Frequencies: To End The Signal

by Lord Destrustor


10: Companionship

The wailing fury of a thousand wings thundered above, drowning the sky itself in a sea of shadows and wind. The red light from the fires bathed everything, the dark flocks that seemed as clouds and the black clouds that could have been distant flocks glinting in the horrifying glow.

Spike reached his arm forward, dug his claws into the earth, and pulled.

We did this.

The screech of metal momentarily smothered the howls of the predators above as Spike dragged himself forward.

He thrust his other arm, burying his claws in the earth again. Another pull, another screech of tortured metal. The ground was too weak to hold fast under the strain, and split around his sharp talons. A handful of dirt was easily shaken off his face.

Us.

Ponyville was visible, so close yet so far. No matter: he would get there eventually, and the inhabitants were on their way towards him anyway. They were fleeing the fires.

We.

With each pull of his arms, with each push of his hind legs, Spike felt his backside sway. The massive tower of twisted metal and glowing crystal was such a heavy burden. The brass roots and pipes growing out from between his scales hindered what few movements he could still make.

You are just like us, are you not?

The ponies huddled before him, struck with fear at the sight of the massive beast crawling in the way of their escape. A hundred wings flew overhead, raining fireworks on the town as colossal hailstones from a storm.

You are one of us.

Spike smiled. The metal of his lips scraped against the metal of his teeth, drawing blood from his gums. His mouth opened, taking air within. The inflation of his lungs distended his scales, allowing countless itches to snap back into place with a chorus of pings.

One of us.

Spike screamed. Spike howled, Spike roared. His note raced across the crowd of ponies, easily swallowing their own cries as they clutched their heads. Soon they rose, trembling, and immediately the unicorns began slaughtering the others.

The confused anguish, the fear, the desperation were palpable.

Palatable. Spike licked his lips, cutting his tongue on the sharp spurs of steel and crystal protruding from every crack between his scales.

Delectable.

You are one of us.

Spike resumed his crawl. Six mares were still untouched.

And we did this.

Two of the mares broke from the group, their wings silent in the roar of the thousands of other wings in the sky. The blue one hovered defiantly, extending her front legs to shield her friends.

Isn’t this grand?

Spike’s left arm rose, the metal boxes from which it was built glistening in the red illumination of the fires, their windows and wheels and joints screeching and breaking under the strain. A chimney on his hand blew a cloud of smoke, a blaring whistle escaping the metal shell as the appendage came down on the two pegasi. The blue one only looked at the arm as it descended, her expression unflinching for the two seconds it took to make her vanish. The impact threw the yellow one into the bushes, where she only cowered and cried.


You should be proud of us.

Spike took another step forward. Two of the remaining mares broke off from the last two, their hooves thundering across the blood-stained ground. Before they could even utter a single word to him, Spike swept his right arm in their way. The misshapen mass of razor crystal caught them both in its path. The pink one was effortlessly bisected, exploding in a shower of blood. The orange one almost avoided the attack, but was still thrown to the side. She screamed, the left side of her face entirely shaved to the bone by the deadly talons. Her desire to fight extinguished, she simply lay down to cradle the body of a small headless filly, petting the yellow coat and red tail as she wept.

You should be proud of yourself.

Only two left now. The hulking beast of scales and steel crawled once more towards them.


Of what you are. Of what we did.

The two unicorns stood their ground, their eyes filled with equal parts terror and disgust. Spike smiled at them. At their beauty. At how much he loved them both in different ways.


Of what you did.

His smile turned into a grin, his grin into a scowl, his scowl into an intake of breath.

You are just like us.

His howl shook the earth itself, causing the entire town to collapse into the suddenly birthed dark void in the earth. In the tremor, the numerous victim’s corpses exploded all around him and the unicorns. The purple one was sent flying, getting immediately covered from head to hooves in the blood of the other victims. Her laugh echoed in the air as she fell down the abyss, licking her wet appendages until her fall took her away from his senses, and she vanished.


As guilty as all of us. You are us.

No!

The white one had only seen her horn explode from the scream, gouging bloody cuts all over her once-pristine visage. The rush of air and sound had tripped her, pushing her nearly into the deep pit. She clung to the edge of the chasm, struggling to rise back up on solid ground.

