The Hollow Pony

by Type_Writer

55 - Knight Macintosh

Our little campsite within the palace seemed to be the servant’s quarters for the palace, with a half-dozen beds along each wall, and a brick fireplace at the end opposite the door, which no doubt would have kept the room warm all through the winter when lit. We stoked up a much smaller fire, just enough to light the room, and left Gilda’s body on one of the beds nearby.

It took us a little while to find some paper—we had to tear a mostly-blank page out of a book left on a bedside table—and it took us even longer to find ink. Eventually we had to make do with my own black blood, and Red's mouth-writing with the old quill wasn't great. We left the note under Gilda's bow, atop her own bedside table, so she'd definitely see it if she woke up while we were gone.

A nearby key locked the door, and we agreed that Gilda would be safe enough in there, and comfortable until we returned. With that settled, we set off into the carpeted halls of the palace, with Red leading me towards where he said an armory was located.

On our way, we came across a grisly scene that clashed with the opulence all around us; one of the Hollowed golden guards had been slain, and his blood was long since drying into the carpet. He had not died quickly or easily; nearby furniture was burned and smashed, and his halberd had been snapped into at least two pieces that I could see, among the detritus. His body was slumped against a wall, and something had taken a bloody bite out of his throat, leaving his head sitting at a strange angle.

“D-did you and G-Gilda…?”

I trailed off, unsure how to phrase my question, and Red finished the thought for me. “Nah. Would’ve been a waste of time anyhow.”

I stepped closer to the dead guard, feeling with my fire, and realized that not only was he dead—he had been drained, and would not be getting back up any time soon. I believed Red, and so that left only two options; either the guards were so Hollowed that they were turning on each other…or there was another interloper within the palace, besides ourselves.

“R-Red?”

He must’ve come to a similar conclusion; he scanned the hallway, and his voice was low. “If it was a trap, we woulda sprung it already.” He stepped closer to the corpse, and I moved aside so he could lift the dead stallion’s chin with the head of his axe. “Pretty sure these’re pony bite marks. Around the same size as us.”

“S-so they’re turning on each other…?”

“Looks that way.” He let the stallion’s head stiffly slump back into place. “Palace locked down, no one in here to hunt or feed off of ‘cept each other…they’re probably starvin’.”

“Will G-Gilda be safe…?”

Red frowned, but after a moment of thought, he nodded. “They don’t bash down doors, ‘less they see somepony go in. Otherwise there’d be no doors left. She should be fine.”

I nodded, and we stepped away from the dead guard. It didn’t even look like his armor was worth trying to salvage, so we simply moved on, and left him where he lay.

Red led me down several sets of staircases, and as we descended further into the depths of the mountain underneath the palace, the gilded marble was quickly replaced by granite reinforced with steel. These corridors were not meant to be seen by visiting nobles and diplomats; these walls were meant to remain intact, even should the rest of the palace be razed to the foundations. And yet, I'd guess that the majority of these halls had originally been caves that had been reinforced and expanded, just like the sewers that we had fought our way through to reach Canterlot originally. How many secrets did this mountain hold?

Eventually, we reached a solid set of massive double doors made of steel with cold iron set into the edges and hinges. I could feel the magic-insulating metal from a few paces away, and I doubted that even an alicorn could successfully tear these doors from their frame through brute force or magical strength. It seemed a safe assumption that the room beyond was warded against teleportation, and maybe even resistant to explosions, of either a chemical or magical source. And yet, the doors were easily large enough that a pony could roll a whole cart through if they were open, though that would require dragging a wheeled cart down several flights of stairs, surely?

Not that this seemed to worry Red. He walked up to the lock—which appeared to be the only magical part of the whole security system, considering that it had no keyhole, just a smooth surface of crystal—and pressed his hoof into the pad. The crystal rippled like water around his large hoof, and he glanced back at me. “Golden Guard had special access to the armory. Couldn't have keys, 'cause ponies could steal those; the door remembers the magic of our bodies instead. Hopin' that means it's too much of a pain to remove a single pony's imprint from the magic.”

I peered at the pool of crystal around his hoof. “S-security was that important?”

“O' course.” Red chuckled. “Gotta make sure the things in here can't get out, otherwise ponies might be hurt.”

