One Way

by jroddie

24: of Tyrants and Griffons

Chapter 24

I walked up between Gespard and Evangeline, relishing the softness of the carpet under my strong, ivory hooves. Marcus was on Eve’s left, and the Doctor was on Gespard’s right. All of us formed a haphazard semicircle around a bushel of apples.

I looked at the bushel, with its splintered wooden sides bound with rusted metal. There was just the slightest dusting of reddish orange on the carpet under it, but I was sure that I was the only one able to see it. I looked at the apples in the container. This captivated my attention, because each of the apples seemed to be a world of its own. The skin of the apples had little tiny bumps and pores and hairs on them, not to mention the extremely vivid colors. I stared at them for a few minutes until I noticed that the Princess was trying to get my attention.

“Edwin?” She asked patiently, but my supercharged senses could pick the annoyance out of her voice as easily I could have picked an apple out of the bushel. I looked up at her, and was struck dumb by the detail present in her. Her hair was waving brilliantly as always, but now I could see it was not individual strands like a normal mane, but a flowing sheath of energy. Her hair waved and pulsed according to the movements of the surging power it contained. I stood dumbly and stared at her hair as she smiled lightly. I heard a shuffling noise to the left of me, and my head immediately snapped to it. It was Marcus, and he was rubbing a hoof over the carpet in an embarrassed manner.

“I might have left him in the plant for too long, Princess.” He said. I heard a slight rustling, and my head snapped back to the Celestia nodding. She turned to look at me with one of her large purple eyes.

“Yes, I can tell.” She responded to Marcus, with her eye still trained on me. She locked onto me for a moment as her head turned. Her eye... The plain purple gradient of her eye appeared to me as what it really was, a vivid shade of purple that my mind leaped to label Tyrian. They were large blooming canyons and valleys and caves suspended in the glassy substance of her eye. I was forced to direct my attention away from her vivid eye as she turned to look at the Doctor, on my right side.

“Doctor, do tell me why you are here. You already came here once. Why again?” She said, her steady voice carrying a regal inflection. I did not turn to look at the Doctor, I was too busy looking at Celestia’s hair.

“To make sure you didn’t die. Quite a few Angelics would not mind adding killing a Princess to their list of accomplishments. But, I can see, that my side trip was unnecessary. You seemed to have made very short work of them, as we can well see.” The Doctor said, and his ending statement was followed by a small brushing noise. My head snapped to the noise to see the Doctor gesturing to a nearby angelic corpse. The lower half of its body was not cloaked in flesh; It was only a smoldering skeleton. It did not even have hooves anymore, but blackened ends of bone where I assumed that legs would have been at some point. I heard the rustling that indicated Celestia opening her mouth to speak. I tried not to turn to the noise, but my head again turned to face it faster than thought, which, for me, was quite fast.

“Where were you planning on going originally?” She asked. I heard the Doctor make an odd noise, as if he were trying to avoid trying to tell a filly about how foals were made.

“Oh, I’m sure that it won’t matter to you, you have much greater things to attend to... “ The Doctor said, gesturing to all of us at the same time. Evangeline, Gespard, Marcus and I slowly backed away toward the tardis, understanding his vague gesture in synchrony. I heard a faint rustle, like gift paper sliding over gift paper, which was followed nearly immediately by the yellow glow of Celestia’s horn. A startled yelp soon followed, and I saw the Doctor floating toward Celestia, enveloped in a golden cloud of magic. Her hair was waving much faster than before, and the energy under it was spinning at an incredible rate. She faced him angrily.

“You are hiding something from me, Doctor. I know you well enough to be able to tell.” She threatened.

“We were going to the future, there was an event that I wanted to show-” The Doctor hurriedly explained, but he was cut off with another yelp. He squirmed in the cloud of yellow magic, seemingly in pain. Celestia looked on angrily.

“Where were you going, Doctor?! Tell me!” She shouted. The Doctor started writhing, screaming in pain. We were doing all that we could to help the Doctor. Nothing. None of us dared to interfere with Celestia for fear of retribution, or to be added to the suffering. All we could do was stare at the Doctor, suspended in the throes of pain unearthly. This kept up for an agonizing, dragging few minutes. The Doctor finally grew limp in the undulating cloud of magic, moaning.

“Tell me where you were going. And don’t you dare lie to me, Doctor.” She said, her voice growing a passionate edge. Her eyes twinkled lightly, and I could see the nearly full moon in the reflection.

