Plain Old Chaos

Twilight looked out at the Baltimare train station, it was much fancier than the one back in Ponyville, with a large covered area for multiple trains to depart from. Heading off the train Twilight saw that the station was far more crowded than the relatively empty one she had left. Looking through the crowd, she spotted Lyra standing near the exit of the station, she was quite surprised that Lyra had kept her word and had been on the train but was glad that she would have some assistance with her task. Checking to make sure that Spike was following behind, She went over to Lyra.

The Changeling waited for her to speak when she reached her. "Hello Lyra,I was thinking that we could get a boat to the griffin territory from here, or do you have any secrets that could make the journey easier?"

Lyra rolled her eyes before responding, "No, not really, or do you mean that you are so socially inept that you want me to go book the tickets for you?" She chuckled at her joke.

Twilight bowed her head in embarrassment, "if it's not too much trouble..." The changeling looked at her with disbelieving expression plastered across her face.

Lyra turned to Spike, who was hiding behind Twilight and trembling slightly, "Little slave, is she serious about this or is she trying to be polite about wanting to be away from me?" She focused an intimidating glare on the dragon.

Spike took a few shaky breaths before he answered, "She doesn't really get out much, she's kinda shy about meeting new ponies." The dragon seemed to gain confidence as he spoke and was now standing straightly.

"Fine, I'll go get the tickets, just meet me back here in the morning." Lyra huffed out, she then turned and quickly left the station.

"Twilight, can we really trust her? Why is she even helping us?" The dragon asked quizzically.

"I'm not really sure about her honestly, but as long as she thinks that I can actually do something to her if she betrays us while we are gone then I'm not going to correct her," She patted the dragons head comfortingly, "Besides Spike, it's not your place to think about these things, you don't need to worry your little dragon head about it."

Spike muttered something that Twilight could not catch before responding. "We should do something about it though, before she tries to kill us or something."

Twilight saw that Spike was starting to get rather confident and decided that she needed to curb his assertive behavior, she remembered from her lessons with the princess that dragons would start to get extremely aggressive if they started thinking that they could rise above their station. She lightly smacked Spike across the head with her hoof.

"Bad Spike! No questioning me, I am in charge here, not you." Twilight felt pride at having stopped the dragon before he went mad with power. The dragon in question was now rubbing the back of his head and shaking slightly while looking at Twilight warily.

"S-sorry Twilight, I won't do it again. I p-promise." The dragon stuttered out shakily,he swayed slightly on his feet and he seemed to look on the verge of tears, Twilight was slightly concerned that she hit him too hard.

Twilight's sympathy for the dragon won over the need to be stern with him and she picked him up with her magic before depositing him on her back. "You don't really look like you can walk now, sorry for hitting you so hard Spike, but you know that you can't go around being so aggressive."

Craning her neck back, Twilight saw that for some reason the dragon bore an extremely confused look on his face. Ignoring this, she walked out into the streets of Baltimare. The port city was far busier and more industrialized then Ponyville, she could see many ponies going about their business. Twilight figured that since Lyra was going to get the transport that all she needed to do was the find a place to sleep for the night before meeting her in the morning.

Hours later and Twilight was still wandering the streets of Balitimare. Her search for a cheap inn had been foiled by her meager funds, she now scoured the seedier parts of the city in search of more reasonably priced accommodation. Nightfall had come and Twilight was now desperate to get inside before the less favorable denizens of the city came out. Spotting a rather inviting looking tavern she made her way into the establishment.

Twilight felt that the Tavern had a rather rustic feel to it, the place seemed rather empty with only a few tables being occupied by small groups that looked much friendlier than the other places she had searched, although that still left much to be desired.

Twilight saw a Navy colored unicorn mare was serving drinks to the few ponies that were up front nearer to the bar. Heading up, Twilight coughed to get her attention.

The mare turned to her along with the other ponies that were being served, glad she got their attention, Twilight spoke. "Hello, I was hoping that I could get a room for the night here, how much do they cost?"

The mare took a look at her back before responding. "That depends, will that purple thing you got on your back there be joining you?"

"This is Spike, He's a dragon." Twilight poked the dragon with her magic, waking him up. "He's pretty well behaved, he won't go around breaking stuff or anything like that. I trained him myself." Twilight stated, feeling pride about how well she had trained the dragon.

The mare stared at Spike for a few long moment before responding. "Well, if you're sure he won't destroy anything then you can stay her for five bits."

Twilight was overjoyed, that was a far better price than the ones she had gotten earlier, "Okay, here's five bits." She picked out five bits from her saddlebag and levitated them out onto the counter.

The mare grabbed them with her magic as soon as Twilight let go of them. "Right, follow me then, I'll bring you to a room." She moved out of the bar, motioning for Twilight to follow and moved further back into the building. Leading Twilight through the back of the establishment she went through a door that Twilight hadn't spotted before, Following her in, Twilight saw that she had brought her into a dingy looking room. A single bed lay propped up against the wall and a chair was looking quite lonely on the other side of the room, the room did have a closet though, which surprised her since she didn't really expect the kind of ponies who owned clothes would frequent this place.

