Spike's Doom and/or Destiny

by terrycloth


Down on the Farm

“This is exactly what I should have expected, but somehow I didn’t,” Moondancer said, as they approached the gate.

It was visible from a long way off – a massive obsidian arch, filled with swirling red energy. Demons, on hoof or on wing, passed through it in a steady stream, although nopony seemed to be flying or walking back out.

Spike frowned at that. “Is it two-way?”

“It should be,” Moth said. “If it is not, ve can always kill ourselves.”

“Not really a good idea without a way to remove the curse,” Bon Bon said. “But if we find what we’re looking for, we shouldn’t need to fight anything to get back up to the surface, so we can keep that in mind as a last resort.”

As they got closer, and the fiery energy loomed higher and higher over their heads, Derpy asked, “That’s not really fire, is it?”

“I do not know,” Moth said. “I haf never been burned by it.”

“We can check,” Bon Bon said. She drew her cleaver. “I’ll stick it in and see if it gets hot.” She trotted ahead, weaving between the other hoof traffic, and poked the metal end of her weapon into the swirling energy. The others saw her entire body glow red, briefly, and then disappear.

“Or maybe we can’t check,” Moondancer said.

Derpy sighed, and closed her eyes. “It’ll be fine. It has to be.” Eyes still closed, she darted towards the gate, spiraling slowly in midair, until she too vanished through it.

Moth and Moondancer, with Spike still on her back, walked through it with less fanfare. After all, it’s not like the fire could burn them.

===

They woke up in a barn, resting on soft straw as sunlight filtered through small gaps in the wooden paneling of the walls, to the sound of Bon Bon screaming.

Moth tilted her head, but kept her eyes locked on the no-longer-sleeping earth pony, whose scream slowly trailed off as she realized where she was.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Spike asked, scrambling around for his shield and sword, which he found leaning against the wall of the barn, behind them.

Bon Bon blinked at Moth, still standing over her, their muzzles less than an inch apart. “Were you watching me all night?”

Moth blinked. “Vat is a night?”

“I had a horrible dream,” Moondancer groaned. “I was trapped in some sort of illusionary game, and then we completely lost the plot and got trapped in an underground city of demons.”

“If the dream ended with us all jumping into a portal of infinite pain, then that really happened,” Derpy said.

“I was afraid of that,” Moondancer sighed.

“Ugh, we must have all passed out,” Spike said. “That was the worst portal I’ve ever been through. Including the one that turned me into a dog.”

“I found it comforting,” Moth said. “Ve touched the beyond, from vich all demons vere born.”

“Is it supposed to hurt that much?” Spike asked.

“Oh yes,” Moth hissed, eyes drooping as she pictured it again in her mind. “Such pure pain.”

Bon Bon reached up and wiped a bit of drool from the corner of Moth’s lips with her fetlock fluff. The demon pony didn’t seem to notice.

“I guess it wasn’t that bad,” Derpy said. “I mean, it wasn’t any worse than being lit on fire and we don’t have any burns to heal afterwards.”

“That’s your mind erasing the memory of the pain to prevent you from going insane,” Moondancer said. “Repeated trauma can defeat that mechanism.”

“Is there a way back to the city that doesn’t involve going through the gate?” Bon Bon asked.

Moth nodded. “Ve can kill ourselves.”

“If it is death you came for, we may be able to provide,” said a voice from behind her. They looked up to see a demon-cow, mottled red and white with tiny little horns, and bright yellow dragon-like eyes.

“No!” Spike said, scrambling to his feet. “We came for armor. For those two.” He motioned to Bon Bon and Derpy, who were also in the process of standing up. “Moondancer’s demon-hide –”

“You!” the cow said, staring at Moondancer. “Yooooooou. You wear the master’s hide.”

“Oh,” Moondancer said. “Horseapples.”

“You killed us!” the cow said. “You killed me twice!”

“It was really a team effort,” Moondancer said. “I mostly just made bubbles –”

“You!” said another cow, wandering into view.

“Yoooooou!” said yet another demon-cow, coming up behind the first.

More low moans of ‘you’, ‘you’, ‘you’ echoed through the massive barn, as cows gathered around.

“Are we going to have to kill them all again?” Spike asked.

The cows lowered their heads, pointing their tiny horns at the party. Spike raised his shield, while the others readied their own weapons… and then as one, the cows lowered themselves further, kneeling before the party.

“You have brought us to glory,” said the first cow. “Whatever you wish, shall be done, mighty slayers.”

The party stared. Spike started to lower his shield… when a massive ‘BANG’ rang out behind him, and one of the cows in the second row slumped to the ground, as her head exploded.

“Yay!” Derpy said, around her smoking mini-cannon. “Cow fight!”

===

The cows were a lot easier than the party remembered. Bon Bon could take them down in one hit. It usually took Spike two, but he could almost completely ignore their attempts to gore and trample him. Derpy occasionally had to heal him, but was able to spend most of her time firing her Gonne, which dropped a cow with each shot. Before long, they were alone in the barn again, surrounded by a massive pile of dead flesh, but none the worse for wear.

