//------------------------------// // 6 . Death // Story: Schemering Sintel // by N00813 //------------------------------// Chapter 6: Death By N00813 -- White light struggled valiantly against the darkness. But it was futile. All the flare could illuminate was the front of a massive pile of glimmering yellow gold, interspersed with the almost fluorescent multi-coloured sparkle of gems. Above the flare, two green eyes flecked with amber were set amongst stained purple scales. A sharp, curved hook of a snout stuck out from the middle of the face, emblazoned with a cruel grimace criss-crossed with roiling waves of light and shadow. The scales on the underside of the dragon’s muzzle were splattered with black-brown: the colour of ink mixed with rust. As the light washed outwards, Twilight could just about make out the black, jagged fins, tipped with a cap of green, poking out from the top of its skull and running down its spine. Something was wrong. But this was definitely where Spike was. Vafer was never wrong. This dragon, though, was definitely not the one in her memories. Were her memories wrong, having been altered and rewritten by her own traitorous mind over the years of travel? She doubted that. She could still remember the faces of each of her friends, Spike included. Tiny, baby Spike… She gasped, just as Spike’s scream resonated inside her mind. Bits of the puzzle drove into place, just as the dragon opened its mouth. Inside, she could see a roiling coil of green sparks falling towards a shimmering secretion at the back of its jaw. Twilight winked out of the way, nary a hair away from the massive tongue of green dragonfire that blasted out of the cave mouth. She’d barely returned to the corporeal world before her brain spun itself into overdrive. It was like someone else was controlling her movements, and she was only an observer in her own body. Between cool, deep breaths, she glared at the cave mouth. The dragon’s head slowly emerged, its spines scraping against the rock ceiling. She didn’t even flinch as rolling waves of superheated air crashed into her shields, the magic flaring up and tinting the world purple. A translucent, violet sea of vapour eddied in the air above a stretch of blackened earth, right next to her hooves. Just a few seconds ago, it had been an undisturbed plain of pure white snow. The dragon’s roar of frustration and anger didn’t catch Twilight by surprise, but the sheer force of it was enough to fling snow and droplets of wet mud into a miniature hailstorm. Twilight frowned as the pellets smacked lazily against her shields, like raindrops crashing into a window. “Spike!” Her voice still sounded the same – to herself, at least. She hoped Spike would still recognise the sound. She knew she had aged throughout her travels, but… all the years had blurred together. Did Spike even remember her? At the cry, Spike thrust his head out of the black, like a quarry eel. Bones followed close behind in a wave, spilling out onto the snow and earth. The dirty off-white of the ivory stood in stark contrast to both the blackness of the charred earth, and the glistening glare of the white snow. They were the remains of all sorts of creatures – the most common being the stout, sloping skulls of wild pig – but a chill ran down Twilight’s back as her eyes flicked between a group of pony skulls, to the antler-bearing craniums of cervids, to what looked like the skull of another dragon. She felt her breath hitch in her throat. The long-snouted dragon skull was worn with age, bleached white by the weak sun over the years and scored with dozens of cracks and gashes. Approximately the length of Spike’s forearm, it leered at her with its empty eye sockets and perpetually grinning jaw. “Spike! Stand down this instant!” she shouted, even as the raging beast turned its head towards her, opening its snout all the while. Dragonfire was inherently magical. This meant that her shields would be useless at best. At worst, even a glancing blow would set off a runaway magical reaction, culminating in an explosion. Given the strength of both her shields and her opponent’s inner fire, the explosion could very well level the mountaintop. She blinked away again, reappearing on the tract of blackened earth stretching out behind her like a runway. The splash and the clammy cold of boggy dirt against her hooves wrenched a frown from her face. So Spike wouldn’t listen. A trickle of thought ran down her head – this wasn’t the first time. How had they solved the greed-growth the last time? What had kicked him out of it? Plunging back into memory was like groping through quicksand for a golden pin. Blind, and navigating by emotion and desperation, her mind’s eye scanned the images flashing past as she delved into the blackness. Rarity. Of course. He had looked at her, then – somehow – regressed. Was it memory? Willpower? Perhaps he had suddenly known that he was hurting her, and that thought, that realisation had managed to worm into his head and stay there long enough for him to notice and then overcome his avarice. Perhaps that could work the second time. “Rarity!” Spike spat a fireball at her in response, and she blinked away. “Damn it, she’s going to hate you for this!” Those words tasted so bitter