I was sure that was the last chance I had to fix the whole problem. But unluckily Theodore's voice was louder than mine.

"FIRE!!!!"

From behind the curtain of smoke a big crimson projectile was shot at Spike's chest. The expression Spike had let me assume that he expected, as much as I did, that red missile to pierce through his hardened scales.

"SPIKE!!!"

I yelled my friend's name, but Spike didn't seem to be able to hear me anymore. The light of his eyes became fainter until they were completely devoid of it. In vain I tried to stand up and run. None of my muscles wanted to listen to my command, they had already given me more than they could. They demanded rest despite my efforts to move again.

Theodore's victory cry was on its own at the beginning. The soldiers, after witnessing Spike's actions, didn't know if it was correct to celebrate his defeat brought by such cowardly means.
The rock that threatened to kill Theodore and his army still laid upon Spike's back, but the lifeless body of my friend still stood between them.

Never before did I harbor so much hate for anypony as I did for Theodore and myself. I wished from the bottom of my heart for us to suffer the most painful of deaths. With delight I saw the mountain tremble once more. I thought that divine justice would be done and that in the end it would be the mountain the one to punish him and me for our actions. But that delight turned into horror and disbelief once I noticed that the mountain was not going to crush us. Instead it was disappearing around us.
The rocks surrounding us grew fainter. Even the rock Spike still held began to disappear. The starry sky outside began to turn clear and the full moon illuminated marvelously the pearl-white towers of the once lost Canterlot.

Theodore prompted his soldiers to celebrate.

"Look! Look at the beauty of Canterlot! Faithful soldiers of the princesses we have brought upon their return. We have aid them in the defeat of the unnamed evil. Each one of you is a hero, even more so the ones that fell in battle, for they will be special in the princesses eyes!"

One by one the soldiers began to yell and celebrate their victory. Even Wild Rose was somewhat moved by the scene that unfolded before her eye.

"Then...then it was the dragon that unnamed evil we've feared for centuries? But then why, Tome, why would you defend it?"

I shook my head violently. Spike was not the unnamed evil. He was just one of its prisoners. Finally the princesses had managed to defeat that evil, but their victory was so ill timed, that it made look Spike's death like the reason for the return of the lost capital.

"No...no, it isn't like that.
Spike...Spike was just waiting for them to wake up. He was trapped in there for thousands of years waiting to meet again with his friends.
I...I ruined it...I ruined it all...
Everything is my fault..."

The sun rose and floated next to the full moon submerging the world in a strange twilight. The small town Spike mentioned appeared in my sight. I could see the stores shaped like a carousel and a cake, the oak tree that served as a library and the huge apple tree fields Spike mentioned before we parted.

Everpony he knew had returned, only to witnessed what we had done to their friend.