On the Dining Habits of Equus Carnivorus
Spike slammed into thin air before getting to his target, smashing his snout painfully and falling to the ground even more painfully. He tried to lift himself up, then collapsed, arms wobbling, and scrambled to a stand from his feet up instead. Confused, he stared blearily at the unicorn, who wasn't just purple because of her coat now. She was purple because the air around her was shimmering with a bubble of purple.
Wait, so ponies got FORCEFIELDS now?! No one had told him that! That wasn't even FAIR!
Figuring that there wasn't anything he could do against something like that, Spike turned tail and ran, glad that at least his legs weren't as completely useless as his arms were. He still wobbled and panted and tripped over things that he shouldn't have tried over, but hey, he was moving. Back through the alleyway, hopefully to a secluded... wait, no, it just led to another big street, and there were even more unicorns in it!
“Oh, I've always wanted to catch a squaglureious gibberling!” an excited voice squealed from behind.
He glanced back just in time to see a lasso of purple magic zip towards him, honing with all the speed of a snake extending infinitely long to strike at a poor little mousie. Luckily, this unicorn didn't have nearly the pinpoint aim of an Appleloosan pony, and he was able to duck it, leaving the energy zipping pointlessly past him. And now he was left with a choice: keep going into a definitely crowded street, or go back the way he'd come to a less crowded street but with a pony actively trying to get him.
Maybe if he could distract her.
“I'm not a whatever it was you said, I'm a dragon, you nincompoppy!” he yelled nastily, happy to see her jolt in offense at the insult. Hah, pony hunger didn't totally override pony sense of dignity, right Rainbow Crash?
Just enough of an opening for him to charge and hit a slide to get between her legs and out the other side, her tail tickling his face as it swished past. He saw that purple bubble slam down around her again, but it was too late and too centered on defense. Up and running again, the other side, the way he'd been to start with, was relatively empty – only three or four unicorns in sight instead of the dozens the other street had, and they all looked soft and happier to munch their street vendor caramelized squirrel heads rather than burn energy chasing after live prey. He had no idea where he was going, he only knew that he couldn't stop moving.
The beautifully smooth, well-kept streets were bliss to his poor feet, but that also presented the problem of letting that unicorn keep up easily. Spike scrambled over tables, knocking over snacks and pitchers while unicorns in seats cried out at him in more offense than alarm. He shredded canopies, skittered under dresses (causing some particularly screechy shrieks with that) and barreled through ornamental bushes, hoping that taken all together, it would be enough to at least slow the unicorn down.
“But, but if you're a dragon, how come your coloration and pore exudings precisely match a well-documented subspecies of gibberling!” she was protesting, because apparently it was normal for ponies in Canterlot to have debate biology during a hunt. “Lexicon Locus's Primer to Class IV Tangible Prey clearly... huff, puff... states that dragons, huff, don't even drip naturally unless they're a sea serpent.. pant, gasp... subspecies!”
At least, heh, she sounded out of breath. Pretty quickly, too, she couldn't be much of an athlete. One of the lazy ones that liked food delivered to her instead of going to get it herself, awright! On the other claw, Spike was feeling more dead than alive himself, and knew that taking umpteen steps for every one of hers wasn't gonna do much for his long term survival chances. She was sending more magic lassos at him with more enthusiasm than aim, and all she got for her trouble against his frantic dodging was snatching a table, somepony's drink (which promptly splashed on her face as the glass itself jammed onto her snout) and a huge feathery sunhat.
Kicking up a fuss like this was definitely gaining him a little distance, but he was running down a big, paved, open street with shops and things on either side. Nowhere near good cover. Worse, some of the ponies that he'd disrupted had tossed away their top hats and monocles to join in the chase, wheezing and chortling with all the cheerfulness of gentleponies who hadn't had such 'jolly good sport' in ages. This wasn't good. He had to make a drastic change in his plan of action if he wanted to live to bash the pony mockery of their harmonious kingdom all to bits.
Since Canterlot was basically partway on a mountain, it wasn't too surprising to find a sharp curve in the street where going forward would have meant walking onto nothing but air. A bronze and silver-braced cliffside with bell-cupped white flowers growing out of modest cracks in the mountain rock, a touch of natural beauty in a place of creatures that insistently subjugated nature. Seeing a nice comfy fat-thighed unicorn in a belladonna dress to land on, and his pursuers not including pegasi, Spike decided to take that walk on air, and even as tired as he was got a little amusement from how the ponies all around him gasped as he jumped without hesitation.
