Warm sunlight cascaded through the window of Twilight's library as she and Fluttershy spoke. The light bounced off of the marble floor and comfortably lit the room nicely. Above the bookshelves, Spike's loft sat empty with his bed neatly made. Below, Twilight confronted Fluttershy about a bold proposition.
“Do you really think that will work?” Fluttershy asked.
“I don’t see how else this trap could work,” Twilight shrugged. “We’ll need all the help we can get. Do you think you could do that for me?”
“Oh, I will certainly try,” Fluttershy reassured her. She got up and began walking to the door of the library when Twilight stopped her again.
“Fluttershy? Can I ask you something else?” she said timidly. The yellow mare turned and patiently waited for Twilight to find the right words. It was more difficult than she expected.
“Do you think . . . well, really . . . how much do you know about dragons?” she mumbled.
“Gosh, well, I know they’re scary when they’re big, but I also learned that they respond the same way most other animals do when I give them the ‘stare’,” she said and giggled. Twilight remembered how Fluttershy was the only one who could get the giant red dragon that was threatening Equestria to behave. But that didn’t really teach her anything new.
“But what do you think of Spike?” she said. She tried to speak as simply as she could, as if he were a fascinating academic subject that caught her intrigue.
“Well, I was scared of him at first, but I can tell deep down that he’s still the same baby dragon that he was before he left. He’s a sweety and would never hurt anyone,” she said with a big smile. “But I’m afraid that I don’t know very much else about dragons. In fact, I’d guess you would know more than I do, since you’ve lived with Spike for so long.” Twilight sighed and gave up on the subject, dismissing her thoughts for a second time that day.
“I’m sorry if I’m not being much help,” Fluttershy said and looked down at her hooves.
“Oh no, don’t worry about it really,” Twilight reassured her. “You’re absolutely right anyway. Deep down, he is still the same Spike. Now let’s get busy. We have more important things to worry about right now,” she said and followed Fluttershy out the door.
Spike followed Rarity to her studio where she immediately began tearing through her gemstone collection to look for convincing replacements for the Elements of Harmony. She gave her selection to Spike and immediately began fastening pieces of gold together with her magic. Spike looked at Rarity’s design sketches for how each gem should be cut, and began working his claws over a large opal for Applejack’s apple. The two of them worked for a few hours straight exchanging idle chit chat and occasionally lending each other a hand or hoof.
“How does this look?” Rarity eventually asked and Spike looked her up and down. She was wearing her own necklace replica which shimmered and shined with elegance. Spike fumbled to respond to her question to avoid being caught staring.
“It looks great! Is that real gold?” he asked and pointed to her neck.
“Of course not, Spike. I don’t have enough gold lying around for such a job. I fashioned these out of iron pyrite, otherwise known as ‘fool's gold.’ I think they will have our three friends fooled if they were convincing enough for a dragon,” she said with a satisfied smile in Spike’s direction. Spike laughed and continued cutting a diamond for Rarity’s necklace. His claws were sharp enough to slice diamonds, but that didn't mean the process was not difficult. He slowly and carefully ran his index claw down the sides of each corner to give them an nice smooth finish.
A long silence stretched out between the two of them. Spike searched frantically for something to talk about, but continuously drew a blank. After spending months apart, was idle small talk really all he could do around Rarity? He found himself replaying what Shining Armor told him in Canterlot. Of course Rarity was his friend. So shouldn’t friends be able to talk to each other? His claws began shaking as he nervously shifted his gaze from his hands to Rarity.
“Spike!” Rarity said with a gasp. He looked back down and noticed that he had cut his diamond clean in half. He fumbled with the pieces which flew in opposite directions. Rarity caught them both and floated them up to her face for closer inspection.
“Oh, I suppose I can find a use for these later. Be more careful with this next one will you?” she said and floated another diamond into his hand. He apologized and continued cutting nervously, keeping himself completely focused on finishing the job. After nearly another hour of work, the two of them gathered the replicas together and admired their work.
“These look great!” Spike said with a glint in his eye.
“Indeed, these will work nicely. I’d say the tiara came out the best,” she said putting a hoof on Twilight’s element of magic.
“Yeah. You could even use it again after we’re done with it,” he suggested.
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“You could use them for a . . . you know, a fashion thing,” Spike said before immediately feeling like an idiot. Rarity laughed at his fumbling.
“Oh yes, indeed, I’ve had so many 'fashion things' recently,” she said and gestured to her manikins. They were all wearing magnificent pieces of clothing from dresses to simple saddles.
“Just last week I got a request to do a dressage piece for a haberdashery in Las Pegasus, and they wanted 10 saddles to be laden in felt with garter-stitching. Can you believe them? How bold!” she said and made a grand motion with her hoof to illustrate her point. Spike put on as friendly a face as he could without letting her know that he did not have a clue what she was talking about.
