Act 3 Chapter 51 : Running About With Our Tails On Fire
"Do you know the strange thing about ponies? The children were never frightened of us.
Oh, they knew we were their slavers. They knew we were cruel. They knew we beat them when they were slow and starved them when they didn't meet their quotas. They knew their parents were rightly afraid. Nothing we did ever made those damned colts and fillies stop working for their talent-marks, or playing pranks, or hunting escape.
There was an unwritten rule that attacking the children under one's care was a poor idea. I remember a story of a young Overseer named Grapack, who thought to devour a young filly when she disobeyed him. He hadn't quite grown into a proper size yet, and his slaves kicked him to death. When time came to punish that lot, they were given a day without rations. Nothing else. Ponies protecting their children make dragons look downright lazy with the security of our hoards.
More than a few of the young managed to get out, and the overseers were always relieved when one of the children escaped of their own volition. You'd think it would have occurred to us to chain them in little boxes, or break their little knees, but hassling the young brought more trouble than it was worth.
I'm glad we didn't. Princess Luna wouldn't have had any mercy if those voices had prevailed. I might have lost more than my wings and back legs when they liberated my camp if the children hadn't been there to stop her.
May no dragon ever be foolish enough to make war on ponykind again."
- Tocra, Former Dragon Slave-master, a History Of The War Against The Ponies
Junior’s leg had fallen asleep about two hours ago, but short of sawing it off at the shoulder, Sweet Shine didn’t seem inclined to let it go. He did his best not to think about his bladder, but it was going to become a pressing matter at some point. Still, she looked peaceful, for once, and that was worth just about any discomfort the colt could imagine.
His Wonderbolts bedspread was piled in a heap at the end of the bed, but it was a warm night and Sweet Shine was like a little furnace as she clung to his leg. Thankfully, she’d left the window open when she crept inside, and a gentle breeze kept the sweat from clinging to his neck and sides. Of course, she could just as well have come in through the front door, but old habits die hard. It’d been only a few months since her father was taken away by the police.
The psychologist his parents hired to poke around in his mind seemed to think he should be all broken up about smashing Stone Shine’s head. He wasn’t in the least; his dad hadn’t even asked why he wanted his bat out of the evidence locker, though his mom had a couple questions when he asked her to help him burn his cutie-mark into the grip.
Cautiously raising his head, Junior cocked an eye over at where his battered baseball bat leaned against the headboard within easy reach. It was a strange thing to take comfort in, but if he’d learned one thing on that fateful day, it was that he’d always have to be ready to protect his loved ones.
Looking down, he carefully ran his free toe down his friend’s mane, tracing along one of her black stripes.
‘I could have died,’ he thought to himself, then shook his head, his shaggy grey mane falling across his eyes. ‘Why doesn’t that bother me?’
Junior bit his lip as he studied his friend’s sleeping face. Her bruises were gone, and the scars had faded. Even her two-toned mane seemed healthier. She looked a bit thicker in the haunch, too, but there was still the shadow of the gaunt little filly he’d carried out of the house across the street.
‘Shiny is alive. That’s what matters.’
Reaching down with his free toe, he gently stroked her mane back from her ear and leaned down to rub his cheek against hers. She shifted in her sleep, letting go of his knee as she turned to face him. He prepared to jump out of bed and sprint for the bathroom, but didn’t have time before her forelegs wrapped themselves around his waist. She buried her face in the fur on his chest, letting out a contented sigh.
Taking a deep breath, he let his head droop onto the pillow.
‘What’s five more hours?’ he thought. ‘She deserves to sleep a little longer.’
----
The jumble of images faded into indistinctness, leaving me alone in the dark. I still had something like a floor, and whatever constituted air inside my head, but that left my list of resources painfully short and me sitting there on the mental ‘ground’ and trying to make sense of what’d just happened. I could feel my tongue and the fur on my forelegs, but I had no pulse to keep time.
I clung to the single picture that made perfect sense; my younger self, holding Taxi, lying in my bedroom in my parents’ house a few weeks after I got my cutie-mark. I hadn’t thought of that night in years.
