Spite closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as the wind whipped by her face. “Oh, Weaver… it’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to let my mane down and just… fly.”
“What, they don’t have sky where you’re from?” Rainbow Dash grinned, flying in lazy barrel rolls around her.
“They’ve got plenty of sky, and as much of it as I could ever ask for,” Spite replied, smiling contentedly. “But I have many duties, many obligations. My sister depends on me to be her eyes and her hands where she cannot see or reach. Rare is the day when I don’t have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
“That does not sound cool,” Rainbow opined, drifting above her. “So c’mon… spill.”
“Spill what?”
“How the hay you got ahead of me when you were chasing me down,” Rainbow snorted. “There’s nopony that fast. No one’s even gotten close but then you show up and it’s like I’m standing still for you.”
“Tactically, you were,” Spite replied, smiling up at the pegasus. “You were moving in a straight, predictable line. I didn’t outfly you, Dash, because you’re right: your speed and agility are so far beyond your nearest competitor that I couldn’t physically outdo you. But I can move from Ponyville to Canterlot with a moment of thought and minimum effort and it’s not possible to be faster than thought.”
“So ya teleported to where my straight line went,” Rainbow surmised.
Spite dipped her head in agreement. “The only advantage any of us ever have is wisdom and intelligence. I don’t bear the title of ‘Handmaiden’ because I’m the strongest or the fastest—far from it, believe it or not—but because I outthink the hoards of things that are stronger and deadlier than I.” She paused before giving Rainbow an apologetic look. “Not that I think of you as stupid.”
Dash waved a hoof. “Heh, don’t worry, one of my friends is the queen of the eggheads. I’m totally used to somepony being smarter than me.”
“I… think Twilight is just more willing to show it…” Fluttershy offered from her position off Spite’s right wing. “I think you’re a very smart pony, Rainbow.”
Spite smiled, resisting the impulse to look at the shy pegasus, knowing that it would just make her blush and try to hide behind her mane. “I agree. I’ve a feeling that there’s a good reason that Twilight Sparkle would bring an adventure novel with her while she kept watch at your bedside.”
She could have sworn she saw Rainbow blush at the mention of the novel but at her angle, she couldn’t be sure. “Twilight? With an adventure novel? Naw, you must have read it wrong or something.”
“Speaking of that, you’re from a different place, aren’t you?” Luna asked, coming up on Spite’s left. “A different world, with very different peoples?”
“I am.”
“Then how is it that your Amarra Drae’thul writes in perfect Equestrian?” The moon princess continued. “How can you read Equestrian? How is it that we understand each other as if you were born here and grew up speaking the language?”
Spite treated the royal blue alicorn to sidelong glance. “Why do you ask? Or, better question, what gives you the impression that I’d have any insight into something so esoteric? Respectfully, Princess, I’m not your niece.”
“No, no you’re not,” Luna responded with a touch of wistful fondness. “I am amazed that Twilight didn’t try to uproot the Ponyville library and carry it with her.”
“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Spite grinned, picturing the train car with every nook and cranny filled with meticulously organized books, each one somehow relevant to the eastern lands of Equestria. Which, as she thought about it, was very odd: why would Twilight feel the need to carry so many? Unless… “Princess?”
“Yes?”
“The eastern lands… are they terra incognita or something?”
“Terra…?”
“Unknown lands.”
Luna frowned thoughtfully. “I believe so.”
Spite almost missed a wingbeat. “You and Princess Celestia have been on the thrones for… how long?”
“Several thousand years, although there was a period when I was…” Luna hestitated uncomfortably, “…not.”
Spite turned to stare at the princess. “You’ve been on the thrones for thousands of years and an entire segment of your lands are unexplored? No explorers? No cartographers? No attempt to survey it, establish outposts in it, cultivate it, or contact its peoples and treat with them?”
“There have been attempts!” Luna replied heatedly. “They… didn’t go well and we… I don’t know why.”
Spite’s brow furrowed. “But you’re the coregeant of Equestria and the co-goddess of Sol Selune. How can you not know?”
Luna’s features tightened and she turned away, looking straight ahead. “I was gone for a thousand years.”
“Oh.” Spite sighed and nodded. “I can understand that. But I can’t imagine that your sister wouldn’t keep you appraised of important things like…”
“She tried,” Luna interrupted bitterly, her voice suddenly tight with muted emotional pain. “Collapsed from grief on hundreds of occasions trying, but during those thousand years, we were… separate.”
