~ 95 ~
"Now I See."
“You’re acting like we just met again, Sugarcube.” Applejack was the final one to come next to her friends, all three still within the safety of the crowd around them, as Despair watched the scene unfold from atop the dragon “Don’t ya’ remember that nightmare on the farm we was in? You told me what I needed to hear, and was able to break out because of you.”
“I had quite the same thing happen to me, darling,” Rarity chipped in before dipping her head in thought. Despair's eyes jumped from the three of them, piecing inside his head the events that broke his spells. “Only it was back in my room with a television asking me some dreadful questions. Spike was the one who made me able to turn it off.”
“I...did?”
“I’m willing’ to reckon that you helped most of the girls here!” Both Applejack and Rarity set their gaze upon Rainbow, who stood in-between them. “Right Dash?”
“Uhhh.”
“Dash,” said both of their voices.
“Would you believe me if I said I broke out of the spell with my awesomeness alone?”
Both opposing mares drew a deep breath. “No.”
Dash sighed, then rolled her eyes. “Okay. Maybe the bundle of scales showed me the way out, but I was the one who walked out on my own!”
“I presume the same it’s the same for all of us,” Rarity said, getting a nod of approval from Applejack. “However, while we seem to remember our previous encounter, it appears that you don’t, Spikey-Wikey.”
Spike recoiled his head. It had been so many years, so many since he was just a baby dragon befitting such a nickname. It sounded so alien to him now, causing him to step even further away from his once friends. “I’m still just trying to get over that fact that you girls are still alive.”
Then, he remembered.
“Fluttershy…” He spoke the name as if it were a throne his heart, but would suffer any pricking just to see her once again. To see not her tomb but her face. “Is she...is she with you girls now?”
The three mares opened their mouths to speak, but a gurgled voice billowed out through the platform. “Now I see!”
Everyone, the girls and Spike included, turned their heads in the direction of black dragon. It fell forward back into its four claws, its muzzle coming just before the purple drake, as well as the figure atop its head. “It was your spirit that intervened in the depths of their peril, but I do not understand how, for my eyes feast upon a scalp of a dragon.”
Spike blinked. “I still have no clue what any of you are on about.”
Then, a faint green glow came from inside the drake’s right wrist, fluctuate in tandem to his heart beat. He quickly covered the dim glow with a claw, hiding it out of sight. “Oh.”
The head of the black dragon pulled away from him, rising high into the air. The black figure extened out its arms and looked up the sky, letting white matter stretched across his face in an expression of smiling lips. “But this is the end to your pony tricks. Die at the claws of my device, and despair in your last moments the absence of an afterlife!”
The ground quaked in tandem with the black dragon’s steps. It moved as if possessing some mind of its own, though it were in control of the being surrounding his. It feasted its eyes upon the distant ponies, who cowered as its steps came closer, though they stopped at the drake stretching out his arms.
“Leave while your life still remains, Spike,” the voice practically spat his name. The massive muzzle of the dragon came before the smaller one that of the drake, who never broke eye contact. “These ponies have been pests for far too long. Run away if you’re pride permits, or wait till I have finished, and I’ll give you a fair fight.”
Spike held out his claws in obstruction of the greater dragon’s path, only aided by the supernatural power. He couldn’t help but glance at himself, feeling still the exhaustion of all that rock climbing, and the heaviness of the thing in the guitar case.
Here was a beast, offering him escape. He looked to the ponies over his shoulder. Some of the guards still held their weapons in his direction, while other cowered slightly upon his gaze falling upon his.
And then he looked to his friends. The same ones whom had made him run away, to embark on a quest of self-improvement – the ones he wanted to be so very close to back then, but the feeling was not mutual.
Spike returned his gaze to the beast. He drew a heavy breath, let his arms fall to his side…
...and then made his choice.