The Kiss of Immortal Love

~ VII ~

Love Swallowed

Spike came to the dragon in a slow walk, his sword held down by his waist, twisted to the side. Rage and anger and contempt surged in a shimmer beneath the mask. It could barely repress the expression breaking through him.

You get it now, don't you, on why the dragon became so powerful? The voice of the other, within, another quality unable to be suppressed. Dragons don't think. They feel! Have you not considered why dragons live so long? It due to that!

Spike didn't bear the voice heed as he didn't break in his stride. The head of the dragon rose to the pouring of blood and stone from its jaw and chin. A slow shake of the head and eye permanently closed. Pain repressed to allow it to rise again.

No thinking about the purpose of our lives, nor worries about not mattering in the grand scheme of things. Good and bad mean nothing to us. Ponies kill themselves by thinking. Existential fears and shackled by wisdom. Always reflecting to the point of the quickening of their deaths.

Spike's tail snaked around the hilt of his blade around, tightening in the curve, the substitute for an arm. Beneath the weight of his feet, stone crushed inward, weight gaining on the minuscule-appearing drake. Despite wings, winds blue from him, an intensity as imposing as the other.

Looking at him evoked the same fear as staring into the scale of the monolithic beast.

Dragons are instead simple creatures! We fight! Then amass a horde. We fight! Then we mate with who we please. We fight! Then we sleep for a hundred years. We fight! Fight! Never considering anything beyond this existence.

That is why we live so long, become so strong, because we are never burdened from thoughts, our experiences are full of feeling, and we exist as nature crafted us for! Our lifespans lengthen by removing existential dread. Our bodies are stronger for the sole act of fighting and living as we please.

What makes you think you are any different... or that any different could win against such a beast?

Spike didn't have time to react as the claw of red raised from the stone, arching into the air to eclipse the sun—before striking upon him. He guarded as his sword pressed against two digits like thick icicles draped over him.

He pushed up against the claw, enough to buy him a few seconds to twist himself backward, readying his sword. Shadow of the claw was cast over him as everything darken—winds blowing off the falling might. It fell on the dragon as he twisted into a spun, curved upward-slash, slicing through the two digits as they clattered to the ground.

But the dragon didn't scream nor shout or freak-out. It simply ceased in its attack and glanced at the limp digits slid behind the speck. It's claw raised to its face, turning around, gazing at the appendages missing.

Before chuckling.

It was a slow and hearty building of laughter, its head now arched into the air, holding out the palm. Sunlight shone upon it, the bloodied stumps that glistened in the beats, blood now warm. They were pushed and popped off by a physical force.

And in its place grew another two talons that contours glinted in the sun.

Red then opened his eye, the one slashed to pieces, returned, a series of fine lines of scarlet stroked through it. Far below, its mouth turned pulled into a smile as brown flames billowed within its irises.

And in a fatal swoop, Red swung that claw from the sky to the right, its palm crashing from the side. Spike ready the approaching, vertical plane of red, slashing at the palm to its retreat of inches. This recoil launched it back, harder, slamming into the drake.

Spike grunted as his feet broke into the stone, every stomp taken him deeper as he fought to keep the ground—pushed back from the impossible weight. The large and curled digits unravelled to grab him, which he prepared his shoulder for the swing that would cut them all.

Only for the palm, instead, to beat into him in a strike.

The force broke into his body and whipped it back, the digits a diversion, his body thrown into the pillar of stone. Massive claw curled into a giant fist and struck him again. Both broke through the pillar as it crumbled.

The strike then sliced him through the stone, now severed into two, it falling in chunks in the starting of its collapse. The drake flew back in the air, twirling his body to reclaim balance—kick and straightening of his legs righting himself in the air.

Rage broke through him from the sudden pain as purple scales as green flames melted over their surface. Spike whipped his body in the air, twirling in circles, charging the culminating force into the next stroke of his force.

He slashed the valley behind him. Single streak of a shooting start beginning at the cliff of the left range, diving and driving across the valley, before rising into the cliff of the right. The gigantic slice tore into land, cut the edges of the cliff—and the force blasted him forward into the crumbling pillar.

His foot cracked into the slab falling backward, crunching feet inside its shape, and redirecting its fall. Handing his sword from claw to tail, the former was free to grip the top corner of the pillar—angling it as he pleased.

To the lifting head of the dragon below.

With the pillar that had supported the statue of the pony, broken by one claw, used in action by a foot. Roars came from them both as the structure came down, brought, with extra force, onto the large forehead of the dragon.

Spike broke it through into an extra push down of his claw, whipping all his anger and rage into smashing the dragon's head in. The pillar shattered into a thousand cuts and broke into thousands of more chuckles, pebbles and bricks and slabs raining across the expanse of the beast.

