Dear Princess Celestia,
The contents of this letter are for your eyes, ears, thoughts, and anything else, alone. None of this will ever appear in my official memoirs because of my shameful Dragon Pride; in fact I’m actually claw-writing this to you myself rather than dictating to one of my underlings because my thoughts and feelings on the subject cannot be known to any pony or dragon other than myself, and I am compelled to tell you. Perhaps, maybe, by telling you then you can convey to Twilight Sparkle in as delicate a way as you can just how important a role she played in the newly founded Draco-Equestrian Alliance and hopefully make her feel better.
As you no doubt have figured by now, I am writing to you about Spike. I will not use his new title because he would not have wanted it used. Very few will ever know the full story about Spike, and so far as I can tell even you only know the first half of it. I’ll keep that half summarized to a minimum for efficiency’s sake and let you know more about the other half of Spike.
I remember him when he was still barely more than a hatchling. We met during his first attempt at joining the Dragon Migration. Despite our age difference, he proved to be the maturest of us all. At the time, I thought it was stupid of him to be so compassionate and kind to others, and I thought it was his weakness from being raised around ponies.
We met for the second time a few years later when he, now older and beginning to grow, returned for another Dragon Migration. He was big enough and possessed enough self-confidence this time to not be bothered by the other teenagers. He found me- for I was now an adult- and we conversed in a more mature fashion. I barely listened to his stories about living with ponies and I constantly put him down. I was an adult, he was a teenager, and still he was the better Dragon than me.
I wish he was here now so I could apologize to him for all I put him through over the years. Every year from then on I could find him during the Migration when it brought me near enough Equestria for him to saunter out and join us. The more we spoke, the more I begrudgingly listened for the Apathy of adulthood was setting in for me. Another curse of our culture; grow old and care less for nothing can harm us. Well, very little can harm us at least. The recent war proved that we certainly can be harmed, but I’m not going to discuss that now.
I learned about Ponyville and about ponies from Spike. Despite only half-listening, I still absorbed it all. He would reminisce forever about his friends, especially Rarity. He talked about her more times than I can count, and he had the far off look of a dragon with a powerful crush. I honestly do not believe he ever stopped loving her, which is probably one of the reasons we have peace now.
He told me about one time where she was captured by Diamond Dogs and he rescued her and for a while I didn’t believe him; he would have still been a hatchling at the time and there was no way I would believe that a hatchling and five ponies could invade a Diamond Dog mine and rescue anyone. But when he told me about the time he gave into his natural greedy temptations and became a Premature Adult due to having no competition in Ponyville I was starting to give him the benefit of the doubt on the honesty of his stories; if he was trying to make himself look amazing, why talk about such a loss of control where he very nearly killed the...female...he loved?
Spike would ask me questions about Dragon culture and how he could start best fitting in. He also wanted to tell his friends all about us; he kept in touch with Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy and, on occasion, the others. I don’t know why he seldom wrote to Rarity. Maybe he was getting out of that hatchling crush stage, or maybe it was because she never returned his letters. He never stopped talking about her and always got excited when she was mentioned in the letters of his friends though, so I do not think that the feelings vanished.
I guess it was about ten years after Spike became a full-time Dragon, aside from writing to his friends, when trouble started. Our greed drove us to rage when pony mines began to tunnel into our lands and take our gem hoards, thinking them natural deposits.
Spike took it upon himself to try and calm the rest of us down. I don’t think any ponies appreciate just how hard the young dragon tried to reason with us; to assure us that we weren’t in any danger from the ponies, explain that you were not trying to invade our lands, told us that you had no knowledge of dragon territories nor when gems were in your lands or ours. Unfortunately, we didn’t care.
I’m not going to argue about ‘who struck first’, Dragons or Ponies, but we both know that it was the Dragons who declared war and burnt Appleoosa to the ground. And thus the war was begun.
