Chapter eight: Splintered Dreams
The tale that Skeleton told to Soarin that night disturbed him greatly. But then, most of them did, if not all of them. Once more, the mysterious stallion with the bone mask and ever changing eyes rescued her. But this time?
Well. This time he’d shown a significantly darker side to his character.
The unicorn had slaughtered every last stallion and mare that had held Skeleton against her will with a small hoof scythe held in the grip of magic. Reportedly, the sight of her saviour drenched in blood with eyes dancing with a bloodthirsty, furious light had sent her into shock. She had taken several weeks to recover and even then. She’d woken up alone with a note by her bedside in an abandoned building. The house she’d found was in ruins now, but she still used it. The storm clouds had gotten worse as well. She’d trusted someone and he’d turned on her. She'd tried to explain how this had given her a sort of split 'personality', a darker, more primal side given to not trusting anypony or anything, bent only on survival, but Soarin had had a hard time actually understanding any of it.
She’d told him of a time where she’d finally settled down once again, hoping to put her past behind her. She’d found a friend who’d stuck by her. He gave her shelter, food and a place to sleep. Eventually he’d tried to move beyond this barrier, but Skeleton hadn’t allowed him to. He’d said he’d understood apparently and things had progressed as normal.
But as it had turned out, he was part of an interesting little group of scientists and religious fanatics who decided that she had somehow inherited power from the dark god and had yet to realise it. He’d drugged her whilst she slept and taken her down to their ‘lair’ as she’d put it. They’d asked first, then demanded her to utilise her supposed ‘abilities’. Then when she seemed to be incapable of doing so, had resorted to torture. She had shown him scars he hadn’t even known about, cuts within her mouth and small pockmarks at the back of her neck at each vertebrae, hidden by her mane. They’d attempted to put her in danger that the power they were so fanatically convinced was within her would emerge.
Instead they’d brought down upon themselves their destruction at the hooves of somepony who Soarin now thought of as her guardian angel.
As such, he had come to the conclusion that the strange and mysterious stallion couldn’t be far away from the one he seemed to protect so zealously, so he’d started searching around the immediate vicinity of Cloudsdale. He figured that if a unicorn would stand out like a ruby in a pot of onyx, then a unicorn wearing a splattered mask of bone would be like trying to find an anvil in a haystack, easier than eating a pie.
However, despite his efforts, he went without reward. The stallion seemed to not be around at all and Soarin started to rethink his approach, or even why he was doing this.
Come on Soarin, what makes you think he’d even be able to stay up here in Cloudsdale for any length of time anyway? Even unicorns can’t keep a spell up forever without slipping. Although I suppose it would be possible if they had a power source, like we gave Skeleton’s father when he visited.
He frowned and fluttered to a stop outside a small store, ignoring a small gasp from the cashier as he started walking down the street. Ponies who saw him gave him a respectful berth, given the look of intense concentration lining his face.
Why would he be around anyway? Skeleton is safe up here, it’s not like I’ll let anything happen to her. I think I’ve proven my loyalty to her many times over now, and I’d never intentionally harm her. He has no real reason to be here, which means this is a foolish venture I never should have started.
He hesitated in his quest, this thought plaguing him.
But… then again… Just because I think she’s safe doesn’t mean she always is. So I guess there’s still a good chance that he’s hanging around here someplace. You’d think a guy with a bone mask would be easy to find, but no. This is even harder than the time I had to find my housekeys before I left for work. At least I found those. This guy is like the ultimate hiding machine. Unless he’s not here, in which case I’ve made a right royal fool of myself, but at least nopony knows.
He sighed heavily and swung around on his hoof, spread his wings and flapped into flight, angling towards home. He accidentally reached a no fly zone and had to set down and walk from there. It was greatly annoying, but he could only get angry at himself. As he cut through and alleyway to get through the zone faster, he heard a dark, velvety voice reach out to him.
“Hey. Over here.”
He froze and turned on his hoof slowly to find…
Nothing.
There was nopony there and nothing that looked out of the ordinary. Simply wall. Frowning in slight confusion and deciding he imagined it all, he kept walking. This time the voice came from the other side of the alleyway.
“Over here.”
He turned quickly, trying to catch the culprit to find, once more, nothing.
“Turn around.”
He froze. The voice had been right in his ear, to the point where he felt the breaths being taken and given by the mysterious voice, but when he spun around he saw…
Nothing.
Now thoroughly freaked out, Soarin started hurrying out of the alley. His whole life he’d never been so scared, not even from Skeleton’s little pranks. This was unnerving. An amused sounding laugh followed his movements, dogging his every step that made him pick up the pace when, impossibly behind him and keeping up with his movements perfectly, came the voice once more.
“Boo.”
Soarin freaked out and started galloping towards the light at the end of the alleyway, trying to escape the phantom voice. But it seemed that, no matter how much he ran, he could not close the distance between himself and the alley’s entrance. In a blind panic, his wings opened, then closed just as hurriedly as he realised the alley was too small for him to flap his wings in. With a burst of adrenaline he forced his legs to move faster to utterly no avail. With an explosive exhale he simply gave up and stopped running and hung limp.
Wait a second…
His eyes shot open and he looked down to find himself hovering several feet off the ground, his wings still firmly folded against his torso. His entire body was encased in a light that shifted hue every few seconds and a dry laugh filled the alley.
