There had been a scream, followed by a betrayal. Neither had been a first.

Twilight had a number of screams. The softest one was just about a hiss, high-pressure wordless invective directed at whatever experiment was simply refusing to cooperate when all of her theories said it should be working and all of reality was steadfastly insisting it shouldn't. There was a scream for emotions which had simply found the wrong outlet: she would encounter something she didn't understand, a lesson too convoluted to be ordered into the simple message of a scroll, and then her frustrations would unite with that constant fear of doing the last wrong thing and turn into a scream. There was a scream for workings which had failed, for sugared hay twists where the coating was so solid as to nearly crack a tooth, and a rather singular one for learning that there was no way around the fact that every library which wasn't the Archives needed to have remaindered sales.

And then there was this scream. Some portion of this one was his fault.

He'd been caught by the same thing as everypony else: the presentation. He'd just about been lying on the floor, trying not to clench his claws as words washed over the spiny projections which served for his outer ear structure. He couldn't clench his claws: they would skitter across the stone and while the sound would be a minor one, any noise felt as if it might be the final mistake. Even with the others occasionally risking soft speech, it would be his mistake, and...

He'd been sent on the mission with them. Discord had sent him along, and so the words which had ensured he'd be with his family and friends... they had stayed with him. There had been some minor echoes (with a few of those triggered by worry, and others by shaky pride: even if it was Discord, at least someone had felt he should go), and they had created enough repetition to allow full memorization.

The doctor was speaking. But he wasn't the only one. Within Spike's mind, Discord's words were coming back.

"Now, mission supplies... one earth pony, one pegasus, one unicorn, one dragon. Also one Pinkie Pie, one Fluttershy, and the one and only, thank goodness, Twilight Sparkle."

He'd memorized those words. But he hadn't previously thought about them all that much, not beyond his pride in being included and his worries that his presence was somehow meant to be one of the draconequus' tricks. And just before scream and betrayal in that high perch, staring down at illusion as horror washed over them all, he became the first to realize what they truly meant.

There was only one of each.

One earth pony. One unicorn, one pegasus, one dragon, one alicorn...

...and two hybrids. Earth pony mixed with unicorn. Pegasus merged with earth pony.

Discord knew.

And just before the implications could sink in, Twilight had screamed.

His head had jerked up, as the familiar feeling of failure began to saturate his scales. He knew all of her screams, and so he knew exactly what this one meant. It was a scream he dreaded, a sound he had devoted so much of his existence to stopping. It was the anguish of a mare who had just felt her world break and believed that she would be the next thing to shatter, and it was partially his fault. He should have been right next to her, should have been watching Twilight...

He had started to scramble, getting upright. His first priority would have been to calm her: he had yet to consider the consequences of having that horrible sound heard. But what little movement he had time to manage had left him facing forward, and so he saw the betrayal.

Spike had been betrayed before. In the earliest part of his life, too many of those had come from Twilight: the hoped-for love of a sibling relationship twisted into something which had sometimes seen him treated as a particularly interesting (and not always cooperative) piece of lab equipment. (The apologies were still ongoing, even after he'd accepted the first one.) There had been just about every encounter with the adults of his own kind, every one of which had tried to drive him off or -- worse. Garble and that group, with the hopes of connection destroyed as he'd realized just what it would take to make him into one of them. And it was a rare day when he didn't have a moment of feeling as if his very body, his birth had betrayed him, left him among a trio of species who had taught him to think as they did in so many ways -- and no more. He could believe and dream as ponies did, but he would never be a pony -- and there were so many times when it felt like he could do no more than be an observer on the outskirts of his own life. In an absolute sense, betrayal was a subject in which Spike had received a significant education.

But this was Quiet betraying them. (He never saw the restraint come down: only the stallion standing over his iron-bound sibling, and it would be some time before he wondered why.) And that made it feel different.

Spike was nearly upright. On the verge of scrambling forward. Instincts flaring within him, an inner fire surging --

-- and the door had slammed open, with the sound making him turn in time to see the robed ponies (a few with horns exposed, and nothing more) who quickly flooded the room. Ponies carrying ropes and chains and so much worse.

