Spike's Doom and/or Destiny

by terrycloth

Is There Any Escape From Noise?

The first few seconds were terrifying – the pounding noise from below, the fiery orange light from behind, not to mention the narrow, gravel-strewn ledge that Moondancer would never have dreamed of galloping along under any other circumstances. But they quickly came to the end of the ledge, where it turned back into a nice, safe tunnel. After a few turns, it was a dark and reasonably quiet tunnel, and Moondancer noticed that Spike was tugging on her mane and screaming, “Slow down!”

She dropped to a canter, then a trot, breathing heavily while spots swam in the corners of her vision. “Did we get away?” She managed to focus enough for a simple light spell, since it really was getting hard to see, and breaking her leg in an unseen pit would be just as embarrassing at a trot as at a gallop.

“I think so,” Spike said.

There was a brief rustle, as Derpy set Bon Bon down next to her. “Even so, let’s not dawdle,” Bon Bon said, trotting alongside. “We’ll skip the side passages and head right for the exit.”

This turned out to be extremely easy, since there weren’t any side passages. The cave was certainly not natural, and had a few mine carts and picks scattered around, but apparently it hadn’t been worked much at all – perhaps the valuable metals had been elsewhere, leaving it as merely a tunnel to the lower exit? Or had it been cut off by the terror from the depths before the mining could begin in earnest? The easiest way to find out would probably be to ask one of the orcs, if they could get them to talk instead of fighting. And to talk sensibly, instead of in broken speech. Also, if they could find one, since at the moment the tunnel seemed quite deserted. Maybe it would be easier to go all the way back up to Moriaz and ask the ponies there, which meant the easiest way would be for them all to die.

Maybe the question wasn’t that important.

“Uh oh,” Derpy said, floating to a stop in midair. “Did we get turned around?”

Looking up, Moondancer saw a faint orange glow coming from around the corner ahead. The omnipresent, rhythmic rumble was still omnipresent and not particularly directional, but it was a fair bet that some of the noise was coming from around the corner as well.

“No,” Bon Bon said. “They got ahead of us somehow. Wait here, I’ll take a look.”

It only took a few seconds before she was back to report. “Alright, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you can see the exit once you round the corner.”

“Aren’t you supposed to ask us if we want the good news or the bad news first?” Moondancer asked. “What if I wanted to hear the bad news first so that we could end this conversation on a high note?”

“Obviously she thought it’d be better to ironically dash our hopes,” Derpy said. “You always give the good news first.”

Moondancer scowled. “Can we at least try it the other way next time?”

“What’s the bad news?” Spike asked, clutching at Moondancer’s mane more tightly.

“There’s another bridge between us and the exit,” Bon Bon said.

Derpy smiled. “That doesn’t seem so –"

“With a giant fire demon standing on it,” Bon Bon continued.

“Well… fire is good,” Moondancer said.

Derpy wailed, “No! Fire is bad!”

“Half of us are immune to it!”

“The other half of us really hate being on fire!”

“How giant are we talking?” Spike asked.

“The other half of us just need to stay back and throw healing muffins, then.”

“That never works! Fire goes everywhere!”

Bon Bon tilted a hoof back and forth. “Twenty, twenty-five feet? But it was hunched over, it’s probably a lot taller if it stands up straight.”

“Ah,” Spike said. “Well, if it’s blocking the exit, then I’m sure we can beat it!”

“But the fire!” Derpy said.

“We really don’t have any choice,” Bon Bon said. “We can do this, Derpy. It might hurt a bit… or a lot… but we’ll make it through, and then we’ll be back out in the sunlight where we can go back to fighting every few days instead of every few minutes. We’ve just got this one last thing to do, and then we’re home free.”

“If by ‘home free’ you mean almost to the location where we can start the quest to get the items which will qualify us to start on the actual quest that might let us go home at the end of it,” Spike added.

“I’d really really like to be home right now,” Derpy said, plopping onto the floor and pouting.

Moondancer rested a hoof on Derpy’s shoulder. “I think we all would. I know this sucks, but we can’t stop here. We’re being chased, remember?”

“Any thoughts on strategy?” Spike asked. “Or should we just do the standard thing where I get his attention and try not to die?”

Moondancer took a stick of nitroglycerine out of her pouch. “Was he wearing metal armor? Enough concussive force from the right angle could knock him off the bridge.” Although she wasn’t sure how she’d get the sticks to detonate at an angle – if they glanced off there wouldn’t be the sharp kick needed to set them off without using lightning on the fuses. Unfortunately, she’d never studied weather spells, and her only source of lightning was the randomly targeted invocation of the emperor’s curse on Dark Eidous’ name.

