Grief is the Price We Pay

by Scyphi


Repertoire of Magic

Spike made good on that goal as well, and as the following week began, took the time to poke around Vanhoover whenever he went out, time permitting. It wasn’t long before he found Vanhoover had a comic store, and being a bit of a comic enthusiast and longing for the comic collection he had left behind in Ponyville, the dragon quickly found plenty to do there, pursuing the wide selection the actually fairly sizable store held while occasionally taking the time to stop and read ones he took interest in. He couldn’t quite justify buying any of them of course, but he enjoyed having access to them and knowing the option was available to him regardless.

Shortly thereafter he also found that there was game store nearby selling all sorts of games, but more importantly was a key retailer in the area of merchandise for the tabletop game Ogres and Oubliettes which Spike was also a fan of and had been missing his games with fellow player Big McIntosh back in Ponyville lately too. Thorax, however, wasn’t at all familiar with the game, or even what a tabletop game was, so Spike decided that, unlike the comic books at the comic store, he would save a small portion of their funds to try and get at least a basic set for the game, using that to teach Thorax how to play and to hopefully be able to take with them to play in any future travels they make. In the meantime, the game shop had an attached arcade which Spike took the time to introduce to Thorax one day during their lunch break. Also unfamiliar with any sort of electronic gaming that was rapidly gaining popularity as the new technology began to manifest itself in Equestria, the disguised changeling was immediately fascinated with even the most simple of arcade games, to the point that Spike had to physically drag him away when their lunch break ended.

Thorax also continued to explore about town, and now that he effectively had Spike’s permission, started to branch out further than before, further than Spike was more tentatively doing. He found a number of random shops specializing in all sorts of things this way, which Thorax took great joy in exploring, if only to see what it was they had. However it was a tip from Fly Leaf that led Thorax to find what caught his attention the most; the Vanhoover City Library. Here, the changeling in hiding was stunned to find that, through this library, he could access virtually any trove of written information he desired without restriction, and he marveled at how diverse a selection he had before him.

As it turned out, in the changeling hive, written knowledge in any form, book or otherwise, wasn’t so readily available. According to Thorax, this was largely due to previous turmoil in changeling culture that resulted in the loss of a great deal of written knowledge, many decades before even Queen Chrysalis’s birth. As a result, any remaining written knowledge, as well as any new works written thereafter, were kept very secure by the presently ruling changeling queen and were not made accessible to the changeling public without her permission or the supervision of an authorized changeling looking after the text’s safety. When they weren’t in use, they were kept locked up in a secure archive deep within the hive. The only time Thorax was allowed to even see these texts while still in the changeling hive was during his schooling when they were pulled out for teaching only, and even then he and his fellow students were closely supervised by both the attending educator and the assigned caretaker of that particular text while it was pulled out. Thorax explained that this was all done for the protection of the texts, but Spike secretly suspected changeling queens such as Chrysalis also used it to manipulate what her subjects could and could not learn, so to ensure she maintained fine control over them. Knowledge, after all, is a powerful thing.

Whatever the case, Thorax saw he now had a unique opportunity to read any book he desired for a change and was nearly overwhelmed by the possibilities. The first time he visited the library he tried to read as many texts as he could and was dismayed when he had to leave, thinking he was unable to bring any books with him to keep reading. So he was overjoyed when, while lamenting this to Fly Leaf and Spike at dinner that evening, it was pointed out he could borrow the books from the library for a time, he just needed to get a library card. The following day Thorax went in and got precisely that, and was so excited about it that when he went to sign his name on the back of the card, he nearly signed it in his native changeling rather than Equestrian and had to quickly scribble out the first letter and start over as a result. When he returned to the shop, he brought back with him as many books the library would permit him to check out in one go.

Fly Leaf was amused by Thorax’s exuberance but fully encouraged him to “expand his horizons” through reading and otherwise didn’t think much of it. Spike, however, found Thorax’s newfound bookworm behavior a little too like Twilight when she got to binge reading a bit too hard, and knew from experience that rarely ended well. Therefore he was a bit more cautious about promoting Thorax’s new voracious appetite for wisdom. Indeed, initially Thorax only read for reading’s sake simply because he hadn’t the opportunity to read texts freely like this before and was perhaps too eager about exploiting this chance. For instance, one of the first books Thorax took the time to read was an outdated almanac from thirty years ago…just because he could. He wanted to read in other words, but hadn’t yet figured out just what he should read.

Fortunately, it did not take him long to figure it out. Quickly Thorax started to veer towards texts discussing spells and magic, which Thorax proceeded to spend his time studying in his spare time. His reasoning was so to try and expand his repertoire of magic, as he really only knew what would be basic magic for most changelings, and thought it would be useful to have access to a far wider range of magic on demand while he and Spike remained as outcasts in hiding. And Spike agreed with that. What Spike didn’t particularly care for from the idea was that Thorax’s studying of magic inevitably led to him experimenting with said magic…resulting in occasionally peculiar circumstances, especially when things didn’t go as the changeling planned. And soon it became all-too common for Spike to walk in on the changeling and find something had gone…amiss.

He started to suspect trouble could only come from this studying when he stepped into their room one day and found Thorax was sitting on the ceiling.

“Decided to study up there today?” Spike asked sarcastically, tilting his head as he gazed at the changeling, undisguised as he normally was in the privacy of their room, had his snout buried in a magic textbook.

“I’ve been studying gravity spells,” Thorax replied, his brow furrowed as he attempted to puzzle out the text before him. “At least…I’ve been trying to.”

