The first thing they felt was the sun.

Spike squinted, his claw going up to his face to shield his eyes from the bright light. It must have been late afternoon, but out here, the sunlight felt...stronger. Harsher, somehow.

"Welcome to the Tropic of Bellerophon," Discord's voice echoed. "Land of the Eternal Plains."

Spike glanced over his shoulder, eyes widening as he took note of the two ponies behind him. "Twilight? Rarity? You came too?"

"Yup," Twilight said. She had just struggled to her hooves after shooting Discord a glare after what was, presumably, quite the unexpected teleportation spell. "I just wanted to make sure that nothing too extreme happened."

"Twilight, please."

Spike looked back up; Discord was hovering in the sky above them, laying back on a cloud and sipping a glass of chocolate milk. "The whole point of this exercise is to go to extremes," Discord said, sounding annoyed. "Goodness; don't you ponies ever do anything fun?"

Twilight kept glaring at him. Discord turned to the ground and stuck out his tongue at her.

Rarity coughed from her place beside Twilight. Somehow, her mane had avoided getting mussed up as badly as Twilight's during their little jaunt; Spike was sure that millions of mares would pay their weight in gold to find out how she was able to control her "coiffure" so well. "Of course, I had to come along too," she said, giving Spike a tight smile. "I must admit that my reasons are not entirely altruistic—there's something exciting about imagining you truly cutting loose, as Discord has said."

"You're sure?" Spike asked. "Even after the Boutique?"

"Spike, that was weeks ago. I've long since gotten over any phobia of growth I may have had." Rarity shook her head. "Besides, if you hadn't noticed, I've become more than comfortable with...well, with a larger 'you,' you might say. Seeing you down here like this is a welcome change, but I can't say that the thought of you outgrowing anything you have before doesn't bring a certain thrill to my veins."

Spike felt a chill go down his spine. It wasn't a bad one, though—it sang with a tense, electric feeling, tickling his muscles with warmth and tension. He shot Rarity a grin. "Well, then," he chuckled. "I'll do my best not to disappoint."

"So where did you say we were?" Twilight asked. "The Tropic of Bellerophon?" A frown crossed her face. "I could swear that I'd heard of the name somewhere..."

Above them, Discord yawned. "Well, I should certainly hope so. Any Canterlot scholar worth their salt will have heard of the legendary birthplace of the Buffalo race."

Twilight froze. "...You called it the Land of Eternal Plains."

"Did I?" Discord asked. "Slip of the tongue, really. But whether it's truly that 'mythical' place or not, the important thing is that it's flat, relatively uninteresting, and most significantly—for you ponies, anyway—completely empty." He shrugged, his shoulders digging into his cloud hammock. "Well, mostly flat—there are a few mountains over there—" he jabbed a claw to a dark lump on the horizon "—but for the most part, a healthy, growing dragon can just go wild."

He leaned over the side of his cloud and grinned. He was sporting a pair of large, gaudy pink sunglasses that seemed to blink along with his eyes. "So, what do you say, Spikey-Wikey? Ready to go?"

Spike licked his lips. "Ready."

Discord waves a hand dismissively, going back to lay on his hammock. "On your mark, then."

None of them saw it, but a mischievous grin swept across his face, and his eyes darted toward the mountains he'd pointed out. "Let's make this one heck of a show."

Spike closed his eyes, his claws curling into fists at his sides. Beside him, Twilight gave Rarity a look, and they both took a few steps away. There was no point in being too close to a soon-to-be-gigantic dragon.

There. Spike's lips curled into a smirk. He could feel it again: that knot of energy throbbing in the back of his mind. It was full of power, of promises of strength and size. Where before he'd had to dig deep to find it, this time, it seemed to be floating on the surface—almost as if it wanted him to find it.

Well, he was more than happy to oblige.

He decided to start slow. With a kind of mental twist—he wasn't sure how, really, to describe what he'd done, and likely wouldn't be able to anytime soon—he loosened the knot.

Warmth flooded into his system, singing through his veins as it loosened from a tiny trickle into a somewhat stronger one. He looked down at his claws, grin stretching from ear to ear as he watched his hands swelling. That power filled him, teasing him, running sparks of electricity up and down his spine.

His arms swelled outward, filling with muscle and power. Tension built in his "normal-sized" chest, and he grunted as his pectoral muscles pushed outward, bulging until they'd reached the size of basketballs. Layers and layers of thick, corded muscle built up around his legs and waist, filling the space beneath his scales with a strength he'd almost forgotten he'd had.

