The Ten Million Year Helloby BandyChaptersEpilogue: A Lesson in GeologyChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixEpilogue: A Lesson in GeologyTen million years passed. A new mountain range emerged north of Andesia, beginning around the tip of the southern plains and extending all the way north into Equestria, cleanly bisecting the San Palomino desert in the west from the Applosian hills in the east. As time went on, it extended further still, brushing up against the greater Ghastly Valley and the Everfree Forest on a relentless northbound path. Around the same time, a second new range emerged, this one beginning in the Unicorn Hills northwest of old Canterlot Mountain. This one cut a path south through the White Tail Woods. Year by year, the two ranges drew ever closer, by inches and by yards, nudged this way and that by volcanoes and the natural geological forces of the earth but never straying from their paths, until in a fantastic ten thousand year-long collison, the two ranges met in the plains where the city of Ponyville once sat, intertwining to become the longest continuous mountain range in the world. Chapter OneThe battle was over before it began. The pony legions broke against columns of dragonfire and scattered, fleeing back into the forest. That was their second mistake of the day: seeking refuge in something that could burn. On a hill opposite the forest, a detachment of the opposing army stood and watched the rout. A few cowered. Others cried. All of them were sweating. Even at a great distance, they felt the heat of the flames. It took nearly an hour for the forest to burn. A thick grey cloud of ash blotted out the sun. Above it, an ominous black figure appeared. It settled beside the hill with a mighty blast of superheated air that burned the eyes and singed the beards of everypony present. “It’s done,” came a tired, gravely voice. The dragon had taken many names over the past nine hundred years of his life. For the last hundred or so years, he’d been going by the name “Blesco,” a name given to him by the southern buffalo after he saved their land from a wildfire. Two days ago, he decided to go back to his original name: Spike. Spike was three stories tall, a veritable mountain of dazzling purple scales that flashed like war paint in the sun. His fiery green eyes settled over the band of ponies like the blades of guillotines waiting to drop. His gaze alone was enough to immobilize them. Ancient instinct, and all. Play dead, and maybe the big bad dragon will pass you over. Spike lowered his head until his snout rested on the ground. He spoke in a low voice, so as not to blow the ponies’ eardrums out. “My map.” The one in front with the crown--Spike had already forgotten if this one was the usurper or the sitting regent--snapped his hooves frantically. An aide produced a saddlebag. “Holy flame!” the king proclaimed, “We thank you for ensuring our victory on this most blessed day. We--” “Map,” the dragon said in a tone so forceful it whipped up wind. “Give me the map.” The king turned a porcelain shade of white and tossed the saddlebag to Spike. As Spike turned to leave, he surveyed the remains of the forest. Charred lumps of carbon and a few twisted remnants of organic matter poking through a thick fall of ash were the only signs that anything had ever grown there at all. It was like that for miles. This forest wouldn’t grow back for another hundred years. It didn’t have to be like this, Spike wanted to tell the king. You could have avoided this. If he could just speak to them on their level, help them work out their differences-- But then he thought about the map, and the pact he’d signed with the king. And he realized that there were no more differences to work out. It was the king who commanded him, but he alone had breathed death on the forest. No pony could start a fire like this. Only dragons could. The last four hundred years had not been kind to the north. Dramatic expansion of the permafrost between the Equestrian Kingdoms and the Third Crystal Empire left a great deal of Spike’s old stomping grounds buried by a hundred yards of frozen earth and snow. The secrets that lay below had confounded generations of researchers. But now Spike had what all those researchers didn’t: a map. Spike flew half a mile above the frozen ground and held the map up to his eye like a spyglass. The map created a detailed topographical rendering of the ground beneath the permafrost, complete with elevation numbers. He was looking for a pair of steep hills jutting out above an ancient riverbed in the rough shape of a smiley face. It could easily take twenty years to survey the entirety of the frozen plains. But after a measly four months, Spike came across a different sort of topographical anomaly: a giant smoldering hole bored into the ground. Spike held the map up to his eye. Sure enough, there were the hills and the riverbed. The hole sat where the nose would have been. The smile looked mocking, somehow. Don’t need a map to see that, Spike thought sourly. Burned that whole forest for nothing. Hot air and the smell of brimstone hit Spike as he got close. He kicked a few stones down into the hole and counted nine seconds before they hit the bottom. He’d have to suck in his belly a bit too, but he’d shimmied through worse. The hole went straight down for about a quarter mile, then widened into a large cavern. A thin stream of semi-molten rock flowed through one corner, filling the place with a dull orange light. The smell of rot got stronger. He licked the palm of his hand, then clapped. His saliva ignited, casting a green light through the room. He saw a hidden passageway opposite the magma, leading further down. Bits of burning cinders fluttered on the ground. He knelt down beside the nearest scrap and held it up to the light. F0=0, F1=1, and Fn=Fn-1 + Fn-2 for n>1 Under some older definitions, the value F0=0 is omitted, so that rts with F1=F2=1 and the recurrence The smoldering parth of the page caught a bit of wind and flamed up. Spike reared back only to bump his head on the top of the cavern. The whole cavern trembled. The page burned to ash in his claws. This place was a library. And it was on fire. A scream echoed from deeper within the cave. Spike took off down the passageway as fast as the narrow walls would allow. A terrible, mournful sound rose in his ears as he raced deeper into the cave. More burning pages littered the floor. Spike kept his serpentine eyes forward, following the light pouring from down the tunnel. The wind grew so fierce it threatened to uproot him and send him tumbling backwards. Waves of heat accompanied the wind, pouring down the passageway, igniting loose pages as they whipped through the air. Finally, the passage widened into a massive domed structure. Crumbling columns with intricate doric designs lined the room. Multiple tiers of collection rooms and hallways branched off into darkness. Most had collapsed long ago, but a few still remained, housing petrified wooden shelves and greying parchment scrolls and books, the ink long-since faded, the bindings long since eaten away by time. An old pang of nostalgia passed through Spike’s brain. Twilight would have loved this, he thought. If it weren’t on fire. The light and heat emanated from the center of the room. A female dragon with orange scales and a dazzling purple crest was slumped over on the floor. One talen curled around a pile of ash. Listless blue eyes watched it sieve through her fingers. She seemed familiar somehow, but Spike couldn’t place it. “Are you okay?” Spike called out. Her eyes moved slowly to Spike. She opened her mouth like she was about to speak, but instead shot a jet of flame at him. He leapt out of the way with inches to spare. “Hey! Stop! This is a library. You’re destroying priceless relics.” The dragon curled up tighter. A thin, deranged laugh escaped her lips. “Kill me, then. Bite off my head. Finish it.” Confusion mingled with raw fear. “What?” More heat pulsed off her body. Spike took a step back, unsure of what to do. The dragon pulled herself to her knees, still facing away from him. “I can’t stop it. If you want this library to survive, you’ll have to kill me.” “I’m not gonna do that. What do you mean, you can’t stop it?” A strangled, gurgling gasp cut off the dragon’s reply. She clutched her belly. Shivers wracked her body. She opened her mouth, and a vomitous gush of liquid fire spewed out. Spike cried out in surprise and leapt onto the second floor balcony. The stonework buckled under his weight, but miraculously held. He flinched as an important-looking keystone cracked. Below him, gouts of fire engulfed the first floor, swallowing entire bookshelves and their contents. “What’s wrong with you?” he cried. “Stop it!” But after a moment he realized the other dragon had made no attempt to escape her own flames. Superheated dragonfire found chinks in her scaly armor. Smoke hissed in the air where her exposed skin burned. Dragons had a natural resistance to heat, but not even they could sit in dragonfire forever. Just as he was contemplating whether or not to dive in and pull her out, the dragon came to her senses. She leapt up, flung open her wings, and took off. When Spike saw the wounds on her belly, his jaw dropped. Her whole torso was flayed open. The scales and skin were gone, her insides exposed, her organs held in by a tight-fitting chainmail vest. He could see her heart beating behind the metal, superheating the links until they glowed red. Heat and steam spilled out of her wounds in waves. Her eyes met his. Then they moved past him, to something deeper in the library. She let out another chilling wail and leapt forwards, her face frozen in a demonic snarl. Spike barely had enough time to get out of the way before the wounded dragon slammed into the balcony beside him. Countless books burst into flames. He missed the worst of the impact, but the sheer heat radiating off her body overpowered him, and he landed with a crash on the floor. Sticky dragonfire licked his scales. In a momentary daze, he wondered how long it would take to buff the burns off his scales. Then he felt burning, and he realized he was going to wind up like all those poor books if he just sat here. He leapt to his feet, shook off the flames, and flew onto the opposite balcony. His dazzling purple scales had been scorched black. And he’d only been sitting in the liquid fire for a few seconds. How was this other dragon still breathing? He looked around. The air had grown noticeably cooler. The other dragon was climbing up the chamber. Whole bookshelves of ancient wisdom turned to ash. The destruction was too much for him to bear. Spike spread his wings and launched himself into the wounded dragon with all his might. He drove the air out of her lungs and crushed her against the wall of the chamber. Red hot sparks leapt from where her chainmail scraped the stone. Her forehead hit the wall and bounced back. Her body went slack. She fell back to the bottom of the chamber with a resonant thud. Ceiling tiles and loose stones rained down all around her. A long, desperate moment of silence passed as Spike watched the motionless dragon. Then she sucked in a gasping breath and started moving again. Spike let out a sigh of relief. He paused to look at the spot she’d been climbing towards and saw a curious sight. Set within the stone walls where the top of the columns met the base of the dome, there was a small cubby tucked into the rock, just large enough for a single pony to fit inside. Inside the cubby, he found a book sealed in plaster. Someone had carved a message in the stone beside it. To Uncle Spike -- How’s the weather up there? Soooo get this--we broke up the spell into three parts. One third is here, another third is in Starlight Metropolis, and the final third is on the moon. It was all aunt Twilight’s idea. Can’t have dangerous dragon secrets falling into the wrong hooves, yada yada yada BORING Happy hunting. Love you lots flurry A sigh escaped Spike’s lips. He ran a talon lightly along the letters. The last time he’d seen Flurry Heart, she’d been leading the empire’s efforts to build mana batteries large and stable enough to power intercontinental teleportation. She’d wrapped up her fifteenth doctorate, with four more planned for the next fifty years. A manic urge seized his heart. Fly there. See her. Say hello. It’s been three hundred years. Just as quickly as the thought appeared, another far darker one dwarfed it. He imagined crystal buildings crumbling to dust as he landed, and ponies being whipped away by the wind beneath his wings, and death, and sorrow, and chaos, and, and... And it would only get worse every day. Better not to risk it. Not until he’d finished the spell. He stowed the book in his bag, then carefully used his sharp foretalon to cut the inscription from the cubby. That too he put in his bag for safekeeping. He turned his attention below. The wounded dragon was trying to get to her feet. More fire leaked from her mouth, singeing her scales. Another row of books to her immediate left reached the critical temperature and went up in flames. She didn’t even bat an eye. This library was lost, Spike realized. Another precious thing inadvertently crushed. The dragon looked up at him. Something in her eyes seemed so familiar to him. “Who are you?” Spike called down. “kill me,” she whimpered back. “What’s your name?” “Screw you.” “Your name.” Her sorrow turned to a snarl. “Banshee,” she hissed. Spike got the feeling she was lying. