//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Starlight Glimmer and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day // by Emperor //------------------------------// The Cutie Vault was buried inside a cave up in the mountain range. During the day, the light of the sun easily reached into the cave enough to illuminate the chamber where the vault had been built. During the night, things changed. Very few realised it, but Cutie Marks, removed from their ponies, glowed in the dark. It’s not as creepy as it sounds, though. The light they give off is actually rather soothing, and the many colours and shapes a Cutie Mark comes in makes it a sight that’s honestly haunting in its beauty. It was this view that the four of us walked into. It was good that the moon was at our backs the whole time. I don’t think I could look at the moon for very long without feeling uncomfortable, now that I knew the outline of the Mare in the Moon wasn’t from lunar maria, but rather from a Princess being banished into the moon. “How many Cutie Marks are there, exactly?” Red Durum asked, looking around at the vault. “Roughly about a hundred,” I said. It had been a while since I had gone over the records and counted exactly how many Unmarked ponies there were. Fillies and colts who had yet to receive their Cutie Mark obviously could not have had a Mark up on here. I did a quick scan and an estimate, and came up to around a hundred again. “A hundred...Cutie Marks, against a monster that’s absorbed the magic of millions?" Night Glider asked. “How does that even begin to come close to a fair match-up?” “Tirek is a centaur. I don’t believe I mentioned that before, but just so you are aware. From what we understand, he absorbs the raw magic of others, but is incredibly wasteful. Princess Twilight Sparkle took on the magic of all four Alicorn Princesses, and was able to match up against Tirek, even after he stole the magic of every other pony in Equestria, and the Spirit of Chaos, Discord, as well,” Red Durum answered. “Even though centaurs are related to ponies, they are further apart than ponies are to zebras and donkeys. We as changelings can trace our common biological line to equines, and for us, taking emotion off of those three species is more fruitful than gryphons or minotaurs. We believe that it is again the same concept here: Tirek is absorbing unlike magic, and so it is an inefficient process.” Red Durum paused for a second. He added, “Also, he is just taking the raw magic of others. He does not seem to be able to take the talents of others. It was he who raised the moon and lowered the sun just now, but it was clumsy.” “That’s a good thing,” I said. “Someone with that many talents would be talented at virtually everything, unless he was destroyed from the inside out by Cutie Pox first.” Left unspoken was the worry that I might be destroyed by Cutie Pox in this mad scheme of ours. “Why did you ask us to come up here, anyways, Starlight Glimmer?” Night Glider asked. “No offense to Red, but you’re still not fully trustworthy,” I said. “None taken.” I breathed a sigh of relief at that, and carried on. “But it’s more than just that. I’m not sure this plan will actually work, and so I wanted more than one pony, person, to be on-hoof here in the case something did go wrong. And, well...I don’t have time, I don’t think, to talk to every pony in town. But before I try anything, I, I,” I stuttered, tripping over my words. Double Diamond and Night Glider had been horrified at what Red Durum had said. I knew they were still disgusted. We had settled into a state of mutual agreement to leave the actual plan unsaid, but now it was time to force it out into the open again. “I wanted to get permission from at least a few ponies to absorb his and her Cutie Marks.” There was silence again, my words lingering in the stale air of the Cutie Vault. Nobody seemed to want to break the silence first. How could they, when the subject matter was still something so antithetical to all common decency? Those who had come to the village gave up their Cutie Mark, a part of their personal identity, to fit in with one another and follow an ideology we hoped would help us find a place in this world. Letting another pony ‘digest’ your Cutie Mark, however, was a hoofstep beyond the pale. Double Diamond was the one who chose to break the silence. “When you first found me two years ago, having torn my fetlock, I listened to you and your life’s story as I recovered. It wasn’t from some romance cliche where I fell in love with my caretaker that I found genuine