Revenant
===E8DB
It didn’t take her long to determine where Lightning was. Despite how much her friend had changed in skill, she was still the same mare. This is what Rainbow had to keep telling herself as she approached the bar they’d go to together. Above, the clouds swirled and discharged small bolts of electrified air, all seeming to spin around this one spot. I don’t know what you did to get this strong, Lightning, but it can’t be good for you. She took a deep breath and walked in.
The place was almost empty save for two or three earth ponies and unicorns. They eyed her hatefully as she entered but hesitated to act, mostly because of the mare sitting alone in a booth in the far corner. Rainbow walked steadily across the bar and saw that Lightning had already finished three full glasses of cider. “A bit early to drink this much.”
Lightning had her head lying on the table, her mane splayed out messily before her. She lifted her head with unease and craned her neck toward her. She chuckled in a slightly tired stupor. “Oh, you drank more than this before breakfast.”
Rainbow didn’t take the bait. “That was a bet. From you. I’m not… like that anymore.”
Lightning’s face contorted into a frown. “And what are you exactly? You disappear for months on end. I thought it was to look for Fluttershy but I scour Equestria for you and your nowhere. Off the map. Gone. Poof!” She waved her hooves in front of her to instrument her point. She screwed her eyes shut in pain and clenched her teeth wincing. “Gah, my head.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I’m not surprised with how much you drank.”
Lightning narrowed her eyes at her. “This isn’t from that. This is… something else. Something you wouldn’t understand.”
Rainbow put her hooves on the table. “Believe me, Dust. I can believe a lot of things now. In fact, that’s the reason I can’t stay. But I need to help you and the rest of the camp before I go.”
Lightning grimaced. “Always gotta have the last word, huh? You seriously wanna leave just after getting here?”
Rainbow took a deep breath trying to calm her nerves. She never liked dealing with her friend when she was like this. “Listen, there is more than meets the eye here. Spitfire and a lot of the others have been replaced. We need to-”
Lightning held up a hoof to silence her. “Woah, woah, Spitfire? What are you talking about?”
“It’s these creatures called changelings. They took a bunch of the flyers’ places, probably some around here too. Their planning to start a war between Sky Glaive and Hoofenbach.”
Rainbow caught Lightning’s eyes and for a moment hoped that what she saw was lucidity and recognition. Instead she laughed. “Are you serious? Changelings? That’s gotta be some kind of gag.”
Rainbow leaned a little bit closer from across the table, her patience wearing thin. “Look, you have to admit that some of the others have been acting weird! Spitfire ordered you to make that cloud cover, right? Why?”
Lightning was about to answer but she winced again and gripped her forehead. “I… um…”
“And the ponies down here. Why would they make a call for reinforcements when they don’t need it? They were told to bring siege weapons. Why would they need that to fight an enemy that retreated months ago?”
Lightning’s eye twitched and she hissed as she tried rubbing her forehead a bit more. Rainbow grabbed her arm and pulled it forcing her to make eye contact. “Listen to me!”
“SHUT UP!!” Lightning flung her arm with such strength that it hurled Rainbow across the floor. Chairs and stools went flying and even the table she sat at turned to mulch. Rainbow groaned, a slight pain in her side but still good. The rest of the ponies in the bar seemed smart enough to run out as Lightning stumbled forward clutching her head in pain.
“Lightning?”
The distraught mare shouted and her voice shattered the glasses and windows. Rainbow shielded her eyes from the debris while still keeping an eye on Lightning. There was something eerily familiar about the feeling radiating from her. Suddenly an amorphous black shadow sprung from Lightning’s feet and swirled around her. “Oh, Dust, what did you do?”
Lightning looked at the shadow with wide eyes and attempted to shake it loose but the darkness held and even began wrapping itself around her hooves and up her torso. She gave one last terrified look to Dash as the dark ribbons coiled around her face. There was the friend she’d known. But the next moment she was gone, her face completely covered.
“Lightning!” Rainbow shouted and flew at the darkness but a mass of it rose from the floor and she collided with it. Without missing a beat, she appeared from a shadow in the ceiling and flew into the floor with a crash.