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen her before. But he had learned to ignore faint familiarities a long time ago. When you see enough faces, they all start to look familiar. He left the way he came. Flames bloomed beneath, blowing wind against his burnt back. Chapter TwoDragonkind contained multitudes. There was its kingdom, with subjects and kings and queens and customs and culture. There was a rotating cast of juveniles drifting from place to place, semi-permanent nomads unwilling to call any one flag theirs. There were warrior tribes who fought wendigos in the north and web-footed tribes in the south pole who swam with orcas. It also had dragons so ancient and reclusive that they dropped off the radar completely. Spike made his way to one of those dragons now, a month long flight from the wastes of the frozen north all the way down to the desert mountains of Andesia, a range of rocky peaks marking the line between the southern plains and the frigid south pole. In a nondescript region too rocky for ground-bound races to hike and too windy for flyers to fly, in a cave so deep you could practically hear the earth breathing, Spike found himself surrounded by piles of treasure ten times as tall as him. He placed a meager but meaningful offering of gold and tasty gems into the hoard, then called out, “Mlinzi? Anyone home?” The earth rumbled all around him. “No,” it replied. Spike chuckled. “It’s Spike the dragon. We met eight hundred and twelve years ago, when you left Dragonstone to complete your hermitage. I was the one you--” “The one I kicked off the dias as I left.” Deeper in the cave, Spike saw a light flash. Two bronze eyes blinked open at opposite sides of the cave. Though he could see only the eyes in the creeping darkness, Spike shuddered with awe as he imagined the true size of the dragon. The whole mountain must have been hollow for him to fit. “Yes,” Spike said, stowing his wonder. “The one you kicked off the dias.” The cave cracked and shifted as the ancient dragon let out a laugh. “I apologize for that. It was purely by accident. My size--” “I understand. No need to apologize..” Mlinzi looked Spike over. “You’re awfully levelheaded for a dragon.” “I was raised by ponies.” “Ah, that would explain it. Is that why you’re here? Getting in touch with your dragon side? Here to consult the elders?” Spike detected a hint of sarcasm in the old dragon’s voice. “It’s not that.” He paused, considering his next words. “I saw something I’ve never seen before.” “Ah. Even at our age, the world still finds ways to surprise us. Feels good, doesn’t it? ” “No. Not this one, anyway.” “Don’t keep me in suspense, then.” Spike swallowed the lump in his throat. “It was another dragon. I found her in the frozen wastes. She was...” He frowned. “She had these horrible wounds, like she’d been ripped apart and left to die.” “Except she couldn’t.” The scales on the back of Spike’s neck stood up. “Have you seen it before?” “No, but I’ve heard of it. What was she doing in this library?” “Torching everything. It was just spilling out of her.” “You were right to flee, then. Sounds like she’s no longer in control of her own powers.” “How could that have happened?” “Maybe it was an accident. Or she challenged another dragon to a duel and lost, and they mangled her as a sign of disrespect.” Spike’s frown deepened. “Can we help her?” Mlinzi’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “You really were raised by ponies.” “Can we help her or not?” “Not a chance. She’s caught in a feedback loop of dragon biology. Her body’s natural regeneration magic keeps trying to heal itself. But the heat from her exposed heart will continuously damage the rest of her body. She’s trapped.” “And she’ll stay trapped.” The look in Mlinzi’s bronze eyes grew very serious. “Until someone puts her out of her misery.” The realization fell like a weighted spearpoint on Spike’s chest. “You can’t be serious.” “It’s very serious. Since you found her, it should be your duty to end her suffering.” “I can’t do that. I won’t. There’s gotta be another way.” “Every day you put it off is another day she spends suffering.” Mlinzi’s tone softened. “It’s no way for a dragon to live. Everything around her burns. Even other dragons. You must have felt it.” Memories of the searing fire seeping between his scales sent shivers up Spike’s spine. “There’s gotta be a way to help her.” “Yes. Find something sharp and shove it into her heart. If she’s smart, she’ll let you.” “That’s not what I mean!” “You sound just like a pony!” Mlinzi let out a bellowing laugh. Stones fell from the ceiling and bounced off Spike’s scales. “So naive. You have a million more years to go before you can fully appreciate the ways of the world. Love is for the small. Dragons can’t afford such things.” Spike’s shoulders sagged. “I think you’ve forgotten what’s outside of this cave.” “There is no out there. Not for me.” A question lingered on the tip of Spike’s tongue. He hesitated, then blurted out, “When did you stop moving?” Mlinzi smiled sadly. The whole cave trembled. “Six hundred, and seventy eight years ago. I stopped flying another hundred before that. I was causing too many twisters.” “Did you... like flying?” “Like it?” Another laugh. Another tremor. “I was the most graceful dragon anyone had ever seen.” “I’m sad I couldn’t see it.” “You’ll see it one day. When the world ends, I’ll take flight again, and the whole of creation will bask in the shade.” This was the curse time and biology bestowed on dragons. The same regenerative magic that kept the wounded dragon from the library alive also caused all dragons to continue growing, until even the smallest flick of their tail could trigger city-killing earthquakes. It was the fate of dragons to rest and turn to stone. The survival of the world depended on their sacrifice. “How much longer do you have?” Spike asked. He heard his voice trembling, and he felt like a baby again, forever helpless at the feet of forces beyond his control. “Oh, plenty of time to contemplate. Another hundred thousand years, at least.” A shudder ran up his spine. “When I figure out this spell, I’ll come back. I’ll make it so you can fly again.” “You’ll do no such thing.” The smile faded, and Mlinzi’s face reverted to its usual serious mask. “It’s the nature of all beings to die. Dragons just die differently.” “It’s not death if you’re still alive. You hate it down here.” A sudden fire sparked to life inside Spike. “Don’t lie to me!” “I welcome my change from flesh to stone. My scales will soar as mountains. My heart will feed the earth’s core with its fire.” A ghost of an old flame bloomed from Mlinzi’s mouth, bathing the room in bronze-colored light. “In this way, I change, but I remain.” Anger and fear collided in Spike’s mind. He turned to storm out, but paused mid-stride. He went over to Mlinzi and wrapped his arms around the old dragon’s snout. Even as big as Spike was, the elder dragon still dwarfed him by comparison. “Thank you,” Spike said. Then he spread his wings and flew towards the light. Chapter ThreeTen million glittering lights greeted Spike as he crested the hills north of Starlight City. Every bit as much a play on its appearance as a nod to its founder, the metropolis of twenty eight million creatures spread out over the Greater Gander Grasslands to the east and west, all the way to the Yak Ultra Glorious Friendship With All Races River in the south. Spike touched down in an empty suburban park several miles outside the city and pulled out his trusty enchanted map. From there, it was a breeze finding the nearest entrypoint to the city’s vast underground subway system. He muttered, “Sorry,” to no one in particular. Then he cupped his hands and started digging. After replacing the topsoil as best he could, Spike slithered through an old subway line until he reached one of the city’s several abandoned metro stations. The faint rhythm of autocarriages and hoofsteps played down the filled-in stairwells and echoed in the corners. Emergency lights flickered pale blue. Long shadows crept up the walls. But none of that stood out to Spike. He was totally focused. He had work to do. The slime on the walls and faint scurrying sound of rats got worse the further down he went. Soon another sound joined in, a faint rumble that reminded him of thunder. Spike paused, his ears up. Was it getting louder? That was when he noticed the light coming from behind him, casting a distorted silhouette of himself on the tracks in front of him. The rumble leapt from faint thunder to a tornado barreling down on top of him. Train. Spike took off down the tunnel. No chance he could simply squeeze to the side and let the train pass. He had to find someplace to hide. He passed a service tunnel. Too small. Then a substation. Too many sensitive electronics. All the while, the sound of the train crept closer and closer, its automated conductor system oblivious to the threat in front of it. Just as Spike felt the front of the train brush against his tail, he saw a subway station a few hundred yards in front of him bathed in electric blue lights and bustling with ponies. So much for abandoned, he thought. Then he redoubled his stride and leapt onto the platform. Ponies screamed and scrambled to get out of the way. Colorful ceramic tiles dislodged by the impact flew everywhere. The train’s horn wailed in his ears. A split second later, the train hit the brakes and decelerated to a graceful stop in front of the platform. Playful music and at least a hundred commuters spilled from the cars. By twos and by threes, they stopped what they were doing to glare at the massive dragon blocking the platform. “Uh.” Spike coughed. Soot from his nose discolored a tile mural on the wall. The staring grew more intense. After a moment of pause, the pedestrians got moving again, flowing around and underneath Spike. He lifted himself up and sucked in his belly, trying to make himself as small as possible and failing miserably. “Sorry,” he said as he felt ponies brush past his scales. “Sorry. Sorry. Uh. Sorry.” The train shut its doors and started off down the tunnel. The platform cleared. Spike let out a breath and resumed his trek deeper into the subway. This time he made sure the tunnels were out of commision first. Later on, as he picked his way through another tunnel line, he heard the familiar rumbling sound heralding a train. He cursed inwardly. Must have made a wrong turn somewhere and wandered onto another active line. He resolved to check his map once he was out of danger, and started off down the tunnel at a trot. This wasn’t nearly as urgent as the first encounter. Within a minute, he found another abandoned station. He curled up on the platform, waiting for the train to pass. But something felt off. The rumble was different somehow. He caught a whiff of sulfur and brimstone that curled his nose. Then a wave of unnatural heat bowled him over. With a screaming roar, the wounded dragon from the library, Banshee, flew down the subway tube at terrifying speeds. Her face was frozen in a twisted roar. Her legs kicked up wood beams and chunks of gravel. Steel supports buckled under the heat. Steel rails curled as she raced past. And then she was gone, leaving a very dazed Spike lying flat on his back. He sat there for a moment as his senses returned to him. He counted the seconds between breaths, felt the faint slickness of the floor, listened to the ringing in his ears fade to an ambient hum. Then he got to his feet and gave chase. The tube emptied into a vast subterranean rail yard, complete with rotating tracks and tiered car storage tubes. Banshee paused to circle the room a couple times, then disappeared into one of the upper tunnels. Spike waited until the light faded and the sound quieted to a faint rumbling, then crept out. A quick look through the enchanted map revealed he was directly underneath the city center and the Starlight Center for Civic Services. Its eye-catching diamond-shaped shell and its crystalline upper tiers towered over every other building in the city. The map also revealed a large concrete arrow buried in the foundation, pointing down towards the rail yard. This was Starlight’s brand of subtlety, alright. Spike breathed a ball of dragonfire into his hands and molded it into a hovering orb of light, then commenced his search. Being careful not to make too much noise, he gently overturned train cars and excavated chunks of concrete, working his way methodically from one end of the yard to the other. When he reached the very center of the track exchange, he pulled up the rusted central pivot to reveal a concrete cap buried in the ground. When he tapped it, it rang hollow. Jackpot. He had almost succeeded in cutting the cap open with his talons when he heard a sound like a train coming from the upper tunnels. He turned around and only too late realized there was no place to hide. Banshee descended from the tunnel in a flurry of heat and sound. Spike jumped back, shielding his eyes, readying a blast of dragonfire to parry the inevitable attack. But much to his surprise, no attack came. He looked up and saw her standing on a slowly melting railroad tie, giving him a look as scorching as the dragonfire leaking from the side of her mouth. His eyes were drawn to the motion of her internal organs. He saw her lungs inflate, then realized it was probably rude to stare and moved his eyes back up to her face. “Uh. Hello.” She spoke in a raspy whisper. Flecks of dragonfire leaked from her mouth as she spoke. “You scratched my chainmail. Back in the library.” “Sorry.” He straightened up a little. “But you did destroy thousands of priceless books.” “It was almost worth it.” Her voice slithered in the space. “You couldn’t possibly need it more than I do.” Spike again found himself staring at her lungs. In. Out. Inflate. Deflate. He shuddered. “What happened to you?” “Pride happened. Did you know if a dragon rips her own arm off, it sets the aging process back by ten years? You don’t even lose the arm for good. It grows back.” Creeping horror slowly dawned on Spike. “You didn’t--” “I didn’t want to live without an arm. But a kidney? An appendix? Each one gives you back twenty years.” Spike felt nauseous. The heat started to make him dizzy. “You did that to yourself.” “I had to know what the limits were.” She took a menacing step forward. “Once I’m fixed, I can go back to living forever. I just need that book.” “No!” Spike heard the panic in his own voice. “I won’t let you hurt yourself like that.” A dragonfire smirk flashed across her face. “You’re a pony, aren’t you.” “No,” he shot back defensively. “You are.” her voice took on a sing-song lilt. “You’ve got scales on the outside, but you’re all pony on the inside.” “You don’t know how dragon I am.” She laughed in his face. “Prove it then. Kill me. Bite my head off.” Spike let out a frustrated groan. “This is stupid. If I just give you the book, it’ll burn to ash before you can touch it. What if I keep the book? You stay put somewhere safe where you can’t hurt anyone, and I’ll look for the other books. When we have all three, we can cast the spell on both of us.” Without a hint of warning, she exploded, “Do you think I’m stupid?” The fire subsided to a simmer just as quickly as it had sprung up. “You’ll find the spells and forget about me.” “That’s not true. I want to help you.” “Liar!” Her heart sped up in her exposed chest. The chainmail changed color from orange to bright red. Her lungs inflated, and Spike knew if he stayed put another moment she’d spew dragonfire in his face, and he wouldn’t be able to get the other spell pieces if he was a scaly puddle mingling with the subway slime. So, although it pained him greatly, he lowered his head, wrapped a wing around his saddlebag to keep its fragile contents safe, and did what dragons did best: attack. Spike was a full two heads taller than Banshee. Charging into her full-force, he wrapped his arms around her and pushed up with his legs, propelling them both into the air before crashing back down on the center of the rail turnstyle. The concrete cap concealing the second spell book cracked. Banshee’s open chest cavity singed Spike’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut against the heat, but it still felt like his head was being microwaved. He leapt to his feet and delivered a single decisive kick to her left knee. She gasped in pain and curled up into a ball. For a moment, Spike thought the fight was over. Then she twisted and shot a fireball at his face. He barely managed to dodge out of the way. She shot a second fireball, which grazed off his shoulder, then a third, which hit him squarely in the chest and sent him flying backwards. The impact forced the air from his lungs. He staggered to his feet only to catch another blast of flame to the face. He backed up, withering under a barrage of fireballs. Suddenly, the barrage stopped. Spike sputtered