My brow furrowed; I hadn't considered that possibility. Suddenly, I was having second thoughts about coming down here with Red. Maybe I wouldn't have to worry about that, though, since the door wasn't opening, nor showing any kind of reaction to Red’s interaction with the lock. “Um...w-what if they did?” I asked warily. “Remove the im-imprint...?”

Red shrugged, though he kept his hoof in place. “Not sure. Maybe nothing, maybe it'll light me on fire.” He said this with a deadpan nonchalance that would have done Maud Pie proud. “Celestia got a little crazy about her security as the war went on.”

“L-light you on f-f—?“ The words died in my throat as the crystal pool pulsed, and a series of mechanical clicks echoed through the hallway. After another moment, seams appeared in the seamless steel, and a pony-sized section slid towards us, then away to the side, allowing us passage through.

Red withdrew his hoof, and flicked his head towards the opening. “Good. Didn't feel like trying to haul one of those hollows down here. You should be fine, security-wise, but...”

We moved close, then Red stopped suddenly, and glanced back at me. “Holly. Ah trust you a whole haybale more than ah trust Gilda, but this is important. Don't touch anything. Ah mean it; don't matter if it looks harmless, or if it looks like a normal weapon, or if it's whisperin' to ya. And if anything does start whisperin', tell me, and I'll help drag ya away from whatever it is. We're here for one item, and I know just enough about that item to be sure ah want to reach it. Everything else in here is weird, and scary, and most of all, dangerous. Dangerous enough that Celestia locked it away down here, and intended for it to stay here—maybe 'til the end of time.”

He stared at me until I nodded. He didn't ask for a promise; he didn't need to. It was rare that Red said more than a sentence or two at a time, and I could tell how deadly serious he was about this. Not that he was prone to joking already, admittedly.

With that said, he stepped through, and I followed him into what seemed to be an oddly normal armory at first glance. The walls were lined with racks of weapons fastened in place, with more on a series of tables and workbenches, along with a scattered assortment of bound books and thin journals. Dust covered nearly everything; nopony had come down here in a long time. After he made sure that the door was securely shut behind us, Red focused on a large tome sitting on a lectern in the middle of it all, and I trailed behind him as I looked around.

After he blew off the dust, Red started flipping through the pages towards the most recent additions. As he searched, I found my eyes drawn to the weapons on the walls again. While more than a few looked identical, I noticed that each had a unique numbered tag, and that no matter what, every weapon was tightly attached to the mounts on the walls. Nothing hung loosely by a leather strap or a mere metal hook. Even the weapons on the workbenches were tightly bound to those surfaces, often by cold iron chains. Once I realized that, this room began to look more like a cluttered and disused museum, instead of an armory.

Or, a part of me thought ominously, a prison.

Tentatively, I leaned forward and peered at a book left open on a workbench. Red gave me a warning glance, but seemed satisfied that I was only reading the dusty pages, and went back to his own book. The thin journal before me seemed to be a scholar's notes on the weapon, which was an intricately-decorated thin rapier. The basket around the hilt was crafted to look like vines made of metal, and more spiraled upwards along the blade for a few hoof-lengths, maybe to reinforce the fragile weapon, or maybe just for aesthetics.

The journal was dry and clinical; descriptions of who had owned it, how it was made, and the enchantments on the weapon, which used language and runes I couldn't understand in the slightest. I wasn't a unicorn, and I'd had no formal magical training at all in either of my lives; the best I could understand from skimming the notes seemed to detail that the user could cause the vines to leap out and wrap around an opponent's weapon—or their throat. After a series of deadly duels in a distant province, the Princess had dispatched investigators, who quickly tracked down the unicorn noble who owned it. His story ended with a reference to a criminal case from a hundred years before Luna's return; the weapon had ended up here, ever since.

I was interrupted when Red made a satisfied grunt, and closed the book which he'd been reading. “Found it. Over here.” I nodded, and followed him to the back of the room, where a second set of heavy reinforced doors had been set into the wall. These opened just as easily as the last with the same delay, and we passed through them into a dense series of hallways lined with even more doors, all tightly secured.