His walking claws had scrabbled at stone: he'd turned too fast, hadn't hooked for better purchase, nearly slipped. A pony (unicorn stallion from the build) was going straight for him and for one horrible second, instinct replaced reason.

He'd jerked his head up just in time, pursed nearly-absent lips in order to make the burst into a short one. The Princess knew flame, understood it better than anypony alive, and so he'd been taught that fire could bounce. An intense jet in a space this confined might wind up going anywhere, and... he'd also been taught about burns. How quickly flesh could turn into cinder and ash. There had been pictures, and all of them were stored within memory and nightscape.

So a little burst, no more: enough to clear space, and it did just that. The incoming pony had jerked back (and not enough), with others instinctively steering around him. But it wasn't enough. Chains went past Spike, horribly bright with field glow. Cuffs were being closed.

He'd been taught so much, and the majority of it had been about control. But his handing claws swiped out because they had to. Because his friends were being hurt, had been betrayed, his sister had a restraint on her head and another of those horrible cones was heading for Rarity...

Spike had been taught to be careful: scales were rougher than flesh, claws more edged than hooves. To realize that every moment spent among ponies was an instant where he could cause harm without meaning to, and so he never did.

His family was under attack, and nictitating membranes flickered across his eyes as he swiped to draw blood.

Fabric was torn (and his inner hearing provided chastisement, Rarity forever concerned about the state of her bolts). But it had to be torn first, and so the sensitive snout beneath was merely scratched. It was still enough to make the stallion pull back still more, rear up so that forehooves could paw at the wounded area. It gave him room, and his walking claws finally started to find their grip.

They had restraints. Ropes. Chains and cuffs. But they had nothing for him, nothing except sheer weight of bodies, and there were so many of those robed ponies, a wild glance found that Applejack was already cuffed...

He had fire. But he had very little else. And fire in a space so confined might not leave anypony to save.

Instinct beat at him, ordered him to try. But there were things other than instinct, and one of them said seven caught is the end.

There was a clear space in front of him, and so he ran.

Words chased him across the level portion of the passage: orders to chase him, stop him. The only ones he truly heard came from Applejack, telling him to run.

He ran, and it felt as if that wasn't going to be enough. Two legs versus four, and short legs at that. He was no minotaur, wasn't capable of putting on a short-term burst of land speed which could beat just about anything in the world over a small distance. No room in the tunnel between walls to fly, but his pursuers still had space in which to gallop --

-- just not enough of it.

The passage was narrow, enough so that Applejack, as the largest of them, had needed to move slowly and carefully in order to avoid injury. Nopony among his pursuers was an earth pony, but all were adults, and the scant majority seemed to be stallions. They tried to gallop, and found their flanks scraping against stone. He was smaller, had space to spare, and Quiet had shut down all the traps on their way in. He could run, and short legs did the best they could.

It didn't give him an edge. It merely created a chance. He found himself glancing back far too often, had to unleash two more bursts in order to give himself some room (and he had to be careful: there was only so much flame). The tuxedo felt as if it was constricting his joints, the accelerated motion of scales against fabric was starting to do some damage there and in terms of freeing him to move faster, it wasn't happening quickly enough.

At one point, he recognized a section of stone, a place where Quiet's field had pressed in order to deactivate something. He shouted about dropping them all, slammed a palm against it, and by the time the robed ponies realized nothing was going to happen, he was that much further ahead. Moving up, a trip which had taken so long on the downslope passing much more quickly, and then --

-- it slows the world, makes the now that much more immediate, it always has and he doesn't understand why --

-- the pressure starts at the peak of his crests, then seems to move inside them before shifting to his skull. It moves down from there, heading forward, and he knows what's coming. The thing they had been waiting for, the event which saw him banished to their assigned quarters for so much for the party. It's happening now and there seems to be very little he can do to stop it. Based on previous experience, he can merely delay it for a few seconds. To attempt more makes him feel as if his efforts would lose the sending in the aether, forever beyond recovery. And they need this: even now, it may help. He can't risk blocking it out, not for more than a few heartbeats. But that duration may be all he needs, because he's just about at the exit now and there's a pony there (the shape of the snout under the robes says mare), probably a last line of defense in case somepony got away, she's just starting to spot him as the shouts reach her, tells her to block him, and she risks another kind of exposure: the horn ignites with a spiking sickly chartreuse corona.

