mean she was completely unprepared for the decisive blow that never came, thanks to you.”
“I can’t risk the lives of my ponies, Spike.”
“But you had no trouble at all risking Thorax’s life,” Spike retorted.
“You don’t know that Thorax is dead,” Twilight countered.
“Nobody has heard from him in years.”
“Nobody has heard from you in years,” Twilight said.
Apparently, Spike didn’t have a comeback prepared, because he abruptly changed the subject. “That doesn’t matter. There’s no point in trying to change the past; it’s more trouble than it’s worth. What I don’t understand is why you just can’t admit that you were wrong.”
“And what I can’t understand is why you still think I have a guilty conscience. Spike, I can’t admit that I was wrong because I wasn’t wrong. Changelings are experts at imitating ponies, which means that getting Equestria involved would have meant complete chaos, with almost no way to tell your enemies from your allies. And as for your rather flippant idea of having Celestia use her magic to ‘solve’ the problem, if she did something weird with the sun, it would have adverse effects on everyone, friend and foe alike. You want to know the real reason Equestria didn’t get involved? It’s because I thought your plan was doomed to failure from the beginning, and you’ll never convince me that the ponies could have changed that.”
Spike grew silent. As the wind continued to howl outside the entrance of the cave, Twilight tried to decode the expression on his face: narrowed eyelids, jaw clamped shut, and thin tendrils of smoke wafting out of his nostrils. Was this pensivity, or bloody-minded stubbornness?
Twilight haltingly broke the silence. “Spike, I... I don’t know why things have to be this way. Did everything need to go so wrong over something so trivial?” As soon as the words left her mouth, Twilight realized her mistake. She tried to rush out a correction: “No, wait, I didn’t—”
“You may not have meant to say it,” Spike interrupted with a snarl, “but it’s pretty damned obvious that you believe it.”
Twilight had seen Spike get angry before. The tensing of every facial muscle; the subtle flexing of the wings to increase his apparent size; the fire that burned within his emerald-green irises as his indignation rose—all these were familiar to Twilight, but until now, she had never witnessed them being directed at her. Now, however, as Spike glared at her with barely-restrained fury, she finally understood how he had managed to compel so many dragons to sign on to his idealistic crusade, and for the first time, she was afraid of him.
She froze, like a wild animal staring at the headlamp of an approaching train, completely unsure of what to do next. She wasn’t sure how long the pair held eye contact after this. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? It felt more like an eternity passed in that cavern, with nothing but the storm and the crackle of the fire providing any background noise.
Finally, Spike spoke once more: “Get out.”
Twilight hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath; now, as she slowly exhaled, it seemed like the last shred of hope she held had slipped away, leaving nothing but an empty pang in the pit of her stomach that no food could ever satiate. She stared at the ground of the cave for a few moments before looking back up at her erstwhile friend. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed it again before any useless words could escape. Silently, she turned around and walked towards the entrance of the cave. As the bitter wind stung her nose, she looked back over her shoulder, but Spike was already tending to his gemstones.
Twilight Sparkle let out a sigh and took to the air for her long flight home, unable to shake the feeling that she was never going to see Spike again.
Author's Note
In several stories, I've implied or outright said that there are things in Equestria that are worse than death; one of those things is the collapse of a previously close friendship. I've long believed that the friendship between Twilight and Spike would be the most difficult to repair once it was broken, but it wasn't until the current season that I had the material to explain how that break might happen in the first place.
In addition to all my fan fiction, I've also got an original short story available for purchase. It's called "The Empty Hand," it features cosmic horror in the Boston underworld, and it's currently available in eBook form on Amazon:
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