//------------------------------// // Call from Destiny // Story: Requiem of Equestria // by TheBlox //------------------------------// Silence overtook the throne room. The quiet was comforting to the Queen of the changelings. Ruling a kingdom daily was not an easy task, and with the new situation regarding the missing pony, it was certainly not a good day for her. Resting her eyes, the silence was abruptly interrupted when the entry door to her throne opened up and a changeling walked in, closing the door behind him. “Ugh, who is it now?” Chrysalis muttered, leaning forward from her throne. “I’ve had a busy day, this had better be important!” She then briefly paused, acknowledging who had entered. “Ah, Plague.” Clearing her throat, she leaned back in her seat. “You wanted to see me?” Plague questioned, slowly trotting into the room toward the Queen. “I understand you’re unhappy with Chitin’s orders,” Chrysalis went right to the point. “You could say that,” the guard muttered. “To be honest, I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. He isn’t the changeling for the job.” The Queen leaned forward. “Chitin has earned his rights. Are you questioning the position I myself have given him?” “Yes.” Plague winced at the Queen. “As a matter of fact I am.” There was a long pause. The deathly silence had returned to the throne room as the guard and Queen glared at each other from a distance. Chrysalis didn’t like the tone Plague was using, but she was curious nonetheless as to what was going on in his head. “That is quite the lip you’ve developed,” Chrysalis muttered with lacking enthusiasm. “Tell me, Plague… What is it about his orders that you have against?” Plague cringed as he explained himself, “I don’t think he even has a plan of his own. He sends us out to split up and search for the pony, but the idiot doesn’t have a hot clue what to do. Essentially we’re figuring this out on our own—he’s just telling us the inevitable: Get to work.” Chrysalis put his last comment to thought. She leaned back in her seat and put a hoof to her chin. Clearing her throat, she decided to listen to any ideas he might have, “And, what do you propose? Do you happen to have a plan?” “Yes, I do in fact,” Plague exclaimed boastfully. “Chitin wants us to search from where the pony was last seen and hunt her down in an expanding radius.” “And what would you do differently?” the Queen questioned him. Plague cleared his throat and replied, “If you escaped from captivity and wanted to go where you felt safe… Where would you go?” Chrysalis’ ears perked; she was beginning to like the way he was thinking. Plague grinned and answered, “Home.” ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Back in the library, the lone pegasus stood at the top of the broken staircase, looking over the side edge of the stairs. With a wounded wing, this height seemed even steeper to her than usual. However, this was not going to stop her from getting airborne. Taking a couple trots back, she breathed in, and exhaled before leaping off the edge with her full wingspan. “YEEAAAH!!” she shouted proudly, but after a single flap, she felt a sharp pain in her right wing, and it buckled, sending her plummeting to the floor. Gasping in a panic, her left wing constantly flapped by itself until she hit the floorboards with a loud crackle. It took her a few moments to readjust and stand back to her hooves. “Damn it!!” she yelled at her stubborn self, bucking the wall with a single back hoof behind her, making a crack in the side. She lowered her head and sighed, and then lifting herself back up with further stubborn determination, she carefully climbed back up the broken staircase, avoiding any of the fragile crevices in the wood with each step. Back to the top of the steps, she leaned over the ledge on the side and spread out her wings. Before jumping, she stretched and prepped her right sprained wing. “Come on,” she muttered at it, while preparing herself for the jump. “Huah!” Leaping off of the top of the staircase, she flapped a couple of times, and her wounded wing once again buckled, sending her back to the floor. “NoOO!!” she collapsed into a pile of loose planks and the crackling of tumbling lumber echoed through the room. The flightless pegasus lied there for several minutes in self-pity before she decided to climb out of the pile of boards, feeling a few new sharp pains throughout her body. Depressed that she was grounded, she stepped away from the boards and sat on her flank, looking down at herself to see that she had cut herself on the planks. She was bleeding from her haunches, as well as her chin and left hind leg. The open wounds were nothing serious, but they were enough to aggravate her. Frowning at herself through her disability to fly, her disappointed grumbles were challenged by another sound—her growling stomach. Rolling her eyes and sighing deeply, she glanced up to the top of the staircase. She hated giving up so suddenly, but she figured it was best that she went back to practicing later. She needed to eat. Food now being her main priority, she turned to the door and paced in that direction. A screech echoed through the room, which caught her attention, perking her ears. The pegasus glanced up to her bat friend flying through the air. Mercy flew down close to her, hovering face to face with her. “So you want to come, too, huh?” the mare warmly murmured and nodded, turning back to the broken door and trotted on. “Alright, let’s go, Mercy.” She sighed upon exiting, and the bat landed on her head, resting in her mane. Wandering off into the ghost town of Ponyville, she began her hunt. