Chapter 10
— ✒ —
Unburning things, it turned out, was an especially difficult thing for Spike to learn. Mostly, this was because he’d trained himself not to burn things in the first place. As a young dragon, he’d learned the singular ability of sending things to Princess Celestia through his fire, and he’d practiced it until it was second-nature. So second-nature that he even instinctively did it when he sneezed. Trying to unlearn that reaction was like trying to unlearn the hiccups, and explaining to the Celestias why he’d yet again sent them an old boot or similar was something he wanted to limit as much as possible. All in all, his determination to get one up on Ember by learning to unburn things before she did weakened rather quickly with each failure.
Still, he’d kept at it… sort of. With the goal of avoiding sending things to the Celestias, his only other option was to take a step back and focus first on not doing that. Actually learning to do other things would have to come later. It wasn’t too bad, really. He wasn’t inexperienced with using just his fire, as he did use it to cook most every day. That said, actually putting magic into it without making it a sending was what continued to fight him.
Slowly, though, it became clear that retraining his learned instincts wasn’t going to be the work of half an afternoon, and he was running out of testing materials, too. It was a bit of a relief, then, when he began to hear the sounds of Ember doing something downstairs, and if she hadn’t immediately come up to shove her success in his face, then it probably meant that she didn’t have anything to show either. He briefly felt guilty about that, but he wasn’t quite mature enough to not appreciate the fact that he hadn’t lost yet.
Satisfied that he wasn’t going to face too much ridicule, he cleaned up his burnt and partially burnt test subjects, waited a few minutes so he wouldn’t seem too eager and went down to see what Ember was getting up to. He found her out back behind the library, just standing in the grass looking at the crate containing the Ring of Ashmund. Shrugging, Spike walked up beside her and for one brief moment, both of them were in sync, reflecting openly at the enormity of what the crate contained.
It didn’t last. Between one blink and the next, Ember was clawing her way up the side of it and attempting to pry the top open with her claws. “Hey, let’s get this thing open, yeah?”
It took a moment for Spike to get his mind back on track. “Hey! Wait!” he called up at her, shuffling in fretful nervousness but not actually willing to climb up and stop her. “We should at least wait until it gets dark.”
To Spike’s complete surprise, Ember actually stopped to consider his objection. “I thought you said your glitter-rock princess is some kinda omniscient about anything under the stars? Then shouldn’t you want to get this dealt with before dark?”
Spike facepalmed and let out a groan. “Did you forget that forty percent of Ponyville is made up of pegasi?” he asked incredulously, gesturing wildly at the sky where there were at least five such winged ponies in sight at any one time. “I’d rather risk the selective omniscience of one pony than show it off to dozens of excitable rubberneckers. Do you have any idea how much pegasi gossip?”
Ember poked her head over the side of the crate. “Okay, I can see that, I guess, but what’s ‘gossip?’”
Spike was tempted to make a sarcastic remark, but he supposed it was an honest question. “Gossiping is… a kind of bragging where ponies show off by sharing information that’s either new or secret.”
Ember cocked her head to the side. “That’s dumb. The more people you tell a secret to, the less value it has. That’s like showing off how sparkly your hoard is by pouring it into a volcano.”
“Well…” Spike scratched at the back of his neck, choosing his words. He wasn’t the kind of person that gossipped, but he’d spent plenty of time around Rarity, who very much was. “Gossip is mostly things that don’t have directly exploitable value like that. If you tell someone the combination to the princess’ safe, that’s treason, not gossip. If you tell someone that Princess Celestia keeps an emergency cache of donuts in her safe, though, that’s gossip. Nobody is going to steal the princess’ donut cache if they know what’s good for them, but it’s still something that ponies get a thrill out of knowing.”
“But… if nobody actually steals the donuts, how does anyone know if they even exist?” Ember asked, frowning. “I don’t even know this princess, and I could tell someone that instead of having a donut stash, it’s actually a secret pile of bacon. That would make much more sense, anyway.”
“Congratulations,” Spike drawled. “You’ve managed to understand in two minutes what most gossips refuse to accept in two centuries.”
