//------------------------------//
// 2. Deuce 
// Story: Queen of Clubs 
// by horizon 
//------------------------------//

Another gust of icy night wind blasted Paint in the face, and he wrapped his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders.  They'd crossed the official border of the Crystal Empire several minutes ago, and were trotting down an old stone road whose heat-enchantments were barely sufficient to keep the cobbles from getting buried under drifts of fresh snowfall.

"Alright, Shot," Paint grumbled.  "When are you going to tell me what this is about?" 

Shot grinned knowingly.  "Just a little farther, my friend, and all shall be revealed."

"… I can't feel my hooves.  I'm going home."

Paint turned around into Shot's outstretched hoof. 

"Whoah, hoss.  You'll want to see this." Shot waggled his eyebrows.  "I found out where your special somepony hangs out when she vanishes on the weekends."

Paint's breath caught for a moment — Luna? — but he forced his emotions down.  No.  Calm down.  There's no chance.  "Okay," he said, trying not to think about her smile, "first of all, she's not my special somepony."

Shot grinned and elbowed him in the chest.  "Not with that attitude, she isn't."

"I mean, I gave up.  You were right.  She's out of my league."  It was getting harder and harder to ignore the weird little heart-flutter that was unfolding with the conversation.  "Besides, I thought you said you weren't gonna help me."

"I wasn't.  But then I heard about Gilt getting thrown in a trash can."  Shot's smile doubled in intensity.  "It's long past time somepony did something about that jerk.  And to hear it was her?  Clearly I've been overestimating her shallowness."

"You have, yeah — but that doesn't make the idea less stupid," Paint said with more conviction than he felt.  

"On the contrary," Shot said.  "It means you're chasing her for the right reasons, which makes all the difference.  She's still a psycho, sure.  It would take a miracle for you to talk to her again without ending up in a hospital.  But miracles?  That's exactly the sort of crazy that's in my wheelhouse." He smirked and swatted the cloak over his Mark.  "I'm never gonna get a better chance to put my talent to work."

Shot's intensity was actually beginning to worry Paint a little.  "Look," he said, "I appreciate the thought … but even if Luna didn't hate the entire universe, that doesn't change what you told me back at the beginning.  She's out of my league.  She hobnobs with Equestrian royalty, and my talent is being the most boring pony alive."

"One, I never said she was out of your league.  Two, the part about you isn't true.  Your talent is tenacity — enduring everything, once you've got a goal to accomplish — and I see a friend whose opportunity has finally fallen into his saddlebags.  And three, even if what you said was true, it just makes my job more interesting." Shot adjusted his cloak and started walking into the darkness again.  "Now, come on.  Let's figure out how to get you that date."

Paint sighed.  This was madness.  On the other hoof, it was his friend's special sort of madness, one he'd seen unfold into impossible beauty before.  On the third hoof, he knew he had no chance at all with Luna … no matter what that smile might have meant.  On the fourth hoof … if even friendship with the sullen young alicorn was such an impossibility, what did he have to lose when Shot's plan went wrong?

Might as well humor him, Paint thought.  At least until he comes to his senses.

"Okay," he said.  "I'll give this a shot."







Paint stopped dead in the doorway, unable to believe his eyes.

They had turned off the road at a small, nondescript stone building half-buried by snow.  "THE LOVELESS," a faded sign read over the door, and when Shot knocked, they were quickly ushered in by a surly gryphon bundled up in several layers against the shack's unheated air.  Then the doorgryph had pulled up on a trapdoor, and a blast of merely cool air had thawed them out, and they had stumbled down a dark staircase into a different world.

Black.  So much black, like he'd walked into a yawning hungry light-eating chasm.  Flickering blue-white magelights burned around the edges of the room, highlighting glaring-white skulls of a dozen different races hanging on the walls, casting shadows he could barely make out against the charcoal paint.  There were glimpses of pastel here and there — ponies, even gem ponies — but they were all swaddled in clothes whose shades ran the range from onyx to ebony.  Both the ponies and a smorgasbord of other races (all of whom dressed similarly) shuffled around the room or reclined in black pillows, murmuring to each other in low tones and drinking sickly tinted cocktails. 

Paint adjusted his collar and shrank back into his deep-brown cloak, seeing the room's eerie light illuminate his leg like a shining white beacon, feeling hilariously out of place.

