Silver Bubbles, Red Dawn
The silver fetters proved more difficult than the human expected. It wasn’t so much the locks themselves, but a case of maneuvering the pick. The fat lock dangling on his neck came first and was by far the hardest. There was no way to tell for certain, but it had taken at least an hour to work, likely more. His hands only could only move so far in clinking chains, and he had to keep blindly feeling about at the lock resting upon his collarbone to find a good angle for the pick. More than once the iron lock pick slipped or he prodded too hard, spinning the lock out of place.
It would have been easier to simply undo his manacles first so he at least had more freedom of movement, but that lock had to go first. It had to. He poked and prodded and tweaked and coaxed and cursed until there was a faint click — no louder than a beetle’s footstep — a sound so sweet he wanted to sob at the beauty of it. The man took a second to rub his chafed neck with a new appreciation for the feel of the air on his skin, then retrieved the lock pick and went back to work.
Star Swirl arrived shortly after the manacle locks — exasperating to open with just one hand — were finished. He trotted along in a swish of black silk and jingling brass bells, with bright eyes and spirit in his step. There were three jingles for every hoof’s step, the bag he carried banged against his rump with a clatter, and by the time he got to the human’s cage all the animals were awake. One by one they raised their heads as he passed in a happy racket and stared as he went by, save for the manticore who’d already been awake. The little blue unicorn was a blessed sight but the fellow had all the stealth of bulldozers barreling through a bedroom.
“I know, I know, I should have arrived hours ago, I’m sorry. If it wasn’t rewriting Cozen’s script it was talking down the Showmaster. Sun and stars above us, was he in a state! I’m amazed I managed to get him to sleep at all, the way he carried on. What in the heavens’ name did you—” Then Star Swirl saw the human’s neck.
“I thought maybe I could appeal to his better nature,” the human said in a scraggly voice. “I’m sorry, I should have taken your advice.”
“Oh, don’t... don’t worry about it. Does that hurt?”
“Less than before. But if Pyrite sleeps, what about the donkey?”
“Oh, I told Cozen I saw a thin patch in the base of his mane. He’ll be fretting at the mirror all night trying to find it and when he finds nothing he’ll have convinced himself the patch is there and look even harder,” explained Star Swirl not a little proudly. “Cozen’s got the sense to know you ought not be here but not enough to know why. He’s convinced whatever malady made all your hair fall out is contagious.”
The human looked down at his hands working the locks, busy, brown, and furless. He felt at the bearskin and asked, “Those unicorns wouldn’t have known what I was without the wonder of the Ursa skin, would they? The same way those swallowtails made up a stratadon.”
“Personally, I’d have left you as you were. The fire's evidence enough to prove a human, but I can understand using the bearskin for a bit of extra assurance. Some ponies need a more than a simple illusion to take a butterfly for a stratadon just as they need a chilling tale, a false Ursa skin, and a real human’s fire to see the human.”
The human’s dark eyes darted from the fetter locks and peered at him through the thorns. “But you didn’t.”
In the curved shadows of the bars, the unicorn smiled at him, soft and sure and a little sad. “No. I didn’t. I know you as surely as any constellation in the sky. I could forget myself and my kingdom and my lineage and if I knew absolutely nothing else I would still know you. I don’t understand how anypony can’t feel it, the complete absence of magic around you. It’s like... a tear in the universe.” After a moment of silence, he said, “Old Pyrite might be dreaming of your old world horrors, but I know you’re more than some fearsome predator. I know there is more power in those paws than their flat little claws.”
“Then will you help me get out?”
Star Swirl looked again at the necklace of little purple tracks above the human’s collarbone. “Oh, absolutely.” He dropped the human’s bag on the grass, pulled back his lips, and began chewing into the thorns.
The man watched uncomfortably before going back to the fetters. Before long there was a soft click and the fourth lock fell away. One fetter left to go, and then there wasn’t much left to do than just watch, wait, and wince as Star Swirl’s teeth cut through the rows of thorns.
After some time he wondered, “Do you really need to get through like that? Isn’t there a less painful way to get me out?”
