Chapter 13: Boy on Fire
She had made a mistake.
She had lifted herself off of her rock for just for a few moments, just long enough to walk around the sheltered side of the great stone to stretch her wings and shake the sleep from her legs.
The griffon hen found that the rock had not kept her warmth. She cursed silently as the cold seeped into her despite her down.
Stupid rock, she thought as she fought against the chill. She drew her legs beneath her, shuddering slightly. The snowflakes of a wounded winter fell around her... big, wet flakes catching across her coat. It was spring, but despite what the calendar said winter still held dominion across the pass. It would be a great long while before the snows surrendered themselves to the outcroppings of short, tough grasses and the edelweiss came into bloom.
That she knew.
Her keen eyes stared through the snow squall to Vuori Ontto below. The city sparkled on the mountainside below her, the timber frames of the biggest buildings evident even this high up the side of the stony crag.
As she watched, black figures swept up the sides of the cliff, and even at this distance she could tell who it was. Even at this distance she could tell what griffon drake had arrived in the city, his lieutenants and adherents at his side.
Urho had arrived in Vuori Ontto. She could feel her poor father’s migraine beginning all the way up here.
She apologized to her rock, sorry for calling it stupid. Now that the city was once again to strain under the weight of Urho’s words, there was no place in Kotkankoto that she would rather be than up here, on her chilly rock, in the snow that blew in over the frigid pass through the mountains.
That she knew.
She’d rather be here on this frigid rock than down in the lodge of her father. She’d rather be here amid the great, wet snowflakes than anywhere in the city below. She’d rather sit here in the driving winds than anywhere in her nation… even the capital at Aarnenlinna held no particular attraction that her cold, stupid rock could not provide.
Aarnenlinna. The Fortress of Aarne. Aarne the Undying. Her thoughts kept going back to that name, back to what she knew of the great, almost mythical hero of her kind. Her mind kept going back to Aarne, back to the stories that she had been told since she was a cub, her grandmother settling them around the fire as she and her cousins sat enraptured at the words.
What he must think of us now, she thought. I can’t even begin to imagine.
Truth be told, she could imagine. The griffon hen had a keen imagination. She could imagine what the great unifier of her kind would think about them returning to living in clans. She could imagine that he would have choice words about the infighting, the devolution… the way that they had come to treat all other races as suspect.
She pressed herself closer to her rock. All too soon she would have to go back down into the city. She let her head lie across her forelegs, across her talons, and she begged the rock to be a little warmer, to let her stay just that much longer.
He wouldn’t like it, she thought, blinking the snowflakes from her eyes. He wouldn’t like it one damn bit.
That she knew.
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Carbon Copy stood in the antechamber of the throne room, his papers falling through his hooves.
“Oh… oh, sorry about that,” he said, scooping up hooffuls of his research. “It’s just that there’s this amazing fact about the sewers that I’ve discovered, and somepony has to hear about it, and I figured that if anypony should know about it, then it should be the princess.”
Silence greeted him.
“M-may I go in?” he asked.
He lifted his head to find the Lord Chamberlain of the Household still standing in the doorway, a look across his face that firmly denoted his lack of concern for matters concerning sewers, minor historians, and anypony who didn’t seem like they should be on the other side of the throne room’s great, vast doors.
The Sergeant-at-Arms, standing to the right, appeared even less cordial.
“Oh. I see,” Carbon Copy said, withering under the gaze of the two officious ponies. “I’ll just go and… I’ll go wait over there.”
Carbon Copy spun around slowly, and began pacing up and down the carpet. Beyond the tall doors sat the throne room, and as he paced he could hear the sound of the royal court. Hundreds of voices came from inside, murmurs and laughter mingling as Prime Minister Fancypants attempted to be heard above the din, calling different ponies out of the crowd to drop their concerns before the unseen princess within.
The young stallion walked on, his head held low, his papers held awkwardly in his foreleg. Priceless treasures and ancient artifacts lined the walls, and at any other time the young researcher would have found them infinitely interesting.
At any other time, though, he would not have bounced off some other pony.
“Gah! My bad! My bad, I’m sorry!” he said, his hooves clattering as he spun in place, going from the fine carpet to the hard marble and back again. “My bad!”
“Oh, not even an issue, good sir!” answered a familiar voice.
Carbon Copy looked up to see the same face he had last seen in the library weeks ago, that of the older stallion who had stood next to the terrifying librarian. The younger stallion dropped his head, looking to see if the dragon that had caused him to lose his library access due to guilt by association was there. He had a few choice words for the little whelp…
…words that evaporated upon his lips as he looked across the creature.
Carbon Copy reared back and hid at Artificer Call’s side. The two stallions stood there, watching as what had once been Spike went along the fine carpet, making his way with deliberate, pounding strides towards the heavy door, making spears rattle in a display case of ceremonial weapons as he went past.
“You’ll forgive him, I hope,” Call said in a low voice. “The poor lad’s not been himself today.”
A decidedly reptilian sound lifted along the corridor, echoing slightly amid the stained-glass windows, bouncing off the fraudulent histories and landing around the two stallions. Chills slithered down their spines at the sound.
“No foolin’?” Carbon Copy said, emerging from behind the older archivist.
They watched Spike go forward, the rattle in his voice sounding like a croak wrapped inside a growl, escaping him with a seething hiss added for good measure.
Spike went forward, approaching the Lord Chamberlain and the Sergeant-at-Arms as his head hung slightly to the side. He did not look up at them as he advanced, and instead looked downwards and at an angle, as though suggesting that the world was askew, he alone keeping the secret of the proper alignment of reality.
The Lord Chamberlain looked down across him judgmentally, and the Sergeant at his side joined him in renewing their mutual scowl.
Still, Spike did nothing. He did not speak or return their gaze. He did not move except for the roll of his lip moving to expose one fang.
The Lord Chamberlain felt his nerve leaving him. The stallion shifted his weight from side to side, and he shot a nervous glance at the sergeant. The older guardpony looked back at him, not quite knowing what to make of the whelp that stood before them.
“Name and business,” the Lord Chamberlain said, affecting his distant, dignified tone.
“Spike,” the drake replied, a challenging rumble in his tone. “To see Celestia.”
“Princess Celestia is holding court right now–” the stallion began.
“No, really?” Spike offered.
“–so unless you can proffer some real reason for me to permit you to enter,” he continued, ignoring the barb, “then I suggest that you remove yourself before–”
“I want my mommy!”
The four stallions startled, the sergeant’s helmet spinning around on his head as all of their eyes went wide. The wails of a child rang around them, and they looked at Spike as he clutched his haversack like a lost toddler would, seeking comfort in its folds.
“I-I want my mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Please, mister, I-I miss her so much!” Spike cried, his voice rising above even the din of the courtiers’ voices beyond the door. “S-She–she’s in there with the nice stallion who said he could help us k-keep our house, and… and…”
“Oh! Oh, kid, I’m sorry!” the Lord Chamberlain said, his cold, distant demeanor dropping away at once. He nodded to the Sergeant-at-Arms, and together they stepped aside, allowing him passage. “Go right ahead, buddy, go right ahead… I’m sure that she’s in there…”
The sniffling dragon whelp wiped his eyes and slowly walked towards the door.
“Oh, hey,” Spike said, curling his lip into a smirk, “thanks… buddy.”
