"-attempted to find the large emerald the last queen was using as a light in the cavern. I quickly realized the drakes were being attracted to the hive by such large quantities of gemstones and disposed of them post-haste."
Spike scowled as he wrote the translations of the changeling journal, looking at the stallion across the room with a bit of irritation.
"Do all dragons act like wild animals?"
"Not all of them," Max replied as he looked up from his own book. "I mean, I've seen one or two that were perfectly normal by our standards, but most dragons just don't see the point of civilizations that they'll outlive a hundred times over. I imagine it gets a bit depressing knowing that you'll outlive everyone around you, neighbors and friends alike. At the end of the day, most just don't find it to be worth the effort."
"But everyone's always told me it's better to have friends and remember them than to never have met them at all," the drake countered. "Mom said it, Twilight says it, Shining says it-"
"Spike, every one of the ponies you listed will live for about a hundred years or so. Well, I don't know what Twilight's looking at now, but I'm going to assume she told you this sort of thing before the alicorn incident. While I'm certain it's a nice thought, when you scale it up too far I can understand not wanting to get attached to people who won't live as long. It's something I've thought about in regards to the princesses, honestly. How many people can you lose before it just becomes too painful to endure?"
"I..."
"I know its a bit deep, Spike, but there are always other ways of looking at the issues. Not everyone wants to be alone because they're mean or things like that. Sometimes they want to be alone because they're tired of feeling that sort of pain."
Twilight looked up from her own book, frowning at the changeling.
"Isn't this a little dark to be discussing with Spike?"
"It's dark, but I'm not going to just cut off the conversation because it's not comfortable. What about you, Princess? Have you had this conversation before?"
"I-yes. I talked to Celestia a few weeks after the ascension. I'm still not very comfortable with what she said, but I know I'll just have to wait and see. Celestia isn't too put off by the loss of ponies at this point, but Luna still has a problem with it. Apparently it's different for everyone."
"And there you go, Spike. Words from Celestia, Luna and Twilight on immortality and longevity," Max said with a wan smile. "Not sure on the general life-span of a changeling but I think it depends a great deal on the energy their exposed to. Some of the drones told me the general life-span is about twenty years if you're particularly unlucky, or...well, they haven't really known a drone that runs like I do so it's anybody's guess. And it's not like the queens are just going to hand over the entirety of their knowledge on changeling life cycles. Most of what I learned I bought from drones for a jar or two of emotion. Even my shapeshifting. Though that first lesson was a loan, and more of a 'How to changeling:101'. And she was more angry that I was so bad at everything than actually interested in my survival."
Spike sighed, closing the journal and rubbing his eyes.
"I think that's all I'm getting today. It's tough work translating these, and you promised me another dragon story!"
Max rolled his eyes.
"Alright, alright, lets see if I can remember which ones I've already told you-"
"I have them written down right here!" Spike said with a grin, reaching for a scroll and offering it to the shapeshifter.
"Hmm, Toothless, Alduin, Tiamat, Haku, Saphirra, that was a fun story, Spyro...I think I know a good one. Draco. It's a fairly simple name, and would probably get a few laughs. More than Gargle, or whatever his name was. He was a good dragon, who when asked to save a small human boy who was mortally wounded, offered half of his own heart to keep the boy alive."
Spike stared in excitement, taking the paper once more and beginning to jot down the information. Even Twilight had stopped her own study, her hears perked and swiveled in their direction.
"The boy was a young prince, whose father was a cruel and wicked king. The father was killed by an uprising, the peasants having become sick of their abuse and deciding it was better to risk their lives than continue to suffer. During the attack a young girl accidentally struck the boy, damaging his heart in a way no healing of the time could repair. His mother begged a dragon for aid, and the dragon offered half of his heart on the promise that the child rule with justice and virtue. The child did not do so, instead choosing to follow in his fathers footsteps and continuing the rule of terror. Upon seeing this, a Knight who had been a mentor to the young prince assumed that it was the dragons magic that twisted the child into such a monster, and swears to destroy their kind."
"After years spent hunting down dragons, he meets Draco once more, but does not recognize him. Declaring himself the last of the dragons, Draco attacked the knight, and the two battled viciously. The two fought to a stalemate and eventually come to an agreement; the dragon will pretend to attack towns and the knight will drive him off, essentially cheating the towns of their money. While they were resting, one village went to offer the dragon a sacrifice, believing that offering a young female willingly would spare them the dragons wrath. It turned out to be none other than the peasant girl who had wounded the prince years ago, and hot on her heels and likely the reason the town was so quick to turn her over, was the prince. The knight and the prince fought, with the prince claiming it was not the dragon's magic, but his own will that led him down his path; he had no intention of following the knights code from the start. The knight was merely a tool to learn to fight."
