//------------------------------// // On Their Way // Story: The Rise of Species: Dragons // by Zarmflamekin //------------------------------// Flying far faster than before, Twilight and Spike made it back to the entrance of the cavern in mere minutes, neither speaking or thinking of what they might find at the end of the cave. As natural light began shining down on the pair, Twilight gave one more great burst of energy into her wings, angling herself upwards as to have a greater aerial view. Upon exiting the darkness, the two briefly blinked to accommodate the change before frantically looking around for any indication of a struggle. Or slaughter. “Princess?” Twilight and Spike’s heads snapped around to see Pointed Eye coming up to them. Twilight quickly descended to meet the guard halfway. “Thank Celestia, are you two all right?” Twilight asked the befuddled guard. “We are Princess, why wouldn’t we be?” “Did you see Dazzle- I mean, a dragoness- come out earlier?” Spike asked. Pointed Eye nodded. “We did, but she shot right on by that way.” Pointed Eye gestured off toward the west. “Steady and I were discussing whether we should check on you just as you came out.” Twilight bit her lip as she looked off into the distance to where Pointed Eye had directed. “Oh, this is bad. Very, very bad.” “Princess?” Pointed Eye cocked his head to the side. “There’s a colony of dragons nearby to which that dragoness is a part of, and she just got some very troubling news from Spike.” She explained, garnering an inquisitive look from Pointed to Spike, but Spike only shook his head sadly. “We need to get to her before she gets back to her clan.” “No offense Princess, but I think that dragoness would give the Wonderbolts a run for their bits.” Pointed looked out toward the broad expanse to the west. “She might already be back there.” “Buck.” Twilight muttered, making Spike’s eyes shoot open. Twilight never talked like that, ever. And he had been threatened with a bar of soap on many an occasion if she ever found out he had. A bit louder, Twilight addressed the guard. “Get Steady Wing and head back for Canterlot.” That made Pointed Eye whip his attention back around. “Princess, are you saying-“ “Spike and I will make sure everything is all right with Dazzle and then head back for Ponyville.” Twilight cut off. Pointed Eye opened his mouth, but was once again cut off by Twilight. “By order of Princess Twilight Sparkle, Corporal Pointed Eye and Corporal Steady Wing are to return to Canterlot and inform Princess Celestia of our expedition to the best of their abilities. If, and only if, there is no contact between myself and Canterlot within the next 24 hours, consider myself incapacitated to do so and organize an intensive investigation of the dragon colony to which we are leaving. Am I clear Corporal?” Pointed Eye snapped to attention and gave a salute. “Yes Ma’am!” He called out, before blinking in a bit of confusion. “And the chariot contents?” “To be held by Princess Celestia as she sees fit until my return. Now off Corporal!” Pointed Eye gave one more firm salute before diving back down to the ground. Twilight aimed herself in the direction Pointed Eye gave and began flying in earnest. As they were passing over the Badland’s boarder cliff ring, Spike spoke up. “Twilight, do you really think chasing after Dazzle is really a good idea? Especially if she’s going back to dragon’s who’ll back her up?” Spike asked, leaning forward next to Twilight’s ear to make sure she heard him. “She was scared Spike.” Twilight spoke up without looking back. “She was fidgety, haunched, and clawing the ground. Her pounce was about as much as getting at you as getting past you. This ‘greed growth’ thing is obviously something she knows about that we don’t.” “And going after her yourself is your best plan?” There was a flash of doubt over Twilight’s face, but her wings kept up their pace. “There’s not a lot of options Spike. She’s the closest- no, only- source of dragon knowledge we have. If we let her get back to her clan, we may never see her again, whether because the clan doesn’t let us or because she doesn’t let us. We have a good- well, mostly good- first impression. We can’t just let it fall through because of one small detail!” ’Small’ she says. Spike groaned internally. I think Pinkie might be rubbing off on her too much. “So what are you going to do if we catch up? Fight her down?” “Of course not. We talk her down.” Spike rolled his eyes at that. Dazzle hardly listened to them with a grand authority behind them. And that was a level headed Dazzle. A panicky Dazzle would probably scorch them out the sky before they knew what happened. Spike looked back ahead to see