That pony backside was well-fed, and he sank his feet in an inch before bouncing off it to land and start running again. Number one rule of being Spike: running always works, baby! Fat pony had been chewing on a fried leg of something that looked like it could've been related to him, and spat it out in surprise... then tripped over it. He laughed merrily, king of his own little world of outlawness, feeling like maybe the revolution really could happen and that brief surge of despair had just been a dumb impulse.
Then there was a flash of lavender light, and the purple unicorn from before was in front of him.
“Alright, gibberling, give it up!” she commanded him in a no-nonsense voice, stomping a hoof. “I'm already whole minutes behind schedule for my Joys of Subatomic Metaphorical Gastronomy report, never mind phase three of my thesis on the dining habits of equus carnivorus!”
“How did... but... you...”
Spike looked back between her and the cliff several times, feeling as bewildered and angry as he had with Pinkie's little train ambush. Why did they have to keep making up new tricks?!
“Oh, it's a simple teleportation spell. Nothing fancy, really, just basic spatial warping,” she replied modestly, then hunkered down, baring her teeth and setting her horn to glowing again.
Well that was swell, just when he'd thought a pony moving too fast to see was the worst thing he could run into, he'd now found a pony who could move around without being in the in-between parts between two places! It was getting sort of funny by now though. Or maybe he was getting hysterical. Either way he was feeling giggly. Next up he'd run into fireball throwing ponies or something, it had to be due on the list.
Frustrated and tired as he was, he still wasn't gonna sit there and let her shoot whatever spell she had planned. So he corrected her again on the gibberling thing, just to gain a split second distraction, and hid behind the fat pony who was trying to retrieve her greasy fried hunk of bone-in thigh.
This actually worked out better than he expected, since the purple unicorn was polite enough to apologize and try not to hit the other pony, and the other pony was sweatily reacting on a clock that was, at best, two seconds too slow compared to the rest of the world. On the downside he got to see way more frilly pony undergarments than he was comfortable with. The faint reek of pony sweat, half-covered up with too-strong perfume, combined really badly with the smell of fried meat.
Then the chunky pony got the idea to start stomping on him, and with four hooves plus magic to avoid, and that kind of weight behind the hooves to boot, Spike figured it was time to bail. As soon as he got a good distance, though, the purple pony, quickly becoming Spike's least-favorite-pony-besides-all-the-other-ponies-that-had-tried-to-kill-him, just flashed in front of him again, a near-mad sliver of a grin of triumph on her face.
“And you can't be a dragon because you're not even breathing fire!” she announced. “Even baby dragons can breathe fire by the time they're fully ground mobile! Hah! Your lies are as imperfectly formulated as your evasive maneuvers, gibberling!”
“Oh, sure, pick on the handicapped dragon, I'm sure he's not sensitive about his birth deformities already,” Spike growled. It wasn't his fault he'd never been able to do that!
He couldn't really think of what else to do with that crazy grin eating away at his peace of mind, so he swiped out with his dog-tired arm, trying to go for one side of a leg in hopes of getting something tender. It wasn't his brightest moment, and he wasn't at all surprised when a purple bubble flickered into being just long enough to block it before vanishing again. The shock made his arm bones quiver from clawtips right up to his poor protesting shoulder.
“You are totally a god moder.” He wasn't sure what that meant, but he'd heard another dragon use the insult once in tail-wrestling.
Her smile lowered to vaguely sane sharpness as she lowered her head, horn surging with sparks this time in addition to the usual glowy light show.
“Okay, now hold still, because I want to try a trick my brother taught me about offensive shield use, but it's a very precise maneuver and I don't want to vandalize any property!”
Yeah. Yeah, that was totally what he was gonna do. Stand still. Although the way his heart was thudding, maybe he could do that and the organ would just bounce him out of the way with each heartbeat. Even rolling his eyes as he dodged was a waste of energy at this point. Problem was he had no idea what he was supposed to be dodging, there was no projectile or anything, so he just picked a direction at random.
He was lucky.
Purple energy slammed down next to him, almost identical to the shield bubble the unicorn liked so much, except it had a harsher, flatter look to it and formed a wall instead of a sphere. An ornamental chain railing, so tiny it was totally useless as an actual railing even from Spike's point of view, was caught up in the purple glow and promptly slid apart, falling as if cut clean by an ax. Hooves and teeth and even horn gorings weren't so... clean.