Spike and Twilight both gasped, drawing a smile to Max's face.
"The knight, so shattered by this revalation, was nearly killed by the cruel prince, but the dragon stepped forward and lifted the scales of his breast, showing his half-heart and driving the prince to retreat in terror. The townspeople saw the dragon save them and recognized the scam for what it was, and the dragon took the two and fled to an ancient tomb of great heroes."
"Draco explained his reasoning for helping the young prince. Hoping that his sacrifice would bring peace between humans and dragons, but instead it brought only ruin. Instead of achieving this great victory in his life and ascending to the stars like the great dragons of the past, he gambled his soul and lost. He was damned."
"Draco agreed to help the young girl to over throw the prince, but the knight wanted no part in it. He was lost, his code shattered. He thought it so wonderful, so strong, yet it was used by the prince to gain his training. What use would he be? For a knight without his honor was no knight at all."
"It was during his deepest self-loathing that the knight had...something happened. Some would call it a hallucination, others a vision. A great king of the past, a renowned warrior and knight, spoke to him from beyond death. He reaffirmed the knights beliefs, told him that a single betrayal should not be cause of despair. That one man's betrayal of the code should not damn an order. It could not destroy an order."
Twilight made a strangled noise at that bit, leaving the changeling to don an air of nobility while Spike clamped a claw over his snout to contain his laughter.
"Do you wish to share something with the class, Miss Sparkle?"
"Why do so many stories have ghosts in them? It's like they can't think of a better way to do it, like a gem-recording or-"
"Which is magical."
Twilight blinked.
"Well yes. You said the humans had an idea of magic many times and-"
"And magic was looked at with the same suspicion as ghosts."
"But ghosts aren't real and magic is, so the point is moot."
"Twilight, we're talking about a race that couldn't touch magic," Spike said with a smile. "We know magic is real and ghosts aren't, but if you couldn't detect either than why would assume one was real while the other wasn't?"
"I- but magic-"
"Are we really going to have this discussion every time, Twilight?"
The purple alicorn's muzzle scrunched up but otherwise she held her tongue.
Max chuckled and tapped a hoof against his chin in thought.
"Now lets see...okay, having had his morales reaffirmed, the knight found his courage and agreed to aid them. The young lady and the knight brought together the peasants who'd long suffered under the ruler and through their courage and planning managed to defeat the kings soldiers...oh, and I suppose the dragon helped...a little."
Spike broke into laughter at that.
"Because peasants can beat soldiers every day as long as their cause is righteous."
"Yup. So if ever you need to win, just make sure you're right and you cant lose, even if you're facing hundred to one odds. Anyway, it wasn't enough to just defeat the prince, they needed to end his reign. Otherwise he would just come back with a bigger and stronger army. So they pushed on, attacking the castle. During this attack, the dragon was shot down and captured. He was kept in the castle, chained down so that he could no longer aid the rebels. But something new was revealed in the battle. The Prince was stabbed through the chest...but he didn't die."
Twilight's head cocked in confusion, but Spike immediately made the connection.
"The heart!"
"Right! As long as the dragon's heart kept its rhythm, the prince was effectively immortal. And blaming herself for the situation and fearing an immortal tyrant, the prince's mother approached the dragon with a large ax, intent on ending the madness. But the prince too had realized the strength, as well as its weakness. He intercepted the old queen and by his own hand, ended her life."
"The peasants managed to push into the castle and the final confrontation was, guess where?"
"In front of the dragon," Spike chuckled.
"The knight and prince fought for what seemed hours, but no matter how many lethal strikes the knight landed the prince could not be killed. The dragon, chained in place and seemingly feeling every strike, told the knight what needed to be done. The knight needed to end the dragon to destroy the prince. The dragon lifted the breast scales, exposing the magic heart of the dragon, but the knight couldn't do it. He did not want to end another life to stop an evil one. Especially one he was beginning to consider a friend.
"But he couldn't win. Even after throwing the prince from the palisades the men fought on, and so the knight threw an axe at the dragons exposed heart, ending both of their lives."
"As he mourned the loss of what he came to see as a friend, the dragon's body dissipated into dust, and a new constellation was seen in the evening sky."
Max grinned as he took a sip from a glass of water, watching as Spike began his usual processing of such stories. The drake was extremely intelligent, more so than himself by a large margin, but Spike just hadn't been exposed to any sort of hardships that would result in proper growth. Celestia and Twilight weren't wrong when they said Spike was a baby dragon, but it wasn't exactly for the right reasons.
"That was terrible! What kind of story ends with the dragon-"
"Well it was kind of obvious the dragon would die," Spike said, writing down notes on the scroll in his claws. "There's also the fact that the dragon said he was the last of his kind, so even if he didn't die in the story there wouldn't be a happy ending for him. My biggest question so far is why did the dragon help the human who killed so many other dragons?"
