Spike had always had a pivitol roll in the survival of ponies, as his simple existance pushed forward anything and everything the world over. His dreams of ponies, of sun, and sky. His dreams of rocks and water.
The static whispered to him. It spoke of power, indefinite and unbeatable. He’d stand over the likes of Discord, Celestia, and Luna. Twilight and Cadence would be nothing in comparison. They spoke of greatness, destruction, and creation.
Spike typically didn’t dream at all, in fact, he slept like a dead man most of the time. The reality of the situation was, he worked hard for pretty much the entire day and, in terms of dragons, he was barely a fledgeling at best. His wings had only grew in about a year ago. Even Smoulder was almost six years older than he was. (Despite the fact that by pony standards he was literally an adult. He was 20 frickin years old.)
Maybe I’m getting off topic. Point is, he worked hard, and he slept hard to reflect that.
The static whispered to him. It spoke of power, indefinite and unbeatable. He’d stand over the likes of Discord, Celestia, and Luna. Twilight and Cadence would be nothing in comparison. They spoke of greatness, destruction, and creation.
They spoke of sea and sky.
They spoke of earth and stars.
Of demons and gods.
Phoenixes and dragons, snakes and birds.
He dreamt of rocks and water.
He woke up.
He didn’t remember his dream. The dream.
A dream of rocks and water.
“Good morning Spike!” Twilight greeted him as he walked down the castle stairs. He yawned in tandem with his “Good morning Twilight”. He grabbed a few pieces of toast and prepared to leave out the door when he was stopped by an incoming Pinkie Pie. Or, rather than being stopped, he was sent flying back into the castle with Pinkie, and was knocked flat on his back.
“Sorry Spike, I just really wanted to tell Twilight something and- Hey, are your eyes different colors?” He quirked an eyebrow at the inquiry. He shook his head and stood up.
“Pinkie, not to be rude, but I think I would remember if my eyes had changed colors. Besides, even if they had, it probably wouldn’t matter that much.” Pinkie Pie shrugged, and immediately ran off to go talk to Twilight about whatever it was she initially wanted to talk to her about. Spike sighed, and grabbed the map he’d been given to find his way to the Changeling Kingdom.
He had a long trip ahead of him, and he was not looking forward to it.
Okay, maybe just a bit, but that was just because he was going Thorax, who, despite any and all teasing on Twilight and Starlight’s part, he did NOT have a crush on.
Okay, maybe a little, but that’s besides the point.
As soon as he stepped outside Spike found himself with what he would have described as a minor headache at the time. It was a consistent buzzing in the back of his head, a deeper version of the sound you get when you turn the TV on an empty channel. Static with a lot of base. He rubbed his temples for a brief moment before continuing on to his walk towards the Train Station.
He never noticed the puddles that occasionally formed where he stepped.
Or his left eye as it got progressively more blue as the day went on.
The gems that trailed him as he trekked through the badlands.
Or the right eye that became a bronze color that shone in the bright light of the desert.
He was supposed to meet up with Thorax outside the Changeling Hive.
“He-ey! Thorax, I’m here!” He cried out from the field that was left to grow after Chrysalis’ defeat. He looked around, and saw the many bushes of a peculiar looking fruit that he’d never seen before. It was red with blue spots, and slightly ooblong, with some flowering buds having a purple flower. He picked one up, and was about to try it when Thorax himself landed in front of him. He promptly dropped the fruit, and ran over to give the changeling a hug.
Spike would be, in the midst of any normal sized pony, happy to have grown an extra foot in height over the past year, but in the presence of Thorax, who was slightly taller than Celestia herself, he wished he’d had a couple extra inches. Even if it was just his spines, so at the very least those were past Thorax’s chest, unlike the rest of him.
“Sorry I’m a bit late Spike, a minor disagreement cropped up between few changelings over what type of vine was growing in the hive. I managed to sort it out for now, but it might start back up later,” He shook his head and sighed. “Those two are really stubborn…” Thorax trailed off as he noticed the bushes. “Those… were not here before.” Spike turned to see what he was looking at, before realizing that he was talking about the bushes.
“Huh… They were here when I got here.” Thorax levitated the fruit up to his face and hesitantly sniffed it before taking a cautious bite, ready to spit it out at the first sign of issue.
“It tastes… like nothing. Literally nothing.” He swallowed, before handing the fruit to Spike, who proceeded to take a bite… from the exact same location Thorax had. Spike’s face scrunched up for a second before he threw the fruit off into the bushes.
“I don’t know what I was expecting. You’re right. It tastes like nothing.” He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but the persistent static in the back of his mind grew stronger.
“Anyways, Spike I had meant to ask if you wanted to come with me to the Crystal Empire for a week or two? I got the invitation from Shining Armor a couple days ago, so I wanted to ask you if you wanted to come with.” Spike noticed what seemed like a faint dusting of purple on Thorax’s cheeks.
“Why not just ask in the letter you sent?”
“...I wanted to ask you face to face. I haven’t seen you in a while so…” Thorax started looking intently at one of the bushes, and the purple on his cheeks got slightly deeper. Spike smiled, and cheerfully replied,
“Sure I’d love to go with you!” Thorax turned back, slightly startled, but still, he smiled back.
Neither of them noticed the bushes becoming trees, and the fruit changing color as they walked back to the hive.
Spike ended up staying the night, after they had decided to go to the Crystal Empire in the morning. Unlike the night before, Spike fell into his usual, dreamless sleep.
One changeling, somewhere in the hive, dreamed of static and waves. Of rocks and water.
And when he woke he saw the shadows as they moved and contorted.
It rolled in the distance, although, judging by the frequency of each lightning strike and subsequent boom, it wouldn’t be long before the storm was upon them.
He had two choices, wait until the storm was over to venture out for the Crystal Empire, or take a chance on the storm not being all the way here yet and start heading there now.
Waiting was definitely the safer option at first glance, since they wouldn’t have to worry about decreased visibility from rain, or any mishaps with some form of lightning. On the other hand, they would most definitely arrive at nighttime, something Thorax had desperately wanted to avoid. He sucked at flying in the dark.
“Spike. Spike, wake up.” The dragon stirred and sneezed a small burst of flame in his sleep. Cute. He shook him lightly again, and this time he opened his eyes.
“Thorax? What’s up?” Thorax shook his head and pulled Spike out of the bed.
“It’s about to start storming. We’ve got fifteen minutes before it really starts if I had to guess.” Thorax grabbed his saddlebag and quickly fastened it using his magic. “I think we should head out now if we want to make it there before the middle of the night, and avoid the storm.” Spike yawned one more time before stretching and spreading his wings.
Thorax smiled and hoped they would make it.
The storm was literally a malevolent force. Or at the very least, it certainly felt that way.
It seemed like it was almost chasing them down, which, while quite odd, would not be totally unbelievable. The faster they flew, the faster the storm came upon them, and it seemed to be generating a white noise sound, akin to a powerful static buzz. Eventually, they were out of energy and were overcome by the storm, and relented to simply fly to a nearby cave and wait out the rest of the thunderstorm.
Unfortunately, as they’d not anticipated being stuck there, they had no wood to start a fire, and only a few things they might have been able to use to start one. In the end, Spike used an old comic book as some kindling for his fire breath, and used a few rocks lying around to contain the fire and protect it from the rain.
“This stinks. We leave out early to avoid the storm, and here the heck it is,sitting directly on top of us.” Thorax sighed and shook his head. “Sorry I woke you up for nothing Spike. Looks like we have to wait it out any way.” Spike offered a small smile, and moved slightly closer to Thorax to pat him on the shoulder.
“It's alright. Not like you could’ve predicted what would happen. Besides, at the very least, it should pass before night time. And even if it doesn’t, my fire lasts for a while, so we’ll be fine either way.” He produced a piece of paper and a quill to write with, enchanted with a Twilight-approved infinite ink spell from his coat pocket, and began to write.
Dear Twilight,
I hope you’re doing well as I may not be home for a week or so. Thorax received an invitation from Shining Armor and Cadence to spend some time in his old room at the Crystal Palace, and he invited me to come along with him.
We were stopped on our way there by a mysterious storm that seems to be almost following us. As of me writing this, we’re waiting for the storm to pass or dissipate within a cave. If you could, maybe pack me a few things and send them to the palace for me? I didn’t pack anything ahead of time.
Love, Spike
He looked over after sending the letter off to Twilight, and saw Thorax looking quite downtrodden. Spike frowned and tried to figure out what to do to comfort him.
He clearly blamed himself for their getting stuck in the storm anyway, so trying to convince him otherwise would just be a waste. A hug would do little to reassure him, and despite how much he enjoyed them, he didn’t seem to be in the mood for jokes. Spike rubbed his temples with an irritated growl. The annoying static was back. It seemed to be getting louder and louder the longer the storm went on. If only the stupid rain would just go away.
Suddenly, the static reached peak loudness, causing him to fall over, completely debilitated by the sound. He desperately grabbed at his head, wanting the noise to end. He was acutely aware of Thorax shaking him, but he found himself unable to respond in anything but choked gasps. After about twenty seconds of the static, it began to fade away to the subtle background noise it was before, leaving a very disoriented Spike to pick himself up with help from Thorax. He opened his eyes to see what appeared to be a completely clear sky outside the cave.
“Thorax, look! The storm’s over!” The dragon began to walk towards the cave entrance before stumbling and coming to a stop. Thorax walked over to help him steady himself before responding.
“Yeah, it was really weird. All of a sudden, you fell over and I started hearing this weird buzzing and then the storm just disappeared. Are… you okay?” Spike nodded and took a few more steps, finally having refound his balance. He stamped out the fire and picked up the “burned” comic book to throw it away, before he noticed something. The comic book was entirely fine.
Despite minor ash on the cover, the book was exactly as it had been before he set it on fire. Not even the edges were singed. He took only a brief moment to note that he needed to test that again at a later date, before walking back to the cave entrance to continue the flight towards the Crystal Empire with Thorax.
If only he’d checked the contents of the book before pocketing it. The spells inside may have been a tremendous help for what comes next.
The flight the rest of the way was filled with idle chatter and immense speculation on Spike’s part. The book that had refused to burn but now seemed to be… whispering to him? He didn’t know if Thorax could hear it too, but if his ears twitching in different directions like he was trying to pick up noise, alongside the occasional reach upward to check if there was something in his ear was anything to go off of, he was probably hearing it too. He finally relented and pulled out the book to check what was going on, before he was shocked by a sudden and abrupt drop in temperature. He quickly stuffed the comic book back into his pocket before going for a landing. It wasn’t worth the extra speed to risk flying in the eternal snowstorm. Especially when they’d been warned beforehand that it was particularly malicious this time of year.
“Stay close Spike, we definitely don’t want to get separated. I don’t think either of us would last long in this cold…” He was cut off by a particularly strong, frigid breeze forcing an involuntary shiver out of the changeling. The shadowy, yet reflective light of daytime in the furious snow had an interesting effect that Spike hadn’t noticed at first. It caused a slight shift in the hue of the changeling’s carapace, changing the gaudy, neon colors to a more muted, pastel version that was much more appealing. It also served to accentuate the changeling’s handsome, sharp facial features, much in contrast to Spike’s rounder facial features. Standing next to Thorax, admiring him in this way, he only served to drive himself further into the hopeless affection he’d garnered for the Changeling King over all this time, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.
Wasn’t his damn fault Thorax was damn good-looking.
“Yeah, I get you,” He squinted, able to make out the magical glow of the Crystal Empire as being relatively close by. “Luckily, we landed pretty close by the Empire. If we move quickly, we won’t have to spend much more time in the storm. Let’s go.”
They trudged through the heavy snowfall. Despite how much was falling all around them, not much more seemed to be added to the amount already on the ground. The real problem was the snow that whipped and frenzied around them. Like a raging ocean, the frigid snow and wind crashed over them, each wave pushing them one step closer to freezing. Unfortunately, they’d come to overestimate the distance between their landing place and the Empire, but they had almost made it.
Key word: almost.
Just as they reached the final stretch between them and the warmth and safety of the Crystal Empire, Thorax collapsed, breathing shallow as rapid, unceasing shudders tore through him. Spike knelt down next to him, eyes going wide as he frantically tried to figure out some way to help Thorax. Lighting a fire wasn’t a good idea, the wind would put an end to that quickly. Then he heard it. The explosion of static once more. An outward burst of force launched in time with Spike’s shout. He covered his eyes as shapes danced violently in his peripheral vision and steadily moved inward. He could make out voices in the storm of static. But, they slowly dissipated. The noise calmed down, and he opened his eyes. The sting of cold winter air no longer nipped at his face, because put quite simply, there wasn’t any more wind. The furious blizzard had evaporated within a mile radius. Thorax was steadily coming to, and Spike sat by him to help him up.
“What happened…? Weren’t we in the middle of a blizzard?” Spike shrugged. He kept looking around. He could still see some snow, but it was a good distance away. And it didn’t seem like it was moving any closer. “Well, in that case, we oughta sit here for a moment. I’m still freezing. Hopefully Shining Armor and Cadance aren’t too angry with us for being late…” Spike pat him on the back.
“I doubt they’re angry with us. If anything they’d be worried. I’m guessing they sent Shining Armor to come find us.” As if on cue, the shape of a pony moved towards them from the edge of their field of view.
A couple of minutes passed and Shining Armor finally reached them.
“There you two are. What happened over here? One minute it’s completely frigid and then three steps later it's 70 degrees and sunny.” Spike stood up and stretched.