Ember scowled down at Spike. “Maybe I don’t understand all the little details about ponies, but there’s no need to be sarcastic about it.”
Spike was briefly taken aback. “Uh, no. I wasn’t being sarcastic. Lots of gossip is just whatever ponies want to hear, and not a lot of it is very nice.”
Ember took a moment to process that. “Seriously?”
“Also, what’s bacon?” Spike added.
“Seriously?!”
— ✒ —
Ember’s rant about bacon ultimately rendered moot the question of whether or not to open the crate before nightfall. Given a choice between the two, Spike would have rather argued about the crate, as he’d actually been winning that one.
“I just can’t believe you’ve never had bacon!” Ember cried in dismay, her head hanging limply off the edge of the crate as she beseeched the emerging stars for an explanation of this travesty. Spike wasn’t entirely sure if she was aware just how appropriate her actions actually were. “Or ham, or sausage, or cracklings!”
“Look, I get it!” Spike responded from his position laying down on the grass. “Pigs are apparently delicious! How many names do you really need for different parts of the same animal? They can’t possibly all be different things!”
“The sad thing is, you actually believe that!” Ember bemoaned. “I cry for your tragic childhood. Metaphorically. I’m not actually crying. I don’t cry.”
“And I reiterate—how on Equus could you possibly come up with that many things to do with a single animal? I’ve had fish! There’s meat, bones and organs—and that’s it! You either cook it or you eat it raw. It’s not complicated! Did someone lock you in an underground vault for a decade with nothing but a thousand pigs and a food diary or something?”
“Dragons as a whole? Basically, yeah,” Ember shot back. “Look, do you have any idea how hard it is to find an animal worth eating that ponies won’t get all bent out of shape about? Sheep! Goats! Cows! They have talking cows now! Talking! Cows! What’s the point of teaching a cow to talk if all it’s going to do is sit there, chew grass and let ponies milk them? They’re not even smart enough to milk themselves!”
“What? You want to eat cows?” Spike asked, scrunching up his face in disgust. He’d met cows. They were boring, sure, but they were still people.
“We used to!” Ember exclaimed without shame. “Not me, specifically, but dad’s generation and further back all talk about it. Constantly. I’ve had to listen to literal fossils go on and on about the relative benefits of cuts—skirt steak over flank steak…”
“They didn’t talk, but they had skirts?” Spike asked, shivering as he imagined a cow in a skirt.
“…Porterhouse or prime rib…”
“I’m pretty sure ribs all come in pairs, so how can one of them have primacy? Or, wait, are they prime-numbered ribs? What’s the point of that?”
“…T-bone or ribeye…”
“Rib… eye? What kind of freakish mutant cows with eyes on their ribs are we talking about here?”
“…Strip or round…”
“…I’m not sure if a cow stripping is worse than a cow in a skirt or not.”
“…Rump or loin…”
“I seriously do not want to know about either of those things.”
“…Brisket or shank…”
“Okay, I know dragons aren’t very cultured, but shanking a cow seems needlessly cruel, and so is naming a cut after where you shanked them.”
“…Chuck or—”
“Stop! That’s enough!” Spike shouted, interrupting her. “Tartarus, Ember. The rest were bad enough, but I draw the line at names.”
“What?”
“I know cows named Chuck,” Spike told her. “Bulls, anyway.”
“Chuck is a name?” Ember asked, perplexed. “That’s weird. I wonder why? I’ve never seen a cow chuck anything.”
“…Actually, a lot of bulls seem to be named Chuck,” Spike reflected, thinking back. “Almost as many as are named Angus.”
“You know, I’m actually impressed,” Ember admitted. “Living your whole life on a pony diet, I expected you to stop me sooner.”
“It’s not like I’ve never seen a griffon eat,” Spike objected. “And I told you, I’ve had fish.”
Ember hmmed as they watched the sky darken. “Are you sure that’s all?”
“Well…” Spike demured. “There was that time when the minks got into Fluttershy’s chicken coop, I suppose. Harry and I ate pretty well that week.”