The unicorn spat out a few thorns and ran his tongue along the edge of his mouth. His blue muzzle was already speckled with red. “There is. Your cage is held together at the top, fastened with a simple little latch. With a simple lift the bars open and fall away like a blossoming flower. If I had wings you’d have been free a long time ago.” He adjusted his position to find a less thorny vine, which was about as fruitful as finding a less damp part of the sea.
“But couldn’t you just magically undo the lock? The same way Pyrite moved the chains and the apple he ate?”
Star Swirl didn’t answer him, just spat out more thorns and looked away. His ears blushed and flattened against his head; the eager wonder in his eyes had run away and hidden someplace secret.
The human frowned, wondering if he had said something wrong. He wanted to ask about it but then looked up to see the moon in descent, low and white in the dark grey sea of sky with the promise of dawn fast on its heels. The last fetter lock had been shoddily fastened and fell away with barely a poke, easy and anticlimactic. He pushed the silver piles of metal to a far corner of the cage where he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.
He moved closer to where Star Swirl was tearing at the thorns. Every bite from his flat teeth came harder, faster, more determined as the both of them felt the seconds snowball into precious, agonizing minutes.
There was now a long scar of open air running along the bottom getting wider and wider and the human started to fidget, for he could already feel the grass under his feet. Star Swirl spat out a mass of red and black thorns every few seconds but it was the only pause he gave before diving back in, looking more like a wild carnivore of the carnival digging into the soft belly of a rabbit than a pony.
Finally, he reared up and with a fierce tug, ripped away a long, long black vine from the structure as if pulling a loose thread from a sweater. The scar in the cage had become a wide gaping wound of yellow field and open air.
Star Swirl stepped back with a sigh, spitting out the last mouthful of thorns and rubbing his muzzle against his cape. His spritely pink beard had turned the soft crimson of the roses decorating the cage. “Come down, human. You are freed.”
The human ducked under the hole, careful to mind the vines, and stepped back into the world. He wobbled in an awkward little dance as his bare feet searched for a patch of grass without any thorns in it. Then he stretched, delighting in his ability to do so, and his bones made a sound like snapping branches.
Star Swirl stepped back from the human, staring up with wide dark eyes. “Oh,” he said in a hushed voice. “I didn’t think you’d be so... big. I mean in the cage, it was different but now...”
The man leaned down, grabbing his grey bag then rolling it over his shoulder in one swift motion, and for a small moment, he and the unicorn were at eye level again. “But I’m no different than before,” said the voice just above Star Swirl’s head. “Just standing out here instead of sitting in there.”
The gangly fortune teller fidgeted in his cape, unsure of how to argue or articulate how the ominous atmosphere of the predator menagerie slowly dripped and thawed away in the human’s presence. How the little rip in the universe seemed to get a little bigger by the second. Star Swirl flicked his tail and looked at the cage next to them. The silver sheen was paler; the roaring stratadon was still there but the scales were stretched thin over a skeleton of fluttering swallowtails.
The human was watching them too. “I don’t know how I ever mistook these things for anything else. It was odd… I saw them for half a moment just as they were described. Does this place look that way to you all the time?”
“Not exactly. I’ve worked under Pyrite for some time, so I know better. I often see cockatrice or timberwolves in the corner of my eye but they melt back into their true form a moment after. It comes and goes. That I am also not a mess of fright ready to believe what any carnival barker wants me to helps quite a bit in that regard. But I’m not surprised that of all the creatures you saw the stratadon. It’s been with the carnival for a very long time, before all the others, even before Cozen and I. It’s a legitimate spell, not just a simple illusion.” The unicorn squinted at what was once a tunnel of gnashing teeth, now an outline of quivering butterfly antennae. “The Lord of Midnight Castle made his stratadon the same way, though old Pyrite could only summon up a shadow of the original spell, if you’ll excuse the term. He cannot truly change a creature into something it is not the way Tirek did. Nopony can. Given that, ‘tis an impressive feat — even the butterflies are convinced. Perhaps them most of all.”
Star Swirl followed the human as he stalked about the cage, watching with a quietly thoughtful expression. The silver barrier thinned away the closer the man came to it until it was no more visible than a spider web, making shaking ripples through the air. The man scratched his fuzzy chin in a curious way, and then casually reached out to touch with a thin finger.
