//------------------------------// // Part Four // Story: The Old Country // by Astrarian //------------------------------// Something heavy and solid smashed into something else. A low braying noise followed. Spike winced as the unwelcome sounds jarred in his ears, but otherwise ignored them. He wanted sleep. He’d been asleep. He could get back to sleep if he just concentrated. But distant though they were and difficult as it was to really hear them rather than the world’s soothing shushes, universal and unending, more insistent brays grated against his nerves, stopping him from getting back to sleep. His body, perhaps believing itself to be dozing in bed listening to the rain, made the mistake of rolling over. Cold crawled over his body and soaked into his scales, while a number of quite hard and uncomfortable things poked him in the back. Groaning in displeasure, he surfaced from lassitude. He opened his eyes, to absolute black. Unnerved for a few moments, his heart raced, clearing the grogginess from his head. Then memories of the past few days and hours whirled through his mind. He reminded himself that darkness itself was nothing, though it felt like everything, and his heart calmed down. Sight was just one way of seeing. He wasn’t alone. He slowly moved his arm. Helictites chinked together. Then his hand bumped against something soft. “Twilight.” Twilight’s voice instantly answered. “Spike?” “Yeah,” he said. “Can you use your magic?” Twilight grunted softly. Her horn sparked to life, illuminating her position behind him. Spike turned around in the sand immediately to hug her. “I’m so glad you’re all right. I mean, you are all right, right?” Twilight spread one wing for balance and laid the other wing across his back. “I feel weird,” she grumbled. “You do?” he asked worriedly, leaning back to look at her. “How weird? Magically knocked out by a giant wyrm weird?” Twilight looked at Spike doubtfully. “Excuse me? I don’t remember that.” “You don’t?” “I remember coming in here and finding helictites, and then there was a bright light.” Twilight rubbed her horn, yet she didn’t say anything about losing her ability to channel magic. “I had a dream about the day you hatched and I got my cutie mark,” she said. She looked at Spike doubtfully. “What’s a worm? I mean, you obviously don’t mean an earthworm, right, because who ever heard of a giant earthworm. Wait! Do you mean a tatzlwurm? No, that would be crazy, right?” She laughed, but her eyes flitted about the place. “Calm down, Twilight. I mean a wyrm.” Spike corrected her somewhat absently, however, because the better question was where Ormr had gone. He scrutinised the cavern. Spray made the air hazy, but the vast chamber obviously lay empty. The gargantuan wyrm had disappeared. So had the eggs in the white sand. Briefly, he thought everything he’d experienced was a crazy dream. But the gems Ormr had torn from the walls still twinkled on the sand, making Spike’s stomach grumble, and the terrible gouges in the walls remained. So did the feeling of powerful, ancient magic, seeping out of him like body heat. Spike rubbed his arms rapidly, as much to drive out the last shiver of magic as to stave off the chill draft which had also returned to the cavern. He remembered shadows reclaiming the cave as Ormr went dark, and a niggling feeling that he should say something else to the wyrm. A few minutes ago, he’d woken up. A glower spread across his face. Ormr must have taken Spike’s words to heart and decided to leave. Worse than that, though, it had taken away Spike’s ability to do anything at all about its choice by. . . by putting him to sleep like he was a child, just like it had taken Twilight’s magic away! “What’s that?” Twilight asked, pointing with her hoof. Distracted from his anger, Spike noticed her shivering. The sand contained a great hollow: the kind a huge head might create if it rested there. Beside it there was a dark solid ovoid. As Spike padded over to it (the sand held some residual warmth, the only warm thing in the whole place aside from Twilight) interlaced filaments within glinted like metal ore. Despite the thin internal fibres, just one thick strand created the majority of the structure. It coiled round and round on top of itself. Water droplets had condensed on its surface. Its colour now was much darker than it had been when Ormr’s fire faded, but Spike knew what it was and that it was made of Ormr’s silken