With a self-satisfied wink, the dragon entered the throne room, leaving a startled and disbelieving pair of court officers to ponder what had just transpired.
For a fleeting moment, the quartet of stallions simply stood there blinking at one another.
“He… he just…” began the Lord Chamberlain. “We just let…”
“As I said,” Artificer Call said, clearing his voice as he watched a scowl creep across the sergeant’s face, “he hasn’t been quite himself today.”
“No foolin’?” Carbon Copy repeated.
The sergeant gave a deep, steaming huff and moved to pursue the little liar. Yet before he had even wheeled around, sounds of general disagreement arose from beyond the door. There was a flurry of motion, and at once a small figure came bouncing out, tumbling along the carpet.
“Well then, my deceptive friend,” the sergeant barked, “somepony didn’t buy the crying act? Serves you right! Now, once you’ve given us an apology, you’ll wait out here like a good little liar until–”
The sound that escaped Spike’s throat at that moment could only be described as draconic. It was unlike any sound that a pony could make, and it made a primal part of them slink in fear, only the sergeant not blanching… even if he went silent.
Power loomed behind the sound, a wild, feral ugly force that not only spilled from his throat but also sat engraved on Spike’s features. They were wrong, all of them, all of the fools. They deserved the force that sat in his throat, behind his eyes...
Hate.
Spike wheeled away from the court officers, the spade of his tail slamming against the sergeant’s spear and making it threaten to topple to the floor. Spike didn’t look back, and instead he marched across the carpet to the opposite wall, past the weapon rack. As he did his head once more fell back into its slight angle, the effect unnerving those who stood nearby, and they lifted and dropped their hooves as they looked at him.
“Well… as I said, the lad’s not been himself today,” Artificer Call whispered.
“No foolin’,” answered Carbon Copy.
An uneasy silence settled over the hallway once again. The eyes of the four stallions sat on Spike, watching as he walked up and down the corridor, but the whelp did not care. He could not care.
Celestia was on the other side of those doors.
Celestia was there, and she would answer his questions.
Celestia would explain herself.
Spike’s lip curled again, exposing his one fang so that its whiteness sat in deep contrast to the faded purple of his scales. His inner eyelids flashed, and a rolling croak hung in his throat as his eyes coasted up and down the stained-glass windows, each one resplendent in their lies.
His eyes flashed to the one where his own figure stood in absurd abstract, grasping for the Crystal Heart. He growled, knowing that it had been useless. His one act of “heroism” was an invention, a falsehood.
It would have worked out better if Sombra had won.
His body turned, gazing towards the newest window… the greatest blasphemy, the greatest fairy tale to be presented to the ponies in their history.
Princess Twilight Sparkle Harmonia hovered over him, the new wings that marked her apotheosis to an alicorn standing out wide as a serene look of happiness sat across her features. Only her closed eyes matched her actual reality, that of a prisoner in the Ward of the Living Dead.
His eyes fell to the two books below Twilight’s stained-glass avatar. Starswirl’s tome sat there, the damned thing grafted to Twilight’s story. Her own spellbook sat there as well. All that he could think of was how he should be in this window, taking her dictation, scribbling away happily in her book.
No. This window shouldn’t exist. This window was a sin.
A growl rattled in his throat as he turned around, unable to look upon it any more. His eyes met those of Artificer Call and Carbon Copy briefly before turning to the wall beyond.
The stand of ceremonial weapons stood there, and he cast his eyes over them once more. Ornate spears, halberds, spurs, and even the torches used in evening processions awaited the next call to parade the princesses through the streets. He focused on something, on some simple, shimmering aspect of the weapons that sat before him, and as he did a thought flashed through his mind.
Spike walked towards the stand.
“Spike?” Artificer Call asked. “Do… do be careful, lad.”
Spike had slipped just out of view of the Lord Chamberlain and the Sergeant-at-Arms. But when they heard Artificer Call’s implore, they threw each other a very, very worried look and then abandoned their prescribed places before the door. They trotted forward, looking to where the dragon had disappeared.
They discovered him just in time to see Spike lowering his arms. In his claws sat one of the items that just a few moments before had sat in the weapons rack, and a twisted smile sat across the dragon’s face.
“Spike, listen to me, lad,” Artificer Call said, stepping closer to the whelp. “I can’t approve of you...”
Spike lifted his prize higher.
“Oh… oh dear,” Call said, blanching. “Oh, Spike. Lad… don’t…”
When the other three stallions realized what was about to happen, their eyes went wide. They backpedalled a few steps, the Lord Chamberlain even losing his balance as he tripped across the edge of the carpet.
A smirk once more rolled across Spike’s face as he held it in his hands, and his eyes narrowed upon this wonderful, simple tool that now sat at his disposal. Opportunities opened up before him, and vindication burned behind his emerald eyes.
Spike chuckled.
He would be heard.
The parliamentary mace banged on the floor of the throne room, reverberating above the sounds of the courtiers and their idle chit-chat.
“Presenting Crab Cakes, the Lord Mayor of Baltimare and its environs,” Prime Minister Fancypants called, his magic hefting the mace once more. “Today, Highness, he speaks to the issue of land acquisition, expansion, and eminent domain, docket number eleven-eighty-seven.”
Princess Celestia nodded to the Lord Mayor, bidding him to rise. She listened carefully as he detailed this, that, and the other thing, paging through the documents in the docket as she followed along in her own copies. Her magic gently slid among the pages, lifting each one with care.
She let her eyes settle on the figure of the mayor below, the smile on her face never wavering as he went through his practiced speech. She nodded at his salient points, weighing each one against the evidence he presented…
…just as she had for the hundreds, if not thousands of times the exact same conversation had floated around this ancient seat of power.
Celestia lifted her head once more, examining the crowd of ponies that made up her court. The fine lords, barons, and baronesses, the officious civil servants, the bemused politicians, the stoic guards... each in their prescribed place, each fulfilling the role that their marks had presented them.
How very, very, very long she had worked to make all this happen. How very, very, very much she had given up to ensure that it would work.
Her eyes settled back upon the Lord Mayor of Baltimare, watching as he made his last few points. She listened intently, acknowledging him with nods and the small smile that often played out across her features… just as she had the tens of thousands of Lord Mayors, petitioners, parliamentarians, and ponies of all kinds who had done the same over the millennia.
Celestia allowed herself a small internal sigh, as she did every decade or so, and lamented the lack of variety and surprise in this world, the world of fine ponies in their beautiful clothes. They came and went in time, like the leaves on the trees, and the world that she had fought so hard to build revealed itself once more in the form of the court and the Lord Mayor who bowed before her, completing his presentation.
“Thank you, Crab Cakes,” she said, in a congratulatory tone, “you certainly make a convincing argument, and I will take your points into consideration.”
As he smiled, bowed, and retreated from her presence, Celestia could see the shadows of innumerable ponies clinging to him, his story being just the latest rendition of a long-told tale. The mace sounded out around the throne room, and the murmur of the crowd shifted as a few attempted to present cards to the heralds.
Celestia watched Fancypants sort through the cards, looking for notable names and important figures that required her attention… just as his many, many, many predecessors had. He nodded his head and yet another figure emerged from the court, the cycle restarting once more.
Inside the ancient alicorn, a small voice whimpered, asking for some relief from the routine. She quickly extinguished it, reminding herself what she had given up, how all of Equus had suffered to make this possible…
…even if, yes, some small change would be nice.