The barrier popped like a soap bubble. Five and twenty butterflies sailed into the night in a single emerald pulsating wave. Star Swirl watched it rise up and up before they dove down at him in a fierce stoop, beating their angry green wings when they landed on his flank and shoulders, furious and wondering why they could not carry this insolent unicorn away in their claws.
“Little ones, your master was dead and gone long before your grandmothers’ grandmothers laid their eggs,” he chuckled. “You wouldn’t even have anywhere to take me. Go find some nice buttercups to eat before you hurt yourselves.”
The swallowtails paid him no mind but continued to bash their frail little bodies against him. A swish of his tail or shake of shoulders would send them away for a short time before a few came back. Star Swirl hoped they would give up eventually; it was difficult enough getting ponies to take him serious without a horde of butterflies making things worse.
He was so preoccupied with the butterflies almost didn’t notice the wolf running past him. He stepped out of the way as she loped into the distance, apparently too busy coughing to notice him. A white ribbon of a weasel cut through the grass not far behind her.
The human stood in the middle of the carnival awkwardly holding a red riot of feathers and claws away from his face and very much regretting the decision to pick up the rooster. It was with no small amount of juggling and luck the blindfold finally came off. The rooster pecked the offending hand for the trouble before strutting with his beak in the air.
The diamond dog was the only one that hadn’t run away when his bubble popped. He crouched near the stony edge of its platform pacing back and forth, longingly staring at the ground so close yet so far away from stubby legs unused to walking any farther than ten steps. He cringed under the human’s shadow, as he often did in new encounters and couldn’t seem to decide whether to shut his eyes or stare at the open field where the others had long escaped.
When the man touched him they both flinched. His hand cradled the dog’s great clunky paw as if it were a baby bird, and waited patiently for the paw to stop shaking. The paw wrapped around his fingers and squeezed.
For the first time that night, the human smiled. He had forgotten what it felt like to hold someone’s hand.
Slowly, gently, the diamond dog was lifted up by his hulking sturdy arms and helped down into the tawny grass. He looked up and the human was surprised to discover the keen awareness in the chartreuse eyes, just like the ponies held in theirs. The dog stood there for while looking at him, holding his hand in the only true way to hold a hand: firm, gentle, with acres of trust. When the hand went limp in his grip he let it go, watching it go away from him and into the human’s pocket. The diamond dog tried to say something, not with barks or whimpers as the man half expected, but clearly forming words. Yet the only sound was the opening and closing of his jaw.
There was a pale scar running along the base of his throat, barely visible under a red collar. The human stared at it as Pyrite’s words lingered with him. The show doesn’t require you to speak. His expression hardened.
The diamond dog walked a small distance, turned to the human, and waved. He wagged a stubby tail when the human waved back. Then with strong shovel-like paws he tore into the ground in a blur of dirt and dust and soon a tunnel among upturned earth was all that was left.
The human looked over his shoulder at the last occupied cage. The manticore stared back at him.
Her eyes had been on him since the human picked the first lock, but only now did they draw him in, two ghost lights bright in the dark. The thin cage rumbled, rolling along the ground, soaking into the soles of his feet. A golden mass of muscles and patchy fur and years and years of hunger towered over him, though the manticore could not have been more than half a foot taller than he. A scruff of ruddy fur framed the creature’s face, short and wispy, more dandelion fluff than a mighty swath of mane. The scorpion tail dragged across the floor, the death-filled tip twitching, the only part of the manticore that moved. The man blinked at it slowly with the calm of a hurricane eye.
Somewhere behind him a voice yelped as loud as it dared and hooves took flight. The human turned just in time to see Star Swirl skid to a stop in a little explosion of gritty dust cloud a foot or so away. The unicorn with blood in his beard dared not come closer, but stamped at the ground, trotting anxiously back and forth. “What are you doing?” he hissed, knowing full well what the human was doing. “Have you any idea what time it is? We need to go.”
He was right, of course. Dawn was already pushing through the delicate safety of the dark. The sun was cozied up in a wooly coat of grey clouds, peering out under a cumulus hood. It had caught up to them quietly, tiptoeing through the butterfly wings besieging Star Swirl, leaking through interlocked fingers and diamond dog paws. There was no more reason to stay. There was also no way to outrun a manticore and though his knives were safely back in his possession, the human knew he could not outfight a manticore either.
He could have left then.