Spite felt a twinge of dimly remembered pain in her chest, remembering all the centuries essentially anchorless, drifting, with neither permanent form nor strong master. “What power could possibly keep her sister from this world’s sun goddess?” she asked in wonder. “I’m surprised she didn’t just… scorch them from existence for daring to take her sister.”
Luna sighed deeply. “I was not imprisoned by another. I was banished to the moon for a thousand years, and my sister was right.”
Shocked, Spite actually dropped altitude a moment before she remembered to keep her wings beating. “She was?”
“She was,” the princess confirmed quietly. “I’m the princess of the night, the moon, and the stars. I put my entire self into the night and especially the stars and a thousand years ago, I watched as ponies ignored my night and reveled in my sister’s day. I held court in the evenings and maybe one or two ponies would show up every few days. I put all my creativity into the design of my Royal Guards’ armor and nopony cared. I went out of my way to be the princess of the common pony and was greeted with indifference.
“Over time, I felt ill-used, unloved, disrespected, and deeply jealous of my older sister who could enjoy the adulation of Equestria by simply sitting on her throne and smiling. Sadness turned to anger, wistfulness to envy and then jealousy, thoughts of how to make it right became…”
“…twisted into an unthinking focus on revenge,” Spite finished heavily. “You were hurting, and the only comfort became the thought of how you would make them pay. They would scream with your pain, beg for your mercy, and receive nothing but delighted laughter in return. You would set such things against those heedless creatures that they’d suffer as much from the fear of those things as they did from your vengeance. And then you would bring their goddess low, make it clear that no one and no pony could save them, and so enjoy your revenge against those that hurt you—and a beloved sister who did no wrong but be more attractive to those heedless, common ponies.”
Luna looked askance at her. “You… sound familiar with it.”
“Intimately,” Spite closed her eyes against the memories. “And in that state, you found yourself consoled by a voice that spoke for your evil impulses. A… presence that offered to do your evil for you, but in such subtle ways that you believed that presence to be your own self. One that insinuated itself slowly and with care, until only the smallest shard of yourself realized that you weren’t the only one in your head.”
She could feel the shocked eyes of all three of her companions on her. “…yes,” Luna finally said. “Nightmare Moon. I became Nightmare Moon, the monster of the scariest little foal’s stories, a dragon-eyed queen of darkness and the Eternal Night. There was a war. Ponies died and were maimed and entire cities devastated. Celestia would have been right to slay me, to save all of Equestria. But she… she used the Elements of Harmony to imprison me until the Elements would be held by six very special ponies who were strong enough to return me to myself.”
Spite opened her eyes and noticed Luna looking steadily at her. “It worked, I returned to myself, and all was well. Then six months ago, the Guardian returned me to being Nightmare but it was…”
“…readily apparent that what you believed to be a part of yourself was actually a real mare, one that was alive and had her own mind and sense of self.” Spite nodded. “And I’ll put good bits down that she had no love for the Guardian and actively worked to bring him down.”
Luna was silent for several long moments before her expression grew hard. “How dost thou know such things of Us and Nightmare Moon?”
“Because your story is actually quite common, but for the last element: yours is the only time I know of that the thing of the Void that latched onto a living being as their anchor reformed and became good,” Spite told her. “Whoever the entity that became Nightmare Moon is, she must be an extremely unusual example of her kind.”
“Was,” Luna corrected, the hardness melting, replaced by a touch of sadness. “When the Guardian was defeated, she let go and evaporated.”
Spite swallowed at that. A being of the Void surrendering a real form voluntarily? This Nightmare Moon, or whatever her actual name was, must have been a really unusual one. “You miss her?”
“Screw a thousand years ago… Night was a bucking hero,” Rainbow Dash declared. “They even added her statue to the memorial to everyone that died taking down the Guardian.”
Spite smiled. “I wish I could have known her then. She sounds like my sister under the skin. History takes so many strange paths… imagine if circumstances had ended with Nightmare remaining? Imagine a duo of thrones becoming a trio, a pair of sisters becoming three, Fronck-Kais being made to confront one more goddess than before, and one accustomed to less… savory means.”
“That would be awesome!” Rainbow grinned, emphasizing her opinion with a half-barrel that brought her just above Spite. “So Spite, level: what exactly didja do to me? And is there anything new coming or is the long mane and better aerodynamics all I get out of the deal?”