“Not much to tell you, I’m not really sure what happened. We were walking through the snow when all of a sudden Thorax collapsed. I started hearing this really loud buzzing, and my eyes started getting really foggy, and when I could finally see again, it was like this.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here. I’ll have Cadance try to teleport us in.” His horn glowed a different pink than usual. Somewhere in between his and Cadance’s magic. A bolt of light shot back in the direction of the Crystal Empire, and after a couple of seconds, the world folded around them, and they landed inside the Crystal Palace.
“There you all are! We were so worried for a moment. Before I’d even asked him to, Shining was gearing up to go after you two.” Cadance gave Spike a hug, despite his being almost taller than her at this point. “Twilight sent enough stuff over for a few days, so you should be fine for the time being.”
“Thorax, your room is the same as you left it. That raises the question though-” He turned to Spike. “-Do you want your own room, or do you just want to share a room with Thorax?”
Before he could even consider the other option, his brain moved ahead and made the decision for him.
“Sure, I’ll room with Thorax. It’ll be like that one time I stayed here for the weekend while Twilight went into deep cleaning mode.” Damnit brain, stop trying to be romantic in any way possible.
Still though, having already made his decision, he grabbed his stuff from Cadance, and followed Thorax up to his old room.
“How long do you think it’ll take for one of them to get tired of waiting and just admit it?” SHining whispered to his wife.
Cadance snorted. “I’ll bet you five bits it takes three days for Spike to break down.”
“You’re on. I’ll bet five on Thorax going down first. You’ve seen how emotional he gets.”
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.
Spike is a walking cataclysm, and Discord was well too aware of that fact.
The little dragon was a polite thing, generally speaking. He was raised by Twilight, so one would expect such. But, he was so blissfully unaware of what he was causing, and it made Discord horrendously nervous.
As of right now, the poor little dragon had two major power surges, one to get rid of the Anemoi, and one to save his changeling friend. And as far as Discord could tell, a third was on it’s way based on the timing of the other two. He was changing things around him in ways he wasn’t even aware of, and the worst part is, it was getting worse. The initial surge merely scattered the Anemoi, but the second one completely changed the ecosystem of the area where he surged, planting a tropic right in the middle of a frozen north. Discord had to fix that one in secret, didn’t want Twilight on his tail. Then he’d have to explain that she’d been raising a very polite, ancient super deity-spirit, reborn through means that Discord was not and did not want to be aware of.
The worst part was, it’s not as if he could do anything about it. Best he could do is hope Spike became aware of it, and learned to undo what he did. He wasn’t sure how long it would take before Spike’s little rewrites turned too big for even Discord.
So there he sat, among the clouds of the Frozen North, watching from the edge of the Crystal Empire. He watched as his clock ticked towards his best estimate for the next surge, four hours, and his face pulled into a nervous grimace.
He hoped Spike had gotten “the dream”. It was the only way he’d gained his control.
The Crystal Empire had some amazing cooks.
Even outside of the castle, there were a myriad of restaurants and diners that Spike was a decent fan of, but Cadence and Shining Armor somehow managed to balance a taste for the refined and fancy with food that actually tastes good. Likely because Shining Armor, despite being raised in Canterlot, went out of his way to eat at greasy, hole-in-the-wall places, and knew that fancy was usually pretty bad for food.
Spike ate with as much poise and proper etiquette as a starving bear, and made no attempts to remedy that fact, given that he was with friends and family.
That was one trope from Twilight’s series of romantic books that he hated. Why would you change your entire behavior to be with someone? Then they don’t like you, just some weird fabrication of you. He wasn’t going to switch up and start eating all proper because Thorax was there. Honestly, the Changeling King was possibly worse than Spike was. That said, he was eating noodles, a food that required a lot of effort to look proper while eating. It’s like trying to look proper while sucking on a smoothie straw that got something stuck in it. It’s not going to happen. In any case, while the two of them ate like they hadn’t eaten all day, which Spike realized they hadn’t around halfway through his meal, and promptly asked for more, Cadence tried to help Shining Armor get Flurry Heart to eat. Eventually, once they managed to get Flurry Heart to cooperate, Cadence turned on them.
“So,” She began. “Why are you two so hungry?”
“We did fly all the way here. Also, I don’t know if it’s possible to freeze off calories, but I feel like I definitely did.” Thorax said. Spike nodded in agreement, and once he swallowed his bite of food, he added on:
“Also, I don’t think we ate anything the whole way here. I’m pretty sure we skipped breakfast.” Thorax silently ‘oh’ed.
“That’s why you asked for more. Should I get something extra too? I feel pretty full, but I don’t know if that’ll be true in like three hours.” Spike shrugged.
“Grab a loaf of bread or something. Just keep it and see if you get hungry.” Thorax nodded, and called over one of the chefs.
“Well, what did you do for the few hours that you were gone?” Cadence asked. “We didn’t see you around the castle, so we thought you had gone out.”
“Nope.” Spike jabbed his thumb in Thorax’s direction. “He wanted to take a nap, and dragged me back when I was going to go to the library.” Cadence raised an eyebrow at him.
“So why didn’t you just go when he fell asleep?”
“For one thing, Thorax is the lightest sleeper on the planet.”
“That’s true,” Shining Armor interjected. “He used to wake up just from me walking past the door.” Thorax frowned at the accusation.
“You used to wear that loud armor everywhere. The clanking woke me up.” Shining Armor rolled his eyes.
“If it didn’t wake Flurry, it should not have woken you up.” Thorax pursed his lips and returned to his food.
“Number two, he decided to place himself on top of me, and even if he wasn’t such a light sleeper, I was not going to be able to drag myself out from under him without waking him up. And number three, do you really think I, of all people, would say no to a nap?” Cadence’s mouth quirked upward in a sort of smug smile for a fraction of a second, not long enough for Spike to catch it. Still she nodded, and Spike pushed his empty plates into a neat stack.
“Do you think it’s too late to go out?” Cadence shrugged.
“It depends on where you’re going. A theater’s probably still open, or maybe a few libraries.” Spike nodded, and dragged Thorax off.
Three hours. Three hours. Discord had considered moving into a better vantage point inside the empire itself, but he didn’t want to risk Cadence and Shining Armor becoming aware of his presence. They’d either inquire him much too heavily about why he was there, or the much better but still slightly scary option, ask him to play with Flurry Heart.
He tapped on his crystal ball. The thing was struggling to keep an eye on Spike, and Discord suspected it had something to do with his recent power awakening. He leaned in, trying to get a closer look, when the ball began fogging up, as if he’d started breathing on it. He backed off, but the fog didn’t dissipate. Lip curling in displeasure, he picked up the ball, and started vigorously rubbing it with his arm. He tapped on it a few more times, and nearly groaned out loud when the fog was replaced only by a pure purple. He stared at the clouds swirling higher above him, before he went wide eyed, snapping back to attention as he realized what that color was. He watched as what he now recognized as an eyelid opened to reveal a familiar green eye with a slitted pupil. The iris slowly faded into a dull blue, and Discord watched, in utter abject horror, as the Crystal Ball began melting in his hands. He looked back at his clock, and watched in fear as it accelerated.
From three hours to two.
And from two to one.
Only stopping at fifteen minutes.
Mouth drawn into a fearful grimace, and eyebrows knit in confusion, Discord flew off towards the Crystal Palace. As a matter of fact, he thought as he flew, it might very well be worth it to inform Cadence of what might awaken in her kingdom.
Spike squirmed lightly as he walked. He hated when it felt like he was being watched. He reached a hand up, and rubbed at his eye subconsciously, and breathed a sigh of relief as the feeling melted away.
Cadance stared at him, disbelief and mild disdain written all over her face.
“So, you expect me to believe that Spike is some super being capable of rewriting reality?” Discord groaned.
“Of course not, I expect you to understand that if I’m serious about something then it’s probably something you should worry about. I hate making sense, and I hate being serious, so if I’m both cohesive and not making jokes, then you should be worried.” Cadance blinked at him with half lidded eyes, still not believing him. Discord rolled his eyes, before snapping his fingers, and a very confused Shining Armor appeared, holding Flurry Heart.
“Discord? What are you-”
“What did you see when Spike and Thorax first arrived here?” Shining Armor furrowed his brow, thinking.
“It was like the snow had been sandblasted away for like a mile. It was sunny. It’s never sunny here.” Discord gestured wildly at Shining Armor, eyes wide. Cadance remained neutral, but her renewed interest showed in her slightly less lidded eyes and straightened posture.
“What does that prove?”
“Spike reset the area around where Thorax collapsed for around a mile! It nearly reached the empire, I had to go back and fix that area, because there would’ve been a single mile wide space where the frozen north turned into a tropical paradise!” Cadance’s eyes went wide, and for a moment Discord had hoped he’d finally gotten through.
“Thorax collapsed?! Is he okay?” Discord facepalmed.
“Yes, he is. Thanks to the elder god he managed to befriend turning the eNTIRE AREA INTO A TROPICAL PARADISE!” Discord rubbed at his temples, before checking his clock again. Ten minutes. He groaned out loud once more, before turning back to Cadance. “Look, we have maybe ten minutes until Spike causes another reality rewrite, and that’s merely my best estimate. That could change in moments, so we should leave now!” Cadance stared at him again, trying to ascertain if he was lying. Eventually, wasting precious seconds, she relented, sighing before standing up and stretching her wings.
“If you’re lying to me and taking me away from my husband, I will see to it that Fluttershy makes you sleep on the couch.” Discord gasped audaciously, appalled.
“We’re not married! ...Yet. I haven’t found the right ring.” Cadance shot Shining Armor a look, and Discord glared at her husband, who seemed to be fighting back an absolutely relentless case of the giggles.
The two took off, hoping to find Spike in the vast crystal empire before another surge.
“So you can digest anything?”
“Literally anything.” Thorax tapped his chin, thinking.
“Dirt?”
“Eaten it.”
“Wood?”
“The amount of pencils I’ve consumed is shameful.”
“Rubber?”
“Like better chewing gum.” Thorax’s eyes were wide, and he was absolutely perplexed.
“How about garlic?” Spike gave Thorax a look, only to realize that the Changeling was completely serious.
“You can’t eat garlic?” Thorax shook his head.
“Makes me break out and makes my chitin weak. Changelings can’t do garlic. Or chives.” Spike shook his head.
“That is awful. I am so sorry.” Thorax waved it off, but Spike was still in mild shock. Garlic was… well, garlic. It was a staple for ponies, and it’s one of the most common seasonings you could find. To not be able to eat garlic…
Well, Spike didn’t want to think about it.
The night air was cool, but not biting, and Spike took a deep breath through his nose. Coming out late was a good idea, even if they didn’t have much to do. The city was calm, and the crystal ponies, as willing as they were to charge Spike for autographs and things of the sort, were mostly in their homes and quiet. The street lights had long since gone on, and Spike and Thorax basked in the cool glow of the evening, simply enjoying their conversation, and each other’s presence.
“You know, you’re really bulking up.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I’m getting a lot more buff than I expected. I expected to grow more… pudgy y’know? I’ve always been kinda on the tubby side.” Spike furrowed his brow. “Actually, there was that one time I got really huge after a greed growth and I got really lanky.” Thorax turned to face him.
“Greed growth?”
“It’s like a built-in curse or something. If dragons take too much, we get super greedy and start growing really huge. I was like the size of Ponyville’s biggest building. Probably bigger. Apparently I didn’t even reach the limit, so I could’ve been bigger.” Thorax silently marveled, before continuing his stride.
“You know, dragons are really cool.” Spike snorted.
“Yeah, I guess we can be.” The two continued walking in comfortable silence, before stopping at a cafe, whose owner waved them in from the street corner. They each ordered simple drinks, not wanting to be up any later than they would need to be. They’d already been asleep for eight hours. The chances of them going to sleep any earlier than maybe four A.M. was miniscule. In any case, the conversation continued. “Still,” Spike picked up, “I think changelings are pretty cool too. If I could transform into anything, I’d probably be myself the least.” Thorax shook his head.
“Believe me, it’s not the best being something else for long periods of time. It feels… wrong. It’s like going through puberty, your body just feels like it’s not you.” Spike grimaced.
“Yeah, I guess that’s not much fun. Still is a pretty cool power though.”
Allow our protagonists to fade to the background, as we focus back on Cadance and Discord, desperate to find them before the clock strikes zero.
Or maybe, we focus on what’s going to trigger the rewrite instead.
The changeling twitched violently as he silently limped in the direction of his prey. The waves told him to come here. The static had forced his hand. He needed to be here. He had to attack so that the Lord may obtain his power.
The changeling retched, spitting a mouthful of corrosive acid onto the pavement. He had only a few minutes left. The pain was staggering, but the waves in his ears comforted him. It was alright. He would be free soon. It didn’t matter if he died. The Lord would ensure he lived on. It was promised.
He spat another mouthful of acid onto the floor. This one came with chunks. He lightly poked at his own underbelly, feeling the shifting of his dissolving innards as they tried to force themselves out.
He shambled along slightly faster.
His name would not matter, and his body would be returned to the shifting waves.
A comforting thought.
He came upon his target, the Lord and the lower with whom he’d taken interest. They weren’t looking in his direction. The window was open, and he had free reign to attack as he pleased.
He retched another mouthful of dissolving organs and acid, melting the ground in a bubbling pool of green. He stared back at the window, the king lower stared in his direction, horrified. He hurriedly grabbed the Lord’s attention, and with a violent twitch, the changeling jumped through the window.
Cadance was beginning to get worried.
Discord was devoted to his pranks, and she had no doubt he was willing to throw his power at anything for a prank. But he looked so utterly terrified, that she was beginning to worry he was telling the honest truth, and she was about to witness Spike changing the fabric of reality. It was a terrifying idea to say the least, the timid drake becoming a devastating force of reality warping magic.