A rotund stallion came forward. His mane was slicked back, and it seemed to be swimming with styling grease, applied liberally to cover up the balding spaces upon his brow. Celestia’s eyes rolled at his embarrassment, if only in her own mind. As though something as banal as baldness would make her disregard the words of…
…her ears twitched, turning slightly to catch a new noise, one coming from deep within the crowd of her court.
Prime Minister Fancypants banged the mace once more, attempting to quiet the growing voices of the crowd.
“Presenting Minister of Parliament Rubber Stamp,” Fancypants began, speaking slightly louder than normal, “elected by the ponies of Manehattan to represent the… Great Flaming Pits of Tartarus!”
Fancypants’ voice went high with shock. His eyes wide as he saw the catalyst of the crowd’s shrieks, as he beheld that which parted them like wheat before a scythe.
“Actually, it’s the tenth electoral district,” Rubber Stamp said, only slowly becoming more aware of the disturbance behind him, “it’s… it’s a nice district, a great place to… to… drag me to the Well of Souls…”
Celestia’s mouth came open in the slightest, her eyes revealing a moment of shock as she registered what was transpiring before her.
A mare’s high scream shot through the court, and at once anypony that had not been aware of what was transpiring was dragged to awareness. They were quickly made to see the great, towering plume of black smoke that lifted from amid the crowd. They were made to smell the stink of burning oils. They were made to watch as ponies fled from the spectacle, dropping fans, monocles, and other trappings of elitism as they scurried to safety like scared foals.
The smoke was black, viscous. It rose to the ceiling in thick tendrils. It drifted out over the assembly in oily rings, lingering on the still air of the throne room. Soot drifted down from the plume lazily, settling like a darkened snow across the ponies gathered behind the columns, the black ashes falling over them as they hid behind the potted plants and pieces of art that lined the throne room.
Only then, only once the multitudes had fled from the specter, only once they had huddled in safety, could Celestia see from what the calamity rose.
A solitary figure appeared in the base of the ashy column, its outline visible through the pall of smoke. Flames consumed it—long cords of a vengeful fire rooted in magic. From within the conflagration of green flames, two emerald eyes fixed her in a gaze, the vision of the holocaust’s lone inhabitant reaching for her across the length of the throne room.
There were hundreds of demons of myth and history, of dark places where her sun had fought to illumine, of ancient history and deeper mysteries that could make such an entry. There were any number of monsters and foes from her own life that would presume to intrude upon her home like this…
…but, as she searched through the eyes that sat in the flames, she knew it was no monster, no demon.
It was a little boy… one in immeasurable pain.
Two Royal Guards streaked in, and as they did a reptilian roar lifted from the figure, the rattle of it catching in its throat. Before they could reach him, something crystalline flashed through the air, catching the emerald sheen of the eyes and the flames.
The fire entombing the figure billowed higher and higher, fueled by the contents of the crystal glass, and the pegasi wheeled away. Their eyes flashed towards the approaching pillar of smoke and flame, to the other guards, Simple Script and Morning Mist, and to the Princess of the Sun herself.
“Guards,” she spoke, her voice calm and even, “it is well. This… this was not unexpected.”
The Royal Guards retreated with a few flaps of their wings, still watching the creature as it approached their princess. Gelatinous globs of thick, clumping oil fell from it as it came forward, leaving pools of green fire in its wake, devastating a carpet that had been the life’s work of a great artisan, burning holes in the fabric and highlighting the figure as it came forward.
The entire assembly went silent, their minds wrapping around her words even as the alicorn lifted herself from her throne. Their eyes darted between the princess and the burning figure who now stood only a few paces apart. The pall of smoke danced across the pillars and columns, dropping ash around the both of them.
Celestia sighed audibly, and then settled her face across the smoldering demon.
“Hello, Spike,” she said.
Two fangs appeared inside the conflagration, revealing more teeth that stood in stark whiteness, curling up into a smile.
Oh, for Pursopolis, thy gleaming domes sitting astride the ways and streams.
A gasp went around the room, catching amid the crackling flames that riddled the carpet.
“Heya, Princess,” the whelp said with a throaty chuckle. “Do ya mind if I smoke?”
Oh, for Pursopolis, eternal city of wonders.
“Spike, please,” Celestia said, her voice calm as she lowered her head slightly, searching for the emerald light of his eyes. “Please, there is no need for this. Please, we–”
“Oh, hey!” the dragon interrupted, his head lifting through the swirls of smoke. “Oh! I’ve always wanted to do this!” He turned towards Fancypants, a streak of emerald light lingering in the blackness of the ash as he fixed the prime minister in a glare. “You gotta announce me, Fancy!”
“Th-there’s already a petitioner on the floor,” Fancypants said, lifting his hoof towards a suddenly very silent Rubber Stamp.
“Hey! Do ya mind if I go before ya?” Spike asked, flashing the minister of parliament a fang-filled smile. “I’ve got this burning need to talk to the princess!”
“Fine!” Rubber stamp said, tripping over his own hooves as he retreated from the demon before him. “That’s fine!”
Oh, for Pursopolis, her streets teeming, her larders full, her citizens shining and mirthful.
“Pr-presenting… oh dear,” Fancypants said.
“Spike,” a voice answered from within that smoke and ash.
“Presenting Spike the… well, I…” Fancypants said, fumbling with the mace.
“Spike the Dragon!” the drake cried, new torrents of flame lifting from him. “Number One Assistant to Princess Twilight Sparkle Harmonia! Bang the freakin’ mace already!”
Spike bowed deep as Prime Minister Fancypants sounded the mace, marking Spike’s petition as the one that now stood before the ancient alicorn. The dragon’s eyes stayed lifted to Celestia, watching her as he painted the farce of supplication, of bowing to her with an unnecessary and sardonic flourish. He chuckled as more drops of the thick oil fell from him, creating new pools of fire on the carpet, burning away great swaths of the ornate rug.
Oh, for Pursopolis, lost to time and a tyrant’s touch, afflicted by a bane beyond thought.
There was motion, and Spike lifted from his bow just in time to see the Royal Guards making their way towards him, approaching him stealthily as he still sat deep in his bow.
At once Spike spun around, and a reptilian growl once more escaped through his fangs, the sound curling in hisses as it slid past the forked end of his slithering tongue. His clawed hand moved quickly, bringing up the crystalline glass once more.
Celestia’s eyes flashed, and in an instant she recognized the container and its contents. It was used to hold the oils that lit the torches that would be carried in processions through the starlit nights of Canterlot. Now, Spike was using the antique for his own purposes, and some part of her faded as she saw him lift it over his body..
The thick, fatty oil spilled from the glass, and sheets of green flame swelled from the boy once again, enveloping him fully and sending more clouds of smoke high into the vaults of the ceiling.
Oh, for Pursopolis, the fallen city. How my heart does ache at the sight of her now! How we weep and beat our hooves upon the ground at the thought that all the glory has come out of her, for she is enthralled to Sombra’s will.
“Spike, please,” she said, bidding the guards to back away. As they did she moved closer to him, moving as close as she could as the ash swirled around her like an unholy snowfall. “Spike, there is no need for such theatrics.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure there is,” he said, the words leaving him in a miserable croak. “I’m pretty sure that you’re gonna listen to me more if I’m on fire. Call it a hunch.”
