Interlude V: Sanity
Father Dmitri snarled and slammed a claw into the stone wall of his quarters in the Canterlot Castle. His door slammed shut behind him, and he could taste his own rage as it enveloped him in a nearly tangible red mist.
“Fucking bastards!” he spat as he threw a chair across the room. “Thrice damned sons of whores!”
The air behind him shimmered, and Dmitri felt a presence appear. He paused, glaring out the window across his room. The griffon’s eyes narrowed, and his beak twitched.
:Weak. You are weak.:
The father turned slowly, glancing over his shoulder with a sneer. “You useless piece of shit. I gave you a single job, and you failed.”
The windigo trotted forward and cocked his head to the side. :General smart. Ponies strong. Goddesses ready. Not our fail. Your fail. Weak.:
Dmitri bit back a scream and stopped himself from ripping out the throat of his useless minion. “Oh, really? I was the one who couldn’t even kill a general who had followed the same routine every day for over a week? Or murder a weak female and an old pony politician?”
:Stupid plan: The windigo’s expression didn’t even change, but he flicked his muzzle forward in contempt as he paced to the side. :What gain if not fail? None. Ponies prove fault. Ponies discover. Ponies always win.:
“If I want your input, I will command you to speak!” Dmitri growled. His face flushed, and his vision clouded as his rage rose back into the forefront of his mind. Anger. Hate. Fire. Kill. Burn. Steal. Immortal. Power. Princess… Destroy.
:See? Insane. Griffon not made for this power. You die soon.: The windigo bowed his head. :And then we free.:
“I can have any power I want!” the griffon snapped. “I claimed yours, for you are unworthy, and soon, I shall… I shall…” His words faltered, and his knees shook. All he could see was red…
:Maybe a week. Then consumed. Sorry.: The windigo’s thought-send had no inflection, but Dmitri could feel the bitter sarcasm that permeated the last word.
Dmitri ground his beak and chomped down as a claw lashed out to grab onto a wall to hold himself up. He blindly reached out with his magic and grasped for the nearest source of power… the windigo before him.
The ethereal horse sighed. Kill me. Become strong now. Weak later. Cannot handle—:
“Shut! Up!” Dmitri screamed as he twisted. The windigo was ripped apart, and the creature didn’t even make a sound. The griffon felt energy rush into his soul, and he breathed a sigh of relief as his energy returned to him. “I. Am. Greater.”
He raised his head with another snarl and walked to the window. Opening the blinds, he sent out a call to his other servants who flew around the castle. :Bring me the traitor,: he sent. A whisper on the wind carried their answer.
:At once.:
The father clicked his beak. After turning away from the window, he moved to his mirror to examine himself. He glared at his reflection, and the face of death stared back.
His eyes were as black as the night sky, and his beak dripped with blood that he knew was his own. His eyelids twitched, and his cheeks were gaunt. Raising a handkerchief with a shaking claw, he wiped the blood away as he took a deep, shaking breath.
“I will prevail. I always do…”
The blood continued to flow, and he hacked painfully as his throat burned him. The magic pooling within him tore at his inhibitions. He wanted nothing more than to leave his room, walk up to the princess herself, and—
“Shut the fuck up,” he said to himself. “Get out of my head! I need… I need…”
He could see himself ripping Celestia in half with his talons, drinking her blood, and absorbing… stealing… taking what was rightfully his.
“Too soon… too soon… follow the plan. Don’t rush.” He looked up to see himself smiling back. “But we can do it… we can take it now! Why do we need these ploys? Why not just finish this?”
His eyes shifted from black to reddish orange, and blue smoke filtered from his beak and nostrils. “We can do it! We’re strong.”
Voices inside his head called out in a chorus, screaming their own voices. The words of the windigos he’d killed, the zebran shamans whose magic he’d re-claimed, the unicorns who had dared to stand before him, all those who now fueled his attacks.
“We are the incarnation of power! Equus’ pinnacle! The end of all! And the beginning…” he said in a thousand voices. The air around him blazed with energy, and he could feel himself slipping… as if the line between the mage and the magic had been blurred, and it was nearly impossible to see who controlled whom…
“Stop!” he shouted to himself, cutting through the darkness. “Leave me! I have the power! Bego—”
A knock at the door stopped him short. The voices were immediately silenced, and he gasped at the sudden reprieve. Running a claw through his crest, he composed himself as he took a step forward.