“I don’t really understand it myself, actually,” Spite admitted. “For lack of a better explanation I transfused part of my… soul, I guess you’d call it, into you, grafting it onto yours to repair the damage the klesae caused.”
“You stuck a piece of your soul in me.” Rainbow gave her a very nonplussed look.
“I’ve got plenty to spare,” Spite couldn’t help but smirk a little. “My soul is not mortal; it’s constantly infused with the Void, constantly rebuilt and kept in pristine order, which is why I’m essentially immortal. A mortal soul can only recover from damage very slowly and only if it’s allowed to rest for long periods in an enforced, coma-like sleep.”
“So that’s why I ended up in a coma in the hospital…”
“Well, after being forced to infuse you like that, I didn’t want to risk not following it up with the regenerative sleep. And then I had to cut it short because, frankly, this isn’t something that could be done without you.” Spite shrugged. “Take a trip to the griffins without the best flier in Equestria? Naw, not smart.”
Rainbow grinned broadly. “Hay yeah! So, I’ve got a piece of your soul like… melded to mine, huh?”
“More like, used as a patch to cover the deep wounds until you could heal them yourself. And there was lots and lots of patching done.” Spite frowned a little. “Weaver, I wish I had a way to grab an expert in this sort of thing, someone who could properly examine and diagnose you. But they’re all back home and bringing one here on my own would cause… issues.”
“What kind of issues?” Luna asked.
“They’re… somewhat singleminded,” Spite replied, wavering uncomfortably. “They’re fantastic warriors and a majority are good people. But they’d take one look at you, Your Highness, and declare it their solemn duty to slay the monster.”
Luna blinked. “Why?”
“They’d be able to literally see the echoes of Nightmare Moon in your visage and they rarely make a distinction between someone who’s been touched but is no longer in thrall, and someone who is entirely in thrall to an Evil.” She looked at Rainbow. “Because I grafted pieces of myself onto your soul to save your life, they’d regard you as Enthralled as well. By now, they recognize me for who I am but only the most skilled and ancient of their people could discern that my graft no more enthralls you to me than it turns you into a stallion.” Rainbow turned and gave her a deadpan look, provoking a cheeky grin. “And no, I’m positive that won’t happen.”
“But will something m… more happen, Spite?” Spite startled a little at the soft, shy voice practically whispering into her ear from how closely she’d drawn while Spite was occupied speaking with Luna and Rainbow. She heard the predictable “eep” off to the right and she caught the pegasus before she could retreat behind her mane.
“Judging by the wings… yes, but I don’t see anything beyond that.” Spite replied, patting Fluttershy’s nearest leg in what she hoped was a consoling manner. It seemed to have worked, at least a little, because the butter-colored pegasus smiled shyly at her instead of retreating.
“What about the wings?” The dragoness took a moment to marvel at the fact that Rainbow could fly backwards at least as fast as Spite was flying forwards before she answered the pegasus.
“Surely you’ve noticed that your wings don’t look the way they did, or work the way they did,” she pointed out. “As near as I can determine, the patching seems to have transferred some of my physical traits to you: a longer, lither body type, jewel-like amethyst eyes, a silkier mane, at least one draconic vocalization, and it would appear, the broad, light, flexible wings of a dragon.”
Interestingly, it was only the last part that seemed to draw a reaction from Rainbow. “What?” She looked at her wings in open dismay. “That’s what’s happening? I’m getting… bat wings?”
“Dragon wings,” Spite corrected, slightly affronted. “Bat wings are highly maneuverable but weak and unsteady, perfect for something that likes to move in a quick, highly unpredictable fashion to both catch prey and dodge predators. Dragon wings, on the other hoof, have disproportionately high surface area and with your incredibly developed musculature, great straight-line acceleration to go with the maneuverability that bat wings have.”
Rainbow eyed her skeptically. “Zat so…”
“I’ll just put it this way, Dash; there was a reason that I, more of a combat flier than a stunt or racing flier, could catch up to you initially with very little effort,” she chuckled. “There was also a reason I could continually hit you with blasts of air from near-misses, reversing my direction and coming again before you could effectively get out of the way.”
Rainbow gave her another skeptical glance, but it was now tempered with a touch of interest and thought. “So… just as fast, lots more maneuverable?”
