Chapter 22 — Crystal
Chapter 22: Crystal
“You must take the ‘A’ train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem”
— Take the “A” Train, Duke Ellington
“Huh?”
The gray mare looked up at me with her light purple eyes like a pig trying to decide if “butcher” meant “murderer” or “my BFF whom I should oink at loudly”. Last night had held for me a good sleep. It was a good sleep because I did not dream. Even though she’d fallen asleep before me, I’d woken up before her. And that’s when our eyes met, her charcoal mane messy and hanging partly over my back like the world’s weirdest shower curtain. The mare blinked. She glanced at where she’d been resting her head the whole night, looked back up at me, looked back at my shoulder, looked at me, and flushed.
“Oh my goodness, I-I-I’m terribly sorry, sir!” she blurted out in a rather refined voice. Personally, I didn’t care if she was a pig-headed elitist at this point; I was just so glad she didn’t have a weird accent. She practically leapt off me and huddled herself against the window, shooting me a nervous grimace.
I tipped my hat to the lady. “And good morning yourself, ma’am. Fancy way to greet the stallion whose shoulder your head thought made a nice pillow.”
Rather than stammer on and babble like an idiot, as I’d expected, the mare took a deep, relaxing breath. She had to take another one before her grimace turned into a more practiced formal sort of smile that rich ponies wore when they shoved their faces so full of disgusting rich-pony food that they choked and died and it was great. My seat-companion ran her hooves through her mane and straightened it out.
The mare cleared her throat. “Um, hello. My name is Octavia.”
“Octavia, huh?” I replied. “Is that, per chance, the feminine form of Octavio?”
She shrugged.
“In any case, here.” I offered her a hoof. “I’m Jericho. Pleased to meet you.”
Octavia hesitated at my offered hoof. Nevertheless, she did take it. I shook her hoof harder than she shook mine. “Likewise,” she said, drawing her hoof back from mine. Octavia glanced out the window at the rolling green countryside.
“So, what brings you out on a train going north?” I prodded.
“Oh, just work,” she said. Her lack of words told me that she wasn’t exactly up for conversation. However, the voices in my head demanded entertainment. Voices in my head always made more sense than did ponies. Who else but the non-existent and totally metaphorical voices would tell me the dark secrets ponykind was not meant to know? Besides, she seemed grumpy. Jericho no likey grumpy ponies, because he was just a bucket of equicidal sunshine.
“What sort of work?”
She glanced around as if trying to find security. “I play an instrument.”
“Are you part of an orchestra?”
“No.”
“Solo?”
“At times.”
I tilted my head. “You’re playing an instrument up in the Crystal Empire?”
“Essentially so.”
“Have you any desire to say more on the topic?”
She shrugged.
I tilted my head the other way. Because if standard questions didn’t work, then the Jericho questions would begin. “Is left your favorite direction?”
“Sometimes.”
“What is your opinion of hats?”
She shrugged.
“Sometimes I don’t like to wear hats, but most of the time I do. They make me feel fancy.” I struck a pose. “Who is the fanciest pony? He is I, and I am he.”
Shrug.
“If I told you that everything you knew was wrong, what would you do?”
She glanced out the window. “Continue living a lie.”
I frowned, making a whimpering, puppy-dog noise. “Sei nicht so ein Miststück.”
Octavia cocked a brow. “Je ne sais quoi.”
“French!” I hissed. “One of my many one weaknesses. Right up there with doorways and words without vowels.”
“Fascinating,” she replied in an off-hoof manner.
I sighed. “You know, ma’am, it’s rather hard not to talk to someone you’re sitting next to. I mean, honestly, the last thing I want is to sit in silence for Lord-knows how many hours next to a lovely girl who’s my only source of conversation for miles. Trust me, the last thing we want is to refuse to make eye contact, every so often glancing at each other and hoping that the other is glancing back, only to find that the other one is also glancing at you, so you look away and pretend you weren’t looking, secretly wondering if they’re leering creepily at you—I’ve been there and I do not like it!”
That at least got her to look me in the eye.
“There, see?” I asked. “Let’s see… what kind of music do you like?”
“Classical.”
“Ah, my dear lady, your answers are so laconic that they plunge an icy dagger into my heart. Or maybe my kidney.” I tapped a hoof to my chin. “Either or, honestly. I don’t know where organs go. Or don’t go, really. I, for one, think classical music is rather lovely. Not in that pretentious, snobbish sort of way, but sometimes it’s rather fun to set a record with it on as your sip some wine and stare out a window, pretending you’re an evil dictator and this is the final hour of your bloody conquest.”
She arched a brow. “Are you suggesting that classical music sounds evil?”
“If by association, then yes,” I said. The look that sprang across her face like a jackrabbit in heat was one I knew rather well: the compulsion to retort. But I was faster than her. “But then again, by that logic, I could say that since all murderers breathe oxygen, and I breathe oxygen, I must too be a murderer.” I’m a murderer for other, far more logical reasons, I almost added, but held back at the last moment like a creepy farmer holding back the urge to see if he could train his pigs to rape on command. The answer, for the record, is ‘Unfortunately’.
“Well,” she said, “that’s certainly one way of looking at things.”
“I like to think that my way is always the road less traveled. Mostly because of all the ‘beware of animal’-type signs that I stole from foreign countries and hung up around my road, but still.”
Her expression flashed to something halfway between an amused smile and a confused sneer.
“Progress!” I chirped. “So, why are you going to the Crystal Empire to play?”
Octavia offered me a cautious look. “The crystal ponies seem to rather enjoy classical Equestrian music.”
“Any idea why?”
She shook her head and shrugged.
“Are you playing somewhere in particular? Where?” I smiled at her.
Octavia only sighed. “Does it matter? It’s not as if you’ll attend.”
Ooh, goldmine! Hey, who ordered the mare with emotional baggage? No one? Screw you, that’s all you’ll ever meet. I folded my arms. “Now, don’t say that. You never know where I’ll end up? Usually on the wrong end of the law, but sometimes I end up in fancy places. In fact, you tell me where you’re playing, and I guarantee I’ll be there. Doesn’t matter if it’s all sold out because you’re too awesome at whatever you do, I’ll beat up some elitist-looking pony and steal their ticket, assuming the place runs on tickets.”
I thought you said you didn’t steal.
Well, I lie. Not to myself, to her. Lying to her.
She wasn’t silent, she actually threw her head back and let out a mirthless laugh. “Right. As if I could sell out a crowd, even in the Crystal Empire”
“Well, then I’ll buy all the tickets or whatever myself until it’s technically a sellout.”
“You and what money?”
I stared at her blankly. Without taking my eyes off her, I reached into my bag, pulled out a small bag that looked empty, and poured out a small hill of gold coins onto my lap. Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull. I tried not to think that if I were nude like all other Equestrians, she’d be staring at somewhere much too close to home base for me, even if it was garnished with gold.
“Gee, you’re right,” I said with a sigh, ears drooping. “What’s a poor wanderer not even from anywhere around here supposed to do for money? I suppose I’ll just have to suck dicks behind a tavern for ten Bits just to work up the money for whatever thing you’re doing. And by Harry, I’ll suck harder and better than any mare before me ever has—all for you!”
“I—bu—where—all of this—” Octavia stammered, staring down at all the golden coins.
“Huh, this old stuff?” I asked. “Well, this is what a stallions gets after seeing the world, exploring ancient ruins, stealing the hoard of a dragon in two separate timelines, pilfering the coffers of evil nations, and occasionally ransoming freaky sex toys back to their evil mistresses.”
Her mane fell over her shoulders and over her eyes as she stared down. She had to straighten it and put it behind her head again. “This…”
“What? On you?” I replied coyly. “This is my Addiction Fund.”
“Addiction?” she asked, looking me in the eye.
“Yes,” I said, nodding as sagely as one of those bearded monkeys that always sit in hot springs, judging other animals. “You see, I have the most terrible addiction of all. Truly crippling.” I smiled, leaning towards her. “I like to wander.”
“Wander?”
“Oh, yes. It’s a terrible addiction. Once you start to wander, start to see all the world’s sights, and then watch as most of them try to brutally murder you, you realize that you can’t stop. Of course, this has led to many horrendous injuries.” I poked my eyepatch. “This was, like, last week. Or mayhap three weeks ago? Not sure. Time is fuzzy.” I pulled up my right sleeve and rolled the arm around. “And then there was the time I cut my a—my foreleg off because it was riddled with blood poisoning, so then I woke up this… or rather, woke up last morning… Can I say that? Does that phrasing make any sense?”
“Say what?”