The lips of the demon warped into a smirk… and then fell down into a scowl.
“You’re gonna listen to me, and then you’re finally gonna tell me everything!” he cried. “You’re gonna tell me why you’ve been lying to me… lying to all of Equestria! Lying to Twilight!”
Spike threw the crystal glass aside as his voice arose in a shriek. The glass toppled along, spilling the last of its contents along the carpet, igniting new little fires as the waxy oil clung to the fabric.
Finally, the glass crashed against one of the pillars, sending more waves of confused panic through the dignified ponies that sheltered there in hiding from the fiery demon.
When the glass shattered, many things happened.
When the glass shattered, it sent a spray of shards bouncing across the fine marble floor of the throne room. The pieces spun a bit before finally coming to a rest against the distant wall. There they sat, each piece catching the shafts of light that fell through the tall stained-glass windows…
…each piece catching the light that fell across the unmoving alicorn who stood silently over him. Tiny rainbows, mimics of one sitting against a wall in a hospital room a few streets away, joined them as they stood upon the smoldering remains of the rug.
When the glass shattered, the sound resonated around the room and filled the ears of all who stood there in confusion and fear. It caught in the ears of the nobles, each fighting to understand what could be going on, why the little dragon could presume to speak with their sovereign so. It caught in the ears of the guardponies, each looking to each other as they tried to determine the best course of action.
It even filled the ears of the princess, fighting for her attention as centuries of hopes and plans sat stark and raw before her mind’s eye.
When the glass shattered, it made a little dragon do something he wouldn’t normally do.
When the glass shattered, it made him curse a pony who he loved.
“Buck you!” Spike cried, turning his body slightly and throwing a finger forward in accusation. “I know it all now! I figured it all out!”
We had entered the city quietly, and under wards of protection. In those streets marched dark things, for Sombra had marked the city as his own. Now, we made our way towards the common wherein the Cyrodenne Fountain sat and bubbled, unseen by crystal ponies, for he had removed all as thralls to the seat of his power.
A space opened up amid the swirls of fire and smoke that sat over Spike, and the haversack appeared out of the ash briefly, whatever material the brown surface was made of protecting the contents. The dragon fished around within, pushing aside the torn royal seal, the writ, the oven mitt, and the inexplicable box of Mairsy Dotes, his gaze never shifting from the alicorn as he fished through it.
It was by no small miracle that he didn’t set all of the contents on fire. He let out a low rumble, a warning to the encircling guards, as his hands found what he had been searching for.
“We got a book! It was a journal, diary, thing of a soldier who fought for the Crystal Empire back when Sombra came to power!”
Spike lifted the page that he had torn out of the soldier’s memoirs, holding it high above him, holding it before her like a prophet of old presenting a text of truths.
“It says that–”
A tendril of flames lashed out, and with that the words of the long-dead soldier were lost to history.
Spike blinked once, realizing his error. He scowled as the ashes drifted through his fingers.
“– it said that the Pillar of the Sun was there already when they tried to get Pursopolis back from Sombra!”
Yet there in the shadows of the streets loomed malice, and we knew at once what it was. Our knees knocked as we rounded the corner, and there before us sat the temple, the new vault within which we knew must rest one of the Pillars.
At once we fell to the stones, and wails escaped us. Our own fears fed it, our own hatred fueled it, and in coming we had only made it that much stronger. Oh, for Pursopolis! Who could free her now? For only one of the Pillars could be here so arrayed…
“The journal said that they knew who it belonged to!”
…for Sombra had gone to Kotkankoto, and Aarne’s Talon alone could be the Pillar entombed within. And, if Aarne could not his own treasure keep, then…
“The soldier knew that Aarne had lost his Pillar, Talon… that thing to Sombra! He knew what it was! He knew what it was for!”
…even Celestia Invictus can not come to us, can not free Pursopolis…
“You knew what it was for! You know what the Pillars are for!”
…for they are the bane of alicorns. Weapons are they, made to steal out their magic, to drown them and make sacrifices of their beauty and grace. Now, without that hope, we fail, and Pursopolis must fade and die, for an alicorn alone could stay Sombra. Knowing this we cast ourselves upon the rocks. We called out curses to the blackened sky and beat our hooves upon the ground. Now no alicorn could come. Oh, Pursopolis! All courage is gone! All hope is dead.
Spike stood there panting, his breath heaving in his chest. The flickers of flame were leaving him slowly, and patches of his purple scales were beginning to appear across his face and body.
He wiped his arm across his face, and then flicked more of the flames to the carpet. There they burned away more swaths of the fabric as his revelations did the same with layers of hidden history.
“You knew. You knew,” he said, lifting his finger to her again. “You knew all along what the Pillar of the Sun was… that it was Aarne’s Talon. That’s what you didn’t wanna tell me in the hospital.”
“Yes,” Celestia breathed.
“You know, you’ve known forever and ever that Sombra had taken it somehow, that Aarne had lost it to him,” Spike said in a hiss. “You knew that Sombra had somehow stolen it from the griffons.”
Celestia blinked slowly, and then replied with a quiet “Yes.”
“And here’s the best part. Ya ready for this? It’s buckin’ gold,” Spike said, a self-satisfied chuckle hanging around his words. More of the flames were leaving him, and the whelp slowly emerged from a fog of fire and smoke. “The best part is… you made somethin’, somethin’ that you thought would help you against the Pillar of the Sun, against all of the Pillars. The Zenith.”
“I did not make the Zenith,” Celestia whispered. “But I suspect that does not matter to your story at large.”
“Buck yeah it does!” Spike shouted. There was movement, and he looked up with a sneer, expecting to see more Royal Guards advancing on him. Instead all that met him were the deeply concerned faces of Artificer Call and Carbon Copy, the older unicorn and younger researcher standing in the distance beyond the rolling waves of heat that rippled across the room.
Spike’s sneer didn’t fade.
“I’ve got another story! This one is the tale of a great big minotaur hero guy and his magic hammer!” Spike said, tapping his haversack, not wanting to reveal the book and make the same mistake as he had with the journal. “It says that he came to you to ask for the Zenith… but that you didn’t have it anymore! You had given it to Aarne! Only the griffons know where it is now, right? Ha! How’d that work out for ya?”
Spike chuckled once again.
“So, long story short… Sombra parked a deathtrap meant to kill you in your own backyard, and you lost the key to turn it off!”
The slightest hints of surprise went across the face of the Firstborn Alicorn, and they were not lost on the dragon that stood there smoldering before her. His flames gave another long, forceful flare, and the boy within them did not lift his eyes from hers.
A complete change washed over Spike, and the little dragon hunched over, his face twisting to reveal his fangs once more.
“So,” he said, his voice trembling with accusation, “you made a new key.”
A flash of recognition went across the face of the ancient alicorn. “Do not say,” Celestia said, her voice low but firm, “what you are about to say.”
“You made a new key,” Spike continued, not heeding her warning, staring back up into her face. “You waited for centuries for just the right moment to come along… just the right pony to come along…”
“Spike,” she pled softly, “do not.”
“You waited and waited until a super-smart, super-magical pony came along–”
“You need to understand…”
“–who you could teach to become an alicorn.”
The entire room went stark silent. There was no motion.