We are you, you are us, and we did this.

No! NO!

Spike gently brought one of his crystal claws to the white one, delicately using it to lift her chin so she could look him in the eyes. Her own were filled with nothing but horror as she begged him for help, as she dug her trembling hooves in the earth to keep herself from falling.

You did this.

Without a single word, he thrust his finger forward, impal-

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”





For a moment after his eyes opened he thought the nauseatingly black clouds still hung in the sky above him. Only when a pair of warm, delicate hooves wrapped around him did Spike recognize the pitch-black shapes as the innocuous foliage they were.

“Shh, Spike, It was just a dream,” the white one Rarity cooed in his ear as she struggled to hold the still-trashing young dragon. “It was just a dream, Spike, calm down!”

“Noooo!” Was all he could say, halfway between a sob and a shout. His hand clenched into a fist, he began pounding at his own head, repeating the word with every impact until the white unicorn finally managed to restrain him. “No! No! No! No! I’m not like that! I’m not like them!”

He struggled for a few moments more before giving in to the soft warmth of the mare, burying his face in her neck to weep.

Rarity held him, rocking back and forth while whispering occasional little words of comfort. The words did not matter so much as simply being there in that moment. Scootaloo watched from a distance, in the darkness of the near-twilight.

The two ponies and the dragon remained where they were, Rarity slowly calming the dragon in her arms while Scootaloo surveyed their surroundings to make sure Spike’s cries hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention. A few minutes passed, bringing out a pink tint to the eastern horizon.

The eighth dawn since they had discovered the culprits was fast approaching.

They had turned towards the coast as they left the dragon’s lair, hoping to find a bridge to cross the river in which the train had crashed once they got closer to the sea. At the very least they expected its shores to turn into something else than steep canyon walls as it found its way to softer lands.

Furthermore, the decision to avoid going back over their own steps made even more sense given the way the signal’s detector needed to guide them; they were at one point of a triangle, evenly distanced from both other ends. Inadvertently heading towards the middle would leave the detector spinning uselessly between two equally strong signals. They had then decided to aim for one of the edges of the confusion zone, where the compass’ needle began to hesitate. Not two days later they had been rewarded with a definite result; the needle pointing almost straight north by then.

The mountains of gravel of the badlands had abruptly given way to an almost impenetrable maze of forested crags, considerably slowing their advance. It had not taken long for the desolation of their previous locale to seem inviting once more after trudging through wet underbrush for nearly two days.

The lands they traversed were mostly uninhabited for a reason, after all.

Still, they had eventually found a road and begun following it north as it led them to more hospitable lands. They were now in a rather pleasantly temperate forest, lost somewhere in the vast expanse of vegetation between Baltimare and Dodge Junction if their map was to be trusted.

Spike still sniffled softly, his nerves reigned in and his agitation quelled. Rarity held him rather loosely, sleep threatening to take her back as soon as she would allow it. Scootaloo simply observed the two in the muted light of the crescent moon.

“Things were kinda looking up, you know?”

Spike’s voice was barely above a whisper, yet more than enough to snap Rarity back to attention. He sniffed some more. “I mean, staying holed up in the library with Twilight… it was… it was eating me up, right? And then we left, and all that walking… it helped. I had something else to do instead of obsessing about Twilight, and with how exhausted I was after walking all day I could finally get some sleep for once.” New tears sprang forth when he realized how much of a pathetic achievement that was, and how depressing it was that that had been the highest point of his recent life. “I was getting …better.”

His grip tightened around Rarity, and he had to make a conscious effort to not dig his claws into her back as he spoke the next words. “But then it… it had to be dragons, didn’t it.”

He broke free of her embrace, taking a few steps away before sitting down on his own tail in a curled-up slouch. He idly toyed with the spear-like tip for a moment.

“I…” his mind filled with questions, doubts he felt were important in some way, thoughts he knew would only fester in his head if he chose to let them unvoiced. What he felt about himself, what he thought that meant, and whether or not that opinion had any worth at all anymore. The only thing he could bring himself to express, however, was:

“I hate dragons. Every last one of them.”

His fingers pinched one of the scales of his tail, and he pulled on it while Rarity silently opened her mouth in an attempt to reply. The pain was too much to simply rip the scale out, but it helped distract him. Being unable to tell exactly what caused his eyes to water helped.