"Right, you can sleep here, I'm not getting a bed for the dragon and I'm not giving you any free food, so if you want anything your going to have to pay for it, tomorrow anyway, I'm not doing anything this late." She brusquely stated before turning around and slamming the door shut, leaving Twilight and Spike alone.

"Well, this place looks fantastic." Twilight said while placing Spike on the floor. "But much more importantly, it was a great price and you said that I should just give up and stay in one of those upper class places for twenty bits. Twenty bits, Spike!"

"I think this place still looks kinda creepy." Spike said while curling up on the floor.

"Ah, Spike, like I said before, you don't need to worry your little dragon head about such things." Twilight gave Spike an affectionate rub with her hoof. " Now, you just make yourself comfortable there, if you try hard enough I'm sure you can pretend that you're really sleeping in your basket." Twilight climbed onto the bed and set her head down.

A shuffling sound awoke Twilight, opening her eyes she saw that a few ponies had broken in and that Spike was being levitated out of the room.

Without moving, she watched as they wordlessly took Spike before the majority of them left, a brown coated earth pony stallion remaining behind. He started to approach Twilight.

Twilight rushed to comprehend exactly what was happening but her mind was drawing a blank, in a moment of clarity she focused solely on her assailant, Who had reached her and was now raising his hoof. Anticipating a strike, Twilight grabbed his neck with her magic and crushed it.

He fell to the ground with a soft thud. Twilight expected that she should feel disgust and revulsion at what she had done, but all she could feel was a rush at how close she had come to death and relief that he was an earth pony and not something that actually had a chance at fighting back, like a unicorn. Ignoring the body, she tried to think of exactly why anypony would bother to come and take Spike.

Having no idea of their goals she shoved it to the back of her mind, she left her room and went back into the main area of the Tavern. The place was completely deserted and Twilight could not see where the other ponies had gone. An inspection of the bar revealed a hatch, opening it up, Twilight found a stairs leading further down. Having no better ideas of where to go she made her way down the stairs.

The area was darkly lit but judging from the barrels that lined the sides of walls Twilight figured that she was in the wine cellar, she could see a small hallway and went through. It was poorly lit but Twilight could see that it got brighter further ahead, she could also hear some voices coming from further down. Emboldened by this, she continued until she could see that the hallway led into a much larger room.

It was extremely large and Twilight could see what looked like an altar in the center, carvings decorated the walls of the room, although what they depicted was hard to tell, she decided that it resembled an ocean. A few cages were lined up against the wall nearest her and she spotted Spike, who had now woken up and looked quite terrified in one of them.

Seeing no sign of Spikes captors, she approached his cage. When she was close she tapped the side to alert the dragon to her presence before she looked at the cages lock, by a stroke of fortune she found that they had left the key inside of it, although the lock was quite large and had just about enough distance that Spike would have trouble opening it even with claws. She turned the key, opening the cage.

The dragon made his way out and looked at Twilight, she could see fear in his eyes. "Spike, where did the ponies that grabbed you go?" She whispered.

The dragon took a second to compose himself before pointing toward the other side of the room. "I saw them go that way, I think they want to k-kill me, they were talking about sacrificing me to their lord!" He was shaking quite a bit and Twilight didn't think that he would be able to make his way out.

"That's fairly creepy Spike, but they didn't even leave somepony here to guard you so I doubt that they were that into it. We should take the opportunity and leave before they notice us though." The dragon was still shaking with fear and didn't respond when Twilight poked him.

Sighing, she put Spike on her back and started going back down the hallway, glad that she was still undetected she made her way back up into the tavern and approached the door. Just before she reached it, the door swung open, revealing the barkeep from before.

She walked in, Twilight was glad to see that she had left the door unblocked, taking a moment to look around her gaze fell upon Twilight, it took a moment for her to speak . "By Smooze! What are you doing here!" She took a breath and that seemed to calm her momentarily, although she looked rather panicked at seeing Twilight. "Now, just put that dragon down and you can go on your way and we can pretend this never happened."

Twilight doubted that they would actually let her go and instead of responding she gathered her magic and slammed it into the mare, stunning her momentarily. She then galloped through the door before the unicorn could stop her.

Quickly putting as much distance as she could between them she could hear the mare yelling for her compatriots. "The sacrifice is escaping!" Afraid that if she stopped the mare's friends would come out of the shadows, Twilight kept galloping, not stopping until she was several streets away, She was still afraid that at any time she could be attacked by Spike's captors.

She noticed that she had gone back into the more reputable parts of the city, a few ponies were still around and Twilight was glad that if she were attacked, she would not be completely alone, she saw that it was starting to get brighter and decided that it would be best if she just loitered inside one of the hotels in the area Choosing at random Twilight made her way inside, hoping she wouldn't be kicked out if she waited there too long.

Inside, Twilight chose a secluded corner and dumped Spike there. The dragon seemed to have gotten over his fear and now looked as if he could speak. "Spike, hide in this corner and try not to be noticed, They might not go notice me but  you have no chance of blending in with a crowd."  She positioned herself in front of the dragon so that he was mainly blocked from view from the entrance of the hotel, "It's only going to be an hour or two before dawn and then we can go see Lyra at the train station, she'll be able to fight them if they come back."