//------------------------------// // The Echoes // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS122 The painful white-out faded as my poor, abused eye recovered from the overload. As things came back into that flat, distorted focus which was all I could coax out of monocular vision, I observed several things. Firstly, that the intact summoning-circle was glowing a deep cornflower blue, every line lit up from inside, casting upwards in a vertical wall and through the high ceiling of the great hall. I fancied that it might continue until terminated by its intersection with the roof of the world itself, the crystal sphere. Secondly, that the dozen or so ponies in the great hall but outside of the glowing circle were themselves glowing, unresponsive, and wide-eyed, their thestraled eyes like slit-pupiled lamps lighting a dark and cold Tartarus. Thirdly, that the rays of the weak late-fall sun which should have been illuminated the hall from its high windows were no-where to be seen, and that there was an unseasonable darkness to be so lit by the glowing statues of which my brethren were making such a wonderful impression thereof. And, fourthly, unsettlingly, in the unnatural darkness, several of the insensate were casting strange shadows behind their shining selves, outlines and figures. Afterimages. Transparent, some translucent, more impressions than solid phantasms, and none really intact or active. The Princess, her blue-feathered wings rampant, shouting something imperiously, proud and arrogant. The Nightmare, long-toothed and striking like a snake at something unseen, more a blur than a figure. The Nightmare again, horn high, nose in the air, her helm holding back her flowing night-sky mane, glaring possessively down at something else, unseen. The Princess, much younger, cringing between her hooves at something above her, half-frightened, half-shameful. The Nightmare, turning a pirouette upon her hooves, her bat-wings cupping the air as she grinned in unnerving delight. The Princess, bowing with such grace as only royalty can offer, greeting some unseen petitioner or delegation of note. More and more of the dozen’s shadows lengthened into their own images of the Spirit, and each shadow grew stronger, more defined, more active as I stood and watched. The Spirit herself, our Spirit, the one I had been conversing with before the incident, spun around in alarm and confusion. “WHAT FELL WITCHERY IS THIS? Am I in a hall of mirrors, cast by a clever warlock?” “Perhaps, Mistress,” I granted her. “But given the timing, I suspect something has happened in the field. Maybe they caught the lich? Odd things happened the last few times we put down one of those monstrosities.” I gestured at my remaining, thestral eye. “Nothing quite this odd, I will admit.” The Spirit was exchanging glares with one of her after-images, Nightmare snarling at frozen Nightmare. Then a filly fell out of one of the phantom Lunas, bent in a perpetual bow facing away from us, smiling sweetly at a wall. Cherie tumbled until she landed right-side up, and looked around with a justifiably alarmed look upon her face. Then she saw me. “Monsieur! I found you! Strange things ahoof in Dance Hall!” She chirped as she charged me, clearly looking to grab onto somepony solid and responsive. Then she hit the circle, and it rang like a bell. She fell back upon her haunches, and shook her head. Dragging behind her like a second tail was a fan of phantasmic after-images, warping strangely like a kaleidoscope made of portal-shards and dreamstuff. “Owch! Why are you trapped in that? Monsieur, everypony’s bein’ weird! Is that the real Princess in there with you?” “As real as I get, little thestral. Although today’s discussion seems largely anchored by accusations and insinuations that I am less real than I would generally prefer, all things being equal. Having one’s own subjects tell oneself that you are a figment of their overactive imaginations can be rather lowering, don’t you think?” The filly looked up at her Princess through the glowing circle-wall, and chirped, “I dunno what that means! You seem real, er, real-er, I guess? Talking is good! The echoes don’t talk, mostly.” “Cherie,” I said carefully, “What’s going on? Where have you been? We’ve had ponies looking for you.” “Oh, I was out with the strike force. We got her! Got her good, sans blague. I helped! A little. Some of the corporals were tellin’ me I did good, when I heard the Princess here callin’ me, so I came back. And this!” she looked around at the weird frozen tableau, frowning. “Nothin’ but echoes! No Princess, just ponies not talking, and echoes of the Princess not talkin’ either. Boring!” The ‘echoes’, as Cherie called them, were now moving. Walking, as if in a daze, they approached us. Or rather, they approached the kaleidoscopic smear behind