“Yesterday I woke up with a new arm that was given to me by some evil abomination I freed whilst working for Duke Elkington—he hired me on as an assassin to help kill for him some monster in his closet.” I shrugged. “And with all of that, I don’t know if I can spare the money to attend the show of some friendly-looking mare who won’t even talk to me.”
“I…” She just watched me as I picked up my gold coins and put them back into the small bag. It still looked empty when the rather time-consuming task was over.
“So, I’ll tell you what,” I offered, and held out a hoof to her. “Hello, stranger whom I’ve never before met. What’s your name? And, would you care for some friendly conversation on a long train ride? Because, though I don’t know whom I’m saying this to, I’ve been in the mood for some live classical music performances. Do you know of any?”
She looked at my hoof as if it were some type of snake in the form of a swarm of bees and yet more bees. “You know, Mister… Jericho, was it? You are a strange pony, I’ll give you that.”
“I just like to make friends.” The fact that I often end up destroying their lives does not have anything to do with that. “So, Miss Octavia, what instrument do you play?”
Octavia looked at me, then took a deep breath, straightening out her mane. She was the very picture of a refined lady, hopefully without all of the implied inbreeding refined noble ladies were known for. “I play the cello, and have played it since I was a filly.”
“See?” I asked. “Now, was that so hard, just some conversation. And all it took was for me to throw piles of money around.”
She crossed her arms, sat back in her chair, and frowned. “I am not talking to you because of that. It’s just that…” The mare faltered. “You seemed so eager to talk with a nopony like me that I can’t help but admire the effort. And I respect effort.”
“That’s a paltry explanation,” I said calmly. It was the exact same tone that I’d use to tell a small child in the cancer ward that ‘I just filled all of your pillows with beeees’.
Octavia let out a long sigh. “Alright, fine. So that did have some effect. Money’s hard to come by these days. I mean, I’m not saying that I would do anything—” she winced slightly; if I hadn’t been paying so much attention to her, I might have missed it “—for coin, but one finds it rather hard to ignore somepony who’s flinging around more wealth than a prince would have in his bank… especially since my financial situation…” she winced again, biting her lip “…worsened.”
“Worsened?” I echoed. “What does that mean?”
She ran a hoof through her long, charcoal mane. Octavia suddenly looked very tired. “It’s a long story; I’m sure you—”
“I care,” I said simply, and she just stared at me. “Is it so hard to believe some random, likely insane stallion you meet on a train actually cares about your problems?” He doesn’t, but I’m bored, and your misery pleases me.
Untrue!
We call it “Schadenfreude”, remember?
She looked out the window. There were cows out there. They were very furry and I wanted to dress them up in frou-frou dresses. “A little hard, yes. I mean, it happened a few years ago, and the story is stale, and…” She looked at me and the honest smile I wore. Well, honest insofar as I knew what those looked like and how to equip one.
“I’m on a train, Miss Octavia,” I said. “I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and only the company of your lovely countenance and voice.” A bit close to hitting on her, no? It was a pity that I couldn’t elbow myself without looking weird. “I’ve got with me plenty of time and interest.”
She licked her lip. “You know, I think there’s a bar on the train a few cars up.” Then, seemingly as an afterthought: “I’ll pay for the drinks.”
I pulled out my pocket watch and saw that it was before eleven. I was pretty sure Equestria had a rule about not drinking before eleven. Or was it twelve? Hell if I remembered. Of course, this also assumed that my watch was correct, which I was pretty sure it wasn’t. The thing still needed to be adjusted for local time.
So we got out of our seats, wandered around, and found the diner car. Of course, there was also the bar there. Octavia got herself something called “ghraf”, and I settled for a gin and tonic. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, a gin and tonic was, but it sounded fancy. Octavia sipped hers at the bar, made a weird giggling noise, and offered me a sip. I hesitated, but at her insistence, I accepted.
Ghraf was this weird, strong, fizzling thing that tasted like apples but in all the worst ways possible. I had to giggle when I sipped it, or else I felt like I would sneeze. Octavia ordered a whole bottle of the stuff and paid upfront in Bits. Quite a few, too. Then she looked away. One sleight-of-hoof and a nod to the bartender later and her money was back in her bag, my money now in the register.
“My father used to love this stuff,” Octavia explained as she sat back in her seat in our lonesome train car. “Sometimes, I used to… shall we say, ‘pilfer’ bits of it when he and his friends weren’t looking. Mother, I think she knew, but was too amused by it to scold me.”
“She sounds like the kind of mother who just lets kids live and let live,” I added, settling back down in my seat. I took off my hat and set it halfway into my bag. Then it dawned on me that I had a horrific scar where my horn had once been, and—I touched at it. The scar was gone, but not gone. It was… it felt was if someone had glued a patch of something over the scar that made it feel like the rest of my head, but all wrong.
So I glanced down at my broken hindhoof. Sure enough, the broken hoof was still broken, but the damage had been masked by a hoof-like material put into there. If you looked at, you couldn’t tell. If you felt it, you couldn’t tell. If I felt it, I could feel just how wrong it was. By all means, I looked normal, but I didn’t feel normal.
Great, I though, C turned me into an art project.
“Yes,” Octavia almost sighed with an air of wistfulness. “Sometimes the better days are so far behind us, are they not?”
“Depends on the individual,” I replied. “My childhood was okay, really. I’m still living my best times.”
“Were we all so lucky,” she said, though not really to me. Octavia said it like she was saying it more for her own comfort than anything else.
I excused myself to use the restroom, bring my bags with me. The car’s washroom was pitiful, but I still managed to wash my face, brush my teeth, use the watercloset, and change into a different shirt and pants. I kept the poncho, though, but now I felt like I could actually present myself in polite society without being referred to as “that weirdo” any more than was warranted.
When I got back, she was staring out the window. “So, you were saying something about the troubles in your life.”
Octavia flashed the ground a pained little grimace. “I suppose that I was, yes.”
I made a gesture for her to continue. I didn’t care if it took the rest of the day, and hopefully it would, but I would learn this stranger’s story.
She sat back in her chair and took a sip of her ghraf. “Well… it was a few years ago at the Grand Galloping Gala.”
“The Grand Galloping Gala?” I asked, cocking a brow.
“Yes, that Grand Galloping Gala. Can you believe I actually got invited? It’s perhaps one of the single greatest social gatherings of the year, and I got a personal invitation to play my cello there.” She chuckled without any humor. Sometimes life only gives you two options, I thought: laugh or cry. “Then… something happened which was out of my control, but these six mares utterly ruined the whole event for everypony. You wouldn’t think that a happy-go-lucky pink pony who clearly had more than just a few screws loose could do so much damage. But, uh…” She took another light sip. “It would appear that you don’t need much to destroy a massive social event.”
“And how did that harm you?”
“How didn’t it?” she replied, looking up at the ceiling. “I mean, that pink pony marehandles me, ruined the music we were all playing, and yet somehow I get blamed? I didn’t get blamed per se; that’s just the, uh… the ghraf talking. But the ponies in charge didn’t want to put any real blame on a few of Princess Celestia’s… favorites, I want to say. So, dare you to suppose who took the fallout?”
“Uh-huh,” I hummed. I wondered when, if ever, this train would pass through a tunnel and present a very clear sexual metaphor.
“But that was the chance, you must understand. If I could do well at the Gala, I’d be noticed, my career would soar, I would be… be a lot better off than I am today, that’s certain. Not to mention that because of the whole event being ruined, I didn’t fully get paid, so a lot of the money I spent getting to Canterlot wouldn’t be reimbursed, which was a load of…” She glanced at me. “Which was pure and utter nonsense. I yelled, I threw a fit, but nothing. I even—”
|— ☩ —|
Octavia stands mortified outside Canterlot Castle, not sure if she should be panting with exhaustion, crying, or screaming. She wants to do all three, but those weren’t proper of such a prim and proper lady as herself. Trickles of rain fall on her. They feel like little bolts of electricity on her naked back.
Those bastards! she screams in her head, but she’d never say it, oh no. That isn’t what the well-to-do ponies want to see from their performers. Never mind that her life has just been shattered. Never mind that her one real true chance to impress the movers and shakers is dead and gone, and she’s just been informed that, for all intents and purposes, she’s fired.
She grips her cello case by the handle, dragging it down the street with her mouth. She tries not to think of just how much she’d been staking on the Grand Galloping Gala. Tries not to think that maybe the endless hours of trying to be the best there was at the cello were in vain. Tries not to think about how this damn cello case hurts her jaw when she drags it.
She doesn’t think all the way to the classy hotel she’s staying at. Of course, she’s staying on the fourth floor, and the elevators are out. She doesn’t think about that as she goes in and drags her cello, her pride and joy, her heart and soul, along with her. Sure, she’ll still play the cello till the day she dies. That’s just who she is, Octavia Melody. She loves her cello. But, she has to be real here: no matter how great the cello was, no matter how great she might be, it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t pay your bills and starve to death.