“Spike, I know it’s-“ the unicorn began, no doubt dredging up an excuse or a weak proverb in an attempt to make him reconsider his drastic statement. He didn’t let her.

“Every dragon I’ve ever seen, met, or heard from has either been a heartless jerk or a total monster! Don’t try to tell me they’re not so bad! They did this!” He punctuated the word by pointing at the unicorn’s bare forehead. “This, and everything back in Ponyville! Isn’t that enough to hate them?”

The mare briefly looked up, glancing at the spot where a white spur had once stood in her field of view; obstructing a part of her vision for most of her life. The dreadful absence of a part of herself. Her gaze soon returned to the ground.

“I… I do hate them,” she said, gently shaking her head. “I hate these three… psychopaths directly responsible. But I don’t hate all of them, all those others who weren’t involved in this abominable curse.” She met his own impassive gaze with a small smile. “In fact, I know at least one who-“

Spike laughed, a dry, short bark completely devoid of any joy. “Pff, like the one ‘good’ freak is an example!”

“Spike! You’re not-“

“I AM! I’ve been raised by ponies! That’s not… that’s not normal! How do you know it didn’t just mess me up? Or what if it’s just a gradual thing? I’m good now, and then I’ll grow up to be a teenage brat, and then an evil adult. …Do you think I could be happy if I was evil?”

“Spike, don’t do this to yourself.”

“WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?”

His scream had ended with him standing up, facing Rarity with his arms open and stretched out. His face was being consumed by the shadows of the upcoming sunrise behind him as he slowly regained his breath.

“How else am I supposed to feel?” His voice had lowered to not much more than a whisper. The silence stretched on, broken only by the soft chirps of waking birds as the morning drew ever closer. “I’m not… I’m not one of you guys. Unless I get into some kind of accident I’ll easily outlive you, and your children, and probably their children’s children too. I’ll never be a pony… and now I don’t even want to have anything to do with dragons. I’m not a dragon, I’ll never be a pony… so what am I?”

He had sat back down by then, once more pulling at one of his scales. More tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m nothing. Some kind of freak who’ll never fit in.”

The first rays of the sun finally lit the tallest branches, igniting them in a golden glow. Some still shined in bright green tones, emeralds hanging from their branches; while others had already begun to pale to a faint yellow.

The voice that spoke next wasn’t much of a surprise to him.

The words it said were somewhat understandable, considering who spoke them.

The hoof striking Spike’s jaw, however, was one thing he wasn’t prepared for.

“And who ever said it was a bad thing to be different!?” Scootaloo yelled as Spike reeled back from the blow. It hadn’t done much in the way of harm; even for fully grown ponies, the dragon would have been nearly indestructible unless real weapons were brought to bear. The lack of damage had little effect on the sheer shock of being struck, though. “Who cares that poor little Spike is all lonely? Snap out of it and stop making this all about you for once! Who cares if you’re the only nice dragon in the whole friggin’ world? You know what that means? You know what that gives you? It gives you the chance to show them what a real, good dragon looks like! You say you hate them? Fine! Just get up and go wreck everything they own then! Show them what a real dragon can do, show them who’s the best freaking dragon out here! Show them all just how much better than them you are!”

Her voice lost its edge, her anger melting even as she stood over Spike. He still lay on the ground, one hand feeling his jaw as he glared at her. “You can cry all you want, but not now, and definitely not here. Bawl your eyes out for all I care, but only once those bastards are done paying for it.”

“That’s enough.” Rarity put herself between the two youths, a hoof gently coming to rest on Scootaloo’s back even as her eyes looked at Spike. “I think we should get going, seeing as we are already up and the sun is about to as well. Spike, my ears are always open to anything you might want to share; you can tell me anything that upsets or troubles you. Scootaloo’s point still stands, though. You need to be strong for us, for Equestria, and for Twilight, understood? Can you do that for us, dear?”

A simple nod was his only answer, his furious eyes still trying to bore into the orange filly.


The light drizzle had begun around mid-morning, adding a touch of bitterness to the already foul mood. It was a constant mist, as if legions of pegasi were playing with spray bottles up above. An unending barrage of microscopic droplets looking more like oversized fog than actual rain, and it brought with it a wet chill that they would have traded for the desert’s dry heat in an instant.

