The Kiss of Immortal Love

~ VI ~

The Dragon of the Great Bridge

Spike was the first to carry up the incline of the slope to the range that was on the top, the two following behind him, starting out one behind the other, turning into Rarity and Twilight side by side. The spider kept an arm over the mare who fell and snuggled into the side-embrace, a reprieve from her current despair.

Lost yourself to a brood, huh? Ain't that rich.

He didn't shake the voice out of his head to avoid giving himself away.

Strangest of them all, weren't you? Doing what must be done allows one to do whatever they want. Anything that interferes with that duty must be cut. The sword was given to you for that. But that mask you put on yourself. Which will tell the greater truth, I wonder?

Laughter hardly controlled.

At the end of the world is where we shall meet, so never forget that, my Spike.

The voice faded beneath the surge of venom composed of fires within, those black flames dimming in droplets of sludge that coalesced within. Tension and pressure expanding outward. Thickness slathered on the wood of the bonfire within.

And it was across the range—a vast stretch of rock for which they were dots upon—the trio came before the end of it all. Coming to a slow of the great slab of stone weathered of storms and fires.

An act of harmony built from betrayal and slavery.

Spike had stopped walking as the two continued behind him, holding his claw out of his side, the digits of his claw long and sharp. They held and so did he, a claw furling into a fist, a change to the tempo of the scene.

No strike of wind or whistle of rolling rock. Two towering pillars erect into the sky a few feet across the bridge, the pony and griffon and zebra high above, feeling turned to stone rather made thereof. Something waited. Preyed. Counting on the chance.

Spike withdrew his blade in a smooth stroke not obstructed by jerks of the arm, the rust of bones forced into their prime, a dead dragon, within, coming back to life. Return to a power that was lost due to a cause. His eyes, brilliant now, raged too.

Without turning around to look, he slashed the ground behind him, a fine line through stone, deeper than should be possible. Clatter of hooves echoed behind him, followed by the sounds of a grab—the spider proving useful after all.

Spike walked toward the opening expanse of paved stone that composed the Great Bridge, the contrast of the monolithic pillars reducing him to a speck—something tiny not meant for something so large. Yet he walked without hesitation for it always bore defeat within it.

And the first step on stone brought the flapping of wings.

Shadows cast over the land.

Spike slowed to the passage of the pillars and the gate they formed, forced to stop and looked up, seeing the titan of red obscuring the blue of the sky. Its mass swallowed clouds and consumed the shape of the sun, from which dived, blocking all, hurdled toward him.

The one-armed dragon didn't bother putting up his guard as the winds returned, not from the earth but born of the beast, its distant roar a tingly frequency in the ear. Its monolithic stature zoomed in from above—unfurling its wings and discharging its momentum in a single flap.

The casting winds straightened and righted him into a hover, the discharged current slicing across the landscape, a tidal wave of sand blasted in sudden fury. Spike's coat whipped violently as he kept silently still. Shouts and screams and the scraping of hooves and legs sounded behind.

The focus of concern pushed from mind, given to another, no longer holding him back. Cutting loose without fear of another there... that was the failure of the last two battles. The keeping of his weakness. Kindness had risked and harm and killed them. Now it was time for him to take charge.

Nothing could be seen beyond the size of the red dragon, who hovered in the air without sound, his shadow and the winds the only other signs of his presence. Slowly he descended, the mass of his claws settling on the pillars.

Crushing the statues of the pony and the griffon. Stone groaned beneath his weight as more of it rested, a great creaking trawling throughout the concrete, the promise of a break. His claws scraped across the surface as he perched on the slab of a platform going across above.

Which slid down and collapsed underneath him.

The slab crashed into the bridge and spilled off its sides, thick and square and crushed into by giant digits, a beast perched on a twig. The long neck from above came and arched itself down, the side of the massive face turning, the pool of an eye casting before the miniature dragon.

"Y...o...u..." the letters came within the sounds of crackles in the faint moving of its jaws. "...o..n...e......o...f......u...s..." It coughed to a great hack, the tunnel of its throat, clearing. "....not often... so small...treat..."

Spike held its blade to its eye, twisting it, revealing its particular glint.

“...a...h...scale...be...trayer...”

The head of the dragon rose into the sky once more, glaring as rage shimmered beneath the scales, an exhale of crackling lasting for many seconds. In opening its jaw ever so slightly, its tongue flicked into the air—before the maw was cast upon him.

Twilight screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed, the cavern of the dragon's maw over the spot where her guide had stood—nothing of him that remained to her view. Hooves threw around and legs kicked down in the horrible panic that consumed her.

Rarity was locked around her, preventing the struggle, catching her over the crossed line. She backed them away despite the throwing hooves that smacked her body. The blurs of her face—caused by Twilight's whipping head—appearing equally distraught.

But knowing what must be done.

On crossing back over the line, the once-giant spider huddled herself over the mare, both in a hug and to protect. Twilight fought through the view of the legs to witness the end of her hope and the beginning of her despair.

"Don't look, Twilight," Rarity hushed in whispers... yet turned to the view as well. "What is seen cannot be unseen, and there is no kindness to gleam."

Yet both girls watched as the looming head, blurred and haze covered by distance and size, lifted. Upon doing so, however, it jerked to a stop. Parting of its jaw and the opening of its maws. Something miniature erect on its tongue, a claw on the ceiling of it all.