Anticipating rather than seeing it happen, Spike jumped back from the second forcefield, which cut into the clean street with equal lack of effort. It still cut into part of his arm, just a little but such a thorough, broad slice that he was bleeding from it so much it actually was visible past all the blood he'd been covered in from the pipe. It was hard not to cry at how much it hurt but he wasn't gonna give her the satisfaction! If ponies even felt satisfaction from that sort of thing, he actually didn't know but DARN IT he needed SOME excuse not to cry, didn't he?!
She was mad that she'd broken the fence, he could tell just form her tone – no time to listen to the actual words anymore – and had decided to make up for it by getting it just right this time. Or the next time. Or the next. Or the NEXT. Being just a little too slow now would mean losing a tail, a finger... or his life, and it seemed like an insult that he could get hurt and worse so badly by something so innocent and girly-looking as that sheet of sparkly purple.
Using all the strength that was left in his tired dragon arm, Spike dug into the dirt with his claws and flung a handful into her face, causing her to gag and wipe at her tongue with both hooves, but more importantly also blinding her for a few seconds. He as much tumbled as ran downwards, not having the strength to fight gravity anymore, just hoping that the street would lead somewhere where he could hide. An alleyway, didn't this dumb pretty city have any grungy alleyways for him to hide in?!
So, checking off the list. Magical lassos. Teleporting. Regular forcefields. Weaponized forcefields. At least the unicorn with the boring manecut had to be out of tricks by now!
Noticing a large shadow overhead that wasn't from a building, Spike looked up and saw two wrought iron chairs, an umbrella-shaded table, a crate, three different sizes of suitcases, a dead tree swallow with a faintly confused look on its neck-twisted face and what was apparently the chain from the earlier guard rail all floating in air and headed toward him like a whole flock of diving falcons, all enclosed in that same, by now unhappily familiar purple shine.
Okay, so she could also throw a bunch of stuff at him.
“I really hate unicorns,” he said to no one in particular, just before it all caught up with him and buried him painfully in debris.
Even piled on, the different objects still bumped against him insistently, as if trying to squish him into a paste. Which, for all he knew, they were. Might've been a special Canterlot recipe: squished dragon paste, served fresh over your flapjacks. One of the chairs was digging its leg into the bad spot on his arm and he couldn't help but let out a... manly scream, yeah, and anyone who said it sounded otherwise was just clearly wrong. So what if he'd gotten what was apparently a steak-sized patch of skin totally taken off, he could deal with it!
“Guess I'll have supper tenderized,” his nemesis talked to herself idly, clopping forward.
Spike dug himself out of the crushing mass just long enough to glare at her before he got sucked into the middle again by the ever-shifting pressure, feeling like he was being buried alive. Except for the fact that ponies wouldn't waste a body like that, it was as accurate a comparison as any he could think of. His arm hurt so bad, and he was shaking all over from all the climbing and running. No strength left. He was gonna die.
“Huh, it looks like you are a dragon after all,” she went on conversationally as the magicked objects scraped blood off of him (when they weren't making him bleed in new places). “A baby dragon that can't fly or breathe fire. You're probably better off being a meal, poor little guy.”
The objects yanked away from Spike all at once, leaving him to fall on his face in the street. While they collapsed all around him in now-inanimate heaps, the air around him filled with dozens of sheets of sharp glowing energy like guillotine blades. Too many to dodge. Like everything in Canterlot, it was beautiful in a delicate, girly way, and like everything about ponies, it was lethal despite appearances. Would it have been better to croak by way of a suitably ferocious, ugly, smelly monster? Even now, the unicorn behind it all was staring with shining, earnest eyes only slightly tainted by that sheen of gluttony, looking more like a student eager to solve a math problem in front of her teacher than a killer. So harmless-looking, that typical pony unawareness only adding to the innocence they had no right to walk around with but still did....
If only things had been different.
Spike licked his lips, swallowed, and tried to think of an appropriate last thing to say as he stared into purple glowy death, ready to chop him into a twenty pieces.
“Maybe I can't breathe fire, but at least I'm not still wearing the manecut my mother gave me when I was two.”
As far as last words went, it wasn't his best work, but he felt it was good enough to go out on.
He felt a thrill of triumph beat back the pain and exhaustion as the unicorn flushed in mixed embarrassment and anger.
“My manecut is practical and attractive!” she half-yelled at him. Unstable much? “And, and besides... uh... you can't even read a dead-end sign! You were doomed by your own classic tactical blunder as soon as you headed down this street, I could have caught you with my bare hooves!” She flailed said hooves demonstratively, and Spike could have sworn he imagined a faint draft of musty scroll odor from the gesture.
