We were back in our room two hours to sunrise when Sunset casually made her way in through the balcony.
"Good morning," she said. "I hope you two are ready to work. We are going to get as much training we can fit in one hour as possible."
"Me too?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"Yep, wing exercise for you while Mera and I work. Get to doing some stretches, because I want you on the ground giving me one-hundred as Mera and I work." She smiled at my discomfort.
Sunset turned to Mera as I was groaning to myself.
"Now for you," she said to Mera, "I want to start as we have. Focus on your own emotions and thoughts, block out awareness of anything else around you."
"I still don't know how this is practical," Mera complained. "How am I supposed to function if I am not able to pay attention to what's going on around me?"
"We will get to that," Sunset assured her. "For right now we need to be able to get you to maintain that through distractions first. Now sit down and start focusing. Pearl, start your wing-ups."
I hated wing-ups with a passion. It always left me feeling at least a little sore and uncomfortable for hours after. With a sigh I laid down, put my wings in position, lifted myself with them, and then crossed my forelegs. After that I began the awkward lowering and lifting myself wing my wings.
"Can you hear me Mera?" Sunset asked her.
"Yes," Mera replied.
"Then focus harder," Sunset snapped at her. Sunset was in full drill sergeant mode right now. She looked towards me, but I was doing my wing-ups as told, so she didn't say anything to me.
After about five minutes of silence my wings gave out on me, and I collapsed down to the ground.
"That is only ninety-five,Pearl" Sunset said simply. "You can get the other five done. Push through, you are doing better than when you first started doing these."
I looked at her pathetically, but only earned myself a stern look back. I sighed and pushed myself up again with my wings.
"And how are we doing Mera?" Sunset asked turning back towards my wife. When she got no response Sunset got up and waved a hoof in front of her face, also getting no response. Sunset smiled and then lightly touched Mera in the shoulder. Mera again didn't react. Sunset held her hoof on the shoulder for about half a minute and seemed to be focusing on something. Then she broke contact with a smile.
"She has me successfully blocked out," she said with pride. I finished my last signup as she made the declaration and gave a smile for my wife and for finally being done with the torturous exercise.
"Now the trick is for her to be able to do that without putting herself in a trance like state," Sunset continued. "The more often she can do this, the easier it will be for her. After a while she will be able to do it on command without thinking about it. When she can do it without thinking about it she can do it while still functioning. Blocking another out means she also isn't getting into another's head to absorb any thoughts or feelings."
"Will it block her from absorbing magic when she is doing that?" I asked.
"I am not actually sure," Sunset admitted. "I don't think so. Magic absorption is a separate ability than her empathic abilities. The absorbing talent she has simply strengthens both her natural Crystal Pony absorbing abilities and her Half-breed empathic abilities. This training is all about bringing that second set of abilities to where she can control them. In theory she might be able to actually choose points to deliberately absorb with enough control. I think she might already have some instinctual ability for absorbing on purpose, she certainly absorbed that Thestral blood-thirst from you on demand."
Sunset gave Mera a good shake, which startled Mera back into awareness.
"I am not going to sit with you every day doing this," Sunset said to her, "but I want you still doing these exercises daily with your wife. When it has gotten to where you can do what you have been doing the last five minutes on demand we will start onto the next phase of getting your abilities controlled. Good job for right now, you are making progress."
"It doesn't feel like I am." Mera lowered her ears.
"You managed to block me from casually entering into your mind," Sunset told her. "I likely could have pushed through, but that would have been by force and might hurt you. I also wasn't blocking my emotions off from you. Did you feel anything from me?"
Mera sat and did her listening thing for a moment, then her face brightened up a moment when she shook her head that she hadn't felt anything.
"You see, progress," Sunset assured her. "Just keep working at this. It isn't something you learn in a few sessions. It is something that takes a lot of work to get down." Sunset looked sympathetically at Mera. "Believe me, I went through this too. When I was your age I couldn't touch any creature without getting a full dose of what they were thinking. Sometimes it got so bad I didn't even need to be touching them, and I could hear their thoughts if they were nearby. It was maddening."
"I didn't think Alicorns could remember back that far," I interjected. I had been told constantly that Alicorn memory from back that far was blurry to non existent.
"There is a section of my life from back then that is still fresh after all these years," Sunset replied back with a sad tone. "I can't remember before it at all, and a lot of what came after is hard to remember anything from, but I remember a few years from back then like they happened yesterday. Some things just stay with you because you keep thinking about them. There isn't a year that goes by that I don't think of that section of my life. They were some of the best years of my life. Back before I was an Alicorn."