The door swung open, and he gazed out at the proud face of a red-maned mare. She raised her chin, and looked into his eyes. “Father… you wanted me?”
He nodded. “Yes. Come inside.”
“You realize that you most likely just proved my guilt to the princesses, don’t you?” she asked casually as she strode into the quarters. “They’ll know it’s me within the week.”
“Before this week is through, everything will be over,” Dmitri growled. “Pony. How did Celestia know about the attack?”
“How did she know?” The spy laughed derisively. “She didn’t.”
“Impossible. There is a traitor!” he declared as he began to pace. “She was with Chaput! She alerted the castle! She was ready!”
The mare rolled her eyes. “You may be my employer, but you are also a fool. That wasn’t Celestia’s doing. It was Chaput’s.”
Dmitri blinked, and his mind raced. “Oh. He builds up a morning routine, knowing that someone is watching, and then…”
“And then he turns it around right when you’re about to attack,” the spy finished. “I’ve been watching him, just like you ordered. He knows your plans, and he was ready. I bet that he even set up having that pony agent with the griffons, just to throw another wrench into your plans.”
His beak twitched and rose into a sneer. “Bastard…”
“Saving his own captain, and making the pony a hero to all of the griffons. The budding romance story doesn’t hurt either…”
Dmitri shook himself. “It doesn’t matter. This is a minor setback.”
Her eyebrow rose. “A ‘minor setback?’ They’re going to find out who’s behind this. Your game is over. Griffonia and Equestria will be allies, and when your betrayal is discovered, you’ll be killed. I’m just sorry that I won’t be around to see it.” She shook her head. “You blew my cover. I’ll have to leave, tonight.”
“Oh, my dear little pony…” Dmitri shook his head. “I don’t care what happens to you. And you misunderstand. The plan was never a war, and it was never peace. It was a means to an end, and the end is within sight.” He glared down at the mare. “But I need something from you… something that was given to Chaput. And you know it too...”
“And what is that?” she asked.
He grinned. “I know Celestia’s weakness… but what is Luna’s?”
The spy’s eyes widened as realization sunk in.
“His name is Button Mash, and he’s staying at the Citadel.”
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Oooh shit. I literally just read all of this today, and you upload this right after I finish? Things are about to get interesting for Button...
Now it's time to try to remember which pony has a red mane...
6594473 well, i was talking about that situation specifically. No one's flying. There's a lot more that goes into something like this then 2 or 3d. Deflecting up is still preferable as the odds of a stray bullet randomly hitting a stray pegasus/griffon are pretty low. if you're shielding everyone (which you can do since deflecting takes less energy) it still takes less energy to shield the occasional extra hit. Say it takes 50 J to deflect a bullet and 75 J to stop one and a ricochet has a 20% chance of hitting a friendly pegasus (which is extremely high) it takes 375 J to stop all the bullets and 300 to deflect all 5 and the shot hitting the pegasi. Granted all these numbers are arbitrary, but they follow the trend. On top of that you can construct bullet traps that funnel all the shots into a specific area, meaning you need a light field everywhere and only a few heavily shielded areas. Like i said, there's a lot of thought that goes into designing stuff like this.
It's all moot though. Non chobham armor is designed to cause ricochets so ricochets hitting friendlies isn't a huge concern.
Deploy all the fans! We're in for a major shitstorm!
Well, this is steadily leading up to a climax. Although considering this is the fifth interlude, and there are sequels intended to be made, I'm probably wrong and you'll go all Project Horizons on us and make this story 1.7 million words long.
oh, one more reason to hate him? alrighty then.
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6595643 I know I'm obsessed with those changelings, but... I'll bet it's a changeling!
I agree with the windigo...dmitri will fall,soon.
Also...Dmitri, keep your bloody fuckin talons away from Button you psychotic nutcase!
P.s. nice job on this and the last chapter.
Heh. I hope that we get to see a little more of Button's combat prowess. From the Windigo invasion earlier, it is very clear that he knows well enough on how to do hoof-to-hoof combat.
In fact, I noticed that he was slightly more competent than the Sec Eleven ponies that he was pinned down in. Perhaps, he's just better at taking control of a situation when under pressure (Especially a painful death by spear to the heart)
...Embarrassing seeing as they're supposed to be secret agents. However, I find Captain Flair to be a bit of a badass yet a cool person. The kind of boss you can let yourself loose around.