saliva. “It’s a cocoon,” Spike said. Twilight followed him. “Why is there a cocoon here?” she said. The top of the cocoon was open, and soft as feathers to the touch. It was gloomy inside. But Spike was no longer afraid of the dark. It might be nice to lie inside it, just to be protected from the draft inside the chamber. With a gemstone to nibble on, it would be like getting into bed for a nap. By the time he woke up, he’d have wings. “I think it’s my future,” Spike said quietly. “What are you talking about?” In a sudden gust, the draft whipped around them, chill and uncomfortable. Twilight’s horn died for a few moments. Spike ignored her exclamation, feeling the tenebrosity that only existed in places beyond reach of day and night cover him in a weightless blanket. ‘Wyrm,’ Ormr’s voice whispered. An almighty shiver wracked his body. Ormr might have gone back to hiding in its subterranean river, too proud and too resentful to give Spike its attention now that its own desires had been extinguished. But its presence lingered in more ways than aerial eddies of magic and mist. Twilight’s horn sputtered back to full brightness. “Sorry about that, Spike,” she said. “I don’t know why that happened.” Spike’s eyes drifted towards the back of the chamber, shrouded in heavy mist from the waterfall. He thought about confronting Ormr again. But why bother: it didn’t want him anymore. Why bother when Spike didn’t want Ormr either. “Ormr’s just messing with your magic,” Spike said, folding his arms. “It doesn’t like you much.” He kicked the sand around the cocoon. It made him feel a bit better, and kept his blood moving, which was a good thing in a cold cave. Twilight sounded exasperated when she said, “Spike, I don’t want to sound rude, but you keep saying things I don’t understand.” “Hey, wait a second. Look,” Spike said. In kicking the sand, he noticed a spotted green egg behind the cocoon, half-buried in the sand and no bigger than his head. He wasn’t sure if his scuffling had unburied it, or if it had always been there. “It looks like an egg,” Twilight said, trotting around the cocoon to get a closer look. “It is an egg. If it wasn’t green, it’d look just like mine did.” They both started when a distant bang filtered through the cave, interrupting their fascination. Brays of alarm followed. Spike’s mind grasped the concepts of yaks and of Prince Rutherford’s horn a little slower than he would have liked. Soon enough though he remembered warmth, and food, and light. He craved those things now far more than answers. “I think it’s time to get out of here,” Spike said. “Before Prince Rutherford tries to yak-smash the whole mountain to pieces.” “I’m not sure that would be the worst thing,” Twilight muttered. Her teeth rattled against one another, but the majority of her focus stayed on the egg. “But are you sure, Spike? Did you find what you were looking for?” “I think I did.” “Really?” Twilight lifted her head, eager eyes shining. “I promise I’ll tell you everything. Just not right now, okay? I think we should just concentrate on leaving.” In spite of the cold, Twilight scrutinised him, as if suspicious. The moment stretched out uncomfortably. She was going to refuse – Spike’s stomach rumbled loudly, taking them both by surprise. He clasped his belly and chuckled, almost apologetically. Twilight’s stern expression relaxed, and she began to giggle too. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. She still sounded confused, but she was willing to get answers later rather than now. Her teeth still chattered gently. “We must have been in here for ages. I wouldn’t mind leaving for now, to be honest. It’s probably safer that way, too. Besides, we can always come back.” Or not, Spike thought. He hugged Twilight, relieved. Her coat smelled good: like home. “Oh, Spike,” Twilight responded, amiably enough. She nuzzled the top of his head. Releasing her, Spike picked up the egg and grunted in surprise. “It’s warm!” The egg was tepid to the touch, just warm enough for Spike to suspect it was due to more than the earlier heat of the sand, which was now quite cool. He brushed grains of sand off the shell. Or was it rock? He had no idea what the egg was made of. It wasn’t like any other egg he’d held. Did a baby wyrm like Spike sleep within, suspended in serenity until someone willed it into existence? That would never happen down here. Didn’t it deserve a chance to find a friend and a family