"Guilt would be the first answer most would give you. The dragon assumed his heart would make the human child stronger. It did, but not in the way he wanted. Instead, the dragon created an immortal dictator who was stronger and more vile than his father."
"I don't agree with the story either though. I don't think that the dragons would allow themselves to be destroyed slowly, for one. Genocides have a habit of bringing people together, after all. It's a sort of evil that only the darkest will ignore. Or those threatened by the same evil perpetrating it."
"If you don't agree with the story, why are you bringing it up?" Twilight asked.
"Because it can be fun breaking it down. The fact that the knight didn't mind working with the dragon to scam villages for instance. He had become so disillusioned by then that it just didn't matter anymore. I think I recall him even knowing that the gold wouldn't make him happy. Comfortable, perhaps, but not happy. He also noticed something was wrong when one of the dragons he killed was sickly. A bard was speaking of how heroic he was destroying the vile monster, but he corrected the man. Said the dragon was not strong at all, that it was likely already dying."
"I think it's odd that the knight abandoned his code so easily. It could have happened slowly over the years, sure, but because of one big instance you go on a crusade to wipe out a race? Especially when the one you hated was just trying to help?"
The drake made a few more notes before tapping the scales on his chest.
"You said the dragon just...lifted the scales on his chest? I had some mare try that when I was younger and it hurt. The scales don't like being twisted like that."
Putting down the quill, the little purple dragon shook his head.
"I think I'll pass on this one though. This story sounds interesting on the surface but there are just too many...just too many idiot balls?"
"Sometimes that happens, sadly. I've seen a lot of stories that were mostly interesting that lost a few points to such things. Rage also tends to make people do stupid things, as does arrogance. For instance, Smaug, another large dragon, was so certain of his invincibility that even when a group showed up certain they could kill him he made wide strafing runs on the town, burning it while not paying attention to the attacks coming his way."
"I've noticed that most of these dragons die," Twilight said with a bit of irritation.
"Well yea, otherwise the author would have to explain why there weren't any dragons flying around in present day Earth. The possibility of it being real in some way is part of what makes it relatable, part of what allows you to insert yourself into the hero's position. To wonder what you would have done in such a situation.
"Another reason is that most of the dragons in older stories were evil creatures. Snakes and reptiles were seen as evil and a fire-breathing snake was top of the list of things that were evil. Since the most common illustrations of dragons I've seen portrayed them as at least serpentine, it's a common trope to make the dragons evil in English theology. The Japanese were a bit more casual on it, having a more...uh, they didn't list elements or creatures as innately evil as often, I don't think. I could be wrong, but the beliefs were different; they saw spirits in all things and they could be good or evil depending on the individual. Or maybe it was dependent on the type of spirit..."
"You don't know? Isn't religion supposed to be important?" Twilight said, writing down notes none the less.
"Excuse me for not knowing all aspects of the 400 religions on the planet."
Twilight's jaw fell.
"Four..."
"I don't know how many there were, but there were a lot, and many were lost to time. But when you don't have immortals to rule and say what's moral and what's not like you guys do we have to make do with faith, laws, and whatever people were smart enough to write down. Even then, we lost libraries all the time to fires, war, or even bad book-keeping. 'Oops, lent out the last version of a priceless text and the guy never returned it. Oh well, there goes another part of human history, never to be known again.' Heck, even the griffons have at least three different religions from what little I've learned of them."
"Japanese...those were the ones who had the snake-dragons, right?" Spike asked.
"Yup. Some of them were bearded, some weren't, but I always saw them in statuary holding a pearl that represented wisdom...at least I think that's what it was. They were supposed to be very long lived, and among a race that usually lived about sixty to eighty years, a creature that lived for even few centuries would have been revered as a deity because of the wisdom they would have acquired from such a long life. Well, in some places they would have. Others would have assumed they were stealing the youth from others or made a deal with evil spirits for immortality. You know, there's a reason we called it the dark ages and it wasn't because candles were expensive."
"I think I heard about dragons like that, but they're pretty unfriendly. Princess Celestia tried to open relations with them but they weren't interested," Twilight said, pulling a map from somewhere. "We're definitely comparing regional similarities next time."
"Wait, you have Asian dragons that don't like visitors? Holy..."
"What?"
"Uh, there was an Asian empire that was pretty insular for a while."
"What did you guys do to fix that?" Spike asked. "Maybe it could help Princess Celestia?"
Max stared off into nothing, the idea of Celestia blasting several large cities with sunfire with her ever-present motherly smile still on her face flashing through his mind before he shook his head.
"Wouldn't work. Trust me on this one."