The room curled like a morbid croissant around a low stage at the far end.  Two earth ponies, one shiny black … bug pony? … thing and one two-legged scaly dragonhorse thing stood on the stage playing instruments, and their music somehow managed to beat the decor in sheer creep factor.  The bugpony had his jaws open, and from it, an ominous bass drone lurched around the scale in a way that would have given Paint's foalhood clavichord tutor a heart attack.  One of the ponies scraped a bow across a fiddle's strings, drawing forth a chord that sounded like the caterwaul of dying beasts; the other was whacking his hooves to a set of drums to produce an irregular heartbeat-like rhythm.  The dragon-thing, meanwhile, was speaking … singing? … in a sub-bass growling register that sounded more like an earthquake than any equinely possible noise, except that once in a while his muzzle would contort and he would enunciate something clearly enough for Paint to catch a word of Ancient Imperial.

"Welcome to my club," a sultry mare's voice said to Paint's side.  "Drinks?"  He glanced over automatically, and nearly leapt out of his skin when his eyes met those of a hovering equine skull. 

Infinite relief flooded his paralyzed body a moment later when the skull blinked.  Paint realized that it was another one of those insect-ponies.  The surface of her body was a dully gleaming dark chitin rather than the matte bristle of a pelt, and was nearly invisible against the room's dark background — except for her head, which she'd bleached a shocking, unnatural white that gleamed in the magelight like bone.  She'd caked an additional layer of shadow-dark makeup around her eyes, ears, and lower jaw to complete the effect. 

The bug-mare twitched an ear-membrane at him, eyes curious.  Paint remembered to breathe.

"Y-you … um … you don't want our IDs?" he blurted out as his brain was unlocking.

The bug-mare laughed, sweet and throaty.  "You trotted out of the Empire, miles into the wasteland, here, to ask me to check your papers? You are crazier than most."

Paint's muzzle reddened.  "No! I mean … um.  We're just looking for a friend —"

Shot shouldered him, clearing his throat and speaking in an artificially deepened voice.  "Two ice-wines, on the rocks." He gave the bug-mare a wink.

She stared at him silently for a few seconds, then shook her head and sighed.  "Life is too short to make drink choices that poor, child.  I shall return with some amasynthe — on the house.  Drink it or don't."

"What was that about?" Paint whispered as the bug-mare meandered toward the discreet bar in one corner of the room.

"Don't blow our cover!" Shot hissed.  "Don't tell anyone about Luna.  Do you want her knowing you're here before you figure out how to make a good impression? This is reconnaissance — let's stay in the shadows while we watch."

"I'm pretty sure that's, um, anywhere," Paint whispered, head craning around.  He froze at a flash of white from the dance floor in front of the stage, then nudged Shot and pointed with a tilt of his muzzle.  "Wait.  There she is."

And there she was — unmistakably so.  A lithe deep-purple alicorn, wings half-spread, was rocking back and forth amid a group of swaying ponies at the edge of the stage, staring reverently up at the band.  Luna was one of the only figures in the room not wholly wreathed in black, using it instead as an accent to her already midnight-dark pelt.  She had on a saddle and peytral of black leather (leather!), with her mane and feathertips all dyed to match — the latter of which revealed hypnotic patterns of color and shadow as her wings swayed back and forth.  She was wearing leggings that looked as if she'd murdered a fishing net dipped in octopus-ink, but somehow the diamond pattern just accented the sway of her hips and the muscles of her hinds and the pale glow of her moon Mark.  She turned her head for a moment to talk to one of her fellow dancers, and Paint saw that she'd thickly outlined her eyes in black mascara, with streaks underneath that made it look as if she was weeping.

But, for only the second time since she'd walked into Paint's life, she was smiling.

A prod at his side from the bug-pony broke him out of his reverie, and Paint blinked what he belatedly realized was several minutes of dancing out of his eyes.  "Where did your friend go, child?" the bug-pony said.

"I … um?" Paint glanced around, searching his memory.  Ah: Shot had sidled off while saying something about scoping out the place and telling him not to go anywhere.  "Around.  Sorry.  He's no trouble, I promise."

"There's no need for an oath.  If he had desired to start trouble, I would have known it when he walked in." A glowing slime-green aura hovered an equally slime-green mouthful of thin liquid in a scratched shot glass over to Paint.  "I brought you some amasynthe.  Try a sip — the average pony finds it an acquired taste." The bug-pony smiled.  "Not what you expected when he dragged you here, hm?"

"No, ma'am," Paint said, taking the glass in his own field and giving it a sniff.  His nose crinkled.  It was a touch sweet, along with a sharper undertone he guessed was alcohol, but mostly smelled of something approaching liquorice.