The best Octavia’s ever been able to hope for was that other ponies would share in her passion enough to want to hear her conduct her songs and play her music with her very soul. And for a while, that’s how it seemed to be going. She’d gotten somepony’s eye enough that she personally got a letter in the mail inviting her to perform at the Gala. She thinks that’s funny now; it was probably the very same pony whom she is ever so elegantly not cursing out, the one who basically fired her.
Octavia finds her room. She opens the door, drags her heart and soul in, and closes the door. She’s all alone. Of course she’s alone. Who else would be in here? She’s alone, as she always is, probably always will be. Octavia doesn’t bother drying herself; she stumbled over to the bed, falls down, and cries. She cries until her eyes are red and her nose runny. She cries until her lungs hurt. She cries because she doesn’t know what else to do, and she certainly won’t laugh it all off.
In the end, she just hurts all over. Her heart feels like it could lurch out, her eyes are sore and tired, and she’s wet from the rain and tears—she knows the difference because the rainwater is cold, the tears still hot.
When she finally has the energy to lift her head from the bed—how long’s it been? A hour? Two?—she can only think one thing.
I need a drink.
So she does. Octavia goes downstairs to the hotel bar; it’s miraculously still open at this hour, a brief window of good fortune in a storm of ruin. She’s always wanted to be the type of pony that everypony should know. But now that dream feels so dead. So for the first time in her life, Octavia gets drunk.
|— ☩ —|
Octavia was silent for a while after that, the only sounds coming from the railroad beneath her. The click-clack of the wheels upon the track and the occasional bump. She seemed to almost hang her head in shame.
Finally, I had to speak. “Your cello. Where is it?”
“In the overhead compartment,” she said. “There’s a lot more room up then then you’d think.”
I nodded. “And so that cello is your… your Herzblut.”
Octavia looked up at me, her glass of ghraf empty, the bottle still unopened. “What?”
“Herzblut,” I repeated. “Literally, ‘heartblood’ or ‘blood of the heart’. It is a word where I am from that means something like ‘heart and soul’, but even more personal, even deeper. It’s like you pour your heart so deeply into it that you tear it and bleed, so that the object becomes, in a sense, of a part of you as necessary as the blood that flows through your heart.”
There mare seemed as if to go into a little trance. “Herzblut,” she said. “Hairts-bloot.” And she even remembered to drop the R. Yay. “Yes. I suppose that would describe my cello and I quite nicely.” I said nothing more, letting her stew in her own thoughts like fish who died spawning, and now rots in a frothy mixture of water and fish seed.
“You know,” Octavia spoke calmly, “I’ve never actually told that little story to anypony before.” A single, mirthless laugh escaped her lips. “Nopony’s ever really asked… because nopony’s ever really cared. Funny how accurate the horoscope sometimes is.”
“Horoscope?” I asked. It was a concept I was vaguely familiar with. Just a load of malarkey and pseudo-witchcraft that not even the most depraved Spezialagent would bother investigating.
“No, it’s nothing,” she dismissed. “On occasion, I simply enjoy looking over the stranger items they have in the newspaper. That’s all. The one for me, my sign, mentioned that I would ‘soon meet a mysterious stranger’ who would ‘help you get over a great obstacle’.”
“And I helped you?”
Octavia flashed me a smile. “I would say so. Thank you, Mister Jericho, for listening.”
“I’m like a regular old Priester or the rapist, eh?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Like a the rapist, one of those ponies who listens to your problems and offers advice.”
The mare just stared at me. “I believe it is pronounced therapist.”
I sat back and blinked. “Huh. You know, that would explain so many things.”
Octavia looked at me. Looked some more. Then threw her head back and laughed.
|— ☩ —|
Sugar Hill, that train station was called. It was an anemic little place, more like a station built in a haste at the end of the known world than the massive station in Songnam. Under the sign that called the station “Sugar Hill”—which I could only see thanks to torchlit, being how deep in the night it was—there were smaller letters that read “Hwal Sucrevim”. I pondered at it, then figured it was either the work of a terribly dyslexic pony or another language entirely.
All about the little outdoor station, the few sleepy-looking ponies there were meandering about, grabbing bags and luggage, leaving the train, or just staring at stuff. Tourists, I thought sourly. They probably don’t even have the guts to steal any of the local streetsigns.
My attention turned to a little notice board on the station illuminated by a glowing crystal that reminded me a bit too much of the way that had led to the the lair of the Devil’s Backbone. The bulletin board noted “Don’t trust ponies with glowing eyes!” and that somepony had lost a cat with a scarred right forepaw, but other than that, nothing of note. Well, save for the fact that everything was in Equestrian and some other language. “Don’t trust ponies with glowing eyes” had just under it the words “Ñes ny ponaejic cwn osjiç telemos!”. I didn’t even try to pronounce it; the whole thing just looked scary and evil.
“It feels as if I arrived here much faster than I had expected,” I heard Octavia’s voice say from behind me.
“Hmm?” I hummed, turning around. I pause. Far, far behind Octavia, behind the train and the trees by the station, there appeared to be a tower. It stretched so tall that it almost dared God to use it as His tee in a game of Godly golf. God always cheated at golf, this much I knew. In fact, I could only see the damn thing because I could see the massive silhouette it made against the stars on this clear night. By far, it was the second tallest tower I’d ever seen.
Then I refocused on Octavia. she was carrying her cello case over her back with a strap alongside her bag. She looked sorrier than I ever did. “Oh, well,” I said, “I suppose that has something to do with that thing with the butterfly. That, and you fell asleep through most of the trip.”
She almost looked embarrassed, but she held her calm demeanor. “How could I have known that insects, trains, and strong alcohol made me sleepy?”
“Hey! I was the one who had to sit there, resisting the urge to draw lewd things all over your body,” I replied with feigned indignity. “Now I’ve gotta go find someone’s life to make slightly worse in order to make up for making yours a little better. It’s how this whole schtick works. Wait, no, I ruined enough lives in the past month alone to totally let me be kind to one lovely lady with a cello.”
Octavia rolled her light purple eyes. “L’Opéra.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s where I’m playing at tomorrow. A place called L’Opéra.”
“It’s a boring French name that literally means ‘the opera’,” I concluded.
“Well, it’s where I was invited to play. Apparently, some important ponies will be there.” She flashed me a smile that was downright girlish in its giddiness. “Do wish me luck!”
“Where is L’Opéra?” I asked. “I can’t assault rich ponies for their tickets if I don’t know where it is.”
“You know what?” Octavia replied. “I’m not going to tell you.” She angled her nose up slightly. “If you wish to watch me play, I’m sure a resourceful gentlecolt like yourself could find it most easily.”
“Ah, now that’s just mean and petty. And I thought I was petty when I stole all the nails from the farmer who refused to sell me that cow. The nails that were in his walls, that is.”
“Oh, it’s not exactly normal opera—” she winked “—more of a party-with-dinner-and-entertainment. The crystal ponies seem to just really like French.”
“This shall be their downfall,” I replied in dark tones, shifting my weight upon the concrete floor of the station.
Octavia walked off, as if she knew where she was going. Before she vanished into the station’s interior, she looked at me and asked, “Where are you staying?”
I shrugged. “Somewhere where they don’t want me, I’m sure.”
She hesitated as she looked at me. Octavia quickly told me when she’d be playing, then opened the station door and vanished inside.
“Well, that wasn’t as full of Schadenfreude as I’d hoped,” I said to a pony I didn’t know as she walked by. She looked at me, giving me a wide berth as she walked past. Looking around, I noticed that there was a brochure stand by the bulletin board. It was all alone, so lonely, so needing to be set on fire.
However, one of the brochures was apparently an official publication by the Crystal Empire. I recalled that Felicitat noted that “Crystal Empire” wasn’t exactly this place’s name, but I guessed she must have been wrong or something. The brochure contained a map, which appeared to depict a rather sizable city built along a circular grid, and a foreword.
“Hello, and welcome to the Crystal Empire!” the foreword read. “I am Princess Mi Amore Cadenza of the Crystal Empire.” I supposed she must have been that Princess the ponies in the bar had been talking about the other night. Wasn’t she the one honorarily promoted because of mastery of spells or somesuch? It was a troubling thought, that Equestria actually rewarded its magi so well, whereas a sensical society would lobster them to death for their evil. To lobster someone to death was like stoning, but with lobsters. Since you were often buried halfway in dirt, the lobsters both pelt you to death and pinched you all over in ways that weren’t lethal but were very annoying. The rest of the foreword was bland, tourist-y stuff without any real meaning but full of vague promises that could doubly apply to a whorehouse.