"Why do they make you seem sad if they were such a happy time?" Mera asked with concern for her friend.
"It is a long story." Sunset shook her head. "I might tell you some other time. The place where those years was spent is now gone forever, and my resentment for the Greaters stems from the fact they were the ones that made it cease to be. It is an old wound for me, but one that never really will heal. They had their reasons, and they were probably right, but I am still angry after all this time."
We weren't going to push her for details. This was the most that Sunset had opened up to either of us. To this point the full extent of what we knew about her past was Starlight had once tried to trick her into taking Starlight's position, and that was it for her history. It was just nice that she opened up at all.
"Anyway, I am satisfied with each of your progress for now. Please try to make this daily routine for each of you, whether I am standing over you watching or not. You have to take some personal responsibility for you to improve, and you have each other to encourage one another on," Sunset said with a smile. "I will check in on your progress every few days, and give guidance on what I want you to adjust.
"For now we have a long day ahead of us and I will leave you two to yourselves until we are ready to leave," she finished. She then waved us goodbye and took out in the air from the balcony.
This left us with some time to just relax, so we went out on the balcony to just sit and talk. Sex was good, but the most enjoyable part of being together was being able to just spend quiet time together talking and enjoying one another's company.
"I really should kick this habit," I said as I lit up my pipe.
"Not likely," Mera giggled as she lit her own. "I would get you hooked again as soon as possible. I am not my giving up my smoking buddy."
"Heathen Thestral," I grumbled playfully to her. "I am going to have to give Hot Sticks a good wing slap for corrupting you."
"Well, technically you corrupted me, not him. What I absorbed from him just reinforced it." She let off a contented sigh as she released her draw. "I don't think this can hurt us anyway. Your healing likely overrides any negative health effects. So since we aren't capable of getting drunk might as well enjoy what little sinful pleasures that we can enjoy."
"Any further thought about how we are going to deal with meeting your parents?" I asked, changing the subject.
"I have been thinking about it," she admitted with a sigh. "I don't think talking to them in a public place is a great idea. I want to be open and honest with them about everything. I can't do that where we have to worry about other ponies hearing. There is a lot of things about us that I don't think it would be good to have many ponies knowing about; our individual abilities, our immortality, the fact I am instinctually more a Thestral than a Crystal Pony, the fact we are paid to produce super cures for the Alicorns. Plus we have Sunset who has her own privacy that we need to respect. And last, but not least, we have a mystery that we need to figure out too."
"So you are just going to be up front from the start?" I asked.
"Looks like it. I guess we will leave Sunset and Hot Sticks in a hotel and go together to my parents' house. I will introduce you, and then just start explaining. I don't know how it will go, but it is the right way to deal with it." She sighed again and took another calming draw.
She was still very nervous about doing this. I tried to put myself in her position. What if my mother were still alive and I had to sit down and explain my life since I last saw her. I am fairly sure she would be understanding, she had already known how I felt about gender issues, and never called me a colt. She would be horrified at the fact that I had been raped, likely worried upon hearing about my time in Starlight's Folly, and I couldn't imagine what her reaction to the fact I was immortal would have been. I think she would have been happy to hear I found a wife, it might have seemed extremely unlikely to her that I would ever marry any pony, it would have made her happy I had found love after all.
"Tell me about each of them so I can know more about them than names. What do they look like? What do they do for jobs? What's are their personalities like? All of that information will help me not put my hoof in my mouth when trying to talk with them," I said with a push for information.
She blinked a few times after my line of questions. Then she smiled and giggled.
"Okay, I apologize for anytime I ever overwhelmed you, or any pony else, with a string questions all at once," she said, still giggling.
"Well, I already told you about my little sister," she began. "My father, Diamond Glow, is white coated and blue maned. He has a spear and shield for a cutie mark. He is a retired Crystal Guard pony, that's the guard that serves Flurry Heart. He gets a pension from the guard, and he will help my mom out with her work sometimes. He also has a love of pipes, and the rest of would always pick on him for being stinky. He is likely not going to let me live down the fact I use a pipe now too. I can feel the teasing coming already.