"None of that, child.  I'm not your professor.  I'm Loveless." Her muzzle curled back, exposing gleaming fangs in a gesture that Paint expected to find more threatening than he actually did.  "Or Loveless, to my friends."

"… Drying Paint." 

"Hm." Loveless looked up and down his body in a way that made Paint feel uncomfortably like a sheep at auction, then nodded.  "You are a sweet little thing, aren't you? Welcome to my club."

Paint nodded back and experimentally sipped, and the drink floated down his throat, leaving a gentle tingling heat along the way.  "Hmh," he said, and gulped the rest down.  "That's really good."

"See what you think in a few minutes when it truly kicks in."

Paint stared into Loveless' eyes, sudden unease gnawing at his gut, but there was no malice in her gaze.  "So," he said, trying to shed his discomfort, "what's with this place?"

"It is the home of the lost.  The misunderstood." Loveless settled in on some cushions alongside Paint, and before he quite knew it he was sitting down alongside her.  She casually draped a chitinous leg around his withers, and it was at once wholly comfortable and disturbingly devoid of the warmth of equine skin.  "In this age, with peace between the Tribes, most ponies live in the light and think that is all there is to life.  But we, here, know that is an illusion.  We realize life is a blind stumble through the cruel and painful shadows, and to embrace that allows us to fully savor the fleeting and bittersweet joys when they come."

Paint blinked several times and bit his lip.  "That's.  Um."

"Morbid?"

"… Frightening?" he said diplomatically.

Loveless laughed, her muzzle curling back to reveal the glinting points of her fangs.  "Good."

But her amusement receded at the look flitting across Paint's muzzle, and her tone softened.  "Peace, sweet-thing.  I forget sometimes how foreign this is to the average pony, and in truth I cannot blame them for flinching.  If this sits poorly within you, then know none shall harm you in this room.  Listen to the music until your friend comes back, and then leave and forget we exist, and live a long and happy life."

Paint slowly looked around, something he couldn't quite name gnawing at him beneath the unease.

"Mmm?" Loveless prompted.

"I think," he said slowly, "maybe it's good this place is frightening."  He rubbed his forehooves together uncertainly.  

Loveless silently turned her head to him, and for a moment as he blinked, all he saw was the skull, staring at him in silent judgment.

Paint cleared his throat and turned away, craning his head to look around the various clusters of ponies and people in the room.  "But …"  He swallowed and went for broke.  "Why would anyone stay here, if it's so scary and you just let them leave?"

"Ah, the real question."  Loveless' voice remained gentle, but Paint's heart stirred as he thought he caught a note of pride in it.  

"Maybe I want it to be scary," he said, and he wasn't quite certain why he phrased it that way; he just knew it made his heart beat faster.  "Maybe I want to be the sort of pony who can stand up to that."

Fangs flashed as the skull leered its jaws in a smile.

"I know," Loveless said.

"Is the drink kicking in?" Paint murmured, pulling his eyes back away.  "I feel like the drink should be kicking in."

Loveless shifted against his side, ignoring his question.  "In the traditional sense, the shadows are not a path of comfort — but they are a path of power, and there is a different sort of comfort in that.  They are about casting off your shackles to embrace who you truly are, the light and dark aspects alike.  They are about the freedom to remake yourself and seize the happiness the world has not offered."  She leaned even closer in, muzzle nearly touching his ear, voice dripping honey behind her fangs.  "And you?  Is there anything the world cannot give you, sweet thing?"

Yes, Paint thought, a flush spreading to his muzzle, but the moment overwhelmed him and his eyes dropped to his hooves.

Loveless paused, and when he said nothing more, straightened back up and pulled away.  Fear and thrill surged in Paint's gut in equal measure, and for a moment before Loveless opened her mouth again, he started panicking that he'd screwed up with silence again.

"Earlier you mentioned a friend," Loveless said, and again she was merely the gentle matron at his side, and her calmness seemed to surround him like a hug to the hindbrain.  "If you wish to walk through the darkness with someone —" her hoof swept around the room — "this place is your best chance to find them."

Paint's eyes strayed back to where Luna was swaying along with the music, and locked onto her.

"But be warned," Loveless added almost casually.  "Everyone must walk into the darkness alone."

He felt Loveless shift beside him, and saw her work her jaw out of the corner of his eye.  She lifted a long, smooth leg to the corner of her mouth, dabbing something away with a black handkerchief.