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Pacing through Ponyville, the forlorn pegasus searched across the empty town for food. The town was disturbing to look at: The world covered in darkness beneath the deathly green hazed sky; the mesh stringing from everything that stood, just like in the woods. It was so quiet everywhere she wandered. As she trotted on through town with the bat in her mane, her stomach growled continuously. She grew hungrier and weaker by the minute it seemed; she needed food if she wanted to keep going. “Ugh, I should’ve gone looking for food before I did all that flight practicing…” she muttered to herself as further growls interrupted her from her starving gut. At this point she didn’t care what she ate—even if it was another hill of ants. However, even that seemed difficult to find in a wasteland like this. Pretty soon, the pegasus dropped to her haunches, feeling like giving up. “What’s the point?” she asked herself in pity, “Even if I do find an insect or two to eat, that isn’t going to keep me alive.” She lied down and rested her chin on her right foreleg, quietly crying to herself, “I’m done.” She sat there in the middle of all the silence, hearing nothing save for her breathing. Closing her eyes, she tried to drown out the impossible quiet. Her mind began to race through the halls of the changeling Kingdom; all those cocoons, all those ponies… all those lives trapped for the changeling race to feed off of through their greed. It was no question that she was the only pony outside of a cocoon, and that she alone was their only hope. So much responsibility rested in her hooves. But she was just one pony. “Even if I can keep surviving, what can I do?” she whimpered. From her mane, Mercy flew lower to briefly face her. The mare’s ears twitched at the sound of his screech, and she raised a brow at him. Mercy turned around and flew off down the streets of Ponyville. “Oh come on…” the pegasus murmured impatiently, standing to her hooves once again, which seemed to hurt her stomach muscles from hunger. “What is it this time?” She found herself aimlessly following the bat once again. Why did she keep trusting in this mammal, she wondered? Why was she following it? It seemed odd to follow such a creature in a corrupt world, but so far he hasn’t lead her astray, and each time he flew off like this, it was as if he was trying to tell her something. It seemed kind; could it be possible that this bat was one of Fluttershy’s many pets? Perhaps she was only following this creature out of loneliness and desperation for survival, or just for the basic desire of having a friend. Following Mercy down the roads of this ghost town made her stomach turn. Her starvation was kicking in a great deal at this point, and it was getting more painful to move. She needed to eat, and she needed to eat very soon. She would not last much longer if she didn’t. “Where are you taking me?” she muttered to the bat ahead of her. It took a couple of turns here and there. “Mercy?” she called out, feeling her stomach trying to collapse from starvation. Mercy then slowed to a stop, and then hovered up a specific familiar building, and perched on the sign post at the entrance. He looked down to her and tucked his wings in, resting where he perched. The pegasus read the sign on the building, and took a glance at the mesh-covered pink gingerbread-like structure before her. It had a few chunks missing here and there; bits of the roof had collapsed, and parts of the walls were broken, but it still stood right where it used to be. “Sugarcube Corner. Of course!” she blabbered out loud to herself, as if she felt dumb to not have thought of this sooner. “Candy doesn’t go bad. Right?” She was too hungry to care if anything in here was stale or not, and she trod into the building with a kick through the door. Once she entered the entrance of the bakery, she could feel the vibrating rumbles in her gut when her stomach growled. The vacant interior of Sugarcube Corner was—just like everywhere else—a disaster. She knew the owners of this establishment: Mr. and Mrs. Cake, the young couple who had two foals before the whole incident had happened. It was painful to see a place she knew well in ruins. In her mind, she could practically undo all the webbing and wreckage to make it seem exactly as she'd last remembered it. And, contrariwise, it made her imagine how the place was damaged in the first place. The overturned boxes showed a struggle, one which she could not keep herself from imagining, no matter how hard she tried. She saw Mr. Cake fending off all the changelings he could. She always thought he looked rather strong for a baker, and wondered if he gave them any problems and how many it took to overwhelm him. She shuddered at the thought. She then imagined Mrs. Cake trying to take the babies away from it all, the main goal of Mr. Cake's defensive struggle. They, of