Chapter 4: Nightmare
“Hey, Twi’, would ya pass me the eggbeater please?”
“Sure thing, AJ!” the small purple unicorn said, levitating the utensil off its hook on the wall and depositing it in her friend’s hooves. “I love baking! Thanks for letting me help!”
Applejack laughed. “Ah bet yer’ only helpin’ me because ya get ta eat the baking when we’re done!” Twilight joined in the laughter.
The earth pony poured the smooth mixture into the baking tray and carried it over to the oven. She popped it inside and removed the first batch they’d made, now baked to perfection, a piping hot set of six golden-brown cupcakes.
“Here y’are sugarcube, ya get first bite.” Applejack passed Twilight one of her eyeballs. It was frosted. Twilight screamed and dropped it. “What’s the matter, Twi’? Ya look like ya seen a ghost,” Applejack said, gazing at Twilight with empty sockets as she munched on her other eye.
Twilight tried to turn and run, but her hooves were stuck to the floor. “Oh, here, lemme help ya with that,” Applejack said as her skin ripped to shreds and she melted.
Twilight screamed again, then she realised that she must have been imagining things. She didn’t just help Applejack bake cupcakes... She couldn’t have. Because she was here in Rarity’s boutique, covered in pinned and folded fabric while the white unicorn measured and trimmed, humming distractedly. She’d been here for nearly an hour.
“Hey, thanks so much for making me this new dress, Rarity. I really appreciate it.”
“Oh, think nothing of it, Twilight,” Rarity said as she levitated a needle and thread. “Everything’s measured, I just need to mmmph mmm mmphhmmm mmmm.”
Twilight blinked and looked at her fellow unicorn. Rarity had somehow managed to sew her own eyelids and lips shut.
Twilight shrieked and tripped over, tangling herself in the half-finished dress. She started scrabbling backwards when the dress was yanked off her by Pinkie Pie. Only it wasn’t a dress, it was a tablecloth. What a silly mistake for her to make, thinking that a tablecloth was a dress. “Hey, thanks Pinkie! I, heh, kinda got a bit wrapped up there.”
“No prob, Twilight!” Pinkie Pie said, expertly flinging the red-and-white tablecloth over a small round table. Twilight levitated the last tiered tray of tasty treats that she and Pinkie had spent the whole morning baking and plopped it down neatly right in the middle of the table.
“We’re nearly finished! Okay, you get the punch, I’ll get Dashie!” Pinkie Pie giggled, streaking out the door. By the time Twilight had lifted the huge bowl of punch onto the last table and arranged the glasses, the poofy pink earth pony was back, a blindfolded Rainbow Dash in tow.
“Come ON, Pinkie Pie, can I take this thing off now?” she complained.
“Not yet, silly!” Pinkie said, winking at Twilight. The purple unicorn grinned and turned around to find that almost the entire population of Ponyville had arrived at Sugar Cube Corner when she wasn’t looking. She didn’t think that was strange. She turned back to Pinkie and returned the wink.
Pinkie Pie whipped the blindfold off the rainbow-maned pony as hundreds of voices shouted “SURPRISE!”
Pinkie came bouncing out of the kitchen and right up to Rainbow Dash - how did she suddenly get into the kitchen, Twilight briefly wondered, then dismissed it - carrying a huge birthday cake. “Happy forty fourth birthday, Rainbow Dash!” the party pony shrieked at the wide-eyed pegasus as she seemed to age a century in a heartbeat, her face wrinkling along ancient laugh-lines, her mane somehow still staying bright pink though her coat greyed out slightly. The cake was magnificent, even if it did look a little bit like Applejack’s and Rarity’s severed heads.
“Wow! Wow, Pinkie! Thanks! Thanks so much, everypony!” Dash said, then fell over, suddenly black and rotting, because she’d died last year.
Spike stuck his enormous bleeding face in through the window and opened his gaping jaws. With a snapping crunch, he ate the white-maned Fluttershy that was crying bloody tears in the corner over the small gravestone with the picture of the rabbit on it.
He turned his huge, suddenly-uninjured head in her direction. “Come on, Twilight,” he rumbled, “We’re gonna be late. The conference is at five o’clock.”
Everything seemed to sharpen and brighten and straighten and come into focus - Twilight hadn’t even noticed that everything was fuzzy and wrong before. She started to think about this, but then realised what Spike had just said. It was already quarter to five. They really were going to be late, and that wouldn’t do at all.