Lightning continued to struggle against the black constraints but it was clear she was losing, her movements getting weaker. Finally, she simply stopped and hung her head. Rainbow lifted herself wearily to her feet from the crater she’d made in the floor. “Lightning?” she asked tentatively.
Two eyes red as blood opened from the blackness covering her face. A mouth started to form as if tearing the blackness in order open, bearing sharp teeth. The wings unfolded into sharp angles like a bat, trails of black miasma loosing from them. That wasn’t Lightning anymore.
The new thing before her smiled with its mouth full of vicious teeth. “What’s the matter, Rainbow? No hello for an old friend?”
Old friend? Whatever this thing was she hadn’t ever met it before. “Fraid you got me confused, black thingy,” she replied trying to cut the tension. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“Oh, it’s still me in here.” It changed to Lightning’s voice. “But me as well.” Rainbow paled as Fluttershy’s voice cut through.
“What… are you?”
“A revenant,” it replied. “An afterimage of the dark power of Nightmare Moon, the mind of Fluttershy and the mind of your friend all at once.”
Something clicked in Rainbow’s head. “So that’s what you did, Lightning. You took Fluttershy’s power.”
“Not all of it,” it said with a sigh. “Lightning simply found a dying shadowbolt and stole some of its power, at my insistence of course. Nightmare Moon may be dead but her power lives on and becomes tied to those that wield it. Those with weaker hearts become mere vessels for its evil while the stronger are able to control it. And before you ask, no it was not controlling Fluttershy. The mare had a will beyond that which she outwardly showed.”
“So why are you here now?” Rainbow asked, trying to take a tactical step back.
The thing grinned. “Lightning had been dealing with the pressure of this power for a long while. Your arrival seemed to be a tipping point for her.” It disappeared. Rainbow stopped in her tracks and looked around. How had it done that? She had been just looking at it. Her step back made her bump into something behind her. “Boo.”
She spun and was greeted to a right hook from the creature. Rainbow was sent flying across the bar again and crashed through the wall onto the rainy street. Shouts and screams rang out around her as she stood back up waveringly. Meanwhile the Flutter Dust Revenant stepped from the hole it created, sharp teeth and monstrous appearance bare for all to see. “You have no idea the frustration we have for you, Rainbow,” it growled. “Fluttershy, Lightning, why is it that all your friends eventually end up hating you?”
Rainbow got her balance but had to hold her left leg up. Damn, that’s gotta be a break. She didn’t feel so good about her ribs either. “You’re not Lightning or Fluttershy,” she breathed. “You’re just some dark thing using their memories.”
“What I am is whatever Lightning and Fluttershy made me,” it replied. “And right now we both want to hurt you.”
Before the revenant could act Rainbow propelled herself into the air. She had lost her goggles in the scuffle so rain was getting in her eyes but she just had to fly as fast as she could. She peered behind and saw the revenant gone, but that was because it was in front of her now. “You keep trying to run!” it shouted as a tendril of darkness shot out and threatened to impale her. Rainbow narrowly dodged the attack but it made her stress her ribs and she lost focus beginning to fall. Then in a burst of speed the revenant was at her again, wrapping its arms around her and flying her up into the sky. “But you don’t get to run away now. You don’t get to abandon us!”
Rainbow wanted to shout at it, to say something to try to get through to her friend but the revenant was moving at speeds unheard of now. Rainbow was having a hard time just getting in a breath. Then her breath was gone. She and the Revenant slammed into the underside of Sky Glaive and plowed straight through. They exploded from the other side, tarmac and safety lights flying in all directions.
Rainbow flopped to the ground, her body bouncing a couple of times until she skidded to a halt. She could already feel herself losing consciousness, a wound on her head beginning to bleed down her eye. In the back of her mind she could make out the sound of the emergency siren. Red lights flashed across the camp, their tracers making Rainbow’s head pound even more. Not only that but flyers had begun to mobilize in the air, not seeming to pay attention to the destruction caused by her fight. But she couldn’t really call this a fight. This was a massacre, and she was on the receiving end. A bleary shadow approached her standing against the lights in the distance.