course, failed in their mission. And the mare could only sit there and tremble, petrified, as she saw the phantoms of the ponies who were so kind to her fight their hardest to defend their foals, and eventually get captured. She stood for a few moments, trying to gather her nerves. She would have to mourn later. Her primal urge to feed was prodding the back of her mind and the bottom of her stomach. Letting herself in, her eyes trailed across the colourful massacre of sugars and icing. There were doughnuts layered in the counter, but seeing the shattered glass, she felt it was probably wise not to eat those to avoid hurting herself. They looked completely dried out and stale anyway. Over on a table that still miraculously stood, there was still a piece of cheese cake in a plate, set in place as if the seating was welcoming her. “Well… Pinkie Pie pretty much lived off of sugar,” she murmured hungrily to herself, trotting to the empty seat. “Nothing bad seemed to happen to her.” Sitting in the chair, she pulled up to the plate of cake and placed her front hooves on the table, leaning over to take a bite out of it. The moment her teeth met with the cake, she could’ve sworn she had just bitten into plastic. “Gh—Ow…” She lifted her head away from the cake and licked her teeth. Frowning at the dessert, she lowered her head to make another attempt, taking a harder bite. Her jaw stopped the moment she bit into it, and she tried to enclose her teeth to get a chunk out of the cake to eat it. “HrrrRRRrgh!” Biting down harder and harder, her teeth finally clamped shut with a crackle from the solidified dessert. “Gh!” She had nearly bitten her tongue attempting this, but managed to get something in her mouth. Lifting her head, she attempted to chew—she could’ve sworn she was consuming a jawbreaker. Sliding it around her mouth to try getting a better grip on it with the back of her jaw, she tried biting harder to grind it down. It took a lot of effort, but eventually it crushed in between her teeth with a dry and loud crunching sound emanating from her lips as she chewed. The aged cake was bland and tasteless, but at least it wasn’t grimy insects. It took her several bites before she ground up the cake in her mouth small enough to swallow it. “Ngh… Yuck.” She winced from the dried up crumbs in her mouth, smacking her lips, and licking her sore teeth. Deeply sighing, she leaned down for another bite, and chomped her teeth into the solid aged cheesecake. This wasn’t pleasant, but at least she found a place with a source of food to keep herself moving for now. Though she wasn’t sure how long her body was going to tolerate old desserts, but at this point, she didn’t have much other choice. After her struggles to finish about three quarters of the slice of cake, from the corner of her eye, she saw Mercy landing on the table top, tucking his wings in when he perched there. The pony lifted her head and her ears perked, and she looked to him with a warm smile. She quietly sighed from her snout with the relief that she had found what she was looking for. “Thank you, Mercy,” she calmly murmured. Mercy just screeched in response, and flew up into the air, landing in her mane to rest there. The bat’s cuddle gave her a warm feeling pulsing through her—similar to what she felt before. Curiously, she lifted up her front hooves to look at them, and just like what happened the last time, her fur coat’s colour very minimally changed to a brighter tint. She still had the same dark and dirty ivory coat of fur, but it had once again become slightly lighter. She sat there, feeling dumbfounded by her slight colour change. “What’s happening?” she questioned herself out loud. Standing from her seat, she wandered over to a mirror on a wall to have a better look at herself. Her mane had slightly changed in colour too—it was still that dirty black, but there was one slit of hair that was slightly brighter than the rest of her black mane with a very minimal reddish tint to it. “Huh…” She slid her hoof through her mane intrigued by the new look, turning her neck to get a glimpse of the sides of her mane. Then from the corner of her eye in the mirror, she saw a bright green glow. She was quick to look at it in the reflection, and immediately her pupils dilated through fear. She gasped and spun around very quickly in a panic to face a changeling in the room standing mere meters away from her with a glowing green horn. The pegasus stood there, frozen with her back to the wall. The changeling grinned and cackled from his throat, gritting his serrated teeth together. “Found you, pony!” A burst of magic erupted from his horn, and a comet of green light came forth toward her. To her it seemed like time slowed down—her mind had gone blank. The green spell that he had cast was coming closer, closer, closer… and a familiar screech echoed through the room, snapping the mare out of it, just in time for her to dive to the side out of pure instinct. The pegasus toppled over across the candy covered floor and rolled back up to her hooves, turning quickly toward the changeling as the spell he had cast collided with the wall creating an explosion of green dust. The trembling pegasus looked to the wall where the spell had struck—a fresh burst of green mesh stuck to the wall. Her