The large, graceful alicorn - who, somehow, was sitting right where a small purple unicorn had just been cringing in horror - put a hoof to her forehead in embarrassment. “Hey, you’re right. What in Equestria would I do without you?” she smiled, getting up from her huge writing desk where she’d been researching ways of partially blocking the sun. She walked over to her closet and pulled the doors open. Her magical ties to the sun and moon made it impossible for her to not know exactly what time it was, but she could still get lost in her studies, even after so many, many years. She frowned with distaste at the physical trappings of her station. “I hate wearing this stuff. It makes me feel... just so fake.”
“Seriously, Twilight,” Spike said as she started putting on her shoes. “Everypony knows you’re just the same as them. You’re, like, popular because you’re normal. Well, except for, you know, the whole alicorn thing. But they’ll get over that.” She giggled at the private joke. He was good at cheering her up. His smile faded. “We want them to take us seriously. Maybe you should wear your armour too?”
“No way, Spike. I’ve never worn it yet and I’m sure as hay not going to start now.” Well, she’d worn it in bits and pieces at the fitting, about six hundred years ago during the Windigo Wars, but she’d never worn it completely, and certainly never in public. And she hoped that she never would. She despised that armour almost as much as she despised the reason why it had been made.
He looked dubious. “Well, alright, just remember how nasty dragons can be. Nasty and dangerous. They just live in the wild, they only get together every fifty years or so to breed. They’re not civilized, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. But sending us a message and asking to meet could be called civilized, right?” She looked at the... big-necklace-chestplate-thingy. Well, at least it had her Cutie Mark on it, in the form of a large star-shaped magenta diamond. She didn’t even know diamonds came in magenta...
Oh yeah. Magic, you dummy. Diamonds come in any colour you want.
She rolled her eyes and slipped this pretentious necklace over her head. At least the smaller stars around the magenta stone were nice, normal, non-magically-hued diamonds. There was a very brief wistful smile as she remembered the five ponies those small white stones symbolised for a moment.
Spike brought her out of that moment. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this meeting. This really fishy suspicious feeling. Dragons don’t do this, Twilight. They never do this. I mean, really, not ever! There’s no record of dragons ever willingly seeking out ponies for a nice little chat, now, is there?”
“No,” she admitted, “but there’s always a first time for everything. They’ll never get what they want, though.” Spike snorted in agreement with that. “What about you, Spike? I’ve never heard you complain about too much sunlight. The sun doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“Not one bit,” he said. “I’ve never had a problem with it at all. I mean, it’s the sun. It’s up during the day and down at night, end of story. There’s a lot of creatures that like the night better than the day, sure, but I didn’t think that dragons were nocturnal. At least, I’m not nocturnal!” he chuckled, Twilight joining in. “I spent a whole week with them after the message came. No, they sleep at night. And none of them seemed bothered by sunlight either.”
She propped her platinum crown behind her horn. “Alright, I’m wearing it. I don’t like it but I’m wearing it. Whattaya think?” she asked, turning on the spot. “Do I look like a Princess now?”
“Sure do. Shall we, Your Highness?”
“Spike...”
“Fine. Shall we make our departure and proceed to said prearranged locale for yon rendezvous” - Twilight started to smile as Spike carried on, now looking ridiculous as he tried to bow - “at your pleasure of course, your very esteemed Royal Highness the Princess Twilight Opacarna Paritus Matutinus of Eques-”
“SPIKE!” They both cringed. That had come out a little too Royal Canterlot-ish. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry I, uh, yelled. That Voice thing just happens sometimes when I’m mad. You know I hate my full title, Spike. It’s ridiculous, I don’t like it, ‘Twilight’ is just fine please. ‘Twilight,’ ‘Twi,’ ‘Big Stupid Numbskull,’ anything. Just not that, not from you.” She frowned up at him, sorry that she’d shouted at him but also angry that he’d called her that. She really hated the formality of the thing, and especially from a friend -
Oh. OHHHHH. Spike, you big tease...
It took a lot of willpower to keep the stern expression firmly on her face. The corners of her mouth were desperately trying to spring up into a smile, probably followed by a laugh. Probably a big laugh.
Spike had only been caught off-guard by the sudden power of her shout. He was, as usual, completely and totally unabashed. He scowled down at Twilight from where he lay, curled up on the enormous covered balcony that had been built for him hundreds of years ago alongside her own private castle tower. He looked furious, as if he wanted to squash her like a bug right then and there. But Twilight saw the gleam of mirth in his eye - how could she miss it? She’d known him for almost a thousand years. She glared right back at him.