interest in your ideals, Starlight. I honestly, truly believed you had something, and that was why I joined you. I haven’t regretted it to this day. I feel like I’ve been betrayed, seeing those marks on your thighs, even as I rationally understand that there’s a good reason for it.” I knew Double Diamond was leading up to something. Regardless, his last line left me heartbroken. What would he say if he knew that I never removed my Cutie Mark in the first place, and that I’ve been faking it for these last two years? If I got out of this, I would have to think of something to make certain he never found out. “But these are trying times. You are the one here who has been studying magic since her fillyhood. Magic is your special talent, and you gave that up to join in our revolution. If anypony here can win against this Tirek, it’ll be you.” Night Glider took her chance to speak. “I still think this is still a terrible idea, Starlight Glimmer,” she admitted. “But I don’t see any other way to win, if the deck is as truly stacked against us as Red Durum claims it is. A monster who’s stolen the magic of the rest of Equestria, who survived imprisonment in Tartarus, and, oh yes, he can steal magic? Brrr,” she said, shivering. ”Do what has to be done, Starlight Glimmer. That’s all I can ask of you. Don’t worry, I know what you’re feeling. You feel like you would be a monster to take everypony else’s Cutie Mark, right? Take mine, take Double Diamond’s first. Know that at least we gave you our permission.” “I know I’m not a pony, not really,” Red Durum spoke again at last. “But I truly did enjoy living in your village, and I hope you’ll let me continue to live here again if this situation can be resolved without more bloodshed.” “I would be glad to continue having you live here,” I spoke up quickly. “However, there will need to be some precautions taken. Some ponies here lived through the Canterlot invasion, , and we’ll still need to figure out what exactly you can and can’t do, and who should know that you’re a changeling. But I think you can continue living here.” “I have no problem,” Double Diamond said. Night Glider was still a little bit skittish, but she nodded as well. “You haven’t caused any problems, so far. Just...just, give me a little bit of time, alright?” Red Durum exhaled, before hanging his head down low . He let out a soft laugh that was almost a chuckle. “Thank you, heh,” he said, looking back up with a smile. “I’m glad for that. But, I might not be a pony, and I don’t have any Cutie Mark that I can let you absorb. But changelings don’t just change, we hide. It’s a crucial part of our racial identity. I’ve given you that part of my identity to carry around now, the knowledge that I’m a changeling. I don’t know whether you can win or not, Starlight, but I trust you to try your best.” I wrinkled my snout. My best. Somehow, it had been decided that I was the one to face Tirek. But was I truly capable of fighting a godbeast? I didn’t think so. The changeling among us seemed to notice my apprehension and doubts, and Red Durum continued, “It is alright, Starlight. You either win, or you do not. Feeling doubts will not change the situation.” Night Glider just brought her hoof up to her forehead. “The first thing I’m going to do with you, Red, is teach you how to make better motivational speeches." “Enough,” Double Diamond said, and he turned to me. “Starlight, I know you must be feeling nervous. Would you like me to come along with you?” I shook my head, even as I bit the inside of my cheek. It would be nice to have somepony along, but I had read enough genre fiction to know how something like this would go. Having someone who was of only average strength would be a liability as I tried to protect him from any fallout from a magical attack. That would simply not do. “No,” I said, lifting the Staff of Sameness into the air with my magic. “L-let’s do this.” Using my magic again, I opened one of the doors of the vault. Poking inside with the Staff of Sameness, I dragged out a Cutie Mark. The Mark was that of three six-sided snowflakes, each flake being a uniform solid blue colour. “Go for it,” said Double Diamond, the former owner of that Cutie Mark. I swallowed. Using the Staff of Sameness was visually tricky. The Staff of Sameness was actually useless, but nopony except for me knew that. However, I had to keep up the illusion that it was in fact what did the Unmarking, and so I used a minor cantrip to continue giving it a blue glow. With the Staff of Sameness, I dragged Double Diamond’s Cutie Mark up to me. I didn’t even