“You tricked Twilight into becoming an alicorn!” he cried, throwing his fist forward until it hovered right before the Princess of the Sun, before the newfound object of his wrath. “You lied to her. You’ve lied to everypony! For! Centuries! You lied to me! You tricked her into becoming an alicorn so that, that–”
His voice rose even higher, shredding and breaking as he leveled the most obscene accusation that any in the room could imagine across the ancient incarnation of the sun itself.
“–you tricked her into becoming an alicorn so that, when the Crystal Empire finally came back, she would die there instead of you!”
There was no movement in the room, and no pony within even seemed to draw a breath. The final flames fell from him, revealing a portrait of a boy lost in fear, wrath, anger, and confusion. His face was twisted in rage, and his emerald eyes harbored ferocity that none had ever seen across him.
Even the guards who were stealthily advancing upon him stopped in their steps, transfixed by the image he presented and the weight of the horrific accusation that sat in his words.
“You grew Twilight like a great big pumpkin! You grew her just to get carved up by that… that thing! It was all a lie! The coronation, the test against Sombra! The ‘I’m so proud of you, my favorite student!’ You… you just gave her wings so that she could find out where it is! You planned it all out so that Twilight would get murdered so you could figure out where it was… you planned for her to die because you lost your key!”
The force that rocketed through the throne room made the chandeliers swing on their stanchions, blew out the candles and lanterns and sent them toppling to the floor, and annihilated the final flickering flames that sat upon the long carpet.
The howling wind that arose in the throne room threw the guardponies to the ground, making them whinny and kick like wild horses, all trace of their Equestrian intellects departing them as they struggled against the torrents of force that flowed from the alicorn.
“I am many things, Spike the Dragon, and I am the first to admit that not all of them are good and kind!” she said, her voice echoing inside itself. Celestia now glowed with her own light, the allegation having called up emotions from deep within the mare, ones that she had fought long and hard over centuries to bridle.
“But the one thing I am not is cruel!” she said, her voice still echoing around the room, the hair of her mane drifting out behind her on currents of wind and enchantments. “You alone, Spike, can imagine the pain in my heart as I watch Twilight lie there in that–”
“Prove it!”
The little voice lifted above the cascading din of air and magic. It reached for her in a plaintive shriek.
“Prove it!” Spike called again.
Celestia looked down to see him clinging to the burned remains of the carpet, his claws digging deep into the fibers, finding purchase there, refusing to back down or give way in front of the mare that now stood before his judgment. She watched as Spike lifted his eyes to her, once more indicting her with his glare.
The winds began to recede, and Celestia of fair face and peaceful countenance once more emerged. Her mane went back to drifting silently on the solar winds that surrounded her, and the fierce light that had enveloped her subdued itself.
“How would you have me prove myself, Spike?” she asked. She watched as he pulled his claws out from the torn carpet. He lifted his face to hers, and as their eyes met she saw that he held a swath of the rug in his hands, folding it over and over..
“T-tell me that you didn’t know,” he said, staring up to her. “Tell me that you didn’t know that the Pillar of the Sun was in the Crystal Empire. Promise me that you didn’t know that Twilight would be in danger. Tell me that you didn’t know that… that thing was there, that it would hurt her.”
Celestia closed her eyes.
The princess of the sun took a deep breath as nearby guardponies struggled to their hooves as quietly as possible, each one anticipating her response. Looks of confusion sat on their normally emotionless faces, and the crowd of ponies that sat behind the pillars leaned forward, joining the guards in their expectation.
“Tell me. Promise me,” Spike said through gritted teeth, once more lifting his face as high as he could, raising himself up on his toes so that he could bring himself as close to her face as possible. “Promise me that you didn’t know.”
He stood there, wavering on his toes, rocking forward and back and folding and wrapping the torn fragment of the rug in his hands over and over until a sigh escaped Celestia’s lips. The eyes of the sovereign came open. She let her gaze drift to the great arches overhead where fine cords of smoke and ash still lingered, and then spoke.
“I can not truthfully tell you those things, Spike.”
The fabric dropped from his hands.
Spike stopped rocking, and whispers flit around the room. He stopped trying to lift himself farther and farther into her face.
He stopped breathing.
The whelp crumpled to the floor. Whatever part of him still believed that Celestia was innocent of these… these sins, fell away and left him standing in the darkness of her admission.
He sat there, on the charred carpet, supported only by his own two weak, outstretched arms. His head wobbled as he swam in her words. Finally, he forced himself to breathe, and to speak.
“You’re horrible…”
“Spike, please,” she said, seating herself before him.
“You’re awful,” he moaned. “You’re… you’re a monster…”
Shocked whispers of indignation went through the crowd.
“You’re a monster,” he said, flopping about on the rug, pulling at it with his claws, ripping at it and shredding it. “You’re a monster.”
“Spike, I beg of you, ask me one more question,” she said, dipping her head low, pushing it as close to him as she dared. “Spike, ask me if I love Twilight. Ask me if I ever wanted any of this to happen.”
Spike’s head wobbled, and he fought to lift himself from the blacked carpet on trembling arms, looking for the entire world more like a newly hatched chick than a young dragon.
Spike stared through her eyes. He looked deep inside them. He forced his will into hers, the last month of pain and fear hovering in his eyes as a child’s features made demands on an ancient face, one that has seen things far beyond his comprehension.
“Do you love her?” Spike asked.
“Yes,” Celestia answered.
Spike paused, gauging the alicorn.
“Did you plan this out so that Twilight would get hurt?” he asked. “Was that your plan? To make Twilight die?”
“No,” she answered.
Spike searched through her features, looked deep into her eyes. He found no duplicity there, but that fact brought him no comfort.
Spike shriveled into a heap, fighting to keep himself steady as he collapsed upon the ruins of the carpet. He stared at the torn, burnt remains as more and more questions flew through his mind. She knew that sending Twilight would get her hurt, possibly killed? She knew that thing was there, in the empire, but she didn’t know where? She knew all about the Pillar of the Sun, about Aarne’s Talon… but she still loved Twilight? She didn’t send her there on purpose?
These questions hovered around him as venturesome ponies began to breathe sighs of relief. Proud hooves began to emerge from behind the pillars, and some small voices were heard.
“I don’t get it,” he said, moving his head slightly, watching as the aristocracy began reclaiming its rightful place. “I-I don’t get… what…”
“Spike,” Celestia said, lifting a hoof towards him. “We all know what you have been through these last weeks, this month, but there is no need to make wild, baseless accusations. I forgive you this trespass, because I know you meant the best by it…”
Spike recoiled, but bit his long, thin tongue before his greatest weapon, his snark, could dig him an even deeper hole. The dragon, though, had not asked for forgiveness… and had certainly not offered it. Celestia had admitted that she knew. She had told him that she could not say that she was blissfully unaware of that thing.
She had known. She knew. She was still at fault. She was still the one who had delivered Twilight into this fate.
And, damn her eyes, she would do something.
Noble ponies moved forward once again, some even harrumphing and pressing cards towards Fancypants. Spike’s body shook around him, and his eyes narrowed as they dared steal this time from him, as they belittled Twilight by taking these moments away from him.
He turned his eyes up again, and his tired, foggy senses once more centering themselves on Celestia’s words.
“You’re gonna help her,” he said, cutting off the alicorn in the middle of a sentence, ending yet another repeating of fairy tales about how the doctors were doing their best, and how everypony wanted the best for him.
