Spike had no earthly idea how the purple unicorn knew his name, and for a brief moment, he considered denying who he was and trying to pass himself off as some other purple and green baby dragon.
But looking at the giant smile spread across her face convinced Spike that the best course of action was to just play along with whoever she was. ‘I’m crazy!’ was practically written all over her face, and over the past few months, Spike had developed a number of rules for dealing with Coro – crazy ponies.
Rule number one: Do not disagree with crazy ponies.
“Hi,” he said nervously, a sheepish look spreading over his face. The unicorn’s smile somehow managed to grow even more. Spike found himself wondering how it could still fit on her face. It was already close to reaching her ears. “Thanks for catching me. That would have been really painful if you hadn’t been around.”
Spike paused to give the unicorn a chance to respond. She didn’t. Instead she walked back towards the bushes she had originally come from, telekinetically pulling Spike along with her. “I uh… I don’t mean to be rude but… who are you?”
The unicorn briefly paused and turned back around. “My name is Twilight Sparkle,” she said proudly before turning back towards the bushes.
The young dragon grew more and more worried with every passing second.
“Well Twilight, thanks again. Could you set me down now? I’m getting kind of nauseous.”
Twilight chuckled lightly in response as she flipped him right side up, thoroughly creeping Spike out. “No.” She reached the bush and began to rummage through the leaves, apparently looking for something.
“Why not?” A hint of annoyance was starting to creep into his nervous voice. Who the heck did this pony think she was?
Twilight pulled what looked like a potato sack out of the bushes. She took a moment to inspect the sack, apparently searching for any damage, before wrapping herself in it. Spike realized that it was a cloak while Twilight turned back to face him once again “Because you’re Spike, companion to Zecora the Zebra and subordinate to Corona, the Tyrant Sun.”
“That’s not true!” Spike shouted. He hadn’t run away from Corona just to end up captured by some other pony who didn’t know how much he hated her! At the same time, he wondered how she knew all of that. Was this unicorn a friend of the ponies he and Zecora had met? The ones that used those element thingies to take Corona down a few dozen notches?
Probably not, those ponies were nice. They would’ve let go of him by now instead of hanging him in the air. Well, okay, they would probably be angry with him for helping Z try to trap them (he was pretty sure Raindrops would hit him), but they would at least let him stay on the ground!
Twilight’s smug grin vanished as she recoiled from the intensity of his response. But she quickly regained her composure, stood up straight and looked indignantly into Spike’s eyes.
“O-of course it is! I know what I’m talking about! I’ve read reports sent to high ranking members of the Night Court on what happened during Corona’s return! They may have come from unreliable sources, but they all mentioned a purple and green baby dragon who travels with a Zebra named Zecora. In all of recorded history, nopony has ever seen a baby dragon within the borders of Equestria until that night. The odds of another baby dragon, let alone one of the same coloration as you being in Equestria at the same time are astronomically low, and furthermore – “
“Okay, fine!” Spike interrupted before she could go into a full on rant. Rule number four for dealing with crazy ponies: Do not let them rant! Once they got that ball rolling, nothing could stop them. “All of that is true,” he admitted. “But I’m not with Corona anymore! Right now I’m getting as far away from that nut job as I can.”
As he finished talking Twilight rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”
“Yes!”
“Well I don’t. You clearly just made that up so I would let you go. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that if you want to fool me.”
“I don’t have to come up with anything better than that It’s true.” Spike said as calmly as he could force himself to sound, though he couldn’t keep the undercurrent of rage out of his voice. He would have liked to yell, but before he could he remembered rule number three: do not let a crazy pony see how angry you are.
Twilight only let out an imperious huff.
“Well I’m sorry, but that lie is just too convenient. The truth is that I caught you, and now you’re making up whatever you can to get me to let you go. It’s as simple as that. You’ve been with Corona for months, and according to the reports I’ve read you were traveling with Zecora far longer than that, as far back as you can remember in fact. You actually expect me to believe that you’d just leave when the facts indicate that you have nowhere else to go?”
Spike was silent for a long moment as he turned his eyes away from hers and tried very, very hard to ignore that last part. “Yes,” he finally answered. But at this point, he knew that it was pointless. The unicorn wasn’t going to believe anything he said, and he was doomed to be her prisoner. It looked like he really had made a mistake in running away.
Twilight, oblivious to the effect her words had on the baby dragon, only smirked in response. When Spike didn’t say anything else, she turned towards the emerald that had gotten Spike into this whole mess in the first place and used her magic to pick it up and shove it into Spike’s arms.
“Now, before we get moving, you’re going to have to tell me, where is Corona?” Spike blinked.
“What?” he gripped the emerald hard enough for his claws to start scratching the surface.
