Of all the things I have ever seen, all the monsters and horrors I have seen and experienced, not one of them had frightened me. They are terrifying beasts, horrifying monsters, things that scar the soul, but not one scared me.
I was afraid of something else that made them all seem like nothing.
I was always aware of it, but most often, I would hide it from myself. Pretend that it wasn’t there, and everything was fine.
Even when it wasn’t. It was never fine, and I had only lied to myself for a very long time.
I first became aware of it when I was young. In fact, I was just six years old, living with my parents and family in my home.
My land was harsh, and my father decided that we had to learn to kill on our own. So, once we were old enough, he would take us out to the rabbit hutch and have us kill one. We got a choice between our hands and a knife.
When my turn came, I chose the knife with trembling hands. Reasoning that it would be faster for the rabbit. And for me.
My heart beat hard and fast as I stared at it. Holding the knife, trembling in place much like the rabbit was. But I calmed watching the rabbit tremble.
I killed it easily and quickly. And felt its blood spray on my hand.
I liked the feel of that.
Father congratulated me, and it all seemed normal, but I wanted something more. I didn’t have the words for it, but I plotted for it.
That night, I stayed up, and as my family slept, I escaped back outside. With the knife.
I went to the rabbit hutch, and chose three rabbits. I spent hours outside, and came in happy and feeling… fulfilled.
By chance, I glanced to my left. Where my mother’s old mirror was kept. Mirrors were very rare in my old home, difficult to make and easy to break, but she had one. I still have it, back in my hut.
And I saw myself.
I saw myself grinning from ear to ear.
I saw myself happier than I had ever been.
I saw myself wearing a bloody dress, and holding a bloody dagger in a hand soaked in blood.
I saw the mark where I had wiped the rabbit’s blood onto my face. I remembered what I had done and smiled more at my reflection.
I reached up and traced the lines of blood on my cheek. I looked down at the bloody dagger, and my hand, and my dress. I walked closer to the mirror, to see myself better in the dim light of the moon.
I looked back at the mirror, and saw a demon smiling back.
I had never been more afraid of anything then right then. I was terrified to the point of speechlessness. Unable to make a sound as I ran to clean myself, hide the rabbits, bury the knife and my dress.
I was terrified by myself. By what I had done so happily and easily.
And nothing ever held any true fear for me ever again.
I denied myself. I denied that I was that person I saw that night. My whole life was running from myself. I lied, and said that I didn’t like things to be hurt. I lied, and said that I wanted to save and help. I lied, and said I was something other than what I was.
I ran from home two years later to become a hag. To find something to make the urges to kill and harm stop.
As a young hag, they didn’t leave me. When I met my love, I didn’t run because of anything good.
I ran because I was dreaming of killing him. Even the discipline of a hag and the love I felt was not enough to quell those feelings.
I bargained with Uwe that night. Take this from me I begged. Take me from myself, and keep it far away. Any price, to not be myself. I demanded, argued, fought. I nearly broke the order with my desperation.
And yet, Uwe spared me that death, and agreed, and took my fate. He shaped my life for decades, but the urge was gone, and I grew strong. I was good, and it was easy. The urge was gone.
When Discord stole my fate back, that urge came with it, but it was weak and ignorable. It grew, but I controlled it.
It whispered in my dreams, but I denied it. I refused to hear it, to acknowledge it in any way, and the rare time when it was impossible to ignore, I ran from it.
But the dark magic in me fueled it. Made it stronger, and louder, and harder to ignore. I began dreaming of violence again, and delighting in it.
And when the changelings had attacked in Eaglemount… I had struck in defense of others and myself. But…
I had done so in sheer joy. The feel of the fight, of killing and hurting filled me. When they wrapped me in a cocoon, my dreams had not been of a peaceful life.
I had been standing in a fire I had lit, and was hurting and killing. And nothing could ever be better. I exalted in the dark magic, and abused it, demanding more and more from it without end.
I wanted the power to hurt more, and more easily.
I wanted to make things bleed. To make them suffer. Changeling, pony griffon, friend, enemy, it didn’t matter.
I wanted to hurt them and kill them.
My fear came true.
And I became who I had once been. I wielded dark magic as if I was born to use it, and killed. I ripped out of my cocoon and killed. They came at me in swarms, and I killed. I made it painful. I tore them apart. I left them to bleed out, I painted the walls and myself with their blood.
It was warm, and wonderful. So wonderful. The best feeling was the final beat of a heart and the hot blood as it sprayed from a stump where a leg once was.
I delighted in it. The dark magic freeing me from my false self. It burned away my inhibitions, dulled my fear.
And anything that used to be Hag was left dead or helpless.
Swift managed to escape me. He had tried to stop me, but he couldn’t.
I was barely able to find some compassion, and let him go. A tiny, tiny bit of something not evil was still in me, and it was able to make me hesitate, and allow him escape.
But it was helpless. I had thought I was strong. I was wrong.
I was only blinding myself. I wasn’t fighting the evil.