She's definitely not a hardass which is what I noticed that her some of her co-workers are. Ironic how she can doher job better than most despite her behavior, eh?
Anyway, whatever Dmitri has planned for him I hope he makes it through mostly unscathed. This story is well written and it just loves to mess with my emotions... great read man.
Just kill him already! I'm already having Murder Fantasies about the fucker (capitalised because it's also a song that fits!). Why must you make it take so long to kill one bird? Why?
6595809 Don't worry, usually when it takes this long to kill a person, that just means that fate is cooking something up nasty for them. Dmitri might not be an exception
I want to see that fucking chicken killed. Foolish, violent, arrogant, hypocritical, cold and betrayal happy. Yep. Will definitely get a very violent death sooner or later... heheh.
6595751 Eahhh... Fucking Changelings should be intresting...
6595744 Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with that... Unless Luna/Button were still only at the kissing/flirting stage by that point.
Well isn't that just a fine barrel of pickles....
Dmitri has gone off the deep end and his days are numbered. Question is: Will Equestria and it's allies find out and get rid of him or Will this power consume him first? Better question: Will there be anything left if he does do something to Button and Luna gets to him first?
6595864 Personally I prefer ponies, but on the other hoof you have a shapeshifter... can you say fetish fulfilment?
now this chapter is a real story builder this is good.
Ohh boy... Me thinks this hole is a WHOLE lot darker than we imagined and war would be a pleasant side effect compared to whats in store.
An alliance with the windigoes with the intention of destroying the pony diarchy? Failing because Dmitri is an idiot. I wonder what exactly he had to do for this power. Anyway, all hell is about to break loose.
6596150 Not really. I just used the play on words...
Excrement ---------> Whirling Device
Whatever Dmitri's plan was, I think the power he has taken is clouding his judgement. Severely. Also, he broke rule 22 on the Evil Overlord List: No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head. The question is, how far will the fallout go?
Actually, that isn't the only rule he broke. Number 24 is damaged with this interlude: I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, This Cannot Be!! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.) I probably should go over the whole list because I now know he is fracturing other rules.
Now, Chaput would be the one I wouldn't want as an enemy.
Also, be well, Button!
"Our name is Legion, for we are many."
Sounds like Dmitri's been dabbling in extreme dark arts... Not a good sign, especially with his power-lust.
Great chapter. I liked how the Windigos and the spy give Dimitri no respect for being a violent fool. Hope to see that guy burst in flames and that Button survives whatever fate he has in store for him. I also think that Noble is actually the spy. Well, hope the spy gets killed off as well.
Aw man... What happened to button and the rest of the gang? Well, I hope the next one is exciting.
6596445
Oh, I've studied this list religiously for several characters who may or may not be or become antagonists in the story... and poor Dmitri obviously didn't get the memo!
~Doc
Looks like Dimitri's sanity checks are getting tighter and tighter. Any bets on how long before he rolls a natural 1?
Oooooo hell fire... Button is going to be in one hell of a situation
Nice job!
Hi I'm commander Shephard and Button Mash is my favorite pony on the Citadel.
6596368 Oh? In that case, forget everything I said.
6597443
I am deleting this comment due to its inappropriate content. If you wish to discuss this subject, please do so elsewhere.
~Doc
Ohhh, I think Dimitri isn't as clear in the head to do the ponynaping correctly. Or he ends up facing Luna. Kidda hope Lulu then visits Mash in his dreams as he is kidnapped and makes him a batpony. Because batponies need to be shoved into evrything!
6597462 Okay, sorry. Not gonna happen again.
Dmitri. Language.
Button run.
Oh shit.
6596940
Well, since I'm not an evil overlord (or lady), I may now indulge in some maniacal laugh (#20 on the list for those interested people). MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
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It is so nice to know that the list still lives!
Dmitri definitely broke rule 48: I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.
In case it isn't obvious, I'm having fun picking out what he is doing wrong.
HMMMM But wont that be screwed too? Wasn't he gonna stay at Canterlot for a week then come back? heh
Eh, Button's not really in trouble if Luna is around. After all, why would Doc show us that scene with her doing the ancient magic if it was just going to be a one-time thing? Aside from the windigoes and Chaput, nobody really knows what she did. And the windigoes, as we've seen, aren'r really that detailed in their speech.