“Naw, what you’re gonna do is get the Kotkankotan… an… annan… an… griffon ambassador in here, and you’re gonna tell him that they need to find The Zenith!” Spike cried.
Celestia sighed again, and in the mass of ponies behind them some chuckles broke out. A dim view of Spike’s diplomatic abilities began to spread among the group as they sensed the end of the drama.
Spike ignored them utterly.
“Spike, I can not make demands upon a foreign nation,” she said, holding her expression steady. “You know better than that.”
“Then… then you’re gonna send the girls! The other Elements of Harmony, Twilight’s friends…” Spike demanded.
“Do you not think that would arouse suspicion? Five of the mightiest heroes of Equestria suddenly appearing in a nation where we have, at best, strained relations? That they should begin inquiring about an ancient artifact, one that is somehow linked to a great and powerful weapon of their kind?” Celestia said. “In fact, I do believe they are already aware. You have been less than stealthy with your gathering of information, Spike, and–”
“I don’t care!”
Snickers arose from the crowd. The little dragon, now shorn of his flaming cloak, was quickly going from being a threat to making a spectacle of himself. They rolled their eyes and pressed forward, each trying to look on the source of all of the excitement.
“I don’t care!” Spike repeated. “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care! You… you need to do something, anything! Send the army! Send the navy!”
“I am fairly certain that would be construed as an act of war, Spike,” Celestia said, shaking her head.
The crowd silenced themselves even as they came forward, the mere mention of the word “war” being enough to silence any other concerns, especially when mentioned here in the very seat of Equestria’s government.
“Send ‘em anyway,” the dragon muttered. “Send the Royal Guards. Send the whole Regular Army. Make the ships go. I don’t care. I don’t care…”
Celestia looked across him once more, watching as the child pulled at the threads of the carpet.
And, once again, she began pulling at the chain of sins that bound them together.
“Spike,” she said as she draped her magic across him, “you don’t mean that.”
He felt himself being drawn nearer to the princess, and soon she had gathered him close to her so that he rested against her tall, white legs. It was a hug, of sorts, the princess pressing him to her closeness as she sat over him.
It was supposed to be comforting, like when Twilight held him. But it didn’t feel like Twilight. It made him twitch, something deep inside him heaving with revulsion at being close to the Daybringer, some deep part of him rejecting her.
It didn't feel like being close to Twilight in the slightest.
Once again he was being coddled. Once again, his deeper, darker thoughts told him, he was being mollified, pacified… once again a pony was soothing him as though he were a little baby foal, one who simply had awoken from a nightmare and who needed to be patted and given his bottle before being put down again.
But the nightmare wasn’t ending.
The nightmare had gone on for a month, and now, at this most desperate moment, now, when he thought that he had forced the issue, that he had laid all stark and bare before the one pony in the world who could answer his questions, the one who could actually do something about the unfairness and injustice of it all… he found himself being coddled again.
A little thought grew in his mind. A shadow of an idea, birthed amid the clutter of four weeks of hovering at Twilight’s bedside, sprouted in the farthest reaches of his perception.
It unwrapped and unwound itself, blossoming across his thoughts. The idea grew and took root, sending tendrils deep through his mind, shooting new determination up into his conscious like budding leaves.
New hope shot through him. It crashed into him like a mighty wave thrown against a breakwater during a storm. Hope. How delicious it was. How the long absence of the taste of hope had left him unsatisfied. Now he drank it in abundance, and berated himself for not realizing the elegant, easy solution sooner.
It was so simple. It was so utterly simple.
“I’ll go.”
His little words drifted around the room, catching in the ears of a few of the aristocratic ponies. He ignored them, caring only for the reaction of the alicorn that hovered over him, stroking his frills.
“I’ll go,” Spike repeated. “I’ll go to Kotkankaka… Kotkankotta. Kot…”
“Kotkankoto,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he continued, pushing himself out of her embrace, “the griffin country, place. I’ll find the Zenith. I’ll… I dunno, but whatever it takes… whatever it takes.”
Celestia pulled him back against her legs… and pulled on the chain once more.
“Spike, that is very brave of you… but I cannot allow it,” she said, wincing inwardly as he startled against her leg.
“B-but, no! I… if you’re not going…” he began, once more trying to pull away from her.
His hope. She was stealing his hope. That cool, refreshing cup was being lifted away from his dry, cracked lips.
“You are dedicated, loyal, and caring, Spike, and I do not doubt that you mean those words in complete sincerity. But it is a fool’s errand, and you are no fool. You know of nothing that it would require, and we have already said why I have no pony to send with you,” she said, gently running her hoof across his frills.
“Then… then I’ll go alone,” he answered, staring at the floor, his arms down to his side.
She pulled on the chain once more, hefting more links around them.
“You would not last long, Spike. You are now truly scaring me, as I can see how utterly serious you are about this,” she said, wafting her magic around them, trying to calm him. “No, Spike, I forbid it. I forbid you from trying to seek the Zenith. Am I understood?”
There was a pause, and the sounds of aristocratic ponies chatting drifted around the throne room.
Spike settled back against her tall, white legs. Her boots were cold, and there was no comfort in the embrace for him. It certainly did not compare to the hugs Twilight had given.
It just didn’t feel like Twilight.
“I’m… forbidden?” he asked.
Celestia gave one last mighty heave on the chain of sins that had bound her for millennia.
“Yes,” she said with a small smile and a laugh, “but please do not think too harshly of me for it, Spike. I simply wish to keep you from pain. Can I not offer you anything? A room here in the palace? You would still be quite close to Twilight. Maybe some gems to eat, to get your strength back? All of these and more are yours, Spike, for the asking. You have dwelt under my protection all of your life, and there is little I will not grant you, if it will help you recover yourself. You know that.”
He listened to the temptations, and the temptress, who offered him such pleasures. He wiped his head across her legs, just above the cold boots, pondering her offer.
“Princess,” he asked in a weak voice, “if I still tried to go, what would that make me?”
“Well, I suppose that going against my law would make you… an outlaw!” she said with a little laugh, nearby barons and duchesses joining in. “And as such, you’d have no gems to eat or nice places to stay. That wouldn’t be very nice, would it?”
“Oh,” he answered.
Celestia ran her hoof across his frills, stroking him, coddling him. Spike turned his face up to hers. He sighed heavily, and his stomach rumbled at the thought of the gems. His heavy, exhausted eyes drifted over the images of the soft, warm beds that were in ample supply in the palace. Temptations… they were temptations.
His mind flashed back to Twilight. The princess was stealing his hope, taking that cup from his parched lips. She was stopping him from keeping his promise.
He grimaced inwardly. The rest was easy.
“Princess?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes, Spike?” she answered sweetly.
“I guess that makes me an outlaw, huh?”
His fangs sank deep into her leg, just above her boot.
The aristocrats looked on, their mouths hanging open in awestruck terror and disbelief.
Their ears filled with the cries of their sovereign, and they watched as she reeled back, shrieking in pain as the whelp dug his teeth into her leg. They witnessed the blood flow across his lips and fly from her punctured limb as she spun about.
They watched as the child went thudding to the floor, once, twice, three times as the alicorn tried to shake him loose. They watched as his grip upon her slipped, leaving a streak of crimson across the torn carpet as he bounced along the rug.