know how I was supposed to go about this. Should I press it up against my current Cutie Mark, or should I try something else? I shrugged caution to the wind. Opening wide, I stuffed it in my mouth. The Mark had no texture and no taste, but my body instinctively swallowed it anyways. The Staff of Sameness dropped to the ground, just as I bent onto my front knees. The sensation of the Mark being absorbed into my body...it felt strange. A sudden chill swept through my body. I felt as if winter had come early and I had been stuck outside, buried in a pile of snow. “Starlight, are you alright?” Red Durum asked as he moved around to sit in front of me. I barely nodded, before the next sensation hit. I felt full, stuffed, bloated, as if I had ate, and ate, and ate until I could eat no more, got up and walked around, came back and ate some more, then drank and drank until I was bursting. It was an intensely uncomfortable sensation that trotted a fine line between extreme discomfort and outright pain, and I could feel my eyes watering, even as my teeth shook in my jaw. The moment passed. I may have lacked grace, but I was able to push myself up onto my hooves. That unsettling feeling of a bulging stomach passed, but I kept my eyes closed. I took notice of my breathing. My mouth was hanging wide open, panting in deep breaths. It wasn’t too rapid, however, and I slowly resumed a normal breathing pattern. I could feel the magic in the cavern better than I had ever before. I felt like I needed to go outside, feel the snow crunching underneath my hooves, and bask in the cool night air. Was this Double Diamond’s talent, relating to his love for all things wintry? Was it a gift, or was it a curse, seeking to push my hoof, much like how the Cutie Pox I had once read up on could drive its victim to insanity? I didn’t feel like myself anymore. No matter. This was the only way. Taking my time would help me to assimilate each Cutie Mark one at a time, and hopefully avoid any complications. But I could not take forever. It was not just that Tirek might turn to outright killing ponies and destroying everything in his path, if he hadn’t already. It was that with every Cutie Mark I took in, I might become more and more a shining star in the distance, attracting his attention. I could feel it. My body was practically humming with power, far more than I had ever possessed in my life, and that was with just one extra Cutie Mark. I opened my eyes. “I’m alright, I’m alright. A little disoriented, but otherwise fine. I don’t feel bad or anything. Let’s give it a minute to see if anything else happens, and then we’ll move on to Night Glider’s Mark.” I narrowed my eyes. I had to do this quickly, before I caught Tirek’s attention. It got easier after the first Cutie Mark. Oh Zacherle, I wish it hadn’t. “How’s about now, Starlight?” Double Diamond asked. It was a question he had repeated after the first few Cutie Marks, and then stopped asking until now. The only thing that had changed was that I now had taken in the very last Cutie Mark in the Vault. I trembled. My very being practically thrummed. “I had no idea a pony was capable of holding this much power,” I whispered. I felt as if taking a single step forward would bring the cave down upon us, my hoof capable of causing earthquakes with a mere tap against the ground. I grit my teeth, forcing the pure magic in my body to still, to consolidate in on itself and be calm. “You’re not trembling as hard as you were before,” Red Durum observed. “I could feel the magic coming off of you. It felt like air currents, only warmer and more pleasant. Oh, yes,” he shivered in ecstasy. “Like love, only purer than that. Whatever you did just now though has tempered it. I can still feel the magic, but it’s as if it’s been tamed.” “So, what now?” Night Glider asked. “You go and fight Tirek?” “No, not yet,” I said, looking over at Red Durum. “Red, I realised something earlier when I was absorbing their Cutie Marks. We can’t stay here and wait for you to teach me anything.” “Huh? Why not?” He asked. I frowned. It was a good thing I had brought in Double Diamond and Night Glider. Each one of us had missed vital pieces of information throughout the night, and each of us had covered for one another’s deficiencies in planning. Such as was currently the case. “Tirek didn’t come here because nopony had a Cutie Mark active, correct? There might only be one pony now, but that one pony has a hundred Cutie Marks combined. Whatever sense of magical detection that Tirek has, won’t he tell that there’s something going on here?” Red