Spike's Doom and/or Destiny

by terrycloth

Exploring the Maze

After passing through one of the side doors – the one to the left, as they’d come in – the heroes found themselves in a long, brightly lit hallway. The floor wasn’t covered in slime here, and the ceiling was lower without shadows for lurking bats. Instead, every ten feet there stood a pair of suits of full plate armor.

Bon Bon examined the first set carefully. “Huh,” she said, wiggling at one of the greaves. “This looks like real armor. I wonder I we could sell it?”

“They’re going to come to life and attack us, aren’t they?” Spike asked.

“Probably,” Moondancer said.

Bon Bon tugged on the leg, but it wouldn’t come free. She tried hacking at the straps with her cleaver, but the blade was too thick to slip between the armor plates. “It’s really stuck on there.”

“I’d attack us too, if we were trying to pry our legs off,” Derpy said.

Trying a different tack, Bon Bon climbed up onto the armor’s back and tried to remove the helmet. It slipped off the neck easily, but there was a ‘clink’ sound before it moved more than an inch or two, and it wouldn’t move further.

Moondancer lit her horn and opened the faceplate, revealing a carved stone face. “I don’t think it’s going to come off without the statue inside moving,” she said.

Bon Bon wiggled at it anyway for a few seconds. “How did they get it on, then?” When she’d satisfied herself that it wasn’t coming off easily, she hopped down. If the statues were window-dressing, looting and selling them had been a long shot anyway.

“Maybe they were real ponies, turned to stone?” Spike suggested.

“That seems like a really expensive way to decorate,” Derpy said, floating down the hallway ahead of the others, now that they’d determined it was safe.

So of course, it was the second set of statues that came to life and attacked. One leaned down and drew a massive sword with its jaws, then swung it at Derpy with deceptive speed. She gave a sharp cry as it slammed into her side and sent her hurtling into the wall, to collapse in a pile of blood and feathers. The other stepped jerkily off its pedestal, rearing up to crush her with its hooves.

Spike was having none of that. He let out a loud roar, attracting the statues’ attention, then ran forwards and took a swing, which skipped off the breastplate of the armored statue, showering sparks.

The statue’s counterattack drove him to his knees, large dents in his breastplate where the metal-shod stone hooves had bucked him. He raised his shield to block the sword as the other one joined in, but the force still drove him back, rattled and sore.

Lightning flashed as Moondancer took the dark lord’s name in vain, and Bon Bon’s cleaver hacked at the statues’ legs as she circled around behind them, but Spike kept their attention by roaring in their faces and making flashy, distracting attacks with his sword. It was just for show – most of his energy was put into staying on his feet, keeping his shield in place to block as many blows as possible and flicking out his long tongue to pop one of Bon Bon’s candies into his mouth. It helped a little, but the hammer-like blows of the foes were still wearing him down, even if they couldn’t penetrate his armor any more than he could slice through theirs.

But fortunately, they weren’t invincible. The lightning went right through their armor, and Bon Bon, left unmolested, was able to aim her heavy cleaver strikes at their joints. Before long, the sword-wielding statue faltered and trembled, then fell to pieces, the armor crumbling like chalk as the statue inside shattered, leaving behind only a pile of rubble. A few seconds later, the other statue followed suit. Spike groaned, and sat down, resting his forehead on his shield.

“You okay, Spike?” Derpy asked. “Here, have a muffin.”

“Mmph?” Spike asked, as she shoved the healing muffin into his muzzle without waiting for an answer. He swallowed, and asked, “You’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “They hit me pretty hard but I just healed myself. You seemed to be holding your own so figured I’d help chop them up.” She pulled out her cutlass and waved it around, to demonstrate.

“Don’t fly out front like that, Derpy,” Moondancer said. “If we lose you, none of the rest of us know how to bring you back to life. We’ll have to use our save point, and it’s in the middle of that orcish camp.”

“Sorry,” Derpy said, flattening her ears. “I’ll let Spike go first. Even if he’s being really slow.”

“Thanks,” Spike said. He stood up, and walked out in front of the girls. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” He glared menacingly at the next set of statues, daring them to come to life.

Derpy giggled. “I’m sure you will! You’re the best dragon, Spike.”

Spike drew his sword, and struck a pose. “I’d face the hooves of a thousand statues if it’d mean keeping you safe!”

“Uh huh,” Moondancer said, impatiently. “Get on with it.”

“Right,” Spike said. “Just, can you use that batter barrier on the next set? They were hitting pretty hard.”

“She should save her mana,” Moondancer said. “We might run into more bats.” She poked him in the back with the blunt end of the scythe. “Now move. Onward. Mush!”

“I’m not a dog,” Spike whined, then started down the hallway.

===

Out of the hundred or so suits of armor lining the hallway, only two more sets came to life – it seemed like they were placed so that just as Spike started to drop his guard, another set would activate. He hoped they weren’t reading his mind.

They finally came to the end of the amor-lined corridor, but a narrow passageway between two of the suits of armor let them continue on. The passage was narrow enough that they had to go single file, and dark, but not quite dark enough for bats to hide. Instead, the bats were clearly visible, flying past a T-junction up ahead every minute or so.