“Alright, so you’re not completely on the pony feed,” Ember allowed, sounding like she approved. “Still, fish and poultry can’t even begin to compare to bacon.”
— ✒ —
“Okay, it’s dark and I haven’t seen any nosy pegasi for, like, five minutes,” Ember announced, getting impatient. “Also, watching the stars is really weird when they might be watching you back.”
“They really probably aren’t,” Spike said, attempting to reassure her. “Not unless she’s looking for something specific. Twilight isn’t really the kind of pony that just sits around watching people. She usually has better things to do.”
“So, we’re good?” Ember asked, perking up.
Spike hesitated, searching for a reason to put it off, but nothing actionable came to mind. “Okay, yeah, I guess we should go ahead and open it already, just in case things take longer than we think. If we can’t get it working, we could be up for a long night.”
Ember whipped her head around to glare at him. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“I’m just being realistic!” he hastily defended. “We’re talking about an artifact of a long-lost pre-discordian draconic empire. What are the chances we just stick our arms into it and just instantly know how to make it work?”
Ember stared at him.
“What?” he asked, getting uncomfortable under her glare.
“Nothing,” Ember eventually responded, dismissing it with a wave. “Just trying to figure out how you managed to start with pessimism and then turn it right around to tempting fate in our favor.”
Spike paused, then asked, “If it’s in our favor, would it be tempting fate, or baiting fate?”
Ember had already gone back to prying at the top of the crate with her claws. “What’s—nnngh!—the difference?” she grunted.
“Forget it,” Spike grumbled, watching Ember at work. He wasn’t quite sure how to point out that she was trying to lift something she was standing on. What he eventually settled on was to ignore it entirely and go inside to get a crowbar. One might not expect crowbars to be standard fare for library equipment, but frankly, the need for a crowbar tended to come up much more often than any of the things that Pinkie Pie had squirreled away here and there around Ponyville.
While Ember devolved into gnawing ineffectively on the crate, Spike made his way over to the side of it and jammed the crowbar between the rough planks of wood. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t any more effective than anything Ember was doing. Suddenly, he was very glad that she wasn’t actually paying him any mind.
Another trip inside to go find a hammer improved matters drastically, but even a drastic improvement wasn’t enough to make up for the inherent lack of strength in his stubby baby dragon arms. He kept trying, but eventually had to stop to catch his breath, which in turn caught Ember’s eye.
Spike looked at the corner she’d gnawed off, while Ember looked at the crowbar wedged into the wood. Both of them looked away, avoiding each other’s gaze.
“This is kind of sad,” Spike admitted.
“Fire?” Ember suggested.
“…Fire,” he agreed, but he didn’t like it. “But can you at least be careful? We don’t want the attention we’d get if the whole thing went up like a bonfire.”
Ember puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. “Oh, for pity’s sake! You always act like I’m one sneeze away from arson! Yes, I’ll be careful! I haven’t burned down your stupid tree yet, have I?
“Not for lack of trying,” Spike retorted under his breath, earning him a glare from Ember. “Look, I'm not stopping you, I'm just saying I'm going to go get a bucket of water just in case.”
Ember continued to glare at him, but he didn’t let it stop him from doing exactly as he’d said. Ember, in turn, didn’t let his leaving to get a bucket of water stop her from getting started immediately. By the time he returned, she’d already burned a large scorchmark into the side of the crate with her coral-colored fire.
It was only when she finally burned through the wood that Spike realized the problem. As it was, he was very nearly too late.
Splash.
Ember was not amused. And wet. “What the—?! Spike! I was doing fine!”
Instead of responding, Spike dropped the empty water bucket, walked up beside Ember and began pulling at the charred wood, widening the hole. Ember continued stand there building up to a potential tirade until he started reaching inside the crate to pull out… smouldering straw?
Ember paled. “Oh. Oh spit.” Whatever else Spike could say about Ember, she wasn’t one to just stand around. As soon as she realized her error, she jumped right in to help. With her taller, more wiry build she was able to break more of the half-charred wood free to make room for another set of hands pulling straw out by the armful. “I’m never going to live this down, am, I?” she grumbled.