I slipped the brochure into a bag, pulling out the letter from Dean/Mayor Kitten Whispers in its stead. According to the photo, which felt almost dated, his son had a curly black mane that went down to the base of his head, red eyes, and was named Stronghold “Strong”. I did plan on finding him; a part of me just knew I’d encounter something to do with him before long.
So, I just stood there, reading over the vague details that Kitten Whispers had provided before slipping the letter back into my pack. I’ll admit, I wasn’t really sure where to go. Maybe this place had a tourism bureau where I could say “Tell me where your secrets are” in a dark voice.
Really, the only logical place that would be was inside the station where Octavia was. After I shrugged, I went in the station. The inside was lit with more of those glowing crystals that made my skin crawl. At this sleepy hour, everything seemed so dead, like birds caught inside the hive of beavers. I looked around for a—
“Hello, stranger!” came a high-pitched, feminine voice. I jerked my head to the left and… what the hell was I looking at?
“Your flesh is made of crystals,” I stated to the earther mare sitting behind a stall, a huge grin on her face. When I said it, her green eyes just lit up.
“Why, so it would seem—did you know that’s the first thing foreigners notice about us crystal ponies, that it seems as if we’re made of crystals?”
“Uh…”
She almost bounced in place. “It’s an effect of the love from the Crystal Heart, which stands at the Crystal Castle—if you hit me with a pickaxe, I assure you, I’ll bleed, not make you rich.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Has that ever happened?”
The mare sighed, looking away. She blew a lock of her red mane out of her eyes. “Let’s not talk about what happened to Êsmiraj.” Then she perked up and hopped over the little wooden booth. “Here,” she offered, holding out an arm. “Touch me. Feel me.”
“Um…” I did as she asked. Despite the freaky look of her, she felt like fur and flesh alright. “You realize there’s probably a better way to phrase that, right?”
“What?” she asked in her high-pitched voice.
“Because the way you phrased it just sounded… off. In a decidedly sexual way.”
She shrugged. “Equestrian’s my second language; I’m not so good at all the intricacies.”
I glanced at the rest of the station. No Octavia. “Second language?”
“Mm-hmm! Mijôra—as we call it, the dialect of the capital, the Crystal City.” She smiled, then gave me a puzzled frown. “We’re not exactly sure how we learned it, just that when the empire awoke, we all had a basic understanding. I think one theory was that some Equestrian actually awoke the empire, but when that happened, the empire sort of… ate her, and so we gained a bit of the language.”
“The empire awoke?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“Just a saying, really.” She smiled. “But while you’re here—business or pleasure?”
“I find business to be pleasurable.”
The mare frowned. “I… that’s… that wasn’t on the list of choices!”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know what to do now! Do I give the spiel about the business opportunities in the Crystal City, or do I go on about all the fun stuff we have?!”
“Describe to me the business as though you were sultry harlot, and describe the pleasure stuff in a stiff, artificial, machine-like tone.”
“I wasn’t trained for that!” she exclaimed, collapsing onto the floor and hyperventilating.
“And I wasn’t trained to deal with ponies with monkeyhands for penises!” I shouted back. She only rolled on the ground and panted. “Great,” I sighed. “You broke her.” I poked her twice, then just walked away. She was somepony else’s basket case.
My journey took me through the station and out the front doors on the other side of the small building. There was a small village-type place here, a little hamlet kept alight via lampposts and the fires inside them. All of the signs here were in Equestrians, and they all offered things that were labeled “Equestrian”, such as “Homestyle Equestrian Kitchen”, a restaurant.
I checked the map on the brochure, and apparently this place was “Little Equestria”, and there was a wide berth between it and the Crystal City proper. Though it didn’t say any more, I could imagine why it was called Little Equestria, and just what kind of ponies lived here. Mayhap also this was a ghetto of some description, and I was apt to get mugged, which would let me mug them back for fun. Putting the brochure away, I noted that this place felt too nice to be impoverished.
Wandering the streets of Little Equestria, I came across a place that seemed to be alive. It was an inn whose name I didn’t concern myself with. As I stood outside its door, I had sudden flashbacks to my first day in Equestria and that tavern, back when all my limbs were my own and I still had two eyes and a horn. Good times.
A weird feeling went up my spine, and I spun around to see if there were blue eyes watching me. There were none. I shrugged the feeling off, went inside the tavern, somehow didn’t get thrown out, and bought a room for the night.
|— ☩ —|
I had no idea what a churro was until that point. But, apparently, they were like long, fried doughnuts for poor ponies that nopony liked, and the Crystal Empire loved them. So said the street vendor this morning when I’d bought breakfast, which I only did because I remembered that I hadn’t eaten in what was probably a month, and that was supposed to kill ponies. The churros were served with a side of café au lait, which worked well with the long, prism-like strips, I supposed.
From here in Little Equestria, which was thoroughly bustling with life at this early hour, I could see that massive tower rising above everything, almost seeming to rise above the snowcapped mountains in the distance.
The giant tower, which seemed to be made of a clearish-blue crystal, was apparently the Crystal Castle—Credhchato, in Mijôra, as one pony helpfully offered. Apparently, Mijôra had an orthography almost like French, just with far fewer stupid spelling choices or silent letters. If you pronounced the written crystal language as if it were French, said one mare, you’d be close enough that few ponies would bother you and your silly accent.
Somepony bumped into me as she walked by. “Oh, sorry.”
I jerked my head to her. “Apology not accepted!” I shouted. “The scars you left will never heal! You did this to me! You did this to me!” I went on. I leapt at her as if trying to pounce, and she ran off screaming. With a casual expression, I turned the other direction and trotted off.
Still licking bits of churro from my teeth, I decided that if I wanted to start looking anywhere, I should start looking in the Crystal City. The fastest way to the the city was the big road, and the fastest way to the big road was through a dark alley that would contain an evil talking dog. Sadly, there was no evil talking dog whose life goal was to tear my genitals off, but there was something else.
A mare was lurking in the shadows, wearing dark robes. As I passed by a little bastion in the alley, she stepped out. “Hyel to thee—”
Of course, for a mugger, she had no tact. I just as quickly pinned her against the stone wall as she had appeared. “Stand and deliver! You won’t mug me today, I’m mugging you!” I chuckled. “You know, I’ve always wanted to mug a mugger, simply as a form of poetic justice.”
Her hoof fell back, revealing her crystal features. “Wait, no, I’m no thief!”
“What,” I said flatly.
“I can see you are no nova of the ocean of the cleverness, but I am a priestess—we steal not, we merely guilt ponies into donations!”
“Oh.” I unpinned her. She clutched at her throat where at I’d been pinning her. “And half of your last sentence made no sense.” She was an earther, I noted. “Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione! I don’t know much Latein, but I memorized a few phrases: that one meant ‘I’m not interested in your dopey religious cult.’ And I don’t suppose your dopey religious cult is super evil and thus me attacking you was a good thing, was it?”
“No!” she hissed. “It’s not a ‘dopey religious cult’, it is the last bastion of the faithful adherents to the old Goddess of the north. All we seek is to hold strong to the old beliefs, even spread the word of the last Goddess.”
“A deity? Tell me of it all!” I exclaimed.
“Of her,” she corrected in a nervous voice. “Chêngrêla, once the patron goddess of Côrint, the Crystal City. Once she was the first amongst equals, but now with all other cities gone, she is the last, she is the Chêngina, the above-mother—Impératrice, really. Mêlenatra, the High Priestess, is the last of the old matriarchs that ruled the faithful in days of yore.”
“What about Princess Cadance?” I asked. “Is she somepony of note, or just some slut with a bad case of headlice?”
“She is what she is,” the mare replied.
“That answers just sucks and now I hate you for it,” I said. “Does the High Priestess generally know where shit is?”
“O-one would suppose.”
“And is she the boss-bitch of magic and all sorts of crystal lore?”
“I should think th-that she knows more than anypony.”
“Then I guess I should have a chat with her.”
“I don’t think she’ll speak personally to just anypony, she’s a very busy and important lady.”
“And I once sang the alphabet song backwards,” I replied. “I think we all know who’s the more important of us two now.”
“Um…”
“That’s a very good response. But now I tire of this line of discussion! Tell me why the crystal ponies I’ve seen so far were naked, and if you all get hot around socks!”
“I—”
“Of course!” I snapped. “You’re a priestess, likely sworn an oath to a life of celibacy and a general ‘stop having fun, guys’ attitude.”
“N-no, we swear no such oaths.”
“Tell me!” I demanded, grabbing her and pressing her against the wall. Again.
She made a scared whinnying noise.