ears fell back, and she slouched where she stood, turning to the changeling. She stepped backwards a few paces, and the changeling just followed her at the same pace with his horn glowing green once again. “It’ll be nice to be called Captain Plague for once,” the changeling growled to himself. “The Queen will be pleased…” The terrified pegasus was sidestepping, uncertain what she should do or where she could hide. “Don’t bother running,” Plague snarled through his grinning teeth. “You’re coming back with me.” With that, he launched another spell from his horn, and another green magic dart came blazing toward her. As she leapt to the side, the magic bullet struck her good wing. “AH—No!” she shrieked when the explosion of green dust burst on her wing. In moments, the dust had cleared away to expose her wing, which was sealed within the thick green webbing like a cocoon, and she could sense that her wing was losing feeling. Gasping frantically, she scraped at the webbing with her hoof to tear it off of her wing, and Plague started to charge another spell. A screech echoed through the room, and from above, Mercy dove down toward the changeling. Swooping down at him, Mercy scratched at Plague’s snout with his clawed feet and took off flying back up in the air. “Gah!” Plague shook his head and glared up at the bat overhead. “You little pest!” Using his charged spell, he fired at the flying mammal, striking him out of the air. An explosion of green magic emanated from the collision, and Mercy fell from above like a stone, collapsing to the floor covered completely in a mesh cocoon. “No, Mercy!” the traumatized pony shrieked. She ran to the bat’s aid, and the changeling stepped in her way, grinning. This made her freeze, and she backed away, trembling. “Your turn,” Plague muttered with his horn glowing once again. He marched toward her, his eyes fixed on hers. She backed away, turning her neck to find a place to run, until she backed into a wall. The changeling before her stood in preparation to launch the spell, and she started gasping frantically for her life, trembling beyond her control. Turning to her left, she saw herself in the mirror. It was as if her reflection was glaring back at her—as if ashamed of her. She was the last conscious pony in existence, and she was about to back down and let herself get caught this easily? “No…” she murmured, and a frown emerged on her face. Something switched inside of her; something that made her understand just how much responsibility was actually resting in her hooves. “I can’t let this happen…” she quietly whispered to herself, and turning her glare to the changeling, she positioned herself on all fours, with a posture for battle. “I can’t.” “Ha ha, standing up for yourself now?” Plague chuckled, his horn illuminating brighter. “No.” The pegasus winced and tensed her legs. “For them.” “Hm?” Plague raised a brow. “For the ponies.” Plague laughed and shook his head in pity. “You are so blind and so stupid! The chances of you getting out of this are a million to one!” “Then… there is still a chance,” the pegasus exclaimed, and using all the strength in her shoulders, she pushed her sealed wing free from the cocoon, ripping the mesh into shreds of webbing, which they floated to the floor, and she spread out her two large wings aggressively. She felt the pinch in her wounded wing, which made her eyes twitch, but she ignored the pain and kept her stance. Once her good wing had been freed from the cocoon, she could sense that its feeling was slowly coming back. Seeing the pony act threatening like this gave Plague the sense that he should hurry and take her down. So without further small-talk, he growled and fired a blast of magic from his horn that launched toward her. The pegasus leapt to the side and did a roll, getting back up to her hooves as the bullet of magic struck the wall, leaving another burst of green mesh. “You think you changelings own this place?” the pegasus growled, sidestepping with her eyes fixed on the changeling. “You think you can make something so beautiful become a wasteland of dust and cover it in all your filth? Tell me, why do you need us?” “Quiet, pony. Your kind had its prosperity for eons while we toiled in the muck,” Plague declared, and he began charging another spell. “Now it’s our turn…” “Your greed will become your weakness. And I should know,” the pegasus admitted. “Oh? Really, now,” the changeling muttered, getting annoyed by the rambling pegasus. “I once wanted something so bad… Something that I thought was so important to me.” She winced, realizing her own selfishness. “But in the end… what’s more important are the ponies you love. The ponies who support you.” She looked up and frowned at the changeling. “Friends, family… They are what matter. That’s what Celestia has always tried to teach all of us. But you, you only think of yourself. What you want.” She leaned forward and snarled. “You feed off of love, and I think I know why.” “Oh, pray tell…” Plague grumbled, his horn almost fully illuminated now. “Because you don’t know how!” the pegasus yelled, and with a kickoff from her hind legs, she galloped straight for the changeling, which caught him by surprise. He fired the spell again, and the pony dove to the side, and continued