They watched as the two royal guard earth ponies, Silent Script and Morning Mist, leapt upon the boy, pressing him beneath their hooves.
“Steady on! Calm down!” Morning Mist cried.
“Stay down! Stay! Down!” Simple Script spat, pressing himself across the little whelp.
Spike snarled, hissed, but it did him no good. He was pinned now, their front hooves pressing his legs, arms, and even the spade of his tail into the charred remains of the rug
Spike spat, swore, and rattled with unhappy, beastly sounds as he fought them and lifted his eyes to face the distant figure of Celestia.
She sat a few paces away, one foreleg wrapped around the other. The princess stared back at him impassively, her head slowly bobbing up and down, choking back the emotions that were flooding her ageless frame.
The crowd looked upon their princess, the assembly lost in what they had seen and heard. Her mane was frazzled, and the crown upon her head had come loose as she had reeled about in pain and shock. As they watched a single sort of hidden sniffle lifted from the alicorn and found their ears. The sound was met with the roll of a single tear, one that fell down her face and joined the growing puddle of blood that sat beneath her. As it dripped from her face it added a plop to the pat-pat-pat that the drops of crimson made as they trickled into a pool where she sat. It slowly spread across the marble floor, staining the remains of the carpet a distinctive hue.
Celestia swallowed, sighed, and then spoke to the heaving little boy that lay with his frame pressed to the rug he had mutilated with his fire and claws, held down upon it beneath the heavy hooves of her guards.
“Very well then, Spike the Dragon,” she said. “I see that I have put you in this position. I had allowed you this much freedom, the freedom to do what you thought best in regards to Princess Twilight. I see, now, the outcome of my choice.”
She attempted to straighten herself, but the second her wounded leg touched the floor she winced, and she lurched forward, drawing a gasp from the crowd.
The alicorn ignored them, pressing on even as she wrapped her leg in her own magic, stifling the blood.
“If you truly wish to be beyond my shelter, I so grant it,” she said, her voice never wavering. “I hereby remove from you the protections of my crown, my law, and my favor.”
Spike stopped struggling, and his face swam with the realization of what the alicorn truly meant by her words.
“I hereby place you under my judgment, no different than any stranger in my lands, even those who may seek to harm my little ponies. As of this moment you are remanded to the care of the Lord Protector of the Nursery until somepony can be designated as your new custodian…”
New custodian. New caregiver. Not Twilight. Not. Twilight.
“No,” the dragon breathed. “No.”
“Until that time you are to travel under guard–”
“No.”
“–and are only allowed to visit with Princess Twilight Sparkle at the hospital for one hour–”
All of the pain and suffering in the world suddenly floated across the boy’s features. Suddenly everything dark, unhappy, and evil in the world of the child spread across his face, making her blanch in the slightest.
“No,” he whimpered. “No.”
“–for three hours a day, also under guard,” she said, correcting herself. “This is to continue until you can be… evacuated… from Canterlot.”
“No,” Spike hissed, new reserves of vehemence filling the cup of hope that had been poured on the ground, that she had stolen from him. “No… no. Nooo!”
Spike struggled in the hooves of the guards, whipping his tail around, making Silent Script and Morning Mist shift themselves so that more of their bodies pressed against the heaving, hissing frame of the whelp.
He hissed and croaked, the unponylike sounds once more filling the throne room.
“Spike,” Celestia said, “I hope that you know that I am not doing this to hurt you–”
She waited a moment, holding her wounded leg close, as he finished thrashing about in a new fit of disdain.
“–but instead to make amends for… putting you through these last few weeks. It was obviously, very, very hard on you, and drew you to this sorry, unhappy state. As such, I forgive you.”
Spike beat himself against the floor once more, Silent Script and Morning Mist pressing against him and shushing him as the boy foamed and fumed. He did not want her forgiveness. He did not forgive her. “You?!” he cried, lifting his snout from amid the hooves of the guards. “You forgive me?! You forgive me?!” You horrible, old–”
Silent Script’s hooves lowered across Spike’s face, but the boy struggled against them. “I don’t forgive you!” he called. “I don’t–” The guard’s hoof came down on him again. His malice shone in the emerald of his eyes, catching in the vehemence that sat around him as fluidly as the iron taste of her blood on his tongue.
Seeing such, she began to drop the chain.
“In light of your wonderful service to Twilight and myself–” Celestia began..
“I-I don’t serve you! I. Don’t! Serve! You!” Spike called back, heaving under the weight of the two guardponies.
More links fell from her grasp.
“–in recounting devoted loyalty that you have shown to the Line of Canter, and to myself personally–”
“I’m not loyal to you! I’m loyal to Twilight! Twilight! Twiiliiight!” the whelp screamed, trying to roll over and slip the grasp of the two stallions who held him down.
Celestia shook her head back and forth, looking all the while like a disappointed schoolteacher or chiding parent… and then let the last of the chain’s links slide out of her grasp and go clanging unseen to the floor of the throne room, ringing out soundlessly around herself and the little dragon.
The chain was long, and it was made of things deeper and more terrible than she had ever imagined that it would grow to encompass. One of those sins that constituted it was they way it warped a word… a sacred word. She drew upon that one word, the most important one that can be uttered, and made it her weapon.
“I do this,” she said, only the barest pause present in her breath, “in the hopes that it will see you get better, and recover yourself, and in the light of the love that we share for Princess Twilight and for one another.”
She gazed at Spike, and at once an expression passed over him as though she had slapped him with a fish. At once it began to change. His temporary silence was replaced by a whine, and his face contorted in agony.
“I…” the whelp began, choking on his emotions. “I…”
Celestia bit the inside of her lip.
“I… I don’t love you!” the dragon cried. “I… I… I hate you!”
Celestia shuddered, leaning forward as she clutched her wounded leg close to her body. She winced as the boy leveled the word across her, as he berated her.
For only the second time in his young life, Spike used that word. He brought the word up forcefully, leaving it to drift around the throne room as he struggled in the hooves of the guards.
“I hate you!” he called out. “I hate you, hate you, haaate you!”
Celestia shut her eyes, wavering in the feeling of the emotion that rolled off of Spike in waves. Her prediction coming to pass, her connection to the boy falling away as a title that only the Pillar of the Sun had wrenched from his lips fell over her.
He was still calling out when she opened her eyes. He was heaving and screaming in the grip of the two guards, the two earth ponies looking up to her and awaiting her command.
She simply nodded to them, and they began to take the dragon away.
“I hate you!” Spike screamed, his voice tearing in unison with the remains of the rug that his freed claws shred. “I hate you!”
“I haaaaaate yooouuu!” he brayed once more, and then he was gone. Only the muffled echoes of his cries in the far distant lobby lingered for a moment as Celestia pulled her punctured limb closer to herself, lowering her head.
Very well then. I accept your hate, she thought to herself, reflecting upon the pool of blood that sat beneath her. I accept your hate… Spike the Outlaw.
Small voices lifted from among the crowd of aristocrats and petty officials. Among them came the voice of a historian.
“As I said,” coughed the older stallion, “he has not been himself.”
“No foolin’,” answered a younger voice.
Celestia stood, her head still hanging as she turned away from the foot of her throne. The royal mace sounded out from where Fancypants had begun to recover.
Celestia listened as his voice filled the room. She tried to apply pressure to her leg, and then hid her wince as she shuffled out of the sight of her ponies.