Where had that memory come from?
“Memory is slippery, little colt. A better question is most likely ‘Where does the mind come from’?” asked a voice that sounded like it’d swallowed hooffuls of tacks.
I stumbled backwards, though not fast enough to stop a quick moving chain from snaking its way up behind my rear hooves and wrapping itself around my throat. I was yanked onto my stomach, my cheek pressed against the glass-like surface and my flank in the air. There was no pain, but the pressure felt unpleasantly real as it dug into my throat.
I tried to speak, but another chain shot from under my chin and snapped my teeth shut. I struggled in my bonds, trying to back away from the creature I knew was out there in the dark. What I wanted seemed to have little bearing on my evening.
Like an ancient banshee come from the depths of Tartarus to take her revenge, Saussurea faded into being in front of me.
The elderly mare’s living chains warped themselves into a strange mockery of her rocking chair, which she plunked herself down in with a pleased sigh and began to rock back and forth. The craggy, wrinkled smirk on her muzzle made my guts squirm. I jerked at my bonds, and that smile widened.
“Oh don’t bother. Those chains are in your mind. You couldn’t break them with a thousand imaginary muscleheads like yourself at the task. Now, the broken mare I so dangerously underestimated...she’d know how to escape them in a second. You? Never. You’re too stubbornly convinced you know your own limitations.”
Saussurea’s sharp horn lit with eerie red flame.
A hole seemed to form in the air beside her, surrounded on all sides by a swirl of smoke. It flickered, then stabilized. Through the hole, a strange scene seemed to be playing out.
Taxi was sitting at a desk of some kind in what looked like a distinctly fleshy cubicle with strange carpet like what we’d seen spreading in the elevator back in The Office, before the portal. Bones was with her, though I couldn’t tell what he might be saying, but from his body language he was trying to convince her to do something.
My driver’s nose was bleeding copiously as she quivered over a stack of paper. She looked like she’d been through the wringer. The healing talisman was still clinging to her side, but its light was fading.
“Now, then! This is quite the pickle, isn’t it?” Saussurea nickered, a teacup appearing in her hoof. She took a casual sip, then set it on the arm of her rocking chair. “You could get up and help her, if your mind wasn’t such an alcohol-riddled disaster area. But you haven’t answered my question yet!”
The chains around my face loosened until I could speak, though the one pinning me down kept taut.
“Tell me, your thoughts?” she asked.
“I’m thinking you’ll be dead alongside the rest of us and that that might be something to look forward to!” I growled.
“Not a killer, and yet so murderously intent!” she laughed, reaching down to tousle my mane like a fond old grandmother. “It must gall you, having let something like me live. A monster, cheerfully and happily resting in my pit while the world ends. You know the Warden would never let me expire. Down in the deep, below even the place they keep rogue dragons, I’ll probably be one of the last things on this world to freeze. I’ve my tomatoes that grow in the dark, and my artificial sun...I might outlast even the Princesses on the moon. Wouldn’t that be special?”
I braced my knees and gave the chains another rough tug as Saussurea returned to her seat.
“What...do you...want?” I snapped.
The old nag snorted, spittle landing on my cheek. “Stupid little colt! It is not what I want. I am in Tartarus Prison, most likely having tea and biscuits! Here, right now, this is all about you. You, who have so many little parts of the puzzle and yet the whole eludes you.”
“The puzzle?! My best friend is dying right there and you want me to talk about the case?!”
“Yes! Dense, boy. You are dense. Thickheaded!” She rapped her hoof on my forehead and it let out a noise like a coconut being hit with a rock, then pointed at the hole through which I could see my driver and Bones. “Consider the situation. Your enemies sought the Armor of Nightmare Moon. The Nightmare was banished, but a thousand years have passed. What motivates ponies to commit the evils these have committed?”
I shook my head. “P-power. Wealth—”
Saussurea’s chain pulled me into the air where I dangled like a fish on a hook in front of her, my back legs wheeling at the air.
