Bridging the Rift

by sincarnation

Chapter 5: Twisted Souls

Equestria 4:30am, 2nd of Maruk, 6 Months after the return of Artemis – Somewhere, Griffon Kingdom

Artemis didn’t really have any real destination in mind, but wherever he was going he was making good time. He was honestly surprised at the mare following him, she kept pace without complaining or outwardly showing many signs of fatigue. Granted he wasn’t travelling as fast as he would alone, but he was travelling at a pace that would’ve challenged the best wolves. Even in her unicorn body she managed to scale the valley walls with him, and she didn’t seem to be having any trouble with the cold. As they headed further north into the Griffon Kingdom it began snowing first lightly then much harder, and he knew it would only get worse the further they went. Artemis’s ears twitched as the picked up familiar sounds of splashing, a small river or creek was nearby. He stopped his brisk run, and waited for his guest to catch up.

“Are we there yet?” asked Diana trying to minimize her heavy breathing.

“Don’t worry about that, but there is a small river nearby, we can stop and rest for a bit,” answered Artemis as he felt out the other creatures in the area. He noted that the largest one in the area was a familiar territorial hybrid of plant composition and animalistic instinct. “Perfect.”

“Hmm? What’s perfect?”

“Our timing, I’m surprised we made it here so quickly. My pace would’ve challenged my finest wolves, but your stamina and strength of will are impressive even in your altered form.”

Though she knew it was well intended, the compliment wasn’t as well received as well as she tried to portray. It only reminded Diana that her fortitude and strength of will were beaten into during her days with the Solari elders, but even so those traits were some of the few things she appreciated from her time back then.

“Did I offend you?” asked Artemis noticing the slight shift in body language.

“No, I was just remembering something,” responded Diana quickly as she did her best reign in her body language. It was something normally very easy and necessary for her to do amongst some of her fellow champions, but unfortunately she wasn’t fully accustomed to her new form enough to know what to control.

Artemis noticed her struggles and chuckled a little, but even still he couldn’t imagine being in a different world with a different body at the mercy of the locals. He was surprised that she seemed to be handling it well, and it made him curious as to what could’ve happened to make her so disconnected from her world. It wasn’t until they both had taken a long drink from the icy water that he figured their rest was a good time to learn about their intruder turned guest.

“Earlier you mentioned something about the Solari betraying the Lunari, and you being the last Lunari left. What happened?”

Diana stared at the water for a long time in silence. As much as she knew she needed to tell others and spread the information on Valoran, she didn’t like the idea of telling something so personal to a strange creature on a slightly less strange world. As she thought about it, she decided her silence was the best answer.

Artemis thought about threatening her again to get answers, but he figured that might build more resentment that he would have to deal with later. Instead he thought he might be able to get her to open up with a little coaxing.

“I ask because I know what it is like to be betrayed by the ones you trust, I also know what it is like to be the last one left as a result.”

Artemis watched as her eyes widened before quickly returning to their previously uninterested look, but Artemis knew he had a bit of her attention now. He wasn’t sure how much information to give her, but he figured the bare basics weren’t too much.

“My best friend betrayed and imprisoned me for 1000 years to save her sister, and as a result I wasn’t able to protect for my subjects when they needed me most. Admittedly she had done it with good intentions and the wolves were collateral damage, but that is little comfort now that I’m all that is left of the old wolf tribes,” sighed Artemis as he picked a smooth stone out of the running water.

Diana wanted to know how the Sun and Moon were involved, but she didn’t want to be the one to ask. Though now that they had stopped moving the cold was starting to bite at her, and it didn’t help that the only water she had to drink was close to freezing. It wasn’t long before the cold temperatures hit her full force, and her relatively thin coat wasn’t doing enough to keep her warm.

“Betrayal is a terrible crime, and unfortunately revenge can be even worse. It poisons and twists your soul preventing you from moving on, and it is never as satisfying in reality. Unfortunately often times that knowledge is not enough quench the burning desire within to wrong those who wronged you.”

Artemis let his words hang in the air as he thought back to his previous arguments with Luna. He knew in many ways she was right, but that still didn’t change how he felt. He felt like he should wipe the insolent little vultures off the planet, but he couldn’t do that without earning the ire of the world. While he couldn’t possibly care less about most of their opinions on the matter, he did care about what Luna and his few friends thought.

Lost in his own thoughts it wasn’t until a particularly cold gust of wind hit him, that he remembered his company. Without a word Artemis raised a wall of snow around them, not quite an igloo but it just enough to block the wind. Diana merely nodded her thanks at the barrier, and they both sat in quiet contemplation.

“So what do you do?” asked Diana quietly breaking their silence after a time.