and wiped the soot from his eyes to find Banshee had collapsed. Dragonfire leaked from her mouth in a thin trickle. Her whole body trembled. She wrapped her arms around her chainmail chest and murmured incoherently. A wave of guilt burned Spike’s face worse than any fireball. He’d just attacked a wounded dragon in distress. Forget dragon ethics. She was hurting and he’d made it worse. He took a step towards her, reaching out with a claw. “I’m so sorry--” She whipped her head around and let out a blood curdling scream. The whole structure shook. Ceiling tiles rained down on the two dragons. A stack of decommissioned train cars overturned like toy blocks. Spike flinched away, covering his ears. He saw Banshee staggering to her feet and decided the best course of action was to get the spell book and run like hell. He leapt over her to the cracked concrete pad and smashed it to pieces with a single precise kick. Inside was another message in the stone and a second plaster-cased book. If you’re reading this, then you must be in serious need of some empathy cocoa. I’ve included-- A fireball bounced off his back. He let out a roar of pain. Before Banshee could summon up another attack, Spike plucked the book out of the cubby and filled the gap with dragonfire, melting the message in the stone. If it contained any hint of the location of the final book, Banshee might find it, and then he’d have a repeat of this awful fight on his hands. Sorry Starlight, he thought as he made his escape. Chapter FourFlurry Heart wasn’t the only one using her relative immortality for educational purposes. Nine hundred years of life left Spike with an awful lot of free time. Sometime around year two hundred and fifty, Twilight finally started to rub off on him, and he submitted to the whims and wiles of academia. Now six hundred and fifty-ish years into his educational journey, he’d gained sixteen doctorates, held a brief tenure as a professor of dragon studies at Canterlot University, and participated in the rise and fall of at least a dozen significant fields of study. One of the things he’d taken to with gusto was dragonfire chemistry. In a DIY clean room slapped together with borrowed plastic tarp and enough bleach to sanitize a small ocean, Spike delicately set a beaker into a UV sterilization chamber. Once the cycle was complete, he swabbed it inside and out with antibacterial pads, then sent it through the UV chamber one more time. Once the UV disinfection process was complete, he turned the glass over and licked the bottom. He then set the beaker atop a stand, took a deep breath, and blew a short stream of dragonfire onto the bottom of the glass. The saliva combusted. A soft whoosh filled the air. With the beaker now happily baking at a stable six hundred and seventeen-point-eight three zero two degrees, Spike set to the task of mixing the ingredients. Crushed rosaline quartz powder and zippyzane syrup went into the beaker. Once the mixture boiled, he added stabilized netorare nitroglycerin and zero-point two grams of changeling spit. When the mixture boiled a second time, Spike poured it into a plastic cup and let it cool until it was just a hair over two hundred degrees. Then he added a squeeze of cocoa syrup for taste and chugged the whole cup in one go. His eyes dilated. His legs went stiff as a board. He collapsed to the floor with a thud. As his vision blurred, strange shapes appeared in his periphery. A glowing orb coalesced into focus, sprouting dozens of wings and just as many spinning golden halos. A hundred eyes blinked to life along the length of the wings. They stared at Spike with a sort of immovable, motherly disapproval. BE NOT AFRAID. I AM THE DIVINE SUN, THE-- The voice paused. The spinning halos slowed slightly. SPIKE. Spike looked around and found himself floating in the astral plane. Galaxies flared up and evaporated to stardust all around him. He waved at the winged, haloed creature sheepishly. “Hi, Celestia.” The being of pure light and radiance frowned. Or, some of the halos and wings drooped in a vague semblance of a frown. THE ASTRAL PLANE IS NOT YOUR PLAYTHING. ACCESS IS OFF-LIMITS TO THE LIVING. The being swooped closer, radiating electric starstuff and pure divine energy. It was enough to make even the largest dragon feel like a baby again. YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO BE DEAD. “Heh. Nope. Still alive.” THIS CAN BE RECTIFIED. “Nope! All good! Really!” THEN BY ALL MEANS, ENLIGHTEN MY OMNISCIENCE AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU’RE HERE. For someone who claimed to be all-knowing, Celestia sure did seem to ask a lot of questions. Spike stowed the thought and said, “Well, truth be told, something is in need of fixing. It’s me.” YOU APPEAR TO BE ALIVE AND IN WORKING ORDER. WHAT’S THE MATTER? Her voice carried a note of caring, albeit in her own unknowable way. Spike took a little bit of solace in that. Celestia had changed beyond belief, but the old eye-rolling, cake-stealing, graceful mess of a pony was still in there somewhere. “I’m growing too fast. I’m not even a thousand years old, and it’s already impossible to live in pony society.” THIS IS WHAT DRAGONS DO, THOUGH. THEY GROW. “Yes, they do, but for the last few decades I’ve been searching for this spell that would freeze me at a normal pony size.” THAT SEEMS UNHEALTHY. “Twilight and Flurry Heart helped make the spell. They intended it to be used as an emergency.” A little bit of fire returned to his voice. “This is an emergency.” The discorporeal being of feather and flame paused a moment. The wings beat slowly against the void. The rings spun. The eyes blinked. I’M SURPRISED, SPIKE, Celestia finally said. “I was surprised, too. But my cave was getting raided by one of the new Equestrian kings, and his soldiers kept going on about this holy book as I was lighting them on fire, and when I destroyed the king’s castle I asked about it, and it turns out it was one of Twilight’s old fiction manuscripts, and obviously I had to take it to preserve her image, and in the margins was this message to, ‘Tell Spike about the reversal spell’, and from there--” I’M SURPRISED IT TOOK SO LITTLE TIME FOR YOU TO FORGET WE LOVE YOU. Spike paused. He took a step back, not that he was going anywhere. This was her realm, after all. He was the guest here. “I’m still going through with it.” WHEN FLURRY HEART AND TWILIGHT MADE YOU THIS SPELL, DID THEY THINK YOU’D EVER ACTUALLY USE IT? “I dunno. You’re the omnipotent one here.” His eyes got wider. “Have you heard anything from Twilight?” Celestia paused. I’M SORRY. SHE’S IN A REALM EVEN BEYOND MY REACH, SEARCHING FOR THE DEEPEST TRUTHS OF THE UNIVERSE. YOU’LL BE GONE BY THE TIME SHE RETURNS. “See, that’s why I want this spell. I can live a normal life and not be a mountain range when she gets back.” YOU MISUNDERSTAND. HER JOURNEY WILL OUTLIVE THE EARTH. “Then let me live my life the way I want to. She would want that.” SHE WOULD. THAT’S WHAT MAKES HER PONY. “Yes, her ability to love!” NO. HER ABILITY TO MAKE MISTAKES. Spike’s growing frustration boiled over. “You forgot!” Fire clipped his voice. He lunged at Celestia, but no matter how hard he flapped his wings he couldn’t seem to get any closer to her. “You forgot what she was like! This place poisoned your mind!” I AM NOT POISONED. I AM DETACHED. DON’T THINK I LOVE YOU OR HER ANY LESS. “You’re wrong.” He tipped forward, unmoored, and flipped upside down. “When she comes back, she’s gonna have some strong words for you.” Something like a frown passed across Celestia’s features. ON THAT, WE CAN AGREE. The somber tone of her voice gave Spike pause. He floated around in place for another moment, unsure of what to say. Finally he settled on, “I need to get to the moon.” FOR YOUR SPELL? “Yes. For my spell.” Celestia was silent for a moment. Then she said, I FIND MYSELF AT AN IMPASSE. IT IS NOT MY PLACE TO PREVENT MY SUBJECTS FROM CHOOSING THEIR OWN DESTINIES. “Then let me go.” AS YOUR FRIEND, IT IS MY DUTY TO COMPEL YOU OTHERWISE. “You’ve been gone for six hundred years!” The pain in his own voice surprised him. “You don’t know anything.” He curled his knees up to his chest and hugged himself tight. “I can’t hug my friends. I can’t even make friends. I’m completely alone.” YOU’RE NEVER ALONE-- “Don’t.” His gaze burned a blotch in the cosmic background radiation. “Don’t even try.” Spike floated around silently for what felt like hours. He could feel a few of Celestia’s multitudinous eyes on him. He didn’t care. Let her turn him away. He’d find a way. He’d come back here a smaller drake and rub it in her face, how a multiversal goddess couldn’t stop him from-- One ring of Celestia’s body vibrated at a frequency that made Spike’s left-side molars ache. The world shifted a shade into the ultraviolet, then went back to normal. Spike blinked. “Wha--” I HAVE MADE THE SHELL BETWEEN SPACE AND THE ATMOSPHERE POROUS. YOU CAN NOW FLY BETWEEN EARTH AND SPACE AT WILL. PLEASE DON’T ABUSE THIS PRIVILEGE, OR LUNA WILL BE MOST UPSET. “Oh.” His mind reeled. “Uh. Thank you.” I AM MERELY A GUIDE. IT IS UP TO YOU TO REALIZE THE MERIT IN YOUR DECISIONS. “Thanks.” He thought about giving one of her rings a hug, but thought better of it. “So how exactly do I get up to the moon?” YOU’RE A BIG DRAGON. FOR NOW. Seven cherubic trumpets sounded in the void. Celestia began to discorporate right before his eyes. Rings sped up and flew off into space. Wings fluttered away by themselves. The eyes started closing. Just before she disappeared completely, he heard her voice no longer as an omnipotent resonance, but as a normal pony voice just like she’d been in his deepest, oldest memories. “Fly.” Six thousand miles and one extra dimension away, a dragon with orange scales and a sucking chest wound scoured the depths of an ancient desert temple built to honor the ancient snake sorcerers of the Nyle river. Sand from the desert outside clung to her chainmail, forming sharp shards of crystal that clogged her wounds and fell underfoot. When dragonfire dripped to the floor, it turned the sand to slippery crystal, slowing her progress. She’d already exhumed three cursed ruins searching for the final portion of the spell. She was just about to start on her fourth when she heard a sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Her left-side molars ached. The world shifted a shade into the ultraviolet, then went back to normal. She looked up, blinking, suddenly drawn back up the winding passageway. She stepped over the remnants of booby traps, through the ashes of the undead guards she’d made sure wouldn’t get up again. Past the gravesites she’d invaded--not robbed. You had to take something for it to count as robbery. Outside, the sun was just starting to rise over the eartern dunes. The air smelled like cumin and prickly-sweet cacti and sand. She turned her eyes to the sky and found the waxing gibbous face of the morning moon high above. It called to her. Chapter FiveSpike definitely didn’t need snacks on the moon. A snack to a dragon his size was a week’s worth of meals for a pony. Anything meaningfully filling would just slow him down. Not to mention he had no idea if the food would still be good once it crossed the barrier into space. Still, the urge to pack away a few hundred cookies and talk to someone, even if the conversation would be a little one-sided, won out. He made a conspicuous landing in the hilly outskirts of the greater Ponyville metropolitan area, waited for a curious pegasus to approach, then waved them over. “No way, buddy!” the pegasus shouted. She was a mare, curious like Apple Bloom III without any of her grandmother’s naivety. “You’re just gonna eat me!” “I promise I won’t eat you.” Spike grimaced at the sound of his own voice. It did kinda sound like he wanted to eat her. One more thing the spell could fix. “That’s just what someone who’s gonna eat me would say!” “What if I made it worth your while?” He produced two gold coins and set them a safe distance away. The coins were from ancient Prance, and worth about four times an average Ponyvillian’s yearly salary. The pegasus swooped down to inspect them. “Is this play money?” “It’s about six hundred years old. Even if it was, it’d be worth a fortune in tax write-offs to a museum. I’ll give you another two later if you finish the job.” The mare looked around, looked down at the coins, then let out a groan. “Fine. Whaddaya want, anyway?” “I need two thousand cookies from Pie’s Pies.” “Two thousand?” “Two thousand.” “Y’know there’s apps for this kinda thing.” “Do you know anypony making dragon-sized phones?” The mare scrunched up her nose. “Yeeeah. That’s a lotta cookies though, that’s gonna take some time.” “I know. I need something else, too. You need to have the CEO deliver them.” “The CEO.” The mare’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “Like, the one who runs the company?” “Correct.” “Jeez. Okay buddy, I can probably finagle two thousand cookies, but how am I supposed to convince the CEO to give ‘em to you?” Spike pulled out an entire sack of ancient Prench gold coins. “Tell her it’s for a friend of the family.” The following morning, a single bright pink party balloon crested the horizon. Sunrise Surprise, the CEO of Pie’s Pie’s, LLC., touched down not ten yards from where Spike was lounging. Awfully brave of her to land this close, he thought. Sunrise looked unsettlingly similar to Pinkie Pie, all the way down to having three balloons as her cutie mark. She had a white coat instead of pink though, and a strawgold yellow mane. She also wore heeled shoes on her back two hooves--nothing fancy, but enough to raise up her rear just the slightest bit. “Prench coins aren’t really in vogue right now,” Sunrise said, in a high, squeaky voice. The resemblance to Pinkie was absolutely uncanny. “It’s gonna take twenty years for these things to appreciate.” Spike wasn’t used to the feeling of being dwarfed in a conversation. “Or we could melt them down right now.” He smiled. “Dragon, and all.” She tssk’d. “Barbaric.” “So where is the delivery?” “Right here.” She tapped her rear hooves together. The basket of the balloon opened up, revealing several metal drums. “The drums have a statis unit inside. Fresh out the oven flavor for the next seven years.” She paused. “You should grab those yourself. I had other ponies load those for me. They’re really heavy.” As Spike hefted the drums out of the basket, Sunrise asked, “So why this whole delivery geddup? Is this how dragons flirt or something?” Spike laughed. “Nothing like that. How much of your family history do you know?” “My mom has a scrapbook.” “Further back.” “My grandma had a scrapbook, too.” How many generations’ worth of scrapbooks do you have?” Sunrise made a show of rubbing her chin and pondering. “I’d say enough to watch a little baby dragon grow up into a great big baby dragon.” The smile bloomed into a full-on grin, teeth and all. Sunrise didn’t shy away like most ponies did. If anything, the sight of all those razor-sharp pearly whites only seemed to intrigue her further. Maybe it was a business thing. An appreciation for predators. Spike opened up one of the cookie drums and produced a single specimen. White chocolate macadamia nut, extra