//------------------------------// // The Pact // Story: The Sentinel of Crows // by Doctor Blizzard //------------------------------// "Answer me or else! I'm only warning you once! How do you know my name?!" Twilight's alicorn horn hummed with vibrant and frothy life. "Take it easy. Let's not rush into anything dire." "Quit evading! Why are you here?!" "I said take it easy, there's no reason to get angry." Eileen took a small step forward, but Twilight gained just as much back. She eventually crossed her arms and leaned against the wall again. If Twilight was going to attack, Eileen knew something would have happened by now. "Why should I calm down?! You broke into my chambers! Are you here to hurt everyone? Is that it?! Because I won't let it happen!" "If I wanted you dead, there'd be no discussion right now... Besides, I'm no good to you dead either. So put the magic away if you know what's good for you. You're a bright young lass, I thought you'd know better." She watched Twilight raise her head slowly, eyes filled with newfound hesitation. "I doubt you could have." "Hehehe, do you want to back that?" Eileen proceeded to pull out her pistol once more, "do you see this? The thing I was pointing at your head?" Twilight squinted closely at Eileen's game and nodded just slightly, clearing her nostrils in the process. "What about it?!" "Well, to put it bluntly. It would of blown your head clean off and onto the walls... You're lucky I didn't pull the trigger, Twilight." The gun soon found its place back at her waist. "You actually gave me quite a scare." "P-Prove it, then." "A tremble in your voice." Eileen inwardly laughed at the thought of proving her point but only let out a shallow sigh instead. "So, you want me to prove that it can kill? I'd choose wiser words, heh heh." "This is ridiculous! I'm going to get the princesses!" Twilight's horn changed from an aggressive toned magic to something softer but tense as all hell. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Twilight." "What are you going to do? B—Blow my, guh!" "No, because I'm not acting as stupid as you right now. Do you really think they'll believe you? Hmm?" Eileen's patronizing tone really got into Twilight's head. "Yes! I used to be Princess Celestia's most prized student and she made me into a princess! They will believe me! I doubt you know anything about that or even the princesses for that matter!" Twilight's anger boiled over before reaching a conclusion. "Wait, why am I explaining this to you?!" "Because if you leave now, I won't be here when you come back." "Then I'll lock the doors!" "I picked the lock in under ten seconds, good luck." Eileen stared intently at Twilight and shook her head. "Listen, I know the princesses, they are allied with me and are sworn to keep my existence a secret. So spouting off to them about a creature on two legs wearing an outfit lined with crow feathers and a plague doctor's mask won't do you any good. In fact, It'll make you sound freaking mental." "What're their names then if you know them so well?" The way Twilight looked completely showed Eileen just how peeved and offended she really was. Some cloaked stranger judging the superiority of a princess really offended her unquestionable logic. "Celestia, Luna, and Cadance. Cadance had a child recently who is named Flurry Heart. Celestia and Luna are close sisters and Cadance is your sister-in-law." "A-Anyone can know that stuff! What are my parent's names and where do they live? Answer me that!" Twilight triumphantly raised her head with closed eyes, only to be disappointed. "Twilight Velvet and Night Light, they live in Canterlot where you've spent the majority of your life." "How did you know that?!" "I can tell you, Twilight. But promise not to tattle on me?" Eileen grinned with a single finger to her wooden beak, shushing Twilight ever so gently. The feeling of being kicked against the wall and the adrenaline excited her dormant body. Whether or not Twilight knew it, she had all the cards and Eileen was lacking a good hand. She needed to sweeten the pot a little bit. "You're a mare hungry for knowledge, I know you are. You can't possibly pass up a grand opportunity such as this." "Show me something so I know I can trust, you-you—Whatever you are." "Oh, physical proof is what you're after?..." Eileen let out a wickedly playful but subtle giggle. "You really are an odd one. Just as they said." "Yes. And I am not "odd"." Her tonal structure still seethed. Eileen sighed with a nod of her head. She reached behind her with Twilight putting her defenses back up. Her fingers gently felt and grabbed a piece of cardstock. Twilight carefully allowed Eileen to come closer as her fingers slide something out to her face. "You'd be surprised at my profession, Twilight." She looked at Twilight studiously examine the photograph of Princess Celestia and the limp-winged creature, the same creature only feet in front of her. "I've known Celestia for a long time now... turn it over." Twilight turned the photograph to the backside and saw Luna being added to the formula. Each one exuberated pure delight, happy that they were together and safe, fortunate to have found each other. But the feathered figure remained emotionless, the mask as secure as it was in Twilight's current reality. "And I'm under Luna's allegiance even more... Understand that I am not your enemy, but