coming out of her mouth. Twilight could still remember the smell and the slickness of Rarity’s tears running down her cheek as the latter unicorn had poured out her sorrows in the days and months after the kidnapping. The memories of her playing with him, pushing him away and leading him on, snapping at him when she was in a funk – every last regret that Rarity possessed had burst out of her throat in that hour. Twilight still didn’t know who cried most, then. Her voice wavered, the sound hovering like smoke amidst the curling air. Spike didn’t even notice as he drew even further out from the cave mouth, his two blackened fore-claws ripping into the earth, carving deep gouges into the mud and rock. Her eyes almost missed it. The flare seemed to flicker for a moment, the pile of gems and gold shifting to create a kaleidoscope of rich colours that, for the barest moment, contained a flash of blue. The same colour of blue as the plumes on the Equestrian military helmet. She glared up at the dragon in front of her – the one that had once been her most loyal assistant, her oldest friend. He returned the glare, rearing his head back before opening his mouth. A beam of magenta magic shot out of her horn with a high-pitched scream. Spike’s head reared back, his eyes glinting with utter hatred, a cloud of pink exploding from his mouth. Scales were magic-resistant. The tissue covering the inside of the throat wasn’t as much. Even then, that quick blast was deliberately weak. She didn’t want to kill him, after all. She was here to save him, no matter the cost. Spike roared out in pain, spraying droplets of crimson blood over the snow and the scorched earth. His jaw hanging open, the sharp canine teeth red with his own life-blood, he growled, his eyes simply narrow slits as they fixed on her. Twilight scowled. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen this type of look. The ones before Spike, she hadn’t cared for much. From him, however, it felt as painful as her first true injury. She only wanted things to go back to the way they were. She only wanted to save him. If that involved pain, then so be it. She’d come too far to back down, turn tail and descend. She would save him, no matter the cost. Unleashing a roar of her own, she stomped up towards her former assistant. Blood ran over his lips and down to the skin-flaps beneath his jaw, dripping onto the snow. “Me, Spike! How dare you attack me! Of all people, me!” She stopped, breathing heavily. The smell of acrid, burnt earth mixed with the salty, rusty scent of dragon blood, creating a heady cocktail that would have once made her head spin. She pushed the stench out of her mind. Spike opened his maw, before Twilight saw the black flash of his claws hurtling towards her from the left. She blinked sideways, looking up with her now-existing eyes to see the abyss of her once-friend’s mouth gaping open high above her. Adrenaline burst into her muscles. She flung herself sideways, but it was far too late. Even as she saw the tongue of green fire uncoil towards her, and the world slowly tilted sideways, she knew she was too slow. Dragonfire roared around her hooves. Searing pain erupted up her legs. Just as quickly, the agony hissed back into the recesses of her mind, smothered in the red haze growing around the edge of her sight. She felt the burning of ley collect around her horn, even as Spike’s head scanned to the side, fire still spurting from his mouth. A whisper of magic was all she needed to blink to the side furthest away from him. Her hooves met the cold of melting snow, and she hazarded a glance down to inspect the damage. What she saw made her wince. Glowing coils of magenta and green sank into her hooves, curling into the air as ephemeral thread, before plunging into the reddening flesh. Her exposed skin and muscle screamed with pain at each pulse and flicker, and she followed suit. The crackling of her charring skin was torn away by the frigid wind whipping around the wounds. The chill – somehow – intensified the agony. She saw her hooves beginning to boil, bits of red and pink splashing up from the wounds, as if her flesh had been liquidised. Her throat had screamed itself hoarse before she knew what she was doing. Tears drew at the corners of her eyes. Hot, driving pain smashed into her head, and she almost toppled over as her legs shook themselves to jelly. Twilight hissed out a dispeller, before muttering a heal-over-time spell, her voice growing in volume until she was crying at the end. The pain seemed to subside from waves into ripples, and she looked up, vision blurry. Spike’s savage grin focused all of her pain into a single, searing lance that roared out through her body. Hot, bubbling anger rose up through her stomach. She followed, pushing herself to her hooves, the numbing rush of adrenaline dousing the burning agony until it was a mild discomfort. Sudden pain broke through the haze of biochemicals, and Twilight screamed anew as light flared from her hooves, casting the snow around into beautiful shades of pink and green. She was at the centre of a miniature aurora. Her limbs felt like they had exploded – and as she teleported away, the torrent of dragonfire passing harmlessly over her head, they felt like they had