I was fighting myself. There was nothing stopping me but my own lies to myself. I was too old to be able to trick myself anymore.
And the moment that was clear, I was free to become what I truly was.
A monster and a nightmare. A blight on the world.
It was what I was.
And I loved it.
I reached the throne room when I had run out of changelings. It was sealed tight, with much magic. It was nothing to stop me.
But looking at it, I paused. Something was calling to me, and I was curious.
I closed my eyes, and answered that call, sending my spirit to find it. In a black void, I saw the crystal tree, its light weak.
I saw Rose next to it, confused and looking around herself.
I didn’t approach. For a moment, I was lying to myself again, and I didn’t want her to see me.
I called out, “Rose?”
“Grandmother!” she said, her voice happy, but heavy with sorrow of some kind. I could see that pain she held.
“Grandmother, where are we?” she asked, trying to see me.
I didn’t respond for a moment. I knew what the tree was trying to do.
It was trying to stop me. Luring me to it, in a desperate hope to trap me. Rose was hurt, and that pain was making me happy and I was hating that it was making me happy. But it wasn’t enough to stop me.
I stepped forward, and Rose gasped and backed away from me as I glared at the tree.
It wasn’t really there. Just a vague image of power, projected into that ethereal void. I threatened it, and saw it flicker, and then I looked at Rose.
Who was staring at me, terrified.
“…Grandmother, what happened!?” she asked, taking a step toward me. “You… you look…”
“Rose. Stop.”
“Grandmother?”
“I… Stop. This is no longer binding to me. Nothing is.”
“What do you mean? Why are your eyes red? Why are you black? Why are you… looking at me like that?”
“I’ve lied for far too long.”
“Grandmother?” she asked, quailing. I saw her pain worsen, and I suspected that she had been lied to recently. Something she believed in had betrayed her.
And I was going to be the second.
“My entire life was just a lie Rose. I’ve helped, and worked to help, and cured. I felt happiness when I helped, I eased pain with gladness. I strived to be something good.”
“But I was just fooling everything. Even myself.”
“My joy is in the pain I inflict. My happiness is in seeing the death I cause. My cause is to take things apart and burn them. I was born to be this, this destroyer.”
“But when I was young, I was too afraid, and ran from myself. I hid it, buried it, built a life of lies. I became Hag, but Hag was never born.”
“She was made.”
Rose stared in horror, but somehow found strength.
“It can’t be! I saw you! I saw… I saw grandmother fight so hard!”
“No lie can do that!”
“A lie of decades. A lie given life by the sheer age of itself. Hag is nothing more than a mask I wore; a life of lies.”
I focused, and the dark power made it easy. My pony form burnt away and I stood again as a human. Rose gaped and looked up as I grew, and I grinned at her, my dress and shawl flapping in my power.
“I am Emeline Frostburn. I am the destruction of all. I have that power, that talent. That urge. The urge to burn, to hurt, to kill. To shatter what is, and laugh as it all dies by my hands.”
“I will never be Hag ever again. She is gone, and never was, and will never return.”
Rose stared, her eyes teary, immobile in shock. I shook my head.
“I am going.” I told her, and turned to leave.
“NO!”
I stopped. And then looked back.
Rose was crying, but she was shining. The tree was giving her its power, and she was holding it close to her. Her anger and grief not corrupting it as it should have, but rather tempering it.
Strengthening it.
“Grandmother is there! You are just some monster! You are the lie!”
“I am the true Emeline. Cease that useless prattle.”
“Never.” she growled. “Grandmother! Fight her! Get back up!”
“Stop it!” I snapped, growing mad. I flicked my hand, intending to simply brush her away from me.
She resisted the dark wave, and struck back. I grunted as her power stabbed at me.
She was strong. Very, very strong. A natural talent, and the tree’s might behind her.
“Let her go!”
“There is nothing left!” I yelled, and struck back. She hissed as I cut at her, but she healed in moments and glared. I glared back.
She screamed and charged at me, and I caught her, her light meeting my darkness. She pushed, and I held her, but only just.
We both struck at the other, both matching each other. We fought at that standstill for some time, screaming in anger at one another. My dark power matching the glittering light of her own, neither able to overcome the other.
“LET. HER. GO!”
“SHE. IS. DEAD!”
Then her defenses flickered, and I acted. I struck at her in rage like nothing I had ever felt, but I didn’t see what she had planned.
She blinded me, and I was stunned, caught in my own head. For a few seconds, I was unable to act and I heard her voice.
“I think I understand now.”
“The difference between what is true and what is a lie is so thin. The difference can be nothing at times...”
“Are we what we are born as? Or are we what we choose to be? If we choose to deny our birth, does that make a difference?”
“Does being born a changeling change anything?”
I began seeing things. Honest, at first a unicorn but then a changeling.
“Does it change what is there? Does the feeling of a heart matter nothing? The actions of a life? Does love change nothing?”
I saw Rose, sighing, and hanging her head.
“Are we doomed to be only what we are? Or can we change?”