Ignoring how much it hurt, Spike propped his wounded arm up on the street by the elbow and leaned his head into his palm, feigning too-cool-to-care with his usual expert ease.
“So I can't read, whatsit to ya? Are you gonna eat me or talk me to death? 'Cause frankly, I'm getting bored here.”
The unicorn blinked.
“What... what do you mean, you can't read?”
He glared at her silently, not even dignifying so dumb a question with a reply.
She blinked a second time, and the hungry look faded away entirely, replaced by... was that tears? Seriously?
“That... that is the saddest thing I've ever heard in my entire life,” she whispered.
All of a sudden, instead of being threatened by looming magic blade things, he was being cradled in surprisingly gentle magic energy. And a pair of hooves. Yeah, okay, this was unexpected and more than a little awkward. Going for the eyes seemed like the right thing to do here, but his arms were pinned.
“How can you stand to go through life not knowing the joys of neoclassical literature like Horse Ace's epistles, or dactylic hexameter-derived epics like the Neighneid, or Golding Withers's classic juvenalian Ford of the Lies or Buckskinius's Consolation of Gastrosophy or, or... even Daring Do!”
“Books are stupid,” he said right away, less because he really thought so and more to get another shot in. That muscle-flopping tiredness that was total throughout the rest of his body wasn't working on his tongue yet, handily.
“No they're not!” she yelled, hilariously offended. It was like he'd said something about her mom. “Books are full of all of the magical and wonderful moments in the lives of everypony important all conveniently compacted into a portable format so you can experience them for yourselves anytime you want! What's stupid about that?”
“Everything you just said. Sounds really lame if you ask me.”
He squirmed against her, but the magic was too tight even if her physical grasp on him was careless. She didn't have many muscles, not like most of the ponies he'd run across, but he guessed that was probably pretty normal for a city-living unicorn. That smell of paper and glue, so much like the library he'd gone into one time to find a bathroom, was a lot stronger now. Basically she read so much that it was apparently her equivalent of perfume.
And still had time to be out and about and kill helpless little dragons, whatta shame. Even the most 'civilized' of them still had to stoop to murder, it was in their blood.
“You're just saying that because your own ignorance has made you so blind that you can't even recognize the value of illumination! Oh, I can't kill you now, you poor thing!”
“You can't? Why not?”
Spike clapped his hands over his mouth. Nice going, mouth, just keep on running away with things without thinking about the consequences. You'd think he'd been looking forward to getting eaten, sheesh!
“I could never forgive myself if I turned you into a fricassee before you'd at least known the joys of a nice, juicy mystery novel, to say nothing of the pleasures of the satires of Filly O'Sorrel on applied subcultural analytics to the social mores of late antiquity Hoofington! You seem like you have a quick head on your shoulders, and the Princess has been bugging me about getting more hooves on experience anyway. It'll be a snap! Or a breeze. Or a breeze-snap! Eheheh.”
“Whatever you say,” Spike replied resignedly, still trying to decipher half of the first sentence as she wiped him off with her magic. It felt like being scrapped by soft rubber, and made exactly the same kind of squeaky sound that window washers made.
So, he was saved at the last minute due to blind luck and his inability to tell what squiggly ink shapes meant. Whatever, a win was a win, he'd take it. The unicorn actually looked almost kind of nice now that she wasn't trying to kill him. He couldn't forget that she'd tried, though. And would try again soon, probably. No matter how nice she looked. Remember, Spike. Remember.
“What's your name?” he asked, taking a peek at her flank to catch her symbol. Nothing but a nasty-looking scar there, the pale, jagged welts having taken over the entire space where a Cutie Mark normally was.
“Oh!” She blinked, as if surprised that she had such a thing as a name. “I'm Twilight Sparkle. What's yours?”
“Spike.”
“How fascinating, I'd always read that dragons had etymological predilections towards biological extrusions for their hatchlings' names, but I'd never actually-”
And at that point, Spike realized that she'd be going on like that for a while, so he tuned her out while smiling and nodding at regular intervals. She looked so eager and happy, talking like this. Way more happy than she'd looked while chasing him – that had been more of a 'grr, stop running away and wasting my time' look. He could have wondered why she'd bothered to chase him if she hadn't found it fun to begin with, but there was no reasoning to why ponies did what they did.
“...of course, the zoning laws are really bad about cold-blooded pets,” she was rambling on as he tuned in again (mostly because he wanted a distraction from the way all the unicorns nearby were eying him interestedly as she floated him along). “I'm not sure what to do about that....”