I felt like I was walking through a dungeon, or perhaps an asylum, and whenever I glanced through the thick glass windows in the doors, the rooms beyond certainly looked like cells. Each one held a single weapon; from a spear still dripping wet blood from the tip, to a warhammer made of silver, and a set of wingblades that crackled with lightning the moment I looked at them. Each door had another numbered tag, and a short placard that looked like it gave a short description of the weapon contained within. The doors all looked as though they opened outwards, and opening one would block the corridor, so a pony could see at a glance from the end of the hallway whether any of the doors was left open.

Finally, Red stopped in front of a cell, and looked back at me. “Okay, this is it. Holly, I'm going to go in and talk to her. The room's sound-proofed, and the doors are secure, so you'll have to let me back out when I'm done.”

I swallowed, unable to shake this nervous feeling that I'd had since we came down here. “Is this s-safe?”

“Ha!” Red snorted. “Ain't none of this safe. This part least of all. She might just choose to kill me; can't rightly say I'd blame her. Watch through the glass, and if she does kill me, or just goes wild in there, keep the door shut. Leave me in there, don't put yourself and everypony else in danger by trying to let her out. From what I heard, last time she was free, she went damned near berserk.”

“Sh-she?” I mumbled. I thought we were to retrieve a weapon, but now Red was talking about her as though there was a pony inside. I peered through the glass, but all I could see within was an axe, bound with chains to a weapon rack on the wall. It was hard to tell, but the head of the weapon looked intricately-decorated.

Red nodded again and gave a quiet sigh. “Yeah. She. I'll explain afterwards; otherwise it won't matter.” He took one last breath, then grabbed the handle of the door; the only part of the mechanism that wasn't made of cold iron (it seemed like half of this place had been made from the metal, which must have cost the Princess a fortune over the course of Equestria's history.)

The door opened with a clank, and I was again reminded of a prison cell by the sound, before Red slipped through. I shut and locked the door behind him, and after he was confident I'd done so, he nodded at me through the thick smoked glass and moved towards the axe. As he moved closer, I looked at the rest of the cell; which seemed to be roughly triangular in design. There was no need for a spacious prison, when each cell merely held a weapon, and the way that the cells were designed allowed an observer to see the entirety of the room through the window, with no blind spots within.

Red seemed to be talking, but I couldn't hear the words, and as he spoke, he placed a hoof on the axe's grip. Suddenly it twitched, even within the cold steel bindings, as though it were an animal trying to escape, and I saw Red flinch—but then he replaced his hoof, and he was talking again, as though nothing had ever happened.

I glanced at the placard for this cell, since Red seemed alright, and read through the warnings quickly. There was something about the axe being soul-bound, but also containing a soul itself...and it was an animated weapon, which seemed to be a particularly dangerous classification. I saw something about “uncontrolled autonomy,” whatever that meant, but that was it.

I turned my eyes back to Red, just in time to see him working to undo the locks holding the chains in place. My breath caught in my throat as he finally did so, and the axe suddenly flicked over his head, then swung downwards to split his brow in an instant—but froze, a hair from his forehead. In fact, it was close enough to part his fur, but no further.

And despite that, Red didn't make any moves to flee. In fact, he had closed his eyes—if his death was upon him, apparently he didn't want to see it coming. So when a few moments passed, and he wasn't killed by whatever mad spirit resided within the enchanted axe, he smiled. He continued to talk, but only when the axe settled onto the floor of the cell did he open his eyes. After a moment, he reached over his shoulder and pulled his old weathered war axe from where he had kept it between fights. As soon as he set the old axe on the floor, the intricate weapon leapt upwards over his head, and settled onto his back, as though it had always been intended to reside there.

Red smiled at me, with a tired look in his eyes, and he picked up his old axe in his teeth as he started towards the door. After only a moment's hesitation, I started to work the mechanism, and the cell opened as the prisoner within was released. I waited with bated breath to see if now, only when I had opened the door, would the axe go berserk and attempt to escape, but nothing of the sort happened. Red simply stepped out of the prison cell, placed his old war axe on the granite floor, and tilted his head down towards it.

“That's yours now, if'n ya want it. Served me well for a long while, and ah made it myself out in the wilds. Damn proud of it.”

He was serious about trading upwards, then. While I felt a little strange about getting yet another passed-down weapon to add to my collection, Red seemed genuine about how much this axe had meant to him. That actually made me more nervous, because I didn't exactly have the best track record in regards to my equipment. Hopefully he wouldn't be too disappointed in me when I inevitably lost or broke the well-loved weapon.