“If you’ve quite finished running away, I think I’ve had my fun now. Is it safe to put you down?”
Soarin looked around for the source of the voice and was moderately surprised to find the owner of the voice floating before him on a platform made of the same, multihued light that was surrounding him. His eyes couldn’t seem to decide on what colour they wanted to be, but his coat was a deep royal blue. His mane and tail were a purple just as deep and somehow just as regal as the blue, if not more. The glowing horn upon his head suggested it was he using magic. His face had a strange, timeless quality to it, and remnants of ancient lines upon it, as though he had seen and recovered from much more than anypony else. At least in the Cloudsdale area. Soarin nodded quietly and the unicorn smiled a creepy sort of smile, lowering the Pegasus down to cloud level, lowering himself at the same time.
“Excellent. As much as I found it amusing, you trying to run away from me, it was growing tiring avoiding you all day. You can be quite the stubborn character Soarin, but I’m tired of hiding from you. What did you want with me and why is it so important to you that you have to spend all day looking for me and ditch everypony else?”
Soarin started at the unicorn’s revelation.
THIS is Splintered Dreams?
Somehow, Soarin had expected something a little more… grand. And there was no mask.
That’s what got me. No mask.
“So… You’re Splintered Dreams?”
The unicorn let his smile widen a little and bowed.
“In the flesh. What is it you want of me? Talk quickly, I don’t have all day.”
He shrugged.
“At least, not anymore.”
Soarin coughed and forced himself to smile at the stallion who seemed hell bent on freezing his blood in his veins in an attempt to diffuse his fear and the strange tension only he seemed to be feeling.
“Yes, uh… I…. Skeleton Grin, my wife, has mentioned you before.”
One of the stallion’s brows lifted.
“Is that so?”
“By name and appearance sir.”
Dreams burst out into laughter, unsettling Soarin more than a little. Once Dream’s laughter slowed enough for him to talk coherently, he waved his hoof in the air, a gesture of dismissal.
“Name and appearance. That girl never knew when to leave well enough alone. Let me guess, you thought you’d swing by, find me and, oh I don’t know, thank me for my actions over the years yes?”
Soarin nodded happily, pleased that the stallion understood so quickly. Dream’s laughter suddenly cut off and his voice turned deathly quiet.
“Well don’t.”
Startled out of his little triumphant feeling, Soarin started in shock and then quailed back when the unicorn stepped up seemingly in an instant and looked Soarin in the eye, his eyes as deadly as his voice and intent.
“Because mark my words, Soarin of the Wonderbolts. If you so much as harm a hair upon my God Daughter’s beautiful head, I will end you in the most painful and torturously slow way that I can dream up, and I have a very twisted imagination mister Soarin, you don’t want to cross it. There will be no place you can hide, no mousehole small enough, no cave dark enough, no mountain high enough, valley low enough, river wide enough, place dangerous enough, there will be no reality, dimension or timeline you could possibly hide in that will save you from my infinite wrath and I will tear you apart, mentally, spiritually and physically and I will use a pair of rusty iron tongs that I used to use to pick lice, vermin and dirt out of my tail when I was on the road myself, I will cut your heart out using nothing but a rusted spoon and use your entrails to string my tennis racquet, Your bladder will make up my new water skein, do we have an understanding… Soarin the Wonderbolt?”
Throughout the entire exchange, Soarin was cowering away from the mysterious stallion more and more with time, eventually finding himself on the floor, cowering away against the wall from the stallion who had forced him into a corner…
Corner?
It vaguely occurred to his mind that there were no corners in the alley, but all he could think of at that moment was the pair of multicoloured eyes glaring at him with the intensity that only a murderer could pull off. Gulping fearfully, Soarin nodded his head rapidly, just wanting this to be all over.
“Good.”
Dreams, just as suddenly as his suddenly vindictive little speech, stepped away and began to walk away. Soarin merely lay on the ground, trembling. About halfway down the alley, as Soarin watched him, Dreams turned around.
“Don’t tell her who I am. She doesn’t need to know. But do tell her and your daughters that they’re looking more and more radiant each day, yes?”
His voice had softened down to an affectionate sort of croon and it was all Soarin could do simply to nod his head in agreement. Seemingly satisfied with this, the image of Dreams vanished.
~*~
From the rooftop of a nearby building, Splintered Dreams watched the blue Pegasus in the alleyway as he started once more in shock before standing up and, rather hesitantly, walked over to where the apparition once stood. It had occurred to Dreams that Soarin would never intentionally hurt Grin, but he’d thought that a reminder was in order for the whole thing. An extra incentive if you would. Behind a mask made of bone and splattered with red, he smiled.
Oh, he wasn’t so bad a choice I suppose. She could have done much worse. At least I haven’t had to kill him yet.
With a self satisfied smirk and a sudden mischievous flair of inspiration, his horn lit up and down in the alley, smoke erupted before Soarin as a raging apparition of a skeletal dragon started to claw its way up out of the clouds, shreds of flesh still clinging to its bones. With a startled yelp and a cry of fear, Soarin galloped out of the alleyway like the entire armies of Tartarus had been set upon him, Dreams watching him with a demented laugh.
No, not bad a terrible choice at all.