“They’re on patrol, like the cows,” Bon Bon said, from the back of the group. “If we time it right, we can probably avoid them.”

“Okay,” Spike said, walking up to the intersection and pressing his back against the wall. That still didn’t give the others enough room to get past him comfortably, so they were going to have to follow his lead. “I’ll give it a shot.”

“Ten seconds,” Moondancer said. “Five… two, one, zero.” On zero, the pack of bats flew past.

“Follow me!” Spike said, running into the corner and heading the opposite way.

“No, Spike!” said Moondancer, as she ran after him. “Not this way! We need to follow them!”

“What? I thought we were trying to avoid them?” Spike said, stopping and turning around.

Moondancer sighed. “If we followed them we could go around the circle as long as we wanted. But this way, we’re heading right at each other. If we don’t find an exit in the next thirty seconds, we’re going to run into them head on.”

“So get moving!” Bon Bon shouted from the back of the pack.

Spike turned back around, and headed around a corner. He spotted a side passage, still narrow and dark but slightly more brightly lit than the bat cave. “I see a place to turn!”

The party piled into the side passage, Bon Bon having to shove Derpy forwards as Spike came to a sudden halt before she’d made it out of the bat’s path. “The bats are coming! Move!”

Derpy hovered up near the ceiling, to try to get out of her way, but ended up basically sitting on Moondancer’s back since the ceiling was so low. Moondancer lurched forwards, trying to get out from under her, and shoved Spike off the small cliff he’d stopped at.

“Oof!” Spike landed with a thump after a five foot drop.

“Are you okay?” Derpy asked, trying to see over Moondancer’s shoulder.

“He’s fine, for now,” Moondancer said, looking around the room she’d just pushed Spike into. She lowered her scythe towards him. “Come on, Spike, grab on.”

“But…” Spike’s eyes focused in on a glittering treasure chest sitting on a pedestal at the far end of the brightly-lit room. “There’s a treasure!”

Moondancer bonked him on the helmet. “There’s also all those slimes.”

Bon Bon tried to look small, as the bats fluttered past, somehow not seeing her – this time. “There’s no room up here, and I’d rather fight slime than bats.”

“But –” Moondancer started, only for Bon Bon to slip underneath Derpy’s hooves and ram into her rear end, pushing her into the room after Spike. Moondancer softened her fall with magic, and Bon Bon umped down after her, landing next to her at roughly the same time. Derpy followed them in, hovering overhead.

“That’s a lot of slime,” Derpy said, eyeing the dozens and dozens of slimy lumps filling the room, all of them slowly moving in the party’s direction.

“We can do it!” Spike said. “Remember, blue ones get magic, orange ones need swords.”

“Other way around,” Moondancer said.

“What about the yellow ones?” Derpy asked.

Spike breathed fire at the first wave of slimes, and the yellow and orange slimes hissed and spat as the fire scorched them. The blue slime was unaffected, but Bon Bon did a cartwheel ending with a massive chop of her cleaver, cutting it in two.

“Better batter barrier yourself, Derpy” Moondancer said, tossing a firebomb at the orange slime as it started to charge up its own fireball attack. “This is going to get messy.”

===

It was very messy. Derpy ended up putting a batter barrier up on everypony, and the slimes not only attacked with balls of slime, and splattered slime all over the place when wounded, but dissolved into huge puddles of slippery goop when killed.

It was also slow. The slimes didn’t move quickly enough to attack all at once, and their individual attacks weren’t dangerous enough to risk anypony actually dying, even if they’d focused their attacks instead of flailing about at random, but between all the magical area attacks and the sheer number of opponents, Derpy spent all her time summoning muffins, and Bon Bon spent a lot of her time passing out mint candies to keep them from being physically slowed by the blizzard spells the orange ones sometimes cast, and carrot-flavored candy to help everypony see again after the yellow ones squirted juice in their faces. While she was at it, she made sure to keep Derpy’s magic topped off with jellybeans, and tossed Moondancer the occasional juice box.

But at long last, the last enemy was chopped up and dissolving, and they all groaned and collapsed into a pile of slime-covered slightly-baked muffin dough with a crunchy hero center.

“I don’t think these stains are ever going to come out,” Derpy said, trying to scrape the goop off of her leather. “We’ll be the rainbow warriors.”

Spike licked off his muzzle. “Huh,” he said. “It’s not bad.” As the others stared in horror, he extended his tongue to its full length, wrapped it around himself several times, and slurped up all the half-baked batter and splattered slime. A swallow, and a loud ‘burp’, and he was clean.

“Oh!” Derpy said, flapping her wings excitedly and flinging bits of goo in all directions. “Do me next! Do me!”

“Nopony needs to ‘do’ anypony,” Moondancer said. “I’ll clean you off after I do myself.” The filth covering her cloak glowed with her magical aura, and started to peel off in chunks… only for her to grimace as the spell fizzled, and it all plopped back into place. “Ugh… so sticky.”