“No, idiot...” she admonished, jamming one toe under my chin and forcing me to look into her deeply lined face. “These ponies found something out there in the wilds. It called to them...and they dug into the earth. It claimed them, generation upon generation. They fed it their old, their infirm, and their helpless. What interest have they in power? Their power eclipses even the Princesses’. Wealth? They built a city. They bribe dragons. They control dimensional magics that make the tracking spells I cast on the prisoners of Supermax look paltry by comparison. What do they want?”
Something in her tone pulled me back from the anger that’d been mostly directed at the effort to get myself free. I stared at her for a moment, mulling over the problem. It was Police Work 101. Establish motive.
“These moves haven’t been selfish moves,” I said, quietly. “They’re calculated. They invest in such a fashion as only their children’s children’s children might see the fruits of their labors…”
“Yes! Go on! Let’s see if that keen deductive mind still has enough neurons to tease out the truth!”
“It would be easier if I wasn’t chained up, here,” I grumbled.
“You’re not chained up, fool,” she replied, sharply. “You never were. You’re inside your own brain.”
I looked down at myself, finding my body unbound and only my hooves supporting me.
“Alright, so...they’re working towards a wish, but they have sacrificed generations to it and no single generation was ever expected to achieve it, until now,” I muttered, then raised both ears. “I can’t see all those hundreds of ponies sacrificing themselves, willingly, unless...unless they weren’t the ones in control. That means it’s not their wish.”
“Yeees, colt. Do give the broken mare my regards, won’t you?”
Saussurea gave one last spine-tingling laugh, and then a bundle of chains seemed to wrap themselves around her body, swirling up to her lips and plunging down her throat. After a moment, they fell into a pile of smoke that vanished as quickly as it’d come. When she was gone, I was left with only the strange hole in the air and the view of Taxi and Bones.
----
Headaches were a new sensation that Nightmare could have done without. Of course, the pounding in her skull was only icing atop the cupcake; somepony was kicking her in the ribs.
“Come on, colt! Get up! Don’t know what you think you’re doing having a nap!”
Nightmare moaned as another sharp strike hit her in the belly. Jerking her head off the carpet, she opened her eyes to find a skeleton’s displeased face inches from her own. It was not that his expression looked particularly displeased, but something in the way he carried himself mixed ‘displeased’ with ‘about to torture you to death’, though that last might have been her imagination. She was still unused to the idea of having an imagination; controlling it was out of the question.
She contemplated screaming. Screaming had seemed like the best course of action more than once since she’d gained intelligent agency. Unfortunately, she’d since established it only made her feel better, rather than keeping her from being eaten.
Then, the memories came flooding in like a tide, washing away her panic.
“B-Bones?” she stammered.
“Who’d you think it was?!” the skeleton barked inside her head. “Is that you, Moonie? Hard Boiled doesn’t usually sound quite so much like he just crapped himself.”
“I…don’t...Oh.” She gave a start, then jerked herself to a standing position, eyes wide. Taxi was still there, blood trickling down her chin, eyes bulging, pulse pounding, veins standing out on her forehead.
‘Ghost, how long was I gone?’ Nightmare thought.
‘About a minute and a half! I can’t talk right now! I think I know where Hard Boiled is!’
‘You do? Where?!’
‘What part of ‘can’t talk’ didn’t you hear me say?! Save Hardy’s best friend or we’re going to be stuck together a long, long time!’
Shaking her head, Nightmare tried to clear her mind. The images of the colt with the filly wrapped around him were still fresh in her thoughts, alongside a strange emotion that felt like a burning coal, warming her heart. It made her want to take the mare in some type of embrace, stroke her hair, and tell her everything would be alright.
True, they might all be dead soon, but that was irrelevant.
Taxi must not die.
“Pony,” Nightmare murmured, putting her hoof on the mare’s shoulder. “You must…” She paused, and considered her words carefully. “Sweets...”
Taxi’s eyes jerked up for an instant before going back to the paper, though one of her ears swiveled to face Nightmare.
“Whatever you’re going to do, best do it quick,” Bones said, nodding at Taxi’s chest. “Don’t think her heart is going to last much longer.”
