The air thundered with the beast’s roar. Its rampage had brought an avalanche down upon it, but that was not to be the end of it.
No, for the earth trembled with fear as claws immense as the ribs of great whales pulverized the tomb of rock. In seconds it would be free and bear down upon them with a hundred tonnes of zerg fury.
Spike held fast to Twilight Sparkle’s back with one claw, grasping a shining gem tightly in the other. She ran as fast as terror itself, but the howls of the monstrosity were faster still.
It was not much further now. Hovering as they had left it, the shifting tessellation of crystals and alien metals that was their warp prism awaited their return. They need only be in its proximity and activate the control crystal and safety would be assured.
The mountain shuddered as a monstrous leg, like a column of the world itself, broke free from the rubble.
“It won’t stop!” Twilight shouted. She skidded to a halt beneath the waiting transport, her chest heaving with stolen breaths. Spike leapt from her back, holding the control crystal before him, his eyes focused on it in a hard line of determination.
“You’re right,” he said as another roar ripped across the sky and stone shattered in the distance. “Someone needs to make it stop.”
Twilight couldn’t decide if she was insane or he was. “What are you waiting for? We need to go! Ponyville needs us!”
Spike shook his head as he stepped back. “No. Ponyville needs you. I’ve got this one.”
“Spike, no, that’s insane! I won’t leave you-” but he had already activated the crystal. Twilight’s form was uploaded into the prism’s warp matrix and it flew beyond any chance of second thoughts.
“I know,” he said softly as the panic stricken after-image of Twilight faded into nothing. He could not stand straight or tall, but Spike stood fast. He met the ultralisk’s burning eyes, tiny pinpricks of madness seething with mindless fury as huge slabs of chitinous armor battered away at the rock.
“This,” he said, holding the gem in open sight, “is mine.” He swallowed it quickly and stepped forwards, leaving a tiny footprint in the dust.
“There are others like it. They’re mine too.” He walked forwards with slow purpose.
“The basket they’re in. The bed. The blanket. Mine,” Spike snorted, and his breath was edged with green flame.
“The purple cocoa mug. The toys. The books I’ve been given. Mine.”
“Peewee. His care? My responsibility. All mine” The ultralisk screamed, flailing as thick ropes of saliva and ichor spilled from its mouth. Boulders shattered and fell away from its endless struggling.
“A home in the library. A place by Twilight’s side. Her trust. Her thoughts. Her dreams. Mine.” His claws scraped off the rock beneath his feet.
“All that I’ve ever learned. Anything I’ve ever done. Everything I remember. Everything I feel. Everything I am. It’s all mine.” Spike’s footfalls came slower now, falling with heavy thuds upon the ground while his tail dragged a trail through the grit. His breath shimmered like a volcanic vent, and he crackled knuckles thick as iron rebars. With a roar and a cascade of rock, the beast freed another leg.
“Everyone I know. They are my family. They are my friends. In every way they care for me, and everyway I care for them, all of it is MINE.” The ground shook with his every step.
“At heart I am a pony, and everything that means is mine. And I’m also a dragon. Everything that means is mine, too,” his words rumbled like thunder in the distance. The ultralisk writhed as the last of the tortured rocks started to break away.
“What they hope is my hope. What they want, I want. Everything I am is mine, and I everything I see is mine.” The rocks cracked and split underfoot as smoke billowed from Spike’s nostrils like furnace chimneys.
“It’s all mine. I don’t need some piddly heap of treasure. Against my hoard that is nothing at all. My hoard is a past and a present and a future with them. All of it is mine.” Twilight Sparkle could have curled up and slept in the craters of his footprints and his claws ploughed through earth and stone.
“Mine to see. Mine to cherish. Mine to share. Mine to give. Mine to protect. Mine to fight for.”
The ultralisk slathered and raved. As the last rocks impeding it gave way it charged, swinging claws like the death of gods.
Spike met it with a roar of pyroclastic fury, a column of fire and smoke and ash that crackled with lightning and scorched the seat of the sky.
“ALL THIS IS MINE, SO COME AT ME WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT!”
They crashed together with the force of continents. Spike grappled with the behemoth’s claws, snarling in its face through fangs thick as trees.
He drew a breath that poured in, filling him with all the air of a hurricane.
There was a single, perfect moment of crystalline stillness.
Then he flamed.
Spike’s flame outshone the sun, shining the absolute white of annihilation. For miles around the air itself screamed with the raw power ripping through it. For seconds that passed like eternity, everything was blinding brilliance.
The heat shimmer writhed between them. The ultralisks carapace was aglow with molten armour, and with arms that could have plucked stars from the night sky Spike hefted the entirety of the flailing monstrosity above his titanic head as a shower of flaming pieces of melt fell all around him.
The ground beneath Spike buckled and caved, groaning with the torment of gravity.
The beast flailed, berserk and broken.
“You. Are. Mine!” and on that he heaved, throwing the struggling ultralisk’s ruin to be smote upon the mountain side.
As the last tremors died Spike turned and walked away, and with every step he shrank. His feet barely scuffed the dust as he returned to the ledge from where he had sent Twilight away.
After a while he sat on an outcropping of rock, sheltering from the wind in the lee of a boulder. Alone with his thoughts, he rested his chin in his hand and considered what he had done. The full extent of it hit him with sudden realization.
How could he have done that. Of all the... oh man... eating the control crystal? What had he been thinking?!
“Oh buck,” he said with dread in his voice. “Twilight is going to be so mad with me when she gets outta there...”