Discord cried out suddenly, drawing her attention.
“Thirty seconds!”
She scanned the area around them, hoping to catch a glimpse of the two. She was rewarded with the sight of them, relaxing in a coffee bar. She sighed in relief, pointing them out to Discord, who cried out once more.
“What are you-” She followed his line of sight, mouth falling open as a limping, glowing changeling approached the window outside where the two sat. She watched in horror as it twitched and shook, spitting a mouthful of what looked like something corrosive onto the pavement. It twitched a few more times, drawing the attention of Thorax, who alerted Spike to its presence. The changeling jumped through their window, and Cadance dived towards it in time with Thorax’s scream.
The changeling struggled to rise from the ground, still twitching. Pieces of broken wood littered the floor around him, pieces of the table he’d broken jumping through the window. Thorax had backed into the wall, eyes focused in caution. The changeling was jittery and erratic in it’s movements, spitting up a mouthful of some mysterious green goo that bubbled and burned as it made contact with the tile floor. Its pale green eyes were squinted, and it grit its teeth as it rose, clearly in pain.
“Uh, Thorax, is this normal?”
“Not even close!” Spike gulped, and the changeling twitched violently, nearly falling back to the ground from the force. Thorax swallowed, and took a step forward. “What’s your name?”
“Long gone.” It spoke clearly despite what looked like a mouthful of goo and the- Thorax swallowed back bile as he realized in time with Spike, that the changeling’s tongue was disintegrating in its mouth. “I-I’m sorry. The waves c-ca-ca-called to me. I had to. Do not… do not... hate me.” One more violent twitch, and with a shake of his wings, the Changeling jumped at Thorax, expelling the full contents of his acid filled stomach at the changeling King. Thorax made to cover his eyes, and Spike flinched as the static in his head reached its peak. The world around him burned to ashes like a torched newspaper, and he saw the background.
An eternal cacophony of shifting squares of color, all mixing into meaningless greys and whites.
He blinked once. Then twice.
And the world began knitting itself back together.
Cadance barely reacted as the world around her disintegrated and fixed itself, entering the sort of tunnel vision akin to that a parent would get when their child was in danger. And, given the length of time that Thorax had lived with them, and the amount of time that she’d spent babysitting Spike over the years, wasn’t exactly incorrect. She dashed through the window with all the grace of an expert flyer, landing ready to cast whatever spell she might need to defend the two.
The sight she was greeted with caused her to recoil in a broad mixture of fear and confusion.
Spike looked like his hands had been bleached up to his elbows, and his typically soft, rounded spines had become wickedly pointy, and rather than one single ridge along his back, they had split into three separate dorsal ridges. Outside of being a generally unexpected transformation, it was made even worse by the air around him becoming something best described only as, well, aggressive. Her ears were assaulted by a violent sound akin to thousands of overlapping, consecutive static shocks.
The worst part is that it was only heard when she looked directly at him.
He looked up at her, and she averted her eyes, feeling every bit of her magical instinct screaming at her to not look him in the eye. Something would go horrifically wrong if she did, she knew it, and either it was the static whispers now worming their way into her ears the longer he stared at her How could she even tell he was staring she wasn’t even looking at him, or the affirmations of a wary Discord who instructed Thorax to do the same, she felt at least somewhat validated in being slightly wary, despite how horrible it made her feel.
“Alright, Spike, now I need you to-”
“Discord, what-what’s happening to me?”
“Stay calm, please. I don’t know how to describe this. Cadance, Spike is a visual learner, correct?”
“He has a near eidetic memory, yeah.”
“Okay, well, I ask you to avert your eyes, completely. Close them and ignore the whispers, please!” Cadance spared a quick glance at Thorax, who’d practically buried his head into the ground like a flamingo. Not a bad strategy. She mimicked him, planting her chin on the ground and wrapping her hooves over her eyes and ears.
If only it was completely effective.
The pressure in the room increased, and while covering her eyes did the job, her ears were filled with maniacal laughter, and whispers of everything horrible she could think of. She grit her teeth as tears tried to force their way through her closed eyelids, when suddenly most of the pressure in the room disappeared.
Then the rest disappeared. Discord’s lion paw reached down and pulled her arm off of her ears.
“You can open your eyes now.” His tone was soft, and less jovial than she’d ever heard him. Cadance’s initial instinct was to resist, but as of the past twenty minutes, Discord has become more trustworthy than he’d been since she’d known him, and the more rational part of her brain felt obligated to at least trust him to see this through. She reluctantly opened her eyes, and was greeted with a regular, very perturbed Spike. He had his arms wrapped around himself, and though he wasn’t crying, his eyes were wet with unshed tears, and despite any remaining apprehensions or fears, he was quick to pull him into the tightest hug she could muster. In the background, Discord made some sound of approval, but she didn’t think much of it.
“I’m sorry.” Cadance ignored the apology, and just pulled him in tighter. Eventually, Discord did interrupt, tapping on her shoulder. She looked up at him, and realized that he was holding something. A very translucent changeling egg.
“We have a lot to discuss.”
“So, you were telling the truth.” Cadance stared at Discord from across the table. The two of them were alone at the moment, Spike and Thorax having gone up to their room and Shining Armor having long since gone to sleep. Discord looked… is there a stronger word than exhausted? He looked so tired that given he stayed awake any longer he might’ve collapsed, and yet he was awake now, sipping away at a mugful of chocolate milk so as to answer Cadance’s questions. “What is Spike, exactly?”
“...All I can tell you is that he is not a dragon. It’s possible he never was one.” Discord sighed, and took another sip of his chocolate milk. “He’s… something. I’m mostly sure that he exists outside of our technical time and space, and created himself a mortal form because he got bored of watching. I did too, at one point.”
“So you’re like him?” Discord barked a laugh, with absolutely no humor.
“If I was like him, there would be no elements in the world strong enough to keep me in stone.”
Cadance’s mug shattered, and with a snap of Discord’s fingers, it reformed, liquid inside.
“You might want to hold off on levitating things. You’re tense, and no one wants you breaking things every couple of steps. In any case, technically, Spike and I underwent the same experience. Extraplanars who built a mortal form to see things from the inside. He did it differently though. It’s like he built himself specifically to have no recollection of his powers, abilities, and skills. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted himself to be nothing more than Spike and simply allow his power to fade away.”
“And it didn’t work.” It wasn’t a question. Just a clear simple statement.
He blinked with bloodshot eyes as he wandered the dark empty halls of the Crystal Palace. He didn’t even think he was looking for anything, more just a distraction from the much too old horror that was himself. Thorax had tried to keep him in bed, but the drake was having none of it, his mind wandering much too far for his body to simply stay in one place. So, he’d gotten up, and here he was, trudging through empty corridors guided only by his natural night vision and the few dimly lit crystal torches that lined the walls and bathed him and the halls in a warm orange glow.
He didn’t feel right.
It was an acute sensation that permeated all of his senses until it became nauseating to exist in his current skin. This body didn’t feel like his, and knowing what he knew about himself now, his biggest fear was that it wasn’t. That Spike the Dragon was a long gone spirit forced out of his own body by an invader, and what he was now was just the body with a different mind. It was a disgusting thought, and it served only to send shivers down his spine and worsen the feeling of wrongness that had settled into him down to the fingernails. He eventually came to a stop in front of the familiar doors of the dining hall, and stepped inside when he realized the lights were still on.
Inside the room sat Discord, staring at the door like he’d been awaiting Spike’s arrival for quite some time. He wordlessly gestured to one of the chairs at the table he was sitting at, and Spike stalked over to it, his movements sluggish for the jarring tiredness that had settled into his very soul since they’d returned from the cafe.
“How do you feel?” Discord greeted him softly, and Spike responded with a groan. Luckily, Discord was a good interpreter, and took the answer with a nod. “You should be sleeping. You’ve never done this before. You’re not like me, and you can’t throw your powers around without getting exhausted.”
“If I’m not like you then what am I?” Discord was silent for a moment, before simply responding,
“Something new.” Spike stared blankly at him with half-lidded eyes. “What? It’s true. You’re something entirely new, Spike.”
“So you don’t know?” Discord shrugged.
“I know some. You’re stronger than me. I know that at least.” Spike scoffed, rubbing at his temples.
“Where did I come from? Am I even a dragon?” Discord hummed, making the unsure gesture with his lion paw.
“You likely aren’t a dragon. Merely a very good mimic. We’ll see when you fully transform for the first time. Still, as for where you came from, likely the same place I did. Just in a different way.”
“...What would’ve happened if they looked at me when I was like that?” Discord pursed his lips, glancing at the not-drake apprehensively.
“They likely would’ve been driven insane until you could fix it.” Spike’s bloodshot eyes went wide. “Don’t worry, given your trigger it wouldn’t have taken long.”
“My trigger?” Discord nodded.
“The one thing that’s consistently caused you to activate your powers so far. Thorax being in danger.” Discord gave him a sly look, the type of thing he’d expect from Twilight.
OH SHIT.
“I need to tell Twilight about this don’t I?” Discord shook his head.
“Cadence and I will handle that. For right now, I recommend that you go to sleep.” Before Spike could even protest, Discord snapped his fingers, and Spike found himself wedged between Thorax’s front legs. Thorax roused near instantly, and Spike froze.
“Discord?” Thorax whispered sleepily.
“Yeah, Discord. I think I’m ready to sleep now.” Thorax didn’t respond more than a sleepy nod, and Spike was content with that, choosing to curl up into Thorax, and marvel at the fact that he wasn’t scared to be in the same city as Spike, much less the same bed.
“You know, we should probably get out of bed.” Spike murmured into Thorax’s chest.
“Do we have to?” Thorax half groaned-half yawned.
“What’s got you so sleepy recently?” Thorax shrugged, still holding onto Spike.
“Holding you makes me sleep better. You’re warm, and you being here just makes me more comfortable.” Spike smiled, shaking his head.
“Well, I’m sorry for leaving you alone for so long last night.”
“You’ve got a lot on your mind. And a lot to worry about. I didn’t mind that much. I was glad that you came back though.” Spike tensed up slightly.
“How are you not scared of me?” Thorax chuckled sleepily, sitting up.
“You’re Spike. Changing reality or no, you’re still my favorite person in the world. Unless you gave me a reason to, I could never be scared of you.” Spike sat up too.
“I changed an entire ecosystem within a mile radius and reverted a dying changeling into an egg.”
“Both times to save me. How could I be scared of you when you’d quite literally change reality to keep me safe?” Thorax turned to face him, and Spike felt his heart (or whatever it was) start racing.
“You’re the most important person in the world to me.”
It wasn’t any confirmation that Thorax reciprocated his feelings, but it was close enough that he’d feel content for the rest of his life even if he never confessed. Spike pulled Thorax into a hug, and the changeling reciprocated it with gusto. When Spike finally let go he felt like he’d reached the highest peak of his life.
“Let’s go get some food.” Spike climbed out of bed, and Thorax joined him, remarkably chipper for the early morning.
It felt good, to say the least.
“Spike is WHAT?!” Discord sighed. He turned to Cadance with a bored look on his face.
“I told you.”
“I mean, I thought she’d react worse.” Twilight turned to Cadance incredulously, and Cadance simply shrugged at her. “Sorry Twi, but you do have a history of freaking out.” Discord hesitantly took a sip from his teacup before speaking, as he noticed Twilight's pupils getting much, much smaller.
“Actually, I think it just-” Discord was interrupted by a single strand of Twilight’s mane popping out of place. He gulped. “-Hadn’t set in yet.” More strands popped out of place as Twilight began to twitch. Discord and Cadance both had the good sense to set down their teacups and move as far away as possible.
“You know, I’d say that went better than expected.” Cadance remarked. Discord nodded, with a satisfied look on his face.
“Agreed. She only tried two truth spells before realizing that’s such an absurd claim that there would be no reason to lie about it.” Cadance smiled.
“And she was only in the fetal position for around eleven minutes. That’s a massive upgrade from when she was little.” Twilight stood there, desperately raking a comb through her hair in an attempt to rein it into pre-freak out order, trying to once more appear presentable. Once it reached her standard, she once more turned to face the two, looking slightly more bashful.
“Okay, I’m sorry about that you two. But I’m still having a little trouble understanding, what do you mean Spike is some kind of…” She waved her hoof as if the word had escaped her.
“Elder god?” Discord offered.
“Yes, that. I watched him hatch, heck, I hatched him! What do you mean he’s never been a dragon?”
“Well for one thing,” Discord began, “Many things hatch from eggs. I did, for example.” Twilight narrowed her eyes. Discord peered back at her, confused. “What? I did. It was a rather large egg though. I’m sad to admit, I wasn’t always this lean. That said, the second thing being that just because he is not a dragon, doesn’t mean he isn’t good at looking like one. Have you ever heard of the viceroy butterfly?” Twilight’s eyes lit up.
“Of course! They’re a remarkable species of insect, they mimic the monarch butterfly almost unbelievably well! That said, their mimicry is for their own defense. They’re not poisonous like monarchs, but the more they look like monarchs, the less likely things are to eat them. If Spike is so powerful, why would he need to protect himself through mimicry?”
“Simply put, I assume it’s because it’s a different type of mimicry. There is a format, such as with the false coral snake and deadly coral snake, where a deadly prey mimics a less dangerous species, because it means that it’s easier for attackers to learn the warning signs.” Twilight blinked in recognition, letting the information wash over her. Cadance on the other hand, was already putting the pieces together.