He runs directly at her. Long years of learning measure the surge of her power, experience tells him that she's likely going for a straight field grab followed by levitation, confident enough in her ability to manage his weight to try merely trapping him in a bubble. But it takes her a moment to summon that much strength, time in which he can still move, get that much closer, and then he lets the pressure go.

All she sees is the flame. Her eyes widen with fear and so she drops, belly and barrel thudding against stone as she gets below the oddly-cool jet. It leaves her at a height he can manage, and so he jumps onto her back and runs two small steps down her body length, even as his right arm goes up. He catches the arrival before it can hit the hallway floor, and nopony sees it come in at all.

The pressure was gone. Time snapped back into its normal flow. And with the freshly-arrived scroll being tucked inside his jacket, unsure of how close they were behind him, more frightened than ever now that he was in a place where his pursuers had space for speed, flight, and magic, Spike ran.

At Spike's size...

The thing about being in a castle full of furniture (with so much of it currently displaced) was that you were also in a castle full of drawers. Cabinets. There had been a portion of his life where hide and seek had felt like the greatest game ever invented, especially when he could hide in places where nopony else could ever fit. (It had faded quickly. Twilight's time in the Gifted School hadn't really put her in the mood for games.) He was surrounded by hiding places, and all he needed in order to use one was to get within unseen.

This had required shaking his initial pursuit. Or rather, giving them something else to think about for a few minutes, and he didn't really feel guilty about what he'd done. His years of story reading told him that Quiet's actions had to cost the supposed Lord something, and a writing desk which probably hadn't seen a drop of ink in two centuries seemed to be a rather insignificant down payment.

Ponies had stopped when they saw the fire. Stopped to put it out, before it could spread. That had given him the final bit of distance he'd needed, a chance to start going through doors with nopony witnessing which ones he was using. And now...

The huge wardrobe was many things. For starters, it was located well off the hallway. He supposed it was some degree of antique, and perhaps that was why it didn't seal perfectly: a little glimmer of light streamed in through the crack between the double-doors. And until recently, it had been unoccupied.

He held his breath, waited until the hoofsteps stopped pounding by outside. Listened for wingbeats, tried not to move until those faded. And then waited beyond that, for there were such things as spells to muffle the sounds of movement, and he'd taken notes about most of them.

Finally, he rested cloth-covered spine against the cool wood. And then the hate rose up.

Not Quiet: it wasn't the time for that. Not the doctor. Himself.

I ran.

They took my family and I ran.

Applejack had told him to run.

I could have...

He'd known that using more intense flame in the little space would have risked them all. And in the reality-distorting view of hindsight, nearly convinced himself that he could have pulled it off anyway.

Too many fields. Too much magic. Too many ponies. I could have clawed, and they would have just gotten me in a bubble eventually.

"It's about -- doing things," the self of memory said (and worse, had done so to Quiet). "In that kind of situation, I usually get two options. One is Yell and the other is Fire."

Yell never would have worked. Fire might have just made things that much worse --

-- they have my family. My friends. Rarity. They...

...maybe they're going to...

He shivered. Shook. Rubbed one jacketed arm against his eyes, let the fabric absorb tears. Jammed the other against his mouth, muffling the sobs.

They might kill everypony.

And I ran.

Noises outside. Ponies roaming the halls, looking for him. But there were many halls, and more rooms. There was certainly more than enough furniture, and ponies generally didn't think about that when it came to hide-and-seek -- at least, Twilight hadn't. It might take some time before they started opening things and even then, he would get one free shot at what he expected to be a rather surprised face. But... put the servants together with those who had been at the conference and if the guests didn't go home, there were potentially more than a hundred ponies who could join the search.

To stay in the castle would mean being found. That seemed to be inevitable.

A hundred ponies or more. And to stand against them, only him.

Discord made it a rule. That I had to come.

What am I supposed to do?

What could he do?

He could have a fantasy about charging to the rescue. He was good at that. The imaginary knight-errant not only (almost) never lost, but was known to have some exceptionally snappy dialogue. He could write any number of inner stories for himself, he would save the day in every last one of them, and none of them would do any good.