Nightmare ignored him and leaned in close, until her lips touched Taxi’s cheek. “Sweets,” she whispered, “Please let go. You have to let go, or...or I’ll die. I swear, I will come back for you. I love you, Sweet Shine. I’ll always come back for you.”
Nightmare blinked a few times as she mulled over her own words . Where had those last two sentences come from? Nightmare hadn’t meant to say them, but the words just slipped out. Still, it seemed to do the trick.
Taxi’s breathing hitched, then she blinked a few times.
“H-Hardy?” she mumbled, looking up from the paper. All at once, her body seized and her gaze was yanked back down to the stack of blank sheets on the desk. Gradually, she tilted forward.
“N-no...oh please, do not be d-dying—” Nightmare stuttered, then fell silent as a series of glyphs began to appear on the empty page in front of Taxi. With a wobble, Nightmare’s knees went slack with relief, and she stumbled sideways against the wall.
“Eh...you mind explaining why that is a good thing, Moonie?” Bones said, cocking his head to one side.
“It is complicated,” Nightmare replied, “Or rather, I do not fully understand. She fought the mind control field and it was killing her. I examined one of Hard Boiled’s memories and believe I convinced her to stop resisting. We will have to retrieve her before we go. What happened to the monsters?”
“They caught a fatal case of indigestion. Sad to say, that’s all the grenades we had left, and there will be more beasties coming. I had to ditch the guns I picked up back in the building when I tried to follow Hard Boiled. Best we get out of here before more uglies make themselves known.”
“I agree. Shall we continue to the control—”
Nightmare was interrupted by a soft hum, followed by a tiny flittering blue light dropping out of the fog. Bones danced back, shoving a hoof into his jacket while Nightmare snatched up her trigger bit and aimed the Crusader at the dancing glow. It hovered over her head for a moment, then seemed to jump a bit to the left a few inches, returned to its original position, then jumped again in the same direction.
“Bones, what is this? Is this your doing?” she demanded.
“That’s not like anything I’ve seen in the Office before, though considering the place wasn’t active way back when, that might not mean much. I will say one thing, though. Don’t that look an awful lot like the nerd’s magic? His horn-light’s that color.”
“Aha! Yes! Limerence Tome must have sent us some form of tracking spell in case we escaped! Oh, I miss my horn! How do earth ponies manage?”
Bones cocked his skull in her direction. “We manage just damn fine, Moonie. If this is a tracking spell, you think we can follow it?”
Nightmare nodded, then turned sideways so she could line herself up with the direction the fluttering light was jumping toward. “Hmmm...It is directing us almost exactly toward where I believe the control room to be. My evaluation of Limerence Tome suggests a pony of intelligence, but a suicidal devotion to duty. I do not like the decision-making processes of suicidal ponies.”
“Then you picked the wrong stallion’s brain to burgle, missy,” Bones quipped.
“The irony is not lost on me.” Nightmare let out a long sigh, which was a gesture she found she liked. There were so many little variations one could add to a sigh. “Unfortunately, I believe my objectives require that Limerence Tome survive this demented caper.”
“Then we need to find whatever ‘creatures’ your friend who got eaten by the carpet was referring to before she died. Let’s hope they can help us avoid whatever is turning ponies into puppets. A pack of wild yaks wouldn’t drag Hard Boiled out of here without Miss Shine.”
----
“She...she heard me,” I murmured, trying to lean into the swirling hole in the air. My nose bonked against something that felt distinctly like warm glass. I tapped the surface a few times, which made no noise but still seemed to be perfectly solid.
Stuck inside my own grey matter, I wanted nothing more than a bucket of bagels and a dozen beers, but it didn’t seem I had that much agency. Certainly nothing like having my dream-world propped up by Gale. That’d been nice.
My body seemed to be doing alright on its own, considering Nightmare walked a little too much like a mare. Or rather, walked a little too much like Scarlet. Part of me was glad Taxi was on a mental time-out. She’d never let me live it down if she saw me swishing my hips like that.
I exhaled, wishing I could feel my heartbeat. Most people never get the chance to go without for any length of time, and the experience is like getting used to an amputated limb; the awareness of something being wrong never quite goes away. Having been dead a few times, it was starting to bother me worse each time.