Bon Bon shook her head. “Just a sort of leather harness. Kind of like your Battle Saddle.”

Moondander’s ears perked up. “I think we can make that work.”

===

The heroes gathered at the end of the bridge, going over the final preparations while the fire demon roared and waved his arms around, challenging them to a fight.

“You’ve all got the cinnamon candies in case you’re lit on fire?” Bon Bon asked.

“Yep!” Derpy said. “And the Batter Barrier is up on everypony except you.”

“Yeah,” Spike said, wiping some of the dripping muffin batter away from his eyes. “I noticed.”

The fire demon roared again, and launched a wall of fire at them. Like the last few times, it attenuated as it travelled further and further from his aura, and lacked the power to break through Moondancer’s bubble by the time it arrived.

“And I’ve got the ‘special surprise’ all ready for our friend there,” Bon Bon said. “So I’m going to go dark. Try not to die, Spike.”

Spike nodded, and hefted his shield. “He’s mostly using fire. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Then we’re ready?” Derpy asked, fluttering up into the air momentarily before her sodden wings dragged her back down.

“Set,” Bon Bon said, crouching near the edge of the chasm, to the side of the bridge.

“Go!” Moondancer said, dropping the bubble and swatting Spike on the rear with her staff. “Go go go!”

She charged after him to get into spell range, as he ran flat out towards the hulking demon. When she got close enough, she pulled a firebomb from a pouch and flung it at the demon’s face. She doubted the flames had any effect, but the sticky fuel obscured his vision long enough for Spike to arrive at his feet, where the brave little dragon gave a fearsome roar, and swung at the giant’s ankles with all his might.

The magically sharpened blade bit into the scales, and the demon roared in anger, reaching down with a massive claw to swipe at Spike from the side. Moondancer’s breath caught for a second as she imagined Spike being swept off the bridge by the massive blow, but she shouldn’t have worried – he caught the blow on his shield, the point on the bottom braced against the stone floor of the bridge, and used the blow’s own force to help brace against the knockback.

There was a loud bang! as Derpy fired her hand cannon, which glanced off the creature’s pectoral muscles without leaving a mark, although it twisted to the side a bit from the impact. With one claw kept on top of Spike, pinning him in place while he huddled beneath his shield, the demon raised its arm and cast a wall of fire that raced down the bridge. Despite knowing that it was harmless to her, Moondancer couldn’t help but avert her eyes and raise a hoof to cover her face from the onrushing fire.

Burning agony washed over her, and she screamed in pain as the fire blew through her armor’s resistances as if they weren’t even there. She fumbled for the cinnamon candy, and popped it into her mouth, letting the burn on her tongue cool the actual fires elsewhere. A muffin appeared in front of her face, and she snapped it up, too.

“I hate fire! Hate it so much!” Derpy complained, behind her.

Meanwhile, the demon was trying to pry up Spike’s shield, until the dragon’s wickedly sharp sword lashed out to slash at its wrist, prompting it to yank its arm back and let the dragon get back into a fighting posture. “Is that all you got?” Spike shouted.

Moondancer was about to toss another firebomb, when Bon Bon tapped on her shoulder.

“It’s ready,” she said.

“Spike, get back!” Moondancer shouted. The little dragon turned and ran, and the demon seemed content with that, lifting his arms for another wall of fire. Before he could cast, she quickly called out, “Dark Eidous!”

Lightning slammed down out of nowhere, crackling over the demon’s body… and over the fuses of the nitroglycerine sticks Bon Bon had spent the last thirty seconds or so tucking into the left side of its harness. There was a flash, and a massive roar, and the demon screamed in anger as it went flying off the side of the bridge, plummeting into the abyss. Spike was blown off his feet by the blast, faceplanting into the stone with a grunt.

“Nice,” Bon Bon said, looking over the edge to watch the demon plummet towards the glowing depths.

“Um…” Spike said, scrambling to his feet. “I think the bridge is –” Then he screamed, as it crumbled beneath him.

“Spike!” Moondancer shouted, lunging towards him as she desperately reached out with her magic – but he was well out of range of her telekinesis, and Bon Bon’s teeth on her tail kept her from getting any closer to the crumbling edge.

“I’ll catch you!” Derpy said, flinging herself off the bridge, where she proceeded to plummet like a brick as the flash-baked batter barrier covering her wings meant that they utterly failed to catch the air.

Bon Bon and Moondancer stood helplessly as their friends quickly fell out of sight.