I am also not someone you should deify." "I... I still don't understand. Why haven't they told me? Why am I just learning about this now?" Twilight's purple glow immediately fled back inside of her horn. "They don't want the secret coming out about me. And they only do it to protect you if my words even mean anything right now... I'm only telling you this because of your clout with them, this was bound to happen eventually." Eileen was not arrogant enough to play it off. She fessed up and admitted that she had been caught, but it was a bittersweet loss in her honest opinion. She could finally meet the prodigy student of Princess Celestia. "It..." Twilight closed her eyes and sighed, holding the picture out for Eileen to grab. "What's your name?" "Eileen." "Ei-leen... and, where from exactly?" "Well, not from around here, that's for sure." Eileen quietly chuckled and stowed away the photo, "A place called Yharnam." "What?" Twilight wore a face of complete confusion mixed with seated interest. "Yharnam?" "Across the mirror of realities, Yharnam is where I spent a lot of my life." Twilight furrowed her eyebrows, "wait, are you talking about the mirror in?!-" "Canterlot? Yes... It's quite the long story. Eh, the details are a bit hazy because it was so long ago." Eileen dipped her head even lower into her chest but remained ever vigilant. "Heheh—normally, ponies tend to run away at the sight of me. Sometimes leaving thin trails of piss in their wake. But you... hmm, you don't seem to care at all." "I've traversed the gap. I've been to the world of humans before." Twilight closed her eyes, "but how did you not change into a pony? That doesn't make sense!" "Well, I didn't exactly enter this world with a lot of hope or will. It just happened." "What?" "I don't remember how I got to your world, g-give me some time to think... but I remember being covered in my own blood... What was it? What happened—I, sorry." "Oh, sorry..." Twilight shrank away from the thought, leaving it to her imagination to put the pieces together however she pleased. "There are blank spots in my memory that are hard to recall sometimes. Mmm-hmm... Don't mind me if you hear mindless ramblings from my lips." Eileen depressingly sighed, "being the only human here really screws with your mind." "I see..." "Eh—I'm sorry, but why is your arse lighting up like that?" "Ugh!" Twilight sounded out with guttural emotion, "idiotic map ruining my perfect holiday." Eileen shifted away from the solid walls and looked at the perplexing map again. She saw Twilight's rotating cutie mark remain stationary, hovering over the same spot of her castle. "Wait, what?" Twilight banged her hoof on the table, "stop lying and tell me the truth!" Her hoof rapped the table once again as her cutie mark refused to move. It sank down deeper into her castle until it finally dissipated, along with the glow in her actual cutie mark. She wondered if the map was really telling the truth or simply lying to her face about a friendship problem. "Is that where you came from? The human world? Are you a mare? Did you know any of my friends there? Was there a school there called Canterlot High and-and-" Twilight nearly jumped out of her skin after feeling Eileen's hand softly wrap around her meek muzzle. "I have no idea what you're talking about, I came from Yharnam and that's it. I've never heard of Canterlot until I woke up here, ok? And I'm a female if that's what you're trying to ask." Her hand easily followed Twilight's bobbing head and let go shortly after. "Woke up?" "Once again, it's a long story... One I don't like to talk about." "Ugh, damn. I have so so many questions." Twilight's eyes shifted towards the beak mask. "Well, you see, I was just concerned about the other world is all... I didn't mean to get excited like that. I thought there was a sickness outbreak in the other world and I... you know." "Oh no, hehehe. This is for a different purpose, but I guess it actually functions the same if I told you why. The only reason I'm telling you all this is because you're an alicorn... I tend to make a point to avoid contact with the common rabble." Eileen peeked down at Twilight with a simper. "I'm only trying to clarify what I said earlier. Surely most of it went flying over your buzzing head." "Huh?" "Heh, exactly." Eileen momentarily went silent and stared at Twilight. "It's not easy to explain, but it has to do with my line of work and where I came from." "What might that be, then?" "You don't want to know... You'd think different of your leaders if I told you." "Well, now I want to know even more." Twilight was on the verge of begging. 