"My mother, Tibia, works in a flower shop. She typically is in the form of Crystal Pony mare that looks a lot like I do, or at least like I did..or will..--okay, that's confusing. Anyway, she looks like that, only older looking. Just imagine my Crystal Pony form in her forties, that would be the splitting image. Her cutie mark is a yellow tulip blossom. I used to run deliveries for her for work, I never really developed a career of my own. I think she kind of wanted me to inherit her shop, but I just never had the interest. Maybe Peridot will have the interest, but I never noticed her have any either. Peridot is still a filly, so who knows, maybe she will develop an interest in it."
Mera shaped her smoke into her parent's cutie marks for me to see.
"I was always a lot more like my mom," she continued in a sad tone. "But now it seems like I am more like my dad. I don't know how my mom will take that. I was always this little version of her, minus the interest in the flower shop. Now I am coming home this completely changed mare. She will still love me, but I wonder if there is going to be a gulf between us that wasn't there before."
"How did they react to you deciding to take off on an adventure?" I asked her.
"They started placing bets on how long it would take me to come running back home." She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Neither one of them thought I could deal with it. They weren't too worried because they were both convinced I would turn tail at the first sign of danger, and be right back in Crystal Heart." She then took on a slightly downcast look. "I guess they weren't entirely wrong. I wasn't cut out for it when I left home, and the first sign of danger left me hiding in a cave in Starlight's Folly. I am not that scared, incapable, little mare anymore though. I can't help feeling they are worried about me, worried something bad happened to me. Something bad did happen, but it put you in my life, so I have no regrets." She smiled at me as she finished saying the last part.
"So how do I avoid doing the wrong thing?" I asked. "I want to make a good first impression. I had my mother, and I have you now, I never have had any extended family. I don't want them to get a bad first impression of me."
"You are a good pony, Pearl, just be yourself and they will like you." She came over and gave me a kiss. "Just let me be the one to be the one to tell them anything that might be upsetting, that way it was me that upset them, not you."
"One more day after today before we meet them, I will be glad when it is done." I sighed.
"I am hoping we find something to hunt together between today and tomorrow," Mera grumbled. "The whole point of this trip on foot instead of by airship or train was to run into something dangerous. I am going to be very disappointed if we don't end up killing something along the way."
"Bloodthirsty much?" I asked her with a raised eyebrow and trying to suppress a giggle on my own part.
"Okay, I admit that sounds bad," she said with a roll of her eyes, as she blew out another plume. "Maybe I am more than a bit bloodthirsty at the prospect of taking down monsters. But it is part of who I am, and it is part of who you are too, and I want us to embrace it together. We should take down the monsters that would hurt ponies." Then she looked down and sighed. "I also admit I also feel kind of denied with Luna killing Rose Thorn, like she stole my kill. That sounds extremely bad, and it probably is extremely bad, but I just feel the need to take out all that unreleased aggression somewhere else. A monster in the wilds felt like the best possible option."
"You never said anything about that before," I said taken aback. This was her getting to be scary again.
"I didn't want to upset you, or scare you. I just have all this rage still about what happened to you, and I have no where to direct it. I made it so I wouldn't feel helpless like that again, but I am still so angry. And that is all me, nothing absorbed from any other pony. I just want something I don't have to feel guilty taking all that rage out on," she said dejectedly. "It is why I was so determined to absorb your willingness to kill when needed. I wanted to have the drive to actually put down the pony that hurt you. Despite all that training I didn't think I could bring myself to do something like that. Now I can, but I have no target for it. I just want this anger to go away."
I came over to her and held her. She started crying into my fur. I couldn't remember the event anymore, but it was burned into her memory, and it haunted her. I remembered how brutal and efficient she had been on the dueling grounds. She had been fueled by pure rage at what had happened to me, and Twilight had actually goaded her on. I wish I had an answer for her, something to make this better like they had for me, but I had nothing.
"We had better start getting ready to leave," she finally said after her tears subsided. I nodded my agreement.
"And let's agree not to tell your parents about the fact that you gained blood-lust from me. For some reason I don't think they would be happy with me for that," I joked. She slapped me with her wing, but she laughed about it too.
***
Our party left Sire's Hallow shortly after sunrise. The road north cut through a vast forest that ran all the way to the Old Crystal Imperial District. It would take all of today and into tomorrow, with a break to sleep to traverse the forest.