His spine arched as his body lengthened, his head inching up into the air as his limbs got longer and longer. Inches became feet, and soon, a ten-foot tall, adolescent dragon stood above the dancing grasses, his sculpted body shining beneath the bright sun.

He smirked down at Twilight and Rarity. "How's that for a start."

"Looking good so far!" Rarity called back. She was barely taller than his knees now, the tip of her horn only just poking below his hips.

"You're still in control?" Twilight asked. "No sudden urges to crush anything?"

"Twilight, it's me," Spike said. He spread his teeth in what he hoped to be a comforting grin. "Don't worry."

She looked up into his eyes, weighing, calculating, and evaluating. Finally, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again with a wide grin.

"Okay, then," she said. "Like Discord said—go wild."

With a pop, Discord himself appeared behind her. "Twilight, dear—you might want to get you and your friend a bit further away for the next part of our little show."

"Why's that?" Twilight asked.

"Ahem."

She followed Discord's glance until she met Spike: all ten towering feet of him. Her cheeks flushed, and she averted her gaze. "Right. One teleportation spell coming up."

"Have fun, Spike!" Rarity called as Twilight's horn began to glow. "We'll be watching!"

Spike waved back. "Will do!"

They vanished.

He turned back, squaring his shoulders. His eyes narrowed as his grin spread even wider across his face. "All right then," he murmured, licking his lips. "That was the warmup. Let's get serious."

Diving back into the recesses of his mind, he "grabbed" the knot with two tendrils of thought, and pulled.

It came loose.

Power like nothing he'd ever felt before flooded into his system. It rushed through his veins, nearly overpowering him with its sheer depth and heat. It was...intoxicating. His eyes fluttered, his mind nearly submitting to the pure feeling of bliss rapidly spreading through his body.

He gritted his teeth, his grin becoming a snarl. "I won't be beat," he growled, his voice deepening as his muscles swelled, his body growing even huger. "This power is mine—I'm in control here."

The power surged again, and his grin deepened, his eyes narrowing. "You want to have some fun?" he rumbled, feeling the power thrum in response. "Then let's have some fun!"

The energy exploded.

It filled his every cell, surging with power and strength. Spike's back arched, his muscles rippling and swelling across his body as his scales sharpened and hardened back to diamond-like levels. His body inched upward, his head moving up into the sky and his chest bulking further with each foot of height. Twelve became fifteen became twenty which became twenty-three. He was enormous—almost as big as he'd been before! At this height, a pony would barely reach his ankle, let alone one of his monstrous, bulging calves! His head alone was the size of a horse-drawn cart!

It wasn't enough.

That electricity ran through his body again, his veins singing with heat and power. He roared, throwing his head back as his limbs stretched, his muscles firming and growing until they made even his previous size look puny. He passed twenty-five feet, and then even thirty, without even breaking a sweat.

By now, had he been in Ponyville, he would tower over the tallest buildings. Even Ponyville Hall, where events like the Summer Sun Celebration were held, would only come up to his shoulder. He could picture it now: so tiny, so puny before his growing strength!

It was only going to get bigger.

His wings thrust out behind him, thickening and growing in span until they were each thirty-five feet, from tip to spine. He flexed them powerfully, feeling his mountainlike chest pulsing beneath his scales as he grew and grew and grew. Thirty feet became forty, soon becoming fifty, and even sixty.

It was like the sound rock and metal grinding together, bones lengthening until they alone were bigger than any pony could ever imagine. His muscles stretched, expanding like a balloon over his chest and arms. A tight feeling built up in his chest, and he let out a long, pleasure-filled sigh. It turned into a moan as waves of bliss washed over him, bathing him in pure sensation as he grew, and grew, and grew.

"Yes..." he murmured, his voice rumbling out across the plains. "That feels so good—"

His eyes darted back down to the earth below, and he almost laughed. Even the tallest trees of the Everfree Forest were nothing to him now! The tall grasses of the "Eternal Plains" were like dust beneath his feet, and with each passing second, he could feel his body growing and swelling, getting bigger and bigger at his command. His arms bulged even larger, his tail thickening behind him as it lashed from side to side in sheer pleasure and power.

Dragons by nature are not a bipedal species. It's only in the lean muscle of their youth that any are able to stand upright as usually only a Diamond Dog or minotaur can. With a mighty roar that shook the plains, Spike's hands—his front legs, he realized with a start—crashed onto the earth below, cracks rippling through the ground at his mighty weight. His wings spread wide, flaring out across the light of the sun above it.