“Luna...” He gasped. “Angelics...” He added in an equally tired tone. Celestia said nothing, but threw the Doctor away from her. I immediately reached out with my mind and grabbed him, keeping him from flying into a wall. Celestia’s eyes twinkled, the same way that Luna’s did when she raised the moon. Her hair, the sheath, folded in on itself, and the energy underneath combusted into a conflagration of light and blistering heat. The flaming Princess floated lightly, taking the weight off of her hooves and letting the extreme heat of the air carry her upward. I had to squint; the burning aura surrounding her was nearly blinding, and I was only able to look directly at her because of my heightened vision. She spread her wings, allowing them to catch the billowing air around her, with each pristine white feather carrying her weight. She immediately shot straight up into the air, leaving a white glow where she was. My eyes followed her accent, which ended with Celestia disappearing out of a small hole in the ceiling, most likely expressly built for this purpose in mind. The world around me grew extremely dark in absence of the brilliant flames. I blinked a few times, and my surroundings became easily visible. I looked around. Each of the Numbereds were blinking, and Gespard was lying on the ground. Marcus was busy jumping on his hind legs, trying to reach the Doctor floating above him. I released the Doctor, and he immediately was caught in a glowing cloud of brilliantly green magic. Marcus lowered him to the floor, placing a hoof on him. Marcus looked back at me.

“Edwin! Evangeline! Follow her!” He shouted, not getting up from the Doctor’s side. Evangeline looked at him, then back to me. Her glowing golden eyes conveying a deep sense of fear. I watched this for a nearly infinite fraction of a second, and then Eve shot up into the air, disappearing out of the same hole that Celestia did. I stood there for a second, just in awe of what had just happened in front of me. I plunged myself into magic, and soared into the sky. I could feel the air try to keep me back, but I would have none of it. I persisted onward, with the air snapping my mane against my neck. I strained myself against gravity as I shot through the hole in the extremely high ceiling of the throne room.

I could see Evangeline as a yellow blur streaking off toward what appeared to be a comet, both of which were flying away from me at incredible speed. I landed on the ledge of the roof, and then jumped off of it. I saw the ground approaching smoothly, the force of gravity making it so eager to kill me. I watched it approach me for a second or two, then flew straight down to meet it. The acceleration of gravity and my own magic was hurtling me downward at blistering speed. I watched the precipices and jutting towers fling themselves past my face, making a deafening noise. I saw the ground get dangerously close, then pulled myself away from the castle.

The air exploded around me. I felt my body being compressed and squeezed, like toothpaste out of a tube. I could feel something... strange. Something did not feel right. What I thought to be air flowing around me was actually my physical surroundings.The rapidly disappearing scenery was being warped and contorted in front of me, like folding a piece of paper with a drawing on it. I tried not to look at it, and tried even harder not to crash into anything. I weaved and flung myself off of cliffs and ledges, sending my body hurling through moving pillars of stone, tumbling through the empty air around flying boulders, where there should have only been rolling, grassy hills. I tried to think my way out of the twisted, fractured, and fluid world around me. Stone would flow much like water, water stayed immobile and hard as rock, and there was no sky. It was like the world had folded around me into a tube that wanted me dead. Fists of stone would sometimes leap out of the wall of the tube and break against the opposite wall. The landscape around me seemed to defy the concepts of rational space, and shapes often would often not allow themselves to be seen just for the sheer impossibility of their form. I plummeted and flew through the stone tunnel for what seemed to be hours.

I caught a break. There was a globe of dark blue, like the far horizon of the sky at sunset. It weaved and raced and even flew through the stone around it, sometimes even floated through the walls of the tunnel. I knew, somehow, that it was the only way out of this stony hell.

“Edwin.” Said a voice, free of inflection. As soon as I heard it, I immediately couldn’t remember how it sounded. The dark globe of the sky had a streak of white in it for a moment. I was flying as fast as I could to reach it, and my efforts were rewarded. I touched the globe with a hoof, and I was sucked out of the tunnel, into the regular geometry of Equestria.

I skidded through the grassy field, getting a mouthful of everything. I must have been travelling at speed in the tube, because I skidded over the damp grass for about forty yards. I only stopped moving because I collided with a very hard surface. I nearly upended myself, because the back half of me clearly wanted to keep going forward. I was content with just staying there on the wet grass for a moment or two. It had been a very trying day. Othello and Columnus had died, Second Lieutenant Spitfire was kidnapped, and Luna was in danger. I just wanted to sleep for once. A full night, or preferably a full day of sleeping uninterrupted by nightmares of my death or guards wanting to talk to me would be very, very nice...

There was the creaking of a door, followed by an odd clacking noise. I would have said that it was the clack of hooves on concrete, but I would have been wrong. There were far too many of them too close together, and the sound was off.

“He’s right here.” A voice said. I could not place where I had heard that voice before. I definitely had, because it had a faint familiarity to it. It was a female voice, like the one that would tell you the floor that you were on in some elevators.