'She must have had a really dark and scarring past to be this reluctant... Something is definitely strange about her, but I want to know more. I need to.' "I can't tell you. Even I don't take pride in it... But it's something that has to be done. Just know that it's to protect you and your friends." Eileen glanced down at Twilight's leg, noticing a small trickle of blood coming from her right hind leg. "When did you cut your leg?" "Tch! I figured I did. I was in a rush to get down here and tripped on the stairs... I'll be ok though." "No, let me take a look. You could get a serious infection from something so filthy. We wouldn't want that, would we?" "Are-you a doctor, E-Eileen?" Twilight noticed the peculiar change in Eileen's voice and how carefully sweet it sounded. "Yes." "Then I need to call you Dr. Eilee-" "No!... I mean, n-no, please. Just call me Eileen... That was a long time ago and I want to keep it in the past." "That's something you should be proud of though, right?" Twilight sat up against the nearest throne, she did not want to sit in it for fear of tracking blood on the cushions. She reeled from Eileen's sudden outburst and still felt a little bit strange around the masked figure. "You should... But the things I had to do, they were not a doctor's work. You can guess by the mask that it wasn't about saving lives as much..." Eileen's hands reached back and grabbed a few topical items from her medical pouch. Her mouth let out a quivering, self-deprecating giggle, lacking even the basic ingredients of a humorous laugh. "Oh... I-I see." Twilight glanced away after seeing Eileen's hands dampen a cotton ball with clear liquid. She looked away in order to hide how she felt first and foremost. The more she learned about Eileen, the more she started feeling simply terrible for her. The leaps and bounds that separated the two vanished, and even though Twilight would never know or experience what Eileen was dealing with, she knew the problems that came with bottling everything up inside. "You sound like my friend, Fluttershy. She always gets concerned when someone's hurt and then makes it her responsibility to nurse them back to health." Twilight grinned at the memory of Fluttershy trying to make Philomena all better and freaking out when nothing worked. "The yellow one? The terribly sweet girl?" "Yeah, the yellow one." Twilight secretly rolled her eyes knowingly, "we have names, you know?" "I know, but it's not my job to keep track of you six little troublemakers." "Ok, I'll give you that. But it's not on purpose. Stuff just seems to fall into place here." Twilight clenched her teeth once the cold liquid in the cotton ball touched her wound. She expected it to sting madly. Instead, it was rather cooling to the touch. "I guess it's working out for you all, then. Judging by your lifestyle here... A castle of gleaming stone." "What do you mean?" "Evil always seems to follow you around, but your methods of non-violence earn you a coronation ceremony and a big castle to boot. It's strange to know that someone's been watching you grow up and not even know it, hmm?... Do you remember when you were a filly and you were trying to get into that school for gifted unicorns?" Her tactful hands spread antibiotic ointment over the cut. "This is strange, messaging a mare's arse must be a first for me... But not for you, I'd wager." "Not at all. I mean, it's where my cutie mark is." Twilight closed her eyes for only a moment before looking back up at Eileen. "How could you possibly know about that? Just how long have you been around?" "I've been around, sweetheart, hehe. I would go there every day when they hosted those tests and watch what kinds of magic you kids would use. I was confused about magic, I didn't know anything about it until I started watching from the shadows. Just like the ponies you call pegasi that fly high above the clouds. The idea of magic eluded me for one reason: it was new, unlike the fabricated arcane arts in my world. I remember seeing Celestia go up and talk to you about it. And I remember you jumping up and down in total excitement for everything that had just happened..." She finished wrapping Twilight's cut leg with the slightest tug for good measure. "That was one of the few days I genuinely smiled..." Eileen added with her own smile. "I... Um, thank you, Eileen. That was... t-touching." Twilight looked up with hopeful eyes but was greeted by a still silence. She looked upon her palms dripping blood onto the pristine white floors beneath. Eileen was on her knees, looking beyond her soaked hands with sanguine liquid streaming down her clothes and legs, pooling incredibly fast. It glistened in the light and undulated like viscous soup. She wanted to get up, but the images of the past entered her violent mind, forcing her into a state of paralysis. All the coffins clapped in irons, the thick steam rising from the warm crimson on the cobblestones, the horrifying screams. She blinked her eyes and lightly searched the grounds. "I—I'm sorry, let me clean that up." "Uh-" Twilight looked down and saw nothing but cleanliness, "there's nothing there." "Oh... You're right, I don't," "Are you ok, Eileen?" "Yeah... I should've told you, but I have—Flashbacks and visions, occasionally. Are you sure the floor isn't, uh, drowned in blood?" "Umm—No?" Twilight watched Eileen look back at the palms of her gloved hands again, noticing that they were still clean. Twilight's own face was stricken with mild disgust. 'What is happening?' "R-Right, of course..." She stared at Twilight without her knowing, "how silly of me." 'There is definitely something going on with her... it's something severely traumatizing. Hmm, at least I'm getting her to talk.' Twilight stood up and moved her bandaged leg around, feeling just how non-existent the gauze was. 