“If I knew that, I would be much happier,” chuckled Artemis humorlessly. “I have an anchor though, a special somepony I love that keeps me from doing anything too unreasonable. Unfortunately neither of us can quash my desire for vengeance, and I’m at a standstill. I’m unable to move forward, but we can’t change the past. Well we shouldn’t is more accurate, we could but the risk is far too great.”

Diana thought about his words, an anchor? When was the last time she had been happy? When did she smile? The only times she was truly happy was spending time with Riven and Morgana at Sinful Succulence. They all had a similar experience, and they accepted her without judgment. When they were together she could almost forget about the past even though it was what brought them together. The more she thought about it, she never gained satisfaction from killing anyone. She did it out of a sense of duty, but it didn’t make her happy.

“Should I just forgive them and forget it happened? Forget that they wiped out an entire culture because they worshipped the moon instead of the sun? Forget that I was shunned, rejected, and nearly killed because I didn’t fit their beliefs? I was curious and naïve, but all I wanted to know was the truth. They labelled me a heretic, and they tried to execute me. No, I will not forgive them, and I will not complete the Lunari genocide by forgetting them. The Solari will pay for their crimes, and I will be the one to collect the debt.”

“Forgiveness is rarely for the one who wronged you, it is for yourself so you can move on. Also I never said anything about forgetting what happened, no you must NEVER forget what happened to the Lunari. You should honor them with your memories, but never forget that the Solari betrayed them. Forgetting only opens you up to it happening again or, just as bad, it could provide them the opportunity to do it to someone else without them seeing it coming.”

“Well if you know all the answers why haven’t you moved on then?”

“I am old beyond words, but even still it is far easier to be wise to help others than it is to be wise to help yourself. I don’t have all the answers; I know what the morally right thing to do is. Even knowing I should forgive them, I just can’t. I can’t exact my revenge on them either, not the way I want to. Even if I did, think about the revenge you have gotten so far. Did it make you happy? Exterminating the Griffons wouldn’t make anyone happy, and it would have long lasting consequences on the balance of this world.

Diana didn’t need to think long, she had already thought about it before. It didn’t make her happy, the only times she was happy was when she wasn’t alone. However she wasn’t going to tell him that he was right, she didn’t want to give him any satisfaction or indication that he had been able to read her.

As she formulated her response, she barely managed to make out an unusual rustling in the wind. Her natural instincts took over as she dived to the side only for the entire wall of ice to explode into powder. She turned her head to look for Artemis, and she saw that where he had been seated had been completely destroyed and he was nowhere to be seen. However in his place stood a very large wolf-like creature, and it didn’t seem to like their presence.

This wolf was nearly 15 feet tall, and it eyed her like a predator viewed an unwanted competitor in its territory. Its body was made from branches and logs from the frozen trees, and it what what looked like pine needles for fur. Its eyes glowed a bright green-yellow, the same color that leaked from the gaps in its wooden body. The wolf didn’t seem to want to draw out the confrontation, for it let out deep snarl to challenge its competitor before it pounced again.

Diana didn’t have time to worry about Artemis as she narrowly rolled underneath wooden wolf that threatened to crush her. She hesitantly grabbed her moonsilver blade after rolling to her hooves, she wasn’t sure she could fight properly without her normal body. Her blade felt heavier in her jaw than it did in her hands before, and it didn’t feel quite like the fluid extension of her that it normally it did. Right now it was a clunky piece of metal that potentially could get her out of or into more trouble.

Unfortunately the wolf spared no time in batting the unsteady mare aside with his massive paw. Before she could finish rolling to a stop, the wolf was on her again, but this time Diana tried to use her momentum to let her counter attack. Her blade sunk deeply into the wooden leg, much to both of their surprises. However the wolf hardly flinched and quickly sent her flying into a tree, the vibrations causing the load of fresh snow to bury her.

“Is that all she has?” thought Artemis from the tree. “Maybe I overestimated her, I had hoped that this would be a warm-up not an actual dangerous encounter. Maybe that blade and armor is more for show than anything.”

The cold snow numbed the throbbing pain, and the desire to sleep was growing harder for her to ignore. She knew more than a couple of ribs were broken and she probably had more than a few fractures. One of her broken ribs had punctured a lung, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to dig herself out of the snow. Her vision was growing dark and her breath was ragged. On the corners of her vision she saw the wolf trying to remove the blade from its leg as it lumbered toward her slowly.

“Is this it? Is this how I die? Lost in some foreign world, killed by an overgrown tree?”

As the wolf limped toward her, deciding to finish off its kill before tending to it wounds, Diana managed to turn her gaze to the sky. She saw the beautiful night sky she loved and the moon she worshipped. It had always been there for her, when she needed guidance or strength, and it was there even now with her dying breaths.