“Well that depends.” Spite gave her a fierce, challenging grin. “Are you planning to wimp out and settle for just being as fast as you were with pegasus wings?”
As she intended, the question drew a look of affront from the rainbow-maned mare. “Me? Wimp out? As if!”
“Then, kid, you’ll be faster than you were and can pole-dance with the best of us,” Spite assured her.
“…pole-dance?”
Spite suddenly realized what she’d just said and coughed. “Uh, yeah, it’s not what you think. I mean being able to zigzag in a serpentine motion between poles that are spaced no wider than your height without touching any of them. Of course, that might be a little too much to promise; the dragons that can do it have such flexibility that they can bend backwards and touch their muzzle to their flanks.” She paused as Rainbows face contorted. “Uh…”
“So… they can kiss…. their own flanks?” She managed, her eyes dancing as she tried to hold it in.
“…yeah, I…”
Rainbow proceeded to double over in midair, laughing (and yet, Spite noted, still managing to keep up the pace) as Spite felt her cheeks get warm. “…it’s not that funny.”
“Oh, but it is!” Rainbow gasped. “Because… because you just… i… implied that you can… pole-dance… can you… kiss your own flanks… too…?”
“Don’t knock it,” Spite retorted in as dignified a manner as she could manage with her cheeks flushing and Rainbow laughing herself to tears. “When you’re really, really lonely, it comes in handy.”
It took a second until the comment registered and Rainbow’s merriment died as she gave Spite a slightly ill look. “OK, way too much information.”
“Serves you right for laughing at the depressingly ancient dragoness,” Spite grinned, sticking her tongue out and flickering it, snakelike, at Rainbow.
Rainbow snorted and grinned back. “You know, you really don’t act all that ancient.”
“I attribute it to a life spent in wholesome activities.” Spite turned to Luna. “So about how long of a flight is it to the Griffin Provinces, Your Majesty?”
“Luna’s fine, Spite,” Luna replied, frowning. “Truth be told, I’d have thought we’d have been challenged by their sentries by now. They typically maintain a cloud outpost with an excellent view of the approaches nearly an hour in advance of their borders.”
“And you… allow this?” Spite blinked.
“We have outposts similarly deep into their lands,” the princess shrugged. “The mutual threat builds mutual interest in mutual peace, or so Tia tells me.”
“So Tia tells you?” Spite repeated. “Don’t you have a say?”
Luna smiled a little. “My sister and I have always divided our responsibilities according to what we do best and we try not to step on each other’s hooves out of love and respect.”
“If matters of diplomacy aren’t what you do, what is?”
“I take care of the subtle and secret matters of state, the things that require a hoof-on approach. Celestia is the grand, glorious, beautiful symbol of the diarchy and I’m its everyday touch. She receives diplomats, makes laws, and hears the needs of the common pony; I see to the honesty of the diplomats, the application of the laws, and see to it that the matters of the ordinary ponies that are brought to Celestia are resolved.” Luna paused, her slight smile gaining gravity. “In war, the very rare wars that have happened, Celestia is the planner, the grand strategist, the one with the vast overarching vision of what must be done; I’m the tactician at the front, making the millions of tiny, all-important decisions at the point of bloodshed and even shedding blood myself.”
“Then I’m all the gladder to have you with me,” Spite smiled. “Are they normally really sensitive about their borders?”
“More like, very dedicated to proper forms and protocols,” Luna replied.
“Yeah, they get a real stick up their plots if you don’t recite all this mumbo-jumbo with a bunch of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘hast’ and all that other ancient stuff,” Rainbow added. “Er, no offense Your Highness.”
“Rainbow Dash! Why would We ever think thou wast offending Us?” Luna replied with a twinkle in her eye. “Thou art known for thy… quick tongue and We should hardly regard thee as a friend if We were offended by thy speech.”
“Thanks, Princess,” Rainbow replied a bit sheepishly. “So yeah, where the hay are they? The couple times I hung out with Gilda at her place, they always got up in your face before you even saw ‘em. Pains in the flanks even when they were being cool about it.”
“Ah yes, Gilda. Your… best friend, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow deflated visibly. “Best friend all the time growing up. Then we got split up by something so bucking stupid and I didn’t… we barely had time to fix things up before…”
Spite drifted up and reached out to pat Rainbow’s side kindly. “But did you? Fix things up, I mean?”