Stories don't work. Not merely dreaming of them. But stories were sometimes written about things ponies had actually done.

Somepony in a story would... see what they had to work with.

His magical weapon count was woefully short and, in the event that he could somehow reach the armory, so was he. Besides, everything there had been made for a pony: armor didn't fit, and hoof-mounted weapons didn't sit well over hands. He didn't even know if there were enchantments in play for those pieces, and the devices and wonders which he knew to exist within the castle were strictly for household use. Unexpected glow-in-the-dark plates aside, it was hard to conquer a hundred ponies with a dishwasher.

Flame... he'd already used some, and his inner supply was strictly limited. He could refuel it quickly enough, but that required gems. Rarity's shortage of supplies was working against him: the tuxedo only had a few small adornments and while those were now ammunition -- the inner apology was both instinctive and sincere -- it was much less than what would have usually been present.

His scales could deal with a fair amount of impact. He could breathe normally when surrounded by smoke, treated lava fumes as nothing more than the most beneficial part of a yearly health trip to the volcano, and was incidentally lava-proof. The total lack of available lava with which to take advantage of all that wasn't much comfort.

He had blank scrolls, of course, and ink. (Redwood with belladonna infusion, cockatrice ink and quills: the manticore variant was currently in their assigned quarters.) He always carried supplies, just in case Twilight needed to send something. Not that he was carrying much. Even when Twilight entered a full note-taking or lesson-recognizing frenzy, nine scrolls usually sufficed --

-- Spike blinked.

-- scrolls.

It was him against a castle full of ponies -- now.

He extracted a blank scroll, got the ink out, used the little crack of light to make sure his writing was clear enough to read. Discord's rules said he couldn't contact the Diarchy -- but there was aid closer than that. He didn't have to know a pony in order to reach them with a scroll: it just made things easier. With enough effort, he could target those he'd never met, or send a letter to a location. Baltimare might be three gallops away, but a police department who'd just been told the Bearers were in trouble would commandeer escorts. Get the message out, let them find somepony with a useful arrival point, and help could be at the castle's front gate within ten minutes...

Spike kept it short: the Bearers were in trouble, the locals couldn't be trusted, send help. He had no way to prove the legitimacy of his desperation, but simply having the scroll arrive in the usual burst of flame tended to make the receiving party pay extra attention to the contents -- and even officers who suspected a magical prank would almost have to investigate.

Please believe me.

He finished the letter, curled it up, glanced towards the crack of light and made sure there was nopony moving by outside before risking a wisp of transport flame. The scroll vanished.

Then it reappeared.

There was no sense of pressure. No pushing from the aether. There had been a small crackle of quavering blue light, and a brief scent of rust. After that, it had simply popped back into existence and fell, with neither arrival or impact making any real sound. And that was all.

For a sapient who'd effectively been through a full Gifted School education, it was more than enough.

Lockdown.

Transport flame accessed the between by a means other than a unicorn's corona -- but in the end, both effects moved through an identical medium. The castle had been placed under the protection of lockdown enchantments, and so teleportation in and out of the structure was now impossible. Movement within the castle could still be managed: he would have no trouble in sending a scroll to the kitchens. But anything else... back to its departure point, and nothing more.

Help wasn't coming.

A very small, very scared dragon eventually managed to take a breath.

Quavering blue and a rust scent. It had been a long time since those lessons, but desperation aided with recovery. But not the usual flash at the end. The working stopped the sending, but it couldn't alert anypony that there was an attempt made or tell them where it was tried. Because nopony's attuned, because that part of the spell doesn't work any more, because the caster's dead, or... because it wasn't a field trying to get through. They don't know where I am.

He checked the crack anyway. Nothing.

Yell or Fire...

Fire had been in the wrong place to work, and... he had trouble using it on anything living, couldn't even make himself face the concept so much of the time. Spike had very few issues with singeing the tail of a thief just enough to make her leave, but... the Princess' lessons echoed. How careful he had to be. They were lessons he'd taken to heart, and fear of consequences had driven them down to the point where he'd hesitated just a little too long in the face of timber wolves. Creatures which would have burned, and knowing that they would burn, he'd... frozen.

Yell included Yell For Help. And now that had failed.

But there was a third option.

