"Treasures unfathomable!" the unshaven stallion hissed, peering from behind the trashcans in the mouth of the shadowy alleyway.
"Really." Spike didn't even bother putting a question mark at the end.
The stallion narrowed his eyes. "You sound somewhat skeptical, my young friend," he said in that weird accent of his.
Spike started counting the reasons off on his claws. "One, you're Dr. Caballeron, the villain in, like, half the Daring Do stories. Two, even though you're supposed to be kind of a good guy now, not stealing anymore and writing books with A.K. Yearling and like that, you're still hiding behind trashcans in an alleyway and hissing stuff. Three, that permanent three days' growth of beard thing is so completely out of style these days that—"
"Fine!" Stepping onto the sunlit sidewalk, Dr. Caballeron managed to knock one of the trashcans over, a rabid-looking yellow cat snarling and squalling and launching itself out; claws flailing, it sliced three parallel lines in the doctor's snout before it scattered away down the alley. "Yow!" The doctor wrenched a white kerchief from his saddlebag and clamped it to his nose.
With a sigh, Spike turned and headed back up the street. Every time he tried to go to Donut Joe's these days... "Let's get you to Canterlot Tower."
"The tower?" Dr. Caballeron's voice cracked. "Surely there's no need to involve—"
"Cat scratches can be nasty." Spike looked over his shoulder with a shrug. "I'm just thinking we'd better get it cleaned up before it gets infected."
Dr. Caballeron groused and grumbled the whole way, but he still followed Spike around the corner to the West Gate. Spike winced when the guard announced, "Her Highness's Royal Advisor and Friendship Ambassador returns!" but, well, it had only been a month since he and Twilight had moved into the palace. He was sure he would either get used to the shouting eventually or Twilight would get more confident and not need to know where he was every minute of every day.
The announcement seemed to make Dr. Caballeron even paler—though maybe that was from the little stripes of blood staining the front of his kerchief. "Actually," he said, his eyes darting around under his brows as he stumped along beside Spike through the gate, "I see now that I...I made a mistake calling out to you earlier. I thought you were somepony else."
"Really." Again, Spike saw no need for a question mark. "There's exactly one dragon in Canterlot right now, and you're looking at him."
"The sun was in my eyes!"
"You were in a shadowy alleyway."
"The shadows were in my eyes, then!"
Opening his mouth, Spike stopped, deciding he really didn't want to know. Instead, he took the last couple steps down the gleaming gold and marble hallway to the public bathroom and pushed the door open. "Let's just get those scratches taken care of."
"They're fine!" The doctor tried to plant his hooves, but since one of them was holding the kerchief in place and the janitorial staff was always polishing these floors, Spike had no trouble sliding him inside to the mirrored wall with its three big white ceramic wash basins. "I have my field kit on me," Dr. Caballeron was going on, "and that should prove perfectly sufficient for—"
A big purple flash went off to his left. "Spike?" Twilight called. "Are you back from lunch already?"
"Twi?" Spike gestured to the blue and beige tiles. "This is the stallion's restroom."
Twilight blinked down at him. "So? You're a dragon, not a stallion."
Sighing no longer seemed strong enough, but at least he only needed two claws to count off reasons this time. "First, it's just general courtesy not to enter the opposite gender's bathroom. And second..." He aimed the claws at Dr. Caballeron, whose wide mouth and eyes suggested that he hadn't expected to meet Equestria's current reigning monarch in a public lavatory.
More blinking went on after Twilight swung her head in the direction Spike was pointing. "What's Dr. Caballeron doing here?"
Spike shrugged. "He said something about unfathomable treasures, and—"
Dr. Caballeron gasped like he'd been bucked really hard in the chest.
"Treasures?" Twilight's wings poofed up. "Is this a new archaeological find, Doctor? I know you and Daring Do promised Ahiuzotl never to work in the Tenochtitlan Basin again, but if you've come across something that—"
"Twi?" Once again Spike gestured to the plumbing fixtures around them. "Maybe we could talk about it in your office?"
"Oh! Yes!" Purple light from her horn flooded everything, Spike's middle stretching. But he was used to this sort of thing by now and knew not to tense up or shift around too much. "Of course!" Twilight continued, the glow clearing away to show one of Twilight's new offices, shelves, tables, and furniture filled with books, papers, and other assorted objects. "Please, Doctor, have a seat...if you can find one. Sorry. I'm like a gas: I tend to expand to fill all available space."