Spike stood tall inside the mouth of the beast much bigger than he, the digits of his feet cut into the tongue, claw and shoulder pushing up on the immeasurable force. His tail slithered behind his head and pushed on the pommel of his handle—pushing the blade of his claw, and launching around him to catch it.

His tail flicked in miniature whips of the blade, all controlled, the first pellets of rain coming before a storm. From the back of the maw, he beat his way forward, step and set, beginning the frenzy of his tail. Cutting in a rain of slices for which only flashes and glints could be seen as it travelled in a speed not seen.

The beast of a creature flicked his head back at once, its jaw pushing out wide, the surprise of the strike shocking his mind. Blood-curdling roars crackled in its tingly frequency as gravity must have shifted behind its scaled cheeks. Twilight held a hoof over her mouth in her knight throw and swallowed back from the flick.

Until something blasted out from its lips.

Twilight within the center of the curled legs, fighting to gaze over their tops, watching the purple figure soar into the air. Jaws of the titan loomed inches below, as did the whipping of something pink and thin—the runway of the tongue he dashed across.

"The crazy fool..." came the whispers of Rarity from the side as she too stared in amazement... "Sliced its tongue into bits and dashed up as the dragon roared. Tricked it into relieving the pressure mounting on him. But what will he..."

The distant and titanic head of the dragon snapped, in jaws that clicked, upward to claim its prey. Seconds from its maw passing into the speck again, Spike twirled in the air and kicked the back of his blade, which pierced through the tongue—slicing across its center with the pull of his tail.

The dragon thundered and whimpered in agony.

Its muzzle flicked upward in an involuntary jerk, tapping the dragon into a boost upward, allowing his tail to pull the blade beneath his foot. The first touch was when gravity pulled him down, the speed gained to his downward thrust—the sword rode into the pond of the dragon's eye.

The dragon hollowed in low whimpers while its staggering form lurched to mitigate the pain. Spike was perched on the sword embedded within the pond bleeding red, rolling back through the air, yanking the sword and tail behind him. Before he landed, the blade slashed three slits on the crater of scales—right on the edge before it dived inward.

His feet and tail sunk and wiggled and pushed into the slits, as deeply as they could, unable to be broken from the flailing of the beast's head. Sword tossed back into his claw, he gripped it tightly, unfurling a barrage of strikes and slashes on the remainder of the eye.

Steel that sliced across white, lines that were fine across the pond, bleeding into the natural colour. Slash after strike after whip after thrust. Effects done the same in a sphere around the small dragon that caused him to appear to those who were dear.

Rarity covered her mouth with the legs of a spider. "My words... he listened to them... brown scales turned red from the blood of others... his eye, once white turned red... from his own blood..." Choked sniffles were next. "I... I don't know what you are, Spike, and it hurts me so wonderfully."

And after a few seconds, the finale of the scene climaxed.

Through masterwork of his a wrist phased through speed and time, the next hundred strikes were invisible to the eyes—pronounced exclusively from the moonlight gleaming from the sword. Spike twirled its tip back into its slit, the sheathe vibrating intensely from the still blade, accepting its return into home.

And at the click of its completion, a ball of slashes curved like the wind, the lines of shooting stars infused in them all. Will and power composed into a dense ball onto an expanse of an eye that, regardless of its size, didn't handle or have the current appear across it.

The mass of flesh exploding into the eruption of blood coursing freely.

Spike freed himself from his wedging and pushed and flipped—catching himself on a single claw—on the racing stream of blood. He slid down the cliff of red as, in the distance, the two giant claws crashed together over the newly formed cave.

Once an eye-socket.

Spike threw his shoulder and weight left, a pass over the sprawling curve of the gigantic chin—grabbing the bloodied tongue draped out the side of the month. He yanked it forward, flicking it up and whipping it down and into a fang, piercing the blanket into a snug fit onto it.

The girls watched as the purple dot fell from the head of the dragon but, in that one arm clenched, pulled the tongue and the dragon with it. Confusion crossed the stretching pastures of the dragon's face as he was yanked down from a sudden and pinpoint force.

Spike landed to the crunching inward of stone—the exact spot once stood before—as swirling dust consumed his figure. Seconds passed as it was blasted away from the slamming of the titanic jaw breaking against the slab of stone from before.

Shattering of teeth like glass breaking inside the dragon's maw.

In complete silence and soaked in blood, the purple dragon was turned red, the same cause as the one before him. In whipping the tongue still held upward, the force of the wave strung across the flesh lifted the fallen dragon's head.

And the pull of arm and shoulder and abdomen slamming the tongue down yanked the underside of the dragon's head through the slab, the crash breaking it through the stone... an explosion of clumps and bricks following through. Turning away was when the one-armed knight pulled on the tongue, tearing on its cut from the fang leg—ripping it off entirely.

The girls sat feet away on the range, their bodies huddled together, not shivers but twitches breaking through them. Twilight's heart was thundering in her chest that pushed her fluff out, a paradox of warmth and coldness over the skin, fear and hope summoning in her being.

She didn't know her feelings.

Only they worsened the more that dragon drew close.

Spike stopped on the last foot of the bridge and, ever so loosely, tossing the drape of the tongue over to them. It fell across the same curve of the border drawn with his sword before, and he glared at them.

His eyes burned brilliantly. One had to squint through their glow to even see them now. Impossibly full of sizzling power and their focused determination bearing an aura of sister.

An effect barely contained as the demon remained still.

Before he turned to face the dragon.