He put his right eye close to the crack. Eventually, his vision adjusted, and the shadows cleared enough to let him make out a particularly fine bench. Dusty, but well-padded in rich velvet. Obviously comfortable. Probably worth a thousand bits or, given its likely great age, potentially much more. A fine thing to own, if somepony's tastes galloped towards furniture.

Or if there was something within you which just wanted to own.

(This time, he felt the membranes flicker.)

How long would it take?

He'd never tried it, of course. He'd never even told anypony about the thought, because it had scared him too much. The idea that if he made himself want, if he drove everything else away until there was nothing left but want... that it could happen again. And if done with purpose, it might happen faster. Discard rationality, toss sanity away, trade everything there was about him for the raw want that came from Greed, and his body...

A small squad of Wonderbolts who'd been practicing maneuvers nearby hadn't been enough to stop him. All the magic Ponyville could bring to bear (which hadn't been everything: they'd held back, with so many of those who'd come to know him as a sapient afraid of hurting him, holding out for the desperate hope of a cure) hadn't done it. The right thoughts until all thought was gone: that just might do the trick. Bring the monster back. His body would swell, burst out of the wardrobe. It wouldn't take much longer before he barely fit in the hallways. Ponies would flee as his strength increased, as the rampage reached out to take everything, as sheer Greed destroyed everything it could not acquire so that no others could possess it...

...until his sheer mass collapsed the floor.

Until stone rained down upon the lower levels.

Until everypony in the castle... died.

He could be strong. He could be stronger than just about anything, maybe even stronger than her. But the first part of the price Spike would pay for that was... Spike. And the mare who'd originally brought him back would be nothing more than the scent of blood and a fast-fading echo of unheard agony.

Spike knew about betrayal. He was a dragon who lived among ponies and in his nightmares, his instincts betrayed him again and again, until there was nothing left which was not his. Until there was nothing at all.

Yell. Fire. Greed. It felt as if he'd summarized his entire species in three words.

'Betrayal' made four.

"Many of those experiences are going to be ugly. But you'll learn from every one -- and after a while, it'll give you more options than 'Yell' or 'Fire'. 'Humiliate' and 'Terrify' can work wonders, although you have to be careful: it's too easy for them to come back on you. 'Embarrass' has some staying power, especially since no amount of time ever seems to make it completely go away..."

No.

I don't want to think about him.

He was...

It had taken a long time for Ponyville to become used to Spike. He'd had to learn how to introduce himself over and over, being friendly, welcoming, giving them a chance to see him. A few never had, but... for the most part, even after the worst had happened, they accepted him -- because they'd known him for years. But if he traveled, had to introduce himself all over again, he quickly went back to being a curiosity. Worse, a familiar: a term so often misused because a true one couldn't be sapient and, after channeling the magic of another for a few moons, also couldn't have a heartbeat. Or beyond that, a pet --

-- or a monster.

Quiet had...

...I liked him.

I liked him and I was glad Twilight liked him too. He made her happy and she hasn't been happy much since she changed. I thought...

...I thought he was my friend.

He'd seen the expression on the stallion's face, as Quiet had stood over a still-screaming Twilight. (It was easy for him to read pony faces, for it was nearly all he knew.) There had been a sort of neutrality there, something which had almost felt forced. And...

...no. If he was sorry about it, he wouldn't have done it.

Yell. Fire. Greed.

No horn. No wings. No hooves.

"Humiliate. Terrify. Embarrass."

Shut up, Quiet.

His right hand clenched. Claw tips skidded across palm scales.

You hurt them. You might kill them. Anything you tried to teach me is...

...like Star Swirl's notes.

He was a horrible pony. Worse than anypony ever would have believed. But he was still a great magician. He knew things. No matter what the pony was like, his workings are still so far past what virtually anypony's ever done, even after all this time.

Quiet's horrible. But he still knows things. And what he said on the walk back from town...

Yell. Fire. Greed.

I can't get help. The lockdown spell will seal the windows and doors too. I might be able to melt my way out, but when that hits the spell, something will go off. And it'll be really loud, the spell interacting with the flame. Even if I didn't run out of fire, they might find me before I could finish escaping, and once they knew I was outside and going for help, even if they don't know I can contact --

Spike blinked, and only his outer eyelids moved.