Spike let out a laugh at this, proceeding to step into the room. “Heh, yeah, they aren’t easy. I remember when Twilight first started to experiment with gravity spells. Accidentally made herself weightless and I had to tie her down like a balloon so she wouldn’t float away while she tried…”

“No wait, Spike!” Thorax suddenly cried out in warning as he noticed Spike strolling closer.

Too late, Spike crossed an invisible boundary and with a sudden gut-wrenching flip suddenly found himself falling upwards, joining the changeling on the ceiling with a thud. With a groan, Spike picked himself up as he figured out what had happened. “You’ve reversed gravity in our room,” he stated bluntly.

“Just in this one spot of the room, actually,” Thorax said with a frown as he turned back to his textbook. “I’m not sure what I did, but I’m trying to fix it.” He glanced back at the dragon as his friend sat himself down and looked at Thorax with a mild glare. “You couldn’t tell?”

“You can walk up walls, Thorax, I thought you were just using that to…shake things up,” Spike admitted grumpily.

Thorax rolled his eyes, or at least as close to it as his pupiless blue eyes could manage, but Spike had been around the changeling long enough now that he could tell the intended gesture anyway. “I can’t walk up walls and then sit down on the ceiling Spike,” the changeling explained like this should’ve been obvious, and motioned to his rump sat neatly on the ceiling that had now become their relative floor. “I don’t have grippers on my butt like I do on my hooves after all.”

Spike rolled his eyes himself, folding his arms, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing. “Just get us down,” he urged.

“Working on it,” Thorax grunted. He squinted at the text before him for a moment before lighting his horn, standing up. “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

With a flash from his horn, gravity suddenly righted itself again. Thorax kept himself from safely falling from using his aforementioned grippers in his hooves to grip the ceiling, keeping himself from falling, but Spike suddenly found himself falling back towards the floor below, and only managed to stop his fall by grabbing the changeling around the neck.

Dangling now so the weight of the dragon’s body was nearly choking the changeling, Thorax quickly popped off the ceiling with a buzz of his wings and righted himself so their feet both pointed towards the floor again. “Sorry, I probably should’ve given you more forewarning.”

I should’ve been thinking ahead to that myself,” Spike admitted, preferring to take the blame for that himself as the changeling lowered him back down to the floor, Spike releasing his hold on his friend the moment he felt his feet touch the wooden flooring. “But I think in the future, if you’re going to experiment with magic in here…maybe you should hang a sign on the door so nobody just walks in here unprepared.”

“That’s a good idea, actually,” Thorax agreed, and levitated a sheet of paper over to himself to make a note of it.

In practice however, whenever Spike saw the makeshift note Thorax would thereafter hang on the door to their room while practicing magic, it told him to instead veer away from the room until Thorax was finished, because he quickly found he’d was likely to walk into the middle of some new magical mishap and Spike found he didn’t have the gumption to have to deal with it directly too often. After all, he had learned long ago from living under Twilight’s roof that the best way to handle the mare’s own magical mishaps was to try and stay out of it, only getting involved more directly whenever Twilight couldn’t resolve it on her own or the mishap was big enough that it was causing trouble for others too.

Spike often feared, in fact, that Thorax would eventually create a mishap that it would draw unwanted attention from ponies outside, to the point that there was a small part of him that wanted to put his foot down on the experimenting for their own safety. Yet at the same time, he didn’t want to restrict his changeling friend like that…especially since that despite the many mishaps, Thorax was clearly enjoying his self-teaching of magic. Plus, the changeling knew the need to be careful, and had successfully managed to keep every spell he cast while practicing, regardless of it being successful or not, contained to their room, so no one outside him, Spike, and Fly Leaf was generally even aware of Thorax’s experimenting. And of those three, Fly Leaf never got herself involved either, as she was already in the habit of respecting the privacy of her two employees and rarely ever entered their room since they had moved in, and even when she did, she got their explicit permission first. It was a nice gesture they of course returned; to date, neither of them had even seen inside Fly Leaf’s own room yet.

However, when upon asking Fly for her opinions on Thorax’s (or rather, Thornton’s) experimenting with magic, the shop owner admitted some of Thorax’s mishaps with his experiments worried her, more for any potential damage it might cause to either Thorax or Spike than any damage of what was really her property (though she also admitted that wasn’t far behind). But otherwise she thought his magical experimenting was a good thing for him.

“From what he’s told me, this wasn’t the sort of opportunity he got where he grew up and naturally he’s eager to make use of it,” Fly explained to Spike. “And heaven forbid, I certainly don’t want to stand in the way of that. It’s exciting to see him get so caught up in this, and you know Thornton’s really just trying to expand his horizons by experimenting with magic like this.” She dotingly readjusted Spike’s false glasses that he wore and gave him a warm grin. “Look, I know his blindly trying to teach himself often only ends up making a big mess for you to deal with, but sometimes that’s how ponies learn, Spike. By making a mess, they learn what they did wrong, and that gives them motivation to learn to do it better. And honestly? I think Thornton hasn’t done anything wrong. So maybe he’s been the cause of a couple of magical mishaps, but nothing that wouldn’t be expected and he’s done no real harm. So long as it stays that way, I personally have no problem with him continuing to experiment. It’s a wonderful thing for one to want to try and improve themselves like that. Besides…” she teasingly poked Spike’s snout with her orange hoof. “…when you keep a positive attitude, you might find even the mishaps can be fun little adventures.”

Spike couldn’t help but grin at Fly Leaf’s wise words, and realized she had made her point well. He certainly didn’t want to stand in the way of Thorax continuing to grow as an individual either, and decided to try and keep that positive attitude about the matter. It did wonders in helping him find the patience to deal with the more trying moments of Thorax’s experimenting. And anyway…Spike always did like a good and fun little adventure.