“So, he’s camouflaged because it would be more beneficial to him if predators or attackers would learn to stay away? If they learn that dragons are already dangerous, it’s better for him to be hidden than to constantly be getting attacked because no monster knows what he is or how dangerous he is.” Discord nodded.
“Of course, this is as much for the safety of the predators as it is for his safety. There’s a reason Spike is such a pacifist, it’s because giving life is naturally ingrained in him. From what I can tell, he’d grow much stronger at sea or in the ocean, from where all life naturally hails, and his very existence is effectively pushing forward the growth of everything as we know it. I’ve yet to tell him, it could be overwhelming, but you two should know at least.” Twilight groaned, rubbing at her temples.
“You’re worried about him being overwhelmed…”
When Spike and Thorax arrived at the dining hall, Shining Armor was already present, attempting to feed a rather giggly Flurry Heart. While he cooed and attempted to get her to eat instead of simply throwing the food around, the two asked the chefs for their own food, and sat down to wait.
“So, how are you two doing? Is sleeping in the same bed working out?”
“Thorax treats me like a teddy bear.” Thorax scoffed.
“Well, not my fault you’re the approximate size of one.” Shining Armor snorted.
“What kind of teddy bears have you had? Spike is taller than me.”
“Yes, and so am I, but by a much wider margin.” Shining Armor rolled his eyes, but Spike continued the conversation, shocked by the wild misinterpretation of his size.
“Now hold on, last I checked, I was bigger than a teddy bear when I first met you, and you were shorter back then. You’re making a lot of inconsistencies here.”
“Okay, maybe, but you’re still smaller than me, so if we’re in the same bed, you’re approximate cuddle size, and I am a physically affectionate person, you should not be surprised that I start holding you like a foal holds a doll their parents get them.”
“I never said I didn’t like it.” The room went briefly silent, and Thorax’s face was lightly dusted purple as he processed what Spike just said. Then, slowly, wordlessly, the Changeling reached over and pulled Spike into his lap. Neither party protested, and the conversation quickly returned to normal, aside from a slightly stewing Shining Armor, who lamented the fact that he might owe Cadance five bits. Eventually, the conversation did take a turn when in the middle of eating, Shining Armor placed down his fork, and looked at Spike semi-seriously.
“So, Cadance told me something interesting when she went out this morning. I was half asleep, but if I remember, she said something about ‘Going to tell Twilight that you aren’t a dragon’. Have we had a changeling around this whole time and I just never knew?” Spike groaned.
“I wish it was that easy. Apparently I’m some Discord level something-or-other, and over the course of yesterday and the day before I had a habit of rewriting reality whenever Thorax got into trouble.”
“He saved me from a brewer changeling who accidentally overbrewed acid and attacked me for some reason.” Shining Armor barely reacted to the news, the part that he most reacted to was the ending.
“Brewer changeling?” Thorax nodded.
“Some of us could eat plants to brew chemicals in our bodies. Shoot, I was one, so I can do it too. My favorite was eating a green flower that grew a little ways away from the hive that when you mixed it with twisted roots and spiney pears made a sort of gel perfume. Some of the more dangerous stuff you could make were acids, but if you brewed too much it… well…” Thorax gestured to Flurry Heart, and Shining Armor covered her ears. “It would melt your internal organs. That’s what was happening to the changeling that attacked us, he was basically dying. If it weren’t for Spike, judging by what it did to that poor barista’s floor, both of us would’ve died.” A horrified expression remained on Shining Armor’s face, and Spike gagged.
“It was worse to actually see it happen.” Spike’s eyes went wide and he whipped around in Thorax’s lap to look at him. “Is that what the chunks were?!” Now it was Shining Armor’s turn to gag, before swallowing hard.
“Eugh… I wish I hadn’t asked. In any case, I wonder how Twilight is taking it. She’s learned a lot, but I think this might still be too much for her.”
Pharynx stared at the egg, contemplative.
The changeling that this egg had been was a drone named Chelice, a brewer known for having a remarkably kind heart, even during Chrysalis's reign. So it didn’t make sense that she’d suddenly leave the hive, same day as Thorax and his dragon friend, only to hunt them down and encounter them in some food place, to then try and kill his brother with acid. He’d need to make a note to organize some sort of thank you for Spike. Saving the ruler of the Changelings would typically grant you anything the hive could offer, but given what his brother had said about Spike, they’d hopefully end up together, so there wasn’t much need for that.
That weird hodgepodge creature had told him to keep watch over the egg until it hatched, and he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. Reverted to an egg or not, a clear attempt was made on his brother, the King’s life. That warranted imprisonment. Or worse.
Still, a more logical, less ruthless part of his brain though, that hodgepodge held some serious firepower, and he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that. Not to mention that according to that hodgepodge, the drone was likely under serious mind control, and that did not warrant worse.
Pharynx sighed, simply sitting in his chair and staring. It wasn’t worth the risk. He’d simply have to let it play out and hope that it wouldn’t cause any issues. He scratched mindlessly at his ear. An annoying ringing had taken refuge, and didn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
“Did you really mean it?” Thorax asked suddenly. The two were on the balcony, enjoying the early morning air in some after breakfast, before we-actually-have-to-do-things relaxation. Spike was once again situated in Thorax’s lap, claws wrapped around Thorax’s forehooves as the Changeling held him in a loose embrace. Thorax had near instinctually snuggled up to the not-dragon as soon as the chill of early morning had touched his chitin. Spike hadn’t protested, enjoying the contact.
“Mean what?”
“That you didn’t mind me being all huggy. I get that sometimes people get uncomfortable. Heck, even Pharynx does from time to time.” Spike snorted.
“Of course I don’t mind. Do you think I would just let it happen if I wasn’t?”
“I hate to say it Spike, but you’re a bit of a people pleaser. You probably would.” Spike frowned, disliking the callout. Still, he shrugged, and turned around to bury his face in Thorax’s chest.
“I don’t mind. I assure you.” Thorax smiled, and wrapped his forehooves back around the not-drake.
“Then I hope you don’t mind if we stay like this until Cadance gets back.”
“I’ll be honest, that doesn’t seem long enough.” Thorax laughed, and Spike smiled into his chest.
“Well, if that’s the case, I give you full permission to demand a hug anytime you like. Whenever, wherever.” Spike sighed in contentment.
“That sounds perfect.” The ‘just like you’ went unspoken, but Spike meant it as much as anything else.
Discord knocked on the ridiculously large door, tapping his dragon foot impatiently. He needed this answer desperately, and hopefully before Spike fell asleep, so he could at least put him through to-
“Discord?” The door had opened while he was lost in thought, and in front of him stood a nearly 60 foot tall monster of some bovine build. Twelve eyes blinked down at him as a clawed hand landed on the ground for him to step onto. “What are you doing here?”
“Ah, Vitraliyaex, I’m sorry to say I’m not here for a pool of tea, but rather a need for answers.” The right set of six eyes all raised eyebrows at once.
“Answers of what kind? Bookkeeper I may be, but even I don’t know everything.” Discord sighed.
“I’m afraid it’s answers about you, my friend. I have a friend, and he appears to be on par with, or possibly more powerful than us. If not, more powerful than me at least. And certainly the same type as us.” Vitraliyaex hummed, scratching at his chin with a six fingered hand.
“What do you need to know?” Discord hummed, twiddling his thumbs.
“Is it true that you were a yak before you became you?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I was always me, but I simply less ‘me’ back then.”
“...My friend was a dragon. We now know that he is something much more vast. Something life giving, and yet chaotic at the same time. He’s performed some incredible feats that even I might struggle with. And yet, he has no capability to replicate them, as of right now.”
“Has he found his true form?”
“...Partially. Less than half done. Possibly less than twenty five percent.” Vitraliyaex ‘ahh’ed, pointing at Discord with an oversized finger.
“Get him there first. Then we’ll see if that has loosened him up any.” Discord nodded, preparing to take off. He glanced back at his ally, staring into the dozen eyes.
“Do you think he can do it?”
“Continue living with mortals?” Discord nodded. “I don’t see why not. I left because collecting knowledge was easier from the outside. You say he is a life giver? It might be best for him to remain there, just as it was best for you.” A certain tension left Discord’s posture, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“...Thank you, Vitraliyaex.” Discord took off into the Realm of Chaos, leaving a stunned bookkeeper in his wake. Eventually, the bovine chuckled, scratching the built-up ink off his arms.
“A thank you from Discord. This Fluttershy might be the best influence he’s had.” And so, the bookkeeper returned to his living space, letters falling off of him into non-existence, reappearing on pages of paper across all of Equestria, be it a well meant letter for a sick family member, or the latest novel of a famous writer.
“So then, Spike said that he never said that he didn’t like it, and he sat in Thorax’s lap the entire rest of breakfast.” Cadance giggled giddily, hopping on her hooves like an excited foal.
“I can’t believe I missed that! How did Thorax react?”
“He didn’t say anything in particular, but, last I checked, they’re still half asleep in each other’s arms on the balcony.” Cadance could barely articulate words at this point, giggling madly.
“Any idea on which one of us might win the bet?” Shining Armor hummed.
“I’ll raise you five bits that it’s a mutual confession.” Cadance gave a sly smile.
“Well, I’ll raise you five bits that neither one of them confesses, and they still end up together.” Shining Armor nodded. “So, five bits for our initial predictions, ten bits for the second prediction?”
“Exactly. Now, let’s get inside and tell them the good news.” Cadance nodded, before sprinting ahead of her husband with a laugh. Shining Armor smiled.
“Oh, you’re on!” He shouted after her, running at top speed to catch up.
“Are you gonna tell me why you keep picking at your scales, or am I gonna have to worry about it in secret?” Spike grimaced. He had hoped he was being discreet enough.
“It’s… kinda stupid. I just feel kinda wrong. It’s like ever since figuring out that I’m not a dragon, this doesn’t exactly feel like me. It feels like a really itchy, slightly-too-tight sweater. Like… the sleeves are too large in the forearms, but the torso and upper arms are too tight, and the tag is itchy too so it’s just digging into your neck… I just kinda hate it.” Thorax frowned. Spike waved him off. “I don’t think it’s anything you can fix. Don’t worry about it.” Thorax grumbled, but looked away.
“Okay, fine. But if you start yanking your scales off we’re gonna have a problem.” Spike rolled his eyes, but he smiled anyway.
“Trust me, I won’t. It hurts way too much.” Still, he scratched at his back, the scales running along his spines being a place of particular discomfort. “Didn’t I have three sets of spines when I transformed?”
“Yeah. And the scales on your arms turned white! It was pretty cool, you looked… what’s the word?”
“Creepy?” Thorax shrugged.
“I was going to say interesting. It felt like whenever Discord gets a little too close to you. Like there’s so much power there and it’s just not in use at that moment. I was honestly pretty amazed, I wish I could’ve gotten a better look.”
“Apparently it would’ve driven you insane, so no, no you do not wish you had gotten a better look.” Thorax laughed, before he realized Spike was fully serious. In fact, the not-dragon looked remarkably downtrodden.
“Hey, you’ve saved me what? Twice already? If I went crazy looking at you I don’t doubt you would’ve done anything possible to fix it. Also, what counts as crazy? Because a lot of what people considered ‘crazy’, is really just some pretty common and pretty manageable mental illnesses.” Spike blinked, and slowly moved to a light smile.
“You’re not wrong, actually.”
“Exactly! Like I'm not saying that it’d be great, but I think I could manage. And even if I couldn’t, at least you’d be there to help.” Spike went silent for a moment, a light smile still present on his face as his eyes shone with hope.
“I beat Cadance here even though she cheated and started running before me!” Cadance elbowed Shining Armor, who laughed it off. Still smiling, she continued talking despite the interruption.
“Today, we have reservations to see a play about you two in theatre opening day!” Spike let out a sort of astonished laugh, a single chuckle that conveyed his disbelief. Thorax on the other hoof, had gone completely wide-eyed. “ Relax, it won’t be as bad as you think. I had been a consultant so that it wouldn’t be so…”
“Ridiculous?” Spike offered. Cadance nodded.
“Hopefully they didn’t exaggerate what I had un-exaggerated. You should be pretty glad you hadn’t seen the first draft, it was a bit of a mess. Well, a bit may be an understatement.” Shining Armor shook his head, not remembering the initial draft fondly.
“They made Spike so… Shakespearean.” Spike outright snorted, and Shining Armor gave a dull smile. “If I remember correctly, at one point they had you call someone a ‘cur’.” Now the both of them were chuckling, and Cadance rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, but no one has been called a ‘cur’ for at least five-hundred years.”
“That aside, I helped them work out the kinks, and they invited us to the first showing tonight.” Cadance explained. “If you all want to go, we get to sit in one of the private boxes.”
“I don’t know…” Spike sounded somewhat concerned, and his brows were furrowed in thought. “Even if you did go through and fix some of it, the Crystal Ponies’ perception of me has always been a little skewed. That combined with Thorax probably being the antagonist, doesn’t sound like it’ll add up well.” Spike’s expression went from a furrowed brow to a worried grimace as an upsetting thought ran through his mind. “If anything, they’ll probably go out of their way to make it seem like I was some sort of superhero that magically turned Thorax from a mindless monster to something good.” Cadance hummed, considering the issue, but Shining Armor was a bit more hesitant to consider the possibility.
“I don’t doubt that they’ll play you up a little Spike, but the Crystal Ponies love Thorax. I don’t think it’ll be that bad.” Spike still seemed hesitant, but Thorax at least seemed a little eager, and that was the deciding vote.
“Well, it’s settled. Tonight, we’re going to see a play!” While the rest made plans on what to wear and when to head out, the negative thoughts lingered in Spike’s head, regardless of how he tried to drown them out with excitement. He took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself.