Grabbing a set of dishes from a nearby chair, Spike held them up so Twilight's magic could teleport them away. To the kitchen, he hoped.
The doctor, though, wasn't moving from where he'd landed on the carpet when Twilight had first popped them into the room. He was, in fact, still gaping the way he had been for the past couple minutes, and it occurred to Spike to wonder if he might be a little shocked at moving from the trashcans of a Canterlot alleyway to the office of the Princess herself in less than five minutes...
"Now, then, Doctor!" Twilight had her extra-big grin on, the one Spike recognized as meaning she was ready to learn. "Tell me all about your latest discovery!"
A moment of silence, then Dr. Caballeron slumped forward a bit. "Very well." He straightened once more. "As you said, Your Highness, due to my agreement with Ahiuzotl, I'm no longer able to ply my trade in the areas I've come to know so well. So I've been studying the lore of the west, the ancient regions beyond what are now the Changeling Lands, trying to find what treasure troves—I mean, what archaeological sites might have lain fallow and undiscovered since the time of Equestria's founding. And I...I uncovered a legend."
Twilight's eyes were practically shining. "Something like Nightmare Moon?"
He shook his head. "More like campfire tales, a good deal less formal and more homespun. But they all center upon—" With a lick of his lips, he swallowed. "The Lizard of Ot."
Spike couldn't keep his neck spines from perking. "The Lizard of What?"
"Ot." Dr. Caballeron reached into his saddlebag, pulled out a small, dusty notebook, and began leafing through the pages. "The majority of the tales, full of wild hijinks and fanciful shenanigans, seem designed to entertain foals on the frontier. But there's just enough consistency to make me think that something might lie at the base of it all: a dragon living out in the Badlands, its cave very possibly filled with wealth and magical artifacts."
"Whoa..." Possibilities flapped through Spike's mind. "And you think the dragon might still be there! So you came to Canterlot to get me! Except...wait. You said you'd made a mistake, that it wasn't me you were looking for! And anyway, wouldn't it've made more sense to go see Dragon Lord Ember if you're looking to find something out about some old dragon?"
Sweat started forming on Dr. Caballeron's forehead. "Well, let's just say that in my career as an archaeologist, I've found myself in...disagreements with dragons every now and again. I'd heard, of course, about the contacts our new and beloved Princess has made among dragonkind, however—" The smile he turned toward Twilight seemed as oily as the deep-fried carrot on a stick Spike had gotten at the last Ponyville Fun Fest. "So I thought perhaps a more civilized sort of dragon might be found here in Her Highness's capital."
"That's Spike!" Twilight clapped her front hooves together. "Oh, isn't it fortunate you ran into him!"
The doctor's smile became less greasy and more stony. "In truth, Your Highness, I'd forgotten that you had a dragon as your Chief Advisor. I'd not wanted to bother you, you see, while still in this exploratory stage, so I'd been on the lookout for some ordinary draconic citizen who might be willing to enter into a partnership with me. I'd planned that we should explore this matter together before I, uhh, presented my findings to the, uhh, wider scientific community."
The slightly sour smell in the air around Dr. Caballeron made Spike wonder if he maybe wasn't telling the entire truth.
But Twilight was clapping her hooves again. "Well, I'm more than happy to sponsor your preliminary research!"
"Sponsor?" Dr. Caballeron's ears shot straight up. "You mean...funding, Your Highness?"
"Call me Twilight: we're fellow academics, after all!" Her horn wavered, and several pieces of paper popped into the air above her crowded desk. "A pair of train tickets to Appleoosa, and a voucher for whatever supplies the two of you'll need to hike out into the Badlands from there!"
The papers drifted down, and Spike was pretty sure his face looked as blank as Dr. Caballeron's. "The two of us?" both he and the doctor asked at the same time.
"Of course!" Twilight chirped. "Spike's my Friendship Ambassador, so who better to contact some long-isolated dragon? And as my Royal Advisor, he can oversee Equestria's investment in the expedition." Her eyes narrowed just a bit. "I'm always willing to give a pony a chance, Doctor, but, well, let's just say that I've been reading Daring Do books since I was a filly." Her smile came back full strength. "Still, my whole life changed when I went out to investigate an ancient legend. Maybe yours will, too!"
