The Blistering Winds of the Frozen North Proved to be an endless obstacle for Spike, His clothes were wet, his boots, already worn out when he bought them, were barely still holding themselves together, and the cold itself was causing him pain in the only recently healed up wound that had once been his arm. Doing his best to ignore the many different kinds of pain attempting to eat away at him Spike instead chose to focus on the one that was itself the most fatal to him.
Having been a one-armed Wondering Nomad for the past two months Spike had learned a lot in his relatively short time in the Frozen North. Among the many new lessons learned was to be wary of anything even remotely close to unearned kindness, that somepony calling for help on the side of the road was almost always a bandit waiting to jump on you, and that the native pest to the region, Freeze Flies, where more likely to kill you than the bloodthirsty Bandit.
This information flooded Spiks Brain as he desperately tried to free his tail of the small blue insects, he had tried to blast them away with fire and had instead attracted a swarm of them, since the little beats ate heat he was already beginning to slowly freeze, this would eventually lead them to leave him, and in turn, leave him for dead.
"water," He chattered through his teeth, as he picked up his pace, seeing a large town in the distance he picked up the pace, as a town in the Frozen North always meant water, "Suck on that Rusty," Spike chuckled as he remembers the day from almost a month ago when had escaped from Rusty Tom with a large sack of supplies, who had called out to him he'd come crawling back to him or freeze to death before he ever made it to a town, "I made it," Spike rushed through the streets, dropping the now empty sack that had kept him alive for so long and headed for the freezing cold water to dispel the bugs. The Town itself was all but dead, Spike chose to ignore this as he high-tailed it to the water and jumped in without hesitation, the water itself brought about new problems but he now had more than minutes to live as he spat some fire to draw in all the nearby flies and lure them to their deaths before he got out and fire dried himself.
No longer being on the brink of freezing to death he now had to deal with his stomach and the torn-up sack he was using as clothing. Spike made his way through the empty streets and looked around for any signs of anypony living there and found most of the builds to be partially frozen inside and out.
"Ah," Spike realized "This place's been abandoned," Spike looked around for any minute signs of life and upon turning into an alleyway found himself face to face with a large hord of Diamond Dogs, all hard packed together for warmth. The Dogs glared at him as soon as he turned the corner and he in turn stopped dead. In Equestria Diamond Dogs were kind of a joke. In the Frozen North, a horde of Dimond Dogs would fight a bloody war to the last dog for something as small as a strip of meat.
"Hey," Spike said in a soft tone as he rose his one arm up in a surrender position "Alley is taken, sorry," Spike walked away from the hord only to immediately be pegged in the side of the head by a snowball, Spike looked to the right and found himself face to face with a white Unicorn. "The hell man?" Spike demanded of the Unicorn before him, the Unicorn in question was short, scrawny, and covered in old bruises as though he had been beaten some days early.
"I am the Great Snow Moe," The Unicorn Declared "Mayor of Diamond Cove, owner of all you see around you," Spike looked around and then at the Diamond dogs.
"I mean, being king of the Diamond Dogs does sound kind of cool but your town is kind of crap if I'm being honest,"
"You fool, you sound like all the others, they saw me unfit, but Diamond Dogs are easy to control, all you need is the right incentive and they serve their master to the bitter end, I just had to have them run through the streets and those who where stupid enough to question my title soon found out the hard way why the boats don't leave the cove,"
"So you killed everyone in town for saying mean words?" Spike noted.
"Ah, I no longer need to worry about that, I have mastered the use of mind control, it only works on simple-minded creatures, and as you can see-" The Unicorn lit his horn and a swarm of Freeze flies burst forth from every corner of the town, with the exception of the docs. The Diamond Dogs all pressed in closer as a swarm of creatures that were the living embodiment of freezing to death formed overhead. "-some times the simple creatures are the deadliest,"
Spike nodded in response to that "That does explain why the dogs are all hiding in an Alley,"
"The dogs are nothing to me, not now that I have a Dragon to do my biding," Snow Moe pointed his horn to Spike and he was coated in the nasty little beasts, in doing so a lot of them began inching towards the Diamond dogs now that Moe wasn't fully focused on them, keeping that in mind Spike casually watched as one of the dogs gave in to fear and tried to run for it, it was immediately swarmed and began freezing in seconds, the dog yowled in agony before Spike opened his mouth and let out a torrent of flames, The Dog was immediately freed of it's cold misery and watched as Spike began freezing at a fast pace.
"Oh, the dragon likes puppies," Moe chuckled "Pathetic, once you've frozen I'll take care to thaw you out once you've been given enough brain damage to easily control, from there I shall raise up and claim my place as leader of the entire Frozen-" Spike spat out a ball of fire and Moe screamed in agony as he was set a light, no longer having the flies under his control due to no longer focusing the flies swarmed him and Spike, who ran to the dock while blowing fire to attacks most of the flies to him before jumping into the water, after a moment Spike pulled himself out from the thick layer of dead insects and walked back to the Diamond dogs, who had swarmed Moe the fire was out and left not so much as a bone behind to prove he had existed.
Spike stopped in from of the Diamond dogs unsure of what exactly he could do in a dead down, when the dog that he had saved nervously walked up to him.
"Oh Hi," Spike greeted, the Diamond dog went from nervous to excited beyond measure that Spike noticed she existed, as her tail wagged other dogs began surrounding him. For half a second Spike was concerned he was about to be their next meal, then one of them put his hand up their face and he took the chance and tried scratching them atop the head. The notion that he was willing to pet them instantly won over the entire hord and they all rushed to get pet, some going so far as to start licking and sniffing him.
"I can work with this," Spike decided as he was blanketed in an affectionate blanket of attention-seeking dogs.