//------------------------------// // Part IV - Chapter 10: Rumors Of Dragons // Story: Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky // by PortalJumper //------------------------------// Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky Part IV - Chapter 10: Rumors Of Dragons * * * "Did Twilight send me with you?" Spike asked. He looked more confused than upset, which was where Starlit wanted him to stay for a little while longer. "No, she didn't," Starlit answered. "I took you along myself because I'm worried about you." "You? Worried about me?" Spike asked. "You're the one on the deadly mission to save the world, why would you be worried about me?" "Spike, this is going to be hard to hear for you, so I need you to just let me talk until I'm done. Can you do that for me?" Spike narrowed his eyes, but ever so slowly nodded his head. Letting out a sigh that hung in the air like fog, Starlit composed herself." "Before I left for the Empire, and before Twilight came back to the Oak after Sun and I got back from New Selene, we made a dinner together. Do you remember that?" "Yeah, it was vegetable soup with some sandwiches," Spike answered. "While we were making that meal I thought we could shoot the breeze for a bit, talk and get to know each other better," Starlit continued. "I asked about you, you asked about me, and so on. Do you remember that?" "I do," Spike answered again. "Is this going somewhere, because you're sounding really weird." "Just let me finish, and then you can ask all the questions that you want," Starlit answered. "I asked you a question about Twilight, about what she was like before all of this nonsense, and when you went to answer, you simply… didn't. Do you remember me asking about Twilight?" Spike furrowed his shimmering brow for a moment, and as he thought the lines of light that made up his form stuttered in place. As the stuttering stopped his expression went back to a happy neutral. "You never asked me about Twilight," Spike cheerfully replied. "Are you sure you're remembering that conversation right?" "And here is the problem," Starlit replied. "When I asked you about Twilight's past, and I did ask you about that, the same thing that happened just now happened; your whole body just seemed to freeze up, and then you'd brush off what I'd asked as if I hadn't asked it." "That's ridiculous, Starlit," Spike replied a dismissive wave of his clawed hand. "Twilight made me to answer any question anypony might ask of me." "Did she now?" Starlit asked, her voice slightly betraying the mistrust that was slowly building inside her. "Of course; how am I supposed to be her capable assistant if I don't answer the questions I'm asked?" "Because she probably expected ponies other than her to ask you questions," Starlit answered, "and when she put your mind into this necklace there were a few things that she left out in the transfer." Spike's expression quickly dropped, going from his normally cheerful expression to a much more upset one. "Starlit, I have know Twilight a long time, way longer than you, and I know for a fact that she would never modify my mind without my permission. She's a good pony whose been put in a bad situation, and the last thing that she needs is the ponies that she picked to save Equestria having doubts." "And how do you know that she wouldn't change you?" Starlit asked back. "Your entire consciousness, the thing that makes you you is a product of her magic. The only thing that's telling you what is and isn't true is her magic, and she could change that at the drop of a hat and you'd never be the wiser for it." "Okay, smart mare, then why would she save my consciousness to put in here to begin with?" Spike snapped back, getting into Starlit's personal space as he grabbed his own necklace. "If she was going to change me from what I was, then why would she save me at all?!" "Because she needed somepony that she could trust to keep her secrets!" Starlit answered, standing up to her full height even though it made her ribs pinch. "What better way to design your own narrative than to have a corroborating party that can't disagree with you? What better way to dupe hapless rubes like me into believing that you are the injured party in a war that you helped cause than to have a second trustworthy source that mindlessly agrees with everything you say because they can't say otherwise?" The wind howled outside as Starlit Sky and Spike stared each other down. Starlit was assured of her convictions, and she could see that Spike was as well. Starlit didn't even know if Spike was capable of having doubts, but if he was he sure was incapable of showing it. "Spike, I know you trust Twilight implicitly," Starlit continued, "but she sent me to help fix a mess she partially caused. I have been killed, beaten, lied to, traumatized, and ripped away from my home and my family because I believed in her, and now I need to know if she really believes in me." Spike's form flickered slightly as he averted his eyes from Starlit's piercing gaze. Slowly he set his necklace back between them and sat down, melting a bit of the ice around him as he did. "She does believe in you," Spike replied, eyes still fixed to the necklace. "She told me as much when you were gone. She worried about you, wanted to make sure you were alright. She's a good pony who made a mistake." "If she really believes in me, then why did she tell me that the whole Crystal Empire is a magical dead zone?" Starlit asked. Spike's gaze went back up to Starlit, an expression of dawning realization working its way across his face. "We're in the Empire?" Spike asked. "We are," Starlit answered. "And I'm here and active," Spike replied. "You are," Starlit replied back. "How could I have possibly activated you if there was no access to magic here?" Spike's gaze flitted back and forth between his necklace and