6598109 I think you're assuming that killing Button would be on top of their "to do" list.
6595664 I'm not disagreeing with you, not exactly - you're completely correct that there's a lot more that goes into something like this. I agree that a deflection would take less energy per projectile than a flat out shield, and assuming a smaller hard shield protecting individuals behind (a larger one protecting multiples would likely make the deflector moot unless the angle deflected to was extreme) you would indeed require less energy to negate hits.
* DISCLAIMER * - I have no idea how magic actually works. We have examples of effects and apparent effort, as well as speculation on individual's metal states at the time and sources of power (internal and external). This is also turning into a giant wall of text, but I want to provide some degree of thoroughness here. **
You don't appear to be taking into account energy spent maintaining the spellwork and focus needed to achieve it. More likely than not, the shield will be a field of magic maintained by the caster in the area covered, not an area where they are focusing on individual objects entering and then individually deflecting them. Even if you optimize a bit and increase power used locally when deflecting an object through the field, there's still a net draw over the volume covered. There's a tradeoff between a thicker, lower density and thinner, higher density deflector here, but we don't have any numbers to play with so I won't diverge any deeper in that respect.
How about frame of reference? For a static shield without prior external preparations (i.e. runes or something similar to actively hold the effect in place), so long as the caster doesn't get terribly disoriented this shouldn't be an issue. Moving allies you're trying to shield add more complications. You can't do it relative to the caster or environment, since they are in their own reference frame. A focused and observant caster might be able to keep track of them visually and move the shield accordingly, but ducking behind cover or looking away wouldn't work. The most likely approach is to add a subspell to the shield that centers itself on the target - this makes the shield more complex and take more energy to maintain.
I'm sure we could think up more caveats that draw power for the scenario, not to mention anything like maintaining an irregularly shaped shield (to make hard points, as it were), or even issues with the power source - could a sudden spike in power drawn trying to deflect a large/dense projectile overload the caster, causing everything to collapse? What about the caster themselves? We know that Breeze has issues maintaining multiple shields at the same time, precipitating her decision to go for deflection. Maintaining spells takes effort and focus on the part of the caster to keep intact, and even if practice can render some to the point of being autonomic (such as telekinesis, for instance), the multitasking required for differing and individual spells will drain the individual's concentration. Sure, the headmaster of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns could probably maintain the focus and energy needed to pull off the complexity of a variable hard shield within a deflector shield around multiple targets, and possibly even come up with the design on the fly.
But here's the thing, we're talking about only an above average unicorn, not a grand master. Your average soldier or agent may be good at thinking on their hooves and able to keep a relatively level head in danger, but in the vast majority of situations you cannot devote all your focus towards overly complex spells, at least not for very long. Battle lines are dynamic, yourself and your allies are in danger, you're wielding a weapon and communicating with others, there's no way you're operating even close to maximum efficiency.
And here we come to the crux of the problem. Odds are that these defensive spells were taught, which means they were designed for usage with these kinds of scenarios in mind. Not this particular scenario, but combat against projectiles in general. (If it was known beforehand that certain agents and soldiers would be in impromptu combat in a cafeteria against possibly dark magic corrupted enemies, I would think that not only would steps be taken to give supplemental training to those who would be involved, but that the situation might be avoided altogether.) If you're designing a tool to save lives, you want to make damn sure it's reliable, effective, and usable in the situations it is called for. It would be researched, designed, developed, tested, and refined well before being taught, and that would mean careful consideration of what is trying to be achieved.
Engineering the spell for the simplest form that satisfies all three requirements to acceptable tolerances is the goal. Does that mean that an arbitrary deflector could injure allies as opposed to a hard shield or a more complex directed deflector? Certainly, but that's a tradeoff for a general purpose spell fit to be taught in basic training. Of course that's not to say that enterprising and gifted individuals might try experimenting and modifying things as needed, but there's good reason why deploying experimental weapons and/or defenses in the field is generally frowned upon, especially if they are to be relied upon.
To reiterate, I'm not disagreeing with you - it's a complex problem with a lot of variables to be accounted for. All I'm saying is that you can't lose sight of the forest for one zap apple tree, you have to keep the big picture in mind when thinking about the little details.