opal. His favorite. He ate one. Then another. Then he upended the entire drumfull of cookies into his maw. He set it down with a loud thump in the grass and let out a belch that could roast loins at a thousand yards. Sunrise let out a familiar-sounding giggle. “Sorry,” Spike said, “I’m forgetting my manners. Would you like one?” Smug satisfaction beamed on Sunrise Surprise’s face. “Nah. I’m more of a gold and platinum gal myself.” Spike tucked the other drum beneath him, like a dragon protecting a precious hoard. “Tell me more about your scrapbooks.” They talked all through the night. When Sunrise Surprise finally climbed back into her balloon and waved goodbye, it was nearly morning. Pre-dawn light cast a fine indigo haze over the earth. Spike secured the cookie barrel and his bag of books, then took off. The horizon became curved as he climbed through the air. Above him, the sky flashed through the colors of sunrise, then turned a monolithic baby blue. The barrier between sky and space revealed itself as a shimmering field of translucent white magic, like a shield spell extending all the way around the earth. When he passed through, it rippled like water. Without gravity to tether him, his first wingbeat sent him rocketing away at an impossible pace. The moon was not the cold, dead place most ponies imagined it to be. The castle Luna had made for herself during her banishment was still there, a lonely set of towers and walls guarding against nothing. Spike landed in the ruins of the grand entry hall and marveled at the decay. Most of the finery, along with everything even remotely shiny, had long since been stripped away by the solar winds and meteorite impacts. He thought he heard a faint muffled scuttling of claws as he progressed deeper into the castle, but it was probably just his imagination. The tall, narrow hallways of the old lunar castle led into a circular throne room capped with the remnants of a massive glass dome. The glass itself had since been shattered by micrometeorites, so only the skeletal frame and a few slivers remained. A fine layer of moondust clung to every surface, muffling the sound of his footsteps and muting the colors of the elegant blue and purple stones inlaid in the walls. A single tall throne set in silver and fringed with pure platinum sat on the opposite corner of the room. The centerpiece of the room was not the throne, however, but a colossal rendering of the new moon set into the floor. The bright part done in pure meteorite iron, the dark part in black titanium. The crescent faced the entryway, inviting Spike further into the embrace of the moon. A conspicuous hole had been carved out of the middle of it. At first Spike assumed it was just another impact crater, but when he looked closer he saw hints of melted metal along the edge. This had been cut. Now that he thought about it, the only way this metal could be cut this particular way was with-- Spike whirled around right as the first fireball struck. The force of the explosion threw him backwards across the throne room. He skidded to a painful stop, blinking away stars. Banshee descended from the dome. Dragonfire pooled at her feet, melting the metal beneath her. “Please don’t,” Spike stammered. “Don’t beg for your life.” “No, the floor. It’s one of a kind.” Banshee looked down at the damaged moon beneath her. Then she hocked up a big dragonfire loogie and spat on it. Sparks flew. Metal ignited. “Just stop,” Spike implored. “We can work this out together.” “Liar!” She reared up and breathed another jet of fire at him. This time he was prepared and rolled out of the way. The flames splashed harmlessly against the stone wall, leaving a black scar behind. Before Spike could react, Banshee pulled a plaster-bound book from beneath her wing. Her lips curled back into a savage smile. “Looking for this?” Spike’s eyes went wide with horror as Banshee blew fire into her free hand and held it beneath the book. Flames leapt from her fingers and licked the plaster shell. “Not another step,” she said. “It takes all three, right?” Spike looked around, desperate for a distraction. The plaster around the book let out an agonizing pop as the shell began to crack under the heat. “Okay, okay,” Spike said, “I’ll give you the books. Just stop, please.” Banshee’s smile widened. “Kick them over to me.” Slowly, Spike pulled out the metal drum and set it on the floor. “What’s that?” she snapped. “Protection for the books. You didn’t think I’d just stuff them in my pocket, did you?” Banshee let out a laugh. “You care an awful lot for pony things.” “I could say the same for you.” Her smile darkened. She turned her attention to the metal drum, impatiently ripping the top open and stuffing her hands inside. A hiss of steam belched from the opening. Her nose scrunched up. Her hand emerged clutching a fistfull of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, extra opal. Her eyes clouded over. “Pinkie?” she murmured. Spike flung his wings out and shot himself across the room. The two dragons collided in a spray of fire and cookie crumbs, tumbling across the intricate lunar centerpiece. Spike came up with the book. Banshee roared with rage and leapt towards him, but Spike ducked out of the way and sent her careening across the room, where she landed in a heap in the corner. By the time she’d gotten back to her feet, Spike was already airborne, flying up towards the skeleton of the ancient dome. “Sorry Luna,” he muttered, and lowered his shoulder. He hit the center of the dome and plowed right through it. Metal moaned. Glass shattered. Banshee ducked beneath her wing to protect her face. Rust and grit sloughed off Spike’s scales as he shot into space. In another moment, the castle was a blip on the horizon. He looked over his shoulder every few seconds, fully expecting Banshee to give chase. But after a few minutes passed without any sign of her, Spike reasoned she was too wounded to give chase and slowed to a glide. Something still wasn’t right. He had everything he wanted, but an awful nagging feeling lingered like dust in his lungs. He should be excited. Ecstatic. But he couldn’t even bring himself to look at the books in his bag. On the horizon ahead, the pale blue marble of the earth rose above the lunar horizon. Chapter SixThe shell of the atmosphere embraced him as he flew back down to earth. On a whim, he tapped the barrier to see if he could fly back out into space. The shell made a thunk sound like heavy plated glass. Good thing he hadn’t tested that at full-speed. The adrenaline from the fight melted away over the next half hour. He glided over the fiery blip of the Crystal Empire, past the wastelands, all the way down to Equestria with its multitude of new kingdoms, finally landing in the one place pony urbanization hadn’t touched in the past nine hundred years: the Everfree Forest. There, beneath a rocky overhang at the bottom of an ancient gorge, with only stoic songbirds and buzzing insects for company, Spike laid out the three spellbooks. Anticipation made his stomach clench. Nervous puffs of smoke drifted up from his nostrils. This was it. One by one, he cracked open the plaster seals protecting the books. Almost immediately, he realized something was wrong. The weight of the plaster concealed an odd hollow quality to the books. The bindings were genuine, but when he tried to run a finger through the pages he realized they weren’t books at all, but boxes made to look like books. Inside each one of them was a note and a glass vial filled with clear liquid. The first, from Flurry Heart, said: THE REAL TRANSFORMATION WAS THE JOURNEY YOU MADE jk lol. mix all three vials together and drink it. Don’t spill any, unless you want a ten-foot pancreas in an eight-foot body. I’ve included a list of all the good dragon-friendly restaurants in CE. If any of them are still around, pay them a visit. If I’m still around, pay me a visit too. Love you lots flurry The second, Starlight’s, included a bag of powderized empathy cocoa in a magically-sealed bag. Her message read: Spike, It was an honor being your godmother. I infer from your reading this that you still value your connection to pony society. No matter what else you’ve heard, hold onto that attachment. Feelings of dissociation and isolation trend upwards in dragons as they age. You’re no normal dragon, but it’s still completely feasible to fall prey to these feelings over time. Ponies privy to the existence of this serum have had lively debates on the ethics of freezing a dragon’s age in order to allow them to participate in “small-creature society.” No doubt you’ll catch some flak from the powers that be once you go through with this. Screw them. ~ SG Spike opened the final false book, expecting something long-winded and erudite from Twilight. There was no letter. Just the third vial and her old Mister Smartypants doll. The anxiety got worse. He set the vials next to each other and stared at them until he lost the light. The phrase, ten-foot pancreas in an eight-foot body danced around his mind in circles. This was not how things were supposed to go. There was supposed to be a spell, something replicable. He was going to find Banshee and cast it on her--after he’d cast it on himself. He looked up at the moon. Was she still up there? The thought of dragonfire dripping over the dust-frosted surface of the moon, turning it to glass, the loneliness, the lack of air, the stifling void all around, the pain of unending mortal injury-- He sucked in a breath. His ears were ringing. For a split second he thought he saw something on the moon, a spot of orange that flickered and went out. It had to be his imagination, though. Had to be. Spike stared at the vials a little while longer. Then he gathered them up and placed them, along with the letters, into his underwing bag, and stepped out from beneath the overhang. He cupped his hands together and blew dragonfire into them. Keeping the flame alive in one hand, he spun his index finger around in the flames until they condensed around his claw. Then he drew a straight line in the air. The flames lingered, floating in the air. He set to work drawing a spell rune, a series of concentric interlocking circles and right angles enclosed within a larger outer ring. When he finished drawing, he leaned in and blew a soft kiss of dragonfire into the very center of the rune. The whole thing flared up in a rush of heat and light. A long, ghostly tendril of magic flew upwards into the sky and disappeared among the stars. A moment later, the whole sky exploded with dragonfire. Tall columns of green flame shot into the sky like aurora borealis. The flames went higher and higher, until they licked the barrier between earth and space, heating it until it glowed. Noonday shadows danced across the slumbering hills. Spike didn’t stop to watch. He took off for a deserted hill outside Ponyville, where the grass was short and the view was wide. The arc of light thrown off by the city lights reflected in the low clouds above. The insects were back, singing over the low thrum of distant autocarriages. There, Spike mixed the three vials together and waited. Long after the dazzling dragonfire display had faded, Spike noticed a mote of light flickering in the otherwise motionless sky. The flicker grew brighter and more defined, until it seperated into a column of fire surrounding a dot, and the dot grew larger until it became a tiny dragon, and the tiny dragon drew closer, and the faint far-off whoosh wasn’t actually just the wind in his ears, but a drawn out, full-belly roar. Without slowing down at all, Banshee lowered her shoulder and plowed into Spike, knocking him backwards across the field. Molten rock and soil sprayed everywhere. Every blade of grass ignited simultaneously, leaving the two dragons at opposite ends of a fiery wasteland. The bright lights of the Ponyville skyscrapers disappeared behind a curtain of choking smoke. “Remember me?” Banshee sneered. Spike said in a calm voice, “I remember you.” Her eyes narrowed, fixating on his neck. She dug in her heels. Her tail flicked from side to side, equal parts counterweight and blunt force weapon. Ever so slowly, Spike reached under his wing. Banshee pounced. Spike waited, still as stone, until she was just a few lengths away before backhand chucking the vial of serum at her chest. The vial shattered on contact. The liquid inside sublimated into a cloud of choking grey smoke. Banshee stumbled in surprise, but her momentum was too great, and she went careening into Spike at full speed. The cloud of smoke consumed them both. A moment passed. The smoke cleared. Dawn broke through. A soft, soothing breeze put the fires to rest. The heat seeped out of the soil. It was a cool morning. Spike found himself on his back. Banshee lay on top of him, coughing out the last of the smoke, clearing her watery eyes. She looked down. Her eyes met Spike’s. She let out a little, “Oh,” and leapt off him. As she moved, her chainmail shattered into a hundred pieces and fell to the ground. Banshee let out a cry of alarm and clutched her chest. Her alarm turned to confusion as she clutched a patch of newly-formed scales where her wounds had once been. Her knees started to tremble. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She clutched the remnants of her chainmail in her fists. “I wore that for three hundred years.” Her voice was flat, but her eyes brimmed with tears. “I. I need it.” She clutched it to her chest. “I need it back.” Spike nodded and started to collect the pieces around him. She hissed and tried to swipe them from his hands only to tumble sideways to the ground. The pieces she’d already collected went flying. She didn’t stop Spike from helping after that. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said as she combed through the dirt. Spike shrugged. “You were in pain.” “Yeah, but what about you?” “If I gave up on someone who really needed help, then what kind of pony am I?” The words held an odd note of bitterness to them. He glanced at the glittering glass of the Ponyville skyline as the realization of his own actions dawned on him. What he’d lost in that puff of smoke. The stack of shattered chainmail grew steadily, until they had a pile almost knee-high stacked up in the grass. As the search wound down, Banshee said, “I haven’t been completely honest. About who I am.” “I know.” She froze for a second, then continued searching. “Then what’s my name?” “Banshee.” “My real name.” “Your real name is what you say it is.” “That’s not--” she groaned. “You know what I mean.” “A lot can change in three hundred years. Why not a name?” She mulled over his answer for a few minutes before replying, “I gave myself that name when I first put on this chainmail. I thought, if things had really changed that much, then why not change everything? Clean slate. I think...” She and Spike both reached for the same piece of chainmail. Their hands touched. They drew away, unable to meet the others’ eyes. “Can you call me by my old name again?” Spike smiled. “Sure thing, Smolder. Can you do something for me too?” She nodded. “Keep me company when I can’t move anymore.” Smolder threw her arms around Spike. “We don’t have to wait that long.”
