[Blazing's Entry]
I hate mushrooms, swamps, and flying. That means it makes perfect sense for Equestria to look like a giant bog any sensible pony would fly across.
This universe exists to annoy me.
[End Entry]
I take my first step, and the world goes dark.
Memories.
Old wounds.
Monument of scars.
Your soul remembers pain.
Your body is carved by your past.
My left foreleg bursts with distilled pain.
I lost it, but I got it back. I was turned to a changeling and the love of... the love of...
My head!
SHE...
Her love fed me... her love gave me the strength to grow it back.
I lost so much more, but...
Two names come to mind.
Choking Darkness, Cromach. Chokey was killed in front of me, but Cromach... he must be gone now as well, or not? How long was I dead?
I fought not because I was a hero, but only for them. I was a selfish, grim, useless, and idiotic pony, but I could fight for them.
Who am I kidding? I am all that. Some things just don't change.
As I take a deep breath, the air flows through me followed by returning memories. The swirling flames fade away, leaving behind complete darkness.
I blink. Nothing. The pained groaning is still there, but I can't see anything. It's not a lack of light, it's lack of any sensory input. I remember this, I am blind. No time to waste, hoofsteps are approaching.
My body acts on instinct, remembering a similar situation, and a surge of magic courses through me. Tracing spell, the only real magic I've ever been able to use without stealing somepony else's. The world restarts as darkness, but with white outlines of ponies and objects. The spell sends out waves of magic, which I have free reserves of because I can't use it otherwise, that 'reflect' off of everything around in a way. Kinda like echolocation, only magic and it doesn't get absorbed.
It still sucks, but I feel at home now.
Some things are different, though. The ponies strewn around, crumbled and gasping for their last breath, are marked with flickers of blue glow. Considering my tracing spell shows thin lines surrounded by the eerie shimmer, those must be wounds.
To be honest, slit throats look much better in monochrome and blue than in real life. I've seen both of either to arrive to an informed opinion.
Not all of the ponies have wounds I can 'see', but most of them are dying.
"Hoofsteps, idiot!"
A familiar voice in my head calling me an idiot? Is it my birthday already?
The crunching I heard before my world went black is back, and my head is giving me a warning.
A hippogriff outline, correction - a hippogriff outline armed with a rapier, is carefully approaching me, weapon at the ready. There's another pony behind her. The tracing spell isn't great at revealing minute details, but the silhouette has no horn or wings as far as I can see, so it's an earthpony. A big and muscular one. Another tick of the spell shows no curvy outline between the earthpony's hind legs - a mare then.
The blue wisps around the surounding ponies fade with each second.
"Who are you and what did you do to them?" the hippogriff, also a mare, asks, pointing her blade, a rapier according to its shape, at me. She's doing so from a safe distance of two ponies away, she apparently has more than two brain cells. Meh, maybe not, if I saw an alicorn reform from the dust and the burning souls of dying ponies I certainly wouldn't be pointing a steel weapon at him. I would be running away, looking for a nearest wand of fireballs, claymore of purified good and angel tears, and preferably an army of priests and paladins.
Wait! How do I know that the blue things are departing souls, or the spirit energy or whatever? Void should know this, he is the alicorn of Death. I was the alicorn of Hope.
Death is the final Hope for those who have nothing left but pain, young one. You might wear my mantle one day.
The words echo through my head, and the deep voice brings back memories. Some painful, but for as long as I have known him, Void was the protector of souls, granting the departed safety from necromancy, voodoo, and other forceful intrusions into his realm.
He should be alive, no matter how much time passed since my death. He can tell me what happened while I was gone. All I need to do is find the entrance to the underworld somewhere in the Griffon Empire deserts, then go through the portal, and end in his pocket dimension.
Easy.
I should really punch myself in the face.
Wait, what did the hippogriff say? I'm still sort of confused here. Oh right.
"I didn't do anything to them, I have no clue who they are, I have no clue who you are, I barely know who I am, and I haven't got the faintest idea when I am. On top of that, the mystery for me is still why you are not on the floor like the rest of them. Oh, there's one thing I know," I mumble with cheery, insane hysteria of somepony sort of done with everything right after starting.
"And that is?" her eyes narrow.
"That I'm-"
In a burst of pink fire returning colour to my monochrome world, and actually revealing reality as it really is in its fullness, I thank stars my body remembers what I used to be able to do better than my dumb head, and teleport behind her.
"-out of here!"
Oookay, I wanted to get much much further.
The earthpony swings her hoof at me. I duck, bolting forwards into a narrowing space sloping upwards - a tunnel or hallway of sorts.
So, the quick burst of my fire revealed few things. First, the stony floor under my hooves is a cave, and probably some wild formation rather than chiseled rock. Second, using my divine power shows the world as if I wasn't blind. Third, the hippogriff has more than the earthpony with her. There's a unicorn, female as well, aiming her horn at me.
"Grab him, Lyam!" I hear her yell.
Wait, my spell didn't show any a stallion. What?
I sense the flow of magic in the unicorn, it takes the pattern of spells used to create something. She's going for a barrier or a chain to hold or slow me. Well, I wasn't called 'a thief' and 'a traitor' for nothing. When her spell is ready a fraction of a second later, she must be a mage used to quick decision, I rip the charged magic out of her and change her target.
