Dragon Magic

Source

Adult Spike is trying to work out exactly how dragon magic works, and after he expresses frustration at not being able to use the only text ever written on the subject, King Thorax, his boyfriend decides to find it for him.

The journey takes him to the Crystal Empire, where the author once lived, but finding secrets from before Sombra's Reign is not easy, as memory and trauma obscure everything.

Written for the 2022 M/M Shipping Contest, it ended up a bit less shippy than I'd hoped, but hey, I wrote something!

Chapters (2)

Comments ( 7 )

Viewing 1 - 50 of 7
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Tangerine Blast

Tangerine Blast #1 · Dec 7th, 2022 · 4 · 2 · Lost Gold (Optional Chapter) ·

Yeah! SpikexThorax let's go!

LucidTech

LucidTech #2 · Dec 7th, 2022 · 3 · 2 · Lost Gold (Optional Chapter) ·

What a nice story! I liked the parallels between Spike and Thorax's relationship and Leafglitter and Lantern's, felt like a nice through-line.

AmorphousFurrySnakeThing

AmorphousFurrySnakeThing #3 · Dec 7th, 2022 · 3 · 2 · Lost Gold (Optional Chapter) ·

11443525
I'm glad you liked it. That's what I was going for, so I'm happy it worked!

Bicyclette

Bicyclette #4 · Feb 13th, 2023 · 1 · 1 · Main Story ·

"Well, I was working on a Four Ear Transform for the piezo resonance in different bones..."

hehe always love these ponifications. Four Ear is very in keeping with the canon Haycartes

"Spike asked?" Thorax's heart sank. Of course Spike had thought of this, he was brilliant.

aww, Spike is a researcher!

"I...I wanted to ask about..." he stammered
"Something that shadow bastard did?"

hehe love the forthrightness of age

The citizen records weren't long on physical details, and whatever bureaucrat had been tasked with filling in Lantern's had clearly felt that 'is a dragon' would cover most identifying eventualities,

aww the effects of a ponycentric Society…

His hopes began to fade as minutes in the garden passed. Though 'Lantern' drew no small amount of attention, none of it brought recognition, even to his straining empathic senses, at least not until a wash of emotion crashed over the disguised changeling, carried by a grieving wail.
hope fear love lust loss self-pity pain horror worry guilt grief recognition panic pain
Thorax didn't hear the gardener sobbing behind him from the ground. He was too busy falling himself, drowning in the emotional torrent, flickers of green flame burning away his disguise in patches, until his overwhelmed empathy finally gave out and his tortured mind sought refuge in unconsciousness.

ooh love this use of Changeling abilities, and the illustration of the tradeoff

When he woke, his eyes brought him only one message: 'Pink!'
He blinked, and managed to bring the Princess of Love into focus, along with the rest of the room where he'd apparently been brought and laid out on a bed.

hehe that is indeed what looking at Cadance would give you

"Understandable. Now." Her warm smile shifted tenor slightly, and suddenly seemed to have an awful lot of teeth. "Why are you traumatising my little ponies?"

always love it when the princesses use the phrase “my little pony” it is always so great

Spike nuzzled his friend, dragon-warmth chasing away the chill of the Frozen North. "You found more than I did. And you did it for me. Even if this is a dead end, I still appreciate it."

aww, mystery-solving boyfriends!

How dare you steal that face, parasite! Lantern turned his head, crunching down on a crystal spire and swallowing it with a terrible grinding and an inhalation that dragged the breath from the others.

and oof! since Lantern had passed the thousand years in real time this is definitely the conclusion he would have come to

"He still won't. The fire...I don't know exactly what it was meant to do, I only recognise about half the fuels, and understand half of them, but it needs changeling magic to fully burn. Without that component, it's harmless."

very useful tool to kill only Changelings though uh, idk how Thorax might feel about that haha

"What I tried... My research? Don't lie to me, dragons care only for their hoards."
"And changelings care only for their hunger. Until Spike took a chance on one that didn't."

augh love that connection! and the whole story leading up to this was an illustration of one of the things that makes this ship great, which is that Spike and Thorax are both non-pony outsiders that ponies knew little about and feared before the canon series. the parallel with the Leafglitter and Lantern ship is really great.

Bicyclette

Bicyclette #5 · Feb 13th, 2023 · 1 · 1 · Lost Gold (Optional Chapter) ·

Half-blind, Lantern staggered through the doors of the library. The end of days had come. A monster that could not be stopped had risen and all the world would fall beneath him. There was no hope of resistance. A pony would be crushed under the weight of it, would curl up to whimper and die. But a dragon's greed and spite are terrible things, and while he could neither stop nor escape the monster, he could deny it what was his.

love the way that this takes the idea of dragon greed and recontextualizes it as a positive thing

He was alone in the Frozen North.

and oof. thank you for this glimpse into more of their story, which could be told for dozens of more chapters!

Vivid Syntax

Vivid Syntax #6 · Feb 14th, 2023 · 1 · 1 · Main Story ·

What a great story! It was a fun adventure that covered a lot of ground, and I like the direction you took with Spike and Thorax. The ending felt a bit rushed - it would have been great to see more emotional payoff for the two of them - but it wrapped up the main story nicely. Great work!

The Sandwich Guardian