It can’t be that bad.
“Holy woah, this is bad.”
It had started off alright. It was understandably ridiculous from the beginning, both due to the general blandness of the actual events, and due to the altered perception of Spike in the Crystal Empire’s eyes, the actor for Spike was a crystal pony in an exaggerated muscle suit. They had a good laugh at that, but it quickly went downhill during the first meeting with Thorax.
It was quite literally everything Spike had been afraid of.
The four sat in stunned silence as an exaggerated caricature of Spike battled with an oversized, monstrous facsimile of a pre-metamorphosis changeling. Spike looked downright enraged, like he was barely containing the urge to fly down and set the actors on fire. Meanwhile, Thorax had practically and literally shrunk down in his seat, transforming into a miniaturized version of himself and bowing his head to minimize his profile. Cadance was more in a state of shock than anything else, staring on with the same rapt attention you’d give a carriage crash. Shining Armor was somewhere between Cadance and Spike, and seemed to be the only one in a working enough state of mind to comment at all.
“Cadance, honey.” Shining Armor began. Cadance nodded dully, mouth fallen open. “Can we leave?” She wordlessly closed her mouth, nodded, and gathered her coat.
Outside the venue, Spike looked on the verge of an explosion, claws flexed as if he were prepared to wring someone’s neck. He’d gone completely wide eyed, pupils shrunk to pinpricks as his eye twitched in anger-veiled horror. Thorax had yet to shift back to proper size, and was around the height of a foal, practically hiding beneath the now larger form of Spike.
“Remind me to never have faith in anyone ever again.” Shining Armor said bluntly. “You all are the only exception. Anybody else is under immediate suspicion. Always.”
“I don’t even know what to say. Doesn’t Twilight have that time travel spell? Can we use that?” Cadance asked desperately. Spike shook his head.
“If we used that, we would’ve already seen past you. It’s all on the same timeline.” She groaned out loud, and she turned to the dragon and changeling, bowing her head in apology. “I wish I had listened to you Spike. I really wish I had. I’m sorry.” Spike sighed, rubbing at his temples.
“I can’t even accept your apology because I don’t even think it’s your fault. You did what you could. This is on them. And forgive me, but I think we should leave before the actors come out, because I will not be responsible if I torch someone.” His smile held a slight mirth, but his eyes were dry and devoid of any amusement whatsoever. Still, Cadance chuckled, an exasperated sound much different from her usual giggle.
“Then let’s leave.”
Shining Armor did his best to keep the mood as light as possible, still making as many jokes as possible, but even he seemed remarkably downtrodden as they trekked back to the Crystal Palace, ready to let the night be over.
Thorax was still tiny.
He had still yet to transform back, even now that they were in the palace, in his room no less, away from everyone except for Spike. He’d since curled up into a ball under the covers, and despite Spike’s active attempts to, he couldn’t focus on anything but the lump under the covers that was Thorax, not even the new Power Ponies issue that Twilight had been kind enough to acquire for him. His attempt to let Thorax have his space was falling apart, and he eventually succumbed to the urge to try and cheer him up instead of letting it play out.
“Thorax, I’m getting really worried.” Spike knew it wasn’t the best way to start off the conversation, but it was better than asking if he was okay. “Do you want to talk it over? Can you come out from under the cover please?” He saw a vague motion underneath the comforter, but judging by the fact that there didn’t seem to be any neon green emerging from the red comforter, he assumed it was a no. He set down his comic. “Can I come under?” The nod yes was more easily interpretable, and Spike scooted along to the edge of the bed where Thorax lay, and stuck his head under. He came face to face with the changeling, and stared into the watery purple eyes with melancholy, sticking his claws under to pull the Changeling into a hug. Thorax accepted, scooting into the dragon’s arms. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve pushed harder for us to look at the script or something before going.”
“...Do they really think that’s what happened? Do they really think I was some mindless monster?” Spike sighed.
“I really can’t say for sure. For all we know, that was just the writers. But does it really matter?”
“Of course it matters. If that’s what people really think of me-”
“That’s what they thought of you pre-metamorphosis.”
“I haven’t changed at all though. Only thing that’s different is how I look. I still act pretty much the same, so if I was a monster back then, what do they think of me now?” Thorax sighed. “They never seemed afraid of me.”
“To be fair, those ‘Spike, The Brave and Glorious’ plays get really ridiculous. Did you see how they see me? It’s never good.”
“At least your reimagining was positive.” Thorax said bitterly. Spike grimaced
“Okay, I’ll give you that. Look, I’m not quite sure how to reassure you. All I can tell you is, I don’t see you like that. Cadance didn’t see you like that, and neither did Twilight or Shining Armor. If some random ponies decide to make you look like that in a play when people on the street greet you with smiles, and all your best friends think you’re great, then I think you should take the minority with a grain of salt.” Thorax groaned.
“I know, but it’s really hard.”
“Then there are the changelings, who think you’re an incredible king, Ember thinks you’re a great friend, Pharynx thinks you’re a great leader-” Thorax was smiling now.
“Okay, that’s enough Spike.”
“Rarity thinks you have great fashion sense, Starlight thinks you’re super reliable, Discord respects you which is usually pretty impossible-” Now he was downright grinning, and beginning to grow back to normal size.
“I said it’s enough.”
“Trixie thinks you’re ‘Spectacular’, Rainbow Dash thinks you’re a great flyer, Fluttershy says you were one of the easiest people to talk to and be aro-” A full sized hoof covered Spike’s mouth, and Thorax smiled at him.
“I’m feeling a lot better, Spike. You don’t have to keep going.” Spike pulled his hoof off of his mouth.
“But I didn’t even say the most important one.” Thorax rolled his eyes.
“Which is?”
“I love you.” Not like. Love. If possible, Thorax’s smile somehow got more intense, and he pulled Spike right off the ground, pulling him under the covers. They found their way into their default sleeping position, and Thorax curled in as close as he could go.
“I love you too.”
Spike found himself in an empty black space, infinite and so vast that he could barely comprehend the magnitude of it. It had an end, surely, but it seemed to only exist in the margins of his vision. Like if he walked from side to side, he’d reach a wall, but if he walked in whatever direction he was facing he could walk forever and never reach an ending. He glanced around, expecting some ghostly apparition to approach him as it had in the past couple of dreams he’d had, and sure enough, after he waited for some time, a familiar draconequus appeared in front of him, perched meticulously on a full length mirror.
“Hello Spike.” Spike blinked in confusion.
“Discord, what are you doing in my dream?” Discord sighed, and gestured at the mirror.
“We need to figure out what your true form is. It’s integral to your progression.” Discord jumped down from the mirror, patting Spike on the shoulder. “So far, we’ve experienced three major surges of your power, and in all three you had very little control. The closest you got was in the cafe, when you managed a partial transformation, and even that was mostly unconscious.” Spike stared at himself in the mirror before turning back to Discord.
“...Are you going to give me any instructions or do I just have to guess?” Discord hummed.
“Just pull at what feels wrong until it feels right.” Well that wasn’t absurdly vague. Spike grumbled, before turning back to the mirror. What felt wrong?
Well for one thing, he felt absurdly compressed. His spine now had the constant feeling that he’d been sitting in a slump, and he felt like he needed to stretch out. He pulled his arms up, stretching as far as he could go before feeling a pop, and even then he still felt the compression.
“Keep going.” Discord instructed gently, and Spike listened, extending his spine as far as he felt it could go.
And then that limit disappeared.
He continued pulling until he finally felt a stretch again, and when he let go, he felt taller. Much taller. He opened his eyes, and realized that the mirror had accommodated his new height, stretching to remain around a foot taller than he was. He blinked, and realized with a start that he was just barely hitting Discord’s chin at this point. Discord hummed approvingly.
“I’m glad you’re no giant at least. That would be difficult to accommodate in a small space if you needed to. Is that all?” Spike shook his head, and thought about his next move. He felt a sort of itchy layer on his scales, and scratched dimly at his arm, watching as the purple fell away to reveal a very light, brown toned grey. He turned back to Discord.
“Can you summon a shower?” Discord shrugged.
“It’s your mind. You take a crack at it.” The draconequus leaned back, and Spike frowned at him. Sighing, Spike thought about his shower at Twilight’s castle, before hesitantly snapping his fingers. With a brief flash, the crystal walls of the shower formed around him, and pulling the curtain shut, he turned the shower on, and scrubbed away at his scales, the purple and green washing away to reveal uniform warm gray. When he was satisfied, he snapped, and the water and shower disappeared in another flash of light. He appraised his new appearance, and kept moving without prompting from Discord. Next up was the spines. He shook violently, and two more rows of spines broke through the scales on his back, and the ones that were there seemed to flex and sharpen, sweeping backward. Still, something still distinctly felt like it was missing.
“...Would it be weird if I said I need more eyes?” Discord scoffed.
“We all need more eyes at some point, Spike. Where, praytell, will you put them?’ Spike stood for a moment, before unfurling his wings. He glanced at Discord with a raised eyebrow, who merely offered a shrug of his shoulders. He flapped his wings, and one by one, four eyes opened on each wing. Well, calling them on was a little misrepresentation. They seemed to float on top of his wings, and he realized upon folding his wings back, that the eyes simply floated in place, only opening when his wings were unfurled. From then on, it was a few minor tweaks. Extend claws here, shrink waist, expand chest, simple things. Then he came to his tail.
“... What if-”
“Before you even ask, remember that this is you, Spike. I have no say in what makes you feel comfortable. Though, I will say I do think the eyes made for a wonderfully chaotic touch.” The draconequus waved for him to continue, and Spike waved his tail around, whippin it until it unfurled into several smaller tentacles, before reforming into one greater, interwoven mass. Discord squealed appraisingly, and clapped. “A genius design choice if I do say so. Is there anything else you want to add?” Spike turned around a few times in the mirror, looking over the changes he’d made. Towards the end, he’d become a bit bolder, and it was for the better in his opinion, given that it simply felt more comfortable at the end of the day. He hummed, mulling over the decision to include this last choice, before deciding to simply place the cherry on top and let it be. He blinked hard a few times, before his eyes lit up a pure bright white.
“I don’t know why, but this feels…” He trailed off, struggling to find the word.
“Right?” Discord offered.
“...Comfortable. This feels comfortable.” Discord shrugged.
“If that’s the better word for you, go right ahead. Glad we could work this out for you, however I would recommend containing yourself before returning to the material realm, if you don’t wish to drive your new boyfriend off the deep end. All things considered though, I feel that he might fare a bit better than we would initially anticipate.”
Spike stared back at his reflection, unfurling his wings one more time, letting his extra eyes open once more. He smiled, before allowing himself to recompress into a slightly larger version of his typical form. Apparently the difference was large enough for Discord to notice, who raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.
“What?” Spike exclaimed. “What’s the point of being able to control your appearance if you can’t stack a couple extra inches on?” Discord rolled his eyes, but flashed a mischievous smile, before snapping his fingers and disappearing.
Waking Thorax up was never this much of an ordeal.
Maybe it was the events of the prior day, but he was pretty much dead to the world, regardless of how much Spike poked and prodded at his face. Spike frowned, thinking. As much as he would enjoy going back to sleep, they probably had something to do today, and more importantly, he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to spend their first day as boyfriends just sitting in bed.
Spike sighed, before choosing to resort to drastic measures. He slowly wriggled his way out of Thorax’s embrace, and like clockwork, the moment he made it out of the bed, Thorax’s eyes hesitantly opened.
“I’m beginning to hate mornings.” Thorax said tiredly. “What are we doing today that warrants me getting out of bed?”
Spike shrugged. “Whatever you want for our first date.” He said slyly, hoping that Thorax would take the bait. And take the bait he did, sitting up in the bed near instantaneously. Spike continued talking, working on coaxing the Changeling out of bed. “We can go anywhere in the Crystal Empire.” Spike blinked, before looking down at his claws briefly. He could probably do a lot more now that he had a bit more of his own power under his control. “Well, I can probably teleport now if what happened in my dream last night was real, so anywhere, period.”
Thorax fluttered over to him, eyes bright with joy and ideas. “Well, while I figure out somewhere to go, you can tell me about this dream.” Spike smiled, but shook his head.
“Thanks, but it wasn’t much of a dream to talk about. It was just Discord helping me figure out my powers a bit more while I wasn’t in the real world, so there wasn’t a chance of me causing any problems.” A tingling sensation ran up and down his forearm as the familiar purple became a clean warm gray. “Apparently I have an entirely different form now, so that’s cool. Here, grab my shoulder.” Thorax obliged, looking very much interested, and Spike hesitantly snapped his fingers. With a flash of light, they were in the main hall of Twilight’s Castle, and Thorax looked down at Spike with absolute awe. Spike was in a bit of awe himself, not expecting it to work on the first try.
With another flash of light, Discord appeared with a party hat and tweeter, clapping ecstatically. “Well done, Spike! Your first intentional use of your powers, oh!” He wiped a comically large tear from his eye. “I feel like a proud parent.” He stopped for a moment, scratching at his chin. “Actually, that’s Twilight’s job.” He gasped suddenly, and a wide smile spread across his face. “Am I a mentor?! Are you my student?”
Spike blanched, having not thought particularly hard about it before. He shrugged, genuinely considering it. “I think you might technically be?” Spike sounded unsure, but nevertheless, Discord squealed with happiness, before procuring a camera from who knows where.
“I have to capture my protege’s first successful use of magic!” Discord explained, before snapping a picture. He looked at the printed picture excitedly, before sending both away. “Now that that’s handled, I should ask why here of all places? Twilight is out, ironically, she’s headed to the Crystal Empire-”
“-To go see me.” Spike sighed, before grabbing Thorax’s hoof and teleporting back to the Crystal Palace. He landed in the dining hall, where a now shocked Shining Armor and Cadance were reading over some papers. “...Hi.”
