> Always Faithful
>  by BlueColton
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Vengeance
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Always Faithful


It was called a Rage of Dragons.
I am the Dragon King, the most feared of my kind, the leader of a storm of destruction that has swept over all of Equestria. My wings spread the flames of my fury, burning all before me. I am death incarnate. I am the end of all things.
I am angry.
Fire spewed from my mouth like an enraged serpent. Towns. Cities. Castles. Nothing was spared the fury of my vengeance. There is not a creature in this or any other world that truly understands the meaning of the word. To ponies, that detestable species whom I was once content to leave alone, it was but an act of retribution. To dragons, it is the very blood that runs through our veins, so hot that we are able to bring it forth in a cone of perpetual annihilation. It is a hunger that devours all in its path and I, the Dragon King, am but its jaws.
Equestria burns below me. Equestria burns above me. The heavens themselves tremble before my passing. My kin rally to my call. They too have grown tired of this pestilence of four-legged vermin who have dared to call themselves the masters of this world. The equines are led by a princess so vain, so confident in her intelligence and magical ability, that it sickens me to think we once broke bread.
I will kill her. She is the cause of all this, not I. I may have summoned forth the Rage, but she had summoned mine. Her betrayal was absolute. She, in her arrogance, thought herself above reprisal. She did not think there was any in all the world that could defy her. And why would there be? She was an alicorn, a creature of unsurpassed power.
My lips curl into a predatory smile. She has no idea what true power is. I, too, am an immortal—a direct descendant of the primal dragons who had witnessed the birth of this world and countless others. In me runs the blood of beings who had witnessed the creation of the universe itself. I could survive in the vacuum of space. I could slumber beneath the deepest ocean…and have. My strength did not diminish with age for with each passing century I only grew stronger.
While that little alicorn surrounded herself within the confines of luxury, I had been preparing. My whole life had been leading to this moment. The traitor who had taken everything from me could never know what I had been through to become the god I am now. Like all great things, I had started small. Now, I am a living mountain, a force of nature…I am the Dragon King…and my vengeance has come at last.
My form darkens the sky over Canterlot. The sound of my wings drives the inhabitants into a mad dread. This city was once the shining beacon of hope for an entire species. Now it will be the tomb of my most hated enemy. I open my mouth, unleash a roar that shakes the earth to its foundations. My dragon-kin rally to me. They heed my every command the way a leaf would the pull of the wind. With but a single gesture I send them forth on a mission of death. A thousand beating wings fan the flames of a burning nation as we begin our final assault.
Of course the equines fight back. They are nothing else if not tenacious. They meet my legions head-on, hoof to claw, horn to tooth, magic to fire. The skies over Canterlot become a sickening mosaic of burned and rendered bodies, of disemboweled ponies and pot-marked dragons. They both die by the scores, by the hundreds…more.
Then she appears.
The princess. The alicorn.
The traitor.
What she did to me could never be forgiven. As I watch her spear dozens of my kind with magical arrows, I cannot help but be reminded of why I hate her so much. She and those like her once spouted equality and friendship, but it was all a lie. I was there, a long time ago, when everything I loved was destroyed.
I watched my world die in a haze of magical fire…a sacrifice, the traitor-princess had told me. the death would ensure the survival of many, so I had been told. I didn’t care about the many. I only cared about the one. When she died, everything that I believed good in the world had died with her. I was too weak to do anything about it now. No more.
I was the Dragon King. I had slumbered for centuries so that I could grow in size. I exposed myself to the pressures of space, the sea, and the earth to harden my body. I fought the giants of the north and the south to become stronger. I learned the ancient ways of my kin from the last of the Elders. I trained and fought and endured—so much had I endured—and, most importantly, I waited until the traitor-princess had grown complacent. Then, I gathered my kin into a Rage not seen since the beginnings of the world. Fitting that a Rage would be its ending as well.
She was strong, that alicorn. She slew my kin with a fury befitting a dragon. Her wings spread, her horn ablaze, she fought on. It was a magnificent final stand.
Enough was enough.
Roaring, my kin took notice and reared away, giving their king enough room to challenge the alicorn. She looked up just as I folded my wings and dived. Only an alicorn princess would dare to challenge a dragon head-on, least of all the Dragon King. 