Nervously, I swallowed, then picked up the axe in my own teeth, and started to decide whether I wanted to use it or my stolen mace. The other would go into my bottomless bag for storage. They were both fairly heavy weapons, which one would have to use a lot of strength to swing—strength I barely had when my broken body was in good condition. Neither seemed like good choices for fighting Rainbow Dash, who seemed as though she could dodge out of the way before I even began to swing my weapon.

I decided my choice in weapons could wait until we got back to the corridor outside the throne room, where we could talk strategy with Gilda—assuming she was of a mind to talk. For now, I slid the axe into my bottomless bag, and followed after Red, who had already begun making his way back to the entrance.

While we were waiting for the magic lock to open and allow us back out, Red mentioned that he had been worried that they would allow us in, and then lock from this side. I was a little appalled that he hadn't mentioned that was even a possibility until after we had already sealed ourselves inside, but the lock clicked open anyways, and my newfound fear passed.

When we entered the odd space that doubled as both workshop and museum again, we were halfway to the door when Red froze. “Holly. Stop. Somethin's off.”

The fear returned in an instant; had we let something loose? Together, our eyes swept the room, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first glance. As I looked back at Red again, however, I noticed the axe on his back twitch upwards—and Red jumped onto a workbench, just as three long green blurs whipped out from underneath it, and knocked my legs out from under me.

My world tumbled as I crashed to the floor, and Red swore loudly. “That sword, from before!”

I was already struggling to escape the vines as they wrapped around my hooves, when a steel blur whipped out from under my table, and stabbed me through the barrel like the stinger of a giant wasp. My breath was knocked from my breast as my lung was pierced, and I only had one foreleg free to use to swat at the animated weapon; my other three legs were being wrapped with green plant life, and I swore I could feel the vines taking root in my flesh as they crushed my legs with unnatural strength.

There was a sound like air being forced out of the way, a whistling sort of noise, and then the axe that Red had retrieved was buried in the granite between my legs. It separated a clump of vines from the rest of the mass, and they withered and died in moments, while the axe flicked itself back into the air above me. With two forehooves now free, I could get enough leverage to grab the grip of the rapier, and I began to force it back out, giving myself an odd sense of deja vu.

In an instant, the cursed rapier stopped fighting me and instead ripped itself back out of my body, then flew back under the table as my black blood trailed in its wake. I stumbled to my hooves as Red's axe lazily drifted around the table at knee height, waiting. I tried to ask Red how he was controlling the axe so well while he was still standing atop the workbench, but all that came out was a sucking wheeze.

Another blur of movement flicked out from under the workbench, and the axe came down on it like a gryphon butcher chopping meat. Red and green(?) sparks scattered across the room as metal ground metal against the granite floor, and the already-cut ends of the animated vines bled magic.

“Holly! To the door!” Red barked, then leapt off the workbench towards the crystal pool set into the metal. He jammed his hoof in and swore as he kept watching the weapons clash without any equine input, and I stumbled over to him as quickly as my collapsed lung would allow. “C'mon. C'mon!”

He wasn't shouting at me, I realized, but the magic lock itself. The delay hadn't been anything more than an annoyance until now, when it could cost us our lives. I slammed against the wall awkwardly, already getting light-headed from my new injury, but I was relatively sure it wouldn't be fatal.

While I struggled to pull my flask of sunlight out of my bag, Red's eyes were on the fight on the other side of the room. Not that I could blame him; it was hard not to watch the deadly dance of two weapons as they clashed all by themselves. The axe seemed to be truly floating, though there was something about the movement that I couldn't quite pin down...meanwhile, the rapier was limited to using magically-created vines to pull itself around the room. It slithered like a snake, it lashed vines around table legs and swung itself around to gain momentum, at one point it even wrapped around the grip of the magical axe, and tethered itself to its opponent. I heard Red let out a surprised grunt when that happened, though he didn't explain why.

I had finally managed to get the flask out and uncork it when Red grunted in warning, “Holly!”