“Oh, boohoo, pony laws. I say do what you want, who's gonna stop a unicorn who can do all that stuff you just did? And can you put me down so I can walk on my own, please?”
“Spike! I can't just do what I want, that's wrong! The rules are there for reasons, to protect all of us and keep us safe!”
He guffawed so loudly and deliberately rudely a nearby unicorn with her mane in a bundle tilted up her nose and muttered 'Well, I never!'
“Well, to keep everypony safe, anyway,” she amended with a smile that almost looked embarrassed.
That's right, don't forget that non-ponies don't count, ya purple jerk. Then she brightened up.
“Oh, I know, I can just designate you for my unused emergency food supply slot. You'll keep fresher alive anyway!”
He wished she looked less happy about it.
“So are you gonna eat me after I've learned to read?”
His arm was still bothering him badly, all the more because he didn't have anything simple like walking to take his attention away from it. He'd never had a cut like it before... for one thing, cutting dragon scales wasn't exactly an easy deal. But even a magic sword couldn't have done a better job of it compared to what she'd done. She hadn't even thought that it might be hurting or could get infected or something. Spike could tell her mind was a million miles away, and he couldn't even be mad at her for it.
It was like being crazy, what these ponies had. It was a kind of nuts, only with no doctors or straitjackets because they'd built a whole civilization of crazy. Which made him the crazy one.
“Well, sure, I can't let perfectly good meat go to waste,” she replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That would be like spitting in the face of my own thesis on the dining habits of equus carnivorus, don't you know anything about ponies? But there's no rush or anything. I'm really more of a sphinxian fritters filly anyway.”
“Hey, I'm bleedin' out here,” he tried, adding a bit of a whimper to his voice. “Can a guy get a bandaid or something at least?”
“Oh, don't be silly,” Twilight said after a split second glance at his arm. “You're clearly nowhere near a critical level of exsanguination. I'll have you cleaned and sterilized once we reach the palace. Just try not to drip on anything that looks like it's hundreds of years old. The Princess won't mind, but the guards can be real sticklers.”
Either her magic was flagging or she had actually heard his earlier request and only just now processed it, because she floated him over to her back and let him ride on top, where he flopped with a groan, grateful and boneless like a beached jellyfish. This was convenient. Discord was stoned (he was pretty sure that was the right technical term for it) in the palace gardens, so she'd be taking him right to where he wanted to go anyway. And hopefully preventing anypony else from eating him, too!
“So we're going to the palace, huh. Are you a maid or something?”
“Nooooo,” she said with a little head toss. “I am actually the personal student of the Princess, if you must know,” she added modestly. “I'm very fortunate to have the position.”
“I bet,” Spike mumbled automatically while his brain wheels churned out a million half-baked schemes he could use that fact to his benefit on. “What's the scar from? Looks cool.”
He paused, biting his bottom lip. Hadn't really meant to say that last bit, actually he'd intended to throw in a cheap shot about her obviously losing an old hunt, but it was cool by dragon fashion standards, so whatever. She didn't seem like she had a big head so he could afford to butter her up a little. It was for survival, that was all.
Twilight stopped walking, her face darkening into a ground-tilted scowl so intense that he was sure he'd made a mistake in asking that, no matter how obvious a question it was.
“Just an old experiment for the Princess,” she muttered halfheartedly, her voice almost Fluttershy quiet. “I wasn't good enough,” she said after a longer moment, with a tone of dark self-directed anger thick as syrup. Although he couldn't see to tell for sure, the movement of muscles at the sides of her head made Spike think of that eerie razor-sharp grin from earlier, as though a grin in response to anger was a pony thing, just like some cats responded to pain or fear with purring.
Spike'd just decided to say he was sorry for asking when she perked up, as if the moment had never happened, her hooves setting to a gentle trot again. Although the palace, castle, whatever-you-wanna-call-it was really close to Canterlot, Canterlot was big enough that getting there wasn't instant. They talked for maybe half an hour, getting to know each other's personalities, her mostly happy to explain at ridiculous lengths any question about pony society he asked, and him happy to distract her with explanation requests so he didn't have to lie to her very much about what he was doing in Canterlot and what he'd done up to this point. As far as she knew, he was just lost. Really, really, really lost. Which was kinda true, since he'd been that way pretty much his whole life. And she knew tons about pony... everything, from art to buildings to industry to crops to politics. It wasn't exactly surprising to find the themes of 'hunting', 'meat' and 'eating' cropping up in every possible way every few sentences. One track minds, these ponies.