“A… a recess,” the Prime Minister said. “Yes, I think that we shall have a recess to… deal, with the issues on the floor. All over the floor, honestly. Do please fetch a custodian.”
The crowd turned their heads to watch their ageless, seemingly immortal, and supposedly divine alicorn princess limp away, her large, graceful frame heaving every time her weight fell upon her wounded leg. She finally disappeared behind the curtains lining the room, one single sob marking her departure.
Bonesaw, despite the horrors that his name implied, was a sympathetic and concerned medic. He had earned his place as the Chief Medical Officer of the Household for his years of service in the regular army. He had become a favorite of the princess, and of her sister soon after. An older stallion with a calming touch that was distant enough to be professional but with a grandfatherly countenance that made his presence comfortable and endearing.
“Buck it, Princess! Damn it all to the Well!” he called, showing off the demeanor that had won him her trust. “The little bastard did a real job on you! Buck! There has to be nerve damage…”
“Please do not speak of Spike that way, Bones,” she sighed. The medic seemed not to notice.
“Fides! Spirits!” he cursed, rummaging through his black bag. “They went in deep… too deep. Yeah, here has to be some nerve damage. Little bucker might even have chipped the bone! Your father alone must know what type of infection we might have…”
“Please, I ask you again, do not speak of him that way. I can assure you that the mouths of dragons are cleaner than our own,” she said. “We may not know much about dragons, but we know that much.”
The doctor began applying more pressure, his magic adding to the efforts to stem the bleeding. The stallion looked up to her with concern deeply set in his eyes. “Princess,” he asked, “we have to get you to the hospital. You’re losing blood, fast.”
“I have not shed more than I can manage,” she sighed as she looked back down at him.
At that moment her boot, which she had removed, tipped over. A wave of crimson went splashing to the floor, ruining another ancient carpet that sat beneath them.
Bonesaw looked up to his princess incredulously.
“I have lost far, far more than this on more battlefields, in more dungeons, and in more traps than you can imagine, Bones,” she whispered, watching the pool spread around them.
“Yes, Princess? Well, none of those places had a hospital less than four blocks away at the time, I imagine. I’m calling for the royal ambulance–”
“No!” she called, startling him. “No, please,” she whispered, calming herself. “Please, I can… I do not wish to go near the hospital right now…”
One wing in particular stuck out in her mind.
“Well, Highness,” Bonesaw said with a sigh, “too bad. As your Personal Medical Officer, I hereby deem that, until you seek emergency medical help, that you are unf–”
A waft of dark blue magic drifted over them, catching them both by surprise. Celestia and Bonesaw followed the magic to its source, and there a tall, dark mare slowly approached, emerging from the gathering shadows of the dying day that hung around the hallway.
“I pray you, sir, do not make such declarations so lightly,” Princess Luna Revenio said, approaching her sister and the doctor, her hoof making a single splash in the puddle of her sibling’s blood, “for alicorns suffer far greater things than these.”
Bonesaw bowed slightly to the Nightbringer. “That may be, Highness, but Princess Celestia is still losing blood at an alarming rate, and there certainly is all sorts of damage that… I can’t… take care of… by… myself…dammit…”
As the doctor had explained himself, Luna’s magic had encompassed Celestia’s leg, and even as he spoke the fine fibers of sinew and nerve began to bind themselves back together.
The doctor sighed.
“Forgive me,” Luna said. “You are great in your talents, Saw of Bones, but between sisters exists a special magic all of its own, one that only grows greater with time… and time is something we possess in abundance.”
Bonesaw looked up to Princess Celestia. She smiled at him. He replied with a professional nod and then gathered his things into the black bag. He turned, bowed, skidded across the pool of blood that sat shimmering in the fading daylight, and then made his way down the long hallway, leaving the alicorns to each other’s company.
They sat there, on the rug, surrounded by blood. It was not the first time that they had been in a similar situation together, and it would almost certainly not be the last.
Luna’s magic drifted over her sister, and slowly the wounds began to disappear, the puncture holes left by the fangs of a baby dragon, but a dragon nonetheless, slowly became smaller and smaller until they disappeared. In their wake only four tiny patches of grey sat against the white of Celestia’s coat.
“I can do nothing about the scars and how they affect your coat, my sister,” Luna said, watching Celestia turn her leg up and down, looking at the tiny, almost imperceptible scars over and over.
“I deserve far worse,” Celestia said with a whimper, lifting her head slowly and peering out the tall windows nearby. “Much worse.”
Luna sat before her sister, her deep magic still wafting across the scene, dissolving the evidence of her sister’s vexation. A deep sigh lifted around the pair, and as it met her ears, Luna lifted her hoof and drew it across the larger alicorn’s withers and flank.
At the invitation, Celestia lowered herself across her sibling, her breath catching in the starscape of the smaller alicorn’s mane. The alicorns sat there, in their repose, as Celestia he rested her head across Luna’s shoulders.
“He hates me, Luna,” Celestia said in a series of whines. “He hates me.”
Luna stroked her sister with her hoof, struggling a little to balance her sibling’s head. Outside the window the world was falling into the darkness of her night, and larger shadows were creeping over the plans that her sister had made long ago. She stroked Celestia over and over until finally she found the words that she knew Celestia needed, and feared, to hear.
“Yes,” Luna said softly, “finally.”
The Palace Nursery sat in a shaded, happy spot off of the gardens. It was here that the Lord Protector of the Nursery, a stallion both genteel and gentle, and his staff of nurses had long watched over the orphans who came under their care.
For Spike, it should have been a homecoming of sorts, for it was in that nursery where he had spent the first months of his life. It was the Lord Protector and the nurses that had watched over him while Celestia and Twilight had come to be with him when they could.
Night had fallen, but sleep was not on his mind. The dragon was drowning in emotions, and none of them were good. He should have been happy to see the kindly old stallion, and even some of the nurses were the same as had watched over him more than a decade ago, before he was old enough to go and live with Twilight’s parents and Cadance, before Twilight could take care of him herself.
Instead, the familiar walls of the nursery grated on him, reminding him that he was back in the “before”. He was back to being something to be watched over, something not trusted.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. This was temporary. He would be sure of it.
The night air of the nursery hummed with the sounds of cooing infants and crying toddlers of myriad races and species. A thousand stories had begun in this nursery, and now his was repeating… but when he left here this time he would not allow himself to be part of a lie, part of a fairy story.
The cries of the orphans made a chorus in Spike’s mind, and the distant rumble of the waterfall beyond the garden drove new, wicked thoughts through his tired, betrayed, and shattered mind.
No, he was going to leave here. He was going to get away.
He was going to find the Zenith.
He was going to wake Twilight.
Whatever came after that didn’t matter. They would be Future Spike’s problem, and he hated the bastard.
If it brought pain, and loss, and lies, and fear, and war… it didn’t matter.
Only Twilight mattered.
The thunder of the waterfall mixed with the occasional babble of the children in the nursery, and their waking cries brought about the soft hooffalls of nurses. The young mares sang lullabies in their lilting voices, comforting the children until they fell back into their slumber and peaceful dreams.
The dragon found no comfort in the distant songs. Instead, Spike the Outlaw sat on his throne of misery and hate, his emerald eyes peering into the deepening night as he plotted the fall of creation.