WARNING!!!
If you haven't read Storm of Secrets Storm of Secrets Remastered , but intend to, this chapter contains major plot spoilers, and isn't crucial for understanding Limits of the Horizon.
You can read a very comprehensive Summary of Storm Of Secrets here.
Alternatively, you could just skip this chapter and move onto chapter 6 to begin the story of Storm and Rainbow Dash's kids, or you can skip to chapter chapter 9 to continue Twilight's story.
Storm walked into a bar. Seventeen years in the Everfree Forest had accustomed his eyes to quickly adjust in dim light; and living homeless as a foal had accustomed him to dank, sullen places like this, designed to suck optimism out of patrons, breeding despondency to be smothered in alcohol or vented on a whore. It would have been a high-risk, high return errand for him to scavenge some food while Silver hid somewhere outside. Tonight, his quarry was only too easy to spot, and he wished he could just leave it here; he could barely even look at it.
“Can I get you anything?” A thin unicorn mare was standing next to him, holding a bottle of something out to him; she was arguably pretty, but Storm got the impression she was a older then she looked. Storm indicated to the sodden damp mess of unicorn half-sitting at, half-laying on one of the back tables surrounded by a myriad of empty mugs, “How long has he been here.”
The waitress shrugged, “I dunno, I began my shift at six, he was already here.”
Storm checked the grease-covered grandfather clock that had been shoved in the corner, forced to watch the debauchery of the current generation, the time was half-past midnight. “How much has he had?”
The waitress shrugged again, “Fifteen, twenty, something like that, he’s been mixing his drinks too.”
“Has he had anything to eat?”
“A few sandwiches and some nuts, nothing in the last few hours.”
Storm noticed the waitress had moved a bit closed to him, leaning like she was about to nuzzle his neck; Storm pushed her back. She looked confused for a moment and then glanced back at the white unicorn like her mind was trying to connect some dots, “Oh, you two are-”
Storm brushed past her, not bothering to try and educate her shallow mind, but grateful that she didn’t have contradictory evidence from Shining Armor. He was annoyed enough about leaving Dashie this late, with her expecting the twins any day now, he just wanted to finish this quickly. Storm stepped into the narrow seat opposite Shining Armor, cast a sound bubble over them and waited for acknowledgement which he accepted as being the bloodshot glare Shining Armor cast at him after a few minutes of nursing a drink.
“Are you trying to kill yourself with alcohol poisoning?”
“Woulds make Twily happy.” Mumbled Shining Armor, “No, wait, it wouldn’t; she wants to kill me herrself.”
“Really?”
"Eerup. Tolds me herrself this afternoon, shouted it athually.”
“What happened then?”
Shining Armor vaguely gestured to the room around them; “Decideds to do some uncover invechigation.”
“A little birdie told me that something else happened before you disappeared.”
Shining Armor looked confused, “Birdie?”
“It was a dove.” Hinted Storm; “…named Hope,” Shining Armor’s eyes remained dead, “Cadance’s pet dove.”
A glint of anger entered Shining Armor’s eye, “Have you been seeing my wife behind my back?”
Storm resisted the urge of punching Shining Armor by reminding himself that he wouldn’t be here if Shining Armor was alright; “Cadance isn’t cheating on you, though I wouldn’t blame her if she did; but it wouldn’t be with me. Dashie would kill me.”
“So why did she send Hope?”
“To ask me to find you. She was afraid she’d be right about where you were, and wanted you to be found off record. Iron Will would draw too much attention, and she knew that a six month pregnant princess shouldn’t be searching places like this alone.”
Shining Armor took a slow swig of ale, “Youv found me, now whhat?”
“Now, you’re going to tell someone else what happened after Twilight tried to kill you.”
“Classtified.” mumbled Shining Armor.
“I was there when this began; I have clearance to observing the aftermath.”
“That’s right.” growled Shining Armor, “You werre there. Yu helped. You’re guilty. So was Cadance, Raienbow Dash and all the othurs. We all did it, it was all of us.”
“True.” But it was mostly Shining Armor.
“But she blammes me,” continued Shining Armor, “She h-hates me. I thought that the last few months with Cellestia had actually helped her get betder; but she just wanted to stab me and when she couldn’t she-”
“She what?”
“She triedd to killl herrself again,” whimpered Shining Armor, “She had a piece of glass behind her teeth and when she knew she couldn’t get me she tried cut-ting her throat from the in-s-side.” A tear mixed itself with the ale beneath it.
“What happened after Twilight tried to kill herself?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened?”
“I left!”
“What did Celestia ask you to do?”
Shining Armor glared hatefully at him, his eyes simultaneously filling with tears, “Whyare yu asking if you already know?”
“Because you need to hear yourself say it.” Shining Armor didn’t say anything, “Celestia doesn’t like it anymore than you do.” Still no answer, “… Are you going to do it?”
One tear trickled from each of Shining Armor’s eyes, as he finally gave a slow nod, setting his head down on a half-empty mug, “I don’t have a choice do I.”
“It will be over soon. Celestia is working on another spell to block Twilight’s memories again. She’ll forget everything that happened to her and this will all be like a bad dream that only we remember. With luck; it would be ready in time for Twilight to remember the birth of your third kid; the question is whether you’re going to remember the birth of your child, or if you’re going to be too drunk to care.”
Shining Armor stared off into space sipping his drink like he was trying to ignore Storm.
“I know what you’re going through; the same thing happened with me and Silver.”
