Tabitha ran a finger along the gauntlet that lay on the table before her. "Not bad. We're pressing on sixty right now, so you know." She hiked a brow. "I heard them, saying most people quit there. I don't plan to. I will protect my team all the way to the top. Does it scare you?" She met Sandra's eyes evenly. "Will sixty be good enough?"
Her shoulders shrugged softly. "Sixty's pretty respectable. I couldn't make fun of you for that. You could get a job anywhere doing almost anything…" Her nails clicked against the metal. "You get to sixty, I have to admit I was wrong."
"This isn't about making you wrong," Sandra spread her hands. "I'm not here to show off."
"I didn't think you were." Tabitha pushed to her feet. "You get to sixty, I admit I was wrong. I'll wish you all the best, and I'll never bother you again."
"You... This doesn't sound right." Sandra rubbed at one arm with the opposing hand. "Will… we be friends?"
"We won't be enemies," corrected Tabitha. "We'll be fellow adventurers. I'll nod as we walk past each other. Just two adventurers. No complicated past." She clapped her hands as she turned away. "All forgiven, like you wanted." She walked off, leaving a stunned Sandra behind.
"Sandra." Spike flew in just behind her, floating at her shoulder. "I have a question."
She glanced back at him. "Sure, why not?" She didn't see how any question from Spike could make her day worse. "Looking for a shop?"
"Huh? No. It's about you."
"Me?" She paused and Spike crashed into her, the two rocking forward before they recovered, facing each other. "What about me?"
"Your parents…" He rubbed at an arm as Sandra had not that long before. "They were called heroes, right?"
"Yeah…" She thought back to those final moments. "They went out like them too, protecting me…"
"Just like they wanted," he barely whispered out, looking away.
"What was that?"
"Nothing!" Spike held up his hands. "Sorry, didn't mean to tug at old memories. You're doing great."
As Spike fled the conversation, Sandra watched him, but where she might have shrugged it off before, she narrowed her eyes.
Garble walked slowly, carefully, his arms out to his sides. Step by step he made his way across the perilous thin stone walkway. Underneath were spikes, tipped with some kind of nasty green substance Garble did not want to discover what was. Above were more spikes, so it’s not like he could fly… Ahead was his sister and Sandra, behind was the runt.
He stepped slowly, carefully, until he was on the next platform, and he let out the breath he was holding. Smolder and Sandra both politely clapped.
Spike bounded across the walkway, not losing his balance even once.
Garble glared at him.
Blinking in confusion, Spike said, “... What?”
“Maybe you should be the one with the daggers up in front, buddy,” Smolder said, slapping Spike on the back. “Cmon, we got more jumps and stuff.”
The four of them continued to make it across the claustrophobic spiked pits.
Sandra stood off of the raised stone sigil, breathing heavily. “Okay, so one more try.” She turned to Twilight. “You’ll have to go out, we know the targets will light up, and you have to hit all of them before they close.”
Twilight nodded. “Right,” her voice echoed in Sandra’s head. “I saw what they were before, some were really specific angles, and I have to hit them really fast.”
“Alright… everybody else should be on their targets for now, let’s do this.” Sandra stood on the sigil, and it depressed and lit up. The lights dimmed and next to Sandra several targets lit up, which she started to pelt with tiny bolts of magic. Twilight didn’t stay around to watch, and simply headed out.
Out in the center room, what appeared to be nearly a dozen targets were lit up, and Twilight went to work.
One by one she shot her stars at the targets, running to make sure the angles were right, and then at the end the aperture opened up, the biggest target, and Twilight raised her horn to the sky, bringing down the big star from the sky, slamming into the last target at full force.
The lights came back on, the door opened, and Twilight, her magic allotment spent, disappeared back to her world, the summon running out.
“You did it, Twili--” Spike said, running out. “... Where is she?”
Sandra came out from behind her own target area. “She ran out of magic. She definitely hit all the targets first though…”
Spike frowned. “Did the floor know exactly how much magic she would have to exhaust her?”
With unease they proceeded to the next floor.
They emerged from a door, expecting a boss, but finding instead howling wind. They were outside the tower on platforms. With a sudden shudder, the platform beneath them began to retract dangerously quickly. "Run!" Sandra pointed ahead as she broke into a sprint. They began running from one platform to the next.
Garble snorted, leaping into the air, his wings carrying him aloft. "This is stupid, most of us--" One of the defensive turrets that Spike had encountered so long ago opened fire, forcing Garble to dart out the way, another lancing up just in front of him. He landed with an angry snort, the warning clearly working. They would have to run and not fall to complete that boss encounter.
A great crash sounded ahead of them, a spiked ball hitting the platform ahead of them and rolling towards them. "Aw, nuts," muttered Smolder. There seemed there would be no fights in that boss encounter, but that didn't mean it would be easy.
"Jump!" Spike jumped off the side, the others at his side. They could feel the pull of their wish to recall as the ground rushed at them, racing between gravity and the magic that could save them.
They arrived at the last recall point, screaming and heaving.
Smolder pointed to the door they had just gone through. "I demand a rematch! We were surprised. This time, we'll know how to do it."
Catching their breath, the team was ready to try again shortly. Twilight nosed Sandra to get her attention. "This seems to be every day for you. Does everyone live like this? Even by my standard, this seems like a bit… much."