looked dumbstruck for several seconds, before he then flicked out his tongue. He reacted quickly. “Starlight! We have to go, now! Before Tirek comes and finds us!” Did he just-no, save that for later, I thought. No doubt he had tasted my emotions, and found them like a roaring furnace compared to a mere heater prior. I spared a few seconds, however, turning around to face Double Diamond and Night Glider. “I don’t know if I’ll be ever coming back,” I quickly told them, before hoofing the Staff of Sameness to Night Glider. “If I do, we’ll have to set up a new protocol with the Staff of Sameness and the Cutie Vault. It was too easy to absorb those Cutie Marks. Far too easy.” I shuddered. “Come back,” Double Diamond said. I rolled my eyes, despite the situation. “Oh, Diamond,” I said in a lightly teasing voice. “Even now, you can’t say a romantic line to save your life.” I leaned forward and gave him a brief, chaste kiss. I broke the kiss, but didn’t move away, peering into his stunned eyes. “Take care,” I whispered before finally breaking away. I delighted in the goofy smile on his face for a second, before turning around to depart the cave. Just in time, because Red Durum looked like he was about to have a meltdown if I had delayed one second longer. We made good pace that first hour after we left the village. At first, I thought we would have to walk. Red had wings, being a changeling, but I didn’t. However, in a eureka moment, shortly after getting out of the village, I cast a spell to levitate myself. “Self-levitation? Unicorns can actually do that?” Red Durum asked, gobsmacked. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Or at least, I don’t think any other unicorn can.” I looked at the ground with trepidation. I was powerful enough now that I could ignore the laws of gravity, but what if my magic gave out on me in mid-air? If I hit the ground with enough force, would I go splat, or did the absorption of the Cutie Marks give me so much magical strength that I was protected from even that? I brushed those thoughts aside. In other circumstances, they would be meaningful. However, the more power I possessed, the less actual value I seemed to place on my life. It was worrisome: the pure magic that filled me was magnitudes above anything I had ever operated with in my life. Even the magical surges I had experienced as a filly were still a drop in the pool to what I had now. “Red, I can’t really trust you given who and what you are,” I said as we flew. “But I need you, now more than ever.” “What do you mean?” He asked. “This is something entirely uncharted, what I’m doing right now,” I explained. “It could be that maybe the magic will get the better of me, and I go insane, or something. I need you to be able to tell if I’m losing it, and if I am, direct me at Tirek and not at anything else.” “I can do that, I suppose,” he said hesitatingly. It was clear that Red had been thrown into the frying pan as well. He didn’t seem equipped one bit to help a pony absorb the magic of a hundred other ponies and then go off and fight a super-charged magical tyrant from a thousand years ago. I was certain that he would have been floundering if not for the fact he was still receiving telepathic messages from his Queen. “Also, drop the disguise.” It was that request of mine that actually made him balk. “No,” he said quietly. I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time to put up with this now. Thankfully for both of our sanities, I came up with a solution that would still work for both of us. “Then change into a pegasus,” I told him. “We can at least move quicker if we’re going over the ground instead of running along the ground.” “Oh, ok, I see. Yeah, I can do that,” Red said. It was a little fascinating, honestly, to see him transform, even if it was a little bit of a letdown. All that happened was Red was briefly enveloped in a cloak of green fire, and when it dispersed, he now had wings. He hadn’t changed one bit of the rest of his identity. I would have thought he might have to revert to a changeling form first, but it appeared that that was not the case. We didn’t share words after that, moving away from Our Town towards the train station, and then we continued on past the train station. The air was cool on our coats, and the moonlight, which I could now see had the slightest tint of purple I swore wasn’t there before, illuminated the vast landscape before us. However, the absolute quiet that permeated the world at large was disconcerting. I was thankful I had Red Durum next to me. Even his moderate breathing