He should have left then.
But those ribs.
Those ribs and that bony spine and those scars stretched on the fur in a map of misery. The human could hear the echo of a cavernous stomach above the rumblings in its throat. He wondered whether was once a time when the manticore cowered before a silver glow, before the light in her eyes turned harsh and unforgiving.
The human could not let the manticore go, it was starving. The human had to let the manticore go, she was starving. Starving with a sapling of a man and a little blue unicorn with a bloody beard standing before her.
“You can’t.” Star Swirl inched closer to nose at the human’s leg. “It will kill us both.”
The human just blinked at him, then moved closer to the manticore and reached out an arm.
“You can’t! What is the point of escape if only to be torn apart in a maw of teeth not an hour later? I don’t know where you came from but I know you must have come from very far away and I know there is a very good chance you are the only one of your kind left. The last human in the world would have come and endured all this way only to die pointlessly. You can’t.”
After a moment the man ran a hand through the thick curls of his hair and looked back at him with a sigh. “The point,” he said “is knowing that little grey dog’s had perhaps the first kind touch in his life and the sick wolf loped away to spend its last days in peace. And then this manticore is left here alone, hungry and scared.”
Star Swirl just stamped at the dust again as his blood screamed for him to run. He backed a little closer and leaned against the human, partly in hope of shoving the legs into motion and partly to keep himself from collapsing with fright. He tried not to look at the manticore’s ears twitching at every jingle from the dinner bell on his cape.
Over the manticore’s thunder, the human whispered, “Be still.”
“You’ve a plan for leaving this place uneaten, yes? Yes?”
“Trust me,” the human said. Which did not answer to the question at all.
The manticore’s cage did not vanish with a pop. When his fingers touched it, the film of translucent silver shimmered and the membrane stretched under his skin. The bubble hadn’t broken on contact, but it still had all the resistance of wet paper. A nose and a row of fangs breathed fog against it.
The human placed his free hand on Star Swirl’s shoulder. At the manticore he said, or perhaps only thought, “I would greatly appreciate it if you did not eat us.”
And he pushed through. The silver bubble quivered and collapsed, folding inside itself gentle and inconsequential as scarves falling from a shelf.
The manticore tensed every muscle she had and roared. Ponies twenty miles away felt it in their hooves. The air snapped under the leather wings as a mass of fur, fangs, claws, and venom tore into the dawn. An empty platform flipped over, tumbling into the grass as a lashing tail struck it.
A blue and pink tumble of unicorn who’d quite forgotten where he was ran blindly into the human, bowling them both over as the manticore sailed over both of them.
“It missed?”
“No. It wasn’t aiming for us.”
In the half-second between the cage collapsing and the awful roar, a door slammed and there was a familiar voice, adder low and thick with loss.
“You wretched hollow horn.”
Star Swirl, unraveling himself from a tangle of arms, legs, and cape, flinched at the sound.
The dawn siphoned out the bluster in Pyrite’s voice, and in the dim sunlight, his presence shrank like a damp wool sweater. The eye patch had been left in the wagon, along with his jerkin and a donkey too sensible to step outdoors. One lonely, lost green eye stared at them beside two long scars stretching across his face like abandoned train tracks.
The human saw him in the gap of space between the rising predator and the empty field before the unicorn crumbled under the weight of the manticore. He blinked at both of them impassively and turned to Star Swirl, lying beside him in the grass, staring straight ahead and looking very much like a small rabbit under headlights.
The man stood slowly, with a hand under the collar of the unicorn's cape to help him back on his hooves. When they were both standing the hand moved to his withers and grasped him. Star Swirl was a little startled at how soft his touch was, despite the strong grip.
“Walk with me,” the human said in a low voice. “Slowly. Try not to look. Pretend it’s not there.”
“But—” They had begun moving, though the young unicorn could not imagine how his petrified legs managed it.
“The manticore is... distracted, but at the sound of running prey, she may give chase. So do not behave as prey. Walk with me, Star Swirl, and think about something else. Perhaps think of how nice it is to see sunshine after a thunderstorm or flower blossoms on a tree or think of your star charts. Think of a song, or better yet, sing one quietly. Think of something. Don’t think about it.”