“You know why nopony is coming to help you?” the shadow asked. “Because they all know this is a long time coming.” The revenant came into focus and gripped her torn uniform lifting her up. “You abandon your squad, your duties, your friends! Why? What was it all for?!”
Rainbow couldn’t keep track of what to focus on. The fighting had already started and she and Lightning had ignited it. The ponies were going to war with each other and her friend was trapped inside a cocoon of her own dark emotions.
No. This wasn’t Lightning’s fault. It was hers. If she had looked a little harder. Been a little more attentive. Been… a better friend. “Guilt,” she croaked. The revenant paused, its anger seeming to subside for a moment. “I went after Fluttershy because I felt guilty. I left without finding you, Lightning, because I felt guilty about getting you into this. I didn’t… want to see you hate me. Not like I saw in Fluttershy’s eyes. I keep telling myself I left for a greater purpose but… it was because I’m a coward. Too much of a coward to say… I’m sorry.”
The revenant held her up, the hoof gripping her beginning to tremble. Then it let her go. Rainbow collapsed to the ground in a heap. The revenant stumbled back gripping its head in pain. “She needs to be taught a lesson,” it hissed.
“But she’s my friend,” Lightning’s voice spoke. “She apologized.”
“You think somepony like her means what she says?! Let us hurt her!”
“No!” It gripped its head and let out another wailing scream before shooting into the air.
“Wait! Come back!” Rainbow shouted but could barely summon the strength to raise her voice. She tried flapping her wings but found that there was a new break on her body. Instead she stumbled and rolled lying on her back looking up at the sky. “Lightning.”
Then ponies were above her. Familiar ones, though a little beaten up. The ones that had attacked her previously. They looked down on her in a circle, grins plastered to their face. “Well, look who it is.”
Rainbow tried to get up but one simply laid a hoof on her chest. “Ah ah ah. Wouldn’t want you leaving before we finally got introduce you to the Queen.”
They parted and Spitfire came into sight. The mare wore her sunglasses even in the dark cloudy day, pulling them off dramatically to look at her. She grinned like the rest but stopped when a look of recognition flashed across her face. “You. I know you. One of the mares from the dreams.”
“Really, my Queen?” a changeling asked.
Spitfire frowned and leaned down to sniff her. They made eye contact and Spitfire’s pupils narrowed to a slit before returning to normal. “No, I must be mistaken,” she chuckled. “To be afraid of somepony like you I’d have to be thick in the head.”
“What do we do about that thing?” another asked.
She put her sunglasses back on and shrugged. “Leave it. If it comes back then just stay out of its way. I want to be done and out of this awful place before nightfall.”
“Why?” Rainbow choke out from beneath the changeling’s boot. “Why are you doing this?”
Spitfire’s demeanor changed into a more serious one. “This place will suffer a battle far greater than this, child. I intend to be gone when that happens.”
“The Queen saw it in a dream,” a changeling added, getting a swat for its troubles.
“Dream?”
“Not that you’ll have to worry about it,” Spitfire said returning to a cocky attitude. “That wing looks broken. Why don’t we give her an aerialist’s end? Throw her off the side.”
The changelings looked a little bummed but still agreed lifting her in the air. “Let me go!” Rainbow shouted and struggled but her body was too bruised. Simply resisting caused immeasurable pain in her side.
“Goodbye, little Pegasus,” Spitfire said as she walked back to the camp. “I certainly hope your end changes the future I’ve foreseen. If not for me, then for all of us.”
The changelings stopped at the edge of the floating island putting Rainbow’s hooves behind her back and forcing her to look down at the earth below. Already shouts were ringing out and lights were blaring. She could see flyers descending on the camp and torpedoing through tents and buildings. This was worse than the One Night War.
Then, to ensure her demise, the changeling holding her pushed on her back while grabbing and pulling her wings. Rainbow screamed in pain as she heard and felt a snap. They laughed at her pain. She could even feel their disgusting psychic tendrils tasting her emotions once more. For the second time today, she was powerless.