Cherie. They stared, fixated, at the swirling image. “Cherie,” I said, choking. “Try and see if you can cross the circle again. Very, very carefully.” As she hoofed the circle, as substantial to her as if it were a plaster wall, the first of the echoes reached her ‘tail’, and was drawn into the swirl like a stream falling over rapids. I could swear the filly was taller than she had been last week, her legs longer and spindlier than the last time I had seen her. “Cherie, did you feel that?” “Feel what?” She turned around to follow my line of sight, and saw the echoes staring at her. “Eep!” She plastered herself against the circle-wall, her wings spread out against the curve of the magic. “Monsieur, I don’ like this!” I reached out, dazed myself, and drawing my hoof through the sawdust and the ink and the blood, I broke the circle. Blackness swirled past the filly and myself, as echoes of the Spirit rushed before us like a torrent, Cherie’s own kaleidoscope erupting like a rain of shards. Everything spun past us, and into the heart of the Captain’s Spirit. The Nightmare bellowed like the end of the world, as she took in the myriad fragments of herself. “Monsieur, what did you do? What did you do?” shouted the little filly, crying. “I undid a mistake, I think. I hope. You have any idea what is going on here?” “No, not a one! Why’s everypony being so weird today! Can’t anything SLOW DOWN AND MAKE SENSE?” I started laughing madly, doing my best to keep the little thestral from being blown off her hooves by the rushing winds and magical discharges. “Welcome to adolescence, poulische! Nothing ever makes sense!” And then the Spirit spoke, with a vast and terrible voice larger than the great hall could hold, something I heard more in my bones than in my poor, overwhelmed ears. I couldn’t be certain of the actual words, given the aural mis-match, but from the aftermath and the results, I think it must have been something along the lines of “Pardon us, we must now go find something to destroy. White Rose badge, right?” Because that is what happened. She walked through the south wall of the hall, and by that I mean she broke the wall, and everything between her and the Baneway. Testimony taken afterwards generally agreed, that she followed that new road until she reached the gates of Le Coppice. At those gates, she took to her wings, and flew over the unoffending walled town without laying waste to it. Her great hoof-marks can be seen, burnt into the metaling, the whole length of the Baneway. The bridge at Trollbridge was nearly shattered by her passage. They tell me she landed once again in the heart of the White Rose defensive bastions, on the northern flanks of their grand army's permanent fortifications. She left a trail of fire and destruction through six great earthworks and their accompanying palisades and associated defenses. The White Rose lost fewer ponies than you’d expect given the total devastation, but they’d long since learned to not keep full garrisons in the front lines, choosing rather to reinforce as needed; it kept sudden flare-based attacks like that of the Spirit from wiping out entire units in the first rush. The Imperials were not in the least prepared to assault through a sudden obliteration of their opposing numbers, not on a damp and cold late autumn afternoon. Extended skirmishing eventually broke out in the shattered ruins, and as many ponies were lost in the unsettled encounter-battle fighting as were destroyed with their fortifications by our Nightmare. She evaporated once her fury was spent. The Company’s losses consisted of one older earth pony stallion in the carters named Cold Oats, and an equally elderly mule. Both Cold Oats and Mad Jack suffered apparent aneurysms from the psychic stress of the Marklaird feedback. From all accounts, only ponies within the walls of the greater Dance Hall complex were part of the echoing effect. None of the ponies on detached duty in Pepin City, the Aerie, on patrol or with the cavern strike force showed any symptoms. The ones within the walls were as described previously of those inside the great hall. No unsworn ponies were affected, none that we could find. Excepting the little Equestrian spy. She hadn’t been sworn to the pikestaff, and yet, she suffered lost-time amnesia similar to those who had been so sworn, and unlike some of our civilian employees and Mondovan witnesses, she had no stories of Company ponies gone unresponsive and alarmingly glowy-eyed, or shadow-imagoes of the Princess or the Nightmare. A jenny from Mondovi had been delivering supplies to the kitchen when the echoes began. Cup Cake's Nightmare had caused that poor delivery-donkey to soil herself. The jenny wouldn't describe it in detail, insisting only that I was wasting time that could be more profitably spent drinking herself insensate.