“Okay then…” Bon Bon said. “The good news is, there’s nothing between us and the exit, now.”

“Including no bridge,” Moondancer snapped. “Not that it matters, since we can’t leave Spike and Derpy behind.”

Bon Bon frowned. “Yeah, we’d better go back up to Moriaz and retrieve those two, and maybe find another way down. Assuming we can sneak past the other chasm on the way up.”

“They’re not dead,” Moondancer said. “Pegasi don’t die from falling, and Spike was a tough little dragon even before we started ‘levelling up’ here.” She looked down into the chasm. “We have to go down after them.”

“How?” Bon Bon asked. “I could probably make the climb, but I can’t carry you, and we don’t have anywhere near enough rope.”

Moondancer summoned a Bubble Barrier around them and started walking towards the shattered end of the bridge, rolling it like a flexible hamster ball. Bon Bon pushed up next to her, hurried along by the rear wall of the barrier.

“This should absorb one blow before breaking,” Moondancer said. “So all we have to do is make sure we only land once.”

“So I guess that answers the age-old question,” Bon Bon said. “If all our friends jumped off a cliff… yes, we would too.”

Moondancer paused at the edge, ready to roll them off to what hopefully wouldn’t be their doom. “If it’s take a risk, or lose your friends, then it should be an easy choice.” She tried to do the math in her head, comparing the force of impact at terminal velocity to the absorption power of the Bubble, but the numbers kept coming up ‘certain doom’, and that couldn’t be right. “Okay, that was way too corny. Forget I ever said that, please.”

“Eh. All we’re risking is a little pain, and some money to pay off the priest,” Bon Bon added. “And possibly being stuck on the wrong side of an impassible dungeon, so that we can’t actually finish the quest.” She looked over at Moondancer, then set her hooves against the front of the bubble, leaning on it to roll it over the edge. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait,” Moondancer said, trying to take a step back, only for her rear hoof to slip out from under her as the bubble one step back was already up off the ground. “This is a terrible idea!” she screamed, as it rolled forwards, and they plummeted into the abyss.

===

Moondancer struggled, and after a few seconds her hoof wrenched free of the glowing river. She set it down one step farther, and ignored the muddy squelch of the lava as it oozed across her hoof, swallowing it again. The next hoof lifted, and found purchase on a cooled crust of rock – with a sudden burst of energy, she scrambled up onto the solid platform, and took a look around.

It was hard to make anything out through the putrid smoke and the waves of heat distorting the air, but she was still heading in the right direction, towards the darkness and hopefully out of the heat. Her magic scraped the magma off her hooves before it set, and she pondered the next move.

“What do you think, Bon Bon? Should I jump for it?” The edge of the glow was closer, but still probably out of her range. “Yeah, I don’t think so either. If I miss I’ll have to dig myself out of the river again, and I might drop you.”

Bon Bon didn’t answer, being completely and thoroughly dead – and also cooked, charred black, and on fire. The stench was… actually not as bad as most of the dead things she’d been around, recently. That didn’t mean she was happy about basting in it, but if Derpy had missed the river of lava and survived the fall, maybe she could bring her back without them having to somehow find their way back to the Giant Floating Crystal in Moriaz.

Moondancer glanced back, and adjusted Bon Bon on her back again, making sure her carbonized limbs were firmly set to hold her in place. “I’d say that I was glad that my protection from fire was working again, but I’m pretty sure this is hurting me more than it’s hurting you.” She sighed, and stepped back into the gooey flow.

An eternity later, she trudged up onto the shore, and would have collapsed right there if a pair of clawed hands hadn’t latched onto the halter of her Battle Saddle and led her further away from the heat.

“You came for us!” Derpy said, flapping happily and helping Spike pry Bon Bon off of her back.

Moondancer stared at her. “Your wings are working again.”

Derpy giggled. “Yeah, that was silly of me, to jump without checking. But I managed to shake free about halfway down! I couldn’t catch up to Spike, though.”

Moondancer groaned, and laid her head on the jagged, stony ground, a hoof over her face. “We could have stayed up on the bridge and waited for you to fly back up.”

“Maaaybe,” Derpy said, looking up at the chasm, uncertainly. “This sort of thing isn’t really safe to fly through. I got kinda toasted swooping through it on the way down, and up would be a lot worse.”

“And hey, you got to do an awesome lava dive,” Spike said, grinning. “Not many ponies get to say that!”

Comments

[howard035]

Clever trick with the Nitro. Hopefully they can find someplace ahead to raise Bon Bon.