In the total absence of wind, it felt and sounded like they had walked in on the entire world taking a gentle yet unfortunate shower.

Both Spike and Scootaloo had yet to say a word since that morning. Spike had quickly sunk back into preoccupied silence, and Scootaloo seemed determined not to be the one to speak first.

Rarity didn’t dwell on it too much. She knew they would eventually come around and at least resume speaking to each other. Maybe even consider the other’s feelings on the matter at hoof.

For now, she was simply content in letting the rainy haze wash the grime from her coat and listen to the gentle impacts of her hooves on the road. The quiet rush of water from under the bridge they were crossing.

The distant racket of discordant metallic percussions echoing from further down the road before them.

She stopped, her eyes going wide and her ears entirely focused in front of her. The other two took one more step before noticing her sudden halt and the expression on her face. Without a word, they were all looking around, wide-eyed and immediately alert.

What little few birds had occasionally been communicating through the mist were now all perfectly silent.

Through the humming chatter of the mist could be heard a clatter of metal, coming closer. A faint voice spoke unintelligible words.

The three travelers looked around themselves, searching for a hiding place, anything they could use to remain unseen in case the approaching… person were to be dangerous. There were none. They were in the middle of a bridge, out into the open with nowhere to hide.

A small, sharp “click” came from somewhere right next to them. Spike and Rarity managed to silence their surprised gasps as they turned to the source of the noise: Scootaloo held, in her hooves, a small crossbow that she had just finished loading. Spike noticed a small bag, now empty, sitting on the filly’s back. A bag that he had seen her lug around, full of sharp lumps, for most of their journey. The bag she had never opened and that they had assumed to be another one of her mysterious and numerous belongings.

Of course she would bring a weapon.

Scootaloo levelled the crossbow, pointing it at the end of the bridge where the newcomer would soon appear.

The sound of hooves on cobble told them it did.

In the middle of the crossroad where the bridge met a perpendicular road suddenly stood a unicorn.

His coat was difficult to see under the eclectic array of pots, pans, and utensils strapped to his body in such a way as to produce the loudest racket imaginable. Old dirt and mud covered his legs, and a large blindfold wrapped over his eyes hid even more of his features. What little could be seen of his coat seemed grey, and his mane was white. His ears swiveled around, attentive, before being drawn backwards as a voice shouted something from far behind him. Dense bushes and weatherworn rock formations hid whatever he was listening to from the eyes of the three.

He was roughly fifty feet away from them.

“Yeah, yeah, I know already, geez!” His answer to the unseen voice contained no small amount of annoyance, but returned to a more neutral tone as he cleared his throat. His next words came with the underlying discontent perfection of a practiced speech.

“If there’s anyone here,” he yelled to no one in particular, “you need to hide and stay quiet! My friends are right behind me and you can’t let them see you! If they see you they will hurt you, so you need to hide, stay quiet, and let us pass!”

The stallion then waited a few seconds before turning his head back to address his friends once more. “Sounds clear! Come on!”

The distant voice called something back, and the grey stallion sat down while he waited for his companions to catch up to him.

A quick look behind told the three travelers that they would never reach the opposite end of the bridge before the unicorns got to the crossroad and spotted them, even if they decided to run away in a loud and obviously suicidal gallop. Spike was raising his arms in a defensively combative posture, while Scootaloo’s weapon shook in her hooves.

They were not fit, or even ready to take on a group of unicorns. One, maybe. Two if they were lucky. Anything more would overwhelm them.

There were obviously more than two.

In a moment of perfect clarity, Rarity slipped a leg around Scootaloo, clamped her teeth around Spike’s tail, and pushed herself into a roll over the bridge’s railing.

The fall was short, and so sudden that the two youths only had time to gasp as they fell. This both prevented them from screaming, and filled their lungs with air before they were plunged into the water below.

The sudden cold slap of the river made Rarity let go of her companions, and she was immediately glad to have directed her hooves downward as she fell; her legs hit the muddy bottom no more than a second after the dive. In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, she also felt numerous stones strewn about the riverbed while she pushed herself back to the surface. A head-first fall could have been deadly.