-- they don't know.

I haven't sent one letter in front of anypony local since we got here. I offered to send some for Doctor Gentle, but the birth got in the way and he never asked what I'd meant. I don't think anypony got a good look at the one scroll when it came in.

The only thing they really know about me is that I'm a dragon. And that isn't much. It'll be like Ponyville in the beginning: it's not facts, it's mostly what they tell themselves...

Think.

He planned, as best he could. It didn't feel like it was enough, and it felt exactly like everything would go wrong as soon as he started with any of it, but that was most of what Applejack said plans were anyway.

Spike prepared: there were things which had to be done in advance. And then, before he left the wardrobe, there was one last thing. Because there was still a chance for an answer to be there, something which would help. Something they could use. And so he took out the scroll which had cleared the exit, let a claw tip break the seal, and used the little crack of light to read it.

It didn't take long. Cadance had only sent back fourteen words.

He read them three times, and the last two were in the hope that doing so would somehow break an enchantment and make them change. They never did.

And after he wiped away the newest of tears, he cloaked himself in imaginary armor and went forth to do battle.

At Spike's size...

A monster powered by nothing more than greed couldn't be missed. A sapient of his height was not only occasionally overlooked, but had a plethora of places to hide in. The castle offered shadowed alcoves, little patches of false night between furniture, and the not-so-occasional cabinet. It would have been a magnificent place to play hide-and-seek in, although the games might have gone on for hours. (If a good spot could be found near a restroom, days.)

He listened before he moved, made sure the air was silent and still. It often left him curled up in tight spaces for several minutes, waiting for ponies to pass. His plan meant he couldn't confront any number higher than one, and he was waiting for the right one to come along.

It meant he was losing time. Minutes accumulated, turned into an hour. But he couldn't rush, even when images of all the horrible things which could be happening to the others occupied so much of his inner vision. He might get one strike, and so it had to be the right one.

Just like Quiet did.

Lessons from monsters.

There were times when he had to hide in rooms, and he used them for scavenging. A few pieces featured minor jewels: a small ruby at the center of a drawer's knob, a little tanzanite setting off the peak of a headboard. It was all fuel, at least after he got them pried loose, and he reminded himself to tell Rarity that she had to stop any payment on the cannibalized curtains.

He had a brief chance at a window and saw multiple, increasingly miserable ponies making their way across the grounds in the relentless downpour. It felt as if that helped him: less ponies to search. It didn't let him out: it was too far down to drop, and his attempt at a test scratch proved that the thaums currently coursing through the glass weren't going to allow easy breakage.

At one point, he found himself in what seemed to be a master bedroom, and the picture in the ornate frame identified the owner. (He didn't take the pillbox: the gems were mere flecks, too small to do any good, and the pearl sheen didn't help. Pearls didn't taste right.) But a deep breath directed him to a large closet, where he found a cardboard box containing four metal loops at the absolute back. Each one featured a tiny pink diamond. He'd never consumed a pink diamond before, but the enticing scent promised interesting results.

(The box had some writing on it: Sacred Leg Bands. He had no idea why they were supposed to be sacred, and didn't care.)

The bedroom was exited quickly, just ahead of the approaching hoofsteps. More time was sacrificed to the depths of an armoire, and he listened to the larger-sounding of the two ponies muttering as he went by.

"He's got to be around here somewhere..."

"He can't be anywhere else," the companion mare replied, not without amusement. "By definition. Just keep looking."

"But if he got into a passage --"

"-- how would he even know to get in? He's only been down the one. Besides, the traps would take care of that for us." A brief pause. "Which means we've got to find him, just in case he does manage to kick one of those doors in."

Spike imagined the nod. "How big is he?"

"Seriously?"

"I really haven't seen him."

Very bemused now. "He's a dragon. He's kind of hard to miss."

In tones which were already fed up with the mare's mirth, "So he's big."

"No. The head crests would come up just short of your spine."

A long pause.

"Maybe we should start opening things."

He froze. Wondered how loud his breathing was, and then tried to temporarily stop.

"Like?"

"Closets, for starters," the stallion said. "And jam them open. Make sure anypony who goes by a room can look straight in." More trotting. "A physical search of all things. Why nopony's invented a dragon-finding spell..."