Rolling onto my back, I let my eyes roll back in my head and shouted, “Room service! I’d like a bucket of bagels, five gallons of beer, Scarlet Petals to eat the bagels off of and Lily Blue to hold me while I cry for about twelve hours.” Cocking an eye towards the peephole showing me the world outside, I added, “Oh, and while we’re wishing for things that won’t happen anytime soon, get me three quarts of garlic and onion cream cheese served in Colonel Broadside’s ribcage.”
Nightmare Moon was saying something to Bones; I could see the end of my muzzle moving. Knowing her it was probably delightfully archaic and infuriating. It also was going to probably earn her a—yep. Then she was clutching my nose. I didn’t know what she’d said, but it’d earned her a sharp kick in the face.
All at once, some sense one develops from years of coping with the possibility that their psychopathic boss might tear them limb from limb at any moment alerted me to the fact that I was no longer alone. I rose to my hooves, brushing a complete lack of dust off my stomach. Surveying my little corner of nowhere, I found nopony there. Still, my danger sense was tingling.
“Not that it matters, but I know you’re here,” I called, testingly.
My voice echoed in the stillness just long enough for me to wonder if I were imagining things.
Finally, a particular spot—which hadn’t been meaningfully different from any other spot until the darkness started to move—detached itself from the background and flowed quick-like to circle around my body. It had a distantly equine shape, reminding me a bit of Gypsy’s misty form when she was polite enough to have one. Nothing about it seemed especially hostile, but it was moving in that way I’d done many times with suspects during an interrogation when I wanted to keep them off balance.
The figure didn’t have eyes, but I got the distinct feeling I was being looked over.
A pair of forelegs faded into being, followed by a dapper black dinner jacket and a burgundy tie tucked in front of a sharply pressed shirt. One leg reached up to adjust the tie as the stallion’s back legs flickered and settled out of the shadows. His pelt was a familiar dark grey, same as my own, while his tail seemed to waver between black and purple. Where his face should have been there remained the twist of shadows, whispering against one another like leaves in the wind.
When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything, I chanced to sit down, again.
“Now fella, I’m pretty damn sure I don’t know you,” I said, “Although, now that I get a look, that’s most of my body you’re wearing. Nice suit, but the face needs work.”
The shadow shifted his weight from leg to leg, the black hole where his head should have been tilting to one side.
“Detective Hard Boiled,” a voice murmured, a hint of mocking in its tone. It was a voice that’d snuck into my thoughts ever since our little ‘negotiation’, during which I’d been forced to give up the helm of Nightmare Moon.
It was D.W.’s voice.
A little posh. Confident without being arrogant.
A voice that inspired. A humble voice. A voice that could topple mountains and boil seas.
I grunted, turning to the hole in the air. “I wondered if you’d show up at some point. You look like this because—”
“—because you don’t know what I look like?” he finished. “Yes, of course. But then, villains always must have an air of mystery, else endless lines of heroes will surely swat them down. Ponies grow heroes like weeds, after all. It makes one wonder what sort of world we live in that requires so many exceptional, brave, and altogether stupid individuals to keep the species from going extinct.”
I shrugged, watching as, out in the real world, my body turned down a fresh corridor and almost ran nose-first into the leg of some kind of giant insect. Nightmare slowly backed away before sprinting off in the opposite direction. Funny how dull it was to watch what amounted to film with the sound off, even if the stakes were life and death.
“What unresolved issues in my wreck of a brain do you represent?” I asked.
“Obvious ones, I suspect,” D.W. replied, rolling up his sleeve. There was a shiny gold watch on his foreleg, though the face had no hands. “What does it say about you that when you visualize your most dangerous opponent, you see yourself?” He quickly held up his hoof to forestall my witty retort. “Don’t bother answering that.”
I glanced at his handless watch, then shrugged. “I’m assuming the mental metaphor is either that I have all the time in the world or my time has long since run out, so I needn’t worry about wasting it.”