Epilogue: A Lesson in GeologyTen million years passed. A new mountain range emerged north of Andesia, beginning around the tip of the southern plains and extending all the way north into Equestria, cleanly bisecting the San Palomino desert in the west from the Applosian hills in the east. As time went on, it extended further still, brushing up against the greater Ghastly Valley and the Everfree Forest on a relentless northbound path. Around the same time, a second new range emerged, this one beginning in the Unicorn Hills northwest of old Canterlot Mountain. This one cut a path south through the White Tail Woods. Year by year, the two ranges drew ever closer, by inches and by yards, nudged this way and that by volcanoes and the natural geological forces of the earth but never straying from their paths, until in a fantastic ten thousand year-long collison, the two ranges met in the plains where the city of Ponyville once sat, intertwining to become the longest continuous mountain range in the world.
Chapter OneThe battle was over before it began. The pony legions broke against columns of dragonfire and scattered, fleeing back into the forest. That was their second mistake of the day: seeking refuge in something that could burn. On a hill opposite the forest, a detachment of the opposing army stood and watched the rout. A few cowered. Others cried. All of them were sweating. Even at a great distance, they felt the heat of the flames. It took nearly an hour for the forest to burn. A thick grey cloud of ash blotted out the sun. Above it, an ominous black figure appeared. It settled beside the hill with a mighty blast of superheated air that burned the eyes and singed the beards of everypony present. “It’s done,” came a tired, gravely voice. The dragon had taken many names over the past nine hundred years of his life. For the last hundred or so years, he’d been going by the name “Blesco,” a name given to him by the southern buffalo after he saved their land from a wildfire. Two days ago, he decided to go back to his original name: Spike. Spike was three stories tall, a veritable mountain of dazzling purple scales that flashed like war paint in the sun. His fiery green eyes settled over the band of ponies like the blades of guillotines waiting to drop. His gaze alone was enough to immobilize them. Ancient instinct, and all. Play dead, and maybe the big bad dragon will pass you over. Spike lowered his head until his snout rested on the ground. He spoke in a low voice, so as not to blow the ponies’ eardrums out. “My map.” The one in front with the crown--Spike had already forgotten if this one was the usurper or the sitting regent--snapped his hooves frantically. An aide produced a saddlebag. “Holy flame!” the king proclaimed, “We thank you for ensuring our victory on this most blessed day. We--” “Map,” the dragon said in a tone so forceful it whipped up wind. “Give me the map.” The king turned a porcelain shade of white and tossed the saddlebag to Spike. As Spike turned to leave, he surveyed the remains of the forest. Charred lumps of carbon and a few twisted remnants of organic matter poking through a thick fall of ash were the only signs that anything had ever grown there at all. It was like that for miles. This forest wouldn’t grow back for another hundred years. It didn’t have to be like this, Spike wanted to tell the king. You could have avoided this. If he could just speak to them on their level, help them work out their differences-- But then he thought about the map, and the pact he’d signed with the king. And he realized that there were no more differences to work out. It was the king who commanded him, but he alone had breathed death on the forest. No pony could start a fire like this. Only dragons could. The last four hundred years had not been kind to the north. Dramatic expansion of the permafrost between the Equestrian Kingdoms and the Third Crystal Empire left a great deal of Spike’s old stomping grounds buried by a hundred yards of frozen earth and snow. The secrets that lay below had confounded generations of researchers. But now Spike had what all those researchers didn’t: a map. Spike flew half a mile above the frozen ground and held the map up to his eye like a spyglass. The map created a detailed topographical rendering of the ground beneath the permafrost, complete with elevation numbers. He was looking for a pair of steep hills jutting out above an ancient riverbed in the rough shape of a smiley face. It could easily take twenty years to survey the entirety of the frozen plains. But after a measly four months, Spike came across a different sort of topographical anomaly: a giant smoldering hole bored into the ground. Spike held the map up to his eye. Sure enough, there were the hills and the riverbed. The hole sat where the nose would have been. The smile looked mocking, somehow. Don’t need a map to see that, Spike thought sourly. Burned that whole forest for nothing. Hot air and the smell of brimstone hit Spike as he got close. He kicked a few stones down into the hole and counted nine seconds before they hit the bottom. He’d have to suck in his belly a bit too, but he’d shimmied through worse. The hole went straight down for about a quarter mile, then widened into a large cavern. A thin stream of semi-molten rock flowed through one corner, filling the place with a dull orange light. The smell of rot got stronger. He licked the palm of his hand, then clapped. His saliva ignited, casting a green light through the room. He saw a hidden passageway opposite the magma, leading further down. Bits of burning cinders fluttered on the ground. He knelt down beside the nearest scrap and held it up to the light. F0=0, F1=1, and Fn=Fn-1 + Fn-2 for n>1 Under some older definitions, the value F0=0 is omitted, so that rts with F1=F2=1 and the recurrence The smoldering parth of the page caught a bit of wind and flamed up. Spike reared back only to bump his head on the top of the cavern. The whole cavern trembled. The page burned to ash in his claws. This place was a library. And it was on fire. A scream echoed from deeper within the cave. Spike took off down the passageway as fast as the narrow walls would allow. A terrible, mournful sound rose in his ears as he raced deeper into the cave. More burning pages littered the floor. Spike kept his serpentine eyes forward, following the light pouring from down the tunnel. The wind grew so fierce it threatened to uproot him and send him tumbling backwards. Waves of heat accompanied the wind, pouring down the passageway, igniting loose pages as they whipped through the air. Finally, the passage widened into a massive domed structure. Crumbling columns with intricate doric designs lined the room. Multiple tiers of collection rooms and hallways branched off into darkness. Most had collapsed long ago, but a few still remained, housing petrified wooden shelves and greying parchment scrolls and books, the ink long-since faded, the bindings long since eaten away by time. An old pang of nostalgia passed through Spike’s brain. Twilight would have loved this, he thought. If it weren’t on fire. The light and heat emanated from the center of the room. A female dragon with orange scales and a dazzling purple crest was slumped over on the floor. One talen curled around a pile of ash. Listless blue eyes watched it sieve through her fingers. She seemed familiar somehow, but Spike couldn’t place it. “Are you okay?” Spike called out. Her eyes moved slowly to Spike. She opened her mouth like she was about to speak, but instead shot a jet of flame at him. He leapt out of the way with inches to spare. “Hey! Stop! This is a library. You’re destroying priceless relics.” The dragon curled up tighter. A thin, deranged laugh escaped her lips. “Kill me, then. Bite off my head. Finish it.” Confusion mingled with raw fear. “What?” More heat pulsed off her body. Spike took a step back, unsure of what to do. The dragon pulled herself to her knees, still facing away from him. “I can’t stop it. If you want this library to survive, you’ll have to kill me.” “I’m not gonna do that. What do you mean, you can’t stop it?” A strangled, gurgling gasp cut off the dragon’s reply. She clutched her belly. Shivers wracked her body. She opened her mouth, and a vomitous gush of liquid fire spewed out. Spike cried out in surprise and leapt onto the second floor balcony. The stonework buckled under his weight, but miraculously held. He flinched as an important-looking keystone cracked. Below him, gouts of fire engulfed the first floor, swallowing entire bookshelves and their contents. “What’s wrong with you?” he cried. “Stop it!” But after a moment he realized the other dragon had made no attempt to escape her own flames. Superheated dragonfire found chinks in her scaly armor. Smoke hissed in the air where her exposed skin burned. Dragons had a natural resistance to heat, but not even they could sit in dragonfire forever. Just as he was contemplating whether or not to dive in and pull her out, the dragon came to her senses. She leapt up, flung open her wings, and took off. When Spike saw the wounds on her belly, his jaw dropped. Her whole torso was flayed open. The scales and skin were gone, her insides exposed, her organs held in by a tight-fitting chainmail vest. He could see her heart beating behind the metal, superheating the links until they glowed red. Heat and steam spilled out of her wounds in waves. Her eyes met his. Then they moved past him, to something deeper in the library. She let out another chilling wail and leapt forwards, her face frozen in a demonic snarl. Spike barely had enough time to get out of the way before the wounded dragon slammed into the balcony beside him. Countless books burst into flames. He missed the worst of the impact, but the sheer heat radiating off her body overpowered him, and he landed with a crash on the floor. Sticky dragonfire licked his scales. In a momentary daze, he wondered how long it would take to buff the burns off his scales. Then he felt burning, and he realized he was going to wind up like all those poor books if he just sat here. He leapt to his feet, shook off the flames, and flew onto the opposite balcony. His dazzling purple scales had been scorched black. And he’d only been sitting in the liquid fire for a few seconds. How was this other dragon still breathing? He looked around. The air had grown noticeably cooler. The other dragon was climbing up the chamber. Whole bookshelves of ancient wisdom turned to ash. The destruction was too much for him to bear. Spike spread his wings and launched himself into the wounded dragon with all his might. He drove the air out of her lungs and crushed her against the wall of the chamber. Red hot sparks leapt from where her chainmail scraped the stone. Her forehead hit the wall and bounced back. Her body went slack. She fell back to the bottom of the chamber with a resonant thud. Ceiling tiles and loose stones rained down all around her. A long, desperate moment of silence passed as Spike watched the motionless dragon. Then she sucked in a gasping breath and started moving again. Spike let out a sigh of relief. He paused to look at the spot she’d been climbing towards and saw a curious sight. Set within the stone walls where the top of the columns met the base of the dome, there was a small cubby tucked into the rock, just large enough for a single pony to fit inside. Inside the cubby, he found a book sealed in plaster. Someone had carved a message in the stone beside it. To Uncle Spike -- How’s the weather up there? Soooo get this--we broke up the spell into three parts. One third is here, another third is in Starlight Metropolis, and the final third is on the moon. It was all aunt Twilight’s idea. Can’t have dangerous dragon secrets falling into the wrong hooves, yada yada yada BORING Happy hunting. Love you lots flurry A sigh escaped Spike’s lips. He ran a talon lightly along the letters. The last time he’d seen Flurry Heart, she’d been leading the empire’s efforts to build mana batteries large and stable enough to power intercontinental teleportation. She’d wrapped up her fifteenth doctorate, with four more planned for the next fifty years. A manic urge seized his heart. Fly there. See her. Say hello. It’s been three hundred years. Just as quickly as the thought appeared, another far darker one dwarfed it. He imagined crystal buildings crumbling to dust as he landed, and ponies being whipped away by the wind beneath his wings, and death, and sorrow, and chaos, and, and... And it would only get worse every day. Better not to risk it. Not until he’d finished the spell. He stowed the book in his bag, then carefully used his sharp foretalon to cut the inscription from the cubby. That too he put in his bag for safekeeping. He turned his attention below. The wounded dragon was trying to get to her feet. More fire leaked from her mouth, singeing her scales. Another row of books to her immediate left reached the critical temperature and went up in flames. She didn’t even bat an eye. This library was lost, Spike realized. Another precious thing inadvertently crushed. The dragon looked up at him. Something in her eyes seemed so familiar to him. “Who are you?” Spike called down. “kill me,” she whimpered back. “What’s your name?” “Screw you.” “Your name.” Her sorrow turned to a snarl. “Banshee,” she hissed. Spike got the feeling she was lying. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen her before. But he had learned to ignore faint familiarities a long time ago. When you see enough faces, they all start to look familiar. He left the way he came. Flames bloomed beneath, blowing wind against his burnt back.
