//------------------------------// // Chapter Four // Story: The Ten Million Year Hello // by Bandy //------------------------------// Flurry Heart wasn’t the only one using her relative immortality for educational purposes. Nine hundred years of life left Spike with an awful lot of free time. Sometime around year two hundred and fifty, Twilight finally started to rub off on him, and he submitted to the whims and wiles of academia. Now six hundred and fifty-ish years into his educational journey, he’d gained sixteen doctorates, held a brief tenure as a professor of dragon studies at Canterlot University, and participated in the rise and fall of at least a dozen significant fields of study. One of the things he’d taken to with gusto was dragonfire chemistry. In a DIY clean room slapped together with borrowed plastic tarp and enough bleach to sanitize a small ocean, Spike delicately set a beaker into a UV sterilization chamber. Once the cycle was complete, he swabbed it inside and out with antibacterial pads, then sent it through the UV chamber one more time. Once the UV disinfection process was complete, he turned the glass over and licked the bottom. He then set the beaker atop a stand, took a deep breath, and blew a short stream of dragonfire onto the bottom of the glass. The saliva combusted. A soft whoosh filled the air. With the beaker now happily baking at a stable six hundred and seventeen-point-eight three zero two degrees, Spike set to the task of mixing the ingredients. Crushed rosaline quartz powder and zippyzane syrup went into the beaker. Once the mixture boiled, he added stabilized netorare nitroglycerin and zero-point two grams of changeling spit. When the mixture boiled a second time, Spike poured it into a plastic cup and let it cool until it was just a hair over two hundred degrees. Then he added a squeeze of cocoa syrup for taste and chugged the whole cup in one go. His eyes dilated. His legs went stiff as a board. He collapsed to the floor with a thud. As his vision blurred, strange shapes appeared in his periphery. A glowing orb coalesced into focus, sprouting dozens of wings and just as many spinning golden halos. A hundred eyes blinked to life along the length of the wings. They stared at Spike with a sort of immovable, motherly disapproval. BE NOT AFRAID. I AM THE DIVINE SUN, THE-- The voice paused. The spinning halos slowed slightly. SPIKE. Spike looked around and found himself floating in the astral plane. Galaxies flared up and evaporated to stardust all around him. He waved at the winged, haloed creature sheepishly. “Hi, Celestia.” The being of pure light and radiance frowned. Or, some of the halos and wings drooped in a vague semblance of a frown. THE ASTRAL PLANE IS NOT YOUR PLAYTHING. ACCESS IS OFF-LIMITS TO THE LIVING. The being swooped closer, radiating electric starstuff and pure divine energy. It was enough to make even the largest dragon feel like a baby again. YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO BE DEAD. “Heh. Nope. Still alive.” THIS CAN BE RECTIFIED. “Nope! All good! Really!” THEN BY ALL MEANS, ENLIGHTEN MY OMNISCIENCE AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU’RE HERE. For someone who claimed to be all-knowing, Celestia sure did seem to ask a lot of questions. Spike stowed the thought and said, “Well, truth be told, something is in need of fixing. It’s me.” YOU APPEAR TO BE ALIVE AND IN WORKING ORDER. WHAT’S THE MATTER? Her voice carried a note of caring, albeit in her own unknowable way. Spike took a little bit of solace in that. Celestia had changed beyond belief, but the old eye-rolling, cake-stealing, graceful mess of a pony was still in there somewhere. “I’m growing too fast. I’m not even a thousand years old, and it’s already impossible to live in pony society.” THIS IS WHAT DRAGONS DO, THOUGH. THEY GROW. “Yes, they do, but for the last few decades I’ve been searching for this spell that would freeze me at a normal pony size.” THAT SEEMS UNHEALTHY. “Twilight and Flurry Heart helped make the spell. They intended it to be used as an emergency.” A little bit of fire returned to his voice. “This is an emergency.” The discorporeal being of feather and flame paused a moment. The wings beat slowly against the void. The rings spun. The eyes blinked. I’M SURPRISED, SPIKE, Celestia finally said. “I was surprised, too. But my cave was getting raided by one of the new Equestrian kings, and his soldiers kept going on about this holy book as I was lighting them on fire, and when I destroyed the king’s castle I asked about it, and it turns out it was one of Twilight’s old fiction manuscripts, and obviously I had to take it to preserve her image, and in the margins was this message to, ‘Tell Spike about the reversal spell’, and from there--” I’M SURPRISED IT TOOK