"Seriously," Spike said from his side of the campfire as he watched Dr. Caballeron use his magical razor to trim the stubble of his beard back down to the three-days-old stage. "If you want a beard, shouldn't you have a beard? And if you don't want a beard—"
"Ha!" The doctor touched the thing lightly to the tip of his chin. "I shouldn't expect a reptilian such as yourself to understand the intricacies of facial hair."
As much as Spike wanted to sigh loudly and roll his eyes, he settled for just that second one. The last three days had turned out a lot more enjoyable than he'd expected, after all, hiking along beside Dr. Caballeron through the buttes and the hills and the canyons. He'd been afraid things would get boring—could he and this semi-shady treasure hunter really have anything to talk about? But after Spike had asked at lunch on that first day what they actually knew about this Lizard of Ot, the doctor had started telling him the stories that he'd collected over the last few years.
The stories came in two sorts, Spike had noticed quickly. In some, the Lizard was kind of a smart aleck, tricking greedy ponies into doing stupid things. Like the story where two ponies had farms on each side of a river down south of where Appaloosa was now, but one farmer started taking more water than the two had agreed to. The second farmer was walking along, grousing about it out loud, and the Lizard happened to hear him. So the Lizard set up a stand beside the river selling the water in jars labeled Premium Quality and convinced the first farmer that his crops deserved nothing but the finest. The first farmer started buying his water only from the Lizard, and the Lizard then gave the business over to the second farmer before heading back into the Badlands.
In the second sort, though, the Lizard was too smart for his own good, falling into traps that he'd set himself or getting fooled by good-hearted ponies he was trying to trick. Like the story where the Lizard saw this giant pink pumpkin growing in a farmer's field and spent the whole story trying to break in so he could steal it. Everything he tried went wrong, though: stepping on a rake so it sprang up and broke his snout; tunneling into the chicken coop and getting chased away by the angry rooster; falling into the hog wallow, getting covered with mud, and having one of the sows fall in love with him. Finally he gave up, crawling back to the Badlands just as the farmer smashed the pumpkin to pieces since he was sure no one would ever want a pink pumpkin.
Some of the stories talked about the Lizard's treasure, too, a cave so filled with gold and magical artifacts that the sunlight shining in the entrance got reflected, refracted, and amplified all the way back to the deepest recess where the Lizard sometimes lounged about juggling precious stones.
"So," Spike had offered at dinner on their second day, "he's kinda like Discord, but instead of his own weird universe, he has a treasure cave."
Dr. Caballeron had shaken his head. "I would categorize the Lizard more as a trickster than a discordian character. The classical version of the discordian is almost entirely devoted to bringing chaos. The trickster, however, embodies a certain didacticism, a truth-telling and lesson-teaching aspect." He'd shrugged. "Of course, now that we know Discord is an actual individual rather a mere cultural archetype, it seems more likely that this Lizard of Ot is or was a creature some trace of which we can perhaps locate."
That had shut Spike up for most of the third day as the stories continued: it hadn't occurred to him that this semi-shady treasure hunter might be almost as much of an egghead as Twilight...
Now, though, after dinner on the third day, Dr. Caballeron had apparently told all his stories and was spending the evening with several mirrors and his razor, getting his not-quite-a-beard into shape.
Spike added a little shake of his head to the roll of his eyes. "So why're you doing all this grooming now? Last I looked, we're still out in the middle of nowhere."
"Look again, then." Without glancing away from his mirrors, he nodded to some books he'd been paging through while Spike had made supper. "For if I've properly traced the lines of story transmission, we should be very near to the Lizard's cave."
That made Spike sit up. "Really?" he asked with a question mark and everything this time.
"Indeed." Dr. Caballeron tapped his razor into silence. "This will be our base camp, I think. And at dawn tomorrow, we begin to construct a grid search pattern in our quest for the Lizard of Ot."
"Wow." Spike let his gaze wander down the slope of the mesa they were camped beside to trace the twisty canyons between the jagged lumps of orange sandstone. "It's weird that none of the stories say anything about where the Lizard comes from or why he doesn't live with other dragons or anything. But then—" He turned back to Dr. Caballeron. "None of them say what Ot means, either."
The doctor waved a hoof. "Inconsequential. What the Lizard does is much more important that what it is."
"He," Spike said, doing his best not to snort smoke through his nostrils. "He's a pony just like the rest of us." He flicked his claws. "Or a creature, I guess, since, y'know, he's a lizard..."