Diana lay in the snow drifting out of consciousness as her life flashed before her eyes. She remembered the beatings, the fights, and the long nights alone in the library, but two memories stood out in her mind. The day she saw Leona’s ascension, when she was chosen by the sun the elders demanded her exoneration of all crimes. Her defying everything for what she believed in was one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen, especially related to the sun. It was what had driven her to never give up, and it had caused her most prominent memory, the night of her own ascension. She had finally found the lost Lunari Temple; it had been the most validating moment in her life. She briefly experienced pure elation at finally being able to say she hadn’t been alone in her feelings, but it quickly soured when the Solari Elders found out. Instead of accepting her and apologizing they declared her a heretic and sentenced her to death, she remembered looking up at the full moon then too. When she had given up hope, the moon gave her strength and survived. When she was alone after the Solari disowned her, the moon was there. When she had nothing, she always had the moon. She couldn’t let the moon’s legacy be forgotten and lost; not here, not now, not ever.

Desperate to survive Diana reached out to the moon for power, but just like before it seemed to react and withdraw from her. However Diana wasn’t ready to give up, and she surged forward with everything she had trying to get something. She wasn’t ready to die yet.

Artemis felt the atmosphere shift, the winds stilled, but the air grew even colder than before. The air started to crackle with energy, familiar energy. Something was coming, and he wasn’t the only one feeling it as he looked the nervous looking timber wolf. He felt a sudden surge of panic from Luna, and snow beneath the branch he was on erupted.

Diana stood on a patch of frozen grass, her eyes glowed white as she looked upon the trembling wolf. With the new influx of energy her wounds were healing quickly, but the power was already starting to be pulled away from her. She knew she had to end this quickly. Before the wolf could react, Diana had already removed her crescent blade and the leg from the beast.

“I am the Chosen of the Moon, and I will not be silenced.”

Artemis watched with anticipation and awe as Diana became a blur of motion, a whirlwind of moonlight and silver. Within seconds the poor timber wolf had been reduced to fine splinters and scattered upon the light breeze that replaced the previously harsh winds.

This strength was more along the lines of what he had been hoping for, but what seemed strange was that she was very clearly drawing upon the moon’s power and using lunar energy. Judging from Luna’s pang of panic Diana had done so without her consent, disconcerting but definitely interesting.

“Well done.”

“Where were you during that!?”

“Up in that tree.”

“You didn’t think to help me, or was this just a trick and that was a wolf lackey of yours?”

“It would seem that you are more than capable of handling yourself, and no that wasn’t a subject or lackey of mine. That was a Beta Timberwolf, and it was the top predator in this territory. Timberwolves are creatures that popped up after the annihilation of the wolves, and many griffons think they are the vengeful angry spirits of the wolves refusing to leave this world and taking new bodies to exact their revenge on everything. I think that they have a similar tribal hierarchy to the wolves of old, but they do not recognize me as their leader.”

“Is that the case? Are they the spirits of fallen wolves?” asked Diana warily as she had dealt with enough spirits from the Shadow Isles to know how difficult such things were to put down for good.

“I don’t know, I’ve only been free and heard of them recently, and I haven’t had the opportunity to approach death and ask her about it. The Timberwolves were what I called the elite members of the tribe, only the truly impressive earned such a title, and now this is what it is used for.”

Diana started to shiver as the winds began to pick back up, and snow began falling in full force again. She hadn’t completely healed from her short duration with lunar energy, but it was enough for her shivers to be incredibly painful as her ribs tried to set themselves.

“Sun will be rising soon. Let’s head towards Equestria.”

While Artemis started heading towards Equestria he figured he should get the message out to Luna and Celestia.

“The intruders are dangerous, but not necessarily hostile. Approach with extreme caution, contact with them is advised. You might want to let Celestia know,” announced Artemis mentally.

“Advised?” laughed Luna in response. “We are ancient mares, Artemis. I think we know how to handle intruders in Equestria, we have already talked with two of them. You should bring the one you encountered back so we can all talk about it.”

“Of course they did, no one ever respects safety protocol. Change in plans, we aren't hiking to Equestria anymore.”

“Wait what do you me-,” started Diana as they vanished in a flash of green light.

Author's Note:

Yeah, I know I mentioned a new champ unveil this chapter, but I had a minor time line conflict to resolve. I promise next chapter will unveil at least one champ possibly two of them.
Chapter 6 probably won't get worked on till the 12th because of finals and other good stuff.
Anyways as always, I hope you guys enjoy. Let me know what you think, and feel free to point out any errors I missed. I wish you all good times.
Sin