Shining Armor slammed his mug on the table; “This is nothing like what happened with you and Silverr! You just killed her once and then it was over, this is like watching Twily die every single day, over and over again. She’s tried to kill herself twenty-three times already and sooner or later she’ll succeed. Have you heard the thing’s she’s saying, the things she’s accusing me of!?”
If anyone else in the world had said that to Storm; they’d be dead. Strom chose his words and his tone very carefully. “I did not just kill Silver Thorn once; the terrormongers that tricked me that day passed those images onto the rest of their kind. After that I stopped caring if I died, there was nothing I was afraid of and the only thing they could do to me that got a useful response was to show me killing Silver over and over and over.
Over time, they changed it; constantly, keeping just enough truth in it that I couldn’t shake the whole thing off as a lie. They added things, making it look like I knew it was her, and they made up all sorts of reasons as to why I did it; one of their favorites was to say that I had been molesting her since we were foals, and I killed her when she said she wouldn’t take it anymore. So yes, I do know what you’re going through.”
“Well how’d you get through it?”
“I spent five years on the front lines of the Everfree Forest, throwing myself into battle, trying to kill myself. You have a wife, two foals and third one the way; you don’t have that option.”
“… Then we’re not going through the same thing.”
Storm slammed his hoof onto the table, making Shining Armor cringe; “You think you’re the only one who loves Twilight!? You’re not. You’re right in saying that we’re all responsible for what happened to her, but you’re forgetting that Cadence, Spike, me, Dashie-”
“You?” growled Shining Armor cynically, “You harvdly know her. You’d met her what, all of a dozen times before she went missing?”
Storm grit his teeth together, holding down a wave of grief and anger; yes, him. He loved Twilight. When Storm body swapped with Shining Armor, he thought he was Shining Armor, feeling everything that he had; the swap back had not been absolute, memories still lingered and while Dashie had filled the void that losing Cadance had created, but Storm had never stopped thinking of Twilight as his little sister, and even to this day needed to make conscious effort to prevent himself from calling her Twily. He’d never told anyone except for Dashie, but he would do anything for Twilight, notwithstanding killing her or murdering Shining Armor.
“… Cadance is hurting from what happened to Twilight as much as you are, and you’re making it worse for her by doing this. When I thought I was you, you practically dragged me out of your body so you could have her back. I remember feeling the love you had for her then, and I still care about her. If you don’t pull yourself together, you’re going to hurt her even more than Twilight is. She loves you too much to leave you, and so I’ll kill you to get you out of her life.”
“Whatever,” grunted Shining Armor.
Storm unsheathed a knife and set it down on the table, spinning it like a top; “You know what I used to do to the changelings I captured, to get information about enemy placement. I tried to teach you once, when we were cadets, you watched for about three hours and then ran out when the changeling started pleading for me to kill it. When I was alone in the forest, I learned how to keep the stubborn ones alive for about four days. I will do worse to you.”
Shining Armor slowly looked up from his drink, a faint shadow of fear passed through his eyes and then he broke into a contorted chuckle; “You could invite Twily! You could teach her how to do it on me; she’d love you for it!”
Storm very slowly sheathed his knife “You have one year, starting tonight. If you haven’t pulled yourself together by then, I will kill you.”
Shining Armor reached for another mug of ale, but somewhere between lifting it to his lips it vanished and reappeared back on the table. Shining Armor’s hoof stopped in midair, wondering why it was empty then seeing his mug back on the table he reached for it again, a few inches from his lips the mug disappeared and materialized back on the table, the ale in it swishing sloppily. Shining Armor stared at it for several moments trying to contemplate the disobedient mug, and then as quickly as he could, he reached for it with both hooves, tipping his mouth back to scull the drink before it ran away again. Storm’s horn flashed for a third time, this time only the cup vanished, and the ale proceeded to splash across his face, precious few drops finding their way to his mouth. Storm levitated what looked like a mostly clean napkin from the main bench and, despite limited cooperation, managed to wipe Shining Armor’s eyes out. As soon as he was finished, Shining Armor was glaring at him menacingly, “What are you doen?”
“You’ve had too much already.”
“You wanna fight then, come on.”
Shining Armor managed to slide out from behind the table and instantly began teetering to the right as he struggled to maintain his balance. Storm sighed, glad for the safety of Canterlot that alcohol inhibited magic, and used a faint telekinetic kick to help Shining Armor fall over.
The next table over, a stallion was reveling in the attentions of the waitress as her one of her hooves fondled his girth next to his moneybag; Shining Armor fell into both on his way to the floor. The stallion noticed the bump as Shining Armor knocked gently against his table and looked down on him in disdain, “Pathetic.”
The next thing that stallion knew, he was flat on his back, his arm twisted beneath him, his head echoing from colliding with the concrete, a jagged hoof dug deep his throat and two red eyes were glaring into his, “When you’ve survived half of what he has; you’ll have earned the right to speak like that.”
Storm let the stallion go, before he hurt him and turned back to Shining Armor who was snoring soundly on the bar floor and used his magic to pick up Shining Armor, draping him over his back. Storm had almost made it to the door when his shoulder began feeling exceptionally wet, and wished Shining Armor had emptied his bladder more recently; somehow, he managed not to drop him.
Storm couldn’t take Shining Armor home like this. Neither Cadence, Clastic Strain, nor Benefair needed to see him like this; so Storm started walking towards a cheap hotel at the end of the street where he could dump him for the night. He could be home with Dashie in an hour and then send Hope back to Cadance.
Chapter Six >>> Youtherd