"We'd have to have somepony here tonight who knew it," the amused mare noted. "And besides, how often is anypony going to want to find a dragon?"

They moved on, or at least went far enough to make Spike think they had: it took a little extra effort before he could make himself jump out.

One strike...

The oldest of the servants slowly made his way down the furniture-lined hall, visibly deep in thought. The observer had no way of knowing that the stallion was pondering the fast-approaching end of his duties, which for him was exactly like contemplating the conclusion of his life. He had been with the House for all of his working years. He had practically inherited the position: his parents had served, he had felt he'd been born to serve, and then his mark had confirmed it. He had a settled zone to live in, a castle to look after, and a Lord to please: that had been true for all his life, although the Lordship in question had eventually been pressed between the hooves of the current generation.

"The last generation," the old unicorn softly said, for he had been at the meeting. To him, there was privacy and in privacy, he could mourn.

The burst of green flame went off directly in front of his snout.

He jumped backwards, and considered it to be a natural reaction. But he didn't shout: even for this, a reserved reaction was also in his nature, and it would have taken much more than that to make him scream. He hadn't been hurt: the flame had lasted but an instant, seemed to have produced relatively little heat --

-- and had just... appeared.

"...Master Spike?" the servant carefully ventured as he peered forward. The burst had been in front of him and therefore, wouldn't the same have to be said of the dragon? But there had been no jet. Nothing living at the other end. Just -- a burst. "If you are trying to gain my attention --" his horn ignited with a partial corona, preparing "-- you have it. Please know that nopony here intends to hurt --"

-- which was when he realized that something had fallen to the floor.

The old servant, who could only put up with so much untidiness in his Lord's domain, instinctively looked down and saw a scroll, one which had unfurled itself upon impact and so allowed him to read the single word written there.

Sucker.

The weight landed on his back. One hand wrapped around his horn, and he felt scales scrape against his neck as the dragon leaned into him, clamped a palm over his mouth --

Softtread reared up. A tail which hadn't done more than mildly swish with displeasure in more than two decades remembered how to lash as forehooves pawed at the air. But the weight was still there, and so he brought his forelegs down and tried balancing his weight on them as the hind went aloft, he twisted and felt the grip tighten on his horn, the horn which was being rapidly tapped by a single dense claw, backlashed at Stage Zero over and over again, he couldn't muster a single working, he couldn't even move the little dragon at that level of effort and to try anything more intensive with the constant impacts would have seen him defeat himself. So he tossed his body about as best he could, moving on instinct, giving in to a desire virtually nopony alive had ever known. The urge to get a rider off his back.

But he was old. The weight shifted, and scales scraped against greying fur. But the horrible hands kept their grip. Walking claws pressed tightly against his sides, nearly poked through the cloth. And so after a wild minute, all four hooves were in contact with the floor again as he panted with exertion, unable to rid himself of that Tartarus-freed weight.

"Trot into that restroom," the dragon whispered. "Right now. If I see a corona, I backlash you -- and you know my claws are dense enough to do it now. If you try to yell, I exhale."

Softtread noted the shakiness in that statement, and wondered if the undertone had been uncertain enough. Didn't initially move.

"I don't think I can miss," the dragon said. "Not from here."

He trotted.

"Close the door."

A very light kick did the work. He hated that. Being uncivilized only led to scuffing.

"I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth," the dragon told him. "Don't scream."

The voice was young: he'd noticed that shortly after the guests had arrived. The dragon's tones were surprisingly normal in nature: it was possible to estimate his age from speech alone. To merely hear him speak, without sight... if one could forget about the scales pressing against fur and skin -- might be to mistake him for a pony.

But he was not.

The palm came away. Not too far. The width of a few tail stands, ready to clamp back down again.

"Tell me where they are." And the young voice was audibly choking back fear. "Tell me if they're alive. I'll know if you're lying."

Could a dragon know? It would account for so many of the stories about the dangers of dealing with them... but in any case, Softtread had no reason to lie.

"They are in the castle," he steadily replied, keeping his voice low. "They have not been harmed. We have been searching in order to bring you to them --"

"-- they were captured," the youth cut him off, and he felt the trembling against his spine. "Chained and restrained. I saw --"

"-- Lord Presence -- needed you all to hear. To understand. He was hoping... that the Bearers would assist..."