In the back of his mind, Spike cursed himself. He was starting to show fear. Rule number two for dealing with crazy ponies was similar to rule number there: Do not let a crazy pony know when you’re afraid. It had always been by far the most difficult rule to follow, because Spike was absolutely terrified of Corona. And this pony actually wanted to find her?!.
Why the heck would a pony, who had probably been taught to fear the Tyrant Sun since foalhood, want to find her?
Did… did Twilight Sparkle want to find Corona for the same reason Z had? Did she actually want to serve her?
“I said – “
“I heard what you said!”
A sudden screech interrupted Spike panicked thoughts while preventing Twilight from responding. They turned to see that the Phoenix had returned, perched on the branch it had planted the emerald in. It almost looked like it was watching them.
Spike turned back to Twilight, who was staring up at the firebird with a suspicious look on her face.
“Why would you want to know where to find her?” He asked nervously.
Twilight took a moment to tear her gaze away from the phoenix. “So I can inform the proper authorities once I hand you over to them.” She answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“The… proper authorities?” Spike didn’t like the sound of that.
“Yes Spike, the proper authorities,” she said with an annoyed voice. “The Royal guard would be the most preferable, but anypony who answers to Princess Luna would suffice. I suppose you don’t have to tell me, because telling them where I found you would most likely be enough of a clue to finding her on their own, and they will most likely be able to convince you to tell them anyway. But I’d prefer to –”
Spike stopped listening; he just couldn’t bring himself to care about what she was saying. Nor could he stop the look of terror from spreading across her face. Princess Luna was Corona’s sister, the other alicorn. The one that manipulated her subjects from the shadows of the night for her own amusement. The second to last person in the world he wanted to meet.
“No.” Spike said suddenly, interrupting Twilight’s rant.
Twilight looked at him in confusion.
“Excuse me?”
Rule number two suddenly became very easy to follow even as number three became impossible. The anger and frustration in Spike’s voice was palpable as he responded to the purple unicorn.
“I didn't run away from one insane alicorn just so I could end up in front of the other one!”
“Princess Luna isn’t insane!”
“I don’t care! I’ve been through enough! I’ve been turned into a mindless monster, I’ve been stuck with an insane alicorn that kept threatening to annihilate me, and I had to leave behind my only friend to get away! I’m not going to let you drag me all the way to the second to last place I want to go!”
Spike wasn’t exactly sure where Canterlot – the Equestrian Capitol he knew Luna ruled from – was, but he knew that it was far away. They were somewhere up north, near the Griffin Kingdoms, and Canterlot was at least halfway across the country. Spike did not want to end up there. Especially if this pony would be the one bringing him.
The Phoenix screeched again, but Spike barely heard it, too focused on glaring at the purple unicorn. Twilight, for her part, merely stood there, staring blankly at him. She seemed to be thinking about how exactly she should respond. But that indecision eventually vanished when Twilight frowned and glared back at Spike.
“Well too bad!” she yelled with ferocity equal to Spike’s. “You’re not the only one who’s been through enough! I’ve been spent the last two months running from the law, which includes my brother, for trying to expose a fraud! Delivering you to Princess Luna will lead to my exoneration, and nothing is going to stop me!”
Spike didn’t know what “exoneration” meant, and he didn’t care. At this point, he was only seeing red, too angry to care about anything she had to say. He could feel the purple aura that keeping him in the air begging to tighten around him.
“I’m not going!” he screamed.
“Yes you are!” she screamed back.
“No, I’m not!”
“Well then, how are you going to get away?” Twilight smirked; it didn’t take a genius to figure out that there was no way she was going to let go of him.
“Like this!”
Spike threw the emerald at her face. It was a large gem, almost half the size of his head, and Spike was only a few feet from her. It hit her right underneath the horn, and right above the space between the eyes.
Twilight cried out in pain as the emerald bounced off her and landed next to her. But she didn’t lose control of the magic, and Spike remained in the air. “Ha!” she yelled as she realized this, “I’m not letting you get aw-“
The phoenix once again let out an ear splitting screech as it dove towards her. Twilight managed to turn her head to see it just as it fell over her, grabbing at the emerald. The embers that fell out of its wing flared out everywhere.
Since he was a dragon, the embers didn’t bother Spike at all. He could easily take on extreme heat and be perfectly fine. Heck, Corona had even thrown him into the lava her palace hung over once or twice. Twilight’s cloak seemed to be fine as well, Spike guessed that it was enchanted to take more punishment than most cloth was. Twilight herself, however, had no such protective enchantment, and the few embers that landed right on her face made her scream out in pain.
That did it.
The purple aura surrounding Spike vanished as Twilight took a few steps backwards, rubbing at the burning embers buried in her snout. The phoenix took off, the emerald once again in its talons.