I flinched backwards, and just barely avoided being impaled a second time by the cursed rapier; instead, it buried itself a hoof-length deep into the granite wall, and vibrated like a tuning fork. Then the axe was between us, and the head was turned to the side—just in time for a fresh shower of sparks as the rapier’s tip scraped against the other weapon, as it had pulled itself back out of the wall faster than I could see. I didn't even know it was possible to deflect a sword strike in such a way, and I tried to remember the move for myself later—so long as I could live long enough to try.

Another twist slammed the top of the axe's head down onto the blade, forcing it back down to the floor, and just as quickly the rapier grabbed onto my own leg for leverage to flick itself away. The axe gave chase, just as Red and I heard a 'click' from the magical lock, and the door began to open.

Red pulled on it to open faster, But I was preoccupied. I gulped at the faint trace of liquid that had barely had time to replenish itself within the flask, before I shoved it back inside the bag, then leapt through the open door. Red followed as soon as it was wide enough for his armored body, and he barked back into the room, “Fleur! Come on!”

He jerked himself to the side as the magical axe flew through the closing doorway like a bullet, and embedded itself in the stairs. The rapier tried to follow, but it was a second too late; Red managed to slam the sliding steel door shut, and we could hear the desperate scrabbling and clanking through the metal as the rapier trapped on the other side tried to get loose.

After Red took a long few moments to catch his breath, he held out his hoof. Fast as a blink, the intricate axe returned to his hoof, and from there, he placed it back onto the leather loops on his back. As though it had never left, and as though we had never seen it fighting with a mind of its own.

“How are ya holdin' up?” Red asked.

The best response I could muster was a wet cough, and I pointed at the hole in my armor, where black blood was still dribbling out and running down my foreleg.

He winced, and looked up the stairs. “Let's start headin' back, t' check on Gilda. If your voice works by then, I'll answer any questions y'got.”

I nodded, as I was unable to do much else, and Red helped me to my hooves. Together, we started the long climb back up to the rest of the palace, though I left a trail of dark droplets behind that I was sure would stain the stone.

* * *

Gilda was still dead by the time we returned, but my voice was coming back to me, and I had used the trip to try and recall everything I'd been told about Red—and that axe. Somnambula had mentioned some dark ritual...and that Red had been responsible. We settled down next to the fireplace, where we stoked the embers and warmed up the room a bit. We were only a few steps away from Gilda's prone form, and I thumped my breastplate a couple of times to loosen up my lungs in preparation for a full conversation.

After another bloody cough, I could manage short words again. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hoof, and asked, simply, “Who are y-you?”

Red winced, and looked away. “Went right for the big one, huh?” He held up his own hoof, and examined his frog; it was worn from years of travel, covered in scuffs and pits from years of travel, and even a few scars from where the hoof had cracked and healed. The fur of his fetlock was long, tangled, and clotted with mud and blood. “My name ain't Red, though y'know that.”

I knew that from the moment he said as such; the Pillars had danced around the subject, but Rainbow Dash had confirmed it without even thinking otherwise.

“Was born in Ponyville, on an apple farm. Part of the Apple Family. Had two sisters; Applejack, and Apple Bloom. My name was Macintosh, though everypony called me Big Mac, 'cus I got tall quick.”

I swallowed suddenly. I'd known that Apple Bloom was related to Applejack, but she'd been related to Red—Big Mac—as well. He didn't know what I'd done to her, and I certainly wasn't going to tell him. Thankfully, he didn't notice my surprise. Maybe he thought I was still trying to clear my throat.

“Our parents died when we were young. Apple Bloom barely knew 'em, and AJ didn't like to talk about it. Think that's why she took to bein' a hero so well; she knew what loss felt like, and wanted to keep other ponies from feeling that. Whether it was fightin' dragons or just keeping ponies from gettin' scammed. I always tried to help when I could, but more often I ended up tendin' to the farm with Bloom and Granny while she went out on adventures with Twilight.”

Red—it was still hard to think of him as “Big Mac,” after calling him otherwise for so long—looked up at the banners of the castle. “Those were good years, 'til Celestia...well, she went to war with the dragons. Reckon ponies told you plenty 'bout that, already. I got a good position with the Golden Guard 'cus of AJ, but she kept tryin' to keep me safe while I was tryin' to keep her safe. Wish I'd gotten the wings n' horn instead, so she wouldn't have been out on the front lines. Eventually, I broke a leg, and AJ used that to get me sent all the way back home, just so she knew she wouldn't lose me.