Starlit's horn, each repetition causing his form to flicker and stutter. It was as if his mind was so busy trying to process the cognitive dissonance that it was enduring that it could barely keep his physical form up. Minutes of this stuttering repetition passed, and Starlit was worried that she had broken whatever made Spike's mind work, until finally he resolved himself and stood up. "Twilight lied to you," Spike declared. "It would seem that way, yes," Starlit replied, "and if she can lie to me then that means she can lie to anypony, even her capable assistant." If Spike could possibly cry, then he looked like he would be on the verge of tears, and Starlit suddenly felt extremely guilty for what she had done to Spike. She had effectively torn his entire world down around him and left him with nothing but the realization that he had been used. "Spike, I know that you're upset right now," Starlit continued, "but I brought you up here to find the truth. Twilight is hiding something from both of us, and the only way that we are going to find peace is if we work together to discover what she has hidden from us." Spike picked up his necklace, gave it a hard look, and quickly hung it around his now corporeal neck. It hung closer down to his belly than it had on Starlit given the length of the chain, and Starlit helped adjust it so that it hung more snugly at his chest. "I'd say you make for a rather dapper dragon with that necklace on," Starlit stated, doing her best to lighten the mood. "If you say so," Spike replied. "So, where are we going?" "The Astral Conservatory," Starlit answered. "It's where Flurry Heart said that Twilight spent a lot of time when she stayed in the Empire, so it should be the best chance we have of getting the answers we need," "I remember the Conservatory," Spike said, his cheerful demeanor coming back to the fore. "Man, Twilight would be upset to see how it's been treated since the war; some of the books and scrolls in there were irreplaceable." "Maybe when we're done saving Equestria we can renovate it, just you and me," Starlit suggested. "I'll even bring the family up to help." "That sounds fun." * * * Every step Starlit took sent a dull throb of pain through her chest, and at this point she was contemplating finding a tall building to leap off of so she could let the black necklace fix her entire body back up after death. While she dreaded the initial pain of impact, it was at least slightly comforting to know that it wouldn't be final. Spike had stayed silent during the trip through the city, following the east wall and using Starlit's compass stone to help orient themselves. The small light on the stone shifted towards the center of the city, directly away from the outer wall, and so she could surmise that it was pointing either to the Crystal Palace or to Cadance herself. Starlit found her mind drifting to Sun and Rainbow Dash, hoping that they were having as easy of a time navigating the frozen streets and dilapidated homes as she was. The weather was brutally cold, but the wind had died down some during the long walk and so wasn't beating its way through her cloak and insulated suit. Starlit envied Spike for his selective corporeality and lack of temperature sense. Starlit stole a few glances towards Spike as they walked, and each time he was staring off into the middle distance, lost in thought and only barely keeping pace with Starlit. "Spike, are you okay?" Starlit asked, moving back to be at pace with him. "Just thinking, that's all," Spike answered, keeping his eyes off of Starlit. "What about?" Starlit asked. "Stuff," Spike answered again, his voice more agitated. Starlit let his answer hang in the air between them for a moment, since she didn't know whether what she wanted to say would help or hurt the situation. Fortunately for her nerves Spike decided to break the silence. "I'm really thinking about Twilight, if you want to know," Spike said. "It's only natural that that's where your mind would be, I suppose," Starlit replied. "Bit for your thoughts?" "I'm just confused," Spike continued. "Every time I think about her I can only think about the good times we had together; working in Canterlot, studying, making dinner. Every time I try to think about Twilight when she was angry, or sad, or nervous, nothing comes up past maybe a few weeks ago. She's always been happy, always calm, always the smartest pony in Equestria." "And now your worried that all of these memories you have of her are fake, or that she's been selectively culling the bad memories?" Starlit asked. "Yeah," Spike admitted. "I'm worried that so much of how I see her is just how she wants me to see her, like she doesn't trust me to accept her for everything that she is and just wants this cleaned up version to be the only version I know." "There's a lot of themselves that some ponies wish they could just get rid of, pretend like it never happened and go on with everypony thinking that they're perfect just the way they are," Starlit said. "Even you?" Spike asked, turning his gaze to her. His eyes flickered and shimmered as snow passed through them, but the feeling behind them was all the same; he needed reassurance. "Even me," Starlit admitted. "I've been around the stump a few times, and there are a lot of things that I wish I could take back." "Like what? You seem pretty well put together to me," Spike asked. "I have a pretty ferocious temper, especially when ponies I care about are being hurt or mistreated," Starlit answered, feelings a knot of shame catch in her throat as she thought about her mistakes. "That sounds like more of a perk, if you ask me," Spike countered. "That just makes you sound like you care too much, which isn't a bad thing." "Tell that to the filly in my hometown whose nose I broke because she called my grandmother a witch," Starlit admitted, "or the young stallion