Shining Armor broke out of the momentary shock first, quickly stringing together a greeting and question, leaving it mostly incomprehensible to Spike. He quickly realized his mistake however, and repeated, “Good morning. So can you teleport now, or was that Thorax?”
“That’s all Spike! We were just at Twilight’s castle.” Thorax answered.
“Apparently she’s headed out here.” Spike added on. Both Cadance and Shining Armor lit up at this, and it seemed that news was enough to snap Cadance out of her stupor.
“Well, I’ve got good news. Apparently the play we saw wasn’t the real deal.” Spike raised an eyebrow in confusion, and Cadance floated the stack of papers over to him. “This is the official, Me-approved script, and the one that the actual playwright and lead actor was going to use. One of his understudied preferred an alternate version that made you look more ‘brave and glorious’, and when the play was pushed back two days, the understudy took the opportunity to gather his own group, learn his version over the course of a week and a half, and perform that on the day the play was initially supposed to go out.”
“So the one we saw?” Thorax questioned.
“A complete deviation from the one I approved.” Cadance confirmed. “That one starts tomorrow. The understudy got chewed out and kicked off the group, and came up here to apologize at five in the morning after realizing we’d left midway through.” Spike blinked, an astonished smile slowly working its way onto his face. He might’ve been the only one to notice as a barely present tension finally left Thorax, like a bare ghost of a weight finally being lifted. Spike instinctively held Thorax’s hoof tighter, his smile going from astonishment to happiness as Thorax finally got the last bit of confirmation that Spike couldn’t provide.
“All I wanted to know is how he didn’t manage to think, ‘Hmm, this might come off badly.’” Shining Armor said. “Guess some people just get too caught up in their own ideas to realize that they’re doing some terrible stuff.”
“In any case, I wanted to know if you two would be alright with going to see the real version. You have the script, so you can look it over and see if there’s anything you don’t like.” Cadance offered. Spike looked at Thorax, who looked slightly conflicted. Quickly enough though, it resolved itself, and Thorax nodded with a full smile.
The rest of breakfast was a calm mix of clinking plates and shuffling papers, as Spike and Thorax ate while Shining Armor and Cadance ran through paperwork.
“Oh, you should’ve seen it, it was incredible! No mishaps, no teleporting into walls, no accidentally teleporting the floor with him!” Discord continued his cooing over Spike’s first successful attempt at teleportation, and for once, Twilight felt inclined to agree. Teleportation was notoriously difficult to master, even for the well-practiced, and she was certainly proud of him for it. That said, Discord had been talking about it for the past five minutes, and as much as she was willing to sing Spike’s praises, she wanted to move onto other praises to sing.
“It really is incredible, but I want to hear about some of the other things he’s done. You said he changed the climate?” Twilight questioned. Discord nodded, still very ecstatic.
“It was when they were first arriving at the Frozen North. It was in the midst of a cold spell, and the rain prior had done them no favors. They made it most of the way through, before Thorax was overcome and collapsed. Spike freaked out, and in his worry, he rewrote the climate from northern to tropical for a mile in every direction! I’d never seen such raw power from a beginner, I was in shock! I did have to go in and fix it, but soon enough, he’ll be capable of changing it himself.” While Discord recounted the events, Twilight was positively beaming. If Spike was capable of doing things like this while he didn’t even know what he was, when he got a full understanding of himself he’d be something incredible.
Not that he wasn’t already, of course.
“Still, I do wonder,” Discord began. “That egg was a peculiar circumstance. It looked like a Changeling egg in almost every way, and yet there were exactly enough things wrong with it for me to question how true that must be.”
Twilight furrowed her brow in confusion. “What egg?”
Discord smiled sheepishly. “Oh, I had forgotten to mention that. Well, it seems that Spike had caused an unfortunate power leak when he first began manifesting his powers. A poor, sweet changeling ended up being on the receiving end, and was driven to attack Spike and Thorax in an attempt to speed up Spike’s power manifestation.” Twilight’s mouth fell open as Discord continued talking. “I’ve yet to tell him about that, especially since it wasn’t even his fault. A new species of fruit had began growing nearby the Changeling hive, and its effects seem to mirror a slightly more malicious version of the poison joke plant. Changelings appear to be immune to its effects, but Spike was not, and the cruel joke it played was causing his life giving powers to corrupt life.”
“Oh my goodness…” Twilight said, dumbfounded.
“Indeed. I removed the bushes when I realized what had caused it, but much before that, the Changeling that was corrupted did make an attack. Spike, in his unrefined abilities, reverted her back to an egg, or rather, renewed her expended life by transforming her into an egg.”
“Well, what makes you think it’s not a changeling egg?” Twilight questioned.
“Well for one thing, it’s too strong.” Discord counted on his fingers as he explained his reasoning. “Changeling eggs are durable, but they’re very goopy. That egg had an actual shell. Second was the patterning, rather than swirls, it was dots and diamonds. Third, and this was the most distinct, was the lack of shifting. Changeling eggs reflect the color of the ground beneath them to a degree. They remain green, yes, but take on color undertones and colors in the swirls based on the colors of the ground beneath them. That one simply remained green.”
“So you think it’s something else?”
“It’s hard to say. Spike is the life giver, it’s entirely possible he created a new form of life.” Discord absently ran his talons through his beard. “I would honestly say it’s likely, the more I think about it.”
“Well, do you have any ideas on what it might be?” Twilight asked cautiously.
“Perhaps a new type of changeling, or something in between Changeling and Dragon. Or perhaps, it’s a mimic like Spike.” Twilight pondered each idea, grumbling as she attempted to process the new information.
“What happens if a one of a kind species enters the world like that?” Discord simply shrugged.
It wasn’t a bad thing per say, but it did put a damper on Spike’s plans to bring Thorax on their first date today, and given the play was tomorrow, he’d prefer to not say they were dating for three whole days before they’d even had a date.
Which was why he didn’t say anything.
He was lucky, in some way, for his prior acceptance of Thorax’s physically affectionate nature, because it warded away questions pretty easily. A hug from Thorax as coltfriends was no different from one as just friends, all things considered, so the two of them could get away with saying nothing at all about their new relationship status. The group ate and talked, and looked through the mountains upon mountains of paperwork Shining Armor and Cadance had to deal with to authorize the building of a new crystal park, all the while Spike ran through every location he could think of that would be suitable for a first date, and he did mean EVERY location.
He could teleport now, after all.
A loud thud rang through the dining hall as Shining Armor groaned, slamming his head into the table.
“If I see one more ‘Sign Here’ location, I’m gonna lose it.”
Cadance chuckled, kindly patting his head. “Well you’re in luck. The next page is all initials.” He groaned even louder, and her chuckle turned into full on laughter. “I don’t know what you were expecting, a park is a lot of paperwork. Management, gardening, roads, there’s a lot of work that goes into one of these.”
“I expected less than fifty signatures.” Shining Armor said dryly. “Also, do both of us really need to sign it? You’re the acting ruler, can’t you overrule the need for my signature or something?” He sounded desperate, but Cadance just shook her head jovially, still signing away.
“Nope. The moment I was able to, I rewrote that law. As long as we’re married, we have equal political influence. Sorry love.”
“You know, this might be the one time your kindness has inconvenienced me.” He smiled, and picked his head off the table, once more levitating his quill.
“Sorry I’m late!” The declaration was accompanied by the dining room’s doors being thrown open, and in ran Twilight Sparkle, trailed by a familiar spirit of chaos, and an unknown Diamond Dog, carrying what looked like a large cyan tile on his back. Shining Armor breathed a near imperceptible sigh of relief, either from knowing Twilight was safe, or that he was given a suitable distraction from the still very substantial pile of paperwork, he practically flew out of his chair to greet her. She gave him a hug, which he gratefully accepted. “I had an idea, so I had to double back mid flight, and then there was the storm spirits-”
“Anemoi.” Discord corrected.
“Right, Anemoi, but regardless, I’m here, and I brought someone who might be able to help Spike get a feel for a certain aspect of his powers.”
“It’s a possibility that I’d communicated,” Discord said, “That Spike might be able to offer something in the way of manipulating genetics. Be it simple appearance or something as complicated as species. Twilight wanted to make an experiment out of it.” Spike grimaced slightly, getting up to meet the two as well.
“That’s nice Twilight, but I really don’t know if I’m comfortable testing on someone with, y’know, a conscience.” He kicked at the ground, a slight nervous tick that he’d developed at some point that he’d never really broken out of. “It feels kind of… wrong. Also like it could very easily go wrong.”
Discord snaked his way around Spike, flicking him in the snout. “Oh, don’t be like that now, Spike. What’s something a teacher would say? The difference between a master and a student is the number of failures. A master has failed more times than a student has tried.” Spike didn’t exactly look convinced. As a matter of fact, he still looked somewhere in between confusion and mortal terror. Realizing this, Discord straightened out, and in a more serious tone, he said, with as much encouragement as he could muster, ”Look, should anything go wrong, I am here to help you undo it. You need not worry so severely, it will hinder you more than it will help you. Caution is useful, apprehension is not.”
“...For someone who says they’ve never done this before, you’re surprisingly good at it.” Spike said, simply. He sighed, stretching his fingers. “Alright, I’ll give it a shot.” Discord nodded sagely, though his enjoyment of the slight praise didn’t go unnoticed. Twilight pulled the Diamond Dog forward, and he gave a slight wave, he announced himself.
“Uh, hi. I’m Pumice. Well, my situation is a bit complicated.” He undid the ropes holding the tile to his back, and it was only then that Spike noted the unique shape. Either this was a very oddly cut, oddly colored tile, or this was a very large dragon scale. “See, my dad is a diamond dog, but my mother is, well, a dragon. Obviously that didn’t work out in terms of having kids, so my dad got someone to have me, and well, you can guess how that goes.” He hefted the scale, which Spike now knew was Pumice’s mother’s, and offered it to Spike. “She doesn’t say anything about it, but I think it’s been bothering her a bit more recently. She asked my dad about searching for abandoned eggs, and she asked me a couple weird questions about what I thought about her as my mom. Do you think you could… I don’t know, make me half-dragon with her scale or something? I also grabbed a bit of my dad’s hair if that’ll help.”
Spike didn’t say anything for a couple of moments, but the look of mortal terror had returned. He slowly turned to look at Discord, and he said, with a trembling voice, “Does this really seem like experiment one material?”
“Well, it might be better for you to make an attempt at something big first. Remember what I said, I’m here to help guide you.” Discord pat Spike on the shoulder, and gestured for Spike to take the scale.
Spike grabbed hold of the scale, and he stared at it for a moment before looking back at Pumice. “This might take a minute.”
“That’s fine, I can wait.”
“Good, just making sure.”
“You’re stalling.” Discord interjected.
“Well,” Spike started. “Not yet. That was just a disclaimer.”
“Okay, well, obviously you need a starting point, so think about it like this. Genetics are stupid, and very tricky, and sometimes it’s harder to modify what’s already made than to start from scratch.” Discord turned to Pumice. “The tuft of your father’s hair, if you please.”
“Sure.” From the gem filled pocket on his vest, he procured a small bit of hair, bound by a piece of twine. Discord floated over and took it from the Diamond Dog’s paw, returning to Spike, and holding it up next to the scale for Spike to see.
“Now,” Discord flicked his finger between the tuft of hair and the scale. “You’ll notice two things, if you look with the right eyes. The first, is that the magical energy of these two things are not in sync, because Diamond Dogs and Dragons are two very different creatures. But, Pumice is much more similar to the fur. What you need to do is align him closer to the scale while still keeping his alignment to the fur.”
“You say that like I understand any of it…” Still, Spike could see some of what he was saying. It was like thin, wispy smoke flowing off of virtually everything, but if he really focused he could specifically see Pumice’s, the scale’s and the tuft of fur’s. The more he looked, the more detailed it became, and he could see a few simple indicators of the differences, from differences in the pattern of the swirls, to the color of the smoke changing on set intervals.
Pumice and the fur had an earthy, warm grey tone, and rather than floating high into the air, the smoke concentrated like fog around the two, flowing closely to them and sticking wherever it connected. On the other hand, the aura on the scale seemed hyperactive, a vibrant orange that shot out and flared in random directions, barely connected to the scale at all in some points.
So, he needed something in between.
He focused on Pumice, and tried to bend the aura in the ways he needed it. It needed to float a bit more, and it needed to be a bit more orange. If he took the magic from the hair and scale it would probably fill in the gaps, so that should do the trick. Spike swallowed hard, and opened his eyes.
“Do you have the idea?” Discord asked gently.
“I think so.” Discord handed him the tuft of hair, and holding both with his offhand, Spike raised his bleached hand.
“Well, not to say I expected this, but it certainly makes sense.” Discord floated, mostly unbothered, through the greyed out version of the dining hall, taking stock of the situation. “You triggered a Gap.”
“Did I break something?” The hesitance in Spike’s voice made no attempts to conceal itself as he approached Discord, still carrying the scale and fur. “Why is everything grey?”
“I believe you’ve seen this before. During your last rewrite you triggered this state to give yourself more time, now it’s being triggered because you need to be more specific. Let me guess…” Discord glanced at Pumice’s newly transformed aura, and back at the items he’d given Spike. “You tried to fill in the gaps?”
“Was I not supposed to?”
