Delivery
“Spike, are you sure you know where we are going?” Apple Bloom asked after Spike led her through the darkened city for what seemed like hours. “It feels like we are walking in circles.”
“I am sure, and we are not,” he replied. “It is just that this city... there are so many blocked paths.”
Because of the enchantment that was placed upon this place--an enchantment that made the night time eternal--and also because of the thick cloud cover that blocked what little light the moon and stars provided, Apple Bloom was unable to see that they had already left the part of the city they’d slept in.
When they entered, they were greeted by the sight of the ruins of small, mud brick housing, all tightly packed together in a maze of buildings and streets: the slums of the city. After getting a lucky break in the form of a straight path through some collapsed buildings, they entered the second part of the city and it was there that they again rested.
This part of town once consisted of larger buildings, separated by wide spaces. By the size of the piles of stone and steel that remained, the buildings could have been as much as several stories tall.
With the aid of his new left eye--an enchanted stone that took the place of the eye he lost last week--Spike guided Apple Bloom out of that part and into a new one. Some had lost their windows and parts of their exterior coating, but otherwise appeared to be in livable condition. There were buildings that had parts missing, or had even collapsed entirely, but those were the exceptions rather than the rule.
The streets returned to the twisting mess that they had been when they first entered the city; although now, they seemed only worse. There were streets built over other streets, some ascending five to six levels across, as if to make up for the narrow paths in the area of town that likely housed the greater populace.
Spike took Apple Bloom down one of these streets. There, even if the clouds were to shift, it would have made no difference. Any light that could reach them would only have been blocked by the lofty roads above them.
The freezing wind, their constant companion, always seemed to find a way of reaching them, no matter how far they walked or how deep into the city they got.
They talked for awhile, trying to keep their minds preoccupied with anything so that maybe they could forget about the cold; but, nothing they could think of seemed to work. They talked about their friends; they talked about how Apple Bloom was doing at school; they talked about the crusaders and their latest attempts of getting a cutie mark; they talked about many things as they continued onwards, but nothing seemed to do the trick.
They finally found one, but not with the aid of their mouths, or even their brains. The new thing on their minds was brought up by a loud groan coming from their stomachs. Having not eaten anything since the morning, which seemed to be such a long time ago, far longer than it should have been, they were hungry.
“I am so hungry,” Spike told himself, hoping that Apple Bloom would not hear him.
“So am I,” she said.
“I really should learn to stop talking to myself out loud.”
“You wouldn’t have anything to eat on you?” he asked the pony.
“No, you?” she asked back.
Spike shook his head in response before realizing that she could not see the gesture. “No.”
“Then Zecora... she must be carrying it all,” Apple Bloom told Spike. “As well as our cloaks.”
“It would have been a lot easier if we had them.”
“I think... she was going to give them to us... when we would have made camp... for the second night,” she stuttered. The lack of sleep, the cold, as well as the hunger had apparently taken their toll on the filly.
She was only able to walk for another hour or so until she collapsed, unable to pick herself up.
“Apple Bloom!” Spike shouted as he felt her falling to the ground.
“I... am just... so... tired.”
Thinking fast, Spike put down his backpack and unwrapped his sleeping bag. He went over to Apple Bloom and found her unconscious.
“Spike wants,” he said as he transformed.
Opening his eyes after the transformation caused him to feel sick again and for his headache to return, so he quickly closed them both and after waiting for a bit, he reopened the left one so he could see what he was doing. After unbuckling the saddlebag from the filly’s back and tying it onto his waist, he picked her up and placed her into his sleeping bag where she would hopefully stay warm for the rest of the way, or at least until they found Zecora.
There were a few more things he had to take care of before they could go on. His change caused him to use a lot of the energy he had left, and he had to find a way to get some of it back which meant sleeping or eating. Since time was of the essence, sleeping was out of the question, leaving finding something to eat the only viable option.
Spike looked around, but all he could see was rubble, shards of glass, rusted steel rods, and a lot of gravel and stone.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked himself, “eat rocks?”
Spike paused, thinking about the possibilities.
“No...” he told himself “A dragon eats gems, he does not eat rocks... But... they do not eat hay either.”
Spike walked towards the remains of a building and picked up a stone roughly the size of his fist. “It can’t be that easy...”
“Can it?” he said out loud before reluctantly taking a bite out of it.
His fangs had no trouble penetrating it. As a matter of fact, the stone itself was a lot softer than most of gems he ate; although, it was, by far, the worst thing he ever had the displeasure of putting in his mouth. But he did not care. No matter how much his taste buds protested, his stomach still craved more, and the hunger always had the last word. So Spike ate rocks. He did not enjoy the taste, nor did he enjoy the thought of eating rocks, but he ate them and his stomach stopped crying.
With his hunger now gone, he finished the rest of the preparations. He picked up his backpack and while laying down, he carefully moved his sleeping bag onto his back without waking up Apple Bloom. His increased size, as well as the extra bit of width provided by the saddlebags provided a large enough space so that the filly could sleep without worrying Spike that she would, somehow, fall off of him.
Spike started walking in the same direction that they had been before Apple Bloom had passed out. Even with the extra weight of another bag, as well as a sleeping pony on his back, Spike still had an easier time moving through the city.
At first he moved slowly, often turning his head around so he could make sure that she was still there, still sleeping, still safe. But, he soon found himself moving faster and faster, and checking on Apple Bloom less and less.