if he could spot any sort of disturbance that could indicate a dragoness, but even while flying over dry planes with only spare outcroppings of trees, there was no sign of anybody ahead of them. After a few minutes Twilight had stopped flying and was only gliding ahead, soon coming down and landing with little less than a skid. Spike quickly hopped down and turned to ask what Twilight had seen to call for them to land, but a cloud of dust cut his question short. Twilight had collapsed, wings and legs splayed in six directions with her face planted in the dirt. He honestly would have laughed if he didn’t know she had flown to exhaustion because of his stupidity. “Uh… just… rest up Twi. I’ll... do something.” Spike murmured, Twilight letting out a light groan of acknowledgement. So Spike began looking around where she had landed. It was a mostly open field with tall grass coming up to his own knees, with a thin spread of trees surrounding them. He knew Twilight needed at least a quick break before she could take off again, and a water break wouldn’t hurt that. That was before Spike remembered that the Guards had been ordered to take all of their stuff back to Canterlot, to which Spike slapped himself on his forehead before dragging it down slowly in annoyance. And this is what happens when decisions are made on the fly. Spike groaned internally, before lightly chuckling. Hehe, fly. Spike walked up to one of the lone trees that were standing about and looked up. All of the branches were too far up for him to grab and climb to the top, and there didn’t seem to be any sort of fruit he could, theoretically, kick down. He sighed and sat down against the tree, with nothing better to do than wait for Twilight to get her strength back to keep going, or at least enough to sit up and think of an actual plan on tracking down Dazzle. He propped his head on his fist as he watched over Twilight, not trusting his own meager strength to attempt to move her anywhere. Having nothing better to do, Spike began to really think about the last moments with Dazzle. And a bit more specifically, the rocks. He had had a moment to look about as Twilight ordered Pointed Eye around, and everything looked like it had before going in to meet Pyrathy. Everything had been its regular red-brown color without any weird pulsing light. Even about that red light, when did it really start? Pondering a bit, Spike concluded it was in the cave leading to Pyrathy that the light started, the entire cavern in and out had been dark, and even before meeting Pyrathy, the connecting cave had been dark to a point. So, was it really something to do with Spike, or with Pyrathy? Because when leaving, the glow had gone right up to the connection cave’s exit to the outside. And what was with the color difference? Why had the stone started turning a darker red when Dazzle clawed into it, but nothing happened when he did? It obviously meant that the darker stone wasn't underneath the lighter one, and the color radiated from the marks, but didn’t cause any mark of their own. Had Dazzle been preparing to do something before she pounced, or was her pounce her end goal? Was it even magic? Was it all an innate dragon magic Spike had no clue about due to being raised by ponies? It might be entirely possible, Dazzle didn’t seem to have any problems navigating the caves, and they also hadn’t raised a question about it in their talk. But did they even know what he knew was magic? As Spike thought, Dazzle never said anything about magic, she said things like ‘flame’ and ‘source retention’. Were there factors he didn’t know about that made him dangerous? What if what he was seeing wasn’t magic? An audible groan caught Spike’s attention as he saw Twilight begin to shift, her wings slowly lifting off the ground and fold back against her and her face rolling to the side to get out of the dirt. At the same moment of her groan, Spike heard a faint rustle. He sat up straight, quickly scanning the grass for anything moving, whether it was Dazzle or not wasn’t a concern to him in that moment. Then he saw it, a single leaf falling from a tree past Twilight to his right. Spike began to scan the branches for anything that could possibly be a threat. But as nothing happened, Spike could begin to feel his breath being caught in his throat, but he didn’t dare let his tension leave him. On his third pass over the tree, he noticed an oddity, there was a patch of darkness that didn’t seem to shift in the breeze, and he could tell there was size behind whatever was in the tree. And as Spike kept his eyes on the mass, he saw the glimmer of an eye. An amber eye. “Dazzle.” Spike breathed, but his relaxation for finding