The Cryssaling pt 2

by storm the castle

Dreams and crowns and advice, oh my!

Ch 3 Dreams and crowns and advice, oh my!

Spike felt out-right rotten at the moment, as he walked sullenly back to the library. It was fairly gloomy in this area, since the cloud patrol had to give the nearby park a bit of extra rain on account of the summer weather.

“Geez, the only thing I think I got right was the slop, and that’s not exactly something to go tellin’ people about.” He said to himself. “Maybe I oughta just stick to what I know.”

Unfortunately, the more Spike thought about that statement, the more he couldn’t figure out what exactly that was. Living with Twilight Sparkle, however, had given him the tools to handle the situation. Make a list. “Let’s see, what am I good at?” he asked of no-one in particular. “I’m an excellent napper, though I don’t think that’s much better than the slop. I can organize the library with my eyes closed, but I’ve been doing that for Twi for years, so I don’t think she’ll suddenly start paying me now.” He thought harder, tapping his chin. “I’m a pretty fair cook, maybe I could go to a restaurant?” while he did most of the cooking at the library, his skills were a bit limited, so he doubted he could get any work for that.

Something he had been told about his chryssaling struck out at him then; Twilight said that he had finished by breathing lightning instead of fire when he took down that dragon dame. “Aw, yeah! Maybe I could get a job on the weather team, making lightning for cheap!” he felt like he had struck gold here, but still Twilights habits stuck with him. He had to test it.

Looking above him, he spotted exactly what he needed; a stray cloud, wrung out of its liquidy contents. “Okay, how do I do it now?” he pondered. So, he began to blow fire at the high up target, scaring a few passerby’s onto the other side of the street. When adding more fire didn’t seem to work, and he had worn himself out, he began to think back to the moment it had first happened, though it was still quite fuzzy in his mind. He remembered the rage, the other dragon, and the need to protect his friends, but there was something else, something key to that particular moment that he was missing.

Suddenly, it came to him. Magic! It was different because instead of the regular thirty percent magic his fire had, he had poured every ounce of magic he had into the bolt to create it. So that meant, instead of simply breathing, he had to concentrate on his inner magic.

This was very difficult for the poor drake, as he had never done it before the chryssaling, which in itself had been more instinct than any conscious effort. When he couldn’t find it as a physical area of his body, he began to mope. “Dangit, this is stupid!” he told himself. “I know I can do it, so why won’t it work?!”

Fed up, Spike decided to try and rest here in the park. Maybe a nap could help him get his thoughts straight. One final comment escaped him, more of an admiring statement than a self-depreciating one; “I bet that dame could do it.” Curled up under the cloud, the sound of rain in the distance and thoroughly exhausted, Spike found himself drifting off to sleep.
***************************

Spike was in a large cave, surrounded by so many glittering jewels and piles of gold that it bathed the area in a warm light of its own. He sat contentedly in the center, not entirely sure if the hoard was even his, but fully ready to accept it as his own.

But then, from a corner of the cave he couldn’t see, a voice called out to him. “Spike!” it said, silky and soft, and undeniably feminine. “Spike, are you there?” It called again.

Spike lifted his head to the voice, and looked to it, but took no defensive posture or aggressive attitude, which he knew was strange for any dragon. But somehow, he knew this voice meant him no harm, that it was the most important thing in the world to him in fact. Around the side of one of the piles of gems, a dragoness flew into view.

The dame in question was dark blue of hide and had a speckled black undercarriage, likewise beneath her elegant wings. Her dorsal ridges shone a magnificent silver, and she had a crescent blade of the same material at the end of her long, graceful tail. “Spike, why didn’t you answer me?” she asked him.

Spike smiled lovingly, and said “Because I wanted to hear you say my name some more.” Swiftly, while she was caught in her giggling, Spike came up to her and lifted her in his arms. She squealed in delight as he cradled her as one might a newborn. “Say my name, lover.” He told her.

She giggled again and leaned her snout to his ear. “Spike.” She said sensually. Spike shivered in response, and again she said “Spike!” sending him into rapture.

“SPIKE!!” called an entirely new (yet distinctly not, he would later note) voice from above. And again, as this dream always seemed to end, Princess Luna descended from above, shining a light on the unknown dragoness that caused her to shatter like glass. “Thou shalt cease this course!” she demanded of him, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Oh, come ON, Luna!” Spike exclaimed hotly, now aware of his status as a dreamer. “Can’t you just let me have it this once? I’m having a crud enough day as it is! Why won’t you even let me dream about her?!” he demanded.