Then they had to take a detour in reverse to back where they'd come from, just as they were in sight of the palace gates, when he pointed out idly that she'd forgotten the book she'd been reading way back when he'd crawled out of the pipe. He wouldn't have said anything if he'd known she'd be OCD enough to go back after it, jeez! But then she was all grateful to him for remembering, which he figured might make for good leverage.
From what he could tell, it wasn't that she was bad at organizing. She was too good at organizing. She had planned out her day so precisely that every minute was accounted for and probably more productive than any single week of Spike's life had ever been. Kind of disgusting really. But now she was all off her schedule, and she couldn't remember everything because she kept stressing about everything she wasn't remembering, and... yeah.
He would've felt guilty if he weren't so busy deriving secret amusement from it. He had dealt with life or death situations with less stress than she was dealing with a single hour of her day not being where she'd intended it to be in her schedule thingy.
The palace was as grand as he'd expected, a friggin' fairy tale castle that had to be using magic just to keep from falling off the side of the mountain, using a lot of the same architectural quirks as Canterlot itself, the gold and marble and bright flags against pale white and silver backgrounds. Probably because the Canterlot ponies copied the style, he realized. The Princess was old, and the place she lived in most likely was almost as old. Still, he wasn't one to get impressed by stupidly expensive, too-big buildings, so he just let Twilight chatter on about Renneighsance era architects and masterwork craftsmanship and landmark engineering techniques while he quietly counted entrances, exits, potential hiding spots (way too few of those), and guards.
Lots of guards.
Mostly pegasi, some unicorns and earth ponies too though. They were huge and muscley and had faces like statues that had decided being rock wasn't nearly hardcore enough for them. Although Twilight smiled and waved and greeted some of them by name, the best she got in return was a stiff nod or sharp-hoofed salute. She didn't seem offended; he guessed that was just how they were trained.
She ducked away from the big main halls quickly and into a smaller set of hallways that led to a tower's spiral staircase. Along the way, they bumped into a servant donkey who complimented Twilight on the 'juicy catch,' and Twilight beamed and grinned so proudly for such a long time after that Spike almost felt happy for her. Which was a whole new kind of wrong all by itself!
Her room was an absolute shamble, a whirlpool of science lab sets, scrolls, quills, colored tape, rulers, chalk, ink pots, miniature skeletal models, half-drunk cups of tea and half-eaten sausage sandwiches (the sausage parts all eaten, of course). Everything was everywhere. Spike looked up and around, and even saw what looked like an old essay paper with red editing correction marks on it stuck on the ceiling with some kind of brown stain. And books, books books in every potential book-shaped space. Books in stacks, books opened, books closed, books organized in little shelves and books crammed into the spaces between other books, wherever a book might fit – by golly, a book there was. A dozen ponies could have lived a dozen lives in this room if they weren't worried about being short on space, and gotten very well-educated in the process. Buried underneath all that was some very nice, if limited furniture in finished pine, and a rug that depicted the pony Princesses of old in a fashion similar to the style of Fluttershy's story book illustrations.
Spike looked at Twilight, who was paused at the threshold of the door with a blush, one hoof still raised, as if it had just occurred to her what her room looked like to somepony who didn't live in it.
“I... I have a system!” she said without any prompting.
“Suuuure you do.”
Cleaning and 'sterilization,' as she called it, was every bit as uncomfortable and humiliating and painful as he'd expected, dedragonizing in a way that somehow fighting for his life hadn't been. Her attempts at boosting his morale were even worse, though.
“Don't be fussy bus, Spike, let's just have two more measly minutes with the steel wool. Your eyelids look like they might be suffering from a mild case of dysecdysis, and ya don't wanna look bad if the Princess walks by, do you? Come on, who's a good emergency food supply? Who's my number one emergency food supply, huuuuh, Spike?”
Clearly 'dragon psychology' hadn't been one of the nearly infinite topics Twilight Sparkle had read books about.
“Please stop talking,” he told her flatly, and grabbed the scratchy pad and finished the rest himself while she very clearly bit back the urge to criticize his scrubbing technique.
At the tail end of him doing that, Twilight got distracted rechecking her schedule and frantically scratching off some things and editing other things. She could have probably done a whole two more of the things she'd meant to do today if she hadn't spent so much time with her schedule list, Spike thought to himself with a silent chuckle. The unicorn quickly became sucked into it, talking to herself, diving back into scrolls and papers and tomes with her magic levitating things that zigzagged all over the place as she remembered she needed them. Spike himself had to dodge a particularly fast quill before it impaled him as he was drying himself off.