“I don’t think you need worry about metaphor, Hard Boiled. Not when the facts before you represent an ocean of truth that you seem barely inclined to stick your toe in.” D.W. chuckled, trotting to the hole in the air and peering out. “Thrill me. What is this ‘wish’ the Family is going to make in...what is it? Two days?”
“Are you seriously asking me to work this out now?” I asked.
“You have all the information, and yet you’ve stubbornly clung to your own ignorance for weeks now. Do you want to see the city burn? Because I must tell you, my family has gone to great lengths to lay out the tinder, soak it in gasoline, and light the match.”
“I’m not a damn psychic! My driver is the pony you talk to when you need vague impressions of future events. How am I supposed to know what those bastards want?”
“It mystifies me that you don’t, Detective. Please, humor your dear enemy. What do you know about me and mine?”
I bared my teeth at him. “You and yours are going to kill everyone in Detrot for your own—”
I trailed off into silence, realizing I didn’t actually know the rest of that sentence. I got the feeling D.W. was smirking at me.
“For our own what, Hard Boiled?” he asked, his shadowy face writhing a little faster with what I took to be amusement. “You have spent so much time chasing your own tail of recent that you fail to ask fundamental questions. So, as we are here together and have no seeming shortage of time in this shambles you call a mind, do tell me...what do you truly know about the Family?”
‘Breathe, Hard Boiled. Breathe. It’s not really D.W. The anger isn’t helping and the prick has a pretty good point. Maybe it’s time to stop and work the facts,’ I thought.
“Very good!” D.W. exclaimed, politely clapping his hooftips like an audience member at a golf tournament. “That temper of yours nearly ended you ever so many times. I had wondered if even the needs of justice and survival might master it!”
I did my best to ignore him as I fought for cool, rational calm. Whatever theoretical headspace I was in was making it difficult to control my emotions. If I’d had a heartbeat, I felt certain it would be racing.
“Alright. The Family...Some group of nobodies wandering around in the wild found something way back in the yesteryears.”
“Or something found us!” D.W. prompted, thrusting the chest of his headless body out. “Few ponies begin as monsters.”
“Granted. Fine. Whatever they found...it was old already. It was very patient and it wanted...something. It was willing to drive Princess Luna mad. It gave her the Web of Dark Wishes and had her try to paint that magic across the sky.”
“Excellent! Now, why are we in our present conundrum?”
I stared off into the sky for a moment before continuing. “Because Princess Celestia banished the control mechanism to the Moon for a thousand years. Nightmare Moon.”
D.W. thumped a hoof against his breast. “The Family rose to the grandest heights! We waited! We watched! We prepared! Now, we act. But why? What do we desire?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, dammit! You keep asking me something I can’t possibly know the answer to!”
This didn’t seem to put him off in the least. D.W. leaned in close, prompting me to take a couple of steps back so that disturbing visage wasn’t quite so near.
“Think, Hard Boiled. Think! Where did you find the first pylon?” he demanded.
“Buried. Buried in a mine,” I answered, fighting the quiver in my voice.
“Buried by the Family?” he continued, though he didn’t wait for an answer. “No! Dug up by the Family! Do people typically entomb things that are meant to be found?”
I slowly shook my head.
“Was it open or was it locked with a key that only operates from the outside?”
“You’re saying the pylon was some kind of...of prison?” I asked as what he was saying dawned on me.
Smugly tapping me on the nose with a hoof that looked distressingly like my own, he sat and flicked his coat-tails out from under his flank. “What do you do with something you have beaten but cannot kill, Hard Boiled? Something immortal, that will corrupt any being it touches? Something intelligent beyond the ken of dragon, pony, zebra, or any other being on this planet?”
I swallowed a watermelon-sized lump in my throat.
“You...you lock it away. You hide it,” I murmured.
“Why in the pylon? Why in a place that drains souls?”
“Because…” I paused, thinking. “Someone somewhere back in time buried this thing hoping nopony would ever find it and set it up to constantly steal the magic of whatever was inside. The Family put their weak on that altar and into the walls to give the pylon something else to drain. That...that’s it, isn’t it?”
