The smoke pushes itself among the blue of it all, a smouldering hellish entity; overshadows sunlight. The horizon is decapitated. A scarce blade of embers and ash cleaves it in half. Happiness then confusion, confusion then worry. The pair knows that someone is in this farm with them.
They cross the fields and reach a tiny crest of land. From here they can see the tree on fire and it’s surroundings, they don’t bother to look upwards. Flames still coil and twist small heaves of wheezing smoke. The tree struggles in itself, licking lapsing tongues of red, tips of yellow. Other trees remain untouched around the burning stack of carbon. A ring of witnesses to a murder. The whining popping is the burning tree’s audacious last words.
“It isn’t natural is it.”
Stiff taut words. No question mark, just a stark full stop. It’s a contrast to the unrestrained joy that vibrated through the air just a few minutes ago.
“Don’t worry.”
Those words aren’t only there for her.
“Follow me. We’re going to put out this fire.”
He leans over and into her. Another snug entwining in a countless number of them. Their eyes are open as they try to hold something vast and invisible in each other’s arms. How many times? How many is needed?
A clutch of each other, a union of changeling and unicorn. A humming breathing thing lives between them. An affection, a closeness that never left from their first encounter. Not even a semblance of desperation or despair.
“We’re going to the river. Can you hold buckets?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Three. No, maybe four”
“Good”
Blue light summons lakes of umbra in their hoof steps. They step in time with each other, still close and touching. As the overcast sky mumbles in its movement they walk a little faster. They reach the river, spectres born of worry in their heads and the spectres burst out.
He worries she’ll be in danger.
She worries he’ll be in danger.
In a way they worry about the same thing.
They step to the edge of emanating water. The water reaches forward and snares earth and rock to it’s trails and eddies. The hands of the river pushes out the smell of fresh water, green and glittering the surface of it the river you see in spring. The cold is immersed in the water and the water is immersed in itself. It gurgles and babbles in a bewildered loneliness, speaks to anything that would listen. But the pair are urgent, and they pay no heed to the river and her solitude.
The tools piled on the river’s side. Three buckets, wash basin, bath tub, two pitchers, washed out cauldron. They pick what they can. He reaches down into the river, and like a shock of fire the water’s skin breaks and engulfs the rim of that bucket. Cool transparent liquid inside the empty space.
When he bends back up she’s bent over the side of the river with a stern grim frown on her face. She’s tall, a clash of green and black on the crown of her, the slender body folded against her, long legs. She’s wanted. There again a rush of thought and dreams to his head. It’s absurd how she can always look so beautiful. It’s absurd how much he needs her.
“You’re never going to starve.”
“What.”
“I’m going feed you and protect you and make you happy.”
“Who cooks dinner?”
“I’m going to marry you I swear it”
A laugh that’s short. With joy.
“This again?”
“I mean it. I’m going to make you safe. We’re going to be happy.”
“I’m double your size and a changeling queen. I’m going to make you safe.”
They grunt as they heave the water out of the river.
“We’re going to be happy”
“Yes I know.”
“I love you.”
“You’re so weird.”
“I love you.”
Exasperated and beaming. She takes the time to grin at him.
“Yes. You already know it.”
“Yeah”
“Okay”
“I love you, you know.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I’m annoying. I just. I’m just excited.”
It’s the first time he heard that sound. A giggle that lilts from the tip of her tongue, the stretch of her lips. For a scarce second she’s someone else.
“I like you when you’re annoying.”
“Oh crap.”
His two words, it drags it all down to a screeching halt. The words hit the bottom of her stomach; threat and fear bud and germinate in the river, in the grass.
“What?”
“My hoof just went straight through the ground.”
“Are you okay? Are you?”
“Shh. I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m not hurt.”
“I’m not worrying.”
“You are.”
“Can’t help it.”
“Yeah, I know. I know.”
“What do you see?”
“It was like a blanket was covered over a hole. The blanket, I think, was covered in a layer of earth so I couldn’t see it. I’m about half a metre in the ground. On my back left hoof. I’m pretty stuck right now.
“Someone trapped you.”
“Yeah”
“You scared?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
They were both lying so obviously it wasn’t a lie at all.