done so again, and again, and again. When she landed, another scream tore out of her, punching past her gritted teeth as her knees fought to buckle. Her vision flickered with bursts of black and purple and blinding white. A trickle of warm liquid ran down from her nostril and into her mouth, and she tasted the steel and rust of blood. Then, the ghostly itching of her skin and muscle knitting back together smothered almost all the feeling in her legs. The sudden absence of any pain, anything at all, knocked her legs from beneath her. She retched, her chin resting in the snow, even as she screamed at herself to move, to get out of the line of fire, and a contradictory voice came in with its traitorous mutterings that maybe this was the easier way. She paid that voice no heed, locking it up in some corner of her brain even as she wrestled her stiff, unresponsive limbs into pulling herself up. Back into her fighting stance, with a wavering groan, she shook her head – pain and feeling were simply messages. And all messages could be ignored. Spike grinned down at her, his mouth an evil slash across his face. No, not evil. Simply insane. He’d given in to the greed-growth for what must have been years, now. It was a lost cause. The pain around her hooves was starting to bubble up again, little pops of fire stuck to her skin that splashed against her mental shields. The adrenaline was wearing off. “Spike! Please, just stop! I don’t want to –” Her shout was cut off by the hissing, roaring dragonfire spewing out of his mouth, directly towards her. She blinked, again. She popped into existence in front of Spike’s now-exposed chest. The dragon’s literally fiery roar paused for a moment, just as Twilight’s horn and tattoos began to glow with earnest, vivid light. The unicorn reared up on her hind legs, her forelegs covered with an opaque magenta glow, with her bloodied hooves hanging in mid-air for just a moment. Two solid, brutal thumps sounded out from Spike’s chest, and the roar of a cannon blast echoed off the mountain slopes. The dark brown scales cracked open, covering his once light-green underside in even more blood. Excess gore splattered onto the white mounds of snow, and trickled slowly towards the black earth at the bottom of the slope. Spike roared out, and a spark of pity and sorrow erupted in Twilight’s chest. “Sorry, Spike,” she murmured, blinking back towards the rear of the impromptu arena. She landed on hard glass, dirt vitrified by the extreme heat. Glancing at her opponent, her enemy-once-friend, she felt tears beginning to run down her cheeks. The saline liquid hissed upon touching her glowing tattoos. She could continue to disable him, hamstring him until he could move no more and would only flail against the cold ground. Then she could force a memory wipe on him through his eye or mouth, to try and remove the effect of the greed-growth. That was the only way – it wasn’t like the greed-growth was the result of experimenting with dark magic, or chaos magic or anything of the sort. It was as natural to a dragon’s development as physical increases in size. She would know. She had done her research on her enemy. But that would be the same as killing Spike. He would lose all memory of her, of his friends and of all of their adventures together. What would be left? Once upon a time, she’d promised she’d never leave him. If she wiped his mind, it would be as if Spike had never existed at all. The new mind wearing his body wouldn’t be Spike – it would be a stranger. Spike’s body surged outwards, the legs bulging beneath the scale with taut muscle. Gold spilled out from the sides of his body, pooling about his feet to mix with the bones. He opened his maw once more, the inside of his mouth covered in flammable secretion. It was an invitation for her to bathe in fire. He was already a stranger. What about the Elements? Could she not go back and ask Celestia to bring the whole team, and ‘cure’ Spike? Her eyes danced over the pile of gold. One shape was immediately obvious – the helmet of an Equestrian Royal Guard, Sentinel division. The underside was blackened by intense heat. Even from this distance, she could see flakes of oxidised gold alloy crumble and settle into the snow. Her tongue clucked against the back of her mouth as she watched the helmet sway gently from side-to-side. No. Trickles of dread ran down Twilight’s back, even as she imploded into a burst of light and exploded into existence some distance away from the spray of fluorescent green fire. Spike’s ‘insanity’ was as closely tied to his soul as his body. Removing one meant removing the other. He wasn’t even insane in the most formal definition, she noted. He’d simply given in to draconic nature. The Elements might not even work. It would be like asking the Elements to resurrect the dead, or change the colour of the sky. Only one person would be leaving the mountain by the end of the day. She had travelled for so long, endured so much, to save Spike. And save him she would. No matter the cost. “I’m so sorry.” Even as she uttered those words of finality, she couldn’t help but feel a spark of hope as Spike’s eyes seemed to clear – but it was gone too soon. The glaze of battle, of hate and greed and anger, washed over those green