He landed before the creature—on stumbling legs—which knocked him onto his knees. His blade drove into the ground to prevent a fall, on which he pushed himself back up, turning around to see the distant, extended length of a tail swinging in a curve toward him. Spike's tail barely plucked the sword from the stone to deflect the attack, slashing weakly—unable to cut through that of his foe as it slammed into him.

Spike's back was crunched into the opposite pillar of stone, the one of the griffons, his body sunk into solid chunks that clung around him. His shoulder and arm broke lazily through with a crunch—but he fell limply onto the bridge as the beast towered above him.

Dragon's fight to fight. Nothing more. This is the king of their strength. Everything that could hold them back is gone. Father won this world through such means and he's unsure of betting on this becoming a changing fact. What holds you back? Why the facade of appearing more than what a dragon is?

Spike stumbled in place as he gazed across to his foe, the belly of scales of a fainter red, flexing across the plateau. This was a beat operating on a level barely above instincts—reduced intelligence used exclusively for cruelty. It knew not to collapse upon him, for Spike would slash through its stomach or cut through its heart.

Swallowed whole in that maw also wouldn't do, as he would cut from the inside out, killing the beast. It would need to chew. The beast knew so far as to win the fight but nothing of the stakes of the fight. The battle in of itself and nothing more.

Would it win for those reasons alone?

Two claws arched into the sky and covered the span of clouds again, each blasting down on Spike, who slashed through the digits of both, seconds after the other, barely able to stand on his legs. One palm still wrapped around him and lifted, curling in a squeeze to make his body explode from the pressure.

Only Spike held his blade between his legs, slicing upward in the few inches of space provided, the lack of digits to constrain him. Mass of the claw opened in reflection of the sudden pain—not without whipping his body into the ground.

Spike coughed, and his body rendered weak on striking the rocky planes, sickening cracks echoing throughout the field louder than the harshest of winds. He rolled feet over the rugged landscape—cut and smacked by rocks and protrusions from the ground—until his body broke into a harsh stop—feet before the severed tongue.

That sword is your duty, a tool, becoming efficient enough to serve that purpose. Blades, however, are extensions of our expression. They become weaker when stifled. Cutting and slicing to the duty imposed upon them. But never will they become greater than that.

And what is repressed becomes weaker, accumulating in a tight density, held back in the namesake of duty and progress... until the uncontrollable is unleashed, and all that is gained is lost.

You are no different from another dragon if, in the end, if your progress is crumbed behind your rageful and bloodied form.

I've told you a lot of contradictions, Spike.

What will you believe in?

The coolness of rock washed over his face as consciousness returned to him again. Weakly he rose, his chest rising, finding no support from his arm. Glancing to his side, there it hung, limp and popped from the socket of his shoulder.

He looked forward to catching the glint of steel feet away from him.

The mask.

Spike crawled limply toward it on torso muscle alone, a wiggle taking him forward, that was, until his face hovered over the interior of the cover. Ironic. The thing hiding his face, now reflected it, on the sheet of its inside. His one eye fully exposed and, despite the weakness of the lid, the flame of green still caused it to glow.

And the blood lathered over his face didn't trigger anger.

He saw it too in the reflection of the mask, the claw poised just over him, centring itself until perfection. Despite the pain and the numbness and the blood, the drake felt no anger anymore, nothing to become rageful about. The husk of him returned as whatever happened to him never evoked deeper things within.

One that is nothing doesn't feel insulted by death.

The words of the other didn't come through, even as the mass of the palm broke upon him, snaps, sharp, crying from all over his back. But it didn't spark a frenzy. It wasn't a lack of hope. Dying dragons still went berserk in rage to all that was inflicted upon themselves.

Yet there wasn't anything about himself to go berserk upon.

For he was nothing and nothing done to him could evoke anything greater than emptiness.

In this death, he could accept, for nothing was left.

"S-Spike!" that voice... how could he... forget? "N-No! Spike! Don't you dare quit out on me!" Fighting and shaking of bodies to the clattering of racing hooves. "Let go of me! I'm not letting him die there! I'm not scared—I won't be scared!"

Was that his weakness? Spike's head popped through the gap of two broad digits, which broke easily through the stone. Slicing ever so easily inward and posing in the ground beneath Spike's fallen body. Insurance. Those talons would cut through it and him in a change of the pressure of the claw not squishing him completely.

"Get off of him! He's not like the rest of you lot! I don't care what I have to do—you won't take him!" Twilight? That was her name, the one billowing life into an empty frame, a jerk of something real flooding throughout him. "I'm not a useless princess anymore! My power is far beyond the gift of my lips."

