//------------------------------// // Amethyst - Drama, Sad // Story: Krizak's Compendium of Concise Chronicles // by Krizak //------------------------------// When you had lived as long as Celestia had, it was easy to seem omniscient. A lot of memories combined with a little attention to detail and some pattern recognition went a long way in making it always seem like you knew just what was going on. It had its downsides – there were times when Celestia hadn’t been told something vital because it was assumed she already knew – but it was worth it for moments like this, when she answered, “Come in, Spike,” to the knock at her door of her private study, despite having thought that her faithful student’s assistant was in Ponyville at the moment. The door creaked open and the baby dragon peeked his head in, looking straight at Celestia with wide eyes. “H-How’d you know it was me, Princess?” Celestia could have told Spike that he was simply the only one of the few permitted to visit her private study who would knock that close to the bottom of the door, but she instead smiled knowingly at him and said, “Come in, Spike. It’s been a long time since you’ve been to my study.” “Heh, I guess it has been, hasn’t it?” Put a bit at ease by Celestia’s smile, Spike fully entered the study and closed the door behind him, crossing the room to sit down on the one backed seat the Princess kept on hand for bipedal creatures (or ponies who sat in an unusual fashion). He opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to think better of it, and Celestia realized that she was going to have to ease the young dragon into it. “So what brings you to Canterlot today, Spike?” she asked as her horn lit up with golden energy, her magical aura surrounding the teapot and two teacups of the Griffindian tea set she had chosen to use today. Spike accepted the floating teacup as it approached him, holding it steady as the teapot poured its fragrant elixir out for him. “Twilight brought me along. She’s visiting her parents for the weekend. Mother’s Day, y’know?” Celestia nodded sagely as her own cup was filled; she had figured that was likely the reason behind this visit. “So it is,” she said before taking a sip of her tea, the gesture encouraging the dragon to do the same. “And yet, my little dragon, you find yourself here. Should I be reading something into this?” she added with a smirk. Spike let our a little cough of flame as his tea went down his firepipe on shock, shaking his head at Celestia’s question. “No, no, Princess, I mean, you raised me and taught me, and I really appreciate it, but…” The dragon trailed off, unsure of how to continue. The princess had an idea of where this was going, however, and though it wasn’t something she liked to dwell on, Spike deserved to know. She offered, “Spike, would you like to know where we got your egg from?” Reptilian eyes looked up at her in awe, amazed that she had touched on the very issue closest to his heart on this day, and it was all Spike could manage to nod slowly. “Very well.” Celestia rose from her seat, and Spike moved to rise as well before the princess made a gesture for him to stay seated. Moving over to the large window that lit up her study, she looked up at her charge, already darkening as it prepared to set for the evening. “It’s a tale I should have told you before, but it’s… not a memory I particularly like to recall.” Spike managed a single syllable before Celestia shook her head. “No, it’s alright. One shouldn’t shy away from memories just because they are unpleasant.” Turning back to Spike, she recited, “Once upon a time, there was a dragon. She was beautiful by the standards of dragons, with shining scales of purple and graceful, slender horns, and she was bold and clever. Dragons establish their hierarchy by their hordes, and so she planned to have the greatest horde ever imagined, and she would not gather it bit by bit. She would take it all at once, from the opulent palace of ponykind: Canterlot.” “Whoa,” Spike muttered, knowing as well as anyone the defences Canterlot had at its command. Celestia nodded. “Even then, no single dragon could possibly attack Canterlot through raw power alone, but she was tricky. She flew by several times, not attacking anypony, because she knew we would hunt her down if she hurt anypony. As it was, she was merely an annoyance, and the pegasi of the Royal Guard gave chase each time only long enough to mark sure she left. But even those dedicated to their duties can get weary of them, and after the fifth time, the pegasi didn’t chase her quite far enough, and that was when she whipped around the side of the palace and burst straight through the doors leading to the treasure chamber. Where I was waiting.” Celestia smirked a little. “I was always a little too clever for my own good.” “She knew of me, knew what I was