pools and then the Spike she knew was gone. She could make this quick. A blast through the eye would kill him instantly. But perhaps she was getting to him! He seemed to have snapped out of it just now – maybe if she disabled him, he could ‘come back’, so to speak. All chances, no certainties. Twilight shook her head, clearing her mind. She could kill him now, and he wouldn’t suffer any more. Or, she could slowly whittle him down, torturing him, under the hope that he might snap back through all the agony she would have inflicted upon him by that stage. And after that, she would have to hope that he wouldn’t relapse under the siren-song of instinctual draconic avarice. A chance was a chance. Nothing more, nothing less. A fraction of all possible outcomes. One in a million was better than none in a million. The choice crystallised in her mind, cold and hard, an indomitable pillar of light in a storm of darkness and confusion. And pain… she could always fix physical wounds. Even if the scales and flesh resisted the influence of magic, she could simply overwhelm them with raw power. The first targets were the knees. Removing them would immobilise Spike. His neck could still twist and turn to barbeque her, however. One step at a time. Twilight’s horn, tattoos and eyes glowed white-hot for a split-second. An intense white beam exploded outwards, lancing straight into his left forearm. The bass roar of magic mixed with that of pain. As the pinkish mist cleared around Spike’s leg, Twilight could see the clean hole bored straight through. The flare below his belly illuminated the wound in all its gory detail. Spike slumped to one side, his limb folding unnaturally, before howling again in pain as his useless leg smacked into the ground. Twilight grit her teeth. Her mind closed. Silence enfolded her, even as Spike’s mouth gaped open and the flaps of scaly reptilian skin on his throat vibrated and soundlessly clapped. Another deep thrum of magic flared out, the reverberation of wavering guitar string mixed with the punch of a gunshot. Spike’s chest hit the ground with a massive, solid thump. A wave of displaced snow swept outwards from the impact point. His right knee was utterly destroyed; the bone and muscle vaporised and carried away by the omnipresent wind. Twilight couldn’t stop the river of tears leaking out from her eyes, even as she grit her teeth so hard that she was sure some of them cracked under the pressure. Steam hissed around her form as the snow boiled. She would save Spike. She had to. No matter the cost. Spike’s head drew itself up off the ground, no doubt to deliver a torrent of dragonfire. Almost on instinct, she hurled herself up and forwards, jumping into nothingness to explode from a spot behind his head. The deep boom echoed throughout the cave as Spike’s head crashed into the ground. He tried to move his limbs, but the great roars of pain that blasted out of his mouth on every attempt left Twilight sure that he wouldn’t try. She landed on his back, crashing into a spinal fin on the way down. It was just like what she remembered, when she patted him – the tissue flexible, but not weak or soft – Finish the fight, before the fight finishes you. Archangel’s words disintegrated the memory before it could fully form, locking the remnants down in some far corner of her head. Spike’s head tried to twist back, but a quick spell brought the magenta glow of magic to bear upon his snout. He growled and grunted, but nothing he tried could break the magical, immaterial binding that wrapped around and around his long, scaly muzzle. She slid down his neck, hopping off at the base of the head, and landing right in front of his ear-fin. There was just one thing more to do. She trotted around until the one green eye on the left side of his face focused on her. Then, she took off the hood of her cloak. Her bangs fluttered all about her head and neck, picked up and dropped by the wind. In the midst of Spike’s hate-filled green eyes, she could see a mare. That mare once had a luscious, purple coat. She once had an indigo mane, with a natural stripe of magenta running down its length. Her eyes had once been wide with wonder and curiosity. Once, but no more. The mare that stared back at her now, in the dragon’s eye, had an indigo mane interspersed with stripes of grey-white. Her coat was patched with spots of grey, concentrated mostly on her chest. Silver-grey tattoos divided her skin, starting from the corners of her eyes and mouth to run down her neck and body like frozen mercury. Her legs were not short and stocky, but lean and long, adapted to a life of travel. Her eyes, once shining with innocent joy, now glared out tiredly beneath her roughly-cut fringe. They were moistened with tears and reddened. Cold and empty. Suddenly, all of the feeling, all of the emotion, all of the pain left her. Nothing replaced them. Twilight shook her head, breathed out and closed her eyes just as Spike whipped his head around and slammed his nose into her shields. The glow of magenta magic flared up, and Spike’s head recoiled, the snout tip spurting blood from the nostrils. The crimson jets came out almost in sync with his rapid breaths. A muffled howl sounded from somewhere deep inside his throat. “Oh, Spike,” Twilight