The road narrowed considerably about two hours out of town. It also ceased to paved stone, and was instead dirt. The road wasn't overgrown as it was well traveled, but we saw few other travelers along the way. The few that we did see were merchants transporting goods south, primarily timber and other other supplies that the few villages of the region produced. The forest was extremely dense to either side, and it was impossible to make out much in the distance within it. The path, and the forest itself, were under a perpetual shade from the canopy above, with only a little bit of sunlight peaking through here and there. For me and Mera this was actually very pleasant, but I had a feeling the place proved creepy for our other companions.
Occasional side paths would run into the main road. Paths to small villages, or more often than not paths leading to where small village once stood. This was not a hospitable region for ponies. If the ponies of the region were more hospitable to Thestrals then it might have been better. But prejudice overrides good sense. My tribe was also not numerous enough to properly settle the region themselves, though the Foal Mountains were not that far away.
We traveled for all the morning into the early afternoon with little talk. Eventually though Sunset brought us to a halt with a raised hoof. She sat silent for a long moment just listening. The remaining three of us strained our ears and looked about to try to determine what she had heard.
"We make camp here for a few hours," she said in a tone that brokered no argument. "I will stand watch, Mera and Pearl should each have a nap, as you two have been up long enough. Hot Sticks you may stay awake or nap as you please. We keep silent. There is a chimera, the actual beast, about in these woods somewhere, and it has killed a pony recently. I have a much more highly developed sense of smell as an Alicorn as well, and I can smell it and the pony blood."
Mera and I both bristled our coats and growled involuntarily. It was only Sunset's orders that kept us from running out into the woods to go hunt the thing. It wasn't even a conscious desire, it was instinct. Knowledge that there was one of our tribe's natural enemies nearby, and that it had killed, awoke primal instincts in both of us.
"Then why are we making camp instead of going out and finding the monster?" Mera growled at Sunset. Wolf instinct was overriding pony instinct, and the only thing that kept her, or me, in check was the fact that same instinct recognized Sunset as the pack leader.
"Thestral instinct that strong in both of you?" She asked us with a knowing smile. "The chimera won't go far, and will be busy feeding for at least a day on its victim. The unfortunate soul it caught is already dead, so we aren't racing to any pony's rescue. If you two are going to go on the hunt I want you both well rested and working in the night. Chimera's aren't nocturnal, so it won't be at its best at night, and will be slower from gorging itself in the meantime. I don't intend to see either of you end up a victim either, but I am giving you what you wanted out of this trip. You will do it with every advantage on your side though. Now get some sleep, when night falls you get to hunt."
***
We had trouble getting to sleep, but eventually managed to get to sleep, curled up in a single ball between the two of us. We were awoken by Sunset shortly after, well, sunset.
"I can tell you that the chimera is somewhere in that direction," she told us as she pointed a hoof out to the far left of the road. "It can't be too far out or I wouldn't be able to smell it through all the smells of the forest, no more than the twice the radius of Sire's Hallow. Move as silently as you can, and keep together. When you get close enough you will start to smell the blood too, and you will be able to quickly track wherever the beast is at then. Chimera's are formidable monsters, each of the heads can spot you independently of the others. It has three minds, but there is a certain level of hive mind to it as well. Anything one is aware of the other two heads will be aware of in short order. I recommend incapacitating the snake head quickly, it takes away a great deal of its field of vision and its most agile weapon. Once you take that head down make the other two heads focus independently on each of you. It may see both of you, but it can only focus on fighting one or the other. It is strong, and either the ram head or the cat head are capable of inflicting lethal bites. You don't survive having have your side ripped from you, do you understand?"
We nodded to her silently, eager to be on our way. The chimera had killed a pony and ever inch of our beings were crying for blood. We should have been afraid, but we were in full Thestral blood thirst. All it took was the knowledge that it was nearby and what it had done and we were reduced to our primal needs.
"Off with you two then, and don't you dare die on me," Sunset ordered.
We took off immediately, but not on the ground. We flew into the branches of the trees, and moved quickly with short leaps and glides from one tree to another. Just as Pegasi had their cloud walking Thestrals could move silently from branch to branch through the woods, without disturbing our perches. It wasn't something you thought about as you did it, trying to think about it likely would make it fail actually. We just had to do it and let our magic do its work, instinct was all we needed.
We went a large distance quickly and silently. After about five minutes we caught the scent of blood and diverted our course to head towards it. The scent of pony blood just made the bloodthirst somehow more intense. I hadn't even felt this with the diamond dog, perhaps it was the knowledge one of the natural enemies of my tribe was out here, combined with the scent of blood.