galloping toward him. Plague’s eyes widened as he tried recharging another spell, and found a hoof strike him in the snout. “Ghah!” Plague lost his balance from the blow to the face, and he stumbled back, crashing into a wall with a vibrant thud. The thump against the wall seemed to shake him back into reality from the hoof to the snout, and after a few tipsy sidesteps, he frowned and faced the pony. “So you do have a little fight in you…” he spat, charging up his horn once more. The pegasus frowned and sidestepped in a faceoff with the changeling. “There’s a reason I’m here,” she exclaimed solemnly. The changeling was getting aggravated at this stubborn pony, but nonetheless, he held off on firing magic at her for the moment, just to give her a chance to speak out of curiosity toward what she had to say. “I’m here because I need to be,” the pegasus continued, “Celestia says that everything happens for a reason. And that everypony alive is alive for a reason.” Her eyes wandered at her proclaimed epiphany. “I am here… because it is my destiny to be here.” Plague was intrigued by her attitude. “Tell me, pony… What is your name?” She opened her mouth to declare her name, but there was sudden silence. The pegasus put that to deep thought, and turned back to the mirror. Time felt like it slowed down as everything seemed to be placed together in her mind. If she revealed her true identity, the changelings would surely use it against her and her friends. Chrysalis knew who she was, and she couldn’t take the chance that the Queen would use her weaknesses against her if she knew. “My name is Daring Do,” she boastfully proclaimed, eyeing the changeling with fury. “And I will fight for my Princess. For the ponies!” “Such loyalty,” Plague spat. “Well, Daring Do, your Princess was a fool.” The pegasus winced at that remark. “If you think so, then just try it. Catch me.” She stepped forward and yelled, “Shoot me! I dare you!” The irritated Changeling growled angrily, and he postured for battle, firing a bullet of green magic at the pony. The pegasus put all the strength into her hooves to leap up into the air, and with a powerful thrust of both wings—despite their injury and numbness—she flew up to the ceiling with the changeling’s spell striking the wall behind her. Plague looked up to the flying pony who dove down at him from high above. “Wha—?!” Upon collision with the changeling, they cracked right through the weak floorboards, and they fell into the basement with split planks and debris falling through with them. They landed on the concrete floor beneath the bakery, and debris fell down on them, burying them in wood and insulation. There was a long passing moment of silence as the fog of dust from the boards collapsing into the basement settled to the floor. From the pile of debris was a faint crumbling sound, and a hoof pushed through from the inside of the pile. “Hngh…” Climbing out of the rubble, the proclaimed Daring Do emerged, limping away from the pile of boards. Daring was exhausted at this point. She could feel several cuts across her fragile body, but fortunately nothing appeared to be broken. Stepping a couple of meters away from the pile, she collapsed to the floor, huffing and coughing to the floor as dust rose up with each breath. “Heh…” She couldn’t help but grin, despite the immense pain she felt. “I flew…” It took a lot effort pushing herself back to her hooves, but she wasn’t ready to quit here. Once back on her hooves, she turned to face the pile of rubble with Plague buried under the debris. A frown took over her face, and after a painful grunt, she spat blood to the floor, and turned her back, weakly limping her way to the stairs in the basement pantry. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Making her way out of the basement and back to the main floor was a real challenge for her limping legs, but she kept moving. Weakly stumbling through the room, she approached the small cocooned bat on the floor and knelt to her haunches. A very sorrowful expression filled her face, and using her front hooves, she started to peal the mesh off of Mercy. “I’m sorry…” she whimpered, scared of losing her friend. String of thick webbing after sticky string, it took her a few minutes, but she managed to rip the cocoon completely off. After pealing the mesh off, she looked down upon the bat in silence. He wasn’t moving. She reached down, whimpering and picked him up. “Mercy…?” Moments passed. The pegasus waited, shaking the bat in her hooves gently. “Please wake up…” Nothing seemed to be happening. Seconds felt like minutes; minutes felt like hours. She chewed her lip and whimpered as tears started to fall. “Please,” she cried, shaking the small creature in her hooves. “Wake up.” Through all the silence, a faint squeak was heard. Her glistening eyes joyfully lit up, and she beamed down at Mercy who had just slightly opened his eyes, breathing slowly. “Oh, thank Celestia…” she gasped quietly, holding the bat close to her, cradling him in her front legs. After a few moments of relieving silence, Mercy regained enough strength in his wings to fly. Lifting up into the air, the bat gently rested in her mane, and she sighed and trotted to the exit. “Let’s get back to the library…” she murmured, tired of her day.