whose eye I nearly knocked out when he started getting a bit too close for comfort with me." "Yeah, but they were being jerks first," Spike countered back again. "Maybe you overreacted, but they still had some sort of punishment coming." "You want a story?" Starlit asked. "There was a filly I knew when I was young named Cinder Spire, and I heard from another friend of mine that she had been spreading rumors about me. Nasty stuff, but the sort of things that foals tell just to make somepony else seem icky, nothing that could wind up being really socially damaging." "And what did you do about it?" "I spent that week going around town catching every nasty insect I could find and storing them all in a jar, and then I went to her house in the dead of night and released them all into her room while she slept." "Unfortunately, being as young as I was, I didn't really know which bugs I was catching," Starlit continued, "and it turned out that one of them was one Cinder had a severe allergy to. It bit her while she slept and she nearly died from it, and she still has problems walking from the damage the venom did to her." "Seriously?!" Spike asked, mortified. "Did you ever tell anypony what you did?" "Never," Starlit answered, shame weighing heavy in her heart. "I ruined that filly's life over a rumor, and I didn't even feel bad about it until I grew up and came to grips with the gravity of what I had done." "I eventually moved out of that town when my grandmother passed away, but every now and again I think about Cinder Spire and what her life must be like now because I was a vindictive little monster who couldn't take an insult. I've even forgotten what the rumors were she spread, that's how long ago this was, but she is going to have to live forever with the consequences of what I did to her." Spike looked back down the road, his face locked in an expression of horror as Starlit felt her stomach go sour after telling that particular tale. She knew that she would have trouble sleeping tonight, but compared to Cinder's fate it was barely a slap on the horn. "Spike, nopony is perfect," Starlit continued, "and anypony that claims that they are is either lying to you or to themselves. We all make mistakes, we all colossally mess up, and sometimes the mistakes we make will have consequences that we or others will have to live with for the rest of our lives. Twilight's mistakes, and the mistakes of the other Princesses, are the entire reason that I'm even here having this conversation with you." "Yeah, I guess they are," Spike admitted ruefully. "But if we learn from our mistakes then we can avoid making the same ones in the future." "Precisely," Starlit replied. "Failure and mistakes are the best teachers that we have, but you always have to look at the mistakes others have made before you to see how you can avoid making the same ones yourself. It's a hard lesson to learn, and it's one that I think Twilight is refusing to learn." "Yeah, I'm starting to think so too," Spike said, fiddling with his necklace. A deep thrum echoed from inside Starlit's black stone necklace, and it quickly worked its way out from the folds of her cloak and hung directly out in front of her, straining at its leather strap. Starlit could feel it dragging her forward, the strap digging into her neck until she came out into a wide open plaza. The necklace's magic stopped as the wind and snow came to a halt, flurries hanging in midair around them. As the white of the snow and sleet dissipated and the clear blue sky above them came into view, Starlit saw what she was looking for. At the far side of the plaza, undisturbed by the non-stop blizzard, a building with a domed roof stood. The building was grown from a perfectly cylindrical mass of night blue crystal, with pillars of deeper purple crystal holding up the awning connected to the domed roof made of an opaque white crystal. Peeking out from the roof was something that looked strikingly similar to the telescope in the Golden Oak, but scaled up until it needed an entire cutaway in the roof to make room for it. The roof shined brightly in the sunlight as Starlit and Spike gazed upon its beauty, until a hellish neigh echoed across the plaza and drew their attention downward. Positioned in front of the massive crystalline doors of the Astral Conservatory was a single windigo, wearing long rusted and worn plate armor. An ice-shard horn poked through the metal of its helmet and held it in place, while a spear of solid ice levitated to is side in a field of ice-blue magic. "Starlit, what do we do about that?" Spike asked as the windigo began a slow, purposeful march forward. "It's alone," Starlit noted, "and I can't die. Seems there's only one option for it." "You're not going to fight that thing, are you?" Spike asked again, fear rising in his voice. "If you have a better option of getting past it and opening those doors before it can stop us, I'd love to hear it," Starlit countered. The thudding, clanking hoofsteps of the windigo grew louder as it made its way further forward, malice and hatred burning its its fierce blue eyes. "Are you sure?" Spike asked. "I'm sure," Starlit answered as she drew out her small sword, letting the weight of it twist around in her magic as she got a feel for its balance. "Then I guess I'll just hang back and wait to see if you beat it," Spike said as he slowly made his way towards one of the abandoned houses on the border of the plaza. Starlit slowly made her way forward, keeping her eyes fixed on the target in front of her. She could feel her heart pounding in her injured chest, begging her to run and find another way in, but Starlit found that she needed a bit of catharsis after the last few days she had had. The windigo and Starlit met a good fifteen feet from each other, both staring the other down in an attempt to intimidate their opponent. Starlit's