The Kiss of Immortal Love

~ VIII ~

Demons and Dragons

His body streaked in flames and fires born from the depths of the land. His eyes devoid of white—a void coloured green. Nothing but glowing veils of emerald on opening again. Rage forced through his being. His scales melted into purple molten, waiting for the flames to grow.

The dragon above chuckled with its head to the shy, in anticipation of the crash and the crunch... hearing and feeling nothing like that. Its expression narrowed to the claw that was flat over the spread of land. No blood gushed from under its red scales.

Which all, ever so slowly, were pushed up.

Rarity had slumped into a collection of legs as her body went limp, devoid of hope and instilled despair, the two lights entering her life and, as quickly, leaving it. Through swollen eyelids, her chin tilted up, daring to see the change in scene.

From underneath the plane of the claw, rose something beneath it, ablaze purple burning on her eyes. Its sheer heat blanketed her coat and nearly lit her strands aflame. The dragon rose beneath the impossible weight, creak after crack, not from his back—but the ground beneath his feet.

"...b-but... h-h-how..." Rarity sniffled but did not raise her head, the weight of the invisible flames too great to break against. She shivered, not in hope but in fear, this new creature not at all seeming like how he appeared. "...your arm, darling... how did it..."

Closer inspection showed the claw was lifted on the dragon's shoulder, which creaked the weight up by inches, the wobbling of his legs starting to dissipate. His arm hung loosely from his side, broken still... but something was burning across the sleeve of the missing other.

The bottom-half of Spike's face was exposed but melted over in the purple sludge, his mouth barely visible, eyes rendered green suns. Rolling his head saw to a roaring of his mouth, intense strength in its decibel.

But its pitch was of pure agony.

The left sleeve of his jacket combusted in an explosion of flames, a tendril of fire, composed thickly, surged outward from his shoulder. Rarity's jaw lowered and her expression became hollow in the occurrence before her.

The manifestation of a phantom arm.

Crafted from a dragon's rage.

Born from agony.

Anger. Rage. Contempt.

Spike raged and howled and roared in the horrible mixture of the three, loosening and losing himself to their depths, parts of himself scattered into the streams of erupting volcanoes that utterly consumed him.

Out from the socket of his left shoulder was how the sensations compounded, aching out in a surge of thickness, that phantom arm gave shape in a fiery rage. It billowed and expanded and was constant with streaks of green bearing the sharpness of tips on its edges. Deepening in colour the longer he screamed.

Until a claw of fires manifested at its end.

The imposing weight on his shoulders became lighter and lighter the more Spike gave himself to the rising and rising of hate to the creature above him. In throwing his head to the right, the phantom claw broke into the palm holding him down—burning into the scales.

The pained howl of the beast came from above, lifting its claw the same, marks charred green on its scales. Without thinking, it thrust the palm down again, and Spike shot up the same—striking the colossal appendage to the sky.

He spun on the dirt to his feet scratching on rock, infusing the phantom with power, the pain at seeing the swallow and her face. The horrible energy evoked in watching the princess descending the throat—the illusion throbbed into twice its size.

Spike finished the turn and decked his claw into the expanse of the dragon's belly, covering a sizable spot upon it—the kinetic force vertically shoving Red back many feet. Its feet dug into the land as its talon surged with orange sparks, carving lanes into the rock.

Red didn't stop for a second as the slide ran out its course, its heavy mass pushing into the land, launching him into a sprint toward Spike. He only roared another horrible fit of agony as his phantom was held to the sky, billowing in size and density, fed in power by his repressions.

The charging jaw then parted to reveal the interior of the maw, one barren of her, that horribleness creeping over him again. Without having to do anything, his phantom flew forward, green flames raining from its size, spread across the land in pelts, raging upward in flames, upon touching the ground.

Tears streaked out the lids gone without eyes, the water sizzled, instantly, in the purple molten rose and thickened over his scales. His phantom claw wrapped around the charging beast's muzzle, flexing in the expansion of its length to swallow the acquired momentum—feeding only into Spike's power.

