//------------------------------// // Routine and Effort // Story: Mistakes and Eternal Silence // by Mocha Star //------------------------------// Spike snorted awake, silence his only friend again. “Ugh,” he reached above his head to Twilight’s throne and scratched a mark into the back. “Sixteen days, I think. Time to start another still day.” He rolled from the throne and walked around the table, still working and showing Equestria slowing crumbling. Fires burnt in cities, cloud homes fell from the sky in pieces, yet no pony cared. He glanced as a dust storm tore across the southern deserts unhindered, Thorax had arrived and left when Starlight was going through a manic episode and lost control of her powers, or so she said and opened a rift to someplace else. Spike had looked into the void and felt nothing short of terror. Thorax, who had been standing in the middle of the circle, barely escaped by changing into a whale. Spike shook his head at the thought and nonsense it was that a creature slightly larger than Twilight could turn into a creature the size of her castle, including the weight. “Thorax is gone, Ember is still a no show,” he rolled his shoulders, “but with no way to contact her she’s probably trying to stop the dragons from burning Equestria to a cinder,” he looked at sporadic fires wondering how many were dragon caused. “Gryphons probably just realized we’re all gone and they won’t come here first, it’d be Canterlot, at best.” He yawned and opened the throne room door and entered the silent hall, the scent of burning bread tickled his nose and he faceclawed, turning to the kitchens. “Starlight,” he groaned as he opened the kitchen door and saw her wearing a toque and spraying flour across the room as she stirred four bowls with magic and one more with her forelegs. “She can do it, so can I. I can do it if she did it. Spike, if I figure out Pinkie I can fix everything. That’s the secret I missed, right? Right! She doesn’t make sense, and the spell doesn’t make sense. But she does make sense,” Starlight snickered and snorted flour from her snout and nose, “and so will it. Pinkie baked a thousand treats in five minutes, if I can figure that out I can figure her out. “Oh! Itchy back, gotta snack,” she opened a drawer by the sink and pulled out a small cylindrical brick. “Come to mama,” she opened her mouth as it moved quickly toward her. Spike stopped it as it crossed the room and looked at it. “Another cake? Starlight, you have to stop doing this. It’s not your fault,” he said looking at the cylinder of dough and herbs that were tightly packed and shaped like they came from a grocery market can. “They’re everywhere, Spike. I’ve hid them everywhere, just like Pinkie. I have an itchy back, Spike, I need a snack. Back and snack, snack on back… Snack on back,” she screamed and all her magic faded creating a mess on top of a dozen other messes. Spike gulped at her sudden epiphany. “Starlight?” She cackled. “If I keep snacks on my back I won’t have to hide them, I can just put them in my mane and pull them when I need them. Stay there, I’m gonna duck down here and then give you a party with all the ponies I didn’t kill, and we’re going to eat and drink punch,” she suddenly began to sob, tears forming into clumps as they mixed with the flour on her face. Spike placed the cake on the counter and moved around to her, took her foreleg in his hand, and led her out of the kitchen. “Spike, I can move the sun if I try hard enough, right? I’m not going to kill the other side of the planet, right? I can fix this if I figure out Pinkie, right? I can go back in time and kill myself before I do this, right? I can go so far back I can kill myself when Sunburst left, right?! “Sweet Celestia, Sunburst. He’s gone. Mom and dad. Miss Cheerilee. The cutie mark crusaders. All the foals, even the ones I never had... are gone. I was going to name my colts and my fillies and my grand foals and birthdays, Hearths Warming. Spike, will you be my special somepony? I need to be with foal,” she spent a moment blubbering as Spike led her into the shower and turned on the water. “I’ll see you later, Starlight,” he said soberly and left her to cry in the warm water. He returned to Twilight’s research laboratory and opened his notes to where he’d left off. “Okay, I can figure this out. It’s just like Twilight showed me a hundred times, it’s just math and practical logic with words, sometimes.” He took a quill in his grasp and dipped it into an empty inkwell. His eye twitched and he stood carefully, moved to the cupboard, took a full one to the desk, then really began. … Spike sneered as Starlight’s voice echoed through the halls as she approached. He mimicked her mockingly in a nasal tone. “They’re gone, I can fix this. A month and no sleep, no crying, no laughing… blah, blah, blah,” he used his claws to mimic her rambling rant. He took a page of his notes, one of the final drafts of this run, to Starlight. “Try to cast this and it’ll make everything better, Starlight. You won’t be alone anymore if you do, everything will be fixed,” he chirped happily. Her eyes focused on the page and she scanned it, her horn lit, and she cast the spell against the wall behind Spike. She galloped desperately towards it and into the portal she’d opened with a giggle. A split second later she fell from the ceiling as the portal closed, she was curled holding her tail and stroking it while mumbling incoherently. “Starlight?” Spike asked placing a claw on her flank. He spent the next three hours trying to stay unharmed and alive from her various attacks. Luckily he was small enough to hide in many places she couldn’t easily find. That didn’t stop her from tearing a tower off the castle before she suffered magic burnout. Spike carried her to her bed and tucked her in, lay next to her, and cried himself to sleep after the worst four hours awake he’d ever had. … “Day one hundred-ish. Nature is back to being completely feral and it seems to be working in a way. The sun has moved slightly in the sky so I think it has started moving on its own. Starlight made hundreds of recording gems and the spell changed so only when they record sound will they use time, so I have enough gems to last a while. “They taste terrible so I won’t be eating them. I’m making headway on the spells I’m writing, heh. A dragon writing spells for a unicorn. A crazy unicorn, but the only one that can help make this better. If I can get her to cast a spell that she doesn’t use or change or cancel, then I think I’ll be in a better place. “I don’t know if it was covered in my earlier report, but Sombra’s spell affected a tribe of ponies, alicorns are all tribes so they were all affected. The math says that if it had been Luna or Celestia, it wouldn’t have been that bad, but Twilight and Cadence control either the ponies directly or through the connection to the aether. “Discord is part pony, so I imagine he’s loving this, being frozen wherever he is. Maybe he’s not affected or maybe only the pony part of him is and he doesn’t really want to help us. Too many variables. Dragons don’t go insane, so as long as Starlight doesn’t kill me I’m the most sane creature in the city of Ponyville. “I’m recording these for posterity. Indexing them by date, topics covered, and importance. Routine is a good thing, I learned that from Twilight and I can’t wait to see her again. I may not be able to let her know about any of these for a few centuries. Heh, it’ll be nice to know something she doesn’t for a while. It’ll be better to hug her again. I might never let her go then.” … “The sun set, the moon rose, and there was wind. I spent time with Starlight Glimmer today, we walked through what’s left of the park. She sat on a hill and watched the clouds moving in the wind and mumbled about how Rainbow Dash would fix all the weather in a minute. I chuckled at that and she gave a real laugh, too. “Ha-ha, heh… I think we’re going to start spending time together, quality time, so she can help me on her good days with these spells. I’m not a unicorn and that’s not a joke, I’m just in a good mood. There’s just some things a horn can do that rugged good looks, immunity to fire, and wit as sharp as my talons can’t. Or can, er… I confused myself. Dang, I wish I could erase that.