of its own? A home on the surface, where life thrived? Maybe long ago, a wyrm like himself had made this same journey, and held Spike’s own egg between its claws, pondering its future. After taking a couple of minutes to eat gemstones and trekking cake (much-needed energy for the journey out, but also to make enough space in the saddlebags for the egg) they departed. Twilight’s sense of direction, fairly reliable in day to day matters even without a map, also departed. Even though he rode on Twilight’s back, Spike took the lead. He recognised most of the meanders of the dry riverbed, and spotted the crack in the wall where they’d entered. They considered using the rope to tie Spike to Twilight while she flew into the crack. Spike didn’t want to be slammed into the wall by accident though. So he waited in the passage below, thinking of Rarity and gemstones and anything that helped him forget their perilous surroundings. Twilight’s hooves scrabbled for purchase on the smooth, slippery rock. With plenty of grunts and scraping noises, she managed to find solid ground. After a couple of minutes of panting, she lifted Spike up with her magic. She used more caution in doing so than she probably ever had before. She looked exhausted by the effort. Once they’d shuffled away from the drop, seeking the feeling of safety more than an actual location of one, they guzzled the water in their canteens. Despite the water break, and their earlier food, hunger began to growl in Spike’s belly again. It had been a long, long day. He guided Twilight through the crawl, seeing bags under her eyes. It helped him to appreciate how quickly he’d become accustomed to this underground world. Not that he was especially familiar with it, but in this instance, he was definitely more like a dragon – more like a wyrm – than a pony. The idea set his teeth on edge for a moment, until more pressing matters took priority. Twilight was clearly flagging. She didn’t remember the journey into the cave taking this long. Neither did Spike, actually. But they’d make it, together. The temperature dropped noticeably, nipping his cheeks. Spike breathed in a wonderful, overpowering scent. It was the smell of soil and musk root and open spaces under the endless sky – the smell of the surface, the smell of life. Spike squeezed Twilight’s flanks with his feet. “Smell that? Fresh air!” She quivered, her chest pushing back against his feet as she breathed in. “We have to be close,” she said. “We have to be.” The smell and the cold delivered a second wind to both. Yet corner after twist after bend followed without revealing the snow slope at the entrance. Twilight’s head began to sag again, her steps becoming shorter and slower. The sharp scent of ozone faded. Twilight stopped. Spike could hear defeat in her voice as she said, “It just keeps going.” “You have to keep going,” Spike urged. Thinking of his navigational successes thus far, he wasn’t yet drained of faith that they would find their way back to the surface. “What if I can’t find the way out?” “Of course we can,” Spike said. “We can’t stop now.” “Maybe we took a wrong turn.” “We didn’t. I know the way. I remember it, Twilight. Anyway, we can’t have: we smelled fresh air. We’re almost out. Think about how good it’s gonna be to see Prince Rutherford again.” “Are you kidding?” He could see a small smile at the corner of Twilight’s mouth as she turned her head. “Not even a little bit,” he admitted. “We can do this.” “I don’t suppose I have a choice,” Twilight muttered. “That’s just like what I read, actually.” Her ears perked up somewhat. “One of the speleological ponies said he liked the commitment of going into a cave. You can’t give up.” Spike vaguely remembered that part. “The only way to get out is to keep going and keep trying.” “Yeah, exactly.” Twilight huffed out a breath, which rose in a white cloud around her head. “It’s basically what I just said,” Spike pointed out, nudging her, and she laughed with a tangible mixture of relief and actual amusement. Spike squeezed her flanks again, and ignored how the phrase ‘the only way to get out is to keep going and keep trying’ soured in his mouth when he thought unbidden of Ormr. A minute later, when Twilight stumbled over smashed boulders in the entrance chamber (some of them looked freshly broken, pale insides stark like snow), he was the one laughing out of a mixture of amusement and relief. Neither of them had spotted