Chapter TwoDragonkind contained multitudes. There was its kingdom, with subjects and kings and queens and customs and culture. There was a rotating cast of juveniles drifting from place to place, semi-permanent nomads unwilling to call any one flag theirs. There were warrior tribes who fought wendigos in the north and web-footed tribes in the south pole who swam with orcas. It also had dragons so ancient and reclusive that they dropped off the radar completely. Spike made his way to one of those dragons now, a month long flight from the wastes of the frozen north all the way down to the desert mountains of Andesia, a range of rocky peaks marking the line between the southern plains and the frigid south pole. In a nondescript region too rocky for ground-bound races to hike and too windy for flyers to fly, in a cave so deep you could practically hear the earth breathing, Spike found himself surrounded by piles of treasure ten times as tall as him. He placed a meager but meaningful offering of gold and tasty gems into the hoard, then called out, “Mlinzi? Anyone home?” The earth rumbled all around him. “No,” it replied. Spike chuckled. “It’s Spike the dragon. We met eight hundred and twelve years ago, when you left Dragonstone to complete your hermitage. I was the one you--” “The one I kicked off the dias as I left.” Deeper in the cave, Spike saw a light flash. Two bronze eyes blinked open at opposite sides of the cave. Though he could see only the eyes in the creeping darkness, Spike shuddered with awe as he imagined the true size of the dragon. The whole mountain must have been hollow for him to fit. “Yes,” Spike said, stowing his wonder. “The one you kicked off the dias.” The cave cracked and shifted as the ancient dragon let out a laugh. “I apologize for that. It was purely by accident. My size--” “I understand. No need to apologize..” Mlinzi looked Spike over. “You’re awfully levelheaded for a dragon.” “I was raised by ponies.” “Ah, that would explain it. Is that why you’re here? Getting in touch with your dragon side? Here to consult the elders?” Spike detected a hint of sarcasm in the old dragon’s voice. “It’s not that.” He paused, considering his next words. “I saw something I’ve never seen before.” “Ah. Even at our age, the world still finds ways to surprise us. Feels good, doesn’t it? ” “No. Not this one, anyway.” “Don’t keep me in suspense, then.” Spike swallowed the lump in his throat. “It was another dragon. I found her in the frozen wastes. She was...” He frowned. “She had these horrible wounds, like she’d been ripped apart and left to die.” “Except she couldn’t.” The scales on the back of Spike’s neck stood up. “Have you seen it before?” “No, but I’ve heard of it. What was she doing in this library?” “Torching everything. It was just spilling out of her.” “You were right to flee, then. Sounds like she’s no longer in control of her own powers.” “How could that have happened?” “Maybe it was an accident. Or she challenged another dragon to a duel and lost, and they mangled her as a sign of disrespect.” Spike’s frown deepened. “Can we help her?” Mlinzi’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “You really were raised by ponies.” “Can we help her or not?” “Not a chance. She’s caught in a feedback loop of dragon biology. Her body’s natural regeneration magic keeps trying to heal itself. But the heat from her exposed heart will continuously damage the rest of her body. She’s trapped.” “And she’ll stay trapped.” The look in Mlinzi’s bronze eyes grew very serious. “Until someone puts her out of her misery.” The realization fell like a weighted spearpoint on Spike’s chest. “You can’t be serious.” “It’s very serious. Since you found her, it should be your duty to end her suffering.” “I can’t do that. I won’t. There’s gotta be another way.” “Every day you put it off is another day she spends suffering.” Mlinzi’s tone softened. “It’s no way for a dragon to live. Everything around her burns. Even other dragons. You must have felt it.” Memories of the searing fire seeping between his scales sent shivers up Spike’s spine. “There’s gotta be a way to help her.” “Yes. Find something sharp and shove it into her heart. If she’s smart, she’ll let you.” “That’s not what I mean!” “You sound just like a pony!” Mlinzi let out a bellowing laugh. Stones fell from the ceiling and bounced off Spike’s scales. “So naive. You have a million more years to go before you can fully appreciate the ways of the world. Love is for the small. Dragons can’t afford such things.” Spike’s shoulders sagged. “I think you’ve forgotten what’s outside of this cave.” “There is no out there. Not for me.” A question lingered on the tip of Spike’s tongue. He hesitated, then blurted out, “When did you stop moving?” Mlinzi smiled sadly. The whole cave trembled. “Six hundred, and seventy eight years ago. I stopped flying another hundred before that. I was causing too many twisters.” “Did you... like flying?” “Like it?” Another laugh. Another tremor. “I was the most graceful dragon anyone had ever seen.” “I’m sad I couldn’t see it.” “You’ll see it one day. When the world ends, I’ll take flight again, and the whole of creation will bask in the shade.” This was the curse time and biology bestowed on dragons. The same regenerative magic that kept the wounded dragon from the library alive also caused all dragons to continue growing, until even the smallest flick of their tail could trigger city-killing earthquakes. It was the fate of dragons to rest and turn to stone. The survival of the world depended on their sacrifice. “How much longer do you have?” Spike asked. He heard his voice trembling, and he felt like a baby again, forever helpless at the feet of forces beyond his control. “Oh, plenty of time to contemplate. Another hundred thousand years, at least.” A shudder ran up his spine. “When I figure out this spell, I’ll come back. I’ll make it so you can fly again.” “You’ll do no such thing.” The smile faded, and Mlinzi’s face reverted to its usual serious mask. “It’s the nature of all beings to die. Dragons just die differently.” “It’s not death if you’re still alive. You hate it down here.” A sudden fire sparked to life inside Spike. “Don’t lie to me!” “I welcome my change from flesh to stone. My scales will soar as mountains. My heart will feed the earth’s core with its fire.” A ghost of an old flame bloomed from Mlinzi’s mouth, bathing the room in bronze-colored light. “In this way, I change, but I remain.” Anger and fear collided in Spike’s mind. He turned to storm out, but paused mid-stride. He went over to Mlinzi and wrapped his arms around the old dragon’s snout. Even as big as Spike was, the elder dragon still dwarfed him by comparison. “Thank you,” Spike said. Then he spread his wings and flew towards the light.
Chapter ThreeTen million glittering lights greeted Spike as he crested the hills north of Starlight City. Every bit as much a play on its appearance as a nod to its founder, the metropolis of twenty eight million creatures spread out over the Greater Gander Grasslands to the east and west, all the way to the Yak Ultra Glorious Friendship With All Races River in the south. Spike touched down in an empty suburban park several miles outside the city and pulled out his trusty enchanted map. From there, it was a breeze finding the nearest entrypoint to the city’s vast underground subway system. He muttered, “Sorry,” to no one in particular. Then he cupped his hands and started digging. After replacing the topsoil as best he could, Spike slithered through an old subway line until he reached one of the city’s several abandoned metro stations. The faint rhythm of autocarriages and hoofsteps played down the filled-in stairwells and echoed in the corners. Emergency lights flickered pale blue. Long shadows crept up the walls. But none of that stood out to Spike. He was totally focused. He had work to do. The slime on the walls and faint scurrying sound of rats got worse the further down he went. Soon another sound joined in, a faint rumble that reminded him of thunder. Spike paused, his ears up. Was it getting louder? That was when he noticed the light coming from behind him, casting a distorted silhouette of himself on the tracks in front of him. The rumble leapt from faint thunder to a tornado barreling down on top of him. Train. Spike took off down the tunnel. No chance he could simply squeeze to the side and let the train pass. He had to find someplace to hide. He passed a service tunnel. Too small. Then a substation. Too many sensitive electronics. All the while, the sound of the train crept closer and closer, its automated conductor system oblivious to the threat in front of it. Just as Spike felt the front of the train brush against his tail, he saw a subway station a few hundred yards in front of him bathed in electric blue lights and bustling with ponies. So much for abandoned, he thought. Then he redoubled his stride and leapt onto the platform. Ponies screamed and scrambled to get out of the way. Colorful ceramic tiles dislodged by the impact flew everywhere. The train’s horn wailed in his ears. A split second later, the train hit the brakes and decelerated to a graceful stop in front of the platform. Playful music and at least a hundred commuters spilled from the cars. By twos and by threes, they stopped what they were doing to glare at the massive dragon blocking the platform. “Uh.” Spike coughed. Soot from his nose discolored a tile mural on the wall. The staring grew more intense. After a moment of pause, the pedestrians got moving again, flowing around and underneath Spike. He lifted himself up and sucked in his belly, trying to make himself as small as possible and failing miserably. “Sorry,” he said as he felt ponies brush past his scales. “Sorry. Sorry. Uh. Sorry.” The train shut its doors and started off down the tunnel. The platform cleared. Spike let out a breath and resumed his trek deeper into the subway. This time he made sure the tunnels were out of commision first. Later on, as he picked his way through another tunnel line, he heard the familiar rumbling sound heralding a train. He cursed inwardly. Must have made a wrong turn somewhere and wandered onto another active line. He resolved to check his map once he was out of danger, and started off down the tunnel at a trot. This wasn’t nearly as urgent as the first encounter. Within a minute, he found another abandoned station. He curled up on the platform, waiting for the train to pass. But something felt off. The rumble was different somehow. He caught a whiff of sulfur and brimstone that curled his nose. Then a wave of unnatural heat bowled him over. With a screaming roar, the wounded dragon from the library, Banshee, flew down the subway tube at terrifying speeds. Her face was frozen in a twisted roar. Her legs kicked up wood beams and chunks of gravel. Steel supports buckled under the heat. Steel rails curled as she raced past. And then she was gone, leaving a very dazed Spike lying flat on his back. He sat there for a moment as his senses returned to him. He counted the seconds between breaths, felt the faint slickness of the floor, listened to the ringing in his ears fade to an ambient hum. Then he got to his feet and gave chase. The tube emptied into a vast subterranean rail yard, complete with rotating tracks and tiered car storage tubes. Banshee paused to circle the room a couple times, then disappeared into one of the upper tunnels. Spike waited until the light faded and the sound quieted to a faint rumbling, then crept out. A quick look through the enchanted map revealed he was directly underneath the city center and the Starlight Center for Civic Services. Its eye-catching diamond-shaped shell and its crystalline upper tiers towered over every other building in the city. The map also revealed a large concrete arrow buried in the foundation, pointing down towards the rail yard. This was Starlight’s brand of subtlety, alright. Spike breathed a ball of dragonfire into his hands and molded it into a hovering orb of light, then commenced his search. Being careful not to make too much noise, he gently overturned train cars and excavated chunks of concrete, working his way methodically from one end of the yard to the other. When he reached the very center of the track exchange, he pulled up the rusted central pivot to reveal a concrete cap buried in the ground. When he tapped it, it rang hollow. Jackpot. He had almost succeeded in cutting the cap open with his talons when he heard a sound like a train coming from the upper tunnels. He turned around and only too late realized there was no place to hide. Banshee descended from the tunnel in a flurry of heat and sound. Spike jumped back, shielding his eyes, readying a blast of dragonfire to parry the inevitable attack. But much to his surprise, no attack came. He looked up and saw her standing on a slowly melting railroad tie, giving him a look as scorching as the dragonfire leaking from the side of her mouth. His eyes were drawn to the motion of her internal organs. He saw her lungs inflate, then realized it was probably rude to stare and moved his eyes back up to her face. “Uh. Hello.” She spoke in a raspy whisper. Flecks of dragonfire leaked from her mouth as she spoke. “You scratched my chainmail. Back in the library.” “Sorry.” He straightened up a little. “But you did destroy thousands of priceless books.” “It was almost worth it.” Her voice slithered in the space. “You couldn’t possibly need it more than I do.” Spike again found himself staring at her lungs. In. Out. Inflate. Deflate. He shuddered. “What happened to you?” “Pride happened. Did you know if a dragon rips her own arm off, it sets the aging process back by ten years? You don’t even lose the arm for good. It grows back.” Creeping horror slowly dawned on Spike. “You didn’t--” “I didn’t want to live without an arm. But a kidney? An appendix? Each one gives you back twenty years.” Spike felt nauseous. The heat started to make him dizzy. “You did that to yourself.” “I had to know what the limits were.” She took a menacing step forward. “Once I’m fixed, I can go back to living forever. I just need that book.” “No!” Spike heard the panic in his own voice. “I won’t let you hurt yourself like that.” A dragonfire smirk flashed across her face. “You’re a pony, aren’t you.” “No,” he shot back defensively. “You are.” her voice took on a sing-song lilt. “You’ve got scales on the outside, but you’re all pony on the inside.” “You don’t know how dragon I am.” She laughed in his face. “Prove it then. Kill me. Bite my head off.” Spike let out a frustrated groan. “This is stupid. If I just give you the book, it’ll burn to ash before you can touch it. What if I keep the book? You stay put somewhere safe where you can’t hurt anyone, and I’ll look for the other books. When we have all three, we can cast the spell on both of us.” Without a hint of warning, she exploded, “Do you think I’m stupid?” The fire subsided to a simmer just as quickly as it had sprung up. “You’ll find the spells and forget about me.” “That’s not true. I want to help you.” “Liar!” Her heart sped up in her exposed chest. The chainmail changed color from orange to bright red. Her lungs inflated, and Spike knew if he stayed put another moment she’d spew dragonfire in his face, and he wouldn’t be able to get the other spell pieces if he was a scaly puddle mingling with the subway slime. So, although it pained him greatly, he lowered his head, wrapped a wing around his saddlebag to keep its fragile contents safe, and did what dragons did best: attack. Spike was a full two heads taller than Banshee. Charging into her full-force, he wrapped his arms around her and pushed up with his legs, propelling them both into the air before crashing back down on the center of the rail turnstyle. The concrete cap concealing the second spell book cracked. Banshee’s open chest cavity singed Spike’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut against the heat, but it still felt like his head was being microwaved. He leapt to his feet and delivered a single decisive kick to her left knee. She gasped in pain and curled up into a ball. For a moment, Spike thought the fight was over. Then she twisted and shot a fireball at his face. He barely managed to dodge out of the way. She shot a second fireball, which grazed off his shoulder, then a third, which hit him squarely in the chest and sent him flying backwards. The impact forced the air from his lungs. He staggered to his feet only to catch another blast of flame to the face. He backed up, withering under a barrage of fireballs. Suddenly, the barrage stopped. Spike sputtered and wiped the soot from his eyes to find Banshee had collapsed. Dragonfire leaked from her mouth in a thin trickle. Her whole body trembled. She wrapped her arms around her chainmail chest and murmured incoherently. A wave of guilt burned Spike’s face worse than any fireball. He’d just attacked a wounded dragon in distress. Forget dragon ethics. She was hurting and he’d made it worse. He took a step towards her, reaching out with a claw. “I’m so sorry--” She whipped her head around and let out a blood curdling scream. The whole structure shook. Ceiling tiles rained down on the two dragons. A stack of decommissioned train cars overturned like toy blocks. Spike flinched away, covering his ears. He saw Banshee staggering to her feet and decided the best course of action was to get the spell book and run like hell. He leapt over her to the cracked concrete pad and smashed it to pieces with a single precise kick. Inside was another message in the stone and a second plaster-cased book. If you’re reading this, then you must be in serious need of some empathy cocoa. I’ve included-- A fireball bounced off his back. He let out a roar of pain. Before Banshee could summon up another attack, Spike plucked the book out of the cubby and filled the gap with dragonfire, melting the message in the stone. If it contained any hint of the location of the final book, Banshee might find it, and then he’d have a repeat of this awful fight on his hands. Sorry Starlight, he thought as he made his escape.
