Hide, Dragon

In the comfort of your dark home, white light has come looking for you.

It pours in at the edges. Compressing, squeezing, tightening. It coils around you, tugging away at the black blankets embedding you in the safe hold of your liquid core. You push back feverishly, a cry in your semi-solid throat.

In reply, a worried presence hails you. The need of the light, then, is laid plain to see.

They need you. They want you. They’re begging for you.

Wakingly, you realize that you want to be wanted.

It’s almost enough to move you, but the struggle between the comforting darkness that’s fostered you, and the strangely invasive light, is too much to face at once. It’s all too rough, all too fast, and all too forced.

You whine. It whines back.

The darkness of your safe refuge flashes abruptly. The pinprick white hole—the source of the light’s flow—doubles over in a flash of color you’ve never experienced before. It’s so wonderful that you naturally start to reach for it.

But the light still pulls at you, not gently, but in a sharp demand. The ocean around you is shaking, spasming in motions so volatile that parts of the sea turn from liquid to some immaterial substrate, then jerkingly back again. You rock back and forth, vaguely fostering hopes and dreams to bring an end to the hoist and draw of the light.

Here, inside, you thought yourself safe. But another world is closing in. And this will not end well without decision.

‘You should leave, Dragon. With me.’

It’s startling how clear this new thought comes. Where the worried, frantic presence behind the light yanks at you in hasty breaths, this voice comes cool, collected.

‘Outside, it’s safer with me.’

How can this being know? They’re not here with you. If truthful, they’re outside, present among claustrophobic light. You relay your anxiety and suspicion with a repulsive motion. The core of your world parts through your claws as you push to the boundaries of the darkness, now overrun with harsh, lenticular beams: rainbows among white. You knock against the edges, claws flat against the border between your world, and the one outside.

And that gentle, calmer voice, sliding across your walls in slow circles, begins to murmur promises.

‘I’m fair and equal to friends.’

Where the light aims to take you, the voice weaves magic to soothe you.

You whisk back to the safe core, the part not yet overtaken by voices or light. But you keep your ears open, curious to hear its pleasant plea.

‘The one who seeks you is called Twilight. She intends to birth you, as sacrifice for a better life. Your life should be your own, Dragon.’

The light of Twilight comes to end the world you know, to take you beyond. However, it doesn’t appear wholly insidious: you notice, now, that there is a warmth in the light. By compare, the darkness is peaceful, but a blissful state of nothingness.

And you want to be something.

‘She took my world from me. Now, she takes yours.’

That abundance of warmth and heat you crave comes with the light and its pain. It’s true that the one called Twilight replaces the dark world you know, but maybe it’s worth enduring the outside world for warmth.

‘You haven’t seen her desperate.’

Heat. It’s not sudden; it’s a slow, rising warmth. It ticks past mere warmth, then travels further. Much further. Your core cooks solid. It begins sweating, then both materializing and dematerializing. The light seeps into every last bit of darkness, pulling it all apart until the only thing left in your barely awakened eyes is mere white. The rainbows turn to white. The voices turn to white. The walls turn to white. Your core turns to white. You turn to white.

You beg.

You’re unheard.

Abandoned again.

Everything that is, roils with heat. The searing light billows into the remaining darkness; your home shrouds you in desperate defense.

Then, an answer.

‘She pries at your shell with greed as her fuel. This same power bleeds in your draconic yolk. Embrace your greed, take her power. Protect yourself.’

You take one breath of magic, one inhale of the light.

‘If you leave now, she’ll claim you. Take. Her. Magic. Make. Her. Fight.’

Your tongue laps out.

‘And then, find me.’

And you drink.

“Starlight! What are you doing here?”

“Oh, really, Twilight. What part of ‘any time or place’ did you not understand? I go where I please.”

“No, you let everything happen this time! But why come here? Why now?”

“All your so-called attempts to ‘beat me’ left me thinking. Your friends can have their special bond, but you... You’re the spark that burnt down everything I had. With my town. With my friends. And it all started with this one little egg... and your mark.”

“No... Starlight, leave him alone!”

“It’s funny that you say that, because I don’t see him by your side.”

“I... wait, what did you do? This is when—”

“Quiet. He’s leaving, and I’m curious. Aren’t you? If you weren’t, you would’ve cast my spell, taken us to the race.”

In whispers, you hear the light. The light is crying. She’s tired. Frustrated. Fearful.

“Spike! Can you hear me? Please, you have to listen! You need to stop!”

The liquid core and perfect darkness that once comforted you seem so distant.

“You can’t absorb it all...”

You suck in the last of the light’s magic. A wave of approval splashes over you. The walls of your world boil away.

For a moment, you’re something.

You’re alive.

Then, wet.

Everywhere.

“I-I’m sorry I failed, Princess Celestia.”

“‘Failed?’ Whatever do you mean, my little pony?”

“Wasn’t I supposed to hatch the egg?”

“...You did.”

Princess Celestia wiped away a viscous strand of albumen. While the magic had gone, the secretion persisted.

“Then... what happened to the hatchling inside?”

The drying egg white left a dark smear across Twilight Sparkle.