"DEVERTO PULVIS!" Miles says again, taking a step forward. If I wasn't scared shitless right now, I would say something about how cool his voice sounds, but the only thing I can do is stare into his eyes. They seem to stare into the very essence of my being. I can't look away, I want to, but they won't let me. Before I can act he swings his arms straight out and wraps himself in the white archaic fire. The fire spins around and around him until it becomes the only thing I can see. I back away from the fire and trip over Spike.

"Storm, what’s going on?"

"I don't know!" I yell back over the roar of the fire. And in a matter of seconds the fire spins itself out and disappears from the room, leaving a large scorch mark on the floor.

"Where did he go? What was that fire? What’s-"

SMACK

Spike falls back from my smack and was about to protest, but stopped when I got in his face.

"Do you have any idea what kind of danger you put him in!?"

"What? I-"

"He can die from this you idiot!" Spike turns even paler from hearing this, so I continue. "If you had just asked, he would have told you everything you needed to know, but no. You just had to probe and test him didn't you!" At this point I'm pacing back and forth, fuming with rage. Spike’s sitting on the ground, holding the end of his tail and looking down. "Why did you do this? Why couldn't you just trust him-"

"Because Princess Celestia asked me to, okay?" I stop in my tracks and turn to him. "*sigh* Celestia originally asked Twilight to send her secret reports to her, but she ended up deciding not to do it. So I decided to do it in her name instead."

"Why would you do that?"

"I mean, come on. Celestia doesn't trust him. She's only the ruler of our nation, why wouldn't I do this for her? Wouldn't you?" I look away from him. I know if she had asked me to, I would do it without question. "See? It's not like I enjoyed doing this, but Celestia asked, so I couldn't say no. I never wanted to put him in harm’s way... I'm sorry." He looks down and I can see a few tears run down his face. I walk over to him and put a hoof around him.

"It's alright, you didn't know, how could you have? I'm sorry I had to hit you like that."

"It's alright... what do we do now?"

"We go after him, of course."

"But how do we do that? We don't have the slightest clue where he is. Not to mention we'll be powerless to stop him once we do."

"Well... I don't know... we'll have to think of something together, won't we?" He looks up to me and gives me a smile. As I begin to walk upstairs I feel Spike jump onto my back.

"I think I have an idea," he says, "do we have any of that drugged wine left?"

"Yeah, but-"

"So if we can get him to drink it, he should pass out, problem solved."

"Okay, how do we get him to drink it?"

"...pony feathers." This gets a small chuckle from me. When we walk into Twilight's room I nearly fall back from a white flash in front of me. When I look back I see Princess Luna standing right in front of me. I immediately bow before her, making Spike roll in front of me.

"Guard, why are you out of uniform? Actually, we'll deal with that later. What is with the sudden power surge in the area?"

"We'll you see... the thing is..." Spike stammers.

"It's Miles," I say as I rise back up.

"Miles? What do you mean?" I begin to tell her everything. Miles becoming my best friend, his powers, Celestia asking Twilight to keep an eye on him but Spike doing it instead, the party, everything. The whole time I tell her all of this she keeps a leveled look about her.

"...and now you’re here," I say in conclusion. I'm going to get fired.

"Where is this drugged wine?" I point up to Twilight's bed and she flies up to retrieve it. As she comes back down I walk over to my armor and begin to put it back on. "So, if we can get Miles to drink this, he should pass out?"

"Well... in theory. He seems to have a high tolerance to alcohol, but even a small amount of this stuff will work eventually." Luna looks down at the bottle as she thinks about this. She sets the bottle down and looks back to me with a confident smile.

"I have a plan." This is going to be interesting.

---

I'm flying all over Ponyville trying to find Miles, but he doesn't seem to be here. How can a guy who sets himself on fire hide so easily? After my third look around, I figure that he isn't in Ponyville, and head back to the library. When I land inside, I find Luna finishing her spell on the wine.

"Any luck?" she asks as she focuses on her spell.

"No, wherever he is, it isn't Ponyville." She finishes up and re-corks the bottle.

"It's alright, I know where he is, it's pretty hard to hide something with a power level over twenty thousand."

"TWENTY THOUSAND! But... but..."

"Yes, I know. We must make haste if we're going to find him before anything bad can happen," she says as she begins to walk out of the room. She stops by the door and looks over to the chest. She lowers the shield and pulls out my sword. "Will you be able to...?" she asks as she levitates it to me.

"I will do what must be done," I say as I take my sword. "I just hope I don't have to."

"Me too, now let's get going. Foggy Bottom Bog is pretty far from here." I nod as I follow her out. We take to the air and fly as fast as we can. Luna is clearly faster than me and has to hold back some for me to keep up, but we're still making good time.

An hour later we finally make it to Foggy Bottom Bog. We split up and begin to search around the bog for Miles from the air. He should be pretty easy to find, a white fiery human, kind of hard to miss. After a few minutes, Luna begins to hover in place looking really confused, so I fly over to her.

