The burning in his skull was getting hotter and hotter, his head felt like it would burst, and glowing yellow smoke rose from his mane. The ice covered his head and he felt his body shutting down, but he could feel the burning energy, the one source of warmth, his warmth, being pulled away! How dare whatever that is take his warmth! But he felt that the source wasn't something he could hate, so he let it take away the energy, and it didn't take much, just enough to spread a little bit more warmth around.
The Doctor let out a haggard breath as purple-pink flames spread over him, thawing him inside and out, the regeneration stopped, the energy being transferred to the flames, and his life no longer in danger. He sank to the ground next to Smart Cookie, and the two looked up at Clover, her coat white, her mane the pink flame. Cookie gaped at the unicorn, and the Windigoes stopped their charge, the three spirits landed in front of her, but they visibly flinched every time her magical flames came near.
"So... much power... I-I... this can't just be me, it had to be all of us, this magic came from the three of us, our friendship." She turned to the Windigoes, and every step she took melted the frost on the ground. "Winter Spirits, for all the hatred you bred, I cast you out!" She screamed, and her horn glowed with the magic, her fire washing over the three of them. The Doctor watched silently as the winter spirits writhed in the fire.
"You dare?" Cookie looked around for the source of the voice, but the Doctor kept his gaze on the spirits. "You dare to destroy us in hatred? "
"We do not hate you, we destroy you out of necessity, right Clover?" The Doctor put a hoof on the mare's shoulder, and she turned her angry sight on him, but seeing who it was, began calming down, the mint green color returning to her coat and the oak-wood color returning to her no longer flaming mane. But the fire coming from her horn did not stop, it merely became a brighter hue.
"R-right." The three spirits writhed in pain even more so, completely cut off from their source of hatred.
"Doctor!"
"The one who brings about eternal pain among the greatest of us!"
"The Sainted Physician, the Oncoming Storm, the One who Has the Answer that Must not be Spoken, the Predator, the Warrior, the last of his race."
"The moon Doctor, the moon will be your end, and you will die with the hatred of a million souls! You will die in the darkness!"
"How do you know this?"
"We are immortal Doctor, spirits of Hatred, Fear, Envy, shadows all. But the Greatest of Us, the Greatest, she will be your end, it has been seen, and you can do nothing, so die hating us, die hating all."
"We will be cast out now, but bring great hatred to this country and we will return, for we can only be cast out, you'll never kill us."
And the three of them were dispersed by the flames, the wispy fog-like bodies evaporating and being blown away by the fire.
"What was that last bit?" Smart Cookie said uneasily.
"If hatred comes back to this land, they'll return..." Clover repeated. "...Well then, it's only a matter of time. The colonies are probably dead, and if so, our tribes will only send more, and they'll carry their hatred with them."
"Then we go back, and tell them about what happened." Smart Cookie said, brushing herself off and going up to the other mare. "We tell our leaders all about the Windigoes back home, and then we can divert our conflict against them! Peace between tribes, united against a common enemy."
"Won't work, our 'flames of friendship'..." The Doctor made a funny face when he said it, but switched to a more serious look immediately. "... hurt them, but it only really worked when we didn't hate them." He picked up his Sonic Screwdriver, and giving it a wave, saw that it was indeed working, but just barely, sparks were firing off angrily from it. He pointed it at the remaining flames on the ground and activated it, causing the fire to inflate into a swirling vortex. He tossed the screwdriver in and frowned as he heard a loud 'pop', but the fire roared to life, and stayed alive minutes later. "We can fight them, but we have to fight them with regret, with a determination, but we can't let it become too personal, something I don't think the people in your homelands will appreciate."
As the other two considered it he sat back down by the fire, and pulled off his armor, it wasn't cold by the fire.
They spent hours in that cave, they talked about their experiences, Cookie's time in college, Clover studying magic, and the Doctor's experience with the Changelings in Cloudsdale, but he was very careful to take out any mention of it happening many millenia from now. They made up songs and wrote poetry, and they even invented a way to play tic-tac-toe with three people, it was lost to the tides of history unfortunately.
After only a few hours the other three began to thaw, and as they did the fire grew larger. "Commander?" The Doctor said hopefully.
"Wh-what is it? D-did we win?"
"Against the enemy that mattered, no thanks to you."
"Huh?"
"I'll tell you in a little bit, the others are thawing too. Take off the armor and go sit by the fire, it'll warm you up."
"I-I want to k-keep the armor on."
"You're shivering, there's cold metal on your skin, just go warm up by the fire you pansy."
"Who are you calling a pansy, Pansy?"
The Doctor sighed and took off his temporary Commander's armor, letting her now obviously starving form rest by the flames, she fell asleep again under it's embrace. The Doctor turned to see a similar situation unfold with Chancellor Puddinghead and Princess Platinum, who had tossed her priceless robe into the fire because it was wet with melted ice and had given her one chill too many.
"Three, two, one!" The Doctor shouted. "Go!" And all six of them charged the ice in front of them at full strength, leaving a large crack on the wall, and six dizzy ponies. "Ugh... Clover, are you sure no magic works against this?"
"No, the ice and snow caused by the Windigoes was always slightly magical, it melted much slower than normal, and it was completely resistant to magic, only telekinesis on the air around them could we use."
"What about a rock? Could you throw that rock at the ice with telekinesis?"
"Sure, but it won't do much, the ice has a way of being unbreakable, it absorbs impacts really well, but if we can harm it with just a tackle then maybe by now..." She levitated the rock the three leaders had been fighting over, and flung it as hard as she could against the ice with her telekinesis, it shattered through the ice and embedded itself in the wall behind it.