He cried upon yanking the dragon into the air, as high as he could though only several feet for it, coming to slam the dragon on the ground, again and again, screaming and crying and roaring to the loud clacking of the beast's body. Once it lay limp on the ground, he slid the beast around the landscape—through the chunks of the remaining pillars.

The glowing contours of green around the muzzle of the monster seemed only to grow, around the thing that swallowed her whole, surging another horrible shiver that thickened the molten once more.

The middle of the arm arched into the air in a curve, each second a pulsation to its size, one gathering into itself. After another pained roar, it flooded forward, the mass wrapping around the claw, bloating its form, tightening the grip, increasing the pressure, on the muzzle that started it all.

Harder and harder to its whimpers and whimpers to the treasure of cracks ending in a crunch.

"Spiiiike!"

That voice. Somewhere beyond the haze. Everything was so blurry to him now, a vision cast through flames, always billowing, heating his body. His phantom claw retracted to his size, its pain causing another scream out of him. He turned to the spider daring to stand behind him.

"You're still in there, aren't you?" Rarity asked in a voice one speaks to the reaper in. "She might be inside of him, Spike. Swallowed w-whole into a stomach... it doesn't mean death! Everything you've done, she's felt, always jostled inside of him."

The sheets of burning green wobbled in quivers that came in a wave across his lids, the mass of his arm shrinking, knees trembling again. He nearly fell, but the spider did not allow it. "She might not have gotten it—but I do. Do what must be done even if it means losing yourself to a demon. Don't hold back."

One of Rarity's legs dived for the sword next to her, three more joined to assist in lifting it, the rest of her body shaking due to her proximity to him. She tossed him the blade as it staked through the ground between his feet—awaiting his pull.

"It's okay to lose yourself, Spike," Rarity said upon stumbling away, fighting through her fear, much like how Twilight had done before, for she knew wasn't based on the full story. Lesson Twilight learned from Spike and, from the experience of the jouncy, added her own wisdom to it. "So long as you can figure out a way to come back to us."

Spike stood there in the silence of his roaring rage, the ember sludge returning to his scales, his shoulder undulating in crackles of flames. Lifting his phantom claw, he gazed into its palm, so dense with fires... he could hardly see through its transparency.

This had been the claw to guide him. Comforting Celestia and soothing Twilight. It acted beyond duty, coming to hug the princess despite the lack of need for it. Wrapped around her as they slept together. It didn't make a difference in that instance.

Now this guiding phantom, arm aflame, had crushed the muzzle of the beast.

Who slowly rose behind him, as the titanic sounds implied, soft and in echoes.

In consciousness effort, the embers of a dragon moved the claw to his arm, the one still there, its flames spreading down its length. Once consumed, the shape of fire tensed, still, cracking the arm back into place.

The claw of purple broke through the phantom as the talons twitched outward and spread, brought back to a life of his own will, feeling washing over the dull numbness previously consumed the nerves there. In the pain that followed, he ignored it, gripping the claw around the handle of the blade before him.

The tool only for duty.

Spike turned around and placed his back to Rarity, his movement slow yet brimming with power, raising his sword to the colossal form, the one picking itself up in the distance. Even wobbled a step until straightness, its jaw loosely hung left—unable to close.

Allowing light back inside.

Spike readied his blade, now far smaller in his claw, his size grown to twice his height. Focus came on a single desire—deadly to dragons. The summoning of his greed wanted for one thing. Twilight Sparkle. Nothing would interfere in the primal want of a dragon.

His phantom claw then clasped over his other, the blade billowing out in flames, surging within and then spreading out, the solid texture of the fire as real as steel. His claws were bigger now, and the green encasing of the hilt grew it too—letting it settle comfortably in his talons.

And its blade becomes streaks of green and neon.

A tool rendered into an extension of his expression.

Looks like you're able to learn a thing or two, after all, aren't you, brother?