Prologue: The Initial Accident
“SPIIIIKE!”
The purple dragon immediately shot up.
Naturally, he growled to himself as he first shook his head, and then began the morning routine of stretching out, gritting his fangs at the cracks and groans of protest from his body. The exercise did bring with it a somewhat pleasant sensation, but still, he couldn't help but feel annoyed at being torn away from his dreams, especially since the last one had involved ice cream and a certain white unicorn.
Noting that the sun was barely up, and while still struggling to keep his eyes open, Spike silently began wondering why Twilight had not only been up herself, but what matter of a catastrophe had driven her to wake him so early as well.
Seriously, she was next to never the first out of bed.
For a moment he collapsed back into his blankets and stared at the ceiling, contemplating just how bad the day that awaited him could possibly be. On one side, there was the obvious possibility that he’d just be putting up with Twilight's never ending barrage of orders and requests, while the other possible outcome was that Twilight would go out somewhere with her friends, and he’d be left bored out of his scales or with the task of cleaning the library. Either way, he seemed to lose.
“SPIIIIKE!” Twilight called again.
“Ugh! Twilight, what is it?” he groaned as he rubbed his eyes, struggling from the embrace of his soft bed.
The library was slowly being illuminated by the sunlight, but Spike was still forced to grudgingly search for the light switch in order to find his way through the darkness. With a flick of said switch the wooden building he and Twilight called home was filled with light; unfortunately, Spike’s mood didn’t subsequently lighten in the slightest.
Upon emerging from the stairwell, and after blinking a few times as his eyes readjusted, the dragon found his older sister excitedly rummaging through a cardboard box... and showering the library’s main room floor with shreds of packing paper, paper he knew he would end up having to clean.
Folding his claws Spike slumped on the bottom stair, watching on in silence as Twilight continued. His eyebrow arched a little upon realizing the box had a white ‘Urgent’ stickered plastered over the side, but otherwise he remained mostly disinterested.
“Twilight... what is this?” he asked at last, glancing between her and the box. “Please don’t tell me you actually ordered another shipment of romance novels already?”
“Oh please Spike, you know I wouldn’t wake you up if this wasn’t something worthwhile.”
He rolled his eyes. Yeah, sure.
With nothing more than another disdaining glance at the box, Spike stood and headed for the kitchen, deciding if he couldn’t be asleep then he'd concentrate on filling his painfully empty stomach. Upon searching the kitchen though, the dragon found himself in yet another common morning predicament; as usual, there was little food to be found in the various cupboards, let alone any gemstones.
“Spike! Come in here!” Twilight called, now sounding urgent. “I want you to see this.”
“If it’s not a box full of rubies, I’m not interested Twilight,” the young dragon replied with a snort, a tongue of green flame escaping him. “So tell me then, is it a box full of rubies? Or should I just go back to bed now?”
“No, but I'm sure you'll find this even better!” Twilight exclaimed as she at last emerged, a red book clasped in her front hooves.
Returning to his stair while Twilight bounced around him, Spike took a mental note of the book to try and find a scapegoat for his disappointment; it was, to put it quite bluntly, a fairly normal looking red cover bound pile of paper, the only item the large cardboard box contained as it seemed, since Twilight had now abandoned it.
As the unicorn finally at last stood still, however, Spike got a slightly better look at the book. For the first time that morning he felt his bad mood lifting, and a small edge of excitement creep in.
The book had something that looked very much like a dragon etched into the cover.
“Twilight… is that a book on dragons?”
“It is!” the unicorn laughed, returning to all four hooves and levitating the book in front of her. “This is ‘The Ponies Guide to Dragons and their Realm’. It was actually written by Star Swirl the Bearded just over a thousand years ago, but only very recently has Princes Celestia allowed printed copies of the original to be sold; you usually have to make a personal request to the royal archivists to get a copy printed, since the original was never actually published."
A grin crossed Twilight's muzzle as she held it up in front of him. "After your little adventure turned up virtually... well, nothing, I decided to do some research myself, and I found out about this book. Apparently the princess is wary of who buys copies because it was never published, but since I'm her student and all she basically sent it to me right away.”
“Hence the ‘Urgent’ sticker,” Spike sniggered with a grin, Twilight's cheeks taking on a red tinge.
He stared at the still floating book for a moment, silently wondering as he tapped his claws on the stair.
“So this book… what exactly does it say about dragons? Does it say anything about how long we live or anything like that?”
Twilight flicked through the pages while Spike watched her silently, using her trained ability to quickly skim-read to pick out important information that would otherwise take hours to read through.
About midway through the third chapter something interesting caught her eye, something which brought a cheeky smile to her face, and made her horn spark with excitement as she read over it. Yes, this was right up her alley.
The mare flipped the floating book over so the pages were open to Spike’s eyes, although he seemed a little confused as to what she was trying to say. All he saw on the page was a drawing of a bowl of water, a strange rune layout, and a unicorn.
“Umm… I’m not getting you, Twilight.”
She rolled her eyes before speaking. “Ok Spike, if I'm reading this correctly, then this is a spell which allows a unicorn to communicate with a dragon in... somewhere called the Dragon Realms," she lowered the book to look at him. "Does that sound familiar at all?"