Chapter FourFlurry Heart wasn’t the only one using her relative immortality for educational purposes. Nine hundred years of life left Spike with an awful lot of free time. Sometime around year two hundred and fifty, Twilight finally started to rub off on him, and he submitted to the whims and wiles of academia. Now six hundred and fifty-ish years into his educational journey, he’d gained sixteen doctorates, held a brief tenure as a professor of dragon studies at Canterlot University, and participated in the rise and fall of at least a dozen significant fields of study. One of the things he’d taken to with gusto was dragonfire chemistry. In a DIY clean room slapped together with borrowed plastic tarp and enough bleach to sanitize a small ocean, Spike delicately set a beaker into a UV sterilization chamber. Once the cycle was complete, he swabbed it inside and out with antibacterial pads, then sent it through the UV chamber one more time. Once the UV disinfection process was complete, he turned the glass over and licked the bottom. He then set the beaker atop a stand, took a deep breath, and blew a short stream of dragonfire onto the bottom of the glass. The saliva combusted. A soft whoosh filled the air. With the beaker now happily baking at a stable six hundred and seventeen-point-eight three zero two degrees, Spike set to the task of mixing the ingredients. Crushed rosaline quartz powder and zippyzane syrup went into the beaker. Once the mixture boiled, he added stabilized netorare nitroglycerin and zero-point two grams of changeling spit. When the mixture boiled a second time, Spike poured it into a plastic cup and let it cool until it was just a hair over two hundred degrees. Then he added a squeeze of cocoa syrup for taste and chugged the whole cup in one go. His eyes dilated. His legs went stiff as a board. He collapsed to the floor with a thud. As his vision blurred, strange shapes appeared in his periphery. A glowing orb coalesced into focus, sprouting dozens of wings and just as many spinning golden halos. A hundred eyes blinked to life along the length of the wings. They stared at Spike with a sort of immovable, motherly disapproval. BE NOT AFRAID. I AM THE DIVINE SUN, THE-- The voice paused. The spinning halos slowed slightly. SPIKE. Spike looked around and found himself floating in the astral plane. Galaxies flared up and evaporated to stardust all around him. He waved at the winged, haloed creature sheepishly. “Hi, Celestia.” The being of pure light and radiance frowned. Or, some of the halos and wings drooped in a vague semblance of a frown. THE ASTRAL PLANE IS NOT YOUR PLAYTHING. ACCESS IS OFF-LIMITS TO THE LIVING. The being swooped closer, radiating electric starstuff and pure divine energy. It was enough to make even the largest dragon feel like a baby again. YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO BE DEAD. “Heh. Nope. Still alive.” THIS CAN BE RECTIFIED. “Nope! All good! Really!” THEN BY ALL MEANS, ENLIGHTEN MY OMNISCIENCE AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU’RE HERE. For someone who claimed to be all-knowing, Celestia sure did seem to ask a lot of questions. Spike stowed the thought and said, “Well, truth be told, something is in need of fixing. It’s me.” YOU APPEAR TO BE ALIVE AND IN WORKING ORDER. WHAT’S THE MATTER? Her voice carried a note of caring, albeit in her own unknowable way. Spike took a little bit of solace in that. Celestia had changed beyond belief, but the old eye-rolling, cake-stealing, graceful mess of a pony was still in there somewhere. “I’m growing too fast. I’m not even a thousand years old, and it’s already impossible to live in pony society.” THIS IS WHAT DRAGONS DO, THOUGH. THEY GROW. “Yes, they do, but for the last few decades I’ve been searching for this spell that would freeze me at a normal pony size.” THAT SEEMS UNHEALTHY. “Twilight and Flurry Heart helped make the spell. They intended it to be used as an emergency.” A little bit of fire returned to his voice. “This is an emergency.” The discorporeal being of feather and flame paused a moment. The wings beat slowly against the void. The rings spun. The eyes blinked. I’M SURPRISED, SPIKE, Celestia finally said. “I was surprised, too. But my cave was getting raided by one of the new Equestrian kings, and his soldiers kept going on about this holy book as I was lighting them on fire, and when I destroyed the king’s castle I asked about it, and it turns out it was one of Twilight’s old fiction manuscripts, and obviously I had to take it to preserve her image, and in the margins was this message to, ‘Tell Spike about the reversal spell’, and from there--” I’M SURPRISED IT TOOK SO LITTLE TIME FOR YOU TO FORGET WE LOVE YOU. Spike paused. He took a step back, not that he was going anywhere. This was her realm, after all. He was the guest here. “I’m still going through with it.” WHEN FLURRY HEART AND TWILIGHT MADE YOU THIS SPELL, DID THEY THINK YOU’D EVER ACTUALLY USE IT? “I dunno. You’re the omnipotent one here.” His eyes got wider. “Have you heard anything from Twilight?” Celestia paused. I’M SORRY. SHE’S IN A REALM EVEN BEYOND MY REACH, SEARCHING FOR THE DEEPEST TRUTHS OF THE UNIVERSE. YOU’LL BE GONE BY THE TIME SHE RETURNS. “See, that’s why I want this spell. I can live a normal life and not be a mountain range when she gets back.” YOU MISUNDERSTAND. HER JOURNEY WILL OUTLIVE THE EARTH. “Then let me live my life the way I want to. She would want that.” SHE WOULD. THAT’S WHAT MAKES HER PONY. “Yes, her ability to love!” NO. HER ABILITY TO MAKE MISTAKES. Spike’s growing frustration boiled over. “You forgot!” Fire clipped his voice. He lunged at Celestia, but no matter how hard he flapped his wings he couldn’t seem to get any closer to her. “You forgot what she was like! This place poisoned your mind!” I AM NOT POISONED. I AM DETACHED. DON’T THINK I LOVE YOU OR HER ANY LESS. “You’re wrong.” He tipped forward, unmoored, and flipped upside down. “When she comes back, she’s gonna have some strong words for you.” Something like a frown passed across Celestia’s features. ON THAT, WE CAN AGREE. The somber tone of her voice gave Spike pause. He floated around in place for another moment, unsure of what to say. Finally he settled on, “I need to get to the moon.” FOR YOUR SPELL? “Yes. For my spell.” Celestia was silent for a moment. Then she said, I FIND MYSELF AT AN IMPASSE. IT IS NOT MY PLACE TO PREVENT MY SUBJECTS FROM CHOOSING THEIR OWN DESTINIES. “Then let me go.” AS YOUR FRIEND, IT IS MY DUTY TO COMPEL YOU OTHERWISE. “You’ve been gone for six hundred years!” The pain in his own voice surprised him. “You don’t know anything.” He curled his knees up to his chest and hugged himself tight. “I can’t hug my friends. I can’t even make friends. I’m completely alone.” YOU’RE NEVER ALONE-- “Don’t.” His gaze burned a blotch in the cosmic background radiation. “Don’t even try.” Spike floated around silently for what felt like hours. He could feel a few of Celestia’s multitudinous eyes on him. He didn’t care. Let her turn him away. He’d find a way. He’d come back here a smaller drake and rub it in her face, how a multiversal goddess couldn’t stop him from-- One ring of Celestia’s body vibrated at a frequency that made Spike’s left-side molars ache. The world shifted a shade into the ultraviolet, then went back to normal. Spike blinked. “Wha--” I HAVE MADE THE SHELL BETWEEN SPACE AND THE ATMOSPHERE POROUS. YOU CAN NOW FLY BETWEEN EARTH AND SPACE AT WILL. PLEASE DON’T ABUSE THIS PRIVILEGE, OR LUNA WILL BE MOST UPSET. “Oh.” His mind reeled. “Uh. Thank you.” I AM MERELY A GUIDE. IT IS UP TO YOU TO REALIZE THE MERIT IN YOUR DECISIONS. “Thanks.” He thought about giving one of her rings a hug, but thought better of it. “So how exactly do I get up to the moon?” YOU’RE A BIG DRAGON. FOR NOW. Seven cherubic trumpets sounded in the void. Celestia began to discorporate right before his eyes. Rings sped up and flew off into space. Wings fluttered away by themselves. The eyes started closing. Just before she disappeared completely, he heard her voice no longer as an omnipotent resonance, but as a normal pony voice just like she’d been in his deepest, oldest memories. “Fly.” Six thousand miles and one extra dimension away, a dragon with orange scales and a sucking chest wound scoured the depths of an ancient desert temple built to honor the ancient snake sorcerers of the Nyle river. Sand from the desert outside clung to her chainmail, forming sharp shards of crystal that clogged her wounds and fell underfoot. When dragonfire dripped to the floor, it turned the sand to slippery crystal, slowing her progress. She’d already exhumed three cursed ruins searching for the final portion of the spell. She was just about to start on her fourth when she heard a sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Her left-side molars ached. The world shifted a shade into the ultraviolet, then went back to normal. She looked up, blinking, suddenly drawn back up the winding passageway. She stepped over the remnants of booby traps, through the ashes of the undead guards she’d made sure wouldn’t get up again. Past the gravesites she’d invaded--not robbed. You had to take something for it to count as robbery. Outside, the sun was just starting to rise over the eartern dunes. The air smelled like cumin and prickly-sweet cacti and sand. She turned her eyes to the sky and found the waxing gibbous face of the morning moon high above. It called to her.