“Yeah, sorta.” Rainbow unconsciously pressed against the consoling touch. “I mean, we ended things square but we… there might have been…”
“…more,” Spite finished with a sigh. “I guess that every kind and comforting word that’s possible to say has been said. I know that you barely know me Rainbow Dash but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, everypony is,” Rainbow turned and gave her a little smile. “But it’s cool of you to try to care.”
“I don’t need to try; I genuinely do care. About you, about the other Elements, about the Princesses, about Equestria, about this entire world.” Spite looked ahead, seeing the clouds without really seeing them. “I’ve seen the shadow stretch for far too long over far too many places; it shall not stretch here, not if I can halt it.”
“You’re not the only one fighting, yanno.” Rainbow grinned, rearing back a little and mimed boxing with her hooves. “You’ve got the Princess, who’s way cool, and Flutters, who’s got that Stare thing down pat, and you’ve got the single most awesome pegasus in all of Equestria.”
Spite chuckled. “Yes, I do. It’s very comforting and familiar to me, having boon companions when I set out to do things. Usually, those companions include my sister and her two…”
“The sentries!” Luna exclaimed, relief evident in her voice. “Finally.”
Spite followed Luna’s gaze downwards to see four shapes, still made vague by the cloud cover below them, swooping upwards to meet them. After another moment, however, it occurred to her that something looked… off about the dimensions of the four fliers coming towards them. Their structure looked more like dragon flowing into pony instead of eagle flowing into lion. And it looked like they had… four wings…?
“Horseapples!” Rainbow exclaimed.
“Wild guess: not sentries?”
“Not griffins,” she corrected grimly. “But last time I saw them was six months ago.”
“Horseapples,” Spite agreed. “How fast are they?”
“Faster than Flutters.” Which, Spite could tell, settled things as far as the rainbow-maned pegasus was concerned. She smiled a little, taking a moment to admire this, before looking down towards the approaching creatures.
“Anything else?”
“Breathe fire, claws, very tough, incredibly agile,” Luna told her, her horn beginning to glow. “Like dragons, in a way, but not quite as dangerous.”
“Most things aren’t quite as dangerous as dragons.” Spite glanced over at the frightened-looking Fluttershy. “Rainbow, would you mind…?”
“Sure thing.” Dash had already dropped back and was flying close enough that Fluttershy’s visibly building terror was dying down. “You kick their flanks, I’ll hang out with Flutters here.”
“You’re a real gem, kid,” Spite smiled before angling downwards to meet the rising creatures, taking position just behind Luna’s right wing. “Is there anything else about them I should know?”
“When we last saw them, they were ordinary ponies that had been changed by a nightmare,” Luna replied. “Not Moon… Flare.”
Spite considered this. “Celestia was also…?”
“It’ll take too much time to explain fully, but yes.”
Spite nodded. “Well, then it seems best to presume that these, too, are victims. Pity… I’d really hoped to make an example out of one of Fronck-Kais’ playthings.”
“Fronck-Kais?”
“I’ll explain later. You take care of those on the left, I on the right.” Spite didn’t give Luna a chance to respond as she folded her wings and let gravity take over. She caught a brief glimpse of one of the creatures as she rocketed past, getting an impression of something partly pony and partly dragon, before she was below it and opening her wings, using the momentum of the fall to catch herself and sail upwards again, hoping to catch the creatures from below where they wouldn’t be looking. When she caught up to the one she’d fallen passed, she was still looking intently where Spite had been—when meant that she was caught totally by surprise when Spite’s shoulder caught her hard in the gut and a whipping blow from the Void dragoness’ tail violently jerked her head to one side, causing her to falter momentarily as she tried to shake it off.
Spite took advantage of the creature’s momentary stunning to neatly let her go, turn on herself, and grab her opponent’s shoulders, folding her wings so the altered griffiness (which is what Spite assumed the creature to be) was suddenly struggling to keep aloft both her own weight and the weight of the larger dragon. A head-butt stunned her still further and she momentarily forgot to move her wings. Spite used the opportunity to flip them around so the creature was below her and then headbutt again, hard enough that she went limp and they began to freefall. Out of danger, for the moment, Spite took a moment to study the other female. The avian beak had been reduced to a hard sheath of keratin at the end of a blunt draconic muzzle, the vicious, ripping carnivorous teeth of the dragon replacing the toothlessness of the griffin mouth. Hard, thick scales covered her body and what had probably been an attractive feather crest was reduced to a few sad decorative plumes. Claws that mirrored her own adorned all four limbs and a feline tail was now serpentine with a wicked probably venomous stinger protruding from its tip like that of a scorpion. She was mildly surprised that the body she clutched in their mutual fall was mildly warm and the scales of its belly supple, almost feeling like the luxurious softness of lion instead of the armored feel of dragon. To top off the ensemble, the chimera had two sets of wings, one the broad, beautiful things of the half-eagle griffins and the other the jagged bat-like wings of the feral dragon.