Lightning from a flurry of it. Lands a feet away from her, beats and pummels her retinas with whiteness. The guard missed, lightening is hard to aim anyway. A shadow in the shape of wings, it flies from a cloud. A clumsily made net is thrown. A wide arc and then it tangles in her. She stumbles in her blindness and in a net.
The shadow lands.
A glint of metal.
There is a struggle, two fighters and the brief shout of harsh words, surprised words put up their hooves and ask for peace. Flesh is pushed aside the tip of the shard, slides into a warm body. I can’t think of the sound of it. Oh fuck the sight of it.
The blade bathed in blood isn’t as vicious as the Guard’s face, a frown dangerous and edged, a smile grim and unhappy. Sullen brooding visage, two sunken pits filled with eyes and shadow. Don’t stare at them; you’ll see an ugly hell. The commitment, loyalty and love on top of all of it, sustains him like the blood in his veins. The violence of it extends out and crushes peace in such a clichéd way.
The guard steps away from the bleeding unicorn, the unicorn crumples on himself. The wound weeps crimson. No time for regret.
The guard’s sight finds the fallen changeling, and in a brash furious gait he follows his sight’s steps. She’s struggling with the net, struggles with ancient wounds that have reopened, struggles with the worry. The thought of him stabbed and alone, it holds her hooves down. The guard leaps. Then a frenzied detachment of her emerges through the netting. Her limbs into the guard’s face. She discards the broken netting. The guard swivels around spitting teeth and blood. They embrace in that desperate savage clinging that kings and animals fight in.
Changeling curses and equestrian profanity exploding from dirty mouths: two languages that try to explain the language of fighting.
The blade held between them, an object kept still by their effort to kill the other. The guard focuses on moving the jagged edge of metal into the changelings old wound below her neck, a passage through the exoskeleton and into a green bloom of flesh. The dark smouldering of needless combat in a vast forest of it.
The guard tries to marshal his thoughts but now there are two conflicts. The first is the changeling queen’s strength, no matter how much the Pegasus tries to flap it’s wings he can’t overcome her. The second is the visions of that night in Canterlot, the night when murder was stamped into him, an unforgotten sin. He tries to see Chrysalis underneath the grey navy light, but he can only see an orange tinged night with fireworks drowning in the sky. It seems as though the spark of Canterlot fireworks pours down all around him, haunts him.
In a paroxysm of guilt his eyes unveil into a rush of wilderness, about five miles from the outskirts of canterlot a perfect snapshot from his memories. In his hooves chrysalis has transformed into the wounded changeling he chased when everyone was told to leave it alone. Her hissing spitting face transforms into the face he silenced and extinguished. The face he has to fend off every night from his dreams. He tries to resist but the memories rise up.
It’s all memories.
He followed the changeling to the edges of Canterlot, carried the intention to kill the changeling. The wounded changeling exclaims in its language then falls under the weight of the guard. The guard beats the changeling again for good measure. It was a good idea at the time, the right idea. It was an idea that will eat you up and spit out your bones. He smothers the changeling’s face in his hooves, partly so he can’t see the life fade from it’s eyes. It buzzes and twists.
It isn’t fast enough.
He reaches out and finds a rock in his hoof. He smashes the face once with the rock, a cascade of green blood mixed with pain. With one hoof off he can see his victim’s eyelids. They fold open to reveal eyes. Black pupil-less eyes, ripe bruises hanging underneath them.
There is no malice, anger, fear. Instead an acceptance and pity has descended on it’s eyes like the ashy colours that fall from the fireworks. Who do you pity? You pity me don’t you? Their eyes balanced precariously in each other’s stare. A still silence on the outskirts of canterlot, the guard uncoils slightly and in this small stretch of time recognised they are more then strangers now.
In broken chunks of Equestrian the changeling tries to save the guard’s life.
“You don’t need to do this. It’s over. You don’t need to do this to yourself. Please. Please.”
All the pretty blasts of light recoiling off this one sided conversation.
Somewhere in canterlot there was a wedding celebration. It was probably covered in modern tasteful music and confetti, bright lights and vibrant colours. Somewhere in the crowd a photographer would smile and take a still of everything a wedding is. The bride and groom would dance in fireworks that would illuminate a long hopeful future. Luna and Celestia would be singing and dancing with the dignitaries, nobles and the lucky handful. They wouldn’t be here administrating the justice of equestria, the small justice that gods overlook. They wouldn’t know how haunting the fireworks can be.