“W-We don’t- Thou art-” she stammered over her words, the barest of blush interrupting the night-blue color of her coat. “T-Thou must pay focus to thine studies!” she managed to stutter out. “Tis unfitting of one so young to dwell on such things.” She nodded her head to finalize the explanation, and in the state he was in, Spike had no mind to question it.

He groaned and sat down on his tail, irritated that no-pony was willing to tell him anything about the dragoness that had helped him so much during his chryssaling. “Fine, whatever, just end the dream so I can get back to sucking at life, then.” He wave at her dismissively.

Registering now that something was troubling the young drake, Luna allowed her embarrassment to ebb away, and calmly asked Spike “Tell us, young drago, what troubles thee so?”

Spike huffed, but relented. Stubbornness was pretty much shot in the realm of dreams since they completely bypassed the speech filter in the brain, so he easily gave in to her and said “Well, you see, I was trying to get a job a Sweet Apple Acres today.”

“For what cause?” Luna asked, having now taken a seat next to him on a conjured cushion. (Ones rump could fall asleep even in the realm of sleep, it seemed, a state which translated irritatingly well to her corporeal body.) “Tis it not Twilight Sparkle’s duty as thy guardian to provide for thee?”

“No, no, it’s nothing to do with Twi.” He waved dismissively. He offhandedly noted that he was now eyelevel with her, as a result of his perfect self-image from the dream. “I just decided that I was old enough to start getting my own bits, and Apple Bloom said they might need me at the farm.”

Luna knew that he was only telling half the truth, however, and nudged him playfully. “Oh really? Is that all?”

Spike blushed a bit. “Well, I might’ve heard Rarity only likes guys who can support themselves.” He told her sheepishly.

Luna nodded sagely. “Tis true, a stallion of means is quite a bit more desirable as a suitor.” She looked at him then. “What else hast thou given effort to?”

Spike shrugged. “Nothing, actually. I’ve considered making lightning for the thunder clouds, but I can’t figure out how I did it.”

Luna gave a small harrumph. “The issue of thine thunderous talent aside, didst thou truly expect to find success upon only thy first venture?” When Spike shrunk down a bit in shame, it became clear he had. “Folly, I say!” she stood suddenly and placed herself directly in Spikes view. (His entire view; mare got a whole lotta body) “Thou art blessed with the gift of friends and freedom! Do not cast these aside in so swift a manner!”

When Spike showed he didn’t quite understand (“uhhhhhhhhhhh”) Luna elaborated, albeit in a calmer tone. “Thou hath many an interest and art gifted with numerous talents, yes?” he nodded. “Then pursue these as a course of employment!”

“I already thought about it, Princess, but I don’t think there’s much of a call for ‘champion napper!’” he said, his trademark sarcasm shining through.

“But we have heard of thine skill as a baker!” she said. “Go unto Pinkie Pie and request an apprenticeship of her!” she declared “Or perhaps at yon gaming saloon, where we ourselves have been bested by thy skill many times!” (It was true; on one of her visits Spike had made a point to introduce her to Mega-Mare and Mario, and had promptly beaten her at both.) She softened now, and returned to a sitting position. “Dost thou yet see? Opportunity abounds in this modern age, and thou art quite capable of finding a destiny of thine own choosing therein.”

Spike sat up straight and smiled at her, glad to have regained some direction in his quest. “Now, onto thy other issue.” She said, confident that his main troubles were gone. “Thou spoke of an issue with thy thunder ability?”

“Yeah,I can’t do it.” Spike responded coolly.

“Couldst thou tell us the extent of thy attempts?” she asked him.

Spike nodded and spoke. “I realized it was a manifestation of magic fairly fast, but that’s as far as I got.”

She cocked her head and furrowed her brow. “We are not sure of thy meaning.”

He gestured with his hands aimlessly for a moment. “It’s like, I know what it was, and what I was looking for, but that’s it.” Again, a questioning look greeted him, and again, he took a moment to find his meaning. “I know its magic, but I’ve never used magic before, and I don’t know how I did it then, so I can’t for life of me do it again.”

Luna nodded, not entirely sure what he was getting at but willing to work with what he had already offered. “Well, instead of working solely from thine muddled memories of the situation, perhaps a full accounting of the incident would help. Can thou walk us through the extent of thy knowledge of the occurrence?”

Spike crossed his legs beneath him and thought on it. Fortunately, in the realm of dreams the blockages presented by ones environment and prior input do not exist, and so the information came quickly to him, even going so far as to morph the area around him to match a still shot of the moment, a singular capturing of the situation.