She surfaced, strenuously fighting the instinct to gasp for air and instead take a slow, silent breath. Scootaloo and Spike soon also emerged, both thankfully managing to remain silent as well. Rarity reached out and grabbed them before using her hind legs to slowly wade through the shallow water. Thus spared the noise that swimming might have created, she quietly made her way to a soft brown stone held against the bridge’s support by a tangle of branches. All three pressed their backs against the stone bridge, looking up to where they had been standing a moment ago, somewhere over the arch above their heads.

Their bags gently bubbled around them as they filled with water, while the rain quietly hissed on the river’s surface. The total lack of wind and the slow currents let the water stand perfectly still, its surface only stirred to the appearance of frosted glass wherever it wasn’t covered by a bridge.

“My legs are killing me,” came a distant voice, easily audible in the quiet stillness. “Are we getting closer, or is this another signless intersection?”

“A hundred and seventy-eight miles. It’s-”

The rest of the sentence was cut off by a clamor of rattling cookware, followed by the voice of the grey unicorn that wore it.

“Aww, man! really? I thought we’d be closer by now!”

“Why are you so eager to get there?” asked a new, feminine voice. “It’s obviously a trap. I mean, come on, really.”

The second voice replied in the same gravelly gruffness it had used to quote the distance just a few moments ago. “It’s not a trap, Poppy! It’s the only hope we have, you know that! Maybe they can help us somehow.”

“Yeah, by putting us down like the animals we are.”

“And would that really be such a bad thing, Poppy? We aren’t exactly a good influence on Equestria right now, you know.” The first voice, the one who had complained of tired legs, had almost mumbled the last part. It had still been enough to be heard, especially in the glum silence that it created with the statement.

A few moments passed, none of the voices speaking while the two ponies and single dragon huddled under the bridge. Spike noticed the soft brown mass on which they had settled was somehow adorned with an armrest of a familiar design. A look around let him see, in the tangle of branches nearby, a single tattered hat floating gently on the water’s surface. Somewhere at the bottom of the river lay a large wooden trunk, similar to the ones often taken aboard trains; previously hidden by the cloud of mud they had disturbed upon their dive. A knot formed and churned in his stomach as he recognized they were pressed against a bench of the friendship express, a whistle escaping the metal shell as the appendage came down on-

…Spike decided not to share this realization with his companions.

“Oh for the love of… Starburst, get the hell off your damn sister!” The older, gruff voice was filled with annoyance and indignation as it shouted, and a hint of disgust crept along as it soon shouted once more. “I meant now, son!”

“Tsh, fine!” Legs-Are-Killing-me, the one apparently called Starburst, replied. The three travelers looked up as the sound of hooves crept closer above them, each step taken in obvious frustration. Starburst stopped right where they had jumped off, and they could hear his disgruntled mumbling ever more clearly in his approach.

“like it’s my damn fault she’s the only mare around… wouldn’t be a problem if we’d let that couple join us last week. But nooo, ‘they look deranged’… as if we’re any different…”

“And don’t look in the damn river, unless you want to drown like an idiot chasing fish!”

“Oh get off my back, will you? I can’t see a damn thing down there with all that damn rain anyway!”

Starburst’s voice returned to its brooding mumblings after his reply, although it became strained and hissing as it went; punctuated by grunts and short breaths in increasing frequency.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, old fart? Riding me like I ride her? Or maybe you just don’t want me to get that flank all to myself? Oh, yes, I see you looking at her when we camp… you old pervert… you want to get a piece of her too, don’t… you… Hhhh… I don’t even… care, mmhh, anymore… I’d take you both… Oh yeah, even Rhinestone too, I wouldn’t… bite… Urhhh… Ghaaahhh…”

Rarity had her hooves tightly pressed to Scootaloo’s ears long before that point, as soon as she had realized just what the unicorn was doing up above. Her own ears were splayed back and her eyes closed as she tried to ignore the voice. Spike simply stared at the faint shadow of the pony’s head, projected on the matte surface of the water.

He soon saw drops of water falling from above; distinct in that they were even visible at all, unlike the fog-like drizzle. The unicorn named Starburst took a moment to catch his breath, before resuming his whispers. These had lost all the grumbling frustration of the previous mumblings, instead replaced with something both much feeble and infinitely more… wounded.