Twilight was getting increasingly less responsive to his questions as she got back to whatever her super important work was, and he wasn't nearly smart enough to figure out half of what she was saying with her fancy college level words. So he just hung around quietly and checked out the place while she wasn't paying any attention to him. Window too high to jump out of, no climbing points. Door was lockable, and she'd already locked it. Drat. Too sturdy to break down without a lot of noise and effort, but he might be able to do it in time if he had to. The ceiling had a small sliding ladder up to a higher window, he had no idea what that was for. Whatever it was, it was latched and locked tight. Had to make a note to climb up there when she was asleep if she actually planned to let him be free in the room at night.
Hours passed like that. He passed, and tapped his feet, and yawned, and looked through the pictures of some of her books, and ate the bread from her stale sandwiches, and considered hurting her but immediately (and gladly) threw that idea away as being dumb. He was right where he needed to be, and he was, for now, 'safe.' No reason to rock the boat when the boat had lots of grumpy-looking armored guards on it who didn't take kindly to boat rockers.
This felt a lot like how he'd been with Fluttershy, but it wasn't the same. He reminded himself of that. It was closer to Appleloosa than Fluttershy, even Rarity was more Fluttershy than this was. She was still gonna eat him, just later instead of now. And to add insult to injury, she was gonna make him learn things before she killed him! All he had to do was look at that long stretch of stinging, itching red along one arm for a reminder. Still, he smiled as he listened to her fuss away at her notes and her essays and what all else she did with those scribbles of hers. He'd gotten along just fine so far without knowing how to read, but clearly it was something central to her life as much as hunting and eating meat was. Pity she couldn't seem to write about normal things, like... anything not involving meat, or murder, or points between the two themes.
When the sun started to leak the molten tangerine orange of early evening through the windows, she put her things down with an audible thump of countless papers, stretched her back cracklingly and sighed.
“Okay! I think I'm caught up enough now that I'll only have to pull a half-nighter tonight. I bet you'd like some chalcedony or something, wouldn't you Spike?”
He would loooove some chalcedony, and told her so. But besides that, he also asked for a quick tour around the place, since he'd only seen a little bit as they'd come in. Maybe the gardens? A nice, safe, peaceful place, the gardens, seemed like this unicorn's kinda gig. Good for study and maybe even some light contemplation of stonework techniques, he hinted, and she was instantly grinning and bouncing at the thought. For a pony who devoted herself to such boring mature junk, she was as easy to manipulate as a kid. Spike couldn't help but like her, but it was a liking that was held in check by his painful longing for her to just apologize for hurting him and knowing that she wouldn't. At least he go a bandage for it before they went out.
While Spike munched on the chalcedony Twilight had leftover from some old project or other – for all he knew, she'd been using it to make friggin' pony golems so she wouldn't have to hunt things herself – he was forced to accompany her on a kitchen raid, where she picked up an nth plate of her 'usual' sausage sandwich and super-caffeinated baby mice latte. He couldn't watch her with the drink, some of the tails were draped out of the cup apparently for ornamentation, and something about the sight kicked in his gag reflex seriously. The rest of his chalcedony, he swallowed whole without tasting, and it seemed to plunk down into his stomach like heavy daggers.
Worth it, though, because she took him on a quick trot through the pleasantly scenic outside of the castle, with its gardens and random exotic wildlife (poor meals waiting to be caught, not that they knew it) and hedge mazes. There were more sculptures than just Discord, most of them involving ponies killing something or ponies eating something – often at the same time. But Discord was unmistakable because his statue was like nothing else that Spike had ever seen before, countless animals jumbled together in a tall, snakey body with a wizened but lively face that grinned one-fanged with ominous cheer. He was careful not to even look except out of the corner of his eyes, and didn't ask any questions, only nodding when Twilight mentioned something offhandedly about the statue. Didn't need to set off any alarm bells, now did he?
As they walked, several passing ponies, all well-dressed nose-in-the-air noble types, asked if Twilight had dibs on him. Apparently he was tasty-looking, not that he didn't know that already. Spike found himself, much to his humiliation, shying away from them and hiding behind his former would-be killer, who at least wasn't going to snack on him within the next twenty-four hours. Twilight, for her part, seemed vaguely aware if not very concerned of his nervousness to their hungry-eyed badgering, and she took them back to her room instead of staying outside as they'd planned.