Honest slowly turned back into a unicorn and she smiled at him.
“A lie becomes truth, just because we want it to be. We change our nature, our very being, and find a new life. We make the lie the truth, and the truth becomes nothing more than a phantom of the past.”
“Hag might have been a lie. You are Emeline. That is who you were born as.”
She looked at me, and I was caught by her eyes.
“Do none of them matter?” she asked, and I saw them all.
Thousands of faces, and thousands of voices. Smiles, and tears, and thanks. A man saved, a woman consoled, a child healed. All of my village, man, woman, and child. Every last being that I ever helped and felt glad for gathered before me, their voices making an uproar of sounds.
My darkness cracked.
“Is Hag just a lie?” Rose asked me, the voices of my memory fading to allow her own to be heard. “Was she just a mask, hiding a monster?”
I couldn’t say anything. My darkness faded, cracked even more. A tear fell from one of my eyes.
“Emeline Frostburn? Hag? It doesn’t matter. Born or made, it doesn’t matter.”
“All those actions, all those sacrifices… do they mean nothing?”
“Is it still a lie when you nearly died for it? When you did everything you could, and found life? Everything you did, and all the happiness you found by helping…”
“Does that mean nothing?”
“You were so happy at my wedding that you made an element from your tears. You sacrificed and laughed during all of my time with you. My happiness was your own, even beyond what you wanted.”
“Does that mean nothing?
“…Grandmother?”
My darkness fractured, and broke. I sobbed, and fell to my knees.
I was myself, but it was still there. So strong. Too strong.
The magic wasn’t leaving, and I couldn’t make it leave.
I sobbed, knowing the inevitability of it. I sobbed, knowing that I was Hag, but only for a moment.
Emeline would kill Hag, and then nothing would ever matter again.
Rose embraced me as I sobbed.
“Emeline, or Hag, evil or good, I love you. Two lives fighting each other…”
“Emeline’s going to win… But right now, you are my grandmother.”
“And I loved you like nothing else.”
I fought to respond to that, and found my voice somehow.
“Loved?” I asked her, and she only sighed. Rose vanished, and my vision reoriented itself.
And I saw Rose.
Bleeding. Nearly dead. Dying.
I had wounded her. Her blood was on my hands.
I stared and threw myself at her, feeling for her life. Her life so weak and fading. She was dying, and I had done that.
Two lives she had said. Two lives…
I ripped myself. Emeline was me, but Hag is who I made myself. I ripped and tore and fought.
Hag would never win. But she could win just for long enough. She stole life, and shoved it into Rose, and healed her as best as she could. It was just enough, and I was running out of time.
The magic was returning fast, and I had so little time left as Hag.
I returned to myself, once more a pony, and stared at the doors ahead of me. In a sudden act, I struck the seal, and watched it shatter. I fought to not giggle, and then pushed my way inside.
Dripping darkness and changeling blood, I entered the throne room. I was fighting to keep control of myself. Every action a bit of strength not holding the dark magic back.
I must have looked demonic. The bearers and the others recoiled from my sight.
I panted, and sacrificed a touch of strength to speak, the magic slowly regaining control of me.
“…Kill me.” I told them.
“Hag!?” Rainbow cried, and Pinkie moved, but I stopped her with a gesture.
“No! Don’t… don’t come close! I can’t… I can’t fight it!”
“Strike! Now! Before… before…”
I shuddered, feeling a nigh overwhelming urge to attack them. I looked at them, one eye lost to my control, and the other filled with my plea.
They had to kill me. Before I killed them.
I saw them think, and saw them decide that maybe they could save me yet. The elements activated, and Celestia and Luna caught me in their magic as I tried to stop them. I worked with them to hold myself as my grip slipped more and more.
And then the light was too much, and I screamed as it hit me. It burned me away. All that I was, washed away in the power.
I relaxed as I burned. The dark power was washed away and I let it keep burning me.
That was my end. I chose it to be that way. A lie just long enough to stop the truth.
Hag chose to die that day as Emeline screamed. I burned away to nothing, and when it was all over, all that was left was a little stain of ash on the floor.
Those gathered were shocked, stunned, horrified. What had happened echoed in most of their heads, and grief soon followed for some. Pinkie sobbed like she had never sobbed, Rainbow unable to show her own feelings.
I had died when I should have been saved. Celestia and Luna sought to find some answer, but they couldn’t. Stonebeak sighed heavily, and Honest simply cried in silence, staring at what I had become.
It was over. Emeline Frostburn had died. I had died, and chosen to die, unraveling Discord’s spell as I regained control in the cleansing fires. It was done. The nightmare was over. Everything was as it once was, or maybe a little better.
But I left bleeding hearts and hurt ponies behind me. For all the good I did, no matter how much that death was needed, I regretted it. I didn’t know if Rose would survive what I had done to her, and I knew the pain I would leave, dying right there in front of them.
I had to. I hated it, but I had to.
It was over, and done, and they would recover. I believed in that.
I was, of course, wrong, but I believed that.