"True." Dr. Caballeron cocked his head. "And thinking upon it, I suppose that yours would in fact be the better attitude to take if we find the creature still exists." Rubbing his stubbly chin, he tucked his razor away. "I'm much more used to encountering dead cultures than living individuals."
"Huh." With a grin, Spike had to add, "So the shaving isn't to impress the Lizard?"
A burst of laughter popped from him, and the doctor took a camera from his bag. "It's for the photos, my lad. One must look dashing among the ruins, must one not?" He set down the camera and clapped his hooves. "But now, we shall sleep once more under the open sky, and search for the Lizard's lair come the morrow."
As excited as he was to think about meeting another dragon who'd apparently spent most of his life isolated from the rest of dragonkind, Spike thought he'd likely toss and turn all night. But curling into his sleeping bag and closing his eyes, he found himself relaxing almost at once, sleep washing over him—
Then washing away with a suddenness that forced him to sit up and gasp. Because he wasn't out under the starry desert sky anymore, the smoke from their doused fire tickling his nostrils. He was inside a cave, a large, long, cylindrical space whose smooth rock walls reflected a warm golden light.
More blinking, though, made him realize that it wasn't just golden light. It was actual gold, coins and statues and ingots lying in patterns along the sandy floor, stacked into structures, and even hanging from the ceiling in places. Little fire pits sparked here and there, too, but a lot of the gold seemed to be glowing all on its own.
"Yes," somepony whispered into the silence, and Spike turned to see Dr. Caballeron also sitting up, his eyes wide and seeming to flicker in the weird light. "Just as the stories say..."
"Stories," a rumbly voice said to his right. Shadows moved there, too, and Spike saw a long, lean, golden figure stretched out on a big, round, intricately decorated golden table. "I remember those..."
The figure was reptilian, but it didn't look like any sort of dragon Spike had ever met. It was more like a snake as big around as an apple barrel and longer than Discord was tall, a pair of legs near the head and another pair way back by the tail. Everything about it flickered with a low golden light except for two solid black eyes that were looking directly at the two of them.
"The Lizard of Ot," Dr. Caballeron more breathed than said.
A slow nod dipped and raised the Lizard's head. "So. Have you come to answer my riddle and win the mystic power that goes with it?"
If Dr. Caballeron hadn't been furiously blinking, Spike would've thought he'd frozen solid.
Spike, though, had to start counting his problems out on his claws. "Okay, first, riddles are totally a sphinx thing, not a lizard thing. Second, we didn't come here: we were asleep out in our camp, so you must've brought us here with your magic. Third, none of the stories we heard talked about any mystic power. Fourth, we—"
"Yes!" Dr. Caballeron shouted, springing to his hooves. "I have come to answer your riddle and to claim the mystic power!"
"Really?" Spike would've given it two question marks and an exclamation point this time, but he wasn't quite sure that was allowed. "I don't remember any of the stories mentioning—"
"I may have neglected to tell you one or two of them." Dr. Caballeron cleared his throat, shrugged, and trotted across the room to the Lizard's side. "Ask me your riddle, O Lizard!"
The Lizard did another slow nod. "Ot," he said. "I don't quite remember what it is. All I have is this ancient mantra of my people: 'When you're Ot, you're Ot, and when you're not, you're not.'" The Lizard nodded. "So bring me my Ot from somewhere in this room, and all my power will be yours."
"Of course." Dr. Caballeron waved a hoof at the Lizard. "You yourself are Ot, are you not? The Lizard of Ot, and as you say, 'When you're Ot, you're Ot.' You, therefore, are Ot." He touched his chest and bowed.
Half a heartbeat went by. Then, with the tiniest possible ripping sound, all of Dr. Caballeron's beard stubble fell right off of his face.
"No!" the doctor shouted, dropping to his knees and trying to catching the drifting particles of hair. "No!"
A sigh ruffled Spike's neck ridges, and he looked over to see the Lizard looking back. "He chose poorly," the Lizard said, and while he didn't move, he seemed to loom closer to Spike. "And you?"
"Me?" Spike had to stop himself from taking a step back. "I've got all the power I need, thanks."
The Lizard's black eyes shimmered. "Then...you won't help me find my Ot?"
Spike had to spread his hands. "I wouldn't know where to start. Except, well, like Dr. Caballeron said, with you. You're the Lizard of Ot. So, I'd guess that Ot can be whatever you want it to be."