To their shared dismay, the more smoking straw the two of them pulled out, the more they found behind it. The longer it went on, the more it became clear that they weren’t going to be able to outpace the spread of the fire. Spike slowed, taking a moment to stamp out the piles of burning straw strewn about the lawn as he tried to come up with something else he could do.
Or something Ember could do.
“Ember!” he shouted. “Send the straw somewhere with your fire!”
Ember pulled her soot-covered head out of the hole just to give him an incredulous look. “Me? I’ve only managed it a couple of times! You do it!”
Spike winced, but now wasn’t the time for pride. “I… can’t,” he admitted. “I’ve only managed to send things to ponies, not places, so unless you think it would be a good idea to dump a load of flaming straw on one of the princesses, it’s gotta be you!”
Ember looked at the smoke billowing out of the hole in the crate, and for the first time since he’d met her, Spike saw a flicker of self-doubt on her face. “I… well, fine! But you’d better go get another bucket of water or ten because it’s not like I can send it to a lake somewhere! I can only send it somewhere I can see!”
Spike didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed the bucket and raced back inside to fill it. The closest, fastest source of water was the ground floor bathroom, and every second he spent filling the bucket seemed like one second too many. He did not want to have to explain anything to the pegasus fire patrol.
Fortunately, when he finally got back outside, there was a great big pile of straw between the crate and the ex-library.
Unfortunately, that pile of straw was on fire. Ember was digging up the lawn to throw dirt on it and making progress, but it was still a very big pile of burning straw. Spike tried to spread the water out and use it sparingly, but he was soon running back inside to fill the bucket again.
Another agonizing minute of bucket-filling later, he returned running only to find the fire completely guttered out. Spike slowly came to a stop and put the bucket down, breathing heavily.
Oddly, he didn’t see Ember anywhere.
“Spike?” came a voice from ten feet up and to the side.
Spike jumped in fright and tripped over the bucket, drenching himself. It took a moment to reorient and spot the five pegasi hovering nearby with a couple of heavy rainclouds. He cringed. “Uh, hey, Thunderlane. Nice night for roasting marshmallows?”
— ✒ —
The talk with the fire patrol was very strange. The situation pretty much explained itself, they said. Clearly the crate had been unloaded earlier in the day, the packing straw set aside to be disposed of, and some small accident had set it alight. As far as they were concerned, there was no sign that the straw had been stored close to anything else flammable, so all Spike would get was a warning.
Spike spent most of the conversation nodding and apologizing, doing his nervous best not to contradict the story or give them any reason to check inside the crate that still contained the Primordial Ring of Ashmund. That would raise questions he didn’t want to answer.
Except, as it turned out, the crate did not still contain the Primordial Ring of Ashmund. Indeed, the reason the fire patrol had deduced that the crate had been emptied earlier that day was because it had, in fact, been emptied. The side of the crate with a small hole burned into it looked like it had been pried off, and the Ring of Ashmund was nowhere to be seen.
Spike barely noticed the fire patrol leaving as he stood in the dark staring at the empty crate, trying to picture a string of events that were even remotely possible in which Ember was able learn how to use the ring and escape with it at what must have been a truly massive size without being seen by the fire patrol, all in the time it took him to fill a bucket of water.
It just didn’t seem possible. He wasn’t even angry. He just wanted to know how she’d done it.
Eventually, Spike realized that he was just standing around in the dark not doing anything and began to quietly clean up. Half an hour later, things had been restored to a modicum of order and… that was that. For once, no one harassed and insulted him for it or got in his way, and it was… Well, he didn’t know what it was.
Ruminating on that, he went back inside and fixed himself a cup of plain old hot chocolate and wondered if Ember had any intention of coming back, or if she would just take the Ring of Ashmund and run. As much as Ember had seemed to improve in the last few days, she was still somewhat… single minded. Spike honestly didn’t even know if his own desire to use the ring had registered at all to her. If so, then why would she bother coming back? Maybe it would be better if she didn’t—if she just took the ring, went and beat up her father and never saw Spike again. That would drastically simplify things for everyone involved.