Sandra gave Twilight a tired smile. "Just us tower climbers. You want your friends back, right? This is how we do it."
"Yeah!" Garble shoved the door open. "Let's go, and be ready to run."
The door shut heavily behind them. "Only… five times," announced Spike, but there was no reply. Looking left and right, the others were frozen in place, time halted for them. "Oh." He didn't seem as surprised as such an event could possibly merit, instead looking around in a slow circle. "There you are." He hurried by the recall point, where the elderly man awaited him. "We made it to fifty."
"If you make it to the top, perhaps it will end." He tapped his cane against the floor. "A lot of things could end."
Spike pointed at him accusingly. "You, the tower, whoever. You… took Sandra's family."
"I won't argue that." He hadn't disagreed. "What will you do with that possibility?"
"You plan to do it to us, if what we're asking for is too much, but you won't tell us if it is or not until we actually ask." The old man watched him, saying nothing. Spike had learned how to converse with the man a little. He got one question, and none of that was a question.
"She wants her parents back." He gestured to the frozen Sandra, caught mid-wheeze from their long sprint. "We want to go home. Only one of us can probably get that, and either could be enough to need one of your sacrifices. Man, look, that isn't cool." He pointed back at Sandra. "She's just a kid! She's just a stupid kid."
"Like you."
"Yes, like me!" Spike shouted, anger getting the better of him a moment. "If we fail… Twilight will keep looking. She'll figure it out, eventually. She can't make dead things not dead. She can't do Sandra's wish, ever. But she is ready to give that up, for us." He waved at his dragon friends. "They aren't even thinking about it. Maybe Smolder, maybe, but she isn't stopping. We'll get to the top, she'll just give it up, all up, for us… the dragons she never even asked for…"
"Because…" He licked over his lips, puzzling through things as quickly as his thundering heart allowed. "Because, even confused, and scared, and alone, she's…. She's a hero. The child of a hero… which is a hero." He pointed at the man. "Tell me I'm wrong!"
“Heroism is a heavy burden,” the man said. “Not always the same burden, but always weighty. --"
"--And heroes only go out one way."
"Two ways," corrected the man with a wry smile. "They die a hero, or live long enough to become something far worse. Now… clever dragon, you have avoided asking a single question. You have learned the rules well. Now, I must insist, ask your question. You have more floors to scale."
"You said you were interested in us. Why us? What do you get out of us dragons climbing your tower?" He stomped a foot. "You have all kinds of creatures trying every single day to get higher in this tower, so out with it."
“Dragons are always of portent. I am not like the people of this world, skeptical to the true nature of your existence, dragon.” The man seemed to rise up, his voice becoming louder. “The potential of ancient years, the strength of the scales, the power of fire… but more important, the covetousness. This very tower is like a dragon in itself, it gathers adventurers, relics, magic. It tempts adventurers, greedy to get the spoils, and the magic flows up into the tower. The tower has had many dragons in it, over the years. Some still live within its walls, collecting like the tower does, while feeding the tower. The affinity the tower has for dragons is undeniable. None have been denied entry, and all of them are talented climbers, if they enter.”
Spike was blinking, trying to take in the somewhat circuitous answer.
“But naturally bringing an ancient wyrm would be difficult. Large things are much harder to move around than small, and why would an ancient wyrm want to help a hero? No, if I wanted my hero to have the help she needed, after alienating all the locals, it would have to be something other than an ancient dragon. Something smaller, perhaps more than one somethings. With their own reasons to climb the tower, spurring a hero stuck in the first part of her story to finally move forward, perhaps.”
Spike’s blood began to run cold, staring up at the man as the implications of his confession clicked. “You… you set this up? You’re the one that brought us here?! The whole reason we’re plucked from Equestria is for… for your own plan?! For whatever it is you want us to do here?!”
“Placing new pieces into her story was not too hard, heroes often have special companions, special people that move their story forward.” The man raised a hand, gesturing to Spike. “I only have limited vision and control outside of the tower, except for the lives of those the tower still influences, and I thought long and hard about how to solve this problem, and I do think my solution is working out quite well.” He chuckled. “Never did I imagine it would produce a good conversationalist.”
“D-don’t treat this like it’s a joke!” Spike shouted, swinging his staff in the air angrily. “You messed with my life, with Garble and Smolder, and even Sandra’s life. She didn’t need to be a hero!”
The man’s chuckling stopped and his face turned to a frown. “Believe you me, these events were set in motion long before you were part of this plan.” He began to fade away. “Sandra will be the hero she is born to be, and I will get what I want.” His voice echoed in the empty hall of the fiftieth floor.
Smolder finally turned the corner, looking back down. “You alright, little guy? You were shouting.”
"No…" admitted Spike, deflating. "I'm really not. Let's… head back." He raised a hand to the recall point, accepting the arrival at the end of the fiftieth floor be officially recognized. "We… maybe we should talk."
Garble stormed up, swatting the recall point defiantly. "What are you whining about? We smashed through it, like everything else. Let's--"
Smolder put a hand on his arm, watching Spike. "Bro… chill." Not an expert in friendship, even she could see something had rattled Spike, though what it was, she struggled to get a grasp on. "Spike, we'll head back. When you want to talk, we're here."