“I ended up hangin' around Canterlot a lot. Had hired workers to tend the farm n' take care of Granny, and Bloom was old enough to be on her own. Lotta nobles still in Canterlot; either they felt like they were too important to fight, or they were supporting the war from Canterlot. Office work, stuff like that. One of 'em was this mare from Prance, Fleur de Lis.” He slowed down when he said her name, and tried to speak without using his accent, taking the time to pronounce it...well, it was Prench, so it probably wasn't accurate, but it was likely closer than he would've managed otherwise.

“She was a widow. Her husband, stallion by the name of Fancy Pants, had been serving as an officer in the dragonlands. Ah think Dash got him and a bunch of others killed doing something stupid, ah dunno. But since I was a veteran, we got to talkin'. We appreciated each other's company, but I was still planning to go back over to do more fighting. Ah think she was tryin' to talk me out of it, but I had to keep m' sis safe.”

“And I met these other two nobles, at a party for...somethin’. Not important anyhow. Jet Set and Upper Crust. Slimy worms, but they knew enchantin', so I got recommended to them to buy a new weapon. We agreed on an axe, I paid 'em, and they told me to come back in a few days. And I got this weird feelin' off 'em. Like I was smellin' trouble.”

Big Mac's eyes fell back to the floor. “Wish ah'd listened to my gut sooner. Because Fleur missed a dinner date, and the feelin' got really nasty, like ah'd bitten into an apple with a worm in it. Ran back to their mansion, and the maids kept trying to keep me out, but I knocked down doors until I got into their wine cellar. It was...” He swallowed. “Ah think they'd been powering enchantments with livin' things. Just small animals, like mice n' birds. Little animals nopony'd miss, cept Fluttershy, if she'd been here to help me search. And they'd been workin' their way up to larger things, and here I was, a knight a’ the golden guard with a military commission for a weapon...”

He trailed off, and I didn't blame him. He took a long few moments to gather his thoughts, and pat the grip of his axe. “Fleur was already...her body was dead when ah got there. They did somethin', put her mind and her soul into this axe. But they weren't done; ah think they were midway through making her dumb, like a tamed animal, when I burst in. Saw her lyin’ there, and my vision went red. When me and her were done, Jet Set and Upper Crust were both dead, and ah just sat there for a long time, talking to this magic axe—to Fleur. Explained my part in it, as best ah understood.”

He closed his eyes, but kept talking. “When the guards came, I didn't fight 'em. Asked her not to fight either, but...guess they started trying to take her apart. I heard about a cursed axe goin' berserk while ah was sittin' in the Canterlot dungeons. An' then Celestia came, told me I was gettin' banished, and it was off to the north with me.

“Spent a long time up there. Missed a lot; ah think we won the dragon war, but it's hard t' tell. Everythin's wrecked, everypony's Hollow, even me. Ah fought a lot of demons on the way here, too; those're brand new to me. And it seems like AJ took the news of what I did even harder than anypony else. She's barely the filly I remember any more.”

He was quiet for a while, after that. He seemed lost in thought, so I prompted him again with a cough, and quietly asked, “You s-said there were three m-mares—?”

“That I had to 'pologize to. Eyup.” Big Mac tapped the grip of the axe again. “Fleur here. Ah'm the reason she got killed, or...whatever's been done to her. Can't fix that, but at least she don't deserve t' be trapped down there in that armory. Way things are going, maybe nopony else would ever find her again.

“And AJ. Ah was the eldest Apple, and I think AJ went off the deep end when she learned what ah'd done. Ah was always the calm, reasonable one; Bloom was too young, and Granny had her bad days, but ah was always there. 'Til I wasn't, because ah'd killed ponies.”

“And Celestia. Never felt right 'bout that, and the country—hay, the whole world—seems like it's goin' right to tartarus. Maybe ah got banished, but there's gotta be somethin' ah can do to help, even if she's just gonna send me out t' fight demons like everypony else down in Ponyville. Ah'd rather die defendin' my hometown than out in the tundra somewhere.”

He pulled the axe off his back, and looked at his reflection in the polished, but intricately decorated steel head—and then pressed his forehead against the flat side of the axe. “And, well...reckon if any of those three would rather see me dead, then ah wouldn't fight it. Their decision t' make, not mine. Fleur's...she's not made a decision yet. AJ don't even recognize me. So it's just Celestia, now.”