“Well, that part is tricky.” Discord landed, pulling a scroll out of seemingly nowhere. “Your last rewrite allowed you to fill in the gaps because the creature you were using them on was no longer alive. Now, they are alive, and attempting to just let the gaps fill themselves could leave things out. For example, Diamond Dogs don’t have the throat gland that ignites your fire breath, so in the case that he produces the enzyme that powers that gland, it would have nowhere to go, and would contribute nothing at all.” Discord rolled up the scroll, before leaning down to Spike’s level. “This is why you need to think very seriously when creating new organisms, because most things serve a purpose or an advantage, and when mixing species, these things can cause problems if not dealt with properly.”
“What about your weird rabbit giraffes?” Spike questioned. He snapped his fingers absently, and one such creature appeared next to him, greyed out like the rest. “Don’t these things have problems?”
“Yes, being that the ratio of calories exerted to movement used is terrible. They eat an incredible amount, this single one could consume almost an entire grain silo in one afternoon.” Discord’s facial expression shifted to one of absolute glee. “Also, your first successful summoning! You’re progressing incredibly fast! Soon you’ll be able to do these things on massive scales, creating entirely new intelligent species, or maybe just finally making jakelopes an actual thing.”
Spike blinked in confusion. “Those don’t exist yet?” Discord shook his head no, before snapping a few times.
“Focus! Alright, here’s what’s happening, you need to figure out how to get Pumice here to that middle point, and you need to figure out what gaps need to be manually filled, so give me a list of what’s wrong.”
“Uh…” Spike blinked a few times, before glancing back at Pumice. “Okay, no heat resistance, fur versus scales, fire breath, and flying.” Discord nodded.
“Okay, now how do you fix each one of those? Remember, don’t lean too much in either direction, you want the middle. You want to find the middle ground.”
Okay, think.
Fire breath was too dragon, but heat and fire resistance made sense, especially because Diamond Dogs are subterranean. Flying is out of the question, that goes against the below ground idea, but to not include flying means including scales in some capacity to balance it out. Maybe the digging claws? That could bolster heat resistance, which made sense if they were meant to be digging in lava for gems!
“Would I like-”
“Naturally understand this topic?” Discord extrapolated. “Possibly, but you’re startlingly studious, and you know a decent deal about animals to begin with. Something like this is likely child’s play.” Spike stared at him for a hard second.
“Either you stop reading my mind or I start reading yours.” Spike didn’t give the threat time to hang in the air before turning back to Pumice.
He could do this. It’s just like figuring out his true form, except he could make the changes much quicker.
First step, start with the scales.
Spike let the pieces fall into place naturally, rather than snapping his fingers every time, guiding the process with his thoughts. The scales were the easiest part. Just replace the fur on the arms with scales. From there, the first hurdle arrived. Blending the two into each other.
“Changing the scales to be like the fur is working backwards.” Spike thought out loud. “But changing the fur to be like scales…”
“Would make it easier to apply heat resistance across the entire body?”
“Exactly. A two fold solution.” Spike leaned in, looking closely at the scales on Pumice’s arm, and doing what can best be described as splitting. Like splitting the ends of a strand of hair, he just pulled apart the ends of each scale, pulling apart more and more as he moved closer to where the hair met the scales, until the final scales simply looked like very thick strands of hair. He pulled those scale strands along the entire body, replacing the regular fur with the sort of scale-hair, making it appear much coarser, but certainly accomplishing an even blend between the scales and the hair, and also accomplishing the heat proofing.
Just in case, he made the skin underneath a lot more burn proof too.
“What if I made the tail spikes more… dragon?” Discord raised an eyebrow at him.
“Meaning?” For bravado’s sake, Spike did snap this time, and the tail faded from something canine to something more reptilian, longer, and stronger, meant more as a balancing limb than something expressive, though he did make the end still very club like, and rather than the rounded tail spikes of your typical diamond dog, these new ones were blunt, but strong, meant for breaking rocks and smashing dirt. Discord gave him a praising look. “Brilliant enginuity. Though some part of me would prefer something that makes less sense, the rational, teacher part of me says top marks!” Spike rolled his eyes, though he was still smiling.
“You like this teacher thing too much.”
“Well from what I’ve seen, teachers sometimes make for the best friends. If Twilight and Starlight are something to base things on, anyway.” Discord smiled sadly. “I love her more than I ever believed I could, but I don’t believe Fluttershy would accept immortality as a wedding gift, so if she does go… I’ll be alone. Celestia and Luna have gone and retired, and Twilight and Cadence aren’t my best friends, outside of a certain bookkeep with whom I’m not particularly close, you’re the best chance I have at a long lasting friendship. One that can outlive the mortals whom we have been cursed to care for.” Spike went silent for a moment, staring at the floor.
“I never thought about it like that.”
“In all fairness, you’re perhaps luckier than me. Thorax will live to be nearly ten thousand years old, by my most conservative estimates, and that’s assuming he wouldn’t accept if you offered him immortality.” Discord sighed, before continuing. “I happened to love the one pony in the world for whom eternal beauty and eternal life isn't something they’d give anything for. Though I suppose that is part of her charm.”
“...I think you’re wrong.” Discord glanced up from the floor, staring at Spike. “I think Fluttershy knows you a bit more than you’d think, and she knows that you hate being alone. She wouldn’t leave you behind.” Something in Discord’s eyes had gone from aloof to desperate, and he stared at Spike, tired frown on his face.
“...Don’t give me hope.”
“You deserve it.” With that, Spike turned back to Pumice, adding a few finishing touches including a mane of sorts, (He was feeling inspired) and a pair of pink horns (It felt absent without horns, but he also couldn’t pick a color, so he went with pink at Discord’s suggestion). He snapped his fingers once more, and the color bled back into the world. Pumice came to consciousness, looking all over himself and taking note of his new appearance. “So,” Spike said cautiously, “What do you think?”
Spike was tackled into a hug, and he was very thankful for his natural strength in that moment, because it’s the only reason he was bowled over.
“Twilight, I know you’re excited, but look at him.” Spike rubbed at his eyes, secondhand exhaustion crashing over him in waves. He’d been on the receiving end of a Twilight question barrage, and while he might be used to it, poor Pumice most certainly was not. “I’m pretty sure he couldn’t answer most of these questions if he tried, let alone when his brain is half-fried from all of the questions you’ve already asked him.”
Twilight pouted. “But Spike, this is the first time that-”
“No buts!” Spike got up from his seat, moving to grab Pumice by the paw. “Alright, I’m gonna take him back to his dad, you can compile what is undoubtedly a way too long list of questions, and I’ll answer what I can when I get back.” Spike and Pumice were gone in a literal flash, and Discord was quick as ever to fawn over his new disciple’s progress.
“Bridging the gaps between two remarkably different species! Even I struggle with that! He’s advancing so fast it’s incredible!” Floating down to Twilight’s level, he asked, literal stars floating in his eyes, “Is this how you feel when Miss Starlight starts understanding her friendship lessons? What a rush!”
“Well, it might be a bit different. Starlight’s lessons usually have less learning to do, and more, ‘you already know how, you just took the most complicated path because you’re insecure about your ability to interact with people in a positive way’.” Twilight furrowed her brow, scratching at her chin. “Actually, now that I think about it, should I work on getting Starlight a therapist?”
Discord blinked slowly. “...Yes. Yes you should.” His emotions rebounded back to comically excited, very quickly. “If this is what Spike is capable of now, imagine what can happen in two years, ten years, fifty! If he’s creating a new species now, in a few years he could be changing the ecosystem, creating new landmasses and populating them with unique species and fauna!”
“He can do all that?” Candace seemed astonished, and it was very well deserved. Thorax was letting the information permeate his mind, and he was feeling overwhelmed. Until recently, Changeling magic wasn’t much besides disguises and the occasional magic bolt. The level of transfiguration and conjuration magic to create an entirely new landmass…
“Well, yes, he should be able to once he gets full control over the static.” Thorax sat up at that.
“Do you mean the same static that I’ve heard when Spike used his powers seriously before?”
“Indeed. That static is, simply put, a much more powerful magical instinct. Most instances of that static jumping out was Spike not knowing what to do, but having the power to do something. Sort of akin to a fight or flight response, it jumps out when he has something important to do that can be life or death for him or someone else, and because of that, it can be as much of a detriment as it can be a benefit. If he panics while using his powers, the static steps in and tries to stitch together the pieces.” Discord’s explanation put some context behind Spike’s power surges, at least. “The problem is, the static is a bit akin to an overzealous helicopter parent, and if you let it do too much, it tries to do everything. It’s sapient, overly cautious, and if you give it an inch it’ll take a mile. It’ll materialize as its own being once it reaches that tipping point, and it’ll start rewriting things that we do not want rewritten for the sake of a faux ‘safety’, and it can be exceptionally dangerous given that Spike would be the only person who could stop it. And Spike-”
“Has had three big uses.” Thorax frowned as he realized what Discord meant. “I’m guessing we’re not far from it materializing?”
“If I had to guess,” Discord said cautiously, as if he wanted them to prepare for the worst, “We only have one power surge left before it does.”
The troubling implications hung in the air like thunderclouds, ready to begin a downpour at a moment’s notice.
Fortunately, Spike was back before the mood could sour too severely to recover.
“Did you all know that Diamond Dogs hug really, really, really hard?” He stretched, and the pop of his spine echoed through the room. “His dad wouldn’t let go of me. I feel like my spine folded in half.”
“Well, considering they have an incredible bicep strength of around 5500 newtons, that makes sense. Now, I have my list of questions, so-”
“Not so fast, Ms. Princess.” Discord was quick to swoop in, interrupting Twilight. “He has a bit more work to do. Outside of the actual creation of a new species, there are two questions we need answered. A name, and in this specific case, how they would be created. Now, Pumice is an unusual circumstance, and while you could certainly say that his species is created whenever Diamond Dogs decide to hit it off with a Dragon, that would make the species absurdly rare. You need a name and a way they show up. Luckily, you really only need to speak it into existence for it to work. Now, if you’ll excuse me-” Discord snapped his fingers, and a set of gaudy, tropical beachwear appeared. “-I’ll be going to offer Fluttershy an impromptu visit to Los Pegasus.” With a polite bow, Discord disappeared, and the rest of the group returned to comfortable sitting positions, while Twilight began her cascade of questions.
“I’m a little surprised this is where you picked for our first date.”
“And why’s that?”
“I didn’t even think you knew it existed.” Spike looked over the lights of the small town from their vantage point atop a peak some distance from the settlement. The flowing of rivers was as pleasant a background noise as the crickets and owls, and the dim glow of the flowing rainbows provided just enough light to eat, as the two sat with their picnic far above the beautiful scenery of Rainbow Falls. “Still, it is a pretty good pick. I love this place, and it’s so pretty at night.”
“Truth be told, I went and talked to a bunch of ponies about places with nice scenery, and this is the one that came up most frequently.” Thorax seemed almost sheepish admitting it. “I do think it was a good choice though. This is beautiful.”
The two were mostly silent while they ate, just enjoying the view and the cool mountain air while they watched over the ponies, and while they slowly made their way into their homes for the night, Spike and Thorax sat far above the small mountain town, simply drinking in the atmosphere.
Then came the first scream.
Spike was on his feet in seconds, surveying the area until he spotted her, a single pony cowering before a bull that seemed to be emitting green gas. Spike’s eyes went wide as he recognized the monster, and he blurted something to Thorax as he dived down towards the town, ready to help get these monsters out of the way.
Katoblepones. A sort of bull monster with exceptionally dangerous breath, and inhaling too much of the toxic gas meant you would be sick for days, if not weeks. They weren’t aggressive, but that didn’t mean much because they didn’t have any real concept of personal space, and had a tendency to get very close to other creatures by accident, putting them out of commission really quickly. It also didn’t help that their gaze could stun you.
For not being aggressive, these things were comically difficult to deal with.
The first one was easy. It was the rest that were a problem, especially when the rest of the town got involved. Not only was it a whole herd of the beasts, around thirty of them, the one mare’s scream got the whole town looking out their windows and coming outside to help. Now the ponies were chased into corners avoiding what they quickly realized from the noxious fumes and Spike’s shouting, was toxic breath, and on the other hand, Spike was playing cowboy, trying to herd the creatures back down the path they’d come up from. Needless to say, it wasn’t going well.
“This is getting out of hand…” Spike considered using his powers in some way to get the Katoblepones out of the town, when he heard a weak cry that made his blood run cold. He whirled around to see Thorax, herded between around six of the creatures, his vibrant green chitin gone a duller, grey green from the effects of the Katoblepones toxic breath.
Thorax heard the static long before Spike did. His eyes went wide at the realization, and he grimaced, with fear in his eyes as he realized there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Spike crumpled to the ground, and from his prone form rose a very incorrect version, made of swirling greys and shifting squares. The faux Spike slowly raised it’s claw, and snapped.
Thorax watched with blurred vision as the static clone raised a claw, and snapped, the sound sharp and rigging as it carried much farther than it should’ve through the nighttime air. His vision stabilized as the noxious fumes he'd been breathing in dissipated, replaced with the sweet scent of cinnamon that accompanied liquid rainbows (A terrible, terrible trap that he’d fallen for more than once). He looked down, expecting to see the Katoblepones shrunken, or turned into bunnies, or maybe just baby Katoblepones, anything really. Instead his eyes went wide, and he flew upwards to avoid what were once Katoblepones, but were now mere piles of ash lying on the ground. He glanced at the static, watching as it stared at the fallen Spike, before swooping down next to it and tapping it on the shoulder.
“Is he alright?”
”He will be fine. The danger is gone.” He really didn’t like this version of Spike’s voice. It sounded like it was being broadcast through a very old radio, faraway and staticy, muffled by a layer of white noise and skipping tape.