“Since we're done, I could also use your opinion on these suit pieces,” she said and began walking to the other end of the studio. Some taller masculine manikins were dressed in tuxedo-type suits, and Rarity pointed to each one explaining what they were all for.
“Wow,” Spike said, trying to show his enthusiasm.
“So which do you think is best?” she asked and waited for his thoughts on the matter. Spike looked at each one and observed them as closely as he could. After nearly a solid minute of silence between the two of them, Spike nervously looked for words. They all looked exactly the same to him, so he decided to answer simply.
“That one,” he said and pointed to the one in the center.
“Really? I was close to scrapping the design, so why this one?” she asked looking at the suit, clearly perplexed.
“It’s . . . uh. I like the tie?” he said and she scoffed at his answer.
“The tie is the same on all of them, dear,” she said and walked back to their collection of replicas. Spike sighed and looked back at the suits in front of him, honestly unaware of any real differences between them.
“Why don’t you tell me more about your time in Canterlot? I just love the sophisticated air of the royal city,” she said and looked upwards as if she were daydreaming.
“Well, I spent most of my time studying or training with Princess Luna, so I didn’t spend much time around city folk. But I did go in to Pony Joe’s nearly every other day. Maybe that’s what made me grow so fast,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“Where’s that, darling?” she said with cocked eyebrow.
“Remember the place we all went to after the Grand Galloping Gala?” he reminded her.
“Ah yes . . . the donut shop,” she said and looked back down at her table. “I hope you don’t find this offensive, Spike, but you are simply missing the amazing things about Canterlot! The balls, the museums, the culture and class! The last time I was there, I thought I’d never leave,” she said reminiscing about Twilight’s Coronation.
“Well . . .” Spike began to retort, but came up short. He had lived there his entire life before coming to Ponyville, but never really saw the point of the fancier parts of town. It was expensive just to look at stuff in some places, so he would go to where his friends were instead. The only answer he could come up with was truer than he realized.
“I always went were Twilight needed me to,” he said and shrugged.
“Well, dearest, to each their own,” she said and began gathering up the spare gemstone scraps with her magic.
Spike noticed something odd. He was usually giddy whenever Rarity choose to speak to him, but at that moment he found himself at a loss for words and unable to describe his mood. He wasn’t exactly upset at anything, but he wasn’t particularly happy. Was he bored? He tried to justify the word in his mind, but there was nothing else to it. He had no interest in talking fashion with Rarity any more than she had interest in talking with him about Moondancer’s crazy parties or Rune Reader’s philosophies of time.
“Is something wrong, Spike?” she asked caringly. He shook his head out of his funk.
“Not at all. I’m just going to get moving. I need to talk with Knight Wing and convince him to chase but not catch 3 wanted criminals,” he said and gestured to the window.
Rarity patted her purple friend on the shoulder and lit her horn in her blue magic.
“Take these to snack on the way there. These are too small to use in any of my pieces so you should have them for a job well done,” she said and floated the scrap gemstones into his hand. When Spike was smaller, this would have set his heart aflame. But he could chomp down the pile in one bite these days, so the gesture was merely an example of the element of generosity at work. Spike thanked her and made his way to the door. He shot Rarity one more glance before exiting her studio.
That was weird, he thought to himself. It’s not like Rarity had changed at all in the time he spent away, so something must have been new about him that was throwing him off. He flicked a few shards of rubies into his muzzle while pondering the idea. He was certainly taller now, and knew a little more about how to breath fire and such, but he still felt like the same dragon whose heart fluttered into the heavens at the sound of her voice. The advice Shining Armor had given him seemed flawed now, because she was clearly a good friend of his. So what happened back there?
The sun was starting to set. He'd need to get a move on, or else Knight Wing would chase them to Appleloosa before they could execute their trap. He shoved the rest of the shards in his mouth and kicked off the ground, fluttering into the air. Focusing on convincing Knight Wing to cooperate would help ease his mind from these stupid thoughts he was having.
The night carried on with a chilling wind sweeping over the treetops. Deep in the Everfree Forest, Dawn Treader paced back and forth muttering angrily to himself. He and Milla Nare took shelter from any Night Watch scouts underneath a particularly thick brush of trees. Milla sat quietly on the edge of a branch, watching her inconsolable companion walk from left to right like a grandfather clock’s pendulum.
“She was right there. She was mine, I had her. Why couldn’t we keep her?” he mumbled.
“Oh will you just keep your stupid mouth closed? She’s gone because the Night Watch showed up, just like I said they would. Now look at us. Broke and hunted. And since we’re trying to avoid being spotted, your constant whining will be the next thing that gets us caught,” Milla Nare scolded.
