(13 years later)
A small purple and green baby dragon slept in his bed as the light from the sun illuminated his small, simple room. The dragon let out a light snore as he slept, clearly enjoying a peaceful dream when a suddenly a loud banging was heard at the door. The dragon slowly stirred from his sleep, slowly blinking his eyes as he tried to adapt to being suddenly awakened. The dragon’s eyes adjusted to the light as he looked around his simple room. He noted how it was fairly empty with a desk that that’s had papers, and candle for light and a few books on it. Suddenly there was another loud knock on the door.
“Spike wake up, your needed in the kitchen”
Spike sighed before throwing the sheets off himself and hopped out of bed landing on his feet. He then did a long stretch before walking to the door and opening it to see that the pony who was knocking was no longer there as he looked down the hallway and saw that it was empty.
“Weird,” Spike said to himself before he shrugged and started to walk down the castle hall as he thought to why he was needed in the kitchen at this time.
“Please don’t be dishes, please don’t be dishes!” Spike thought to himself as he continued to walk down the long hallway.
****
Spike sighed as he looked at the massive pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. He then grabbed a sponge and then started to slowly clean them.
“Well this is fun…” Spike whispered to himself as he scrubbed a giant pot. Each scrub had more anger seemingly put into it before he finished and went on the next dish. When he heard the door open and turned to see a brown earth pony with a dark green mane and tail, wearing the standard black and silver cloaked armor.
There was an awkward silence as the pony and dragon stared at each other. The pony then spoke.
“Hello.”
“Hi… What do you want? I’m kind of busy at the moment.” The dragon asked
“Commander Greycoat wants to talk to you.” The pony said as he leaned against the door.
“What about the dishes?” Spike asked.
“They’re not really going anywhere, are they?” The pony stated.
“Okay, fine.” Spike said as he stepped away from the sink and started to walk towards the door before he stopped and turned to the pony. “I don’t think I have ever seen you around here before, are you a new recruit?”
“No, I have been here for five years.” the pony responded.
“Wait, really?” The dragon asked as he stood there looking at the pony.
“Yes,” The pony as he walked towards Spike “I have a question for you.”
“What?” Spike responded in annoyance.
“If a tree falls down in the woods and if no one is around to hear it fall, does it really make a sound?” the brown pony said as he looked at the young dragon.
“Ummm… Yes” Spike answered in confusion.
“Well then. I am the tree that falls and does not make a single sound. Remember that piece of information; it could one day save your life.” The earth pony said before he turned and trotted out of the room, leaving Spike standing there confused.
“Well that was weird, heck I didn’t even get his name!” Spike thought to himself before the baby dragon hastily walked out of the kitchen to meet with the commander.
****
Spike approached the door to Commander Greycoat’s office and quickly knocked and waited for a response.
“Come in.” said a voice from the other side of the door.
Spike slowly opened to door and stepped into the room. He and looked around and saw that it was a lot simpler then he anticipated it to be. He noticed a bookcase, a large bed, and a large wooden desk with papers and scrolls strung about it, as well as the grey unicorn behind the desk that was staring out of the window.
“You wanted to see me, Commander?” Spike asked as he approached the desk.
“Yes,” the grey unicorn said as he turned around to face Spike. “I assume you do not know why you were called here?”
“No, Sir.”
“Well as you are probably aware our organization has been in service, guarding Equestria for nearly a thousand years, guarding the land of Equestria from the dangers that they do not know about, nor do they want to know about them. The point I am trying to make is that no one really remembers us, and as we fade more and more into obscurity it means the less likely we are going to get members to join our cause. This has led to our less than stellar numbers of members. This also means as time passes it leads to many different problems. One, if we need to defend the land the fewer numbers we have, the more likely we are to fail. Then two, the traditions and knowledge that we hold will fade away.” The older unicorn said as he let out a deep breath. “Do you understand?”
“I think so, what does this have to do with me?” Spike asked with a hint of curiosity.
“I was getting to that,” Greycoat said as he walked to the baby dragon. “I feel it is time for you to become a more active member of this organization. I apologize for making you do menial choirs at this young age but I needed to see if you were mature enough to become a member of our group and now I see you are ready. Spike, I have a very important request I need to ask you.”
“Holy Celestia, he’s going to ask me to become a member of the guard. Yes, everything I have dreamed about is going to become true!” Spike thought to himself, as a smile slowly started to appear on his face.
“Would you care to become the blacksmith’s apprentice?” the commander asked.
“What?” Spike said as the smile quickly faded from his face.
“Yes, Steel is only going to be getting older and he is going to need someone to pass all of his secrets to and take his place when the day comes when he becomes too old to make our weapons. So we need someone to take his place and that some is going to be you. So what do you say?” Greycoat said as he smiled at Spike.
“I will gladly become Steel’s apprentice.” Spike said with a hint of both sadness and anger.
“Good!” Greycoat said as he turned around and walked to his desk “I have already informed Steel about the situation and you are to go meet with him immediately. Do you understand? ”
“Yes commander.”
“Well good then, that is all we needed to talk about. I wish you luck in your new workspace.”
“Yea, thanks.” Spike said before he turned and quickly exited the room
****
Spike slowly entered the blacksmith workshop and looked around the room. He took note of the work bench with various tools and hammers on it. As his eyes panned over to an anvil resting on the ground before him, he looked up and his eyes rested on the large forge. Spike slowly approached the large stone, flames filled forge. Looking at the grey stone bricks that made up the forge it was clear that it had been in use for hundreds of years. As he grew closer to the forge he could feel the heat of the orange fire coming out of the forge, as he crept a little closer to feel the full warmth of the hot flames.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
Spike’s head whipped around at the sound of the new voice to see who had spoken. His eyes quickly rested on an older unicorn who had a light white coat and a silver mane, he was wearing a black cloak with a brown backpack and stood at the doorway looking at the young dragon before he walked over to Spike.