the unknown was quickly wound back up as Spike now had to worry what Dazzle would do with Twilight in such a compromised position. He couldn’t tell what she could be planning, he needed to protect Twilight from Dazzle, but at the same time, he was the reason Dazzle was as high strung as she was. There was only one thing Spike could think of to make Dazzle pass over Twilight. Make her focus on him. “Dazzle, I see you.” Spike spoke up, spying a questioning look from Twilight as she shifted to look over at him. There was no reaction for a second, but soon enough a mass fell from the tree Spike had been eyeing. The mass soon stood and assumed the form of Dazzle, wings slightly flared, all claws on the ground, but she wasn’t bunched up this time. Instead, there was a weary look in her eyes as she glanced between the downed alicorn and lax dragon whelp. “Why did you chase me?” Dazzle asked, just bordering on accusation. Spike felt rash action would get him rash responses, so he didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked to Twilight, who was looking increasingly worried about her own position of exhaustion. Spike slowly sighed. “I don’t rightly know.” He answered. “Twilight and I started following when the guards told us which way you went.” “Guards? I didn’t see any… wait.” Dazzle huffed as she began to circle around her tree, eyes seeming to dart in random directions, before lying down in front of the tree, slowly shaking her head from side to side. “Where were your guards?” Spike gave a concerned look to Twilight, who lightly shrugged. “They were on the ground. You probably flew right past them in your hurry to get out.” Dazzle growled as she lay her head down over her claws. “I still should have seen them.” Spike didn’t see a point to continue to question what was on her mind, and Twilight wasn’t in a position to ask. Instead, Spike let them sit there in silence, waiting to feel if there was a way to properly break the ice. Minutes passed by before Dazzle finally raised her head to address Spike. “How did you break it?” At Spike’s quirked brow, she elaborated “You’re greed growth.” If it’s true. Spike felt the unsaid accusation, but let the doubt slide. Thinking back to his time as a monstrous behemoth of a dragon, Spike hesitated in answering. He didn’t know how she would react, but the truth was the truth. “I didn’t break it alone.” That alone made Dazzle sit up a bit straighter. “And I probably almost didn’t.” That made Dazzle start to glower, making Spike hasten into his story. “I had been saving a particular ruby for a birthday meal, and I was making the final touches to it when… when one of our friends saw me with it. I kind of couldn’t say no when she asked me for it.” Spike’s cheeks still heated a bit at the before and after of the incident. “So when I went full on mindless hoarder, one of the things I picked up was our friend. And she had just so happened to have fashioned the ruby into a necklace. She kind of didn’t recognize me at that point, and when I eyed the ruby,” Spike chuckled. “She berated me for it!” That shocked Dazzle a little bit and looked down to Twilight, who at this point had been able to tuck her legs back under herself. Thinking back to what she had heard of greed growth dragons, and seeing just how small Twilight Sparkle was, Dazzle couldn’t help but chuckle in kind at the absurdity of a pony berating a full blown greed dragon. There was light laughter in the field before Spike found himself to continue. “And she said that that ruby had been given to her by, and I quote, ‘the kindest, sweetest, most generous dragon ever’. And when she said that, I remembered back to doing just that, and I looked back at what I had done and thought ‘Would that dragon be doing this?’ And then I kind of snapped back to this.” Spike gestured to himself. Dazzle was profoundly stunned at the account, if not a true account, then at the fact that a dragon, any dragon, freely gave up something of their own, even to a friend. Her focus drifted away from the other two, back out to the fields, contemplating what it could mean for a greed dragon to revert back to a previous state. Twilight, on the other hand, was gazing deeply at Spike. They never really talked about what happened after the rampage incident. He had seemed so morose over the damage to Ponyville that she had wanted to give him some space to think, and then Rarity had seemed to cheer him right up from any sort of funk. Though she did have to insist on him bathing three days after the incident. In short, she was both proud that Spike had been able to see that what he had been doing was wrong, and worried that, if it had not been for Rarity, he would have been