“Easy for you to say, Milla!” Dawn protested. “Sure you lost your gold, but there’s tons of it out there for grabs. There is only one Princess Twilight, and she was right in my grasp,” he said and sat down looking pitifully defeated.
“Quiet you two!” Warmonger hissed from the base of the tree. He raised a hoof and held his ear high. The three of them sat quietly listening to the night sky closely.
“Is it the Watch?” Milla whispered.
“No, but I’d say we have a guest. I can hear something odd,” Warmonger said and the other two gathered close. The closer they drew, the more clearly they could hear the odd sound. It was a voice, but it was so tiny and faint, it sounded like a mouse's voice.
“I’ll say you have a guest,” said the voice with a squeak. Warmonger raised his hoof to his ear and moaned in pain. The other two watched as he started to shake and squirm. His ear twitched violently as his groans got louder. Suddenly, a small figure appeared from his ear canal.
“What is that thing?” Milla said in shock.
“I do always love it when they say that,” the figure said as it slithered out of Warmonger’s ear. “By the way, you simply must start cleaning more in there. I’m going to need a serious bath to get all this wax out.”
Warmonger rubbed his ear and angrily growled at the floating serpent in front of him. In a flash, the tiny figure vanished, then reappeared before them in another flash. He was 10 times the size and somehow bathing himself in a bubble bath that appeared along with him. Warmonger’s eyes went narrow as he inspected the creature in front of him.
“I know you,” he said slowly and prepped his legs for a fight. “You’re Discord.”
“The one and only,” Discord said with a valiant salute. Dawn Treader looked up at the grotesque combination of 5 or 6 different creatures in disgust.
“Well, whoever he is, he’s not going to get us caught,” Milla Nare said and opened her wings with a mighty flap and charged him. She growled as she hurled herself claws drawn at the bathing creature.
“Hmmm, I call tails,” Discord scolded and snapped his fingers at the charging griffon. In a flash, the flying predator transformed into a gold bit, which Discord skillfully caught and looked at his palm. “Aha! Tails! I win.”
“What do you want?” Warmonger asked carefully. Discord thought his question over while flipping the Milla Nare bit into the air with his thumb a few times. Her shrieks could be heard as she flipped through the air dizzyingly.
“Would you believe me if I said I wanted to help you?” Discord proposed.
“No,” Dawn Treader said flatly.
“And why not? We have the same goal after all,” he chuckled. Dawn treader raised his hoof and pointed it accusingly at him.
“I’ve read about you. You’re ‘reformed’ now. You’re friends with the princesses, and you helped them defeat Tirek!” Dawn spat.
“And what exactly did this book say, may I ask?” Discord replied. He flipped the squawking griffon-coin in the air one more time and vanished with another snap of his fingers. Milla Nare appeared back to her old self and struggled to stand from the disorientation. Discord reappeared behind them holding a thick leather book flipping through the pages. He donned some reading glasses on and thumbed through a few lines.
“Ah! I see, it says it right here. I joined Tirek and helped him wreak havoc among pony kind. Only after he was defeated did I ‘re-reform’ myself,” he said curling his fingers in quotation marks. “The truth is, ever since they let me out of that stone prison, I’ve been at the mercy of the Elements of Harmony. They are the one power that can contain me, and despite my best efforts, I have always failed to deal with them properly,” he finished and tossed his book behind him, where it turned into a hen upon reaching the ground and scuttling off. “Call me chicken, but I think it’s time I let somepony else handle them for me.”
“So you’re going to help us do what exactly?” Milla Nare asked after regaining her balance.
“Simple, little birdy. You take the elements, and I finally get to dole out some delicious anarchic justice on the ponies who have ruled my life since my release,” he said and bowed to the three of them.
“We don’t need your help, Discord,” Warmonger threatened.
“Oh, but don’t you? Do you know where the elements are right now?” Discord asked with another chuckle. The three of them kept silent long enough for his point to get across.
“Well don’t beat yourself up too much about it. Even if you did find them, you’d also find a stubborn barrier of magic placed around them. And I don’t care how powerful you think you are, you are up against an alicorn princess. Those are nasty, and they never play by the rules. Trust me, I know,” he said and re-enacted his prison by turning himself into a stone statue of himself. But this time, he remained frozen with a cheeky grin on his face.
“So what do you want from us?” Dawn Treader asked him.
“Well, I can agree to help on one condition. I want Ponyville,” he said and re-materialized into his natural self. “I’ll help you disable the barrier surrounding the elements, if in exchange you give me Ponyville. Everywhere beyond that is your business, but Ponyville, and it’s inhabitants, are my playground. Agreed?”
Warmonger squinted at the agent of chaos before him. If he could help them get the elements of harmony, he could always turn him back into stone if he double-crossed them. The white unicorn shot his two associates a glance, and they nodded their approval.
“You can start by telling us where they are.”