breath fogged in the air as the windigo's rattling breath produced no steam. With a whinny that could shatter stone the windigo made the first strike, hurling its spear with immense force. Starlit muttered an incantation and quickly manifested one of her wards, placing it between herself and the windigo, watching with smug satisfaction as the ice shattered against it. The beast was already conjuring a second spear from the snow flurries around it as Starlit made her way in, undoing the class of her cloak so she could move more easily. With a quick feint to the left, away from the new spear, Starlit slashed upwards toward the windigo but unfortunately caught a section of is decayed armor. It whipped around to face her and stabbed forward, just barely missing Starlit's face but tearing at the head wrap she was wearing and slicing a frigid line across her cheek. Starlit beat against its breastplate with her front hooves, sliding it back against the ground as the impact sent shock of pain through her chest. Her ribs distracted her for a brief moment, just enough for the windigo to recover and lunge forward. The windigo's spear caught Starlit straight through the throat, just barely missing her spine and releasing a massive gout of blood that sprayed across the monster's face. Starlit gurgled as blood came pouring out of her mouth, but with the last ebbing bit of her strength she jammed her sword through the windigo's eye socket. It released a horrid shriek of pain as it went floundering back, reflexively tearing its spear out from the side of Starlit's neck with another burst of hot blood. The combatants fell a scant few feet from each other, and Starlit watched the magic drain from its eyes as her vision was taken by blackness. All she could hear was a dull thumping noise, a sign that she would prove the ultimate victor. * * * The dull thumping noise roused Starlit to consciousness, and she awoke to the bitter cold and a lack of pain in her torso. Spike was kneeling beside her, and nearly jumped out of his scales as she stirred. "You're awake!" Spike exclaimed. "Indeed I am," Starlit affirmed, "and now I don't have any broken ribs. Everything's coming up me today." "I got rid of the windigo while you were… indisposed," Spike said. "Are you alright?" "I will be in a moment, I just need some time to adjust," Starlit explained. "This process is never easy, but I've gotten more and more used to it as it's happened more and more. Where did you put that windigo?" "Over in a snow drift, why?" Spike asked, pointing to a bank of snow to his left. "I just want to make sure it's down, that's all," Starlit answered as she got up. She was expecting a sting of pain from her chest, and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn't come. Starlit made her way to the snow bank where, sure enough, the windigo lay. On eye had shifted back into a normal blue hue, while the other was black from the frozen ichor that must've seeped into it when she had stabbed it. With her sword she carefully poked at the armor plating, shifting it around to see if it responded along with stabbing it a few times in the torso. As she moved the tattered tasset from its flank she could see the barest hint of what this creature's cutie mark must have been. It looked like a kite shield with a star in the center of it, but the marring of its frost white skin was so bad that she couldn't make out any colors. "Is it dead?" Spike asked, having come up from behind Starlit. "It's dead," Starlit answered, putting the tasset back down. "Come on, lets see what we can find inside." As Starlit and Spike approached the massive crystalline doors Starlit felt an odd feeling, something she hadn't felt in days; warmth, real warmth from the air and not the sputtering heat that a fire gives off. "Do you feel that heat?" Starlit asked Spike, before remembering who she was talking to. "I don't feel any temperatures, but is it getting warm?" "It is," Starlit answered as she placed a hoof on the doors. With just the barest touch the doors swung inward, and as they scraped open against the ground a blast of steamy air escaped the Observatory, followed by a deluge of warm water that flowed past their ankles. "Water? What could possibly be hot enough to keep water warm with these condit—" "THE MURK SHIFTS AND STIRS," a voice, booming and sonorous, spoke from inside the Conservatory. "I AM GREETED BY SOMETHING OLD, AND SOMEONE NEW." Starlit drew her sword as the doors continued to open, until finally they stopped with a shuddering quake against their mountings. Inside the Conservatory was a massive pool of water, easily taking up a full half of the bottom floor's space. Steam evaporated off of its surface, and Starlit found herself sweating under her insulated suit. Innumerable tomes and scrolls inside were scattered about on shelves or the floor, and most of them had long been reduced to mush by the humidity they were surrounded by. A disturbance in the pool sent more water sloshing outward, followed by a massive clawed hand that shone with a slick, purple gleam. Another hand reached out from the water, followed by a snaking, serpentine neck with a broad reptilian face attached to a muscular, green and purple scaled torso. A pair of massive, leathery wings flipped open and closed, spraying water everywhere and drenching Starlit, before folding closed and nestled against the creature's back. Most striking of all of this being's features were its eyes; piercing, vivid green irises cut vertically down the middle with cat-slit pupils that stared down towards Starlit and Spike with curious intensity. "Spike?" Starlit asked, her gaze flitting between the baby dragon at her side and the hulking dragon in front of her. "AS I WAS, AND AS I SHOULD BE," Spike answered, shaking the very air with his proclamation even as his mouth made no movement. * * *