//------------------------------// // Chapter One // Story: The Ten Million Year Hello // by Bandy //------------------------------// The battle was over before it began. The pony legions broke against columns of dragonfire and scattered, fleeing back into the forest. That was their second mistake of the day: seeking refuge in something that could burn. On a hill opposite the forest, a detachment of the opposing army stood and watched the rout. A few cowered. Others cried. All of them were sweating. Even at a great distance, they felt the heat of the flames. It took nearly an hour for the forest to burn. A thick grey cloud of ash blotted out the sun. Above it, an ominous black figure appeared. It settled beside the hill with a mighty blast of superheated air that burned the eyes and singed the beards of everypony present. “It’s done,” came a tired, gravely voice. The dragon had taken many names over the past nine hundred years of his life. For the last hundred or so years, he’d been going by the name “Blesco,” a name given to him by the southern buffalo after he saved their land from a wildfire. Two days ago, he decided to go back to his original name: Spike. Spike was three stories tall, a veritable mountain of dazzling purple scales that flashed like war paint in the sun. His fiery green eyes settled over the band of ponies like the blades of guillotines waiting to drop. His gaze alone was enough to immobilize them. Ancient instinct, and all. Play dead, and maybe the big bad dragon will pass you over. Spike lowered his head until his snout rested on the ground. He spoke in a low voice, so as not to blow the ponies’ eardrums out. “My map.” The one in front with the crown--Spike had already forgotten if this one was the usurper or the sitting regent--snapped his hooves frantically. An aide produced a saddlebag. “Holy flame!” the king proclaimed, “We thank you for ensuring our victory on this most blessed day. We--” “Map,” the dragon said in a tone so forceful it whipped up wind. “Give me the map.” The king turned a porcelain shade of white and tossed the saddlebag to Spike. As Spike turned to leave, he surveyed the remains of the forest. Charred lumps of carbon and a few twisted remnants of organic matter poking through a thick fall of ash were the only signs that anything had ever grown there at all. It was like that for miles. This forest wouldn’t grow back for another hundred years. It didn’t have to be like this, Spike wanted to tell the king. You could have avoided this. If he could just speak to them on their level, help them work out their differences-- But then he thought about the map, and the pact he’d signed with the king. And he realized that there were no more differences to work out. It was the king who commanded him, but he alone had breathed death on the forest. No pony could start a fire like this. Only dragons could. The last four hundred years had not been kind to the north. Dramatic expansion of the permafrost between the Equestrian Kingdoms and the Third Crystal Empire left a great deal of Spike’s old stomping grounds buried by a hundred yards of frozen earth and snow. The secrets that lay below had confounded generations of researchers. But now Spike had what all those researchers didn’t: a map. Spike flew half a mile above the frozen ground and held the map up to his eye like a spyglass. The map created a detailed topographical rendering of the ground beneath the permafrost, complete with elevation numbers. He was looking for a pair of steep hills jutting out above an ancient riverbed in the rough shape of a smiley face. It could easily take twenty years to survey the entirety of the frozen plains. But after a measly four months, Spike came across a different sort of topographical anomaly: a giant smoldering hole bored into the ground. Spike held the map up to his eye. Sure enough, there were the hills and the riverbed. The hole sat where the nose would have been. The smile looked mocking, somehow. Don’t need a map to see that, Spike thought sourly. Burned that whole forest for nothing. Hot air and the smell of brimstone hit Spike as he got close. He kicked a few stones down into the hole and counted nine seconds before they hit the bottom. He’d have to suck in his belly a bit too, but he’d shimmied through worse. The hole went straight down for about a quarter mile, then widened into a large cavern. A thin stream of semi-molten rock flowed through one corner, filling the place with a dull orange light. The smell of rot got stronger. He licked the palm of his hand, then clapped. His saliva ignited, casting a green light through the room. He saw a hidden passageway opposite the magma, leading further down. Bits of burning cinders fluttered on the ground. He knelt down beside the nearest scrap and held it up to the light. F0=0, F1=1, and Fn=Fn-1 + Fn-2 for n>1 Under some older definitions, the value F0=0 is omitted, so that rts with F1=F2=1 and the recurrence The smoldering parth of the page caught a bit of wind and flamed up. Spike reared back only to bump his head on the top of the cavern. The whole cavern trembled. The page burned to ash in his claws. This place was a library. And it was on fire. A scream echoed from deeper within the cave. Spike took off down the passageway as fast as the narrow walls would allow. A terrible, mournful sound rose in his ears as he raced deeper into the cave. More burning pages littered the floor. Spike kept his serpentine eyes forward, following the light pouring from down the tunnel. The wind grew so fierce it threatened to uproot him and send him tumbling backwards. Waves of heat accompanied the wind, pouring down the passageway, igniting loose pages as they whipped through the air. Finally, the passage widened into a massive domed structure. Crumbling columns with intricate doric designs lined the room. Multiple tiers of collection rooms and hallways branched off into darkness. Most had collapsed long ago, but a few still remained, housing petrified wooden shelves and greying parchment scrolls and books, the ink long-since faded, the bindings long since eaten away by time. An old pang of nostalgia passed through Spike’s brain. Twilight would have loved this, he thought. If it weren’t on fire. The light and heat emanated from the center of the room. A female dragon with orange scales and a dazzling purple crest was slumped over on the floor. One talen