Spike took the opportunity to dive into the bushes and make a break for it. He didn’t really have a concrete idea on where he was going beyond ‘get as far away from Twilight as possible,’ but that was easy enough. He could still hear her cursing as she recovered from the light burns.
Then again, he wasn’t exactly being quiet himself as he tore through bushes and ran over broken twigs and leaves. Once Twilight took hold of her senses, she’d probably be able to track him down pretty easily, and Spike was too small to outrun a full grown pony.
Nevertheless, the young dragon did his best to make his way through the forest as quickly as possible, avoiding anything that looked like a path, and taking random turns all over the place.
It didn’t take long for the sounds of Twilight’s yelling to be replaced by the sounds of a very determined pony rushing through the thick foliage. Spike gulped when he realized that the sounds were following him pretty accurately, and that they were getting closer.
Before she could catch up to him, Spike caught sight of a tree that had some very strange roots. Some of them had grown above ground, in such a way that they intertwined with each other, forming a kind of wooden web. The space between each branch looked like it was just wide enough for a creature of Spike’s size to fit in and hid.
He promptly went off in the opposite direction and hid behind an ordinary tree. Hiding in that weird mass of roots was just too obvious, she was sure to look for him there. Plus, there was probably already something living inside. As he sat in between some of the roots that were partially showing above the ground, he struggled to catch his breath and quiet himself before she caught up to him.
He didn’t have to wait long, as he heard Twilight burst into the clearing only a few minutes later, just as he managed to get his breathing under control.
Spike couldn’t look around the tree in case she was looking in that direction, but he could hear her well enough. She had stopped in the clearing, apparently because the universe hated Spike, and told her that he was hiding nearby.
He listened intently to what Twilight was doing. From what he could tell, the first thing she did was walk over to the strange formation of roots. Suddenly, the shadow of the trees and plants everywhere lengthened in the direction opposite from the root formation. It was fairly obvious that the unicorn was creating light to see inside.
Suddenly, an angry roar tore through the air, accompanied by a surprised yelp from Twilight. Scared, Spike briefly stood and looked around the tree. He saw Twilight sitting on her rump, backing away while staring at the root formation, too shocked to turn around and see Spike.
Looking into the roots, the baby dragon saw two green eyes glowing out through the darkness. A low growl emanated from the roots that lasted until the eyes vanished.
It looked like Spike had been right about something being alive in there.
“Okay, he’s not in there,” Twilight muttered from her sitting position, making Spike realize how close he was to her. “But there are no signs of disruption among the foliage, which means he’s somewhere around here.”
The young dragon quickly moved back into hiding behind the tree, hoping that she hadn’t heard him move. He struggled to remain as quiet and still as possible with his back up against the tree and his claws digging into the bark.
“So all I need to do is…”
…
What?
What did she need to do?!?
There was an unbelievably long moment of silence as Spike held his breath, wondering what his pursuer was about to do.
His question was answered after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, when he noticed that everything a certain distance away seemed to take on a purplish hue. The leaves, the wood, the dirt, half the world suddenly seemed to turn purple. The other half, the half closer to Spike, remained the same.
Then, slowly, Spike’s half of the world began turning purple as well. The foreign color was enveloping everything at an infuriatingly slow pace, until Spike realized that it was some kind of wall, or a… a… a force field.
Twilight had created some kind of purple force field all within a certain distance, and it was shrinking! Soon it would be close enough to trap Spike against the tree trunk.
She was trying to trap him!
No, that wasn’t right. She already had trapped him; she just hadn’t seen that yet. There was no way for Spike to escape from the shrinking force field
Unless…
As the purple field made its way to Spike, the young dragon tried the only thing he could. He took in a deep breath, for as long as he could. Once he had pulled in as much air as possible, he held it in his lungs for a few seconds. When the force field was close enough, he exhaled in a vicious burst of green flame.
Z had always told him that dragon fire had strange properties, that it was somewhat magical in nature. In the past, she had even used it to send messages to Corona, who could send her own back through. Z had also told him that dragons were usually somewhat resistant to external magic, and that dragon fire should be able to burn through magical things.
They never had the chance to test whether or not that was true, but Spike didn’t really have much of a choice at the moment. He kept his green flames going as long as he could, which wasn’t much longer than a few seconds.
Exhausted, Spike looked to see that his flames had in fact managed to burn a hole in the force field.
An extremely small hole.
An extremely small hole that he had absolutely no chance to fit through.
“Oh come on!” he shouted.
“Aha!” Twilight’s head poked out from around the tree.
Before he had the chance to react, Twilight’s horn glowed, and Spike once again found himself floating in the air, surrounded by a purple aura.
“Got you.” Twilight’s face was once again adorned by that impossibly smug smile.
Spike only let out an annoyed grunt.
Could this day get any worse?