“Dammitall!” I swore. “This method of questioning which is totally unrealistic and not at all representative of how real people speak is failing me. Tabletop roleplaying games, you have failed me yet again.” I let the priestess fall to the ground. Well, I sort of tossed her onto the ground, but who was counting? “That line of dialog bores me. Now you shall tell me how to get an audience with this High Priestess Marshmallow Fluffy Genitals, or whatever her name was.”
“Mêlenatra,” she offered weakly from the ground.
“This too,” I replied darkly.
The priestess grunted as a bird flew over the dark alley. The two events were unrelated, sure, but I thought was bird was interesting enough to pay attention to. “Mançthwl…”
“Tell me of this thing!” I demanded, and she flinched, curling up into a tiny pony ball. “No, don’t be a ball,” I said. “I can only kick you for so long until I get bored and wander off.” She stayed in her ball, shivering.
I leered at the priestess for a solid ten minutes. Every so often she would peek up and see me staring, glaring down down at her, and I would ask her exceedingly personal questions, like “How does gynecology work in the Crystal Empire?” and “Do you think a gynecologist would bother looking at my penis? I sometimes like to pretend that it’s not a penis but instead some kind of fanged dreadlord, and I wanted to express this to a gynecologist.” Of course, she would then exclaim a sound like “Eep!” and curl back into her ball. Eventually, I got bored and wandered off.
Quickly, I found my way onto the large road that lead into the unwalled city proper. The road seemed to just be in the middle of nowhere in terms of development. It was just a train station, Little Equestria, a really long road through little patches of evergreens and tall grass, and then the big city. At least the road was populated well.
Upon reaching the city proper, two things became clear to me. One: you could instantly tell the natives from the non-natives. Two: all the buildings here looked to be either made of colorful stone carved from a mountain that didn’t exist, or made of crystalline materials that were far too opaque to really be normal crystals. Clearly, this place both looked magical and must have had a very easy time segregating undesirable ethnic minorities like myself. Really, though, if it weren’t for the dopey religious cult, this place would almost seem a child’s fantasy kingdom at first glance. I knew there was even more to this place’s dark underbelly, there had to be, but I’d yet to find any evidence of such.
The Crystal City was sizable, not as big as the cities of the Fatherland, but certainly on par with Songnam and its great metropolitan area. Around the center of the Crystal Castle was a fairgrounds, and when I arrived near towards the center heart of the city, some sort of holiday was in full swing. Lots of crystal stallions engaged in diverse physical competitions with other stallions, just as archery, jousting, and something that was inside some sort of colosseum. I saw a few stallions doing speed math, or something like it that, which made my skin crawl. The only mares around here were either walking about or swooning at the stallions. Go them.
It took nearly forever to get through the fairgrounds and to the castle. Oh, and the castle and its tower were standing on four dubious-looking stilts. As I looked more closely, I could see intricate structural patterns in the crystals which held the stilts together, and I vaguely recognized them as being some rather strong geometric patterns. Ponies weren’t allowed near the base of the castle, though, since it was dangerous or something.
I was about to give up searching when I saw a mare in dark robes with two strong-looking guard stallions flanking her. They were wearing a silver-like armor that didn’t look like it covered nearly enough of their bodies to really be anything but ceremonial. She, on the other hoof, looked important and mayhap knew where stuff was. I judged her to be in her early-to-mid forties.
Logically, I had to stop and demand things of her. “Hey, do you know where I can find, uh… where I can find Mêlenatra? I have business with her.”
The stallions looked between themselves, but the mare gave me a puzzled look. All around the place, ponies yelled and screamed and enjoyed fairgames and fun stuff. It was all so lively and energetic, but she was so calm.
“Ñar, fair Equestrian,” she said.
“I’m not an Equestrian, I’m a Teutscher,” I said, almost snapping the words. “There’s a difference; I come from much farther away, across the seas and from a great Reich to the east.”
“Sênatris?” one of the stallions said in a nervous tone with an air of ‘should I murder this guy for you?’
She shook her head at the stallion. “Teutscher, then. I am afraid that there is no practical…” The mare trailed off as she leaned her head to the side. “Is that a sword?”
My eye fell upon my sword. I’d been wearing the blade rather openly, not hiding it like usual. No priestess was going to bother me for a donation to their dopey religious cult when I had it out like this, that was for sure. “It is,” I replied.
“Are you any good with it or fighting in general?”
“Maybe,” I said, narrowing my eye. “I wouldn’t be alive today, at least, if I both didn’t know how to use it and possessed rational moral compunctions.”
Her eyes lit up. “Why, if you wish to meet the High Priestess, then you would do well to understand that she has a certain… higher regard for those gifted in the art of the fight.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Pardon?”
The mare gestured her head in the direction of a not-so-distant building that looked like an amphitheater of the completely closed-off, circular kind with stone walls. “Mançthwl is in swing; it has been eons since last ’twas held, and now we look anew amongst the best and brightest, crystal or otherwise, to know of us. It is well known amongst us of the well-to-do here that Mêlenatra has been looking forward to personally acquainting herself with he who is judged and proven to be the greatest physical combatant there is.”
“Ah, so you’re saying that she is a fangirl for gladiators, right?”
She looked hesitantly off to the side, biting her tongue. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Although, I am unclear as to what ‘fangirl’ means. All you need do is enter the Ampfidhiyatsiç, step into the ring, and defeat any who dare challenge your reign. Of course, you could always enter at the end, which is nigh, I dare think, and defeat mano-a-mano the grand champion.”
“This seems somehow rigged in favor of those who show up towards the end, for they’d be more rested and would be facing tired opponents,” I said.
“You might think, but you’d be wrong. In theory, any can enter at any time. In practice, none ever enter but the first round.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Oh, just tradition, some fear, and perhaps because of certain… time constraints.”
“Pardon?”
The grin that suddenly found itself upon her face was almost malevolent. No, wait, it totally was. I could see it in the way her eyes ran over me, and I felt somewhat molested. Mayhap, by some cosmic chance and evil, she was distantly related to the Cherrypillar. “You know, no real foreigners have dared to want to enter our games here. Were you to… say, go into the Ampfidhiyatsiç at the end as my champion, challenge and defeat the then-reigning champion, I would be most happy to assist you in finding whomsoever you needed.” She winked. “Only after getting to know you thereafter, of course.” Her face grew sour. “Just so long as that bitch Ywłamõ doesn’t win, and a foreign champions would make ever the worldly Sênatrismic, yes it would.”
“Ah, so, you wish to help me undermine a rival of yours, so you’re willing to be rather petty to that end?”
“I would stoop very low to buck her in the teeth, yes. Does this make me a bad mare? Besides, you’re the only foreigners I’ve ever seen, save for Prince Shining Armor, who looks like he could kick the ass, as it were.
I tipped my hat to her. “Ma’am, I believe we have an agreement.”
|— ☩ —|
“Strip,” the armored stallion said.
“No,” I replied flatly. “I’ll take off my weapons and bags, though.”
In the dark underroom beneath of the Ampfidhiyatsiç, Sênatris and her two stallions watched me. She sat on a box, her legs crossed, a sly little smile on her face as she said, “Oh, be not modest—Equestrians are nude, as are we.” There came that little Cherrypillar smirk again. “Besides, I just can’t help but wonder what you’re hiding from me under all of that clothing.”
“Battle scars, an arm that I had donated to me by an immortal abomination, and a circumcised penis, really,” I replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Look,” the shorter of the two crystal stallions said to me in a perfectly reasonable voice. “The fact is, you can’t go with all that on.”
I slipped my bags and duster off, making sure all my little bags, weapons, and knickknacks were off my body. Seriously, with all the stuff attached to my body, you’d think I was a thoroughly licked lollipop that had rolled around in the lost and found of The Damned And Terminally Equicidal. Beneath it all was a red T-shirt that made to look like the logo of a popular drink in the Reich. The shirt read ‘Gehorche Kthulhu’. There were also my jeans.
Sênatris made an impatient twirling gesture with a hoof. “Hurry up, please. Off with the shirt and trousers.”
My eye, cold and steely, met hers. Her almost predatory look, like a shark who’s just learnt how to hunt zebra housewives suffering from domestic abuse, never vanished. With a sigh, I buckled, removing my shirts and pants.
She cocked a brow. “Sleek, efficient, hardened… oh yes, I do know how to pick them, do I not? You do not work out, do you? No, you stay fit through hard labor, honest work, and I dare think fighting. Just, what’s with the yet further clothing you’re wearing? Were you planning a trip to the mountains?”
“Need I take off the underwear?” I asked. “I suppose I could, but my culture would say not to do so in such a public place, only for bathing and sexual intercourse. I told you, I’m no Equestrian.”