curled around a pile of ash. Listless blue eyes watched it sieve through her fingers. She seemed familiar somehow, but Spike couldn’t place it. “Are you okay?” Spike called out. Her eyes moved slowly to Spike. She opened her mouth like she was about to speak, but instead shot a jet of flame at him. He leapt out of the way with inches to spare. “Hey! Stop! This is a library. You’re destroying priceless relics.” The dragon curled up tighter. A thin, deranged laugh escaped her lips. “Kill me, then. Bite off my head. Finish it.” Confusion mingled with raw fear. “What?” More heat pulsed off her body. Spike took a step back, unsure of what to do. The dragon pulled herself to her knees, still facing away from him. “I can’t stop it. If you want this library to survive, you’ll have to kill me.” “I’m not gonna do that. What do you mean, you can’t stop it?” A strangled, gurgling gasp cut off the dragon’s reply. She clutched her belly. Shivers wracked her body. She opened her mouth, and a vomitous gush of liquid fire spewed out. Spike cried out in surprise and leapt onto the second floor balcony. The stonework buckled under his weight, but miraculously held. He flinched as an important-looking keystone cracked. Below him, gouts of fire engulfed the first floor, swallowing entire bookshelves and their contents. “What’s wrong with you?” he cried. “Stop it!” But after a moment he realized the other dragon had made no attempt to escape her own flames. Superheated dragonfire found chinks in her scaly armor. Smoke hissed in the air where her exposed skin burned. Dragons had a natural resistance to heat, but not even they could sit in dragonfire forever. Just as he was contemplating whether or not to dive in and pull her out, the dragon came to her senses. She leapt up, flung open her wings, and took off. When Spike saw the wounds on her belly, his jaw dropped. Her whole torso was flayed open. The scales and skin were gone, her insides exposed, her organs held in by a tight-fitting chainmail vest. He could see her heart beating behind the metal, superheating the links until they glowed red. Heat and steam spilled out of her wounds in waves. Her eyes met his. Then they moved past him, to something deeper in the library. She let out another chilling wail and leapt forwards, her face frozen in a demonic snarl. Spike barely had enough time to get out of the way before the wounded dragon slammed into the balcony beside him. Countless books burst into flames. He missed the worst of the impact, but the sheer heat radiating off her body overpowered him, and he landed with a crash on the floor. Sticky dragonfire licked his scales. In a momentary daze, he wondered how long it would take to buff the burns off his scales. Then he felt burning, and he realized he was going to wind up like all those poor books if he just sat here. He leapt to his feet, shook off the flames, and flew onto the opposite balcony. His dazzling purple scales had been scorched black. And he’d only been sitting in the liquid fire for a few seconds. How was this other dragon still breathing? He looked around. The air had grown noticeably cooler. The other dragon was climbing up the chamber. Whole bookshelves of ancient wisdom turned to ash. The destruction was too much for him to bear. Spike spread his wings and launched himself into the wounded dragon with all his might. He drove the air out of her lungs and crushed her against the wall of the chamber. Red hot sparks leapt from where her chainmail scraped the stone. Her forehead hit the wall and bounced back. Her body went slack. She fell back to the bottom of the chamber with a resonant thud. Ceiling tiles and loose stones rained down all around her. A long, desperate moment of silence passed as Spike watched the motionless dragon. Then she sucked in a gasping breath and started moving again. Spike let out a sigh of relief. He paused to look at the spot she’d been climbing towards and saw a curious sight. Set within the stone walls where the top of the columns met the base of the dome, there was a small cubby tucked into the rock, just large enough for a single pony to fit inside. Inside the cubby, he found a book sealed in plaster. Someone had carved a message in the stone beside it. To Uncle Spike -- How’s the weather up there? Soooo get this--we broke up the spell into three parts. One third is here, another third is in Starlight Metropolis, and the final third is on the moon. It was all aunt Twilight’s idea. Can’t have dangerous dragon secrets falling into the wrong hooves, yada yada yada BORING Happy hunting. Love you lots flurry A sigh escaped Spike’s lips. He ran a talon lightly along the letters. The last time he’d seen Flurry Heart, she’d been leading the empire’s efforts to build mana batteries large and stable enough to power intercontinental teleportation. She’d wrapped up her fifteenth doctorate, with four more planned for the next fifty years. A manic urge seized his heart. Fly there. See her. Say hello. It’s been three hundred years. Just as quickly as the thought appeared, another far darker one dwarfed it. He imagined crystal buildings crumbling to dust as he landed, and ponies being whipped away by the wind beneath his wings, and death, and sorrow, and chaos, and, and... And it would only get worse every day. Better not to risk it. Not until he’d finished the spell. He stowed the book in his bag, then carefully used his sharp foretalon to cut the inscription from the cubby. That too he put in his bag for safekeeping. He turned his attention below. The wounded dragon was trying to get to her feet. More fire leaked from her mouth, singeing her scales. Another row of books to her immediate left reached the critical temperature and went up in flames. She didn’t even bat an eye. This library was lost, Spike realized. Another precious thing inadvertently crushed. The dragon looked up at him. Something in her eyes seemed so familiar to him. “Who are you?” Spike called down. “kill me,” she whimpered back. “What’s your name?” “Screw you.” “Your name.” Her sorrow turned to a snarl. “Banshee,” she hissed. Spike got the feeling she was lying. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen her before. But he had learned to ignore faint familiarities a long time ago. When you see enough faces, they all start to look familiar. He left the way he came. Flames bloomed beneath, blowing wind against his burnt back.