"My, my," Loveless said.  "That one.  You love her."

The word "love" jolted him back into focus, and a flush spread across his muzzle.  "I guess," Paint said, forcing his gaze from Luna's flanks down to his hooves.

Loveless abruptly stood.  "That wasn't a question, sweet-thing." She snatched the empty shot glass back from Paint, made a noise deep in her throat, and spat a mouthful of thin slime-green saliva into it.  Paint blinked several times, then felt his own bile rise as it clicked.  He shot to his hooves and scrambled back frantically, hinds slamming into the wall behind him and sliding down to the floor. 

Loveless whirled to face him, and he froze.  Her eyes pinned him like a spear as she stalked in, and he stared in open-mouthed terror as she leaned in muzzle-to-muzzle, close enough for him to taste the liquorice on her breath.

"Calm, sweet-thing," she whispered, and his eyes fell into the swirling infinite of hers.  His heart hammered to the erratic rhythm of the drummer, and the droning of the bug-singer itched and squirmed in the deep darkness of his brain, and some soothing voice in the back of his brain told him that all he had ever wanted to do was reach this moment and listen.  

"Mark well my words," Loveless whispered.  "You are in possession of a rare love, pure and intense and entire.  It is not a thing to be squandered nor diluted — and I will not sully it, nor you, by savoring it in any less than its full measure.  And so you shall not see me when next you return here, nor shall my daughters feed upon you in the world of snows.  This I swear upon the shadows of the heartless throne." She pressed a hard hoof to Paint's chest, squeezing his lungs in, and the calm broke and his fear flooded back in and his entire attention refocused on the way her gleaming fangs shaped her words.  

"But should you ever decide to be rid of your love," she said, "speak my name three times.  It shall release me from my oath, and I shall lift the burden of your passion —" she paused to slowly run her tongue slowly over a mouthful of glistening fangs — "wholly and irrevocably."

Paint stared helplessly into Loveless' eyes.  His blood pulsed in his ears.  The stage-dragon growled.  The skulls on the wall leered at him.  The dying fiddle wails mingled with the laughter and murmurs of the crowd.

Then Loveless kissed him on the nose, and the room swam, and 



— the next thing he knew, he was stumbling down a dark and icy stone road, leaning heavily on Moon Shot's shoulder, his heart still beating to the song of the shadows.

"What do you mean, you want to go back?" Shot shouted over the howl of the midnight snowstorm.

"That's where I can do it," Paint heard himself shout back, and a thrill rippled through his blood.  "Embrace myself.  Impress her with me."

Part of him wondered who in Tartarus this pony was who spoke through his lips.  Another part knew, with glorious certainty, that it was simply the Paint who always should have been.

"No," Shot shouted.  "I do crazy, not stupid.  We've had this talk."

Paint shoved Shot roughly, which sent Shot's hooves sliding on the icy road, bringing them both to the ground.

"Ow!" Shot said as he struggled back upright.  "What was that for?"

Paint lurched to his hooves and leaned in, frowning.  "What's stupid about it?"

"I lost you for an hour and then suddenly just found you lying on a couch by the entrance mumbling something about the 'real you'."

"And?" Paint said.  "You were fine."

Shot opened and closed his mouth — then winced as a wave of snow blasted into them, and returned to Paint's side, shouldering him down the road.  "Look.  We got out of there.  Mission accomplished.  Now that we've figured out more about her, we'll find a way to impress her at the Academy."

"It won't work," Paint said with softer certainty.  "She doesn't live there." The image of Luna's smiling muzzle under mascara-streaked cheeks ghosted behind his eyelids. 

"… I don't understand."

"I do," Paint said.  "I understand her now, Shot." The way his pulse quickened at the thought of returning to the club she frequented — the excitement he vibrated with at the thought of meeting her there — was proof enough of that.  "Look, it's simple.  I want to make her happy, and she's never smiled anywhere else."

Shot looked dubious, then shook his head.  "If you say so."

"I do."

"But I can't —" Shot winced as the wind screamed and nearly took the cloaks from their shoulders —"can't go back there with you.  That place is scary, Paint."

The wind vanished mid-step as they stepped through the barrier of the Crystal Empire.  Shot staggered several steps before catching his balance.  Paint squinted against the soft glow of the streetlights, lifting a leg to shield his eyes while they readjusted.

"Well," he said quietly, his ears still ringing with the storm outside.  "Everyone walks into the darkness alone."