"Everything alright?"

"According to my reading, he should be below me, but there's nothing there." I look down and see nothing but solid ground below.

"Well maybe he's..." I stop when I hear the ground below explode open. I try to look down but Miles flies past my face in a flash, making eye contact with me for a brief second. He goes high into the air until gravity begins to take a hold on him. When he hits the height of his jump, he does a spin and shoots a ball of white energy towards us. It goes clear past us and slams into a hydra's head... HYDRA! From the ground comes a giant four... three headed golden hydra. The remaining heads look incredibly pissed off and roar out in anger. Luna and I immediately fly higher to avoid getting eaten by it.

"What do we do now?" I yell to Luna.

"There's nothing we can do right now, he's already destroyed one of the heads, I'll have to observe from here before we can find the new jugular."

"BUCK... sorry Princess."

I look back down and watch the fight unfold. Miles has landed in front of the hydra and has taken some weird fighting stance. Why does holds his arms so high...? Whatever, not important right now. The hydra’s headless neck convulses as it begins to split in half. Once the shaking stops, two new heads have appeared, roaring in anger. Miles jumps back high in the air as two of the heads try to bite him. When he hits the top of his jump he sends out a single curved line towards the two heads, decapitating them and sending blood everywhere. By the time he lands, four new heads have appeared and the hydra has started to charge after Miles. Miles pushes both his arms forward and sends a solid white beam into the hydra's chest, causing a large bloody explosion. As chunks of hydra rain down from the sky, Miles turns his back and begins to walk away.

"MILES, BEHIND YOU!" Luna yells as one of the heads swallows him up. Standing where the old hydra stood are two hydras, one with three heads and one with four. The center head of the three-headed one starts to lift its head as the others begin to laugh, until that head turns to solid ice. A few cracks appear on it, then it shatters. Miles lands on the ground looking unscathed. The other heads roar in anger and try to all bite Miles at once, but are stopped by a blue force field... blue? I look around to find myself hovering here alone. I look down and see Luna standing next to Miles, looking very tired. The hydras rear their heads back and smack back into her field, making it shatter and forcing Luna to collapse from the mental strain. Soon the heads cover my view and all I can see are the necks fighting to get to the two of them.

"Bucking Luna! What have..." The ground begins to crack as massive pillars erupt from the ground, carrying up the hydras. From these pillars, rocky hands come out and hold the necks of the hydras in place. White energy seeps from various cracks of the stone as Miles holds his hands on the ground, standing over a scared looking Luna.

The hands start to pull away from each other as they tear the heads off one by one. When all of the heads have been pulled off, Miles stands back up over Luna and begins to flail his arms around in a circular motion, sending white beams of energy out in all directions. Whenever these beams make contact, they make whatever they hit turn to ash. Soon the only remainders of the hydras are massive piles of ash that are blowing away in the wind.

Miles is now standing over Luna, looking down at her. With a tear in my eye, I pull out my sword and begin to fly straight for Miles. I really don't want to have to do this, but I will if I must. When I'm mere feet away, Miles turns around and lifts a hand, stopping me midair. He tilts his head as he looks me over. Before either of us could act, red liquid flies into Miles's mouth and forces its way down to his stomach. He drops me and turns back to see Luna levitating the now empty bottle next to her.

"ET SALUTANT MORTUUS," he says, before the lines on him fade away and the flames disappear. He stands over Luna for a second more before he passes out and falls on top of her.

"What did he say?" I ask, as I sit up and sheathe my sword.

"Umm... as much as I want to know... can you help get him off of me?" I shake my head and run over to pull him off of Luna. I roll him over on the ground and help Luna back to her hooves.

"Sorry about that."

"I-its fine," she says with a blush. She walks over to him and takes a look at his body, which I do as well. The wounds from earlier are gone now, not even scars remain. He simply looks as if he's sleeping peacefully. "Is he going to be alright?"

"I don't know, he told me when people use that much of their power, they lose a part of themselves. We'll have to wait for him to wake up before we can know for sure."

"Very well..."

"Princess Luna..."

"Yes?"

"Please don't separate us." She looks over to me in confusion, I guess now is as good a time as ever. "Miles is my best friend... my only friend really. Please, don't separate us, please." She looks at me for a bit before she looks back down to Miles.

"Now why would I do that?" Hu-wha-duh-uh? "You’re my expert on Miles now, if I were to separate the two of you, I doubt anypony else would be able to get him to open up as you have. I hope you get used to being around him, because you’re here to stay."

"Thank you Princess Luna, thank you, thank you, thank you..."

"Okay, okay. I get it. *giggle* come on. Let's get your friend home... and clothed." I quickly pick him up and begin to fly off with him, Luna close by. "How are you able to carry him on your own?"

"Hm... oh, a friend of mine enchanted my armor to give me extra strength." Luna just shakes her head as we continue to fly back towards Ponyville.

Next Chapter: Chapter 32 My Storm Estimated time remaining: 81 Hours, 30 Minutes