From far away, Twilight and Rarity watched with awe, their eyes as wide as saucepans. "I-incredible," Twilight stammered.

Rarity took a deep breath. She felt warm—uncomfortably so, even. "Absolutely incredible," she echoed, licking her lips. Spike's gargantuan form towered above the plains; even from the distance of a half-mile, she could see him as clearly as though he'd been standing right beside her. Each bulge of toned, rippling muscle, that head growing huger than she could have imagined as his bulk seemed to cover the plains.

Spike grunted, smirking as his growth seemed to slow, tapering off at around seventy-five feet. "What's the matter?" he muttered, stomping one giant foot on the ground. It left deep claw marks, gouges that ripped through the tough dirt and claw. "Had enough? Is this too big?"

The tension seemed to grow, and Spike felt an almost belligerent feeling in the back of his mind. "Come on!" he hollered, his deep voice echoing for miles. "Let's see what you've really got!"

In the blink of an eye, Spike's already gargantuan form nearly doubled in size, growing from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet of pure draconic power. His tail lashed against the earth beneath him, gouging out deep scars in the ground as his claws—each bigger than a house; a pony was barely even an ant to him now—dug down even further.

His wings flapped once, not to get him into the air, but to make a show of their sheer size and breadth. It was like a hurricane had descended upon the plains, pushing and bending the tall grasses to the ground and even ripping small chunks of dirt into the air. Far away, only a quick shield spell on Twilight's part had made sure that the two observers wouldn't go a similar way.

The time of "inching" was long since gone, with another ten feet of length adding themselves to Spike's already titanesque size every second. On all fours, he wasn't necessarily as tall as before—just over a hundred feet at the shoulder—but that did nothing to mask the sheer bulk of his growing, powerful form.

He passed two hundred feet with a roar that shook the heavens, his head swelling up into the sky as his wings surged above him. His mind was overrun with sensation, the feeling of his limbs stretching and bulging like a torrential river bursting over his thoughts. His body sang with power, his already-huge body—two hundred fifty feet, three hundred!—screaming for more and more and more!

His roar bellowed out over the plains as his head soared up even further into the sky. By now, Twilight, Rarity, and Discord weren't even visible next to his enormous size; for the sake of their well-being, Twilight had teleported them even further away in preparation of future...explosive growth.

Five hundred feet. Six hundred. Seven hundred. This growth was exponential, pushing him further up into the sky with each passing second. Spike's mind was ablaze with the distilled feeling of power, strength that fueled his great size and urged him to go further, harder, and above all bigger.

A single clawed foot could have covered the entire Ponyville marketplace; each of his wings could have shaded the entirety of Sweet Apple Acres. He surged up even further, surpassing one thousand feet as a fire burned in his stomach, fueling his rise to what seemed like, for all intents and purposes, godlike proportions.

An Ursa Minor would be a gnat beside him, an Ursa Major barely the size of a chipmunk in comparison. Spike shifted his weight, slamming his claws deep into the ground. When he lifted them back up, he left an impact crater that shattered the ground beneath his several thousand tons of weight.

Hydras, skyscrapers, whole villages—they were nothing to him now! Tiny! Minuscule! Insignificant—unknowns beneath his massive, ever-stretching bulk!

And he was still growing.

Spike nearly doubled over, feeling something rippling deep in his stomach. The sensation moved up further until it filled his chest with heat, pushing him outward, upward, and past the lowest layer of clouds. They felt cool against his scales, leaving thin drops of precipitation falling against his massive back. Even that, though, was nothing compared to the temperature building in his chest.

With a roar swelling deep in his lungs, Spike took a deep breath, lifted his head to the sky, and—

The mountains that Discord had pointed out were not, in fact, mountains at all. Not in the strictest sense, that is—they actually formed a range of mountainlike territory that comprised one of the largest rings of volcanic activity in the world.

Near the peak of Mount Wanahawkaloogie, a red dragon dunked his head into the nearest pool of lava. He was a growing specimen, likely hitting the peak of his adolescent growth spurt: probably around forty to forty-five feet in length. His talons were impressive in both their sharpness and shine, and his wings flared powerfully behind his back.

He let his head rest in the lava for a moment. Its scalding temperatures may have burnt a pony or "weaker" species to a char, but to a dragon like him, it was merely a lukewarm bath. It felt...pleasant.