“Uh, yeah, about that, are you going to fix the Katoblepones, or..?”
”They are fixed, they are no longer dangerous.”
“...I guess that’s true? I just don’t think that Spike will be particularly happy that they’re- y’know…”
”They are fixed, they are no longer dangerous.” The clone said it with a certain finality, like it was an absolute truth. Technically, it was, but the Katoblepones were no longer dangerous much in the same way that a diamond is still a rock. It’s a factual statement, and most would not disagree with you on it, but it’s still a very broad form of description.
“...When do you think Spike is going to wake up?”
“Apparently, right now.” The real Spike’s voice was tinged with pain, and he rubbed at the section of his head that had hit the ground first. “Sometimes I forget that hitting the ground hurts a lot in most places. Ponyville has some absurdly soft soil.”
“I know, I crashed into it before.” Thorax grimaced at the memory, it was one of the most embarrassing things he’d ever done, besides staring at a fire for ten minutes straight. “How do you feel?”
“How do I feel? How do you feel? You were the one getting smoked out by those Katoblepones.” Thorax winced, glancing quickly at where he’d been standing.
“About those…”
“And that’s how that happened.” Thorax huffed, feeling like all the energy had drained right out of his body. He felt absurdly tired, and judging by the way his boyfriend was falling into his shoulder, Spike felt the same, dark circles forming around his eyes at rapid pace. “So, what do we do?”
“That’s the problem. We can’t do much.” Discord spoke around a mouthful of coffee that seemed much too hot for consumption. He swallowed, before pouring a small bit on a napkin that he’d placed down beforehand. “See, if this coffee is the Static, then this napkin is Spike’s pool of influence. As you can see, the Static spreads. Spike would have to quote-on-quote, “ring out” the napkin, and remove the Static, which becomes much harder the longer it takes. Just as the coffee settles into the towel, staining it, the Static will leave a visible mark on Spike’s magical influence the longer it is allowed to fester.”
“So should I-” Spike was cut off by a yawn, rubbing at his eyes, which Thorax realized with a mild internal panic, were growing considerably paler, “Should I try and go to sleep? Last time I actually got to talk with it was in a dream, so…” Discord chewed slightly on his lip.
“I will be one hundred percent honest with you Spike. I do not know what to do here. This is unfamiliar territory for me. I dealt with the Static with minimal issue because my powers hinge on chaos. Instinct is all I need. You have so much more to worry about…” As Discord tapped his talons on the table, Thorax’s internal panic was beginning to reach its peak. Discord knew everything, it’s why he was Discord. For him to not know what to do meant they were in absurdly far over their heads. Spike stood up from the table stretching.
“I’ll figure sm’thing out.” Spike said it simply, like it wasn’t a major issue. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with Twilight, it’s that fuck around and find out is a valid research model. Sometimes you just gotta muddle through and hope.” He grabbed vaguely at the air for Thorax’s hoof, and once Thorax offered it to him, the changeling was dragged straight up to his room, leaving a still worried Draconequus silently sipping away at still much too hot coffee.
Spike stood on a lone rock, in the middle of an ocean.
The water around him glowed like it was full of that one kind of algae that Twilight had tried to propagate for a school project. Dinofla-something? Either way, the glowing water seemed to slowly spread outward from his lone rock, the luminescent blue slowly spreading into the rest of the water, like dish soap feathering out into a water-filled sink. With the flow of the waves came a quiet humming, and feeling the grip of a long day and high magical usage even in his dream, Spike curled up on his lone rock, and he let the dream play as a background. Watching as the light spread outward, far beyond his vision, yet still very aware of its presence and continuous spread, growing and growing. He watched as in the corner of his vision, land rose from his water, from his waves, forming rocks, grass, and trees. The land glowed all the same as the water did, bright with life and magic and love. And in that land there was one mountain that grew taller than any other, shrouded by something similar, yet other, that his light could not reach. Another light. This one twisted and confused, lashing out against itself in fear.
Just as the light had done for him, the light calmed the other’s fears, bathing it in otherworldly kindness, before enshrouding it. Assimilating it. Adopting it as its own. A part of itself. Not something other, merely another piece of a larger puzzle, like the last ingredients of a cake.
Spike turned his head and closed his eyes, letting the world of his dream continue to form and grow and spread and glow under the light. Hugged by kindness and magic, the remaining static dissipated.
When he woke up, he remembered the dream.
The dream where the seas crashed on beaches and the skies were filled with clouds and life.
The dream where the earth cared for and raised all that inhabited it, and when the night came the stars were the guiding lights for all those who saw the night as their playground.
The dream where phoenixes were reborn in great bursts of flames, and where dragon eggs hatched in volcanoes and lava pits. The dream where snakes burrowed and birds nested.
Frost seemed to hang in the air around him as he breathed, and as he raised his head out from the crook of Thorax’s neck he realized with a slight fright that the room seemingly had frozen over in the middle of the night.
During his dream of Rocks and Water.
He slipped out from under the bed with much greater ease then he would’ve normally had, and he realized with a start that he’d transformed with his dream, turning into a sort of halfway point between his true form and the form he’d assumed for so long, the one that felt like Spike the Dragon instead of Spike the Life Bringer. This was somewhere in between the two, something along the lines of Spike the Dragon of Life, if he had to describe it. He was more slender than his typical form, and slightly taller, but still slightly broad in the chest. He was a matte lavender, a more washed out version of his typical purple, and rather than the usual chartreuse, his belly scales were a xanadu color, which seemed to shift slightly? Sort of like a holographic card. He looked around the room, feeling ice crackle and crunch beneath his claws, and slowly, he waved his hand across the room. Behind his hand trailed what seemed like a path of heat, as the ice melted, and water evaporated, but as he reached Thorax, the sleeping changeling didn’t even react. Spike took a deep breath, before creeping out into the hallway, walking through the frozen Crystal Palace, bringing with him a wave of restorative heat, melting away the invading ice. He finally stopped once he’d circled most of the castle, ending back up at the room he’d shared with Thorax. He’d been here for what? Three days? He still had four more to spend here, and he intended to make the most of it.
First he had to deal with one last thing.
With a snap of his fingers, Spike appeared on a mountain thousands of miles from the Crystal empire, where a tiny, greyed out dragon sat on the edge of a mountainside. It stared intently at something miles away, something that would remain unseeable to virtually anything. The air around it seemed to quiver with distortion as it went from the freezing cold of high altitude to the calm warmth of summer, and Spike approached quietly and softly, only drawing it’s attention when he was just a few steps off from it.
“I wanted to help.” It said, voice crackly and distant, like it was being carried through a pipe from miles off. “Do you not want me to help?” Spike was quiet for a moment, before moving to slide down next to the Static.
“I think… you were useful when I needed you to get by. You were great when I needed help, but I’m standing on my own now. Like… when an elephant sticks close to the older elephants, and learns which plants to eat and things like that. Now I’m doing alright.”
“...I see.” The Static seemed to shrink just a little more, and Spike waved his claw ever so slightly, clearing away the fog so he could see where the Static was looking off to. In the far distance was the ocean. The very same that he saw in his dreams. His dreams of Rocks and Water.
”Take me?”
Without saying a work, Spike scooped up the Static, and snapped his fingers.
“It’s really nice.”
“This is where we’re supposed to be, I think.”
“Well, it certainly feels right.” The Static continued to shrink, before eventually becoming so small that the only way Spike knew he was still there was the feeling of his own power, sitting in the palm of his hand.
“Do well without me?”
“...I’ll do my best.”
Spike arrived back home just as the sun was coming up, sitting at the table in the dining hall they usually sat at, laying his head on the table until the others got there. When Cadance and Shining Armor arrived, dragging a frantic Thorax behind them, Thorax shot at Spike like an arrow, flying over the table, and landing in the seat next to him with the most relieved expression he’d ever seen.
“When I woke up and you weren’t there I got worried, especially with how worn out you were last night, and I-”
“I’m here, Thorax. I’m here.” Thorax smiled, dragging Spike into his lap.
“And I’m very glad you are. Now, why are you so much lighter?”
“I got full control over the Static, so now I’m a bit more grey. It happens. Either way, we should probably get some breakfast.” Thorax seemed to be holding Spike just a little closer than usual. He didn’t mind, he was a little on the thinner side now, but it seemed like a little bit more than the fact that he went down a waist size. Spike quickly leaned up and gave Thorax a peck on the cheek, and like clockwork, the Changeling loosened his hold to normal levels.
Unfortunately, Cadance and Shining Armor were the next to hop to attention.
“WHICH ONE OF YOU CONFESSED FIRST?!” The two shouted it in unison, and Thorax nearly jumped out of his chair in fear.
“It’s important, there’s ten bits on the line.” Spike pursed his muzzle at that.
“Why were you betting on this?”
“Because the two of you had been mutually pining for around a year now and everyone knew but you.”
Thorax blinked. “...Well that’s disappointing. This could be our one year anniversary instead of just getting together yesterday.”
Spike sighed. “Well, to answer your question, I technically said I love you first, but I’m pretty sure we were just dating without the dating before then. I really don’t think either one of us actually asked the question.” Cadance cheered, and Shining Armor groaned, walking towards the door, presumably to get 10 bits.
“So, what are the two of you gonna do now?” Cadance asked. Spike furrowed his brow, before looking up at Thorax.
“How long do you have to be dating before you get married, because that’s definitely happening.”
Living forever is a tragedy, as amazing as it sounds. Most end up leaving behind far more than they would ever gain, and most who do eventually succumb to the pain of loss and seclude themselves, desperate to avoid it’s pain.
It’s four hundred years after the events of our tale, and Spike and Thorax have gone for a hike.
The crunch of the dirt beneath Thorax’s hooves is a sound dwarfed by the thunder of Spike’s footsteps, the not-dragon having grown in relative proportion to a true dragon, as his natural shape was still much akin to one. Despite his titanic size, his presence alone calms the wildlife, allowing them to see the creatures as they come rather than watching as they flee. Thorax climbs up a small rock trying to better see the face of his husband.
“You should come down a little. I can barely see you.” Shouting wasn’t necessary, Thorax had long since learned that since Spike could hear his thoughts, talking more than amplified them enough for him to hear. Yelling was overkill. At his request, an angular, purple-grey dragon head came down from the canopy, wide, blank eyes staring at him. Despite the blank stare, the not-dragon was visibly sheepish as he asked:
“Sorry, should I go smaller?”
Thorax nodded. “It’d be nice. I can’t hug you well while you’re this big.” Spike nodded, and with a set of consecutive pops, the town block-sized not-dragon shrunk down to around the size of a large deer, now slightly more colorful, and small pupils visible in his eyes again. “It’s always so odd to see your pupils again.”
“Not unwelcome?” Thorax smiled, before leaning over and planting a kiss in between the not-dragon’s eyes.
“Not at all.” The two continued their walk along the trail, the cool, late summer, evening air a welcome companion as they walked side by side, taking a welcome respite from the day to day.
Thorax had been king for four hundred years, and with Pharynx and Spike’s help, he’d managed to turn the Changeling hive into the Changeling Kingdom, expanding into the Badlands and housing the newest occupants of their kingdoms. The Sprites.
Sprites were something that only Discord could’ve seen coming. The first sprite was the infamous Egg that came from an encounter between Spike and a changeling under the Static’s influence. A changeling on the much larger side, bearing wings and a tail similar to that of a dragonfly was what hatched from that egg, and Pharynx was quick to scoop the girl up and call her his own, having developed something akin to paternal instincts during his tenure as the egg’s caretaker. Then came the later Sprites. Changelings were still creatures of love, even long after the Metamorphosis, and as they spread out, they found love with practically any creature, from yaks, to dragons, to diamond dogs (who surprisingly seemed to attract all kinds), and most commonly, ponies. Spike’s innate magic turned love into life, and creatures that had truly fallen for each other routinely found eggs nestled in their rooms, appearing with a dull glow that echoed with the sound of crashing waves. That, combined with the boom in changeling population when they were no longer starving, caused the Hive to overflow, and over the course of two hundred years, the Hive became a palace, at the center of a sprawling kingdom built by a beloved changeling king.
And yet still, more had happened.
Discord and Fluttershy remain together to this day.
Turns out, immortality osmosis through the Elements of Harmony is a thing, and for the time being, Twilight and her friends remain the Council of Friendship, with Fluttershy and Discord as the other married couple besides Spike and Thorax, and the two spend any time where Fluttershy isn’t working to maintain harmony together, much like our Changeling and Dragon are doing now…
“The peak is up here!” Thorax trotted ahead grinning as though this wasn’t his favorite path to walk. Grinning as though he’d never seen this before, and he was anticipating something different from what he’d seen time and time again.
Then again, it was pretty amazing.
The sun was dipping below the horizon over a sea of birch trees, all centered around a lake, which shimmered with the light of the sunset as the two looked down on the enamoring sight, holding tight to each other as they sat on the edge.
“I love this place.” Thorax said dreamily. “This might be the only location I like more than Rainbow Falls.”
“Oh really?” Spike questioned. “I would’ve guessed this was your favorite.”
“No, it’s just that Rainbow Falls is so out of the way. It’s a hassle to go there and come back.” Spike gave him a sort of questioning look.
“I can teleport you know? We could go right now if you wanted.”
Thorax’s smile got just a little wider as he placed his head in the not-dragon’s lap. “Nah, maybe next weekend.”
Eternity is a long time.
Our protagonists are lucky, to say the least. They get to live forever without most of the pain. They get to stay together. I’ll admit, I’m envious. Though, I could join them if I so pleased.
...I wonder when Discord’s calendar might be open.