'Ask more questions.' "What kind of accent is that, Eileen? I've never heard it before." "Oh, um. English... in the United Kingdom. Or, perhaps from the hinterlands." "United what?" "Oh, right. It doesn't exist here." Eileen's voice grew more wistful with age. Secretly, it was mired in hate for what she was in charge of, what she did for everything in their world. But what angered her most was the fact that she could not escape from her job. It always seemed to haunt her, especially on Hearth's Warming Eve. "W-Where did you get the idea for your, uh, outfit? It looks... well, terrifying." "I don't know. The role was passed onto me, just as I'm responsible to pass the role onto someone else. Its origin is lost but a crow I remain. In fact, my nickname in the other world was "Eileen the Crow". And if I'm not mistaken, some of the ponies here have made comics about me. Calling me "The Silent Crow" who only works in the shadows and uses magic as a pegasus or something. It's all leavened with rumors from previous run-ins with me, but let them see what they want to see. It's kind of cute, really." "Wait, that's you?! Spike, my, uh, little brother, reads those comics as soon as he gets his claws on one. I never knew that was you!" "How could you know? You just learned that I existed. Not to mention I look different on those things." "So, why haven't you made yourself known? You say that your work shouldn't be, but it can't be that bad. If it's to protect ponies like me and my friends, then it must be very good and noble... are you afraid of what ponies will think of you?" Twilight's hooves carried her forward without even the slightest budge from Eileen's feet. "Twilight, everything that I've said is very confidential and replete with surreptitious actions." "But why, Eileen? I don't understand, please. I... I want to help. I know you're hurting." Twilight restrained herself from reaching out and feeling her hand, hoping to receive a spark or a glimmer of hope still left in her. A signal within the body of a neglected and beaten soul whos only purpose now half lived. "Do you really want to know? You'll think differently of them and especially me, I can guarantee. You can't go back on this." Eileen leaned down slightly as Twilight's eyes listed away to the ground. Twilight bit her lip painfully; this was her only chance to help Eileen before she would vanish for good, most likely never to be seen again by her very eyes. The thought of the map entered her head and she knew that this was the friendship problem, and she had this gnawing feeling that it was not going to a pretty one. But like Eileen, she had her work to deal with too, even if it was not pretty. Twilight looked straight into the black voids of Eileen's mask. "Yes..." Eileen nodded apprehensively, "if that is what you wish, only... I wish to discuss this in front of them. Is that possible, Twilight?" "Well, yeah. Of course." "I'm not sure how they'll react, though. But I imagine they'll be furious with me for talking to someone while on duty, it's one of my tenets. Perhaps even to a point of high treason, but I've never broken this code until today. So I don't know what will happen." Eileen plan of recourse fell solely on Twilight and her loyalty to the princesses. "Are you serious?!" Twilight gritted her teeth together, "this is unacceptable! I—I can't let this keep going, it's random for me to be this passionate, but everything you've said should never be wished upon someone like you... You don't deserve it." "Twilight, I know it's upsetting to you and I thank you for worrying. But there's a reason I've kept my mouth shut about it all this time." "No, I can't have this on Hearth's Warming... it isn't right now and it isn't right ever." "Twilight!" Eileen snatched Twilight by the leg. "Stop and breathe for a moment! Don't rush into things so brazenly." "This isn't ok, Eileen. I want to help you, it's my duty." Twilight took Eileen's advice and closed her eyes for a few moments of intense reflection. "I know you do... and I think you're the perfect candidate for the job." Eileen let her go slowly, "They'll trust you. You've proven yourself time and time again. Maybe they'll blow it off at first, but once you start really digging deep. They'll get the message loud and clear." "Are you saying we should face them right? Ri-Right now?" "Celestia and I have been drifting apart over the past couple of years, and I fear Luna is starting down the same path. I think they need to be reminded of a few things to bring back the fire between us. Not to mention a few bad omens from my past that I just need to get out. This is what this holiday is about, right?" Eileen's unsteady voice resonated with Twilight's apathy. "Of course, Eileen." "If we do this, I need to set a few things straight for you all when I speak to them, understand? Prepare yourself for what you might hear because it isn't good... I might say a few things that will question your newfound trust in me." "N-No, whatever it is, I'm going to help you all see through the problem." Twilight opened the doors and let the hall's glory flourish into the room, unleashing a change in pressure. Eileen's feathers danced in the air wildly for a brief moment, much like Twilight's mane and tail. "All will be revealed," Her heavy boots started up again as Twilight exited the room just before her. Eileen towered over Twilight and even had a few inches on Celestia herself. Granted, the pointed black hood gave Eileen the few extra inches. "I understand I'm keeping you in the dark, but it's best if you learn with everyone around... It's been a long time coming, really." She turned heel and closed the doors with nary a peep to rattle the ears.