There was an awful wet crunch behind them, and the hand on Star Swirl’s withers shook just a little. He looked into the distant sky and softly sang into the sour breeze.
“From the sun comes light
From the sun comes power
O, ‘tis the sun aloft in the sky
That makes the flowers flower”
The pair walked in the tall yellow grasses toward a hill in the distance where a winding dirt road waited for them. Their shadows reached behind them to the cadaverous carnival as Star Swirl’s ballad muffled the crunch of bones until it was the only sound with them.
“From the sun comes hope
From the sun comes laughter
With the sun in Her place,
We'll embrace a happy ever after
Summer, winter, fall and spring,
Ah, it makes the whole world sing...”
The song of the sun gently wrapped around the human and unicorn traveling under the grey sky, strong as a shimmering silver bubble. Fragile, beautiful, impervious to reality bumping against it.
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Am I right to assume that star Swirl is not yet the ancient mage of legend yet?
NFC and this story? Early Christmas!!!!
Take that, Pyrites!
Very VERY good take on some of the Schmendrick lines from the Human rather than Star Swirl.
HUMANITY MUST BE SAVED, WE ARE THE LORDS OF THE UNIVERSE! OUR DESTINY IS TO RULE!
"Here lies Pyrite,
in a pile of manticore dung,
doing more than he ever did in life to make the world a better place."
I love this story, even more so because I've read the original and every time I wonder if you're going to be able to do justice to the original scene, you pull it off masterfully.
Buck you I cant bite all these thorns! om nom nom...
I always wanted to write a fic like this and get a lot of likes by the fourth chapter. Then cancel it.
1711534
^This, more or less. While I do enjoy the fact that humans are better then ponies in every way except harmony, I also love reading about post apocalyptic plots, where the humans are these grand ancients who could accomplish feats that even the most powerful magicians could not.
Well I liked it.
Please keep up the good work.
I personally really enjoyed how he freed the manticore and his reasonings for doing so.
Another great chapter! This is just getting better and better, especially since pyrite got his lol. Can't wait for the next entry!!!!
A very well written story, I like how you have made the human character someone who is not from some alternate dimension or cryogenically frozen. I don't think I've seen a human character in this situation before, so kudos on both storytelling ability and originality.
Awaiting the next installment
BlackWinter
Well that was risky, but well rewarded.
Karma Manticore at it's finest.
So humans are so mundane they can make magic go *poof*? The best power is nulling other powers.
Manticore are like Diamond Dogs, they remember kindness...and cruelty.
May Pyrite forever rest in Tartarus!
Best story that I have read since Cold in Gardez's "The Glass Blower". 11/10, sir.
An absolutely excellent chapter. Delicious exposition, a couple of interesting new mysteries discovered about our main characters, and the part where they walk away from the newly freed manticore under the human's detailed instructions was grand. In particular, I just totally ate up the song, and the double-meaning of the last two sentences... "strong as a shimmering silver bubble." Awesome.
So! Let's get straight to the errors.
Use "fire's", or "fire is".
This sentence seems to forget what it was doing halfway through. Did you mean "That I am also not a mess of fright ready to believe what any carnival barker wants me to helps quite bit in that regard"?
in in. Obvious enough.
I am rather excited by the rate at which you've been pumping these chapters out, in contrast with the wait between the first couple. It seems entirely possible that I might see two more chapters out of this story before the year ends! Or just one would be fine too, whatever works for you.
A fitting end for the mean old Unicorn.
You've been making a lot of references to G1 Dreamvalley, Tirek, Megan, etc. Are you going to explain how this all fits into the G4 universe? If I recall correctly Megan came from another world, this raises more questions than answers about the presence of a human city in the ponyverse.
So the ears got red right? And that wasn't a mistake right?
1711349
You'd be quite right. Star Swirl's about Twilight's age right now, maybe a little younger.
1712432
Or space. A lot of times the human's from space. But yeah, not often do you see a human that's not from somewhere else but the same world; it's a neat concept and I'm a little sorry it's not explored more often.
1720302
That explanation's in the upcoming chapter, actually. Not sure if it'll be ALL in that chapter, but certainly some of it. (Might also add in additional blog post in that regard, too)
1730520
Yep, the inside of his ears blush because there's not quite as much hair there, so more visible. (Not until later I remembered in the show ponies blush through a face full of hair all the darn time, but oh well)
1716521
Errors. Errors everywhere. Well actually, not as much as I feared.