“Don’t worry,” Spike said. “I’ve gotcha.” He flipped his tongue out and wrapped it around Moondancer’s muzzle, snaking it up her face until he got to the part that had been protected by the cloak, then licked her clean as he pulled it back into his mouth. “See? No problem.”

Moondancer stared at him, eye twitching.

“Why don’t I get your tail next?” Spike suggested.

Moondancer’s cloak glowed, and she dumped it on the floor in a pile, then took out a firebomb and torched the mess. “No! I’m fine. I’m clean. See?” Sure enough, she and her battle saddle had remained pristine. Her hooves and the tip of her tail were a little messy, but her cleaning spell was able to handle it.

Bon Bon stared at the fire as it merrily crackled away. “That cloak cost 500 golz.”

“And I thought you didn’t want anypony to see you in that armor?” Derpy added.

“It’s okay,” Moondancer said. “We’re in the dungeon now, so if anypony stares I can just kill them.”

“Ooooh,” Derpy said, smiling and nodding, and trying to shake off her wings again.

Moondancer glared at her. “Derpy, stop staring.”

Derpy looked away quickly, and locked eyes (well, eye) with Spike, who slurped out his tongue and wrapped it around her face, just like he’d done to Moondancer. Derpy squirmed and giggled as it slurped around in her mane and ears, then down her cheeks and muzzle, leaving her face damp but mostly clean.

“Wings next?” Spike asked.

Derpy flexed her wings, then turned her head to nibble on her own battered feathers. “I can get my own wings. Why don’t you start with my tail, and we’ll meet in the middle?”

While Derpy was licked clean, Bon Bon laid her own armor out of the floor, and started scraping it off with her cleaver. Chef’s clothing was designed to catch food splatters, so she was mostly clean underneath. Moondancer poked at the bonfire she’d made of her cloak, but it fizzled out before actually consuming either the cloth or the batter, instead leaving it a sticky hardened mess of burnt sugar and bread.

She sighed, and headed over towards the treasure chest at the far end of the room. “I hope this treasure was worth it.”

Spike paused from licking Derpy’s thighs clean, his claws on her cutie marks to hold her in place. “I thought we were doing this for the experience?”

Moondancer snorted. “That was an experience I could have done without.” She poked at the chest with her magic, and a couple of basic analysis spells, but it didn’t look locked or trapped, so she popped it open.

“What did we get?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer floated out the only contents. “It’s a note,” she said. “I.O.U. one treasure. Signed by the Guardian of Wisdom.”

“Ooooh,” Derpy said, sitting up straight and nearly crushing Spike’s head as her rear came splatting down on the floor. “We’ll have to remember to turn that in when we find her!”

“Aren’t we going to kill her and take all her treasure anyway?” Spike asked, moving on to Derpy’s back, since her legs were awkwardly placed now, and mostly clean by that point anyway.

“Only if she’s in this dungeon,” Derpy said. “Or another dungeon. Or out in a shrine somewhere but still evil. Or –” she scrunched up her face. “We should keep the note, anyway.”

===

Once they were mostly clean – although still stained in rainbow colors from the slime, as Derpy had predicted – they continued on through the maze. There were more bats to dodge, and a cruelly placed living statue that leapt out to attack them as they were running from a bat patrol, meaning they had to fight it and the bats at the same time. They were well-stocked on jelly beans from the slime chamber, at least, and everypony but Moondancer was willing to eat them to refill on mana.

“I got a bunch of it in my mouth already, so it’s not like I'm getting extra cooties,” was Derpy’s take.

The maze was fairly disorienting, so they weren’t sure that they’d explored every nook and cranny by the time they finally came to a staircase descending further into the dungeon. “We can search the rest on the way out,” Bon Bon said. “Or just come back later. This is a normal dungeon dug into bedrock – I doubt it’s going to suddenly explode when we kill the boss.”

“And we don’t really need any more I.O.U.s,” Moondancer grumbled.

So they headed downstairs. At the bottom was a surprisingly small chamber, styled much like the entry hall, only cleaner and with fewer statues. Across from them was another staircase leading back up, while to the left was a raised altar, guarded by a shadowy figure standing perfectly still.

“Are you the guardian?” Spike asked, approaching with his sword drawn.

The figure didn’t answer.

Spike continued to advance until he was right up next to it, then poked it lightly with his sword. The cardboard cutout wobbled, then toppled over, landing on the floor with a thump. Spike leaned down, and poked it with his sword again, but there was no reaction. “Um…” he cautiously stepped around it to approach the altar, which held a golden half-circle talisman, with the flat edge all bumpy and ridged as if it was meant to snap into place with the other half of the circle. “I guess this is part of the Biforce?”

Moondancer lifted up the cardboard cutout, then flipped it around in the air as she looked it over. “There’s a note on the back.” She held it closer, to read. “I.O.U. one boss fight. Signed by the Guardian of Wisdom.”

“Hah,” Bon Bon chuckled. “I guess she was wise enough not to stay and fight the heroes.”

Comments

[howard035]

I.O.U. one reader comment.

[terrycloth]

7581808 If you plant them you'll grow a giant slime?

[RowynII]

Well, if she's gonna skip leaving the treasure some times, skipping the boss fight too is only fair!