And then the ground shook beneath his claws. Once. Twice. Three times, the pebbles that, to a smaller creature might have been called boulders, rumbling around his feet.

His head jerked out of the lava. Beady yellow eyes glaring out across the magma-filled wasteland, he looked around for the unfortunate soul who'd disturbed his soak.

"Who—"

The words died in his throat as his eyes drifted up into the sky. It was an astonishingly purple-looking sky—which was admittedly odd, due to the fact that sundown wasn't for at least another hour—and made even stranger by the splotches of green that looked like giant clouds bobbing in the air above.

The dragon swallowed. Why did those clouds look like scales? Why did that purple look like muscle...?

He continued looking upward—his neck craning back, his spine cracking as he tried, and failed, to fit the entire thing into view—and saw, sitting high above the clouds, a face.

A dragon's face.

And then came the fire.

Huge tongues of flame, licking at the skies above, roared forth from the titanic dragon's throat like liquid heat. They curled around the clouds, evaporating any present moisture in a fraction of a second. The heat was nearly tangible, even from here—it was like an ocean of fire, flame, and heat, filling the skies until they were a deep orange, burning like the swell of a volcano's lower chambers.

The much smaller dragon's eyes wandered back down to the being's face, and he felt a shiver go down his spine. That pillar of size, already near a half-mile in height, let alone the monstrous length of its body, and the breadth of its wings, was like some kind of god—a creature of myths, like the great Wyrm, or the World-Serpent whose thrashing shook the world. But...those eyes...that crest...

...That stupid, dorky face...

Before he'd fully allowed himself to remember Spike's name, Garble's eyes rolled back up into his head and he fainted, collapsing onto the ground below.

Spike let his forelegs fall back to the earth with a crash, the ground cracking beneath his weight. Pillars of smoke the size of small towns curled beneath his nostrils. His body swelled and grew beneath him, his claws growing huge, his torso growing enormous—and he loved it. He loved every square inch of his massive, bulging body.

It was like nothing else he'd ever felt before. His rate of growth seemed to increase in size as fast as he did, each new spurt bringing even more power than the last. And what power! It seemed to fill his mind, drowning his thoughts and emotions in nothing more than pure, size-fueled bliss. He could roar, he could breathe fire, he could destroy entire cities if he wanted to! That rush filled his thoughts, fueling his muscles and height as the demand for more became a demand for more and more and more and more—

No.

Nearing a full mile in height, Spike was nearly lost in growth as he surely—and anything but slowly—became the largest creature that Equestria had ever known. His head swelled in time with the beating of his heart, that heat the only thing that filled his thoughts.

And then he heard the voice again: No.

It wasn't a loud voice. It wasn't a particularly defiant voice. But it was disappointed, and as Spike grew further and further into the skies, dominating the earth below him, it fluttered beneath the surface, waiting.

He was better than this, it whispered. He wasn't some beast, to be overcome by adrenaline and hormones and Celestia-knows what else. He wasn't a mindless monster, nor was he some kind of junkie, his muscles bulging outward with pleasure as he waited for his next fix. He was a dragon. He was a dragon, raised by a pony. He was a dragon who knew what things meant, and he was a dragon who knew why.

He was Spike, and there was no point in size if he was going to drown himself in it.

That whisper—that tiny, insignificant whisper—rang louder than the biggest volcano. The fire stopped.

He saw Discord, smirking down at him as he enunciated the words, "Go wild." He saw Twilight, looking up at him with wide eyes as her lips formed the words "Be safe."

He saw Rarity, and then remembered that if he was ever to have a chance with her, it would have to be as a dragon.

Not as a beast.

There was a strange, tingling sensation running up and down his spine. He suddenly felt cold, his limbs aching as though he'd dumped them in cold water. He glanced up at the sky and gaped—

The clouds were getting smaller. He glanced back down. The ground, bit by bit, was getting closer, rushing up to meet him. His eyes narrowed. He knew what he had to do.

Reaching back into his mind, he took hold of the "knot," grabbed hard, and pulled it tight.

The warmth disappeared.

He was shrinking, he was falling, he was losing altitude—and fast. A hundred feet disappeared in the blink of an eye, the earth swelling up to something more than just a floor beneath his feet. His wings curled in, and he shut his eyes in preparation of what was to come next.