Even so, the ex-library seemed awfully quiet that night.
— ✶ —
Twilight was in the middle of rereading one of her old books on applied theoretical magics when Luna found her.
“Aha! So this is indeed where you have holed yourself up,” Luna remarked, her head poking out from under the tarp roof into Twilight’s makeshift library. After some brief shimmying, the lunar princess spread her wings and glided down into the center of the room, which had only gotten cozier with the addition of several rugs, lamps and other creature comforts.
Twilight looked up from her book and blinked at her marefriend. A second glance through the stars confirmed that, yes, it really was that late, and then the content of Luna’s greeting finally registered. Twilight’s ears folded back in embarrassment. “…Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to make you come looking for me.”
Luna shook her head as she paced around the room inspecting it. “Neigh, it was no great difficulty. I knew that you were to organize one of these towers today, and the light from your lamps are quite clear from the sky. I must say, this is quite nice. It feels… different in some nebulous way than my attempt at a temporary domicile.”
“Your attempt was a rock with a hole in it,” Twilight deadpanned, though her smirk quickly broke through it. “Actually, you’re not imagining it. I poured a lot of magic into the area. It’s pretty much saturated with… me, I guess. It’s had some… unexpected effects.”
“Oh?” Luna said, idly running a hoof over one of the bookshelves. “It does feel lived in, now that you mention it, and not dissimilar from the site of the old castle after you erased it from being. Were you practicing with your earth pony magic, then?”
Twilight chewed nervously at her bottom lip. She did promise herself that she would talk to Luna about it. “That’s the thing. I’m not actually sure.”
Luna raised an eyebrow at that and waited for an explanation.
“Well… see for yourself,” Twilight said, then she clapped her front hooves together and a couch flashed into being underneath Luna, bouncing her up to make room for it.
Luna opened her mouth, closed it, tested the cushion underneath her with a wiggle and blinked. “I admit, I wouldn’t have expected you to explore Applejack’s suggestion that you would have the other half of Discord’s powers so soon.”
“Yeah, well…” Twilight vacillated, then went on to explain about her dream, exploring other ponies’ dreams, dream magic, her concerns about the similarity to Discord’s magic, hiding her experimentation from Spike, then finally her success and being broadsided by the obvious connection to earth pony magic.
As she was wrapping up the story of her day, Luna shook her head and sighed. Twilight felt herself shrinking inwards at the awkward silence and was taken by surprise when a milky white glow of magic lifted her up and deposited her with Luna on the couch, where she was summarily engulfed in a warm, feathery hug. “You worry too much.”
Slowly, Twilight began to relax. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
— ✒ —
Spike was only an early riser inasmuch as he was generally the first person in the house to get up and start the day, which wasn’t much of a challenge when those people were Twilight or Ember. Compared to actual morning people like Applejack, though, he practically slept through half the day, so given the opportunity of an empty home, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to sleep in a bit.
He should have known better.
The second time Spike awoke, it was to the sound of giggling. At first, he thought the sound must be some sort of bird that had decided to spend the morning just outside his window. Of all the great many sounds that Spike had woken up to over the years, giggling had not yet made the list. Twilight was not prone to giggling, nor had Ember been. In fact, out of all of Twilight’s friends the only real giggler in the group was Pinkie Pie, and like most ponies, Spike had the common sense not to risk sleeping in her vicinity.
And yet there was giggling.
From more than one pony.
Actually, come to think of it, there was one collection of gigglers that he knew, and he hadn’t heard of them causing any problems recently so they were overdue: the Cutie-Mark Crusaders.
Maybe if he ignored them, they’d go away?
On second thought, the giggling didn’t sound like the Cutie-Mark Crusaders. It sounded cute, but less… squeaky, and it seemed to be coming from above him.
Eventually, it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, so he rolled over onto his back, raised his arm to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted at the shapes surrounding his bed.
There were five of them, tall and… slender? Slowly, Spike’s eyes adjusted to the light and they came into focus.
