//------------------------------// // The Dragon Lord (reworked version) // Story: Where Spike came from // by Billy G Gruff //------------------------------// The Dragon Lord had trespassers on his lands. These pests had infested his mountains and fields for months, bringing an endless winter with them. They were annoying, quarreling little creatures, and The Dragon Lord wanted to wipe their pestilence off the face of his lands. He had not made this exodus, established the largest organized dragon brood in existence, and amassed a hoard like nothing any dragon had ever dreamed of just to be driven off by a herd of pathetic mammals. At least the Buffalo had known their place and made the appropriate treaties with him. They treated him the way a dragon was meant to be treated, so he honored their request for land in a gesture of goodwill. But these things...these ponies saw fit to claim even the sun and moon for themselves, and even change the climate to this abominable winter. Was it any wonder his subjects attacked their villages and drove them into hiding? Was it any wonder he made them soil the ground whenever he roared out? Still, he could not simply wipe these pests out. The God Tree had seen to that. Even before he had established his kingdom here centuries ago, he had known that the Tree that resided in the Forest was not to be messed with. It had powers greater than even his old master or any other creature he had known, and it had its own silent agenda that it was pushing. An agenda that did not have Dragons in the equation, it seemed. His kind had been in these lands for centuries now without so much as an acknowledgement of their existence from the silent totem of power. The wayward ponies with Windigos nipping at their hooves, however, received preferential treatment. The Tree had appointed new rulers among the ponies. Two young things with coats of white and deep blue respectively. They were hungry and still fighting off the residual cold of the Windigos who had left them. Whatever deal they had made with the Tree, it seemed to have been enough to drive off those frigid spirits. The tree had not even fought the mass of them, they just turned around and floated off towards the north, leaving their chilling winter in their wake. Some of his more full hearty subjects had flown up and tried to fight the Wendigos despite his warnings and orders to not approach them. They were snuffed of their life before they had even came close to their equine shapes. Their bodies had frozen so completely that they had shattered into pieces by the time they fell to the mountains below. Such powerful Spirits could easily exterminate the entirety of the dragon nation, yet they were driven off by the mere whim of a Twig. A twig with the power to topple gods as well as make them. It was by this Tree's authority alone that these newly appointed leaders of the ponies had stridden into The Dragon Lord’s lands with heads held high. They had not earned their bravery as they strode onto his lands. The elements gifted to them by the Twig garunteed their victory, and that is the power they placed their trust in to win against the Dragon Lord. The tree had born fruits for the two of them it seemed. fruit that these two ponies dubbed "the Elements of Harmony." As they marched towards his mountains, his subjects waged a one sided war against them. They made sweeping attacks, scorching the ground they walked with fire, rack their bodies with their claws, try to devour them with their teeth that could rend diamond, anything in their power to halt the advance of these cursed ponies. All of it was futile against the pair. The power of the God Tree shrugged off all comers in an impenetrable barrier. Their claws, teeth, and flames were not even slowing these two ponies down, nor did it distract them from continuing towards his domain. As long as those elements remained on their person, they were the harbingers of the Trees will, and now the tree had come to finally strike him down through its new subjects. The only advantage The Dragon Lord had over the Tree was mobility, and now it had devised a way to weave its altruistic power towards his new slaves. It saw no grey. It saw no gradients of morality. All it knew were absolutes. It had decided that it was good, and the Dragon Lord was evil, and it would bring his end upon the rising of the morning sun. The sun that the White One now could raise into the sky with her own will. The Dragon Lord summoned a flame in his right claw and used the smoke to project a visual of the two ponies while he soaked his scales in the royal Volcano. The black smoke churned in the air from his palm and began to assume colored shapes, until it fully manifested into the image of the two ponies marching through the snow, shrugging off every assault that his royal guards threw at them. They didn't even flinch at the torrents of flame that cascade over Harmony's shields. They put too much faith in the gifts given to them. They had not earned this power, they were given it because of their pact with the Twig. It infuriated him to no end that these undeserving mammals may in fact lay claim over his domain and the lands beyond simply because they had bargained with something they didn't even understand. It would be a cheap victory if they did win this day, hollow in comparison to the trials and tribulations he and his kin had gone through to forge this independent nation. The thick clouds the Windigos had brought began cracking in the night sky. The unholy clouds that the ponies had brought with them