The Kiss of Immortal Love

Kiss of Immortal Love
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The towering doors were not pulled open for him, instead requiring his claw on their middle, the force of an arm forced to make up for two. He didn't groan underneath the strain. To do so would be to fail in his duty. In the current and tortured ideal the world needed him to be.

Spike the Dragon pushed the doors apart to the immensity of the throne room. Immediate to his sides were the array of guards erect, filed in a line, side by side, spanning across the length of the red carpet. It sprawled forward and toward the throne, ascending the sporadic set of steps, ceasing before the final case.

None bowed. None talked. None coughed.

The dragon strode across the path the same. Behind him stepped two guards, coming to the doors and pushing them closed. He continued up the steps of the dull sounds of movements filled the silence of the court. Far to the sides rose the wooden boxes, its benches raising in elevation. Countless ponies were looking down at him.

They didn't like what they saw.

And they didn't have to.

Spike didn't dare a fresh breath from underneath his mask. His coat was long and frail and faded orange. Trousers as neglected puffed around his legs and his feet were without shoes. Only a faintly green sash was around his hip—and a curved sheathe a foot from the floor.

It was not often one dressed as he was accepted into the court—much less a dragon. And never to such a crowd. But the times were different and the ponies were desperate. Desperate enough to seek aid in that which they detested the most.

Spike strolled to the end of the carpet, falling onto a knee in perfect formation, head bowed already. He kept like that and didn't dare to speak. Even in hearing the clacks of golden-glad hooves, he did not twitch. Rather he waited. Waiting for the first word.

"Rise."

The dragon did as told. Upon lifting to his feet, he stood tall but not proud, keeping still. He gazed up and across the steps to the throne, coming to see it looming high in his vision. Princess Celestia had stepped out from the chambers to the side. She took her seat and did not bid for anyone else to do the same.

"Spike the Dragon, draconic knight of Canterlot, you have been summoned to the court in need of Equestrian's subjects." Princess Celestia leaned back her head, an eye covered underneath the billowing of her mane—beautiful and ethereal. "You were suspected of plotting against the state to aid your kind."

It wasn't a question. The words spoken were a statement. True or false didn't matter in the politics of ponies. Their perception, the whole of their social construct, that was their current basis for truth. What they perceived became what they believed. The face of a dragon cannot be changed.

Merely hidden.

"Your trial in this crime has been postponed due to the changing tides in the lands of Drangleic. Do not be lost to our formal speech." Princess Celestia tore away his scales with a glare, her single eye an intense sun, breathing in burns to what lay beneath him. The spread of flames, harmful somehow to a dragon, warmed the court in its range. "Committing you into anything will summon an earlier rage to the dragons. War looms in the coming months. Your presence here is a threat to all."

He didn't dare speak. Not even his breathe was to be heard. All he wanted to ask, his sole intent to all involved... was to offer his life. Lowered onto his knees, to be allowed in taking his blade to the throat—and slicing.

Even the offer of his suicide was too disrespectful to merit a syllable from a snaked tongue.

"Your king sits dying upon his throne, but as you best know, death comes ever so slow to a dragon." Princes Celestia lowered her muzzle, not in a bow or a great dip, but as if a weight was suddenly upon her. "No longer is your presence deemed to bring peace between us all. In your failure... there has risen another."

Spike blinked through the cut holes in the metal. Rest of his expression, however, was lost beneath metal. There'd been a slot for his nose and mouth, his frills sprouting from his sides, spines running backward. But his face had been damned from the world.

"In the failures to engage peace between our kingdoms, an arrangement has been strung from your king." Princess Celestia nodded. "In coming to learn about the divine gift of your princess, he has bargained peace for her enteral kiss. But he does not accept nor accept a pony to deliver her on such an arduous journey."

Stale eyes were dull through the holes of the dragon's mask. Expression or surprise or anything of the kind was hidden away. Be this a lack of the dragon to control himself, or his look the same beneath, none knew.

Not himself either.

"You have been chosen to complete this assignment." Princess Celestia rose from her throne and beckoned the dragon into bowing once more. Only he looked up, silently, as the great princess strode down the steps. "Do not be mistaken in feeling special. There are many better suited for this journey. I'd much rather send an army than task this to a lone, one-armed dragon."

Her gazed flicked—noticed by him alone—to the left sleeve of his coat. Limp against his side, its filling was space and air, draped into the side of his body. It stung from her look. The phantom pain. The itch to scratch at a limb no longer there.

"Your heritage. Your competency of a sword. Your loyalty to duty." Something swirled within the limb no longer there. In the abstract arm came the swelling of obscure pains. Claiming loyalty to a perceived traitorous dragon? His arm endured the burn of a new cut. "These qualities assure you'll see your objective through. You'll be able to make it halfway, at least, until handing the princess off to their contact."

His arm tingled at those words, despite the lack of cause, aching anyway.

"Once your mission is done," Princess Celestia said upon reaching ground on which he kneeled. Her long dressed brushed across the ground, the back of her mane tied into a knot, several ones in fact. "You will return and report to Canterlot at once. There you will be housed in a cell. Your fate will be decided from this very court."

Her figure loomed high above his kneeling state, a contrast felt to the faces above, countless and without expression. Their stares and subtle hatreds spoke of his destiny. Though no upraise came from any, the room bordered on the edge of it.

Everything repressed due to the presence of the princess.

"Dismissed."