…
…
So this was one of those dreams. Odd, he didn’t feel like he was dreaming, but it was more likely than waking up to a tall, sexy Ember and four similarly jaw-droppingly beautiful friends. Really, that proved it right there. Ember? Friends? As if that could happen.
With a huff, Spike turned over again, pulling the blanket over his shoulder.
Odd. Suddenly his tail felt cold, and it was accompanied by another round of giggling. Annoyed, Spike craned his neck to see what was up with his blanket. On closer inspection, it seemed to have shrunk, along with his bed, the room and—okay, he wasn’t stupid, even at this time of the morning. It was him that had changed. He uncurled, sat up in bed and got a good look at himself.
He was… He looked… good? He was as lithe and wiry as the girls were svelte and curvy. There wasn’t a single hint of baby fat on him and his stubby little arms seemed to have shot out like weeds. Just stretching his arm out in front of him gave him a feeling almost like vertigo.
The giggling continued, and this time he noticed that it was heralded by chittering whispers behind delicate clawed hands. Ember was not participating, preferring instead to just stand there with her arms crossed, looking smug. If nothing else, he felt a little vindicated over his earlier conclusion that she wasn’t the giggling type.
Finally, he realized what they were giggling about. They were looking at him. And giggling. Was he… did he look as sexy to them as they did to him, or was it the other way around? Were they laughing at him? He didn’t know how to feel, and he didn’t like it. Suddenly, he felt very self-conscious and reached for his blanket to cover him up. It didn’t do the job very well, which only triggered another round of giggles.
This wasn’t how he’d expected things to go when he’d suggested that they steal the Ring of Ashmund.
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I really have to apologize. For the last few months, I've been really feeling down about this story and considering some pretty significant rewrites, possibly to the extent of outright removing the subplot of Twilight not being allowed to build her own damn house. I'm no longer considering that, though I do intend to do a strong editing pass on the whole thing, and possibly add another chapter to the beginning to start things off on a better footing.
All that, I had decided at the beginning of the month, and I can blame nothing but my own laziness and the busy nature of the season for the fact that I waited until the last moment to actually write. Unfortunately, when that last moment finally came, I ran into computer troubles, resulting in this 4,500 word update instead of the usual 10,000. For that, I apologize, though I fully intend to have another 5-10k done by the end of the month. 15k is a pipe dream, but wish me luck anyway.
Ah, I'm sorry you'd been feeling down about the story; glad it sounds like you're feeling more positive about it now.
Ah, and sorry you had such difficulties getting the chapter written.
And don't feel too bad about the shorter chapter; I still enjoyed the words that were here, and I'm kind of a little buried in a backlog of holiday-posted chapters to get to at the moment already. :D
Good luck! :)
Oh spike I have a bad feeling about your new look Lol
Decided to let some chapters build up before reading this sequel and so far it's great, i like the interaction between spike ember and luna and twilight so far in chapter 1. can't wait to read the rest and more later on.
Ah ha ha, I was just thinking to myself, "It's Christmas, time for a new Sharing the Night chapter!", but then I remembered it was completed and wondered if the tradition would transfer over. And it did! A lovely Christmas present as always, thank you Cast-Iron Caryatid. Merry Christmas.
Great chapter :)
I'm guessing that Ember discovered that the ring, like many wearable magic items, resizes itself to fit the wearer. Then she could literally just walk off with it. As for why she put it on Spike and brought a wing of dragons to ogle is, as they say, the question.
Dat cliff hanger ending...
Glad to see more of this universe!
10003756
My guess is Ember realized the Dragon Empire would have to be on good terms with Equestria and used the ring to make Spike, the top pony expert, into the Emperor.
derpicdn.net/img/2018/3/26/1691266/large.png
10004636
That part I get. Why she did it in his sleep and brought some randos in to watch...
Give it up for the Ember and Spike vaudeville routine, folks!
10004670
Power's less interesting if no one's around to see it.
Also, she might just be into that.
Well, at least that’s one problem taken care of....
You don't win arguments against bacon. You don't even try.