the snow bank glowing faintly, though it seemed so obvious now as he looked at it. Loud clamouring erupted at the top of the snow bank. Over all the others, one voice reigned supreme. “Ponies!” Prince Rutherford charged down the snow slope with ease that suggested either recklessness or deep familiarity, fur all akimbo. He shouted something at Twilight that Spike didn’t listen to, being too busy scrambling over the snow so he could hug the yak prince. He could move so quickly now that there weren’t bottomless pits and sharp boulders everywhere. “Spike dragon!” Rutherford hugged Spike so tightly he nearly choked on his laugh. Other yaks clustered around him, shouting and cheering. Someone shoved an upturned helmet into Spike’s hands, brimming with steaming, fragrant liquid. “Drink,” a yak ordered. Spike threw his head back and drank until he could no longer see lights at the top of the snow bank, only the roof of the cave. The broth was thick and delicious. He didn’t stop until his lips touched something solid and spiky. He examined the prize in the bottom of the helmet. It was a kind of gemstone Spike had never seen before, and a crystal cluster at that, in a raw form he rarely saw. It glimmered green. “Whoa,” he breathed. Even the gems beyond Yakyakistan were wild. “Gem not perfect?” Rutherford asked. Spike could hear anxiety in his voice. “Don’t worry, Prince Rutherford,” he said, popping it into his mouth whole. It broke with a satisfying crunch between his teeth. “It’s perfect. Thanks.” He hugged the yak prince again. Funny that he’d hated the yaks so much before. How petty. Now he was beyond happy to be able to clench his claws in the softness of thick yak fur. “Not perfect,” Rutherford repeated, shaking his head. “But if dragon like. . . maybe perfect enough.” “That’s more like it,” Spike said. The yaks carried them both up the slope even though Twilight protested, since she had wings. At the surface, frigid wind raked across Spike’s spines, whistling through nooks and crannies in the rock, snatching away the scent of the musk root growing around the cave. “It’s so windy,” Twilight shouted, grinning foalishly. The yak’s warm fur protected Spike from the full extent of the chill. Yet his lungs ached gladly when he inhaled the cold, so crisp and fresh compared to the lifeless cold found underground. He realised he was grinning too as he stared up at a perfect dark blue sky blazing with stars. Never again would he call the night black. At that point, time started to pass in something of a blur. Twilight thought she should fly back to the camp at the base of the mountain, but the yaks insisted that they carry her as well as Spike. Unsure whether Twilight’s time spent unconscious underground had actually been as restful as proper sleep, Spike didn’t back her up, and soon stopped listening. He spent the trip back to camp dozing, and looking at the roof of the world. A milky band of stars stretched across the centre of the sky, each point of light the tip of a far-distant stalactite. They span slowly, one great celestial whirlpool. They reminded him of Ormr’s kaleidoscopic eyes. He thought he wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough to eat. His deep weariness disappeared though as soon as a full meal appeared. No food had ever tasted as good. Hunger, it seemed, was the best flavour. The yaks hustled Spike and Twilight off to bed as soon as they’d eaten. Twilight, drooping, was about to close the ger’s heavy felt door when Spike heard the grass sighing. He rushed outside before she could stop him. The air smelled crisp and clean and wild, and the steppe was a silver ocean that rustled in the wind with a thousand voices. ‘Come back if you ever wish for wings,’ it whispered. A breeze caressed his face. “Spike?” called Twilight. He returned to the ger and climbed into his welcome sleeping bag. Twilight closed the door, trapping the rich aromas of outdoor life inside, where they began to mingle with the musky odours of two tired, unwashed friends covered in stale sweat and wood smoke and fragrant musk root. Even by Spike’s normal standards, everything stank. Yet tonight, adrift in happiness, Spike thought it was wonderful. He rested his hand against the blood-warm shell of the egg he’d carried out of the cave. Combined with the suspiring grass, nodding its many heads in appreciation of the night, and Twilight’s gentle snoring, the egg’s warmth lulled him to sleep.