“Mayhap that is the case. Let us presume you are correct. What do all prisoners wish for, Hard Boiled?” D.W. asked, sweeping a leg out to indicate the strange space I’d found myself trapped.
I didn’t even have to think; the answer was staring me in the face.
“Freedom. Prisoners want freedom. The Family is going to use this wish to...to free...” I paused, then carefully scratched one of my ears with the tip of my toe. “Wait. The pylon was already empty, right?”
“Hah! And the great detective stumbles again. Would the Family be dedicating so many resources to protecting the center of the city if our master were beneath a burnt-out house in the middle of the Wilds?” D.W. asked, twirling his hoof in the air.
“No,” I muttered. “So, whatever this is must already be free of its prison. Unless—”
“Unless the prison was more than just the pylon,” he added, thoughtfully, “You have not inquired in an important direction, yet. For such a cautious, careful lot as we, why banish Celestia and Luna? Why that flashiest of entrances?”
I squinted at him, then dropped onto my haunches. “Twilight Sparkle and Princess Cadence are beasts. Sparkle scares the fur off me when she’s drunk. I’d hate to think of a mind like that fully sober. I guess the most obvious answer would be that the Family knew Luna and Celestia could probably stop them. That or they needed them distracted from their normal duties in some fashion.”
“And what reason would something have for needing the protectors of Equestria...distracted? You know it feeds upon chaos. What fuel source is there for such a thing that is greater than a city aflame? What wish is most powerful?”
If my biological processes had been operating normally just then, I’m pretty sure I’d have had a nasty chill and a gut full of beetles doing a little tango in my intestines. It was then I noticed that D.W. was slowly fading away. The process began at his back hooves, a bad film wipe effect moving gradually up his fetlocks and turning them to wisps of smoke that scattered into the windless blackness.
My gaze met his.
He had eyes, then. They were my eyes. He wore my face, my trenchcoat, and my hat. The Crusader was strapped to his leg, and a shiny gold badge dangled from a string around his neck.
“A...A dying planet,” I said, softly. “The day after tomorrow, they mean to wreck the entire world. The Family are going to make us all wish for death.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.025 seconds
Total duration
870 users online
562,365 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
ohhh boy... well you gotta give em credit for ambition if nothing else..
Wham indeed.. That's, yeah.. okay.. Well, no time like the present to make and choose.
"Nothing we did ever made those damned"
"But nothing we did ever made those damned"?
"a story of a young Overseer named"
"a story of a young overseer named"?
"Former Dragon Slave-master"
"Former Dragon Slavemaster"?
Trying to figure out The Family's objective has had me racking my brain for a long time. As all good mysteries we were given all the fact we needed and the answer was staring us in the face but we just couldn't see it until it gave us all a backhoof.
But we now know what The Family wants, and how their guoing to get it.
That means we can now figure out how to stop them.
Well done Chessie, well done indeed.
2 days? The moon is falling, the moon is falling.
And the plot gets deeper! Does that mean they're trying to unleash whatever is being held at bay, and using the combined suffrage of an entire world to pull it off?
I have no words to describe something so terrible in both its scope and intent.
But then that raises two more questions: The first is 'How could they see and plan this far in advance?'. They would have to arrange everything just so, spending generations upon generations of effort up to this perfect moment. Considering they have a master that drove Luna loony, it's possible the thing is the one instructing them through unknown means, and used some sort of clairvoyance to see and do everything that has been done. Explains why Hard Boiled is still an anomaly to them, since the Crusader makes him invisible to their scrying.
That's one question chewed on. The second comes simply to 'What could this possibly be?', because I somehow doubt Discord is this terrifying in the Detrot timeline. I think Twilight mentioned him being on her side, so that helps clear him. If we're going by show antagonists, there are a handful of possibilities, but it could just as well be something entirely different. And considering the sheer span of its intent, I'd safely put it under being something new and incredibly terrible.
Either way, I'm loving the chapter, and eagerly await more!
DAWN OF THE SECOND DAY
48 HOURS REMAIN
This is some goddamn eldritch abomination shit you've got going on here let me tell you that.