made for a helpful distraction. Then I stopped. “What are you doing, Starlight?” Red Durum asked. He had briefly flown past me before halting his momentum, then turning around to come back. “You’re still connected to your hive, right?” I asked. He wrinkled his snout, apparently unwilling to concede too much information, but then nodded. “Good, good,” I said. “Tell me, does your hive know where Tirek is right now?” I asked. “He went to Vanhoover, on the West Coast,” Red Durum slowly said, uncertain as to why I wanted to know, but trusting I had a reason. “So he’s not in Canterlot, that’s even better” I said. “Canterlot is the centre of the Equestrian landmass. However, from Vanhoover, if he wanted to get to the East Coast, he first has to get back to Canterlot, and then travel past that.” “Yes, that’s true,” Red Durum said, admitting to the logic but still not seeing my point. “Red Durum, do you trust me?” He shook his head. “Not really.” “But do you think I’m really the only one with a chance to stop Tirek?” The changeling-cum-Earth pony-cum Pegasus nodded this time. “What are you trying to get at here?” He asked. “I’m doped up on so much magic now that going back to like I was before makes me pained just thinking about it,” I admitted. “However, I think I still have enough control that I can teleport, bringing someone with me. And with the amount of magic that I have now, I believe I can teleport across the entire continent.” Red’s green eyes showed visible shock now. “Red, this is important to know. Did Tirek ever teleport?” He tilted his head over, ear pointed to the side, almost as if he was receiving a radio broadcast. Given what he was, he probably was receiving a broadcast of the telepathic kind. After several seconds, he tilted his head back and said, “No, he did not. What are you thinking, Starlight?” “I’m thinking that if I cast any magic of any sort that’s even slightly powerful, Tirek will follow it,” I said. “So what we’ll do is give him a couple of decoy targets. First, teleport to Canterlot. Then, teleport from Canterlot to somewhere in the deep south. Tirek will think there’s a powerful magical burst here, and another powerful magical burst in Canterlot. He’ll investigate in Canterlot first, before coming up here, all while you and I are on the other end of Equestria. That should give us some time for you to teach me the principles of your emotion-stealing magic.” “I think you’re playing a dangerous game,” Red warned me, before sighing. “However, in the circumstances, that’s a better plan than any I’ve thought of so far. Just give me a warning before you teleport, OK?” I nodded, then moved forward. I had to contain my disgust at touching him, and felt the need to explain my disgust. “Sorry. I just, I’m a little uncomfortable still. You’ll have to give me some time to get used to the idea.” “That’s alright,” Red said, but he clearly had felt my disgust, shifting slightly as I held him in my hooves. “Here goes,” I announced. Teleportation was an odd spell. Many unicorns claimed it to be the most difficult spell a magician could master. In actuality, that was so far from the truth it could have made me cry. Teleportation was merely the last spell many unicorns bothered to master. In their minds, they thought ‘I can now move from place to place through no effort but for casting a spell, why should I bother learning anything more?’. The amount of potential that had been wasted by that lazy attitude was horrifying, not to mention the amount of unicorns who didn’t even bother trying, thinking that because their ‘special talent’ was mundane, they didn’t even need to bother. My unicorns in Our Town weren’t like that, couldn’t be like that. No longer held down by such a false dichotomy as their Cutie Marks, they could learn whatever they set their minds and hearts to, just like the pegasi and Earth ponies. I assigned myself and my side-along passenger a destination, set in a couple of safeguards to make sure the magic would not backfire on me, and then cast. In my youth, I once had a spell of a few weeks where I decided to be a daredevil. It ended when I took on a dare to eat a gallon of ice cream in under fifteen minutes, which was definitely not a smart idea. In that time period, however, I sought out some cheap thrills. One of the things I did was to hire a pegasus to carry me up several hundred feet. He then divebombed towards the earth, with me still in his grip, before turning around at the last possible moment. It wasn’t something I cared to do twice, but that memory of being weightless, as the ground