“Oh my damn stars… I’m so damn disgusting. I hate this. I hate this so damn much, why can’t I stop thinking like that? …What’s wrong with me? Sweet gods above, how did I become such a horrible, filthy piece of shit?”

More drops fell from above the bridge.

Starburst remained there for a few moments, finally sniffing back and taking a few steps to join up with his companions, who had continued their conversation while he was away from them. A more muted conversation followed, the four unicorns speaking of various mundane subjects regarding their supplies and plans.

Soon, the older stallion raised his voice to command the rest of his group. “Okay, let’s get going. Starburst, you’re staying on seeing duty, everypony else put their blindfolds back on.” A short pause later, he continued. “Alright, ready? Go ahead, Rhinestone.”

The clatter of cookware resumed as the pony called Rhinestone set on his way once more, soon guided by Starburst’s shouts. “You’re drifting to the right again, watch that. Branch on the ground, on your ten, in like… six steps. Five, four, three, two… right there. Yeah. Kick it out of the way for the others. Now just keep going straight for a while.”

The sound of Rhinestone’s movements faded as he got further and further. After a moment more, Starburst quietly prompted his other companions to follow him, and they left as well.

Rarity waited a few minutes more before moving the slightest bit. When she did, her movements were slow and deliberate as she waded through the shallow water once more. Silently, she vigilantly kept her footing secure while she crossed to the next support of the bridge. Now lacking the buoyancy that their bags had afforded them before filling up with water, Spike and Scootaloo had to paddle to stay afloat. The trio rounded the corner of the support and crossed over to the next, and the next, and finally to the shore. They quietly shook off the water -for as much good as it could do in the constant rain- and Scootaloo crept up the slope to where the road stood.

After a thorough look and a pause to confirm the return of the birds’ disinterested chirping, she finally motioned for the others to join her.

“Well,” Rarity began once she had stepped on the road and looked westward to confirm to herself that the unicorns were gone, “It was certainly… nice of them to come up with a way to warn ponies of their presence.”

“Yeah, well, we still got lucky again,” was Scootaloo’s answer, spoken without a glance spared in the unicorn’s direction. Her eyes were only focused on the crossbow she had managed to miraculously hold onto while she was thrown off a bridge. The bag that had concealed the weapon since the beginning of their journey had not been so fortunately saved. The orange filly began unzipping and opening some of her various pouches, apparently looking for something. “I kinda wish we could stop depending on that alone…”

“I wonder what they were talking about,” Spike inquired as he walked towards the assortment of road signs planted at the intersection.

The matching set of official signs installed by the equestrian government attested that the road to their right led to “Baltimare, Fillydelphia, Stoneshade”. The way they had come from, across the bridge, was simply announced to lead to “Dodge Junction, Dragon lands”.

Whatever had been written on the westward sign was now entirely covered by a newer, hastily-crafted sign that had been nailed over it. This one, in hoof-drawn lettering, bore most prominently the ominous mention of “Cloister, 178 miles”. Below those words, smaller text added “Unicorns: Head to Cloister, bring food and supplies. Everyone else: AVOID CLOISTER AT ALL COSTS” The last few words had been underlined in red paint.

“Cloister? I’ve never heard of such a place.”

Rarity had just joined Spike in front of the signpost, soon followed by Scootaloo. The filly now carried her crossbow on her back, a sash-like length of rope holding the weapon steady and secure.

“Wow, that mare was right: that does sound like a huge trap.”

“Well even if it’s not,” Spike replied, “It just means it’s full of unicorns, and that’s pretty much the same thing to us, isn't it?”

“In any case,” Rarity said as she strode forward on the east path, “I’d rather leave this place as soon as possible. We are still heading for the coast, right?” She only needed to hear the short hums of assent before continuing: “To Fillydelphia it is, then.”

Spike and Scootaloo exchanged glances, before the filly simply nodded and uttered a quiet “yeah.” She followed the mare.

Spike looked at the sign and then at the bridge, remembering what was under it. His fists clenched as he turned his gaze to the west and the four unicorns he could not see.

“I didn’t do this. I’m not one of them.”

With the gentle sorrow of the clouds up above drowning the sky in a grey mist of silence, Spike spun to face the east, put a foot forward, and resumed walking.