SO LITTLE TIME FOR YOU TO FORGET WE LOVE YOU. Spike paused. He took a step back, not that he was going anywhere. This was her realm, after all. He was the guest here. “I’m still going through with it.” WHEN FLURRY HEART AND TWILIGHT MADE YOU THIS SPELL, DID THEY THINK YOU’D EVER ACTUALLY USE IT? “I dunno. You’re the omnipotent one here.” His eyes got wider. “Have you heard anything from Twilight?” Celestia paused. I’M SORRY. SHE’S IN A REALM EVEN BEYOND MY REACH, SEARCHING FOR THE DEEPEST TRUTHS OF THE UNIVERSE. YOU’LL BE GONE BY THE TIME SHE RETURNS. “See, that’s why I want this spell. I can live a normal life and not be a mountain range when she gets back.” YOU MISUNDERSTAND. HER JOURNEY WILL OUTLIVE THE EARTH. “Then let me live my life the way I want to. She would want that.” SHE WOULD. THAT’S WHAT MAKES HER PONY. “Yes, her ability to love!” NO. HER ABILITY TO MAKE MISTAKES. Spike’s growing frustration boiled over. “You forgot!” Fire clipped his voice. He lunged at Celestia, but no matter how hard he flapped his wings he couldn’t seem to get any closer to her. “You forgot what she was like! This place poisoned your mind!” I AM NOT POISONED. I AM DETACHED. DON’T THINK I LOVE YOU OR HER ANY LESS. “You’re wrong.” He tipped forward, unmoored, and flipped upside down. “When she comes back, she’s gonna have some strong words for you.” Something like a frown passed across Celestia’s features. ON THAT, WE CAN AGREE. The somber tone of her voice gave Spike pause. He floated around in place for another moment, unsure of what to say. Finally he settled on, “I need to get to the moon.” FOR YOUR SPELL? “Yes. For my spell.” Celestia was silent for a moment. Then she said, I FIND MYSELF AT AN IMPASSE. IT IS NOT MY PLACE TO PREVENT MY SUBJECTS FROM CHOOSING THEIR OWN DESTINIES. “Then let me go.” AS YOUR FRIEND, IT IS MY DUTY TO COMPEL YOU OTHERWISE. “You’ve been gone for six hundred years!” The pain in his own voice surprised him. “You don’t know anything.” He curled his knees up to his chest and hugged himself tight. “I can’t hug my friends. I can’t even make friends. I’m completely alone.” YOU’RE NEVER ALONE-- “Don’t.” His gaze burned a blotch in the cosmic background radiation. “Don’t even try.” Spike floated around silently for what felt like hours. He could feel a few of Celestia’s multitudinous eyes on him. He didn’t care. Let her turn him away. He’d find a way. He’d come back here a smaller drake and rub it in her face, how a multiversal goddess couldn’t stop him from-- One ring of Celestia’s body vibrated at a frequency that made Spike’s left-side molars ache. The world shifted a shade into the ultraviolet, then went back to normal. Spike blinked. “Wha--” I HAVE MADE THE SHELL BETWEEN SPACE AND THE ATMOSPHERE POROUS. YOU CAN NOW FLY BETWEEN EARTH AND SPACE AT WILL. PLEASE DON’T ABUSE THIS PRIVILEGE, OR LUNA WILL BE MOST UPSET. “Oh.” His mind reeled. “Uh. Thank you.” I AM MERELY A GUIDE. IT IS UP TO YOU TO REALIZE THE MERIT IN YOUR DECISIONS. “Thanks.” He thought about giving one of her rings a hug, but thought better of it. “So how exactly do I get up to the moon?” YOU’RE A BIG DRAGON. FOR NOW. Seven cherubic trumpets sounded in the void. Celestia began to discorporate right before his eyes. Rings sped up and flew off into space. Wings fluttered away by themselves. The eyes started closing. Just before she disappeared completely, he heard her voice no longer as an omnipotent resonance, but as a normal pony voice just like she’d been in his deepest, oldest memories. “Fly.” Six thousand miles and one extra dimension away, a dragon with orange scales and a sucking chest wound scoured the depths of an ancient desert temple built to honor the ancient snake sorcerers of the Nyle river. Sand from the desert outside clung to her chainmail, forming sharp shards of crystal that clogged her wounds and fell underfoot. When dragonfire dripped to the floor, it turned the sand to slippery crystal, slowing her progress. She’d already exhumed three cursed ruins searching for the final portion of the spell. She was just about to start on her fourth when she heard a sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Her left-side molars ached. The world shifted a shade into the ultraviolet, then went back to normal. She looked up, blinking, suddenly drawn back up the winding passageway. She stepped over the remnants of booby traps, through the ashes of the undead guards she’d made sure wouldn’t get up again. Past the gravesites she’d invaded--not robbed. You had to take something for it to count as robbery. Outside, the sun was just starting to rise over the eartern dunes. The air smelled like cumin and prickly-sweet cacti and sand. She turned her eyes to the sky and found the waxing gibbous face of the morning moon high above. It called to her.