The female began to stir as they broke cloud cover and the ground loomed large. Large, frightened reptilian eyes flew open and stared momentarily into her own before Spite spread her wings simultaneous to submerging into the Void, letting its nothingness fill her senses just long enough to emerge at a height where she could release the captive and the creature slammed into the ground hard enough to audibly snap the bones of its wings but otherwise survive. Spite sailed close enough to do a quick look-over, satisfying herself that the injured but innocent being was in no serious danger, before another, longer submersion in the Void brought her back to the altitude from which she’d plucked her first victim.
She emerged to see that Luna was acquitting herself like the field general she’d claimed to be, three changed griffins enfolded in blazing spheres of indigo that were sending bolts of debilitating magic shooting through their bodies. Luna’s body was entirely unmarked and the effort of confining her captives seemed to be taking no toll on her. Satisfied that the moon princess had the situation well in hoof, Spite sailed back towards Rainbow and Fluttershy, keeping an eye out for any other attackers as she went.
She came upon Rainbow battling a pair of the changed griffins—and Spite could instantly see that the pegasus was just as unusual as she’d expected from the first glance she’d gotten days ago, when Dash was helping Twilight Sparkle learn to use her (relatively) new wings. It wasn’t just that she darted and struck with the effortless grace of a born athlete—that much had been expected—but she wasn’t fighting like a winged equine at all. Rainbow didn’t thrust her hooves, striking with the hard, strong bone like a club, but swept with them, striking hard but lightly, swinging her hooves in across-her-body diagonals… like she had talons and was raking a foe with claws. She didn’t sweep her wings back, protecting the avian-like bones with the hardened muscle and bone of her athlete’s body, but led with the wing, distracting and disorientating as each slashing strike went home. Rear hooves weren’t used in the double-hoof buck that had shattered Spite’s jaw when Applejack used it, but in arcs that took full advantage of lateral velocity to throw their target off and induce painful (but not fatal) soft-tissue injuries that would be debilitating later in the form of sore joints, aching muscles, and wrenched limbs. Watching for a moment, feeling her eyes widen, Spite realized that the pegasus was fighting like a griffin and she was doing it with the instinctive ease of a born leoavian.
The sharp, hot pain of scythelike claws digging into her sides hit her like a hammer, briefly stunning her with the unexpected agony before another sharp spike of pain in the back of her head made her gasp. Ultimately, reversing the situation wasn’t hard—she briefly relished the growl of mingled surprise and irritation as she let her essence flow out of the chimera’s claws and behind it—but slipping her enemy’s grasp made her realize that there was a damn good reason she hadn’t noticed the former griffin’s approach.
The malformed creature she’d examined on the way to the ground was clearly typical of the work whatever Evil was assisting Lashaal did: crude, cruel, and thoughtless. Just as clearly, the beast leading them had garnered much greater care and the full application of the demented being’s skills. The hard, ugly armor-like scales gave way to smooth elegant ones decorated with a full feathered crest that looked markedly mane-line. Its muzzle was longer, slimmer, with a handsome osprey hook at the tip, looking more like an elongated beak than a draconic muzzle. The five-fingered claws on all four limbs were now scything eagle talons on the front and the three-and-one sickle-like claws on the back. Its four wings were identical in size and beat in perfect harmony, briefly looking like the broad leathery sails of dragon wings had acquired a jet-black plumage. Finally, the scorpion sting of one tail had become a pair of muscular appendages, each with its own spade-like tail blade.
Most menacing by far, however, was that this new creature had a smoky indistinct aura around its black shape, the toxic material of the Void wafting off of it like steam off hot metal. It was, Spite realized with an unpleasant twist in her gut, an infusion of Void into a living creature—just short of what Luna had called a “nightmare”. The beast studied her, its ice-blue draconic eyes cold and calculating, before it bared its teeth. “Spite!”