6598539
The big reason i'm not taking energy into account when designing the shield is because i'm not exactly sure how for a couple reasons. First, I don't work with squishy things (organics). I can tell you what force your muscles need to produce to hold a weight, but I have no idea how much energy your body uses to create that force. Then i'm not quite sure how to treat magic. Some parts analog nicely to electricity, you have a flow (current) and a concentration/willpower in classic interpretations of spell casting (electric potential) and things like enchantments model very well as electronics. However, shields don't model well with classical mechanics. At the very least it's above my level of understanding (I already know some parts are). It may be relativistic as it appears to break classical mechanics. Since shields seem to interact with matter the same way as other matter (as compared to a force), its ability to deflect bullets depends on it's physical properties. However, since it isn't actually physical matter, it doesn't have the properties it needs to.
It isn't helping that I keep switching between general cases, say a shield generated to protect an entire army, and the shield generated by breeze. My view of magic in equestria is very different. We are presented with a modern society with semi modern tech (or advanced) so we need a view of magic that reflects this. the idea of a mage is very similar to a medieval or Renaissance master builder. We simply don't have them anymore, in their place we have architects and structural engineers so we need a magic equivalent. The shield created by a team of arcane engineers and sustained by a significant amount of thaumatronic (fancy word for arcano tech) systems is going to be radically different than the one created in the heat of the moment by breeze.
I'm not expecting breeze to make a layered, reactive shield with hardpoints. Going all the way back to my original post, I said that a shield that deflects bullets isn't worse than one that stops them, especially in a closed room where the bullets are going to be stopped by the ceiling. From there we got into the specifics of shielding.
6598485 I wasn't assuming that Button was being targeted for assasination, but if he were, the its guaranteed Luna would take care of it.
edit* Also, you're following me.
6599072 ... Yea, you can see why I was avoiding hard shields in my thought experiments - at least with deflectors I can model it on a charged particle passing through an electromagnetic field for an idea of behavior. You might be able to get away with a region that simply always exerts an equal and opposite force on any matter (or other projections for that matter) interacting with it, but that runs into issues rather quickly.
I suppose we did drift a little of topic, but I stand by my original argument - deflecting up toward the ceiling is no better than down to the floor, or slightly off to a side since with fliers you could have allies to any side of you, including up and down. You can certainly argue statistics, and I'll agree that deflecting is likely a great deal more efficient and a reasonable tradeoff, but compared to a shield that stops projectiles entirely it is not safer. "Better" is entirely subjective.
6599185 One of the problems I ran into with forces is that they don't really behave like shields as shown. you don't really "hit" it.
6599228 I'm forced to leave the actuator as "magic" for obvious reasons, but the way that makes the most sense to me I'd to have a field that will respond to matter entering it with an opposing force applied on the matter. If you give it a little bit of time delay to react, and limit it to only react along one direction of one axis (to allow return fire), I would expect something quite similar to a "hit"
Dmitri's insanity confirmed. It was obvious he's really the bad guy, but this was, if nothing less, the absolute confirmation.
Now, was he twisted because of all he absorbed, or was he rotten to the core even before he embarked on the path of darkness?
Doesn't matter, he needs to be eliminated permanently anyway.
6595767 Target acquired.
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Target eliminated.
Horseapples just got serious.
I will admit a little disappointment, however. Chaput was working up to be an interesting complex antihero, and he still can be after this, but Dmitri's insanity writ large basically runs a large chance of derailing Chaput's complexities and putting him solidly in the good guy camp unless you're extremely careful with your writing. Not just him, but the whole Griffon cult of personality will fall like a house of cards when they see him being batty.
Although, I wonder what the source of Dmitri's powers is. Thus far we've been given three canon examples of creatures being able to steal energy from others. In the case of Changelings, it's assumed to be pretty harmless outside of the whole sneaking around thing to harvest love. The Sirens have to stir up negative emotions to absorb, and Tirek just flat-out stole magic. In Dmitri's case he seems like Tirek on steroids.
When is the next chapter coming out?
6601731
Just an fyi, this is only the first of 4 books in my planned arc. We have well over 500k words to go. Don't count Chaput out yet...
6602170
The next chapter should be out by Monday at the latest! I'm working 40 hours between today and Sunday, so I have no time to write until Sunday evening!
25% in thoughts:
Damn the legion!
Rest of chapter:
Wut...WUT. ..WUUUTTTTT?!??!
We have:
Celestia X Chaput
Breeze X Ivanov
Flair X Dove
Luna X Button
Spike X Sweetie
Rumble X Scoots
Dimitri X Demonic Voices X Mystery Spy
I must say, I approve of all. Although, why did Luna sleep through the whole damn thing!?