Granted, I don't hate the Family's motivations. Been getting hints of it ever since they went to the pylon/shrine surrounded by the remains of sacrifice.
You've tread into "Wishing one could die" territory before Chessie, many times. I know what you can do.
Man am I glad they're getting out of the Office soon.
9057713 It's been mentioned exactly once in the show. I'll throw you a couple clues.
1.I started Starlight in Season 2 of the show. It's nothing from after that point in the series.
2.No, it's not a 'meta' character.
3.No it's not one of the writers of the show. No, it's not me.
4.No, it's nothing stupid.
5.It's not one of the good guys of the show turned evil.
6.Yes, it is something that was by name mentioned in the show.
7.It's not from any previous generation of MLP. No Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 3, or Gen 3.5.
-Chessie
9057980 You know, I didn't know it was going to be quite this horrifying when I started out? I really didn't.
-Chessie
Great work, Chessie!
I look forward to seeing how Hard Boiled defeats the Big Bad. I believe I know who they are, and I know how they should, in theory, be defeated. But as we all know, things never go as smoothly as that in practice.
9058300 I will be shocked if you do, but feel free to send it to me in a PM.
-Chessie
All aboard! This train now has no brakes, and is not stopping for anything!
9057965
Ah! I know who it is!
It’s Kalros, the Glue...
...Mak-eeerrrr *coughs* I mean, it is really the necromancer, Gro-....
...gARGH! Fine! Then it has to be the Headless...
... Horse SH*T!
Ooh, you are good. 
Well then it just has to be The Olden...
... Pony aw-mother-plucker!
That’s it, I am gonna scour the ENTIRE first two seasons my next full day off! I WILL find out who it is, Chessie, just you wait!
But in all seriousness, I enjoyed the chapter. Sorry I haven’t commented on the past few chapters... been dealing with some RL issues (mostly the passing of my 93 year old grandfather, which means I now have no more living grandparents
). But just wanted to say that seeing any new chapters, even with the heavy stuff in it, always puts a smile on my face. 
Discord? (Especially with the mention that it “feeds upon chaos” …)
Doesn’t at all match anything past S2, but there are fics with him as an evil character/antagonist, so …
9059368 I am in a similar spot. My dad's heart is not doing well. Still, the story continues.
I really enjoyed reading the comments on this chapter. They made me smile.
-Chessie
9059469
It’s not Discord.
9059272 This train is on fire and the engineer is drunk and on acid! WATCH OUT FOR THOSE NUNS ON THE TRACK...oh Celestia, why the nuns...
WHY WERE THE NUNS MADE OF KITTENS?!
-Chessie
9059368
Here, I'll save you some time
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_ponies
I'm already going past 3 am to find the bastard
Arimaspi?
Yep, I definitely sympathize with Hardy here. Nothing like having a deluge of data and still being confused on where it leads. Reading mysteries like this are a bit of a masochistic act for me....
I’m inclined to think you’re pulling a FOE and the Stars (as in “will aid in her escape”) are behind all this.
9057965
Is it... a 6-legged pony with a purple polka-dotted mane and shooting stars coming out of its eyes, who flies through the air all over the world to hide magic, sparkly eggs?
9060314
Oh, wow, I never even thought of that
9075650
Yes.
-Chessie
You know, this is a bit of a new one on me. I have seen many villains boast about how they're going to make someone wish for the sweet release of death, but I've never seen one use that as their M.O.
The flipside to that is that at least some of this is starting to make sense. An eldritch abomination, sealed away since probably before the dawn of time. That just makes...sense, somehow.
9077458
Not to ruin your musing, but "before the dawn of time" implies a constant, unchanging moment, so there was nothing happening or being done then.
When young Hardy hit a home run, was he doing it for great justice?
I swear there's a motivational poster about the chains of the mind.
Your objectives, and a large chunk of the readers!
it's wearing a Hardy suit?
Except Starlight Glimmer.
I've seen the first two seasons, but that was years ago
Can't wait for you to make me facehoof
Dramatic sting? Dramatic sting. Jeez... This story is such a hidden gem it's unbelievable...