"Sweet freedom!" Princess Platinum yelled before diving out of the cave, and as she landed on her flank she began to shiver again, but she could feel it wasn't nearly as cold as it had been the days before. She walked over to the three groups' soldiers, examining them, they were flash-frozen, stuck in the positions they had been fighting each other in, it looked like it was a crazed attempt to reach their cave.
She moved to a unicorn guard and frowned, her hoof touching his face before drawing back, it was wet, they were already beginning to thaw. "Clover! Bring that fire over here! And give it as much juice as you can muster!"
"Yes your Highness!"
The Doctor walked over to an Earth Pony mare, one who was frozen standing on top of two stallion's heads with her tongue sticking out. He stretched out his wing to her, the tip barely glowing with yellow-orange light, and the feather began melting through the ice.
Clover trudged along, supported by every unicorn they had freed, as well as the Princess herself, carrying the gigantic pink fireball with their magic. As it came within a few hundred feet it began melting the cursed snow immediately, flash-thawing every frozen pony they came across as well. Under the Earth Pony's legs choked grass sprung back up, drinking in the now revealed sunlight and the newly melted water, and allowing themselves to be guided by the presence of Earth Pony magic. The Pegasi took turns crashing through the fireball and thawing the colonists that had left the central camps. They went to the Earth Pony Colony first, and thawed every mare, stallion and foal before turning around and heading for Pegasopolis.
And after thawing the thousands of Pegasi the Unicorns made the long trek backwards to thaw their own families.
The three tribes' colonists took the thawing and the new found warmth of the land with gratitude, and weren't afraid to show it, even to the soldiers of their former enemies. By the end of the day over seven thousand ponies of varying species sat around the gigantic fireball, which had grown visibly with every thawed pony, and sang songs.
"Well Doctor, what happens next?" Pinkie asked, pulling off her party hat and hanging it up on the too-high coat hook inside the Tardis.
"Well, first of all- ooh! It's done!" He ran to the other side of the module and pulled out the freshly-made Sonic Screwdriver. He put it in his mouth and swung it over the Tardis's module, the lights and sounds of the Tardis becoming more alive. "First of all, we need to get out of here."
"But the party just ended, and it's not even dark out yet! And they'll need you!"
"I already convinced them to all commit treason at once, well, most of them, and got them to think about a new government, If I stuck around and wrote up the actual thing for them I'd be interfering too much, besides, I don't want to be part of the Government in the first place, far from it. The closest thing I'll agree to being is a military consultant, and only if necessary."
"But if we just leave won't that be mentioned in the history books?"
"Of course- isn't it? Actually- don't tell me, if you tell me anything from the history books about me it'll happen and there's nothing we can do to change it."
"From what I remember you aren't even mentioned."
"Well... after fifty thousand years things can be forgotten..." But the Doctor looked a little hurt.
"The others were all mentioned, we have a play actually, every year to celebrate. I played Puddinghead! It was really fun actually meeting him, and let me tell you- he can't hold a drink."
"Please tell me you didn't drink any of that Pegasus beer."
"Just a few bottles, don't give me that look, I'm an adult, and I can hold it better than any of these guys."
"But are you sure they didn't mention me?"
"Well in the play, Dashie played Hurricane, AJ played Smart Cookie, I played Chancellor Puddinghead, Twilight played Clover, and Fluttershy played-"
"He's gone!? After all that, and he just cuts town the second things stop being exciting!?" Platinum said shocked.
"Yep, apparently nopony saw him after the party ended, he's been gone for days."
Clover sighed and looked over the list of articles they had written up, on the bottom were seventy-seven signatures, the head of every prominent family in the colony, and most importantly the five founders, but at the very bottom was a blank spot for the last founders name. "He was the one who told us that we needed to build a new country, free of our old hatred." She shook her head, "Heh, you know what, I don't even remember his name." She said with a wide smile.
"Yeah, I don't think he ever told us." Smart Cookie said. "We spent hours and hours together talking about anything we could think of and we didn't ask his name."
"He didn't tell me his name." Hurricane said from the corner of the room. "Even when I asked, I just wrote down 'Private Doctor'. But that sounds more like a rank than a name. I actually called him 'Private Pansy'."
"Well then, I guess we'll have to do with seventy seven signatures." But then they all stopped when they heard a thrumming and beeping sound. Seconds later the Doctor rushed in, a pen in his mouth. No one in the room could even talk to him before he scribbled on the document, winked and left.
He came back in an instant later though, "Commander, I'm leaving the military, I like the name by the way. Always preferred being called a coward than a killer." And he left for the final time, the thrumming coming after him. The five ponies rushed after him, and Clover threw open the large oak door to see an outline of a blue box fading away, and no sign of the Doctor.
Puddinghead turned back inside and looked over the Articles of Equustria, he looked to the last name on the paper and fell to the ground laughing. The seventy-eighth signature said in big sloppy letters; 'Private Pansy'.
And he didn't notice that the night sky was completely black, with not a star in sight.
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Well, i was kind of disappointed by the s3 Premiere, the songs seemed a little forced and unnecessary, Sombra got next to no screen time and only one line in the entire thing, and they built almost no story for the crystal empire (something I will take full advantage of!) I did enjoy the climax with Spike and Twilight though, but overall, not what I waited six months for. However, I decided on one important thing- Season three will be cannon for my story. Also, I will delete any comments relating to 'gak' with extreme prejudice, you have been warned.
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