“If you try to pass a royal decree saying that I’m not allowed to tease the everloving crap out of you any more when you’re stressed,” he rumbled in a very creditable imitation of furious anger, “I swear, I’m leaving Equestria. Leaving and never coming back. And I’m taking this balcony with me. It’s my balcony and I’m taking it -”
They both dissolved into howls of laughter.
“It’s... It’s...” Spike choked. “It’s the o-only way to...” He was far too big to roll around in stitches on his balcony, but through her tears, Twilight could see that he wanted to. So she obliged. With a huge flash of reddish-purple light, the two best friends were suddenly lying on their backs and kicking their legs into the air in the middle of the large grassy plain just to the north of Canterlot Mountain’s foothills. Spike grabbed his shaking chest and rolled around, enormous joyous rumblings in his throat as Twilight did the same.
“I-i-it’s th-the o-only way to g-get you t-to l-l-loosen up!” he bellowed. Twilight laughed louder along with him, rolling around and around in the luscious green grass like a foal.
I feel so young. I have to remember to laugh more.
“Ah hah. Ahem. Okay,” she managed after a few minutes. She got to her hooves and magically brushed the grass off her coat and out of her mane, then gave Spike a quick dusting as well as he lumbered back upright, still chuckling. “We should go. It’s twenty-eight seconds to five.”
Spike’s fading chuckles died instantly as he assumed his ‘Official Royal Business’ expression. “Sure thing. Hold on a sec though. Shale Gully’s nearly a thousand miles away.” His eyes became fixed and he seemed to strain slightly, concentrating hard on something that was far away, beyond sight, beyond what mortal eyes could see... He glowed faintly green for the briefest instant.
“Okay, translocation protection’s done. It’ll be more impressive to them if we arrive airborne as well.” His large spiky wings unfurled and with a series of slow, powerful beats, he flapped slowly up into the air until he was bobbing up and down at around five hundred feet. Twilight stayed on the ground for a moment, her horn glowing faintly as she tweaked and tuned her teleportation spell so they’d both arrive in exactly the right place - teleporting a thousand miles with someone as big as Spike along for the ride was almost as hard as going to the moon alone - then she crouched, sprang from the ground, and shot rapidly upwards to join him.
“Ready, partner?”
“Remember, Twilight, follow my lead. They’re probably gonna be ticked at me but that’s not important. Let’s go show those dragons why they don’t mess with ponies,” Spike said, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards despite the stern expression on his face. He despised dragons. As he’d been raised by ponies and didn’t act at all like a wild dragon - he had a conscience, for one thing - he preferred to think of himself as a pony. A fifty-ton fireproof pony. With a two-hundred-foot wingspan. And three-foot-long teeth. And diamond-hard scales. And blistering Dragonfire. And a life expectancy of maybe four or five thousand years.
Yeah, that’s Spike. Just your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill pony.
The glow surrounding Twilight’s horn expanded in an instant, enclosing both herself and Spike in a giant bubble of reddish magic. The bubble, and its contents, vanished with a flash that briefly illuminated the entire tall north face of Canterlot Mountain.
They arrived at precisely five o’clock in a burst of light and thunder, five hundred feet above the shattered ground. They were in the very centre of a moving, circling ring of enormous flying dragons.
“Good afternoon,” Twilight began, not using her magical Voice. She didn’t want to seem rude. “I am Princess Twilight of Equestria. You requested a meeting?”
There were a lot of dragons. There must have been a dozen in the air around them, and another dozen on the ground below, but those too were now leaping into the air and joining the swirling circle of enormous beasts that surrounded her and Spike. She recognised a few of them from the detailed descriptions he'd provided after his intelligence mission. That was Magma, and that one hanging back over there had to be Rumble. He was huge. He was beyond huge. He was almost as big as Canterlot.
“Spike? Why are you here? And why did you arrive with this pony?” came a deep voice. She couldn’t tell which one had spoken.
“I’m here because I’m not a dragon,” he replied. “Oh sure,” he said over the confused mutters and occasional chuckle the crowd was now making, “I’m a dragon, alright. But I’m not a dragon at heart. Princess Twilight here is my boss. Sorta.”
“You... you work for ponies?” hissed a new voice. Twilight saw who was speaking now, and from the black-and-gold cracked spines, she knew this was Fracture, the dragon the message had said would be their ambassador. He was nearly a thousand feet long... Almost as long as Rumble, though nowhere near as bulky. “You work for ponies? You stoop so low as to do menial tasks for your inferiors? Tasks such as spying?”
“We needed information on you,” Spike responded calmly. “And of course I work for ponies. I work for them and with them every day. I was raised by them.”