lost like that most likely forever. “Can… Can I ask you something?” Spike spoke up, returning Dazzle’s attention to him. She gave him a slow nod in return. “How did you find Pyrathy?” Dazzle was silent for a second, seeming to consider something before she answered. “It’s been told through my clan to follow the flowing stone pillars for the entrance, and our nose for the chamber.” She said simply. And that gave Spike the answer he felt he needed, but he had to make sure. “And when you went toward the chamber, did anything change?” That had Dazzle begin to doubt this line of questioning. “Of course not. Father is reclusive, not elusive. He makes no attempts in hiding from those He calls.” And Spike was sure now, Dazzle had not a clue about the red stone or the deeper red cracks. “Thanks Dazzle.” Spike sighed as he looked at the ground, a bit dejected in getting nowhere. So the three sat in silence once more, with an occasional shifting from one for a more comfortable position. None of them really knew where to go from here. The silence was finally broken by Twilight as she stood, stretching out and sighing. “Well, we need to be going Spike.” “Where?” “Home, Spike. We’ve spent enough time here and there’s nothing to gain from wasting Dazzle’s time here as well. We also need to get somewhere with paper so we can contact Princess Celestia and let her know what’s going on with… whatever this is.” Twilight gestured her hoof in the air. “What about Pyrathy’s request?” Spike asked, not getting up from his position against the tree. “It’s not really something I can just ignore.” “And we’re not.” Twilight elaborated. “But like you said, dragons live for a long time, we can start this another day. There’s nothing stopping us from starting at a later date.” Spike looked up at Twilight, as she had walked over to him, and was now offering a helping hoof up with a condoling smile. But something seemed off for Spike as he looked at Twilight’s hoof, but he just couldn’t place it for the longest time. And as he accepted the help up, something seemed to click for Spike. “Why later though?” Spike asked as he fully stood. Twilight’s smile seemed to twitch a little bit. “Oh, you know. Information gathering, dragon clan layouts and hierarchy. There’s a lot we need to look into before we can even think of starting any sort of reformation.” “But Twilight, you know there’s not that much in the way of pony research into dragons. That’s what has us stumbling around in the first place.” “Well it’s not like we took all that much time to look into it before coming out here.” Twilight rebutted. “There can be so much in the Canterlot archives that we could dig up that could lead to a more precise-“ “She’s stalling. That's what's wrong.” Dazzle spoke up, seeming to have read Spike's mind, and making Twilight whip her head around. Dazzle hadn’t moved an inch, and in all seemed more relaxed than before, seeming to pick at something between her claws. “Stalling for what?” Spike asked over Twilight’s shoulder. “I am not-!” Twilight began to defend. “So you forget.” Dazzle asserted as she stood up on all fours, slowly making her way over to the pair. “So you forget about what Father asked you to do and so that you stay with her under the guise of looking for what you want.” Dazzle now stood alongside Twilight, and even abreast from each other Dazzle was a head taller than Twilight, and much more muscular, Spike noticed. Dazzle, for her part, was looking down at Twilight impassively as she glared back at the dragoness. “And while I still stand by my assertion that visiting my clan is not the best or brightest option, I think it would be better than never doing it at all.” That made Twilight go from anger to shock in a time that would impress Rainbow Dash. “What!?” “You clearly have no intention of letting Spike near dragon culture. You’re motions are stiff and your words are benign. Anybody with a decent set of eyes can see that you intend to drown all meaningful action behind menial work until a desire for the wanted outcome is snuffed out.” Twilight’s shock reverted back to anger. “I would never stop Spike from perusing his goals! But he needs to be safe and informed if he’s even going to attempt trying to change an entire society! Going in blind is just going to cause problems that could easily be avoided if we look for them beforehoof!” “And how much is enough knowledge?” Dazzle asserted. “How much does he need to know before you feel Spike is safe enough? Well here’s lesson one of dragon culture.” Dazzle lowered her face to be inches in front of Twilight’s. “There is no such thing as safe. Only caution. And to much caution causes you to stand still. And standing