“You have nothing beneath your underwear, do you?” she asked with an almost girlish frown unbefitting of the forty-something-year-old mare I pinned her for.
“Only a codpiece to protect myself from genital trauma.”
“Remove that,” said the stallion, “and I don’t see why you couldn’t wear it.” He leaned in close and whispered, “And don’t mind her behavior. I think she just gets a kick out of making stallions really uncomfortable because she hardly kent her father.”
Ah, so like Cherry Berry, but without the rape. Understood. Also, ‘kent’. Assuming it’s the same as the Teutsch verb ‘kennen’, then ‘kent’ means ‘knew’. I stepped behind a crate—Sênatris uttered a sad little groan—and a moment later I stepped out and tossed my codpiece into the pile of clothes. The mare squinted, looking at my right arm.
“Schantih,” she said slowly. The way she’d said the sch was the exact same absurdly weird way in which the Blue-Eyed Mare had said the opening to the word schecht, like the sh-sound but from the back of the mouth. Even with its weird sound, I knew she must have been reading the peace-word on my arm.
Suddenly, I found myself worrying about the upcoming fight. Why now, of all times, I had that feeling was beyond me. Just that until this very moment, I’d sort of taken this fight for nothing, but now I was nervous. The catlike gleam in Sênatris’ eyes didn’t help, neither. Really, now that I was really thinking, the letter C had written me also was really weird and mayhap unnerving, with its mention of a “Dark Lady” and all. At the time, I’d figured it was just some weird… no, I actually hadn’t thought about it. I just hadn’t.
When I stopped to take check of my surroundings, Sênatris was already sauntering up to me. “He can’t wear those undergarments,” she said in an annoyed tone. “I do not believe that they are allowed in the rules. You can but wear the arena’s sanctioned armor.”
“You really think they’d care?” he asked, and she gave him a look that shut him up faster than a virgin at a rapist convention. He sighed, shook his head, then walked off into a side room. I could hear him rummaging.
“The arena has certain raiments that you must wear,” she explained to me with a shrug. “I am sure you understand.”
The stallion came back out,dragging something in his teeth. “Here,” he said and tossed it to me. “Should be the standard.”
It was light cloth for the most part. Really, it resembled a slutty nurse uniform with a cutoff skirt that had been designed as if it were armor. Heck, it even had a horsehair helmet. If I wore it, I’d A) Feel pretty, and B) have sufficient space to hide my genitals provided that I didn’t bend over seductively.
With reluctance, I put the armor all on. That done, there was nothing stopping me from sliding off the last vestiges of my original outfit. It was a little tight, clearly not made for me, but it fit just enough that I didn’t want to complain like a little bitch. The last wearer of this armor better not have had crabs. As I looked down, I noticed that over the vague breastplate of the armor was a symbol: two crossed red roses.
“Do you like my sygwł?” Sênatris asked with a little jostle of her hips.
“Excuse me?”
She pointed to the crossed roses. “That. My sygwł. It’s the symbol of my house.”
“You mean, you’re a noblepony?”
“Yes. Hence my title, Sênatris.”
“Wait. I thought that was your name.”
“No. That’s my title.” She smiled. “Now, go out there, bear the sygwłvic of my house—” her voice suddenly went flat “and make sure to humiliate the champion of that Ywłamõmim bitch. He’ll be the big, scary one. You’ll kenn him.” And then the dry, flat voice was gone, replaced by a more bubbly tone. “I’ll be rooting for you, Teutscher.” She brought her lips to the lower side of my cheek and gave me a quick peck, muttering words in her own language.
“For luck,” she said simply at the end. Of course, then she slapped me on the ass and pushed me forwards. “Now don’t keep a lady waiting. Or else.”
Suddenly, I regret everything.
The crystal stallion who’d spoken to me earlier only rolled his eyes, gesturing for me to follow.
|— ☩ —|
I didn’t understand the loud, magically amplified mare whose voice rang out across the little coliseum-type place. Her language was foreign to me. But from her excited tone, and the roar of the crowd, it wasn’t hard to imagine what she was saying.
“What’s this? A new challenger appears! Well, folks, are we all game to watch more stallions brutally fight for no real reason other than honor?” And that was enough to get the crowd roaring.
Behind me closed the metal gate. The walls around the little arena were too tall to ever climb, the floor a flat, well-pressed, dry dirt. “Eh, good luck with that,” the flat, bored voice of the stallion said.
There was only one other pony in the arena with him. Even from a distance, I could tell that he was a giant of pure muscle, rage, and probably penis size issues. The announcer mare went on her spiel as I looked at my metaphorical hand of playing cards. I was probably going to lose my other arm to this guy, let’s be honest. And yet this was still the only way to get an audience with the High Priestess, who may or may not be able to help me.
Great job planning ahead, Jericho.
“You’re not helping,” I said to myself through gritted teeth.
Who said I was trying to help?
So. I had gone on the word of a creepy noblemare, agreed to gladiatorial combat for her, and now this. Because this was what I got for trusting strangers. Really, though, what else was I going to do? Of course this day had to go here. It wasn’t like I’d ever try any of the sensible things or try to use my head to solve a problem for once, oh no. That wasn’t my style, baby. What’s that? Be clever, you say? Haha, oh Timmy! Why would I do that when I could just stab someone thirty-seven times in the chest?
Because Murder. Solves. Everything.
Still, at least the giant stallion pretty much sparkled in the sunlight due to his crystal complexion, so it was hard to take him seriously. A part of me wanted to stop the fight, bend the stallion over, and spit-shine him until I could see my own reflection in his face.
He walked in a rather calm manner to the center of the arena, standing there with a face like an elderly stallion dying of constipation—his attempt to look angry, I presumed. I could see there were two little painted lines in the dirt, each separated by about two yards. He stood behind one of the lines. Logically, this meant to me that I was to stand behind the other line, so onwards I sauntered.
“You represent House Erysa?” he asked in a mild voice when I got to the line.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m just here because I really had no plans for the morning, and the only vague idea I had ended up with some weird lady telling me I had to do this to meet this one mare who I thought might know how to assist me in my quest.”
He cocked a brow. “Be that the case, I wish you good tiding this fight, for I am of House Ywłamõ.”
“So despite your woeful countenance, you are at least polite,” I commented, arching a brow back at him, the crowd around us cheering and jeering. “Ah, Equestria—you are nothing if not surprising. Like the icebox of a serial killer.”
The crowd gave a roar. The stallion smiled. “It is the time of the show.”
Without a further word, he charged for me. But I was prepared. Kontaktkampf was rather clear on how to fight enemies who looked bigger and stronger than you. In essence, size didn’t matter so much as did being able to counterattack and use their strength, weight, and size against them. Heart pounding, I felt I was ready when he got to me. Stances swapped, I allowed myself a few inches, and thrust my right arm straight into his—
Nothing happened. No, not that I had no effect on him, but the arm didn’t touch him. It just stopped. Just… stopped. For a second, the entire limb felt like it was half-asleep and would suddenly awake with the feeling of pins-and-needles. In that second, I had enough time to think, Oh, what the—? before he bodyslammed me.
I tried to catch myself, and we rolled on the dirt like two lovers trying to murder each other due to a divorce gone horribly, horribly right. With the desperation of a housecat trying to eat a piggy bank full of bees, I tried to get him off me. By some miracle, the roll ended briefly with me clawing my way on top of him.
Logically, I had to slug him in the face. The thrust hoof stopped just before his face. Mere centimeters, it felt like. Maybe less. The arm was long enough; it was still mostly drawn back. But it just refused to move. He looked up at me with a vague hint of confusion.
I smiled, forcing a chuckle. “I swear, this kind of thing had never happened to me before. I’m sorry, but—”
“No, no, I hear it happens to a lot of guys,” he replied. “They’re just pussies.”
“Hey! No need to degrade mares by comparing them to me!”
His look was flat. “Oh no, that wasn’t a slant against mares. I’m saying that even mares have more balls than you.”
“Oh God,” I said with a vague snicker, “if you’d seen my first girlfriend, you would totally know just how true that is. Well, not literally since, uh, I should sort of know being I was… and she… did often that thing which males and females are literally designed to do with each other that for some reason I suddenly feel too prudish to explain, which is weird because I’m the kind of guy who will willingly ask strangers in strange lands about their habits concerning gynecological maintenance.”
He just blinked at me.
“You know—” I gasped as a knee rammed me in my gut with so much force that it both knocked the wind out of me and kicked me off him.
“You know,” he said, still as flat as the standup comedy routine of a stallion who believes himself to be at a group the rapy… therapy?… session for pedophiles, “I am Ywłamõ’s champion, and you the enemy of her sworn enemy. So, here’s what’s what. When I said that mares had more balls than you—” he reached down and grabbed something precious faster than a guy that big should have been able to grab “—I wasn’t exaggerating.”