There were rumbles and growls.
“You did come to spy on us! You... Aha! You showed up after we sent the note, you showed up to get information -”
“We don’t even know why you want shorter days and longer nights,” Spike said, cutting Fracture off. “There’s no reason for it. We can’t see what possible benefit it would do you, and it would cause much harm to the rest of the land -”
It was Spike’s turn to be cut off. “That is the point. We don’t need light and warmth from the sun. We’re tired of the dominion of ponies. Such weak creatures don’t deserve their standing. We wish to be the rulers of this land, and removing most of the sunlight will kill so many, many plants and creatures, the ponies will be so busy tending to the dying -”
“IF YOU HAVE QUITE FINISHED,” Twilight thundered, far louder than any dragon’s roar. Several of the dragons gasped. They’d forgotten that she was there, it seemed, and the power of her Voice had taken all of them by surprise. She’d completely discarded politeness after hearing this. She was livid.
“Twilight,” Spike said quietly.
She ignored him and glared at Fracture. Any pony caught in that glare would have quailed, but the dragon didn’t flinch. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You called me here so that you can somehow convince me to change the lengths of the days. You’re going to convince me to willingly inflict death and destruction on Equestria. And your argument to convince me of this” - she took a breath - “IS THAT IT WILL MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU TO TAKE EQUESTRIA FROM US?” Her final shout echoed back from the ridges and peaks surrounding the blasted gully floor below.
For a moment, the only sound came from the slow flapping of dozens of enormous wings. Then, Fracture started laughing, a deep, grinding, malicious laugh that was picked up by the other dragons, one by one, until the noise was deafening.
“Twilight,” Spike said again.
She ignored him again. She was absolutely furious, though she wanted to laugh in their faces for hatching such a pathetically stupid plan of conquest, a plan that would fail before it began. She shouted above the hubbub.
“I THINK WE’RE DONE HERE. GO BACK TO YOUR CAVES AND DON’T BOTHER US AGAIN.”
The earsplitting laughter increased.
“BIG STUPID NUMBSKULL!” Spike hissed urgently.
That got her attention. She turned to look at him, flapping about a hundred feet away to her left. There was terror in his wide eyes. He’d obviously come to some conclusion about what was going on. She instantly swooped over to him and stopped right next to the corner of his enormous mouth. “What?” she whispered. “What’s going on, Spike? Why are they still laughing?”
“They’re going to try to capture you to force Celestia and Luna to cooperate,” he murmured.
Twilight felt like laughing herself. Capture her? How? Then, a niggling thought occurred to her. What if they didn’t know...
“Spike! What do they know about magic? About alicorn magic?”
“Nothing, I’d imagine,” he murmured back. “Nobody does, except you and your Sisters and me. We kinda keep it quiet, right? You’re all just supposed to be important winged unicorns who happen to live a long time and can control the sky, not... Nobody knows what “alicorn” really means, Twilight. There’s gonna be a fight, and it’s gonna be nasty. They’re getting ready, I can feel it -”
“Things have gone well!” Fracture bellowed above the cacophony of laughing dragons. “I already believed our forces were strong, and our position strong as well. And now we have a bargaining chip!”
She could see Spike moving out of the corner of her eye. He was getting behind her, into a defensive position to cover her back.
What can he do? He’s practically still a teenager...
“Spike, I’ll buy us time, you just get away. I’ll keep them occupied for a minute or two then I’ll follow you and teleport us back to -”
As Fracture’s circling brought him back into her field of view, the huge black-and-gold dragon suddenly lunged towards her, claws outstretched, an expression of greedy victory on his face.
Twilight grabbed him around the neck in a powerful psychokinetic hold. He screamed. She squeezed. He squeaked. She shook him.
“YOUR POSITION IS STRONG? YOUR FORCES ARE STRONG? I AM JUST ONE ALICORN AND I COULD DESTROY ALL OF YOU IN A HEARTBEAT! THERE ARE TWO MORE BESIDES ME!” That she would do no such thing, under any circumstances, was something she'd decided not to mention.
More dragons were coming at her, swiping and trying to grab her. She just batted those ones away, not causing any injuries, just keeping them away from her and Spike. She glanced rapidly over her shoulder and saw Spike with his claws out and spines raised, slow tongues of green fire curling from his nostrils as he snarled venomously at the dragons that were approaching him.
His sudden viciousness shocked her. She’d never imagined that Spike could look so damned dangerous. Incredibly, they backed off. Then an absolutely enormous roar came from her right. She glanced that way and saw one of the truly gargantuan dragons - either Rumble or Sizzle, she couldn’t tell which - hurl something straight at her at tremendous speed. It was a boulder...