“Oh, I have an admirer,” she replied sweetly, filling one of her hands with the Light-infused flame she’d used against the klesae. “I’m flattered.”
The sarcasm drew a snarling growl from the amalgamation. “How dare you! I, admire the deviant thing that you have made yourself? Your very existence is blasphemy, pet of the Sixth!”
“Temper, temper,” she scolded with a mocking grin. “I’d hate to do unto you as I did unto Lashaal’s little klesae.”
He returned her mocking grin. “Go right ahead; I have no particular attachment to my construct. You, on the other hand, would very much like to know my purpose.”
Spite frowned thoughtfully, feigning contemplation as she idly glanced over the construct’s shoulder, noting that Rainbow had already driven off the two altered griffins and was now drifting towards him with a grin of anticipation, the jewel-like amethyst of her irises glittering. “You make a good case,” she admitted to the construct. “It’d be wonderful to know what your purpose is.”
He snorted. “You think it’s…”
“Of course, it’d be much more satisfying to give your punching bag a nice thrashing, just to prove a point: I do not bargain with Evils, nor do I abide cowards.” The sphere of flame neatly disintegrated one of the shadow-thing’s front limbs, evoking a very avian squawk of surprise as it unthinkingly backpedaled and rose… just as Rainbow casually somersaulted in the air and drove both her rear hooves into the top of the construct’s skull with a klomp that sounded all the world like metal being bashed out of shape by a hammer. For being technically unable to feel pain and being technically not-alive, the construct reacted remarkably similar to a living thing; all four wings folding as it simply dropped, streaming Void substance like blood as its broken form spiraled out of sight.
“What a loser,” Rainbow snorted, grinning as Spite winged over to her, following her back to and oddly unafraid-looking Fluttershy. “Don’t remember these things being nearly that easy.”
Which was an excellent, and disturbing, point but Spite didn't let her expression betray this fact to Rainbow. “You weren’t part-dragon last time,” Spite pointed out.
“True.” Rainbow grinned at the observation but the smug expression faded suddenly. “Do you think they’ll be alright, though? I mean, all the griffins?”
“We can only hope so.” Spite grimaced. “I bucking hate things that’re too cowardly to come right out and fight. There’re times I wish they’d just forget the Game and duke it out somewhere so we can nail more Void-things to more city gates…” She paused a moment before looking at Rainbow. “Who taught you how to fight?”
“Gilda,” the pegasus replied shortly. “Why, you have a problem with how I fight or something?”
“Not as such, no,” Spite replied. “It’s just… unusual because you’re a pegasus but you fight like a griffin or, I suppose, a dragon. Keeping your hooves and head forward, following a blow from your hoof with a wing, striking downwards and across…”
“Yeah, Gilda was an awesome teacher.” Rainbow grinned, her eyes getting a look of distance and nostalgia. “Back in flight camp, we got really well-known… Gilda and Dash, most awesome pair in the entire bucking camp.”
Spite chuckled. “Well, she certainly taught you well. Being hit like that would come like a bolt from the blue, much in the way that enemies are stunned and even scared when they come across someone gifted in the art of berzerkergang. The unexpected is powerful weapon to use in battle and if someone didn’t know you, Rainbow, they’d never expect something like what I was seeing.” She then turned to look directly at the pegasus. “Just be really careful with your wings. You don’t have the hard bone on the leading edge of your wing frame that…”
“Aw, c’mon… do ya really think Gilda would forget that when she was giving me pointers?” Dash interrupted. “She… had my back, all the time, even grabbed my wing and stepped on it to make a point. Hurt like hay but I got it.”
“It didn’t look like you ‘got it’,” Spite retorted skeptically.
“Yeah, well, you’re a dragon. You don’t know how to fight like a dragon without being a dragon. If you weren’t a dragon but some dragon taught you how to fight like a dragon, you’d totally know the score,” Rainbow announced confidently. “It’s like the Rainboom… this is the kind of thing I do.”
Spite chuckled, shaking her head. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just… I didn’t save your life just to see some dumb thing like a broken wing get you killed.”
“Hah! As if I’d ever let that… oh, hey Princess.”