capable of – though I always suspected she had heard more of the legend than the truth – and we stared at each other, alicorn and dragon, each measuring the other. And then I lifted one of the greatest treasures within our vaults, an amethyst larger than you the precise colour of her scales, and I offered it to her.” “Really?” Spike asked, noticing only after Celestia’s amused glare that he was drooling a little at the sound of such a gem. “Really. She hadn’t hurt anypony – she had caused minor damage to the palace at best – and I wanted to avoid hurting her.” She cocked her head to the side. “Avoiding an epic battle that would have probably have collapsed the palace was also a concern. So I offered her the gemstone, and she looked at it, at all the riches besides that gem, and then at me. Finally, she grabbed the gem in one mighty claw, looked me straight in the eye… and thanked me, before she flew off.” Spike raised an eyeridge in question. “And how does that lead to you having my egg?” “I’m getting to that, Spike, be patient,” Celestia gently admonished, which as usual caused the one being admonished to act as though she’d just ordered banishment. Sighing softly, she continued, “That was not the last time I saw the dragon I came to know as Amethyst. She came again a fortnight later, this time landing in the courtyard and asking to see me. Well, demanding is more like it. The guards refused to let her see me, but it caused enough of a ruckus that I heard and came to see her myself.” “What did she want to talk about?” Spike asked, finally relaxing after spending a minute trying not to even breathe, lest he make a sound. “Well, the pretense Amethyst gave was that she simply wanted to thank me again, but honestly, I think she just wanted to talk. Dragons rarely socialize after they are fully grown, only coming together during migration, and I believe she simply wanted some… companionship.” Celestia glanced up at the intricate mural on her study’s ceiling, her expression growing wistful as she stared at the two ponies in the centre. “And that was what I needed as well. That was some five hundred years after Luna and I had been… separated, and I was longing for a friend who wouldn’t… who I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to so quickly.” Her voice took on a slightly bitter tone. “Or so I had hoped.” Spike didn’t dare to voice the question, but his eyes asked it anyway. “My little ponies happened. There was a sizable contingent that felt that their princess, their pure goddess of the sun, was being corrupted by the dragon that visited her at least once a month. They feared that Equestria’s policy towards dragonkind would become too lenient, that ponies would be less protected because of our friendship. I tried to tell them time and again that they were mistaken, but they would not listen to me. They took matters into their own hooves.” *TIME LIMIT* “To this day, I’m not certain what I would have done to them, had I gotten my hooves on them. They attacked Amethyst when she was a couple months into her long nap. Even sluggish and disoriented, she managed to slay them all… but not before they managed to mortally wound her.” Celestia took a deep breath as she prepared to relive one of her worst memories. “She was… barely holding on when arrived, but all the healing magic I command could not help a fully-grown dragon, not with their resistance to magic. She said that her kind would deal with her horde in their tradition, but she asked me to take one thing, to remember her by, and to keep safe.” She looked down at Spike, who was now sniffling, trying to hold back his tears. “Your egg.” The young dragon wiped a claw across his eyes, trying to stem the growing tide. “What… what about my father?” Celestia had been hoping Spike would make this inquiry after her story; it would allow her to end on a light note. “What about your father? You live with her.” Any sadness in Spike’s features was replaced with utter confusion. “Huh?” “Spike, dragon eggs don’t take half a millennium to hatch,” Celestia instructed, her familiar smirk taking its place on her lips once more. “But they can last forever if they aren’t fertilized. The test we had entrants to my school perform wasn’t really about hatching your egg; it was supposed to be about creativity, thinking outside the box.” She looked to her desk, where a photo of her trusted student and all her friends sat in a place of honour. “But Twilight Sparkle… with her raw power, she hatched your egg, an egg that should have never have borne life. Twilight is, for all intents and purposes, your father.” Spike was silent for a moment, before he raised a claw in question, but before he could manage to voice it, he passed out from the shock. Celestia shook her head, the smirk not leaving her face. “I wonder if Twilight will handle the news any better.”