She drops on the floor, legs tangled in her own ethereal chains.
Something large and strong tackles me. My first bet is on the earthpony, but I feel the touch of feathers, and talons rake my barrel as I and my attacker roll around. A flicker of tracing spell reveals a beak, so I know it's not the hippogriff mare.
A griffon, could it be Cromach? Why else would anypony be ready for me to return to this world? Wait, no, the hippogriff called for someone named Lyam.
I'm really sorry if I screw this up.
I focus my divine power into my front hoof. What was supposed to be a punch turns to a swipe as the gold and pink phoenix fire around my leg turns into a glove ending in talons as well. The quick burst of light reveals the griffon's colours are a combination of black and brown, not pure white.
Well, he is definitely a little blacker after my fire talons cut a set of scars in his chest and immediately cauterize the wound.
"Moron, leave the wishful thinking for later. Crom is dead and nopony has ever wanted you alive for something good."
I agree, that was just blind hope. Heh, when has something truly nice happened to me out of nowhere?
Potato! That's when.
Curling on my back and kicking the griffon right in his wound with my hind legs, I relish his agonized scream and get back up. Lyam's pained flailing blocks the earthpony from following me in this tunnel barely wide enough for three ponies to squeeze through for several seconds.
Explosion of noise.
I groan, tripping as my trace spell fails and rolling on the ground. I've always had sensitive ears and good hearing, and in this enclosed space the sound paralyzes me momentarily.
"Awww, crap, damn it!" I curse, trying to regain my senses. Up is down, left is purple, right tastes of lime.
Work, you damn legs!
Click click. A gun being reloaded.
I stumble to my hooves as the hoofsteps behind me get closer and closer. The first shot didn't hit me, and the next time I shouldn't get hit that hard by the sound.
A point of raw whiteness is getting closer and bigger. The tunnel's mouth.
"STOP!" the hippogriff yells again.
"Uhh, how about no?"
Agreed.
Run, run, run!
Just a little further...
I get out into the fresh air. A surge of power, my unquenchable divine flames of Hope, bursts out of me and spreads like a shockwave rippling air and grass from the hilltop I am standing on downwards into dark forests revealing areas much more distant than where my tracing spell can reach.
Splatters of molten lead hiss out in the tunnel behind me as the hippogriff fires more shots which just melt in the air when they get close to me. I can see clearly, my bronze coat and blonde mane turning to platinum white in places flowing in the air, the 'gloves' of phoenix fire around my forelegs, carefully spreading wings surrounded by the same aura, and... wilderness.
The surge fades, and my world turns dark yet again.
What I saw didn't remind me of anything I've seen before.
Eveything was dark. No lush green grass glimmering in the sunlight. No golden rays cast through fresh leaves of the forest canopy. No fields or orchards. Instead, swampy ground all the eye could see. Real eye, not mine because I can see, forgive my language, a ton of useless monochromatic crap. Soft, warm, and too yielding ground feeling as if I stepped on a sweaty mushroom. Tendrils, vines moving on their own tangled in the trees, and a mouth of something that looked like a giant, hungry flytrap.
"Behind you!"
In my shock, I haven't even noticed the hippogriff approaching carefully through the tunnel charred by my flames.
She seems to think I killed the ponies in the cavern down there.
No, she must have seen me do it. Whatever happened during my resurrection must have drained life from them, but some clearly died of normal wounds.
Do I actually care? It's not like I can talk to her.
I stare into the barrel of a pistol held in her talons.
The trigger clicks into yet another splatter of molten lead.
She has no mercy, no desire to find out what happened, I can see it in her eyes.
She wants me gone.
I want myself gone, there is nothing in this world for me.
And yet... and yet the more I think of it the less I believe my resurrection was natural. I died fighting a god who had the power to purify the divinity of others. I should have died without any divine power and thus a chance to come back. I have some of Void's memories, and deep down I feel I have all of them, as if having his knowledge was vital to something. Plus, I can see souls and fatal wounds, something natural only to the alicorn of Death.
Someone orchestrated my return, and used lives of several dozen ponies to fuel it.
As I look at the hippogriff's flank -don't blame me, I'm a stallion after all- I see two crossed swords on a tricolored crest. I know the colours because they flicker even in my blind world - blue, green, red. Whoever this hippogriff is, she bears a tiny fraction of divine power.
She was down there, she bears faint traces of divinity, she and her lackeys lived while normal ponies died. What are the chances she isn't behind this in some way?
"Blueberry?"
About right.
"MIST!" she yells.
"Ready!" the unicorn's voice from further down the tunnel answers.
She throws a disc which lets loose thick black smoke through the tunnel and outside. The unicorn must have used a spell to protect her group from its effects.
Well then. It's not like I need to see, I'm in the fresh air, and when she makes her next step I'll strip the protective spell off of her.
"Tsk tsk tsk..."
I used to be the alicorn of Hope, but that also means the lack of Hope. Duality only a schizophrenic mental patient like me could, heh, achieve. A curse more than a blessing.
"You mess with Hope, you'll find Despair," I growl.
The hippogriff charges.