Was that her plan? Free his body somehow with magic and restore his body with the love of her kiss? She'd found something to love about him. But he was nothing, empty, an abyss with legs. What cause did she find, in a divine power, strong enough to bring him alive?

He was nothing, but she had found something, about or within him, that evoked loved to bring him back from death. The reason why she wanted him to keep living. Power of her love was a testament of him being more than a husk. But what was he then? To himself and her?

Spike laid with his cheek on the mask with a portion of his face exposed, expression fading from life, the fire of his eyes dwindling. The purple mare stood tall as her horn glowed brightest of them all, the spider behind trying to pull her away—pushed off by the currents of the developing spell.

But Twilight's love had made him weak.

In his worries for Twilight happiness and safety, he held himself back, losing easily to pony-bandits and a spider, not wanting her to see the worst of the world—or maybe himself. Even though fate took the princess to the bloodiest lands of them all... he had craved to make the journey there as peaceful as possible.

Resulting in his own death.

Twilight reasserted herself on the ground as her hooves kept sliding back, the force of the spell pushing even her back, a fighting of legs to keep herself in place. Groans echoed from her muzzle and tears from pain rushed from her eyes. Every iota of her essence placed into this composition of magic.

Spike watched as her body transitioned into hazes and blurs and the same becoming true of the rest of the world. His vision wobbled, and he was too weak to shake it back into place. He'd allowed himself to neglect his duty to her happiness and destroyed the dragon in a building of burning haze.

But Twilight's mortified expression at seeing him victorious, burning in the glow and awash in blood, tossing them that tongue... the one she crossed now... it wounded him deeper than he knew. Being nothing was easy.

But being seen as a monster in her gaze, despite being a creature finally alive, killed him on the inside. It weakened him as the dragon behind grew stronger for it. And where had this restraint led? To Spike's defeat, and Twilight in harm, even more horrified at seeing him nearly dead.

There was no winning.

But being a monster came closest to it.

Just as the jaws of the monster descended from the sky, opening around the space of the mare, consuming the whole of the area—closing. Seconds later, the dense mass lifted, the length of her tail, draped from its lips, twitching around.

Spike's eyes widened on seeing the mare disappear within the maw of the beast, the giant head slithering around to his side, until it came straight before him. The creature gazed at his pinned form as its chin hovered inches from the ground.

And then its lips split.

The mouth opened ever so slowly, full of intent, revealing the damp and dark interior of within—the narrow cell of towering fangs serving as bars. Twilight's form loomed at the back, barely touched by light, hugging its tongue to ride its waves.

Her compact form that filled the back of the mouth, a tasty chunk of food that would pelt an empty body, a substance the dragon seemed to cherish as its open-lips grinned. Warm exhales sickened her mane as Twilight became deathly still.

Her muzzle jerked around in the depths. Seeing the interior webbing of cheeks and the rows of giant fangs and down the long-length of the tongue holding her. Her body shivered in horror, on the precipice of shutting from shock, a trauma that couldn't be undone. She gazed through the opening of the mouth to her protector, outside the confines, pinned to the ground.

Twilight held her hoof out to him.

"Spike... please..." She cried and her voice cracked. "...help...me..."

Those lips slammed into a lock, followed by the tilting back of the titan's head, the gulp was audible, the swallow perceptible. In the exposure of the throat pushed out to him, the pinned drake watched as a large lump passed through, the mare that he loved, travelling down a gullet and into a cavernous stomach.

The other massive claw appeared before it, digits regrown, pressing below the lump to slow its descent. It freaked out at once, thrashing into a more prominent bulge against the throat, tickling the dragon delightfully so.

The mare was in there, squeezed by the tightness of a gullet, dim and wet, hearing the unconscious bodily functions from inside of the dragon—played even in that terrifying and scary situation that would drive her to horrible insanity from the trauma.

Finally the dragon pressed down on the lump, following it down its chest, where it thinned before disappearing, thrown into the depths of its stomach. Horrible screaming and screeching came from the right, a spider unable to be seen anymore, all turning into an inky blackness within the dragon's vision.

No gift of eternal life to bring him back to life.

Duty lost inside the belly of a dragon.

His body was beaten into death.

The dragon grinned in satisfaction of its morsel, allowing itself moments of delight before another kill. The crushing of a claw and the impaling of talons into the one beneath its palm. Rarity could be changed with kindness and understanding.

But this dragon wouldn't bow to such words.

He wouldn't bow to words at all.

For dragons considered nothing outside of a fight.

When we meet again at the end of the world, spoke the voice of his brother once again, your beliefs will compose the being allowing you to reach there. They must be born of you. None others can do. We are the new definitions of strength—remember that.

Spike faded from existence seconds before death came to capture him.

What will you believe in, Spike?