finally seemed to have run out of their endless volley of snow and hail and finally was leaving his lands. Though he wanted this endless blizzard to end, he could not help but feel like this was a very ominous sign. How much power was really within those seemingly limitless depths of that Tree? He watched the two younglings march through the snow in the distance. They looked like specks barely taller than the snow they walked through. He shifted the visual into a closer perspective, but could only get so close without getting interference. The Tree wanted him to watch, but it didn't want him to get too close. His brood continued pelting them with crimson flame, though it proved more pointless the more they kept trying. Each stream of flame bounced off an imperceptible field, melting away the snow instead of the mares. He gritted his teeth at the power emanating from the Tree's fruit. It was taunting him with just how ineffectual his forces were against little slivers of his power. It was toying with his empire, silently challenging him to come out to meet these ponies head on. The Dragon Lord raised tilted his massive head towards the sky from within his volcano and let out a crimson burst of flame into the sky, signalling to his forces to fall back from the two ponies. If they wished to invade his lands he would oblige them with a proper welcome. He stood up to his full height from the pit of lava, letting the molten rock drip off of his scales as he began to focus his mind to his armory far below the depths of the mountains foundations. His mind visualized his suit of armor, forged of tens of thousands of tons of blackened metal that were form-fitted for his titanic physique. Emerald flame surrounded his body, summoning forth the familiar segments of his ancient plate-mail as it magically clasped onto his limbs and torso. It was meticulously forged by his own claws during the early days of his kingdom, emblazoned with runes of magic that were lost to all but a handful of beings on the planet. The armor was designed to do one thing. Augment his already considerable power. It was a glyph he learned from the Umbrum during his quest for power those centuries ago. It was one of the most useful symbols of power that he had ever learned, and it was something that worked better the more the effect was layered. It enabled him to perform powerful magic with a fraction of the effort it took to cast it, and cast far more powerful magic than he was capable of without it. Even with so much augmentation added to him, he still knew deep down that he was no match for these elements that these two-winged ponies were bringing to him. With his mind focused on his targets, he reached into the depths of his mountains to his armory once again, this time to his defense systems that he had created just for this day. He knew this would ultimately be futile, but he had to try to save his kingdom. Without his guidance, he feared that the Dragons would not be able to handle the vacuum of power and become a nomadic race that ended up getting them taken over by the Centaurs and Gargoyles all those centuries ago. He could not let them lose the power they had earned and fade away into history as some scary beasts the ponies spoke of, instead of a noble, renowned civilization. The two ponies reacted as the sky seem to tear open around them with rifts of green flame. Erupting from these patches of fire came arrows from his armory that were the size of buildings. They two ponies maneuvered around the onslaught of massive arrows that stabbed into the ground and the mountain as he tried to hone in on their location. The Elements aided their movements, guiding each and every action they took while making it seem like it was their instincts that won the day. He summoned a spear into his hand and stabbed through a flaming tear he created inside his volcano, narrowly missing the two mares at the end of the spear hundreds of miles away from where it started. He hated having to do battle with such insignificant creatures without being in same location as them, but he knew the second he showed himself to the Elements, no amount of magic would be able to save him from their power. Though he held powers on par with gods and goddesses, he was nothing against the might of the Tree. A claymore still hot from the forge materialized in his hand and he struck down at a flaming rift he created. On the Princesses’ end, a towering wall of sharpened metal that was glowing from the intensity of its own heat sliced into the ground below them, evaporating the snow and scarring the ground with its searing heat. The wind from the attack made them lose control of their flight and they toppled through the air like leaves in an autumn breeze. In their panic, they lost their hold on the Elements and they fell to the earth. His chance had come. The massive dragon enveloped himself in his own emerald flames, using his natural magic to materialize himself to their location and end this once and for all. The princesses gawked as the sky itself seemed to catch on fire. It was like a cloud of emerald flame, and the silhouette of a truly terrifying titan of a dragon crashed into the earth before them, stabbing the ground with his massive claymore on impact. The Dragon Lord had made himself known. Never before had any pony seen a creature big enough to rival a mountain in stature, especially not one clad in plates of armor wielding a wall of forged black metal that, to him, was a two-handed sword. There was a reason the dragons followed the Lord. His greed had made him