We came to a sudden halt as we spotted our prey. It was napping, all three heads asleep. There was a mutilated carcass near it that had once been a pony, likely a foal from the size, now it was an unidentifiable mass of blood, meat, and bones. Seeing it made my vision briefly go red.
We circled in opposite directions through the tree branches, silently directing each other through small glances and shifts if our ears. There was an unspoken language to this, you just knew it, you didn't learn it. We didn't need to talk to one another to plan, we could do it all through the smallest gestures. I was going to do the first strike, and I moved to get in the ideal position, while Mera moved to get in the perfect position to follow it up.
I pounced from my tree branch and brought my two forehooves down hard on the snake head that served as the tail. There was a very satisfying crunch as the head collapsed under my hooves, the beasts other two heads shot awake with a blood curdling scream. One head down in short order, two to go.
I jumped back away from the monster as the other two heads whipped towards me in rage. After they both turned to focus on me Mera made her move and came down on their back, sinking her fangs into the back of the ram's neck. The neck of the thing was far too big for her to sever the spinal cord that led up it, but it did cause a lot of pain, and panic. The chimera tried to buck, an odd site for something that was half feline, but there was no loosening a Thestral once the Thestral had a good bite on it.
As it bucked I darted towards the foreleg closest to the cat head. The head roared in rage and panic and tried to lift the paw to take a swipe at me. Unfortunately for the chimera this was a very stupid idea, as lifting the paw put it on just one leg, since the two hind legs were in the air bucking. It was incapable of standing on one leg alone for even a moment, and the awkward attempt to swipe at me just caused the beast to fall down on its side. As it was falling Mera released herself and bounded off the thing's back.
As soon as it hit the ground we moved again. Its underside was fully exposed, the the underside of it was far less bony and muscular, this was flesh that could easily be ripped and have chunks bitten away. I darted in and quickly took a bite from one of the sides of its stomach area, taking a large chunk of flesh with it he bite. It screamed again in agony and panic. It was flailing about now, the two heads desperately giving separate orders to the body out of sync with one another. It was losing blood rapidly, the tail had far more blood pumping into it than other creatures would, due to the fact it had previously had one of its three brains at the end of it. Now it just had a massive ball of gore at the end of the tail that was gushing out blood. The place where I had taken a chunk of it was bleeding severely as well, not to mention it was losing blood where Mera had bit it. All this flailing about in panic was just pumping more blood out those wounds. If we did nothing else at this point the monster would likely quickly succumb to death by severe blood loss.
We didn't stop though. Mera and I took turns darting in and away from it, taking bites as we went, keeping the beast panicked and increasing the rate of blood loss with new wounds. Eventually the blood loss took its toll and the flailing slowly came to and end. The thing was not dead yet, very shallow breathing could be seen, but it was no longer capable of putting up resistance. Mera and I both pounced up on the torso, knocking what little breath the thing had out of it. It was still letting out a terrified whimper somehow.
We each went for a separate throat to end it; I had the cat throat, Mera the ram throat. With a bite and a rip from each of us the monster was put out if its misery. We had no injuries, this had been easy for us. Thestrals had proven once again to be the apex predator of this world.
I suddenly found myself looking Mera in the eyes. I didn't remember changing position, there was meat in my mouth. She held my gaze and smiled at me. I glanced down and realized that I had done it again and had shut my mind down as I went to feed on my kill, and had been in the process of that when my wife had caught my gaze. I now noticed as well that gore covered her muzzle from where she had been feeding on the beast as well.
"Don't block this off from your memory," she said, as she licked some of the blood and flesh from her muzzle. "You have no reason to, there is nothing to be ashamed of. This is what you were born to do, to make sure than creatures like this, things that would hurt our fellow ponies, die by your teeth. Being able to dine on it afterwards is a reward for a job well done, and a warning to any other such creature that thinks it can make an easy meal of ponies. I might not have been born to this, but I have pride in it. Don't force this from your memory in shame, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Now, eat with me, and let's celebrate the fact that this thing won't be killing any foals ever again."
She was right. All that she said came from me originally. These were things that I knew deep inside of me. I needed to make peace with myself and learn to enjoy being what I was. I thought of Water Shadow who tried spending her life in denial of what she was, but ever so slowly creeping towards madness. There was more to it of course with her, but it stood out to me.
I stepped over and gave my wife a blood coated kiss. She happily returned the kiss with a small sound of pleasure. When we broke the kiss I smiled at her, before going back to eating our grisly meal, and she quickly joined back in with the victory feast herself.