I tried to claw at him, but C’s arm refused to land any blows on him. Sure, it’d move in every direction, but just so long as it didn’t end up hitting him. Mister Leftie had no such moral compunctions. Quick as an insect, he jerked forwards and, before I was even clear on just what the hell was going on, grabbed me by the testicles, squeezing hard.
Pain was immediate and beyond unbearable: a burning, swelling agony like being drowned in liquid lead. “Do you see what I mean?” he asked.
Then he jerked my testicles forwards and down. Enormous, rusty, saw teeth sank into my gut, the taste of salt and blood in my mouth. I was sure he’d rip them off; he’d already turned them into jelly, and now he was going to just rip them straight off! There were only held on my by just a thin flap of skin. They shouldn’t have been that far away from the rest of my body—they were just going to rip off with a sound like sharply pulling apart velcro, only fleshier! I was going to—I tried to scream, but he just yanked so hard that he actually dragged my whole body, the gurgling shriek dying in my throat as—
And then he let go, just smiling at me as he kicked me onto my stomach, the dirt rubbing into my chest and stomach. I could feel my balls swelling to what felt like the size of teapots sitting on a stove just before they whistled that the tea was ready; if I’d been wearing pants, the heat would have burned a hole straight through them.
With every ounce of strength left in me, I rolled onto my sides. I felt that if I continued to lay on my front, my balls would swell so much that they’d just pop under the weight of my body. A new torrent of fire erupted in my guts as I vomited a half-digested load of churros partially onto the ground, partially across my armor. I could feel the pain eating me alive as I whimpered and cowered in the dirt and vomit. Mud and vomit, for the vomit was turning the dry turn into wet mud.
The crowd roared, and something loud thumped into the arena somewhere. I could see it, since the stallion was walking towards it: a large, red chest that looked oddly flat and elongated. Sort of like a tall, fat footlocker. I wonder what secrets it held, or even why it was there, though I had the vague feeling that it was going to hold healing medicines that he’d drink right in front of me solely for torment me.
I blinked, my eye staying closed for longer than they should have. When they reopened, there was a mare standing before me, her eyes blue, her black jacket looking slightly scuffed. She looked at me with what I hoped was sympathy, not pity. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a throaty, wet gurgle that nevertheless felt high-pitched.
She looked down at me. It was all she seemed willing to do. A part of me felt that what I’d taken for sympathy was actually a cold, almost disgusted look, like she wanted nothing to do with me. Like she would just as soon step on and break my neck with a calm indifference, and go on with her life.
Then a slight, almost motherly smile graced a corner of her mouth, as if to say “Oh, you silly colt, what are you doing down there?” She held out a hoof to me, utterly silent.
I swallowed, unsure if I could even move. The taste of salt and blood was still in my mouth, and my spittle drained down into the sea of liquid lead that was my stomach. My groin still burned, still swelled.
But somehow I managed to reach my right forehoof out. Before I thought that maybe I should use my left arm, the Blue-Eyed Lady had grabbed my right and was helping to haul me onto my hoov—
A huge hammer crashed down on my arm, hitting in the center with the heavy crack. Bones were very alive; they didn’t sound like dead wood when they break. So when you heard that crack, you knew just what the hell had happened.
The arm bent impossibly as the blow forced me onto the ground, back into the mud-vomit. I could see the stallion standing above me with a sledgehammer-type thing in his maw, and attached to his left arm was sort sort of arm-mounted blade that somehow reminded me of the world’s worst guardrailing. The Blue-Eyed Mare was gone; there was only him. He saw me looked, smiled through the hammer, and then jumped down, holding his left arm forwards.
His weight and power forced the blade to dig deep into my arm lengthwise, gouged the bone, no doubt severing an artery. With a far-too-practised move, he leapt up, forcibly tearing the blade out in the most vicious, goring way possible.
Somehow, the only thing I could do was sigh and think, God, just think how much my life would suck if I masturbated with my right hoof.
The crowd roared as the stallion looked at me, setting his sledgehammer aside. His left arm soaked in my blood, he spoke in a calm voice. “I don’t know if you understand it, foreigner, but here during the final challenge round, there is no penalty for slaying your opponent. And I made sure to make a fun sport of…” His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Gnamatre!” he shouted as I stood straight back up.
I stared back at him with a placid expression, the huge crowd gasping, some even screaming. I held my twisted, smashed, broken, gouged, arm up. It cracked like and popped a stretching back as it twisted and writhed and twisted back into shape with erratic jerk, impossible motions, a blackish-red void of stars beneath the flesh, just like C’s arm.
Then the blood of mine that soaked his seemed as if to boil. In a swarm of tiny droplets they all rolled down his arm as he screamed and flailed back. The droplets rolled over the dirt, mixing with the now-moving blood spilt onto the ground until they looked liked a swarm of wet fire ants. They marched up my left arm, slithered across my body, under my arm, and hitched onto my right arm. The blood poured into the dark, starry abyss that was the gash in my arm.
When all the blood was back in my body, the ground and enemy combatant clean of blood, the wounds sizzled as they fused into normal-looking flesh and fur. One place had no wound but still sizzled, the smell of burning flesh making me hungry. There, on the edge of the shoulder, was a red-hot number that quickly cooled into the black mutilation like the words around the arm: “608.”
“Just—just what by all the gods are you?!” the stallion squealed.
My testicles still burned, the lead sloshing around in my gut, but none of it seemed to matter at that moment. So I smiled, revealing far too many teeth; I’d been thinking about my big friend right here while my arm was doing that thing, and I knew just what I wanted to say.
“Why,” I said in a calm, almost amicable tone, “I’m the stallion who’s going to break your fucking neck.” And I walked slowly towards him.
“No! Stay away from me, you freak!” he screamed, swinging his blade-arm sideways at me.
It wasn’t a good idea. I simply jerked my arm up, partially impaling myself into the blade. Using the weight of his own blow against him, I twisted, thrusting my other hoof into his throat. He gurgled as I threw him to the ground. Rending my arm free of his blade, I stepped forwards, and stomped on his neck for all I was good for.
He didn’t exactly die from that, but I’d broken his neck regardless. Maybe he’d drown from blood. Mayhap he’d suffocate. Who knew? Either way, there was no chance he was going to survive. In effect, I’d killed him.
“Welcome to the real world,” I told him as he made little choking, dying sounds.
Spread out from my arm was that nebulous mass, like a rope catching lost blood. It waved and undulated before finally coiling back into my arm; it healed silently this time, oddly enough. I felt a new burn, and when I looked at the side of my arm, a new black mutilation was there, and it read “Convict—XIV.”
“Hmm,” I hummed, tearing cloth strips from the stallion’s armor. I used them to clean myself of vomit, then threw the dirty strips onto him.
My eye roved the stadium/arena/colosseum/what it was. Where once they’d been shocked, now they cheered my victory, chanting, “Sygwłvôm Erysamim! Sygwłvôm Erysamim!” And on they went.
Gates on either side of the arena opened up, and a few ponies trickles out, including what I hoped was a team of paramedics. Because I really needed to put my balls on ice. And put some real clothes on. Take a shower. Brush my teeth again. The works, really.
The paramedics checked the stallion, shrugged, seemed to pronounce him dead, then asked me if I was okay. The two crystal bucks seemed to hesitate when they asked. I was betting that seeing a stallion’s destroyed arm heal itself like mine had done wasn’t exactly your everyday spectacle.
I asked them for some ice to put my balls in, and if there was somewhere I could clean myself. Then I thought about it, and I asked them for the location of L’Opéra.
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Brilliant chapter as always. No other words are really needed honestly.
And I guess a sciency machine and lab equals being scientifically inclined, maybe.
Yaaaay
Made me think of the Opera-guy from Sum of All Fears who listened to Opera because he knew his attempt at reigning supreme was about to end before his throat slit by a knife.
Why does this remind me so much of the Imperial City Arena from Oblivion, minus the bloody healing pool?
Heaven help us if Jericho learns to break the fourth wall... *shivers*
That was the best chapter in a while. I really like Jericho's new pacifistic, invincible, and self-tatooing arm. I'll really like it if we can spend some more time with C.
Jericho takes his codpiece off for two minutes and almost gets his groin ripped out. THIS is why he never undresses.
I hope we get to spend a lot more time with Octavia. Jericho can be such a gentlecolt when he meets new people.
d1sct75hbeauoh.cloudfront.net/images/shirts/6Kqgsf5B8jRZ/teefury_obey-cthulhu.full.png
This was amazing, loved all of it.