said, shaking her head involuntarily as her voice and legs started to waver, “why?” Spike only howled and roared and growled as best he could through the binding around his muzzle. The glaring magenta magic pressed into his scales, warping them as he struggled. “Spike,” she said, raising a hoof towards him. He turned away. Twilight frowned, stepping forwards – His neck flicked, and his head hurtled towards her like the end of a whip. Twilight raised her shields. And Spike’s head slammed into the barrier, his entire body shaking like a spring from the impulse. Twilight barely felt the power draw. She folded the magical barrier until he was wrapped in it, writhing like a snake inside a log just big enough for its body. Stepping back, Twilight examined her hoofwork. She shook her head. Her once-friend was trapped in a cocoon of her own magic, crippled by her own actions. Blood trickled down his jaw from the wound at the roof of his mouth, and his nostrils were filled with more blood than air. His front legs lay slathered on the ground, simple slabs of useless meat. Pitiful. Horrific. And all her fault. She trotted closer, ignoring the muffled growls that now curiously sounded like whimpers to her ears. Trapped, Spike could not move away – yet he continued to glare at her. Little puffs of dragonfire burst out of the sides of his jaw, in time with his huffs of breath, mixing with the crimson spewing out of his nostrils. Twilight scrunched up her nose to ward off the smell. Her hooves, dripping with blood and strips of skin, sang with pain as she stepped upon a ridge of vitrified dirt. Scowling and gritting her teeth, she ignored them. She knelt down in front of his snout, and saw both of his eyes swivel around to focus on her. “Spike! It’s me, Twilight!” No, it wasn’t. Twilight wouldn’t have broken her oldest friend’s ribs, blown out his kneecaps, and then trapped him like an animal in a field of her magic. Twintel would, but not Twilight Sparkle. Even if they were both one and the same. She felt the heat roll off the small bursts of fire coiling above his snout. If she closed her eyes, she could trick herself into thinking that she was in some remote cabin somewhere, with a warm fire keeping the cold night at bay. The sun reached down until it almost touched the horizon. The sky and snow lit up into a brilliant fire of orange and red as the heavens themselves seemed to burn. Clouds drifted across the sky, curling and splitting like smoke hanging above a massive funeral pyre. It was beautiful. She turned her back to it, and looked at the dragon. There was nothing left. All of her tears had fallen. The anger and hate had vaporised like the snow, to be carried to some far-off place by the uncaring wind. Blackness remained. There was nothing left. This whole endeavour had ended with nothing but ash and blood beneath her hooves. With all the blood spilled, all the time, money and effort spent to find Spike and prepare for the final confrontation, she’d never even considered this possibility: that Spike couldn’t be rescued in the first place. That he had become the monster she was chasing – and that he wasn’t the only one. That she was too late – far, far too late. Sterfgeval. The Crying Mountain. She looked at herself, reflected in his eyes against the fire of the setting sun, once more. There was just one more fight left. Just one more. For him. “Spike?” Even the last phrase Spike would hear from her was weak and indecisive. Honest. No more aliases, no more delusions – he deserved to know her. Her, the pony that had sacrificed everything. The pony that had stopped at nothing. Spike deserved that much. He deserved more, much more. But she couldn’t give him more. She could only give him the kindness. The mercy. Peace, permanent peace. No more struggling against the world and the greed and the bloody horror – just simple existence in the afterlife. And after that? Who knew? And perhaps one day, she’d join him. She smiled. Yes. She’d like that. It would be his last few moments in the Known World. His life would be taken by his former caretaker, in an act of compassion twisted until it was indistinguishable from spite. All the pieces were set, and there was only the final move to make. “Spike, please.” Twilight shifted over to the left. From there, her magic could lase straight through his eye and into his brain. Hopefully, it would kill him instantly. “You… you don’t recognise me, do you. At all.” All she got in response was struggling, huffs, and the quiet splatter of blood on black earth. She sighed, a huffing, raspy sob of a sigh. “Spike. I’m so sorry.” Her vision blurred as hot liquid spilled over her eyelids. “Wherever you are, forgive me.” As she charged up her horn, she saw Spike’s expression change. As ley wound up around her form, running up her glowing tattoos and coiling around her horn, his eyes seemed to widen. As she put every gram of power she had into the spell, making sure her last act of mercy would be swift and kind, he seemed to fall slack. With recognition or fear? Or pity? Twilight knew she would never know. The spell erupted from her horn, a great beam of magenta magic screaming outwards just as she closed her eyes. The cannon sounded one last time, a lonely salute.