Chapter the Only
Spike set down his Power Ponies comic for the nth time. He'd stopped counting the number of times he'd re-read the series from beginning to end centuries ago.
"Morning, Twi."
Passing words for an immortal who'd passed.
He walked past the simple grave--a request made by the mare herself, to be with her friends to the end of time.
He chuckled quietly to himself. She'd spent countless years trying to find a way to undo what she'd come to see as a curse. It came as a surprise when one day she entered the room, finally free of her wings.
It came as an even bigger surprise when she collapsed then and there.
He could still hear her voice filling the castle.
Spike opened the patchwork door. He probably could've done better over his thousand or so years of life in maintaining the castle.
Sometimes, he wonders if he should try sending a dragonfire letter to Celestia.
...Then again, the last time he did that, he woke up a day later choking on an inflatable swimming pool, courtesy of the former Sun and Moon Princesses. Those two seemed to hardly give a care about worldly affairs anymore following their retirement. Though... did they ever take the world seriously?
Spike paused mid-step, holding a scaly ear to the air. He swore he could hear Luna raging over a video game again.
Or maybe that was just the wind.
It wasn't always this way, of course.
Spike plodded through the ghostly streets of Ponyville. Even in this prime age, he'd never really gotten all too much bigger than he'd become when Twilight's friends had become old and wrinkled.
Even up to a few hundred years ago, ponies still lived here. Equestria as a nation still existed.
And then... it didn't.
It wasn't something that happened suddenly, of course. It was only the realization that struck within a single day.
The nation was in decay. Magic had oddly been fading over those years--slowly at first, but... Spike paused to gaze at what little remained of the old rust heap that was once the trainyard.
One day, just like the existence of Equestria as a unified whole, he'd realized that magic was gone. There wasn't much he knew about the what or whys of it, though. To him, it just sorta... did.
Much of what he did know came from the papers that once arrived in town from Canterlot. When those shipments stopped, his news came in as litter in the wind.
Nowadays, though, the only thing in the wind were the oranges and reds of autumn leaves.
Cloudsdale seemed to be the hardest hit at first. Many pegasi found themselves plummeting from the clouds, one-by-one. They began to blame the unicorns for their troubles, and eventually were forced to anchor the cloud city atop Canterlot. Oddly, the flow of news from that place seemed to cease not long after.
Even stranger was the influx of ponies traveling through Ponyville afterward. Each and every one of them would vanish into the Everfree in time.
Spike strolled past the foundation of Sugarcube Corner. It'd unfortunately been burnt to the ground by a lightning strike only a few years ago.
"H-hello?"
Spike froze.
"Wow, a real dragon!"
A second voice?
Slowly, he began to turn his head.
"He's looking at us, Sunny. Be prepared for anything." The lone stallion of the group mumbled. He was the third of the group. There were two pegasi there as well--one hovered quietly in the air, while the other stood beside the stallion.
He turned his attention back to the earth pony mare standing just before him.
"Is your name Spike?"
That name. Spike's eyes widened as he held back a gasp. It'd been so, so long since he'd heard his own name. Slowly, he began to nod.
"You're doing good so far!" The unicorn mare behind her shouted.
"H-how do you know my name?" Spike stammered. He looked around for a moment--he needed to sit down. This was already a lot to take in.
As for the earth pony in front of him, she only smiled, holding up her journal.
A journal with Twilight's cutie mark emblazoned across its cover.
"That--th-that's--" Spike pointed a shaky claw at the journal, nearly tripping over himself as he stepped back. He could already feel the tears beginning to form in his eyes. "Y-you..."
"My dad used to tell me so many stories about Twilight and her friends." The mare lowered her hoof. "We... were wondering if we could meet her. Twilight, I mean. We have so many questions to ask."
Spike shook his head. "N-no... she's... she's gone."
"Called it!" The stallion chirped. "Sunny, I know you brought back magic and all, but did you really think that somepony from that many years ago would still be around today?"
'Sunny' cringed. "Well... I was thinking that since alicorns supposedly are immortal, that she might still be arou--"
"She's gone." Spike repeated, clutching his head. "I--she--" He swallowed, turning his gaze to the sky. "Twilight... gone... I... dug grave?"
"Is... this a bad time?" Sunny's cringe was wider now than before.
"Er..." Spike choked, wiping away a stray tear. "N-no, I... I'm okay. It's just--"
"It's just that you've been living alone for so long that you've internalized your habits to the point of having them develop into a pseudo-existence of a beloved family member who passed away a long time ago?" The unicorn blurted. She sucked in a deep breath of air the moment she finished speaking.
"Mind reading." The stallion whispered to the pegasus beside him.
Spike lowered his head, uttering a somber "yes" in response. "It's been so, so long since I've seen another living pony."
Sunny paused. "Spike?"
"Yeah?"
"...How long has it been?"
He already knew what she was talking about.
"Around five centuries..." Spike muttered. He kept his eyes on the ground. "Can... we talk about something else?"
Sunny flipped through her journal. Spike raised his head a little, peering at the cutie mark scrawled across the cover.
"Okay... then how about Princess Celestia?"
"Oh, THAT mare--" Spike threw his head up. "The next time I wake up with a pool floatie wedged halfway out my mouth I'm gonna--"