It was also possible to feel the rider's muscles go tight. "Assist? To make more ponies like her? To make them hurt? Or is he just looking to create more hybrids --"

"-- to help her," Softtread managed to get out, fighting back the constriction of his ribs. "To help so many. Things happen, Master Spike, and --"

The claws tightened around his horn.

"-- don't. call. me. that."

Lightning flashed near the window, and the boom of thunder arrived a mere heartbeat later.

"You're going to take me to them," the dragon told him. "And we're going to let them out."

"And how," Softtread asked, "do you expect me to do that?"

"I've been waiting for a servant. The older, the better. Somepony who knows all the passages. If they're really okay -- if they're just being held -- then you know where. You're going to take me down there, through those passages. Making sure nopony else sees us. Because if they do..." He heard the hard swallow, the gulp of fear. "Maybe I can't beat more than a few ponies at once. But I can breathe. I'm right on top of you. Even if they try to yank me off, I just have to breathe once."

He was the oldest servant in the castle. The head of staff. He did know exactly how to get to the cells.

But he also knew a terrified youngling when he heard one.

(A child. The dragon sounded exactly like a child...)

"You don't want to do that."

"I will," the dragon shakily said.

"You don't have it in you," Softtread calmly replied. "Jump down to the floor, and we can discuss --"

The hand which had been in front of his mouth was now against his neck. Claws poked through the fur, indented flesh.

"I know a little about what I have in me," Spike hissed. "I know not to let it out unless I have to. But you've got my sister."

(Exactly like a frightened child...)

"You can't..." It was a weaker protest than he'd expected it to be. "You can't feel that way. She's a pony, a Princess, and you're a --"

And there was force in the words. "-- she's my family. You're holding my family. You don't know..."

The old servant was quiet for a little while.

"The doctor," he finally said, "has given an order. They will not be harmed. There is a researcher on the way, correct? They are only being held until she arrives." With some pride, "Somepony tried to call for their deaths, and the doctor stood against --"

"-- Coordinator," the shaky young voice said.

Softtread blinked.

"How do you --"

"-- we," the dragon stated, with fear vibrating every syllable, "went to school together."

The old unicorn couldn't manage to picture that.

"They won't be hurt," he said. "They are only being held so that Lord Presence can leave the castle with the doctor and his daughter. We would never harm the Bearers. You are our guests, the last ones we will ever host, and --"

"-- they're leaving," the dragon desperately cut him off. "The ones who don't want them killed won't be here. Coordinator will."

And for the first time, Softtread thought about that.

"My duty," he eventually stated, "is to the House and its Lord. His... final orders... were to ensure that he departed without incident, and that the Bearers would be safe --"

"-- they aren't!"

"There will be guards --"

"-- guards who have access," the dragon frantically insisted. "Who could do anything! And they're restrained, they're chained and tied up and..."

The claws had never stopped poking, even as the fear peaked.

"...it's my family..."

Softtread stood in silence, a few hoofwidths away from a sink which desperately needed cleaning. It seemed as if some of the griffon cuisine (modified) had wound up in this room, post-consumption. He'd have to take care of that.

He could feel the weight. The real on his back and the frantic pressure of an old memory, expressed as the recollection of tears soaking into a foreleg.

I lied to him.

Until I did not.

"I will need to move to the wall on the right and raise a hoof," Softtread quietly said. "Once we are in the first of the passages, there will be multiple occasions when I will require the use of my field to deactivate the traps. I will warn you of each one."

Silence.

"I don't trust you."

"I understand," the old servant told him. "I simply want you to see where they are. That they are unharmed. And... perhaps once you do, you will be willing to stay with them. To protect them. That is your role, is it not?"

"You could be sounding alarms," the youngling declared with the air of somepony who'd just thought of that. "Every time you say you're deactivating a trap --"

"-- I don't think you want to kill me," the stallion stated.

"I --" the dragon began.

"-- but not having the desire," Softtread finished, "is not the same as not possessing the ability. Brothers... do strange things when their sisters are involved. I will be moving to the right now. Be careful with your claws, please."