A couple heartbeats passed this time, then the Lizard nodded. "I like that."
"What?" On the floor of the cave with a brush and a little bag, the clean-shaven doctor—he looked more like a pharmacist, Spike thought, without the stubble—leaped up from trying to rescue his beard. "His answer's the same as mine!"
Raising a front paw, the Lizard waggled it back and forth. "You said I was Ot. He said I could define Ot. That appeals to my creative side." He pushed himself up onto his little legs and cocked his head at Spike. "You sure you don't want the power?"
It surprised Spike how little he was tempted. "Sorry."
"Good." The Lizard more slithered than stepped down from his big round metal bed. "'Cause there isn't any. I pretty much lost everything when I lost my Ot."
"What?" Dr. Caballeron cried, waving a hoof and spilling his little bag of stubble. "This cave contains treasures unfathomable!"
The Lizard tapped a claw against something that looked like a solid gold owl. "It's just stuff." His voice got very quiet. "And what good is stuff without Ot?"
Looking at the forlorn Lizard, Spike couldn't help asking, "When was the last time you sold water by the side of a river? Or tried to steal a pink pumpkin?"
The puff of breath from the Lizard's lips sent dust swirling. "After I lost my Ot, I just...just didn't see the point..."
Spike stepped toward him. "But you get to decide what Ot is, right? So you should be able to—"
"Well, I can't, all right?" The Lizard whirled on Spike, and even though those jaws didn't seem to have any teeth, Spike got the feeling he really wouldn't enjoy getting chomped by them. "I mean, yeah, sure, I used to go out and do all kinds of stuff: trick ponies, trick myself, throw Ot around like I had a bottomless well of it! But then...then..." He sighed. "I don't know. I'd get stuff and sit in here looking at it, and, well, instead of Ot, 'not' started being a lot easier."
The doctor was staring at the Lizard, the bag still tipped over in front of him. "The stories. You would expend this 'Ot' to create the situations, and the stories would partially replenish your stock. And these!" He leaped to his hooves, his gaze moving to take in the stacks and stacks of items. "These pieces! I recognize two dozen simply from a cursory examination, and the stories they have locked within them—!" He spun back to face the Lizard. "Your Ot is indeed here! We just need to tell the stories once more to set it free!"
The Lizard blinked. "Stories?"
"Stories!" Diving forward, Dr. Caballeron grabbed the golden owl. "This 4th century Hippolytan owl! Where did you get it?"
"Where?" The Lizard's brow wrinkled. "An arimaspi and a griffon were using it. They'd set themselves up between the coast and the Hayseed Swamp saying they were Priests of the Owlbear and that anypony who didn't pay tribute would be scooped up and eaten: they did all the necessary scooping up and eating themselves after dark." The dull light of the Lizard's scales began to strengthen. "I'd gone down to the coast for a swim, and I heard a few of the fisherponies complaining. We came up with a plan where they came marching into the Owlbear Temple saying they were Priests of the Salamander and that their deity wanted to meet this other deity. I stomped in all lit up, and when the arimaspi and the griffon couldn't produce any Owlbear, well, things went badly for them..."
With a snicker, the Lizard reached out and tapped the owl again, Spike absolutely sure that his glow was brighter than just a few moments before.
Dr. Caballeron was nodding. "How are you feeling now?"
Blinking, the Lizard nodded. "Better."
The golden light played across Dr. Caballeron's face. "I'm seeing a museum here where you regale all who visit with the tales surrounding your acquisitions: I will, of course, stay on to assist with inventory and curation." His smile had more of the academic to it, Spike thought, than the treasure hunter. "If that would be acceptable?"
"You..." The Lizard's eyes went wide. "You're returning my Ot to me."
The doctor bowed, then shot a look at Spike. "So any mystic power you might happen to come across..."
The Lizard laughed. "Don't hold your breath." His claws curled gently around Dr. Caballeron's fetlock. "But thank you."
At the doctor's nod, Spike clapped. "Okay! Doc, give me a scroll and a quill, and I'll send a message to Twilight! I'm sure she'll want to be involved, and maybe Daring Do, too!"
Dr. Caballeron tossed Spike the writing materials, and the Lizard pointed toward a shadowed spot that was actually the door to the surface. "Be right back," Spike said, and started out.
A Friendship Ambassador's duties were never done...