What else after that except more writing for Twilight while he sat around doing nothing? That was okay though. He needed the time to think. He'd walked right by friggin' Discord, his key to saving the ponies from themselves with a little crazy to fight the crazy. Hair of the pony that bit ya. He'd walked right by it, and the statue hadn't seemed alive or anything. Just rock. Was Discord really dead? Had he come all this way for nothing? Or maybe there was some kind of spell or trigger that could wake the guy up. Twilight seemed like the kind of pony to know, but he couldn't ask. Not unless he got her on his side, and he didn't even know if that was possible.
But he was alive.
That was something.
Alive, as a dragon, smack dab in the middle of Canterlot Castle.
While Twilight choked on the last mouse tail and gulped the dregs of her drink to make it go down smooth, Spike looked back at the slice of red on his arm, stiffening and drying into jagged little spots. It still hurt bad, especially every time he flexed that arm. He looked at it, focused on the pain, and then sighed and let the resentment go.
He wouldn't hate them for being what they were. How had Twilight put it? So blind you can't even tell the good of a light, something like that.
After wondering whether she was naive enough to really let him roam the room freely while she was asleep, Spike wasn't too surprised and only a little disappointed to find that she'd planned to lock him in the bathroom. After only two minutes of whining, he managed to get her to snatch an old basket just his size from the kitchen storerooms so he wouldn't have to sleep in the cold tub. She even throw a spare throw pillow and blanket in there, which touched him so much he almost cried. Even killers could be kind sometimes. It was a good bed. Comfy.
But he couldn't sleep in it.
Even when it got really dark, he couldn't sleep. He ended up staring blearily at the locked door, listening to Twilight scribble away with her quills and mutter to herself like a madpony. The bulk of her late night work seemed to about that thesis, the 'on the dining habits of equus carnivorus' thing. Hah, little did she know all that he could tell her about pony 'dining habits' if she wanted to sit still long enough for him to use every bad word he knew. He wondered what self-reinforcing junk she had spent all her painstaking time on assembling on her endless rolls of parchment and in her scattered pages of notes. You couldn't study your own madness, you couldn't see your own madness, because it was a part of you. Like whatever the thing in Fluttershy's stomach had been. If Twilight asked, he could tell her. He could tell her so much. But she wouldn't ask, and he couldn't take the risk of offering, so she would have to keep on working hard on writing her nonsense.
Something besides that was itching at the back of his head but he didn't know what. Walking back through the events of the day, he counted out every messed up thing that had happened to him, mixed with all the good stuff. Bad outweighed the good but that was normal. He hadn't planned to get here this way, but he'd gotten where he'd meant to go. He should be okay.
No, he was missing something. Something was wrong, he was sure of it.
After too many minutes of brooding in the dark, it finally clicked. Spike got up, still wide awake, and knocked gently at the door. He could still hear Twilight working away.
“What is it, Spike? Do you need a glass of water?”
He snorted. There was water right here, it was a bathroom. How could someone so smart be so stupid?
“No, I'm fine. I just... can you open the door for a sec? I just wanna ask you something real quick and then I'll go back to bed.” He thought of a way to phrase it so she'd be interested. “It's kinda a folklore slash architectural thing.”
She opened the door right away, looking so pleased that he'd finally shown an interest in her smarty pants gobbledegook that he felt bad for exploiting her interests that way.
“Yes, what is it? Oh, I know! Doubtless you're wondering how the Great Masters of the High Renneighsance achieved everlasting laudation by becoming the definitive ethos of the Canterlot geopolitical region, am I right?”
She said it with such breathless enthusiasm. Ah, the marvels of higher learning. What a waste of time. Also, there was at least one word in that sentence that Spike had no clue of the meaning of.
“Uh, no, actually, I was wondering about that mixed up statue we went by earlier,” he mentioned, twirling the tip of his tail nervously in his claws.
“Mixed up... oh, you mean Discord?”
“Yeah, that's the guy.” Spike concentrated hard, thought back the exact words and even the tone Fluttershy had used when she'd told him the story so he wouldn't get it wrong. “From what I heard, this guy was messing up pony land, but the Princesses beat him in a fight and turned him to stone with their magic, right?”
“That's correct, Spike, you have a pretty good grasp of history for a dragon your age. You'll be a natural at reading, I just know it!”
“Oh, why thank y- I mean, never mind that junk, argh!” Do NOT let her make you be proud of her being proud of you. Stay frosty, dragon! “I mean, Discord totally lost the fight fair and square, so he knew he was doomed and all, right? It wasn't like he was ambushed or anything.” Spike licked his lips but they still felt dry.
“Yes, that's how the historians describe the event. I've never thought to ask the Princess myself.”
“Right. So. Why is he smiling?”