If you let one changeling live, then you let an invasion live.
Is this justice?
An entity sharpens in the guard. It coils tighter and tighter.
The rock is slippery so he grips it tighter.
He brings the rock down.
A chance to grab his breath then he brings it down again.
Again.
This is all that’s left.
A dead changeling that accepted fate.
A royal guard that can’t.
In a trembling shivering tempest he drops the instrument of murder. He slides down next to the corpse exhausted, holds himself in the suddenly freezing boiling night. There is nothing that can make him warm. Something detached and died in the guard, it cannot be replaced, it cannot come back, its absence is something that howls and wails. Never has he felt so powerful and helpless holding that changelings life in his hooves. Then taking it.
Oh Celestia what have I done?
The tears drift off him like his question, lost and alone in the milky twilight filled with fireworks. The guard’s thoughts unravel. If you didn’t kill this changeling then what? Someone else would have, a weaker person would have. Soon they wouldn’t be able to contain the corrupting power of justice and blood. Soon they will take up action against the changelings, soon a hot blooded pony will incite the masses. And for what? A riot, then a war, then a genocide. If Celestia does nothing now then she never will. If you don’t kill changelings then someone else will have to.
If you love equestria, then save it from itself.
And you did. Only you stopped the invasion.
Only you made the choice no one else would.
Only it never occurred to him that he wasn’t strong enough.
The thought doesn’t stop the shivering, the thought doesn’t keep him warm. Red blues and greens sigh in the sky, reflect and die in the hard pinched trail of sadness that flows down his face. The guard can’t comprehend how blind he is. The corpse is peaceful in its pose and in its place in the world, another cooling pile of meat. The desolate shaking of his hooves; the intricate whorled skin patched with hair. He stares at the balefulness of it; it tells him that it’s all wrong.
Wrong?
What’s wrong?
He doesn’t know why he’s sobbing and he can’t stop it. When they found him alone wandering out of the wilderness he knew his mind was ready to kill Chrysalis. Only his heart wasn’t.
In a faraway land and time chrysalis pushes the guard off herself. He knew this was going to happen but he can’t help but be astonished at it all, how the air tucks his hair behind his ears and sings to him. The guard watches in a trance as he leaves his memories and the present meets him. Sleep deprived and demented his tongue has the taste of the river on it, but also the taste of gunpowder and smoke. His eyes still see the fireworks, and the fireworks turn into multi-coloured hands, and the hands hold on to him like lost children.
Chrysalis left her past and the guard couldn’t.
Blinded by the clash of the past and present, he can’t see the blade. Their shadows blend and flutter in the lingering smell of lightening. Then chrysalis has the blade draped in scarlet. She holds it amazed by the mundane vulgar design, the droplets of red beading then falling off the tip; it would be the thin top of a spear with rags wrapped around its bottom, it would be thrown down and forgotten and no one would care.
Then she lifts the blade.
It buries itself in his gut and then flies into his lung. The grip is tightened and twisted; she leaves it there satisfied by a gasp of pain. His organs slide and slip in a pain we can’t understand. Chrysalis releases the guard in a monstrous triumph. When the guard lands he doesn’t know if he’s on a riverbank, or in canterlot watching the fireworks set the sky on fire. Lying on his back his hooves would trace itself around the blade stuck inside of him, the bodiless boom of fireworks that are funeral drums.
Celestia, I’m going to die like this?
He tries to laugh but lungs have filled with blood, the messy sticky thud of it. The remnants of the waking nightmare refuse to leave. All he can feel is blackness and hideous explosions of light.
The fireworks above him.
Shudder of light.
I redid the long description, gave it a bit of flair like the writing style I use. I'm sorry about the cliff hanger and how the story has turned so sadly. But we were all expecting this weren't we? The next chapter might take two weeks, but you need to read it to gain some closure. If you think its painful reading, imagine writing it. Thank you for the views and favs, but really you should follow me, I'd be grateful if you would.
And the comments. You don't know how much a comment helps. Thank you.