reached up to swallow me, was something that had always stuck with me. Perhaps it was because that was exactly what teleportation felt like. This time, however, the effect of the spell was several times greater than I had ever felt it, and even though I landed on my hooves, I wobbled around where I stood, my body feeling like it was already sprawled out across the grass and confused that it wasn’t. Not for the first time, I was glad that I barely had anything to eat that day. “Urg, I don’t feel so good,” said a soft voice from aside me. I went and comforted Red, whose disorientation was showing in his face. He was a changeling, but I knew all too well what the spell effects felt like not to comfort him. In the meantime, I looked around me at what was supposed to be Canterlot. The lights were still on, but they were dimmer than normal, with some lights not on at all, and other lights still as bright as I recalled them being the last time I had visited Canterlot, many years ago. Perhaps some of the lights were operating on electricity that wasn’t magically generated? That was the best guess I could make. It wasn’t as if I was going to stand around and investigate. I had chosen the garden maze in the Castle grounds. I knew that it was shut off to tourists at night so, barring them having changed the hours since I was last here, it should have been otherwise abandoned with nopony to witness us. Thankfully, it appeared that plan had gone off without a hitch. “Are you OK, Red?” I asked the pegasus. “If you need it, I can give you a few minutes.” “Yes, please,” he said, sitting down and taking some breaths. My analytical mind seized upon this. Was he being affected so poorly because he wasn’t used to teleporting? Or perhaps it was something about his changeling anatomy that didn’t work well with pony magic? Or maybe my magic was so overwhelmingly powerful that, even as it was perhaps a few times stronger in its effect to me, it was many, many times stronger for him? I shook my head. I didn’t have time for that. I was going to have to learn a spell after the next time we hopped. Red Durum cycled through a breathing exercise that I didn’t recognise, even after having taught several of them to my ponies in Our Town, and at last was able to stand up again on his own four hooves. “I’m good to go again,” he said. “Alright,” I said, wrapping him up close to me again. Letting my magic go free, I cast my teleportation spell again. It was noticeably darker out in the second spot we landed, touching down on the shortgrass of the Equestrian southeast then the soft, trimmed lawn grass of the Royal Sisters’ garden area. That was to be expected, given we were no longer in the metropolitan centre of Equestria. Dodge Junction to the south was only a fraction the size of Canterlot, with a fraction of the artificial lighting. Red was quicker to recover this time, perhaps getting slightly used to teleportation after the first ordeal. It still took him a few minutes, but he finally managed to get up. “Where are we?” He asked, examining his surroundings. “Dodge Junction, famous for its vast cherry orchards,” I explained, swinging my upper limbs around me and motioning to the many cherry trees. “Close to the Badlands, where rumour has it is where the changelings live.” Red gave me an odd look, before saying, “I can neither confirm nor deny that rumour.” I snarled. “I don’t care right now!” I shouted, before a sudden migraine overtook me. “Look, I don’t care about that. I just took us across the continent in long-jump teleportation spells that are supposed to be impossible for that length of distance. I’m a little short-tempered right now, so bear with me. Tell your hive to keep an eye on Tirek, make sure he doesn’t suddenly have teleportation skills of his own and shows up here, or that he somehow decides to change course and come our way. Right now, I have a spell to learn, don’t I?” “Yes, you do,” Red agreed, seemingly perturbed by my outburst. I suppose he may have been thinking back to what I said earlier, about my needing him to watch out for me undergoing any odd personality shifts that may have been fuelled by my intake of power. The last thing I needed was to defeat Tirek, only to fall to my own megalomania. “We’re putting a lot of trust in you, Starlight Glimmer, telling you about the first principles of how this spell works,” he said. “We think you can reverse-engineer it, and hope you don’t turn it back on us later. So now, please listen carefully.” I sat down on my haunches. I hoped this wasn’t going to end up being one long, long night.