No, she shouted in her head. Fight back. Fight back! “Fight back!” she shouted throwing her head back and slamming it into the changeling holding her. It grabbed its nose and let its disguise slip as green blood poured from it. Rainbow’s head rang out as she swayed trying to get her balance. She could fight. Everything pounded and ached but she had to fight. If for no other reason than she was the only one who could. Then one of the changelings snarled and pushed her in the chest toppling her back. Rainbow’s arms flailed and she fell off the side.
Every Pegasus instinct fought for her to survive. To fly somehow. But her wings were useless. Her legs had nothing to grab onto. So she fell. Tumbling through the air, the ground and sky seemed to revolve around her, thunder and lightning above and below with the flashes of war. She had flown so fast before always striving to go faster, but only now with the ground so in a rush to meet her did she want to slow down.
Rainbow closed her eyes, resigned to her fate. Maybe she deserved this. Maybe Lightning was right. No, there’s no denying it. I’m a coward. I’m forgetful. I always had such a one track mind. She opened her eyes again, biting her lip and staring up at the receding island she called home. “I don’t want to be like that anymore.”
Suddenly a rush of wind shot up from beneath her. It felt almost like being caught by a pillow of air as her descent slowed to a halt before dropping her on the ground. “Rainbow!” A blur of pink wrapped around her neck and squeezed. “Oh, I was so worried! I saw you fall and thought you were going to fly but then you weren’t and I knew something was wrong so I-”
“Pinkie!” Rainbow choked out pushing her away. “I’m fine!” She winced slightly at the strain it caused. “More or less.” They had landed in a narrow between two barracks. Out of sight with the rest of the battle.
Pinkie pulled away and examined her. “You’re not fine more or fine less. You’re bleeding everywhere and your wings don’t work!”
Rainbow struggled to her feet denying Pinkie’s assistance. “Doesn’t matter. I still need to stop this. Maybe… Maybe I can use the catapult or something.”
Pinkie shook her head. “Shining Armor says a bunch of ponies took the catapults before the fighting started. Their all being used by crazed soldiers.”
Rainbow rubbed her mane as she thought. “Agh, what about revealing the changelings? Is there any way to do that?”
Pinkie frowned in thought. “Hard to say. A burst of emotion, maybe? Something strong enough that they can’t digest it. I don’t know!”
Rainbow looked at herself and the world falling apart around her. “What kind of emotion does it have to be?”
“…Happy.”
“Not a lot to go around here.”
They both looked at the ground. Things were looking hopeless. Even if she used Pinkie’s speed to get everypony out of the battle, there would still be the changelings hiding and the pegasi in the skies to deal with. The skies…
Rainbow looked up at the storm. Light illuminated the insides of the clouds sporadically throwing off a bolt of lightning or two. But inside those illuminations was something else. A figure thrashing around with reckless abandon. “I know what I need to do.”
Against every impulse her brain was sending her, Rainbow beat her wings. It felt like knives in her back but she needed to be airborn. “What are you doing?!” Pinkie asked grabbing her hoof to stop her.
Rainbow looked into her eyes, a new determination brimming within her. “Pinkie, please. I need to get up there. I think I have a way to stop this but I can’t do it alone. There’s somepony up there that I need to help. This won’t end until I do.” Pinkie’s worried expression was unchanged. “This is my world. My responsibility. And I abandoned it to this. I don’t know if I could have done anything to stop this invasion, but I left my comrades… my friends behind to face it alone. You understand, right?”
Pinkie still looked unsure but loosened her grip. Rainbow took that as a confirmation and nodded to her. Her arm lingered as she pulled up and a small spark of electricity buzzed between their hooves. Rainbow didn’t even notice as she was already flying higher.
With each beat of her wings a new pain began and then they gradually stopped. She was probably just getting number which wasn’t a good sign but she needed to get to the clouds. She beat a little faster, not even noticing the quickened pace of her wings.