Moondancer dropped the bubble she and Moth had spent the entire fight hiding in. “I guess that’s step one down,” she said. “Do any of you know how to skin the cows and tan the hide? Or sew armor out of them? We came here to ask them how to do that. Not to fight them again!”

“I can skin them,” Bon Bon said, taking out a small utility knife. “I picked up monster-part harvesting back in Castle Town.”

“That’s step two then,” Moondancer said. “Out of four.”

“We can ask the cows to do the rest!” Derpy said. “If they liked us because we killed them once or twice before, they’ll like us even more now.”

Moth nodded. “You fight together vell. It vas a pleasure to vatch. I almost regret not taking part, and falling before your blades… but I vould rather see ze end of your story.”

===

A few of the cows came back before Bon Bon was finished skinning their original bodies. They confirmed that they did, indeed, know how to tan cow hide, and did something incredibly gross with the skinned carcasses to start the process. The rest of the heroes left the barn so as not to have to watch them work, and found themselves in what looked like a small farm on the surface, with the sun merrily shining down overhead. Except that it wasn’t the real sun, since it had an evil face etched into it, and a pair of glowing demon horns, which made the shadows it cast kind of creepy. Moondancer lit her horn and yanked Spike’s gaze away from the evil sun before he blinded himself.

“I wonder what it would be like to be a demon,” Spike said, staring at the blood on his armor instead. He licked one of his gauntlets clean.

“Like… what if we knew we’d just come back after we died?” Derpy asked. “So we didn’t mind fighting and dying over the stupidest little things or just for fun?”

“Nah, we’ve already got that being heroes,” Spike said. “I mean… what if…” He frowned. “I don’t know what I mean.” He started licking the blood off the rest of his armor, a little at a time.

“I think I know what you mean,” Moondancer said. When Spike and Derpy stared at her expectantly, she recoiled a bit. “What? I’m not going to tell you!”

“Why not?” Spike asked, pouting.

“Telling you why I’m not telling would be as bad as telling you,” Moondancer said, with a scowl.

“But telling him that telling him would be as bad as telling him isn’t?” Derpy asked.

Moondancer gave a quick huff. “I think it’s enough indirection for the necessary obfuscation.”

“I know what those words mean,” Spike said, glowering. Then went back to a pout. “Come on, tell me!”

Moondancer sighed. “Derpy, what would it be like if Spike was a demon?”

Derpy frowned. “It would be…. bad?”

Spike froze, wheels turning in his head. Then he frowned, and sat down. “Oh. Oh! But – I’m not –”

Moondancer walked over and yanked him up into a hug, wrapping a foreleg around him and pressing her cheek to the side of his helmet. “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not a demon, and you’re not going to be. It’s just this world.”

Spike sniffled. “I didn’t…” he rubbed at his eyes, definitely not crying. “I didn’t finish washing, I’m getting blood all over you.”

Moondancer sighed, and squeezed him a little tighter. “I’m not nearly as bothered by that as I should be.”

“Exxxcellent,” Derpy said, rubbing her hooves together as she hovered overhead. “Now kiss!”

===

Bon Bon emerged from the barn a few hours later, wearing Moth’s skin as a ghoulish devil-suit, the demon-pony’s horns and little bat wings taxidermied and still attached. She tossed a folded suit of more conventional mottled demon-cow-hide leather armor towards Derpy.

“Aww, she’s not coming with us?” Derpy said, landing and wiggling out of her armor to try on the new fireproof set. Spike and Moondancer kept their eyes politely averted.

“After seeing us fight, she knew she’d just be a burden,” Bon Bon said. “So she chugged that little bottle of hope she was carrying around, asked me to skin her alive – because apparently she’s into that sort of thing – and then bound her soul into the hide before dying of blood loss. It makes the armor more powerful, but she can’t respawn until it’s destroyed. She hopes that she’ll be able to see the world through my senses as long as I wear it.”

“Oh,” Spike said. “Well, that’s… um…”

“It makes as much sense as anything else she did,” Moondancer said.

“Maybe this is what demons do when they want a vacation?” Derpy suggested. “I mean, that’s what I always do on vacation. I go somewhere where I can just lie around, not doing anything…” she gave a happy sigh, reminiscing. “…maybe find a friend to spend some time inside me.”

Bon Bon and Moondancer groaned. Spike just looked confused. “Do you turn them into a muffin?”

Derpy giggled. “I guess they’re a kind of muffin.”

“No,” Moondancer said. “Let’s just – no. Stop it.”

“Fiiiine,” Derpy said. “But you and Spike really need to kiss. I mean, have you seen his tongue? I bet he’s a great kisser.”

===

From there, it was just a matter of retracing their steps. The hardest part, if you went by the willpower required, was going back through the gate. The hardest part, if you went by ‘most likely to fail’ or ‘required the most brainpower’, was avoiding getting lost in Pandemonium without a guide. The hardest part physically, by far, was actually climbing up out of the chasm – fire immunity from the demon-hide meant that Derpy could carry them without her feathers burning off from the intense heat of the river of lava, but it was still a really long way straight up, without enough room to just soar on the updraft.

The entire tribe of orcs that they had to fight through to get out of the foothills and down to the open plains was a cakewalk, by comparison. They weren’t even the fireproof sort.