strong and powerful, he had brought unity to their species, and without him they would revert back to the roaming disorganized mass they had been before he met them. He brought an armored boot down, crushing the Elements and sending the two ponies tumbling backwards with the force of the blow. He had won. "You dare come into my lands, wielding trinkets you barely understand and believe yourself superior to my kin?! You dare threaten my rule, on behalf of a twig that help fix a problem your kind started!" His voice rumbled like thunder above them. Each syllable shook the land as surely as any of his footfalls. They got to their hooves and flew up into the air, each of them no bigger than the gap between one of his teeth. "Your reign is over" The white one shouted. He couldn't help but laugh. These ponies thought so highly of themselves, especially these two in particular. They had horns and wings, which apparently was significant for their species. His smoldering emerald eyes locked onto them as he spoke out in a booming voice. "Did you not see that I smashed your so called Elements?! You're finished! You could have agreed to my terms and avoided all of this, but you turn towards the Twig instead!" The broken pieces of the elements, looking like flecks of dust, surrounded them. "Spike, you need to wake up!" The blue one said. He became confused....what was he doing? Where was he? Why was he so tall? Why was he fighting the princesses? He opened his maw to finish them off. No no he didn't want to do that. Celestia and Luna were his friends. "Spike, thou art having a nightmare, forget this troubling fantasy and return to your friends!" This...was this a dream? It felt so real, though....like he had.... "AWAKEN, SPIKE!" The Elements fired at his body as the sun rose, and his vision grew black. --- Spike snapped awake. He instantly regretted lurching in his bed as his whole body screamed at him in protest. He flopped back down on the bed with his vision swimming. He didn't know for certain, but he had a feeling he had broken nearly every major bone in his body. Whatever had been flooding his brain in his dreams was wafting away, as all dreams tend to do. It didn't feel like a particularly good dream, though. It had this unpleasant sensation he would get when he forgot to do something on one of Twilight's lists. "Spike, you're awake!" Twilight called out as she sped over to his side and patted his head. She looked so happy to see him and he felt the same way as he gave a weak smile in return. She gave his body a tentative hug, trying to be as gentle as possible to not cause him any undue pain. "Twilight, I'm so happy you are okay!" Spike gripped her neck in a tight hug, ignoring the pain to show his affection towards her. He had thought he had lost everything. "I'm the one who supposed to be saying that to you! You've been out for three whole days after...whatever happened between you and Tirek. Speaking of which..." She rapped him over the noggin with her hoof, causing him to yelp before hugging him again. "What was that for?" he asked in slight indignation "It was for making me worry while you were all beaten up like that. You need to promise me you'll never do anything like that again. I thought you were going to..." her voice hitched on the last part of the sentence "I...don't really know what happened Twilight, it just sorta... happened. I was next to the library and the next thing I know I was seeing you guys with weird manes flying in the air and I was getting my tail handed to me by Tirek. I don't even know how I got so big..." "Heh...did they really look that weird? Rarity was complaining about it the other day." Twilight said ruefully. "Twilight, it was a fashion disaster, whatever you did to get that kind of power it came at a price of looking completely tacky." "Shut up!" Twilight said in mock rage, but she couldn't fight the grin playing on her face at the same time. He pulled back from her, his eyes glinting as he looked from right to left "Did...did I look cool?" She gave a face that was equal parts amused and annoyed and ran a hoof over his head roughly. "Of course that's what you would ask!" "Well?" She nodded, her smirk growing as he tried to celebrate his victory before wincing and remembering his body was made of bruises and covered in bandages. "Lay back down, slugger, you need to rest. Apparently dragons heal from these kinds of injuries fairly quickly because you were looking terrible three days ago." "So I was really out for three days? That's nuts..." he blinked, just registering that they were inside. Where this 'inside' was was entirely lost on him though. "Where are we?" "Oh...this," She waved a hoof at the towering walls of purple crystal "...Is our new castle. Apparently after the Tree of Harmony gave us the power to take down Tirek it decided to give me a brand new castle as well. You should've seen it -- it just kind of got planted and popped out of the ground. " "Wow." "Why do you look mad all of a sudden, Spike?" "I do?" he adjusted his apparently sour expression into one of confusion. "Maybe it's just the injuries." Twilight accepted that answer and gave him a kiss on the forehead "Get some sleep, I want my number one assistant back in tip top shape ASAP!" "I've been sleeping for three days, though!" ~~~ Little did either of them know they had someone listening in on them. Perched atop a cloud high above them, Luna looked down upon the castle with a deeply troubled expression. This would need to be rectified, and soon -- before everything they had worked for fell to ruin.