“Where are my manners, my name is Steel Slash. Pleased to meet you.” He said as he stuck his hoof out at Spike who then slowly took it with his hand and gave it a shake.
“I’m Spike.” The dragon said.
“I know.” Steel said as he watched Spike let go of his hoof and then looked closer at the dragon. “Where going to need to get you a little more in shape, but we can get to that later. Time for the tour.” Steel said as he moved past Spike and went to the middle of the room. “Well, as you can see that is the forge, workbench with all the tools, anvil, and that’s about it really. So do you have any questions?”
“Umm, what will I be doing?” Spike asked in confusion.
“Of course, you will be my assistant. You know, helping me with keeping everything in order, learning how to forge and make weapons, helping me make the weapons, cleaning up afterwards, and other similar steps. As well, as the fact that you have been told, I will be teaching you the tips of the trade." Steel said, giving a little wink before walking over to the workbench.
“I see… well it sounds like fun.” Spike said in an unenthused voice. “So what are you going to be teaching me first?”
“Well, truth is I wanted to show you something.” Steel said as he motioned for Spike to come over to him. Spike quickly walked over to the workbench and watched as Steel’s horn glowed a silver color and the bag lifted off his back and was suddenly dropped on the table with the sound of several clangs of metal heard.
“Go on, open it!”
Spike looked at the bad with curiosity before slowly reaching into the bag and pulling out a glowing white metal ingot. “Is this?” Spike asked in awe.
“Yep. What you are holding is an ingot of Metalla Lux, or Metal of Light. What you are holding is basically the life blood of our organization. Our weapons and everything that we have done has been a direct result of that metal. It’s extremely hard to find, harder to mine, and extremely harder to melt.” Steel said as his horn glowed and several other ingots of metal came flying out of the bag.
“So now what?” Spike asked as he set the ingot down on the workbench.
“Well first I want to get to know a little bit more about my apprentice. So would you please tell me a little about yourself, Spike?” Steel asked as he started to inspect each glowing ingot.
“Well, truth is there is not much really to say. As you probably know Princess Celestia sent me here when I was just a hatchling and I was basically raised by basically the Commander. I did a lot of cleaning up around the castle, doing a lot of choirs and what not, and now I am your apprentice. That’s really all that’s worth mentioning I guess.” Spike said.
“So do you have any dreams?” Steel asked.
Spike opened his mouth and then took a pause before he started to speak “Well, one thing that I really want is to become a member of the guard.”
“Ah I see. Well maybe one day you can join the ranks of the guards, but for now you’re kind of stuck with me. So anything you want to ask me?
“So what are you going to be teaching me?” Spike asked.
“So you want to get straight to the point I see. Well the first thing I’m going to do is show you how to use the forge and smelt the metal.” The unicorn said before he walked to the forge and suddenly stopped and turned to the dragon. “Oh I heard somewhere that dragons are fireproof is that true?”
“I don’t really know.” Spike responded.
“Well there's really only one way to find out, isn't there?” Steel said as he looked at the forge. Spike eyes widened in realization before he looked at Steel who gave him a smile.
“Fine.” spike said before he walked over to the forge and looked at the orange flames coming out of it. Spike took a deep breath before he stuck his hand in and suddenly let out a loud scream, before his hand flew out of the fire.
“Holy Celestia! I am so sorry I thought-” Steel said apologetically before he was cut off by laughter which caused the Unicorn to look at the dragon who was smiling holding up an unburned hand.
“Funny. Let’s get to work. Grab one of those Ingots will ya.” Steel said with a smile as he watched the dragon walk over and grabbed an ingot. Then he walked over to Steel ready to see what he had to show him.
“Let’s get started.” Spike said.
****
Greycoat sat at his desk, watching as the door to his office opened up and Azure entered the room.
“Take a seat please” The grey unicorn said as his horn started to glow and an amber liquid filled bottle, and two glasses levitated on to the desk.
“It that Apple Scotch?” Azure asked.
“”Yep.” Greycoat said as he lifted the bottle and pored the liquid into the glasses and pushed one to Azure.
“So what do you want to toast to then, commander?” The blue unicorn asked.
Greycoat looked at his glass for a moment before lifting it up. “To the Shadow Guard!”. Azure gave a nod and lifted his glass and let it clink with Greycoat’s glass before both of them took a drink from there glasses.
“So what’s the deal?” Azure asked.
“Well, the truth is in a month I’m going to be sending the guards out to do a sweep across Equestria, just to be safe and see.”
“Why? There has been no sighting in over seven hundred years.” Azure asked as he took another drink.
“I feel we need to get ourselves out there. I mean the last pony that joined us was Cedar; and that was five years ago and by complete accident. We need more members. If by some mere chance the Shadows do return, we are not ready.” The grey unicorn said as he finished his glass.
“I suppose you are right. I will start to make the necessary arrangements then as well as make sure that the guards have enough weapons and supplies for the journey, because some of them will have long distances that they need to travel.” The blue unicorn stated as he took the last swig of his him drink.
“I shall work on making the teams between the guard members as well as giving them their locations. When they are away we can then plan on how we can attempt to get more members to join the guard.” Greycoat said as he levitated the bottle and refilled the glasses.
“Sounds like a plan.” Azure said as he and Greycoat clinked their glasses and took a drink.
****
(Well there is Chapter one of my story. I would like to thank my Editors V-Pony, and Insane Guy of DOOM. Hope all you readers enjoy the chapter.)