still gets you run over and eaten.” Dazzle raised her head back up and huffed. Twilight, for her part, was deeply shaken at how close Dazzle had been and the intensity of the conviction in her eyes. But what broke her was Spike’s next question. “Is it true Twilight? Do you really not want me to go?” Twilight’s vision slowly drifted over to Spike, and the heartbreak there broke her own heart. She could see a look of betrayal and the beginning of tears, making tears to begin to well up in her own. An internal struggle went on in Twilight’s brain between her conscious and unconscious. Eventually, her conscious mind ripped out the answer, and it made Twilight’s head droop. “Yes.” She answered morosely. Her head rose slightly to look at Spike, cutting him off before the question could leave his lips. “I don’t want you to go. I… I don’t want you to change!” Now both Spike and Dazzle’s reactions were that of surprise. “You’re the one thing that’s been constant in my life Spike! Moving to Ponyville, becoming a princess, losing the library, so many other things have happened that I can’t even recount, and you’ve always been there! I can come back from whatever crazy adventure our friends, Princess Celestia, or even Discord send me on, and I can count on you being home with some form of snark that can blow all of that away. And… And if you do this… you’re not going to be the same. I just know it.” Her head dropped once more, tears beginning to fall. Spike could only blink at the admission. He recalled the conversation in the tent, and recalled when she said she didn’t know what she would do without him. But, did she really mean she wouldn’t know what do without how he was now? And then Spike remembered back to his room, and how devoid of anything that was his. And Spike saw the problem. “Twilight,” Spike spoke softly, a claw lifting her face to his own. Her eyes were beginning to turn red, and the tear tracks were obviously visible, but Spike knew what need to be said. “You’re your own mare. You don’t need me.” Twilight’s breath caught in her throat as she tried to retort, but Spike shook his head. “You don’t need me as a crutch. You don’t need me to be the same Spike anymore. You’ve done so much to move forward. And now it’s my turn. I need to step up and be my own drake. We’re both to blame for this, I felt like I was being left behind, and you seem to feel like I was the only thing keeping you up, but that’s looking so far back, nopony’s there anymore. I need to move forward, and I would very much like it if you would help me do that.” Twilight sniffled, but a grin began to touch her lips as she moved forward and nuzzled Spike. “When did you get this smart?” She chuckled, her voice still catching a bit in her throat. “When I started thinking.” Spike joked, making Twilight jerk back mockingly. “The horror!” Twilight’s smile broadened and was matched by Spike’s own, and both began to laugh the heavy mood away. Dazzle, for her part, had moved away to let the two reconnect in their recognition. The smiles were infectious, as even she didn’t seem to be immune to a rise in the corners of her mouth. But remembering what she had planned on doing next, her merriment vanished. She came back to the pair as their laughter was dying, clearing her throat to make sure she had their attention. “While I would not like to interrupt. I still stand by my offer.” A look was shared between Twilight and Spike before Twilight’s eyes shot up. “You mean; you would take us back to your clan?” She asked. Dazzle closed her eyes, bracing herself, before resolutely nodding. “It may not be the best place to start whatever you may plan to change, but a crash course is the best for a dragon. And if Father lead us to meet, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Him.” “Is it far?” Spike asked as he looked at Twilight’s wings. “You did seem to run yourself ragged.” “I can make some good time if I pace myself Spike.” Twilight reassured, her wings twitching slightly. “We did cross a decent portion of the flight in that dash.” Dazzle affirmed. “If we fly moderately, it should not be more than an hour to the clan.” Dazzle looked between the two, both looking at each other with steely determination. She closed her eyes and gave a weary sigh. “And I would be willing to lead you two there.” Twilight and Spike looked each other for a second longer before both gave a firm nod. Twilight dipped her wing and Spike hopped up onto her back. “We’re ready when you are Dazzle.” Twilight spoke up. Dazzle didn’t even bother to look the two in the eye as she turned back west and took to the sky, hoping beyond hope that this was the right thing to do, and wouldn’t get these two killed.