“Really? How convenient of him. Well, go on then! Let him in. We have places to be.” Another voice said, also hauntingly familiar, but I was able to place where I had heard it before. I felt myself lifted up by magic, feeling the warm, trickling force flowing around me like a spider web. I felt myself lowered down onto a firm thing, like a couch. I lied there for a minute.

“So, Cleo. It has certainly been a very long time.” Said the voice, definitely male. There was a faint clicking and scraping accompanying this.

“Yes. It’s hard for me to associate with the outside world, these days, for fear of encountering him.” The other voice said in a slightly sad tone.

“Well, Evangeline killed him earlier today. Or, at least I think was today. Or, it will be today... Will have been? What day is it?” The male voice asked. There was a click, followed by a low sound, almost too low to be heard.

“Tuesday?” the female voice, Cleo, ventured.

“Must be. Never could get the hang of Tuesdays. So, what brought you out of hiding?” The male voice asked. There were a few more clicks, and I suddenly knew who the pony was.

“Events in Equestria move apace, Doctor. I would be a fool to miss history being made right outside my door. No Colt, however oppressive, would stop me from seeing this.” She said firmly.

“Right you are, Cleo, right you are... Edwin! Get up!” The Doctor said. I opened one eye to look at him. I was lying supine on a pink Victorian couch, and the Doctor was talking to a... I was not too sure what it was. It had the body and front legs of an eagle, but the back end of a lion. It’s wings were enormous, and I was sure that one of the feathers would have dwarfed me if it were standing on its end. It was an enormous creature, but it was also completely white. The only exception were the brilliant orange eyes and yellow beak. The Doctor coughed. I looked to him, much slower than I would have. I was pretty sure that the effects of the plant were wearing off.

“Edwin, I would like to introduce you to Cleo, one of the few Ghosts in Equestria not under the authority of Columnus. Say hello, Edwin.” The Doctor said. I looked back to Cleo, then back to the Doctor.

“What happened to her?” I hissed. The Doctor looked confused, then made a gesture for me to elaborate.

“I’ve never seen a pony like that before. What’s wrong with her!?” I hissed again. The Doctor just laughed.

“Ah, Edwin...” The Doctor said, raising a hoof to wipe a tear from his eye. “That’s because she isn’t a pony.” He added.

“What is she?” I hissed again.

“I am a Griffon.” She said. I looked back to her, extremely confused. She saw my look, then began to explain.

“You see, Edwin, the vast majority of Ghosts have been ponies. Although, it was not uncommon to have a Griffon, Zebra, or even a Dragon Ghost. It just did not happen as often. Also, Ghosts that were not ponies were accepted into their communities more than their pony counterparts because of their ability to weave magic. My species does not have any natural-born “unicorns”, so Ghosts were accepted as the only spellcasters of my race. Sadly, the Numbereds hunted and killed every Ghost not under Columnus’ influence, and a grand amount that were. I saw reason and joined Columnus against the Numbereds. I was young, and I was passionate. I had not the ability to see what would happen if I joined his forces. He had a stranglehold on our lives, dictating when we would do everything. Not a single pebble was moved with magic without Columnus knowing. We were killed by the Numbereds, all except for a filly, Columnus, and myself. I was lucky enough to escape from his iron grip, and have been hiding ever since.” She said. I gulped.

“So you can live in Equestria now? You can go back to the Griffons?” I asked, my heart heavy with her sad story.

“No. Columnus... Columnus never dies.” She said seriously.

“I’m pretty sure that he is quite dead.” I said, remembering Eve splattered with crimson.

“No, Edwin, you don’t understand. All of the Ghosts wanted him dead. We would plan for months, sometimes years. Then we would act. We’ve set him on fire. Boiled him, cooked him, starved him, dried him, drowned him, stretched him, flayed him, quartered him, impaled him, we even tore the muscle from his bones. We’ve crushed him and clubbed him and stabbed him and poisoned him more times than I could ever count. . Oh, his body would die, and he would not breathe anymore. We would celebrate a tyrant’s death. But a month or so later... He would be walking amongst us as if nothing had ever happened. He doesn’t live, Edwin. He endures.”

Comments

[Ablesoap]

So he did air more or less

[yusha]

what about drowning? also good that you explain everything that happens so far becous i lost track on what happened

[Wolfy Hige]

I'm having a hard time understanding what Doctor Hooves does sometimes to put Edwin into a rage attack...

[dafiltafish]

the middle of that seemed a bit garbled, i got to sonic rain-boom, but i did not understand what happened to Celestia or Evangeline. it was perplexing to say the least.

[xXNinjafred]

We’ve set him on fire. Boiled him, cooked him, starved him, dried him, drowned him, stretched him, flayed him, quartered him, impaled him, we even tore the muscle from his bones. We’ve crushed him and clubbed him and stabbed him and poisoned him more times than I could ever count.

Ra Ra Rasputin! Lover of the Russian Queen!