Spite turned as the princess of the moon sailed gracefully into their company from the direction of a nearby cloud bank. “Rainbow Dash,” she greeted with a small smile. She then turned her head and looked at Spite, her smile evaporating into an expression of real fear that made Spite’s stomach drop. “We need speak to thee, Spite, alone.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
“As We’ve said, Spite, thou mayest call Us Luna,” Luna said, almost automatically. “Come.”
“Of course, Luna.” She followed the royal blue alicorn out a short distance before Luna turned to her, no longer bothering to disguise her frightened expression.
“Dost thou know of the Guardian, Spite?”
“I do, but only vaguely.”
Luna took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Until the Guardian, We believed that nothing was worse than the Nightmare. You cannot know what it did to Our little ponies, to Our Equestria. It killed so many, made so many miserable, destroyed so many lives. It…” She swallowed. “…it took Twilight from Us. The pony who saved Us from the nightmare, the pony who awoke the Element of Magic just by being who she is, the pony who… who was Our first friend when We recovered. It murdered her and We only got her back by glorious, glorious chance and… We are so fond of her, Our niece, Our friend.” There was another paused while Luna gathered herself. “And it killed so many more than just her, destroyed so many others, destroyed lives, destroyed families, dragged Our alicorn friends of old back from rest to be its playthings. We see that these… things…”
“These things look like the victims of the Guardian’s work, don’t they?” Spite inquired, feeling her heart ache for the naked pain she saw in the lovely alicorn’s expression, feeling honored at the same time that Luna was letting her see behind the regal mask royalty necessarily wore.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “It can’t have survived… We saw it die and cried with relief over its shattered body. Thou knowest of the matters of this Void and the Evils that are within it, like the Evil that corrupted Order and made him the Guardian. Could… could it be…?”
“It could,” Spite admitted. “But if it is, your Majesty, there is a very important difference. While certain beings of the Void could have reconstituted the Guardian, they could not make him live in the same way. Even with world-shattering power, a being that is made alive through the Void hates and fears magic that’s infused with truly living power, like your sister’s Light or your own Dark.”
Luna considered this, the pain fading somewhat and the tenseness in her body relaxing visibly. “And thyself?”
“Excuse me?”
“Thou sayest that a being made alive through the Void hates and fears magic infused with living power. What of thyself? Art thou not one that is made alive through the Void?”
Spite frowned, thinking of how to best answer the entirely reasonable question. “I’m…” She sighed. “It’s very difficult to describe how I’m different unless you’ve met another Void dragon face-to-face. I have an actual, living form, not a construct built around my essence. I don’t radiate the energy of the Void because I have no need to consciously hold my form in its present state; it’s inherent to me, the way that your body is inherent to you.”
Luna gave her a somewhat puzzled look. “Are not all of your kind alive?”
“In… a way.” Spite thought a moment. “Things of the Void are alive in that they have a soul and a coherence but in a mortal realm, they imitate living things because they’re naturally without body or form. I, however, have a body that’s bound to me, as much a part of me as my soul. Granted, I can alter the form somewhat and I admit that I naturally look different then I appear to you but no matter my form, I eat, I breathe, and I experience all the other natural aspects of being alive.”
The princess nodded thoughtfully. “Thus magic infused with Light or Dark…”
“…affects me no differently than any being of the Dark,” Spite confirmed. “Light-infused magic is more harmful, Dark-infused less. With a creature fully of the Void, there is no difference; both are equally dangerous to them. Tying it back to what I was saying about the Guardian, even if he was to return, he would return with a very significant weakness to your magic or that of your sister.” She reached out and gently laid both hands on Luna’s shoulders. “In other words, Luna, this Guardian can only live so long as he does not attract the righteous fury of the sister goddesses that reign over sun and moon.”
Luna smiled a little, her stance broadcasting her relief just as much as her expression did. “We… I thank you for your consoling words, Spite.” She looked towards the north and her mouth set in a hard line. “But now that I fear not the Guardian, I fear for the griffins and what we may find. Clearly, the weak one that fled before you has aid, and strong aid at that.”
“Then there’s only one way to do this.” Both Spite and Luna turned their eyes to Rainbow, who was making no attempt to hide the fact that she’d clearly been eavesdropping.
Luna, of course, recovered her regal bearing first. “And that is…?”
“We do for ‘em what one real awesome griffin did for us,” Rainbow replied, grinning but her eyes as serious as Spite had ever seen. “We kick their plots back to whatever hole they crawled outta.”