That’s not a boulder, that’s practically a mountain...
She dropped Fracture and fired off a huge psychokinetic shove all around her, pushing the nearest dragons away, disorienting them for a moment while she focused on the incoming wall of rock. She prepared a blast of magic that would shove it straight back towards Rumble -
Spike swooped into her view, moving very fast, cutting off the line of sight she needed with the -
He smashed straight into it at full speed, it exploded with a tremendous crash that sent house-sized splinters of rock in every which -
Screaming in pain and rage, blood streaming from his muzzle and his eyes, he launched himself at the two dragons who were closing in on Twilight from above and below -
They were suddenly sailing away from her through the air, headless -
More of them were coming straight at her, she grabbed them with her magic and held them in mid-air while they snarled and thrashed -
As if he thought she was holding them for him, Spike smashed into the immobile dragons, tearing a leg off one, smashing another’s face in with it, biting the head of another clean off -
He was sent spinning and howling towards the ground as one of the larger ones she was holding clubbed him viciously with its enormous spiked tail -
She blasted the dragons she was holding, both alive and dead, straight up into the air above her to buy time, she looked wildly around for Spike -
He was glowing bright flaming green as he threw one of the two biggest dragons at the other -
She whipped around and around, mouth open in shock and horror, trying to follow Spike’s impossibly-fast movements as he broke neck after neck -
That one had gashed him across the chest, she almost felt it herself as her heart clenched -
She had to squint as Spike blasted a huge orange dragon with the brightest Dragonfire she’d ever seen, leaving it screaming and... on fire -
He had set a dragon on fire -
Gaping, she flitted numbly to the side to avoid Fracture’s head. It sailed straight past her as Spike spun the twitching body of the ambassador around and into the last remaining dragon, that one was the smallest, still far larger than Spike but it was trying to flee and Spike had just crushed it -
The green flicker around him died, he was falling through the air, screaming, trailing blood, he was going to hit the ground -
She came out of her shock. Teleporting to the ground, she caught him before he hit, casting a bright-red protective spell around them as multi-ton chunks of lizardmeat started thudding to earth all around the gully. His wings were gone, she hadn’t even seen it happen, but then she remembered when he’d starting using magic to levitate. It must have happened right after that big one she was holding had got him with its tail.
He was screaming and thrashing in agony as she cradled him in her softest magic. She didn’t know what to do. She had to get him medical aid, and quickly. “Spike! Can you do your shock protection spell? Spike? Spike! Spike!”
He didn’t answer, just screamed and screamed and screamed. She took to the air and started to work on her own, quickly, magically cauterising the worst of the bleeding wounds until she found herself staring with horror into the deep gash across his chest.
Through the torrents of dark dragon blood, she could see right down past his scales and muscles and smashed reddish ribcage, right into his chest cavity, right to his fast-beating heart and spasming lungs. There was a tiny bloody nick in the corner of his right lung at the deepest point that his dead foe’s claw had penetrated to. Small tongues of green fire were flickering around the edges of the nick.
His magical Dragonfire was leaking. The only thing that could contain raw Dragonfire was a dragon’s lungs, it was part of the magic that made Dragonfire work, if it escaped...
Spike screeched as he was wrenched into the air behind her. She rocketed skywards, horn blazing her way as she blasted through the sound barrier in a quarter of a second. She needed the Element. The Element could stop this and to get the Element she needed to unlock the Vault and to do that she needed her Sisters -
Everything got oddly dark and bent and vague as someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see who it was. It was Spike. His arms were crossed. He was tapping his foot. He was twelve years old and three feet tall and frowning at her with disappointment.
“Why didn’t you go and get the Element, Twilight? Left me here, teleported to Canterlot, come back to save me, you know?” he said in an accusatory tone. “If you’d done that, I wouldn’t be dead.”
Twilight’s left eye flicked open. She was lying on her side in her soft four-poster bed in Canterlot, her smoke-like mane plastered to her pillows. The hangings were closed and it was dark outside, just a few minutes before midnight according to where she sensed the moon to be. She was completely drenched in cold sticky sweat.
She was also far too tired to care. She closed her eye and fell asleep again instantly.
The next dream started instantly too.
At least it really was a dream, and not a diamond-sharp flawless recollection of a real and tragic memory that she’d been trying to forget for four horrible years. The dream was all silly and crazy and nothing made sense, and it began in a shower of blood and death.