Spike was not alone in trying to prevent war, and he had enough Dragons following his example that he could have convinced them to assist in protecting the ponies if the ponies had needed protecting. Your magic spells and brave warriors were far more than we had ever imagined. Spike, however, did not want violence, and he abhorred what you were doing as much as he abhorred his own kind. It was Spike and his faction that caused the rockslide in the Macintosh Mountains to prevent the Royal Guards from getting to our battle care camp before we could evacuate it, and it was Spike who derailed the train we were hiding on to sneak into Canterlot.
I don’t know what all else Spike did overtly and covertly to save lives, but I’m certain were it not for him the war would have been more terrible, and we both know that were it not for him it would have been far, far longer.
After you and your sister willed an entire nest of hatchlings out of existence in an attempt to scare us into inaction, we launched our attack on Ponyville. This brought Spike out of the shadows and he came to the rescue of his former home. He tried, to, at least. There were more than two dozen full grown and angry adult Dragons in Ponyville when Spike got there. Their reports were that he tried to get them to stop the attack but they ignored him because he was a known pony sympathizer. They continued with the attack and had it not been for Rainbow Dash and Applejack coming out of Ponyville to try and stop them before reaching the town, Spike might still be alive and Ponyville might have been burned to cinders.
My lieutenant Knuckles was on the front of the attack. He was the one who released a ball of fire at Rainbow Dash while preparing to gouge Applejack with his claws. Neither attack hit its intended target; Spike dove over Rainbow Dash and knocked her out of the way of the fireball and fell in front of Applejack. Lieutenant Knuckles’ claws were what pierced Spike’s skin. I wish I could say he died quickly but the wound wouldn’t let him go so easily.
Lieutenant Knuckles is more than a good fighter; he’s a good Dragon too. He knew the laws about attacking our own kind when not under attack ourselves or when our horde isn’t being burgled, and he knew that what he had done was in many ways illegal. The rest of the troop were as shocked as he was by the act of a Dragon slaying a Dragon, and none of them knew what to do about it. Spike was the first ever Dragon to throw himself in front of another Dragon’s path of destruction on purpose for the sake of saving another. Even I wouldn’t do that to save my own wife or hatchlings; it just doesn’t make sense. Spike did it to save ponies.
His last words, as reported by Knuckles, were “I did it because they are my friends.” This was several minutes after he was wounded. A furious Rainbow Dash nearly escalated the fighting again, but prior to his death Spike told them not to bother avenging him, and Applejack held Rainbow Dash to that promise.
Knuckles had his troop retreat and Ponyville was left alone. The news reached me of what Spike had done and I immediately ordered the rest of my kind to leave Equestria and retreat to their respective homes. If pursued, I told them not to retaliate and only to keep running until I said otherwise.
The rest you are already knowledgeable of. We met face to face, discussed peace, drew well defined borders that conformed naturally to the landscape, and since then we have been allies. If not for the Equestrian military I do not think I would have survived the attempt on my life by the former rebels, and I want to thank you again for assisting me and my people in hunting them down. Not all Dragons want war, after all, and those rebels were a very poor example of our race.
I’ve said all I wanted to say, or written it at least. Any attempts at spreading the word of my sorrow at the loss of such a brave Dragon as Spike and my late understanding of Friendship will be met with denial. But I want you to know that now, after so much time and tragedy has passed, I consider Spike my greatest friend. And as I reminisce about the old days, I find myself finally understanding his action on that day in Ponyville. Could it be that I would step out of my cave and witness the event unfolding before me, I, too, would throw myself in front of the now ostracized Knuckles Lifetaker in order to save Spike the Selfless.
In time, I hope to teach the rest of my race about the true meaning of Friendship and eventually replace the curses of Apathy, Greed, and Pride with it.
Yours truly,
King Garble
PS: On your next visit I'm going to take you lava diving. I want to see if you're at least tough enough to match Spike's hatchling bellyflop record.