Chapter FiveSpike definitely didn’t need snacks on the moon. A snack to a dragon his size was a week’s worth of meals for a pony. Anything meaningfully filling would just slow him down. Not to mention he had no idea if the food would still be good once it crossed the barrier into space. Still, the urge to pack away a few hundred cookies and talk to someone, even if the conversation would be a little one-sided, won out. He made a conspicuous landing in the hilly outskirts of the greater Ponyville metropolitan area, waited for a curious pegasus to approach, then waved them over. “No way, buddy!” the pegasus shouted. She was a mare, curious like Apple Bloom III without any of her grandmother’s naivety. “You’re just gonna eat me!” “I promise I won’t eat you.” Spike grimaced at the sound of his own voice. It did kinda sound like he wanted to eat her. One more thing the spell could fix. “That’s just what someone who’s gonna eat me would say!” “What if I made it worth your while?” He produced two gold coins and set them a safe distance away. The coins were from ancient Prance, and worth about four times an average Ponyvillian’s yearly salary. The pegasus swooped down to inspect them. “Is this play money?” “It’s about six hundred years old. Even if it was, it’d be worth a fortune in tax write-offs to a museum. I’ll give you another two later if you finish the job.” The mare looked around, looked down at the coins, then let out a groan. “Fine. Whaddaya want, anyway?” “I need two thousand cookies from Pie’s Pies.” “Two thousand?” “Two thousand.” “Y’know there’s apps for this kinda thing.” “Do you know anypony making dragon-sized phones?” The mare scrunched up her nose. “Yeeeah. That’s a lotta cookies though, that’s gonna take some time.” “I know. I need something else, too. You need to have the CEO deliver them.” “The CEO.” The mare’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “Like, the one who runs the company?” “Correct.” “Jeez. Okay buddy, I can probably finagle two thousand cookies, but how am I supposed to convince the CEO to give ‘em to you?” Spike pulled out an entire sack of ancient Prench gold coins. “Tell her it’s for a friend of the family.” The following morning, a single bright pink party balloon crested the horizon. Sunrise Surprise, the CEO of Pie’s Pie’s, LLC., touched down not ten yards from where Spike was lounging. Awfully brave of her to land this close, he thought. Sunrise looked unsettlingly similar to Pinkie Pie, all the way down to having three balloons as her cutie mark. She had a white coat instead of pink though, and a strawgold yellow mane. She also wore heeled shoes on her back two hooves--nothing fancy, but enough to raise up her rear just the slightest bit. “Prench coins aren’t really in vogue right now,” Sunrise said, in a high, squeaky voice. The resemblance to Pinkie was absolutely uncanny. “It’s gonna take twenty years for these things to appreciate.” Spike wasn’t used to the feeling of being dwarfed in a conversation. “Or we could melt them down right now.” He smiled. “Dragon, and all.” She tssk’d. “Barbaric.” “So where is the delivery?” “Right here.” She tapped her rear hooves together. The basket of the balloon opened up, revealing several metal drums. “The drums have a statis unit inside. Fresh out the oven flavor for the next seven years.” She paused. “You should grab those yourself. I had other ponies load those for me. They’re really heavy.” As Spike hefted the drums out of the basket, Sunrise asked, “So why this whole delivery geddup? Is this how dragons flirt or something?” Spike laughed. “Nothing like that. How much of your family history do you know?” “My mom has a scrapbook.” “Further back.” “My grandma had a scrapbook, too.” How many generations’ worth of scrapbooks do you have?” Sunrise made a show of rubbing her chin and pondering. “I’d say enough to watch a little baby dragon grow up into a great big baby dragon.” The smile bloomed into a full-on grin, teeth and all. Sunrise didn’t shy away like most ponies did. If anything, the sight of all those razor-sharp pearly whites only seemed to intrigue her further. Maybe it was a business thing. An appreciation for predators. Spike opened up one of the cookie drums and produced a single specimen. White chocolate macadamia nut, extra opal. His favorite. He ate one. Then another. Then he upended the entire drumfull of cookies into his maw. He set it down with a loud thump in the grass and let out a belch that could roast loins at a thousand yards. Sunrise let out a familiar-sounding giggle. “Sorry,” Spike said, “I’m forgetting my manners. Would you like one?” Smug satisfaction beamed on Sunrise Surprise’s face. “Nah. I’m more of a gold and platinum gal myself.” Spike tucked the other drum beneath him, like a dragon protecting a precious hoard. “Tell me more about your scrapbooks.” They talked all through the night. When Sunrise Surprise finally climbed back into her balloon and waved goodbye, it was nearly morning. Pre-dawn light cast a fine indigo haze over the earth. Spike secured the cookie barrel and his bag of books, then took off. The horizon became curved as he climbed through the air. Above him, the sky flashed through the colors of sunrise, then turned a monolithic baby blue. The barrier between sky and space revealed itself as a shimmering field of translucent white magic, like a shield spell extending all the way around the earth. When he passed through, it rippled like water. Without gravity to tether him, his first wingbeat sent him rocketing away at an impossible pace. The moon was not the cold, dead place most ponies imagined it to be. The castle Luna had made for herself during her banishment was still there, a lonely set of towers and walls guarding against nothing. Spike landed in the ruins of the grand entry hall and marveled at the decay. Most of the finery, along with everything even remotely shiny, had long since been stripped away by the solar winds and meteorite impacts. He thought he heard a faint muffled scuttling of claws as he progressed deeper into the castle, but it was probably just his imagination. The tall, narrow hallways of the old lunar castle led into a circular throne room capped with the remnants of a massive glass dome. The glass itself had since been shattered by micrometeorites, so only the skeletal frame and a few slivers remained. A fine layer of moondust clung to every surface, muffling the sound of his footsteps and muting the colors of the elegant blue and purple stones inlaid in the walls. A single tall throne set in silver and fringed with pure platinum sat on the opposite corner of the room. The centerpiece of the room was not the throne, however, but a colossal rendering of the new moon set into the floor. The bright part done in pure meteorite iron, the dark part in black titanium. The crescent faced the entryway, inviting Spike further into the embrace of the moon. A conspicuous hole had been carved out of the middle of it. At first Spike assumed it was just another impact crater, but when he looked closer he saw hints of melted metal along the edge. This had been cut. Now that he thought about it, the only way this metal could be cut this particular way was with-- Spike whirled around right as the first fireball struck. The force of the explosion threw him backwards across the throne room. He skidded to a painful stop, blinking away stars. Banshee descended from the dome. Dragonfire pooled at her feet, melting the metal beneath her. “Please don’t,” Spike stammered. “Don’t beg for your life.” “No, the floor. It’s one of a kind.” Banshee looked down at the damaged moon beneath her. Then she hocked up a big dragonfire loogie and spat on it. Sparks flew. Metal ignited. “Just stop,” Spike implored. “We can work this out together.” “Liar!” She reared up and breathed another jet of fire at him. This time he was prepared and rolled out of the way. The flames splashed harmlessly against the stone wall, leaving a black scar behind. Before Spike could react, Banshee pulled a plaster-bound book from beneath her wing. Her lips curled back into a savage smile. “Looking for this?” Spike’s eyes went wide with horror as Banshee blew fire into her free hand and held it beneath the book. Flames leapt from her fingers and licked the plaster shell. “Not another step,” she said. “It takes all three, right?” Spike looked around, desperate for a distraction. The plaster around the book let out an agonizing pop as the shell began to crack under the heat. “Okay, okay,” Spike said, “I’ll give you the books. Just stop, please.” Banshee’s smile widened. “Kick them over to me.” Slowly, Spike pulled out the metal drum and set it on the floor. “What’s that?” she snapped. “Protection for the books. You didn’t think I’d just stuff them in my pocket, did you?” Banshee let out a laugh. “You care an awful lot for pony things.” “I could say the same for you.” Her smile darkened. She turned her attention to the metal drum, impatiently ripping the top open and stuffing her hands inside. A hiss of steam belched from the opening. Her nose scrunched up. Her hand emerged clutching a fistfull of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, extra opal. Her eyes clouded over. “Pinkie?” she murmured. Spike flung his wings out and shot himself across the room. The two dragons collided in a spray of fire and cookie crumbs, tumbling across the intricate lunar centerpiece. Spike came up with the book. Banshee roared with rage and leapt towards him, but Spike ducked out of the way and sent her careening across the room, where she landed in a heap in the corner. By the time she’d gotten back to her feet, Spike was already airborne, flying up towards the skeleton of the ancient dome. “Sorry Luna,” he muttered, and lowered his shoulder. He hit the center of the dome and plowed right through it. Metal moaned. Glass shattered. Banshee ducked beneath her wing to protect her face. Rust and grit sloughed off Spike’s scales as he shot into space. In another moment, the castle was a blip on the horizon. He looked over his shoulder every few seconds, fully expecting Banshee to give chase. But after a few minutes passed without any sign of her, Spike reasoned she was too wounded to give chase and slowed to a glide. Something still wasn’t right. He had everything he wanted, but an awful nagging feeling lingered like dust in his lungs. He should be excited. Ecstatic. But he couldn’t even bring himself to look at the books in his bag. On the horizon ahead, the pale blue marble of the earth rose above the lunar horizon.
Chapter SixThe shell of the atmosphere embraced him as he flew back down to earth. On a whim, he tapped the barrier to see if he could fly back out into space. The shell made a thunk sound like heavy plated glass. Good thing he hadn’t tested that at full-speed. The adrenaline from the fight melted away over the next half hour. He glided over the fiery blip of the Crystal Empire, past the wastelands, all the way down to Equestria with its multitude of new kingdoms, finally landing in the one place pony urbanization hadn’t touched in the past nine hundred years: the Everfree Forest. There, beneath a rocky overhang at the bottom of an ancient gorge, with only stoic songbirds and buzzing insects for company, Spike laid out the three spellbooks. Anticipation made his stomach clench. Nervous puffs of smoke drifted up from his nostrils. This was it. One by one, he cracked open the plaster seals protecting the books. Almost immediately, he realized something was wrong. The weight of the plaster concealed an odd hollow quality to the books. The bindings were genuine, but when he tried to run a finger through the pages he realized they weren’t books at all, but boxes made to look like books. Inside each one of them was a note and a glass vial filled with clear liquid. The first, from Flurry Heart, said: THE REAL TRANSFORMATION WAS THE JOURNEY YOU MADE jk lol. mix all three vials together and drink it. Don’t spill any, unless you want a ten-foot pancreas in an eight-foot body. I’ve included a list of all the good dragon-friendly restaurants in CE. If any of them are still around, pay them a visit. If I’m still around, pay me a visit too. Love you lots flurry The second, Starlight’s, included a bag of powderized empathy cocoa in a magically-sealed bag. Her message read: Spike, It was an honor being your godmother. I infer from your reading this that you still value your connection to pony society. No matter what else you’ve heard, hold onto that attachment. Feelings of dissociation and isolation trend upwards in dragons as they age. You’re no normal dragon, but it’s still completely feasible to fall prey to these feelings over time. Ponies privy to the existence of this serum have had lively debates on the ethics of freezing a dragon’s age in order to allow them to participate in “small-creature society.” No doubt you’ll catch some flak from the powers that be once you go through with this. Screw them. ~ SG Spike opened the final false book, expecting something long-winded and erudite from Twilight. There was no letter. Just the third vial and her old Mister Smartypants doll. The anxiety got worse. He set the vials next to each other and stared at them until he lost the light. The phrase, ten-foot pancreas in an eight-foot body danced around his mind in circles. This was not how things were supposed to go. There was supposed to be a spell, something replicable. He was going to find Banshee and cast it on her--after he’d cast it on himself. He looked up at the moon. Was she still up there? The thought of dragonfire dripping over the dust-frosted surface of the moon, turning it to glass, the loneliness, the lack of air, the stifling void all around, the pain of unending mortal injury-- He sucked in a breath. His ears were ringing. For a split second he thought he saw something on the moon, a spot of orange that flickered and went out. It had to be his imagination, though. Had to be. Spike stared at the vials a little while longer. Then he gathered them up and placed them, along with the letters, into his underwing bag, and stepped out from beneath the overhang. He cupped his hands together and blew dragonfire into them. Keeping the flame alive in one hand, he spun his index finger around in the flames until they condensed around his claw. Then he drew a straight line in the air. The flames lingered, floating in the air. He set to work drawing a spell rune, a series of concentric interlocking circles and right angles enclosed within a larger outer ring. When he finished drawing, he leaned in and blew a soft kiss of dragonfire into the very center of the rune. The whole thing flared up in a rush of heat and light. A long, ghostly tendril of magic flew upwards into the sky and disappeared among the stars. A moment later, the whole sky exploded with dragonfire. Tall columns of green flame shot into the sky like aurora borealis. The flames went higher and higher, until they licked the barrier between earth and space, heating it until it glowed. Noonday shadows danced across the slumbering hills. Spike didn’t stop to watch. He took off for a deserted hill outside Ponyville, where the grass was short and the view was wide. The arc of light thrown off by the city lights reflected in the low clouds above. The insects were back, singing over the low thrum of distant autocarriages. There, Spike mixed the three vials together and waited. Long after the dazzling dragonfire display had faded, Spike noticed a mote of light flickering in the otherwise motionless sky. The flicker grew brighter and more defined, until it seperated into a column of fire surrounding a dot, and the dot grew larger until it became a tiny dragon, and the tiny dragon drew closer, and the faint far-off whoosh wasn’t actually just the wind in his ears, but a drawn out, full-belly roar. Without slowing down at all, Banshee lowered her shoulder and plowed into Spike, knocking him backwards across the field. Molten rock and soil sprayed everywhere. Every blade of grass ignited simultaneously, leaving the two dragons at opposite ends of a fiery wasteland. The bright lights of the Ponyville skyscrapers disappeared behind a curtain of choking smoke. “Remember me?” Banshee sneered. Spike said in a calm voice, “I remember you.” Her eyes narrowed, fixating on his neck. She dug in her heels. Her tail flicked from side to side, equal parts counterweight and blunt force weapon. Ever so slowly, Spike reached under his wing. Banshee pounced. Spike waited, still as stone, until she was just a few lengths away before backhand chucking the vial of serum at her chest. The vial shattered on contact. The liquid inside sublimated into a cloud of choking grey smoke. Banshee stumbled in surprise, but her momentum was too great, and she went careening into Spike at full speed. The cloud of smoke consumed them both. A moment passed. The smoke cleared. Dawn broke through. A soft, soothing breeze put the fires to rest. The heat seeped out of the soil. It was a cool morning. Spike found himself on his back. Banshee lay on top of him, coughing out the last of the smoke, clearing her watery eyes. She looked down. Her eyes met Spike’s. She let out a little, “Oh,” and leapt off him. As she moved, her chainmail shattered into a hundred pieces and fell to the ground. Banshee let out a cry of alarm and clutched her chest. Her alarm turned to confusion as she clutched a patch of newly-formed scales where her wounds had once been. Her knees started to tremble. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She clutched the remnants of her chainmail in her fists. “I wore that for three hundred years.” Her voice was flat, but her eyes brimmed with tears. “I. I need it.” She clutched it to her chest. “I need it back.” Spike nodded and started to collect the pieces around him. She hissed and tried to swipe them from his hands only to tumble sideways to the ground. The pieces she’d already collected went flying. She didn’t stop Spike from helping after that. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said as she combed through the dirt. Spike shrugged. “You were in pain.” “Yeah, but what about you?” “If I gave up on someone who really needed help, then what kind of pony am I?” The words held an odd note of bitterness to them. He glanced at the glittering glass of the Ponyville skyline as the realization of his own actions dawned on him. What he’d lost in that puff of smoke. The stack of shattered chainmail grew steadily, until they had a pile almost knee-high stacked up in the grass. As the search wound down, Banshee said, “I haven’t been completely honest. About who I am.” “I know.” She froze for a second, then continued searching. “Then what’s my name?” “Banshee.” “My real name.” “Your real name is what you say it is.” “That’s not--” she groaned. “You know what I mean.” “A lot can change in three hundred years. Why not a name?” She mulled over his answer for a few minutes before replying, “I gave myself that name when I first put on this chainmail. I thought, if things had really changed that much, then why not change everything? Clean slate. I think...” She and Spike both reached for the same piece of chainmail. Their hands touched. They drew away, unable to meet the others’ eyes. “Can you call me by my old name again?” Spike smiled. “Sure thing, Smolder. Can you do something for me too?” She nodded. “Keep me company when I can’t move anymore.” Smolder threw her arms around Spike. “We don’t have to wait that long.”