He passed through the cloud cover, the white puffs leaving streaks of water and ice across his scaly face. Those melted in time, but only from the air resistance rushing across his skin. He left a thousand feet behind, and then eight hundred—seven hundred—six hundred—

Where once he had more than filled the sky, he now only filled half. His wings fluttered weakly behind him, his muscles shrinking and leaving his scales to fill that empty space back in. He was the size of a village—of a market square—of a skyscraper—

As easily as it had come, one hundred feet left him behind. Ninety feet flew by with a whoosh of air, eighty feet falling to seventy, and then sixty. He was falling, his bulk deflating, his head flying toward the ground like a missile—

And then there was nothing but dust.

"Spike!"

Twilight's hooves pounded across the ground, the grasses whistling against her sides with each heave of her chest. "Spike!" she hollered again. "Are you—"

Her hooves skidded to a stop, digging through the light brown dirt as she came to a full-out halt. Wide-eyed, she looked down at the scene below, with the sound of Rarity's galloping hooves echoing behind her.

A mass of dust hovered over the area, just barely settling after that mighty crash. The ground was bare, with a deep gouge in the earth that looked to go down for fifty feet. It was like a crater, as if a meteor had crashed here, wiping the earth away and leaving empty space in its place.

Right in the center of the crater was Spike, lying prone on the dirt.

In a flash of purple light, Twilight was by his side. "Spike!" she said again. She dove on top of him, her hooves clenched tightly around his neck. "Are you alright?"

"Ugh...Twi... You're choking me."

Twilight quickly pulled back, and Spike coughed loudly. He grunted, looking up at her—still prone—and gave a weak grin. "That was...pretty awesome, huh?"

"It was," Twilight admitted. "But you're not doing anything like that again! At least," she added, seeing the look of dismay in Spike's eyes, "not for a little while. You don't want to push yourself."

"Oh, Spike! That was amazing!"

"Rarity—oof!" Spike grunted, just barely managing to keep his grin as Rarity tacklehugged him to the ground. "What...what'd you think?"

"I could scarcely believe my eyes." Rarity gently stroked his scales, brushing the tips of his spines with the edge of her hoof. "My Spike, growing bigger than a mountain? Those mindless nimbies up in Canterlot would never believe something like this."

Spike sighed happily at her touch. "My Spike," Rarity murmured. "My big, wonderful Spike."

"So you all enjoyed the show, I see?"

Twilight turned to look over her shoulder. "Discord! I was wondering where you'd gotten off to."

Discord shrugged, twirling a bit of fur between his claws. "Oh, here and there," he said. "I'm more of an aerial viewer, myself."

He turned to wink at Spike. "For the record, those were some impressive guns. Battleship sized, I'd wager."

Twilight opened her mouth. "Wha—"

"But in any case," Discord went on, steamrolling right over her, "you may have noticed that you're feeling a bit tired. Fatigued. Exhausted, even."

Spike grunted from his place on the ground. "It's that obvious, huh?"

"A bit." Discord sighed. "You see, my dear little dragon—you're still young. Your body is still...maturing, shall we say." A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Your magic is still growing."

"So what does that mean?"

"Aha! But there's the fun part." Discord winked. "It means that with time, you'll not only have more control of yourself and the growth process, but you'll be able to push your body further as well. It'll just require some time."

"Time, huh?"

Spike looked around him. Twilight had her hoof on his arm, her mane waving in the wind. Rarity stood tall beside him, blue eyes glittering with affection and possibly something even more. Spike chuckled.

"I guess if it's just time I need, then I've got plenty of that. After all—"

He looked up at the sky.

"—making the journey is the best part."

He met Rarity's eyes. She nodded back, a smile flickering across her face.

"Let's go back to Ponyville," she said. Her hoof brushed against his arm. "I'm sure some ponies back there will be very interested in learning about what they may have just seen."

Her face moved closer; Spike went stock-still. Could she...?

Her lips touched his cheek.

As Twilight prepared the spell that would take them back to Ponyville, with Discord watching them with amusement and a spark in his eyes, Spike's jaw stayed wide open, his eyes seemingly even bigger than when he was huge. He barely made a sound as the magic surged above Twilight's horn, and didn't notice that one of the clouds above was shaped like a curl of flame, or that the sky was beginning to turn a deep crimson with the onset of sunset.

It was unfortunate that they weren't in the sky. For as they vanished, the teleportation spell taking hold, an airborne observer would have been able to notice something peculiar about the "crater" that they had just been in.

It was over three hundred feet long. It was rough, like the surf of the ocean. It was deep, pushing into the earth for a good fifty feet.

And, to that airborne watcher's eyes, invisible to those on the ground...

...It was in the shape of a dragon's foot.

END