So that was why he was fighting so hard to get here. A lot of things made more sense now, about Red—damn it, Big Macintosh. Although...

I coughed again. “D-do you...what should I c-call you?”

He didn't look away from the axe, or move it away from his forehead. “Haven't gone by Big Mac for a very, very long time. Haven't been a knight, like Rainbow said, for nearly as long. Celestia decided I wasn't worthy of the title; can't say I blame her.” Finally, he sighed, and replaced the axe on his back. “If she decides ah deserve it again, then I'll go by Big Mac, or Knight Macintosh. 'Til then...just gonna go by Red.”

“G-got it.” I mumbled. Red was fine, and if I needed to shout for his help in a fight, now I knew what to yell.

“What ‘bout you?” He asked, as he looked up at me. I couldn’t meet his gaze, not with my own Hollow embers. “What’s your plan, overall? You’re goin’ to Celestia, but why?”

Why? Why did I do anything I did, ever since I woke up? I’d come to Canterlot to give her the Element of Generosity, and then our mission became “rescue the princess.” But after that, would she just give me more orders? To what end?

The Elements had to have something to do with all of it. Something for which she could use them, some way to save the world. But…was there anything left to save? So many ponies had already died, and so much had been destroyed. She’d need to turn back time to before any of this ever started, in order to fix all this.

Could she at least use them to defeat the demons, somehow? That would take a lot of pressure off of the remaining survivors. Without demons lurking around every dead bush and dropping out of the sky, maybe ponies could start to rebuild something other than defensive walls. But our world was dead; I’d seen plenty of fallow farms on my way here. Not that we needed food, but…it was almost laughable, trying to put this shattered society back together, to say nothing of the rest of the world.

What did the rest of the world even look like? Gilda said Gryphonstone was gone; had the dragons attacked the rest of the countries and races of our world as well? Were we alone, just ourselves and the demons, fighting each other for the rest of eternity?

“Holly?” Red’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. “Ye’re tremblin’.”

“J-just…I can’t…” I bit my forehoof, and barely even felt the pain. Even when I could taste blood, the bite never felt like more than a dull ache. After a few moments, I unclenched my jaw, and let my hoof fall to the floor. “It’s t-too much. Too m-much for one pony to s-solve, even the p-princess.”

“Yup,” Red quietly agreed.

Damn it; now I was getting more blood on my armor. I didn’t need to deal with that, even if it seemed like such a small problem in comparison to all the others. If I wasn’t careful, I could start spiraling again—maybe I’d even start to go Hollow. “At this p-point,” I mumbled, as I grabbed a dusty bedsheet and wrapped it around the deep bite in my forehoof, “I d-don’t even know. If we can r-reach the princess, and sh-she’s not Hollow, or cr-crazy, or just d-dead, then…then I’ll b-be happy with that.”

Red just nodded, and together, we settled in to wait to see if Gilda would return to us. The silence would have been comforting, were it not for the distant thumps and shuffling of Hollowed Golden Guard, still patrolling the halls around us. And the silence left us with little else to do, except contemplate what little remained of our existence.

Author's Note:

Havel is an interesting character, and as you can see, I've split him into two characters. Maud got the aesthetic, while Red/Big Mac got an echo of his backstory. As two of the strongest characters in the setting, it seemed only appropriate. I'm less happy with this portrayal of the Canterlot Vaults; it's a little slapdash, and I feel like it doesn't fit pony as well. While I wanted the overall concept to be vaguely reminiscent of SCP and Control's portrayal of "dangerous items that need to be contained," this feels a little too similar. But maybe there's only so many ways you can design a prison for inanimate objects.

The song for this chapter is O'Death - Ghost Head, focusing directly on Red and Fleur's dynamic.

Big thanks to my pre-readers, Prince-Nightfire93, Citizen, SisterHorseteeth, and Non Uberis.

And of course, my links to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. There's also been great victories on college campuses, with a great many of those colleges agreeing to cut their funding to Israel. Keep protesting, because changes are happening, and progress is being made.

Comments

[Rafaman]

Enchanted weapons! And the reveal! I knew something was fishy when the name of the two enchanters were mentioned.

[Artermus]

Aww, no super weapon for Holly