Hopefully a lot more Octavia. But that could just be me wanting a ship......
I guess C can't hurt ponies... or at least not unless they hurt him
Haha another awesome chapter. Good show.
Jericho's goal in life is to scar the minds of natives one conversation at a time.
Right now you are down and out, and feeling really crappy......so its probably a good time to kill someone!
........beeeeeeeees........
Octavia seems to not like smalltalk, yo. Good thing ol' Jericho knows how to handle the situation. The end was quite sweet, in a sick way. Jericho nearly gets his balls torn off, and he still wants to see Octavia play. Something tells me that Crushric is either doing something horrible next chapter, or something nice for once! Yea, I still believe he can do such a thing — deal with it!
There's a saying Germans have. "Schadenfreude ist die reinste Freude./Schadenfreude is the purest kind of joy."
Did anyone count how many ponys had some kind of sobstory yet? Well, that's the first one Jericho wanted to hear, so, I guess that means something?
I wonder how Jericho would imagine Cadence. Most likely as some kind of horribly misformed abomination. Would be funny to see what'd happen if he actually saw her. The pink devil!
Dang, no extra loot for slaughtering Crystal Ponies. Will they give some more EXP then?
Y'know, Jericho's pretty hypocritical. Instead of babbling, he should show them how to be a man and steal all the streetsigns of 'Little Equestria'.
You guys really know how to get my murder boner going. That was awesome.
I tried both of these once. ah, good times
Llammas with Hats reference!
webmemes.org(awesome)
That's from Rarity's song from "Sweet and Elite"!
And Octavia was in that episode. Though Octavia doesn't seen as great without Vinyl Scratch by her side. And what do you have against the Mane 6 that you would launch a smear campaign against them? 
You invented a language for the Crystal Empire!
Wow.
TheLordSiffer: The philosophical complexities of "Feeling Pinkie Keen" are too complicated to get into in a mere comment.
3339444 Oh so that's what that was!
This is how cults get founded. No time like the present to start the Grand Mystic Knights of the Waffle Brotherhood.
"Right"
I believe my avant-garde bogtopi designs will start a new fashion trend among the rich and elite fashionistas in Equestria. In fact, I am willing to kill them all in the pursuit of perfecting my designs (the bogtopi or the fashionista wankers; whichever comes first)
There are other way evil dictators can meet their untimely demise...
farm6.staticflickr.com/5518/10261202184_ffdfb8724d_o.jpg
Like, say a pair of black thigh-highs and an ocelot?
I can imagine Jericho all beat up appearing before his horrified superiors in a debriefing after his visit to Equestria. Horn stub bleeding, eye stitches all manky, bleeding from shattered hooves, coat burned off, C's arm sprouting tentacles, ribs broken, switch-blades stuck inside...
One does not simply walk into Equestria. It's pastel pastoral ponies are guarded by more than just magic. There are alicorns there that do not sleep. The Magic of Friendship is ever present. It is a bucolic paradise, filled with love, tolerance, and friendship. The very ponies you meet spontaneously break out in organised song and dance. Not with ten hundred Fallschirmjäger could you hope to do this.
Jericho is definitely going to have Cross Words with the Equestrian board of Tourism when this is all said and done.
Report any occurrence of purple eye-contrails to the nearest gendarme or eye-doctor immediately! Only you can prevent Doughnut Steel Syndrome!
Hmmm...
I have before me a brochure for a gourmet pizza place. I wonder if this will apply as well?
- 2 for 1 special, now through Wednesday
(lame)
- Additional toppings on demand for a small fee.
- Tastes best with our spicy jalapeño cheese
- Special catering for parties of 16 or more.
- Ask about our corporate events. Turn boring meetings into something to remember!
Dear God, it does apply double for a whorehouse...
Poor Êsmiraj...
th08.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2013/059/f/0/the_crystal_chronicles_by_csimadmax-d5wk41z.png
Sigh...
Time to schedule another visit to a the rapist.
It requires a degree in geology and petrology.
That is just wasteful. Better to pour some blood onto a hamster wheel, seal it in a Habtrail, wire it to a little dynamo, and let the blood power your desk lamp.
SCIENCE!
3338789
Honest, it's just how I speak and think. Translates fairly well into a narrative voice, too. And I love thee too, Muffin-related Sovereign.
3339026
Dunno. Because arenas in general sort of have a similar feel?
3339121
I like The Wizard of Oz. And yes, that definition was a mite bit inspired by Tin Man.
And Jericho takes places in a weird post-season-three void where I can easily change anything to have it occur at any point after the third season.
3344202
Siffer and I just have this thing against the Mane Six: we're out to prove that their actions have consequences negative.
And yes, Mijôra, crystal language, is a conlang (constructed language), consists of 4 grammatical genders, some 7 grammatical cases, a complex system of declensions, and has no "a/n" or "the".
3339329
I'm glad you liked it so much! I had fun writing it, I did indeed. To me, the idea of why Jericho's new arm couldn't do struck me as being a big middle finger to Jericho, because I'd never want to make his life an easier. And the more folks actually care to learn about my characters, the more I know I've made them sufficiently interesting, which means I've done a good idea, and that makes me smile.
As for Octavia, well, I just sort of tossed the coin for her to be here. My goal was to have her character itself be interesting, not just because of who she was. I hope I succeeded to that end. But at least Jericho has his moments of being nice.
3339476
Oh dear. I dare wonder: what's with everyone and shipping everypony?
3339718
Mayhap so. The why of it is a bit complicated, but out-of-universe, it boils down to "Fuck Jericho", from the thought How can I make his new arm a disadvantage, not a blessing?
3342636
I'm hoping that "Murder boner" refers to making you really want me to kill somebody.
3345206
Yes, like that.
Or just buy a lot of fish and then staple them to all the doors, locking them Board of Tourism in their building as the smell of rotting fish slowly kills them. (Now there's an idea for the next Stephen King novel)
So many things do—without context. It's rather humorous, in my opinion.
Their business has been booming recently, and they can't figure out why. You got Cards being Cards, all these random mares, and Lightning Dust probably has PTSD from when her face and wing got exploded in that cave.
3346162
Because "Modern Times" and the ticket price didn't give it away
3359415
Yes. That's it. Exactly.
I had to laugh as I tried to look up the word "sygwł" on google to determine what derivative language it was from, and the only google response was your story.
Well played.
I came up with an idea for a story about an earth pony that used runic magic, and was doing some research for archaic spellings for words. Looks like I will need to dig deeper.
3360601
Sygwł is a word of the crystal language, regular fourth declension (meaning "common gender")
The chart for it looks like so:
Case | Singular/Plural | Example | Translation
Nominative | n/a & -ji | Sygwł/Sygwłji | sigil/sigils
Accusative | -vic/-jic | Cares Sygwłjic! | Eat sigils!
Dative | -viç/jiç | Ttha ra Sygwłviç | ’Twas by the sigil
Genitive | -vim/-jim| Sygwłvim | Of the sigil (The sigil's)
Instrumental | -vôm/-wtil | Sygwłwtil | By means of the sigil
Vocative | -vidh/-jidh | Ly Sygwłvidh | O sigil!
Causative | -vitec/-jitec| Sygwłvitec| Because of the sigil
It stems from a corruption of "Sigil" I once heard, "Sigul", wherein that I further corrupted and bastardized into the Crystal language as "Sygwł" (pronounced as [sɪ.guɫ]). Ultimately, it stems from the Latin Sigillum, since the Crystal language borrows a noticeable bit from French and Latin, much like English, which is all due to in-universe reasons.
3359415
Ohhh... nasty!
The only exception would be the caribou working there. She would just simply wait a day or two for the fish to "ripen", then break out the onions, potatoes, and tunnbrod and have lunch with a glass of milk.
Ugh! NEVER trust a food whose prep includes the words "weeks" and "fermenting" without mentioning "ethanol".
Come to think of it, the Crystal Empire is in the far north is it not? I imagine they would have plenty of Equestrian hakarl, lutefisk, and surstromming analogues. What horrifically pungent "delicacies" lie waiting to ambush Jericho's unsuspecting palette?
(Famous last words: Why is the fish-can corrugated and bulging?)
Both paragraphs are spoken by Jericho. It feels like Octavia's response to "...what instrument do you play?" is missing. Right?
Nice chapter
Oh God, mein sides they are burst
Wow, now Jericho has more in common with our OC than most dark magic users out there. We think we might take up drinking now, if just for one more thing to add to that list...
That's freakin awesome. I should really attempt that some time, perhaps after I finish learning French.
Was that from Dr. Who? I wouldn't know, I've never watched the series, but it seems like something that would come from that.
Sorry for double posting, didn't think i'dd catch this one: