The Rocks And Water

by KingReptarAlmighty

Ch 4: Eyes and Ears On The Watch For Light

Thorax’s room was bigger than Spike remembered.

It might’ve been that in the meantime between them visiting the Crystal Empire and Thorax becoming king post Chrysalis attempting hostile takeover, he was moved to a slightly larger room, but this seemed bigger than when he’d first managed to get settled in in the Crystal Empire, by a decent margin. Especially considering Spike was much taller now too.

“Okay, so what should we do first while we’re here? Get something to eat, go and see a movie or-” Spike was cut off by the chattering sound changelings made when they were content. He looked over to see Thorax settling into his old bed, which was most astonishingly, still big enough to fit him. Spike smiled. “A nap works too.”

“Not a nap, still cold.”

“I’d light a fire, but I doubt Shining and Cadence want us burning things indoors.” Thorax yawned.

“Probably not.” Spike smirked at him.

“For someone claiming it’s not a nap, you look really sleepy.”

“I was just thinking that. It might just have to be a nap, because this bed seems to have me trapped. I just can’t bring myself to get up.”

“Alright, I think I’ll go talk to Cadence and Shining then. I haven’t talked to them in a while, so I think I’ll-” Thorax’s magic pulled him into the bed. Spike rolled his eyes, but smiled all the same. “You jerk, I’m in.” Thorax offered only a sleepy smile, and Spike curled into him.

---

Spike stood in an empty room. Well, empty wasn’t the right word, there were chairs and tables, but the room seemed so obviously soulless. Everything was fake, and he had the distinct feeling that anything he touched, he would simply phase right through it, like he was a ghost. He walked around the room, and he realized that it was more than a simple room. It was like a hallway, or more of a train car based on the decor, that extended in whatever direction he walked, and around ten paces in front of or behind him, it simply ceased to exist.

He walked in one direction only.

As he walked forward, he noticed that the furniture seemed to change rapidly, from comprehensible, to something from the deepest depths of Discord’s mind. Recognizable as a chair only by its ability to serve that function, regardless of the fact that the chair was twisting and reshaping, moment by moment. As he tore his eyes away from the terror furniture, he looked ahead of him, and stumbled as he backed up. A static clone of himself, constructed out of what seemed like waves of light.

“Uh, hi?”

”Are you me?” A simple question that sent shivers down Spike’s spine. The voice it spoke with was certainly his, but it had a tone of otherness to it, like it could never have been him in the first place.

“I… think so? I mean, you look like me, and sound like me.”

”Then you and I are meant to be the same. Why are we not?” Spike shrugged. ”I will help you be like me.”

“...What?” A wave of the same light his clone was made out of washed over him, and his clone disappeared.

It was only when he looked down that he realized that his claws were formed out of that same light.

---

He blinked, and realized he was staring at the ceiling, Thorax draped over him like a fallen towel.

They had been asleep for six hours. He hesitantly raised a claw to see that it was… exactly the same. So he was having creepy nightmares of light clones for nothing? Oh well. He had to get Thorax up anyway, and being made of weird light waves would be hard to explain.

“Get up.”

“No.”

“We’ve been asleep for six hours.”

“Then it’s like eight o’clock. What’s ten more?”

“I refuse to sleep for ten more hours without eating something. If you want to wait for me, I’ll be back in like twenty minutes.” Thorax grumbled, but complied, and got off of Spike. He stretched once he got fully on the floor, having already been hanging halfway off of the bed to begin with.

“I don’t regret that at all, but I wish I hadn’t slept so…”

“Pretzel-like?” Thorax shook his head.

“Honestly it was more of a breadstick. My back hurts.” Thorax groaned. “I wonder if they still have that one massage chair I liked.”

“The red one?” Spike questioned.

“No, that was the one you liked. I liked the one with the hoof soaking attachment.” Thorax clarified. Spike nodded, and the two left the room, heading towards the dining hall.

Spike was only half focused on going in the right direction, still thinking about the weird train car dream. That’s not the type of dream that simply leaves your mind, it sticks to you. Fills in the crevasses and gaps of your train of thought, like hot tar pouring over asphalt. It was hauntingly vivid, and Spike was almost certain that were he given a block of wood and enough time, he could carve out one of the not-chairs in near perfect detail. The haunting sound of static had returned, but rather than causing a headache, it caused his world to become significantly more focused. His eyes felt like they were observing details that were much too small to be seen, with incredible capability. He could see the shifting of Thorax’s facial chitin as he hummed along to one of Applejack’s friends songs.

When did he hear that song?

“When did you hear that song?” Thorax stopped.

“What song?”

“The song you were humming just now?”

“I wasn’t humming.” Spike furrowed his brow.

“Yes, you were, I heard it.” Thorax shook his head.

“Changeling humming doesn’t sound like regular humming. It’s an old evolutionary thing, but it sounds like- well, it’s- it’s kind of like-” Thorax sighed before shifting his jaw, and he started humming.

That was… not what Spike had heard before. It was a similar sound to shifting plastic. Creaky, but it also had a sort of bass to it. Thorax stopped, and Spike looked and felt incredibly confused.

“I was thinking of a song, sure, I think it was-”

“Feel Better, by Applejack’s friend, Countess Coloratura.” Now Thorax looked confused.

“...Yeah, that one. How did you..?” Spike shrugged.

“I was looking at you, and it sounded like you were humming it. Well, not humming, but I could like- I could hear the tune of the song.”

“Woah. Weird. Can you like… read minds or something?” Spike shook his head.

“I wish. It would make it a lot easier to keep Twilight from spiraling if I could. Anyway, when did you hear that song?”

“Oh! It’s this one changeling that lives out of the hive. She loves music. If she was a pony, her cutie mark would be music. She sends me cds and records and whatever else she can find. She started four petitions to make an official band in the hive. That’s... mostly why she left, no one wanted to join.”

“Well, if you’ve heard so much music, do you have any favorites? They have a piano here, and I can play.”

While they continued their walk to the dining hall, Thorax rambled on a list of his favorites, and Spike kept note of any that he knew, or at least felt somewhat comfortable that he knew them well enough to play.

Author's Note:

This story of very deliberately short chapters, because I feel like you can only write so much eldritch nonsense before it loses it's potency.

Spike is getting stronger.