We clashed in a spectacle of lights. Though I was many times her size, a lion to a mouse, she was still able to hold her own against me. I battled a creature who had spent millennia perfecting her art. She was strong, of that there could be no doubt. I felt the sting of her magic missiles. My diamond-hard skin was penetrated in several places. I felt my blood leaving my body, creating a crimson rain that showered the earth. More than once she came very close to striking at my heart. Her cries of rage were deafening. Like unleashed thunder, she became a living hell-storm. Never in all of Equestria had there been the like.
I hardly noticed.
Defying all logic, I moved faster than my size would bely. My tail moved with the speed of a flying arrow, stabbing at the traitor-princess. She avoided me easily enough, but only because I wanted her to. Now that I had gauged the strength of her attacks, fully confident in my armor’s ability to withstand anything she could throw at me, I put her on the defensive. While she was distracted, I flexed my wings. Spikes as long as javelins flew off like a swarm of angry insects. Like a black cloud they converged on the alicorn and she just barely erected a shield to protect herself. The spikes bounced off harmlessly but they had done what I’d wanted, and she’d done what I’d expected.
That magical barrier created a nice, solid target to hit. With nothing but my immense strength behind it, my talon came crashing down upon it. She screamed, still shielded by her barrier, plummeting down towards Canterlot. I could hear the anguished cries of her people as their god fell from heaven. The city trembled as she left a massive crater in the heart of what had once been the palace. Several ponies rushed to her aid. My kin devoured them. There would be no disturbances. She was mine! 
I landed at the foot of the crater. She traitor-princess slowly got up. She was hurt but far from beaten. Good, I thought. Don’t make this too easy for me. I want to make you suffer. Back when I had been young and foolish, I’d hesitated when I should have acted. That mistake had cost the one I cherished so much her life. I pledged to never make that mistake again.
Spitting blood, the princess glared raw hate into my eyes.
She was trying to unsettle me. That would not happen. Not again. This time I would not hesitate. I unleashed my dragon fire at the same time she fired her magic burst. Our two energies collided, devastating every building around us. She put everything she had into that attack. Everything. Her people were counting on her to win. She was their only hope of salvation.
I had my vengeance. In that split second when our blasts connected, I saw her again. My best friend. My love. My everything. Howling like some maddened demon, I put more into my attack than a thousand dragons could hope to commit in a thousand lifetimes. My fire enveloped the traitor-princess. She put up another shield, but it was no use. Like bits of stone being chipped away, it caved under my fire. Soon there would be nothing left.
She screamed as bits of my fire licked at her tender flesh. I pressed the attack, stepping forward as my fire kept flowing out of me like I were a burst dam.
Finally, I stopped. The traitor-princess stood on wobbly legs. Her fur was burned in several places, exposing seared flesh and bone. Her mane was almost completely gone. She looked up as my shadow encompassed her trembling form.
“Look at me,” I demanded, my voice shaking the ground. I bored my eyes into her body, as if trying to make her combust just by looking at her. I lowered my head so as to smell her charred flesh. “Look upon the face of vengeance!”
In a voice that was barely above a whisper, the traitor-princess said, “I did what I had to do…for Equestria. She knew that.” Slowly, the alicorn looked into my eyes. “Is this how you show your loyalty, by destroying her home?”
Feeling a tightness in my chest I knew to be more than rage, I said, “Our home was being together.” There was a tremor to my voice as I spoke those words. It hurt so much even after all these centuries. “When she died, I died along with her.”
“She gave her life for Equestria!”
“NO!” I boomed. “I knew her better than anyone. She died because you were too cowardly to make the sacrifice yourself.”
“Is that why you killed the one I love?” She asked me with tears in her eyes. “Your first victim?”
“Victim? She was just as guilty as you. They all were. Every last one of them.”
The traitor-princess shook her head. “This…is not…the way…”
“You’re right,” I said. “This is the way to hell.” In a blur, my hand clamped down on the alicorn. I lifted her up toward my mouth, my jaws opening.
“Stop!” The traitor-princess pleaded. I could feel her struggling to escape her fate. “This is not what she would have wanted. Don’t do this…Spike!”
Her final words were lost in a crunch of bone and blood. I savored the taste of Celestia in my mouth, relishing every anguished twitch as her body attempted to escape. Being an immortal I knew she could never die, thus she would wallow in perpetual agony as my stomach acids ate away at her for all time. Thinking of this, I smiled as I swallowed.
“For you, Twilight,” I said, my whisper a powerful current of wind that parted the smoke before me. “Even in death, I will always be your faithful assistant.” I looked up at the sky, choked in clouds so thick that the sun would not penetrate for ages. “Always faithful.”