"Uh, no, or not that I can remember anyway. Should it?"
Twilight hmm'd for a moment, before shrugging and going back to the book. "Well, according to Star Swirl, dragons are said to have originated there at the beginning of time. If I cast this spell then maybe we can ask questions, learn about dragons, and maybe find out why they exist in both our worlds from an actual dragon…and yes, before you go asking, we can ask how old they are.”
The last part came out with a sigh of mild annoyance, although Spike didn’t even hear what Twilight had said after the ‘communicate with a dragon’ part.
“You just read the book Twilight,” Spike said excitedly as he bolted back into the kitchen. “I’ll get everything ready.”
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“So how exactly does this work then?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking curiously between the unicorn and the set of chalk runes that were drawn into the floor.
“Basically it creates a mirror connection between Equestria and the Dragon Realms, through the energy medium of something called Convexity,” Twilight explained, lifting her head from the pages of the book. “The idea being the reflection of a dragon should appear in the water. From there we can talk, ask them questions, and they can ask us questions, so nothing really complicated.”
“You mean other than the fact we’re talking to a dragon in another world?” Dash grinned, ignoring Twilight’s annoyed sigh and returning her eyes to the latest edition of Daring Do.
Exactly why of all days Dash had decided to catch up on her Daring Do reading, neither Spike nor Twilight were certain. Still, as long as the pegasus quietly stayed on stairs lost in her own thoughts, they didn’t really mind. She was paying little attention to the two of them, other than throwing in the occasional remark... although being Rainbow Dash meant even when she was quiet, she seemed to fill the room with her presence.
The two were at that point going through the fine print of the communication spell down to the tiniest detail; Twilight making sure every rune was perfectly drawn, while Spike stood back and bit at his claws in anticipation. How exactly an otherwise boring morning had turned out like this was beyond him, but he was still trying to control his excitement, and hence such in depth reasoning was out of the question.
“Alright Spike,” Twilight said at last as she lowered the book to the floor, her eyes falling on the jumpy dragon. “Are you ready to do this?”
“Duh!” was the loud reply, the young dragon’s teeth chattering with excitement.
Wordlessly, Twilight smiled, closed her eyes, and allowed her horn to begin to spark, the magic filling the room with an eerie glow and causing the former white runes to glow pink-purple. The unicorn’s muscles began to tense with the effort as she poured her magic into the spell, silently following the incantation as a young dragon and a pegasus watched on.
At last she began to lower her horn to the bowl, the final part of the spell as Spike knew, which was to enchant the water with pure magical energy.
“Come on Twilight!” Spike whispered to himself, claws clenched as the anticipation. “You can do this.”
What happened next, however, wasn’t what anypony had expected, and it was definitely not what Spike had wanted to happen.
Just as Twilight’s horn touched the glistening surface of the water, there was a loud knock at the door, a knock not only loud enough to spook a former highly concentrating, spell-wielding Twilight, but to also cause a surprised hoof to scrape over one of the chalk ruins.
Two words rebounded in Spike’s head a moment before all madness broke loose in the library.
“Oh great!”
In a single heartbeat the spell went out the window, but the immense energies which Twilight had summoned didn’t follow suit. As the magical energies freed themselves from the confines of the spell, they discharged as a massive pulse, giving off a brilliant purple light in their wake, so bright and intense that it temporarily blinding Spike, Rainbow Dash, and whoever was unfortunate enough to be the one opening the door at the time.
Whoever they were, they gave out a surprised cry in alarm as an almighty bang shook the library shortly after, the blast subsequently throwing Spike backwards into the wooden stairwell.
Spike snarled, feeling pain despite his steel-like scales.
Within a few moments though the light vanished, and, once his pain died down enough, Spike jumped to his feet and darted forward into the mass of books that now awaited him.
“Twilight!”
“Sp... Spike!” came her shaky voice, the dragon realizing at last that the unicorn had, during the explosion, been equally thrown back against one of the library bookcases. Her purple coated body was now half covered in a pile of books.
Hastily he began throwing them off of her, and Dash quickly flew over and joined in the effort, the two at last freeing Twilight from the paper prison of classical literature and helping the mare to her shaky hooves. Twilight, for her part, seemed a little shaken and dazed, but was otherwise unscathed from the event.
The library though was in a little worse condition; countless books now lay strewn around the place, and the loose pages of which floated through the air here and there, somewhat as they did when Rainbow Dash made a surprise crash entrance on the odd occasion.
“Ugh…” came a slightly slurred voice, making the three to turn and see a mildly stunned Applejack standing in the open doorway, an upside down basket and a bunch of scattered apples beside her.
“Some welcome in ah' get then… everypony in here ok?” she finally asked, straightening her skewed hat.
“I think so, Appleja…”
Twilight cut herself off as she realized exactly what, or rather who, was now in the room along with them, although it still took her a few moments for the sight to sink in, despite the fact she was looking straight at it.
At last Spike, and everypony else, realized what had happened as well, but even Dash couldn’t find words to describe what they were all seeing.
The main room floor of the library was in a state similar to a tornado’s path to say the least. What had made the unicorn stop talking and caused her eyes to widen, however, wasn’t the state of the floor, but rather the fact there were now three young dragons lying unconscious amongst it.
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