The last few lines are some of my favorite, too. It was one of those few times I was really happy with a line as soon as I wrote it.
This chapter was actually part of chapter three originally, but I split it off to keep from getting too long and because it'd been forever since the last update anyway. Chapter five shouldn't take as insanely long getting written as three did (I started the rough draft on the plane back from Canterlot Gardens!
) and hopefully it'll be up at least before the year is out.
1713947
Yep, anti-magic. It doesn't go so far as to make magic itself void, but something that's made of pure magical energy like say, a magic blast either wouldn't do anything or vanish before it reached you depending on how strong said magic was. Were Pyrite's spells a little stronger (like Shining Armor's Canterlot barrier, for example) it wouldn't have popped, but it wouldn't have been able to keep the human out either, he'd have just stepped through it.
On the other hand, if a unicorn magically fired an arrow a human nullifying magic wouldn't matter much since an arrow's still an arrow.
1715716>>1711728
Such high accolades! I'll try to live up to them
1740849Ah, ok! I wonder when will he become STAR SWIRL THE BEARDED and not just Star Swirl the bearded. He does have a beard currently right? I thought that's what it said but I'm not sure.
1740873
Yep, a cute little pink beard that'll eventually grow into a MIGHTY... pink beard.
1741752By Star Swirl's beard!! It is majestic!
Nice. Keep up the good work.
1711379
Don't put up Author's notes, those are annoying.
Commenting afterwards is much less intrusive.
Someone has been watching "The last Unicorn" lately?
Good story and awesome chapter.
1711534 not exactly lords of the universe. Close to it though
I like this human he respects nature
1740849
I do say, I like how you are making the human effectively immune to direct magical influence
This greatly reminds me of the Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars, they were extra-galactic, not native at all to the traditional Star Wars galaxy and thus were cut off from the Force (it is a bit more complicated than that but still), Jedi could not use the Force on them directly, either it would have effect or the effect was greatly diminished, of course they could still lift a large rock or speeder and throw it at them and it would not matter
This clear connection, whether intentional or not, delights me and very much makes me want to read more
I look forward to future chapters
Another awesome chapter! Love it!
1641283
Given a key plot element in TLU that we KNOW is gonna happen to him too, I would have to wonder if Lyra is a descendant if our intreped Human gets a little careless with his seed later when he's "in disguise"...
1918106 I don't know the story of the Last Unicorn actually. I really can only gess what's going to happen but if she is indeed a decendant of humanity then awesome!
1918126
If you dont mind spoilers You can probably find the movie on Youtube or hulu (rated PG if you find it uncut) or the $5 bin at walmart
Its very close to the novel since the author, Peter S. Beagle wrote the screenplay.
1918169 If it's sad then I'll have a little bit of reservations about it, but eh, GO HUMANITY! And Unicorns too....
1918184
The end is a little bittersweet, but not really sad the way things balance out.
More, more, more!!!
It's really worth to read!!!
Well that karma was quick in coming
Still awesome.
So, the manticore is the harpy? I'm surprised no one else has pointed that out.
Pyrite the sinful pony, heartless as the stone.
Sins the least, lair and cheat,
For these sins he must atone.
Sins begat, cold of heart, pitiless as his own.
And for his sins did those sins eat:
Tear into his heart so cold as stone.
Justice is another concept we humans have brought with us wherever we go. Sometimes, justice takes an odd form, but she does tend to be there, nonetheless.
So it was illusions. Except in the case of the butterflies were it seems to have been something much darker.
So this is what started the Sudden Singing Survival Skill(SSSS) in ponies,
your work it is good!
This chapter was beautiful
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.
The diamond is my favorite part, too. I don't even know how that escape gives me the most sense of satisfaction, but it does. :)
While I appreciate the callback to TLU, the sideshow scene reads more like it was a re-skin of the book rather than as a homage. When I realized that and what it meant for the story going forward it lost a lot of the impact it had been building for me. Also I don't understand why a human would be so supernaturally calm in that situation.
8753279
He had experience in killing game. The added danger aside, it isn't exactly hard to drown one's instincts when you're used to the sounds of butchery.