For the first time in two weeks, the two stood in the cave in the rock quarry, with the Elements of Harmony on one side of the cave and a pile of glittering gems and jewels on the other. In the middle, Spike, who had taken the place of the memory of himself, faced off against the unnamed dark dragoness, standing between her crouching visage and his frightened friends. Spike had taken on a form more similar to his current physical stature, though lacked any of the presence or fury he had possessed at the time. Luna stood off to the side of the conjured image, looking around in a minor state of nostalgia. “Now, Spike, canst thou walk us through the situation verbally?” however, she received no response. When she looked to where the dragon had been, she found him absent. “Spike?”

Some more swiveling head action later, and Luna found her face suddenly enveloped by her own hoof, in what the youth of the era referred to as a ‘face-hoof.’ Spike had near instantly forgotten the purpose he had initially set out with, and was now on his belly before the conjured Dame of his dreams. (Yay! Situational Puns!) He had taken to making goo-goo eyes at her and making kissy faces.

“Spike!” Luna hollered. “Forget thy hormones, and focus on one issue at a time!!”

Spike jumped at her screaming, then grumbling got to his feet. “Joy-kill.” He muttered. Luna rolled her eyes, and gestured for him to return to the center of the room. Once in position, she asked him again to recite the facts of the moment out loud. “Well,” he began, “I was standing right here, that much I remember.” He pointed to the girls behind him. “I think I was concerned about them getting hurt, because Twilight says I was actually protecting them from-” his finger swung wide, back to the dragoness. He immediately went to goofy teen mode and the ogling started again, a wide grin plastered on his face. “-her.”

“Spiiiiiike.” Luna growled threateningly. She and the others had decided it was best not to tell him it had been her transformed into a dragon that he had fought, since there was a chance his draconic instincts might start the chryssaling again if there was a chance they had been faked. However, the young drake had been trying her patience on the subject with his newly cropped up (near)wet dreams of the Luna-gon, sometimes involving Rarity as well, making it even more creepy. She and Luna sounded so similar,(what’s up with that?) it might trigger a realization in the drago, which could not be tolerated.

Spike shook his head and had enough shame to smile apologetically at her before continuing. “You and Twilight said the bolt itself was almost raw magic, but since you had spent a week getting rid of mine, it must have come from them when they were made into my dragon hoard.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “So, maybe there’s a magic reserve for storing what I take from them? But that still doesn’t tell me how to use it.” He was beginning to get frustrated, and crossed his arms with a huff.

However, Luna came to his side and placed a hoof on his shoulder. “Me’thinks that perhaps there is no separate reserve, and their magic became thine own.” She thought for a second before coming up with a possible answer. “You say that thy purpose was the defense of thy hoard yes?” he nodded. “Perhaps, then, the key is to focus on them, on all they mean to thee and thy will to protect them.”

After considering her words for a moment, and looking about the scene to confirm for himself, he suddenly cracked a huge grin and nodded happily. “Yeah, I bet you’re right!” he exclaimed animatedly, excited with his breakthroughs. “Thanks a lot, Princess! You’re really great to help me like this!” he started to bow, but the sound of Luna laughing caused him to hesitate and look upon her in confusion instead.

She smiled affectionately and leaned down to place her muzzle to the top of his head. “Tis’ only fitting, as our duties include the patrolling of dreams.” She straightened out then. “However, thou need not address so formally. Merely Luna will suffice. We art thy friend after all, are we not?”

Spike grinned wide at the Princess. “Of course Luna, that’d be-”
***************************

Spike sat bolt upright beneath the cloud under which he had fallen asleep, and immediately began spewing forth a midnight blue flame, his eyes glowing and his hide taking on a slight magical luster. It passed in a moment, after which Spike fell back to his side. “Ugh,” he groaned. “This better not be a thing every time I make a friend.”

Comments

[Smurf]

i want to see more SpikeXLuna, maybe have Celestia find out about Spikes crush and set up a date or something

[Ignaltus]

You forgot that Spike is a good cutter jewelry, at least good enough to impress a fashionister who has been working with jewelry throughout your life.
Spike possesses also counted in Canterlot, good enough to get a celebrity to bring a small rural town.
Spike can also send messages magical. Of course, he can hopefully expect some of that expertise beyond just send them to Celestia.

[Ignaltus]

4247357
Now, it seems more like a revenge for all other dates that Luna threw Celestia another fic.

[DX-1118 C]

4247357 Smurf that Smurf! That's a smurfing good idea!