//------------------------------//
// Chapter 37: Father Against Daughter 
// Story: Fools and Drunks 
// by Jordan179 
//------------------------------//

Grey Hoof laughed, bitterly.  He gazed into the eyes of his defiant daughter.

"Thou dost know why I cannot release them," he said.  "They have trespassed too far and too long into our realm, into the maw and down the gullet of the Curse.  They have been chewed; now 'tis time for them to be swallowed, and digested, that the power of the Curse does not wane."

"Thou needst not do this thing," said Ruby.  "Thou dost name thyself Master-Wraith; if the mastery in truth be thine, thou canst choose a different course.  Let them go -- make them swear to ne'er again enter the limits of the Curse, but let them back into the World, to play out the rest of their dooms.  Let them go, and live."

Complex emotions played across Grey Hoof's face, which had reverted to its Life Aspect.

He asked the obvious question.

"Why?  Whyfore should I do this?"

"Father," said Ruby, stepping slightly closer to him, and waving one hoof to indicate the living equines, "these be not all simple Ponies.  Zecora is the emissary of a greater Order in Zebrica, as thou didst thyself admit -- and her nature be known to the Realm.  Apple Bloom her apprentice is of the Apples, who founded Ponyville; her elder sister be one of the Companions of Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, who is greatly beloved by the Royal Pony Sisters."

Grey Hoof considered this statement.  "And of what import," he asked, "be their ranks in the mortal World to those such as our own selves?"

"Their disappearances will be noted:  a search shall be made for them," Ruby pointed out.  "When 'tis discovered that thou hast made away with them, and imprisoned their very souls, there will be a rescue -- and per chance reprisals."

"We are strong --" Grey Hoof began.

"Are we strong enough to fend off three Alicorns and all their Companions?" Ruby snapped back scornfully, her voice rising and changing into something not entirely equine.  "Backed, at need, by the very armies of the Realm, and all that Realm's arcane hoard and lore?"

Grey Hoof's ears flicked, his expression became thoughtful.

"Father," Ruby continued, her own tone gentling, "'tis exactly as it was when we were breathing.  We be not rebels, nor invaders, nor even the pack of daemons we do resemble.  We are the ghosts of farmers -- with a skin condition -- and in the affairs of the Great we are but little ghosts.  If we try to treat with the Princesses as if we were some rival Realm, t'will lead only to our final doom."

"What then wouldst thou have us do, daughter?" asked Grey Hoof, sneering sardonically.  "Let them go?  Be naught but a pack of ghosts haunting a collection of heaps of earth which once was our village?  Dwindle into nothingness, and pass on forgotten by one and all?"  His voice rose, until by the end he was almost shouting.

"We are dead," Ruby said softly.  "Father, we died five and a thousand years now gone.  We are but ghosts.  We have but to pass on to the true death.  If we be good, perhaps our doom will be good.  But if we persist in wickedness, we shall surely be damned."

She took a step forward, coming close to touching him, and bumped and rubbed the air between them.  Sparks crackled dangerously between their auras -- his reddish-black, and hers golden.

"Father ..." she said, softly.

Grey Hoof closed his eyes; for a moment, smiled in genuine happiness rather than false cheer or cruel mockery.  For that moment, he might have been any father receiving affection from a beloved daughter.

"Ruby ..." he replied.  In his voice was only affection.

Then the moment was gone:  the reality of what they were reasserted themselves.  They had come too close, and the Curse brooked not such closeness between two caught within its toils.  Their auras tangled and clashed; both gasped in pain and staggered away from each other.

"I ... I am sorry, Father," said Ruby, casting down her eyes.  "I did not mean to ..."

"None of us meant this," replied Grey Hoof, looking at her steadily.  "But we now are what we are.  And what we now are has limits ... and needs ... beyond what we were when we were but simple farmers, with a skin condition."

Ruby looked back up at him, and nodded.  "'Tis true," she admitted.  Then, in a rush, "Still, we should let them go.  Still, they will be missed.  Still, if they vanish there will be revenge.  Still, if we further sin we risk the state of our souls."

Grey Hoof mulled for a moment over her words.

"We have taken many," he said, "most of whom may have been missed by somepony.  Some have sought revenge, and those we have either slain if they were weak, or hidden from if they were strong.  We are very hard to harm past mere pain, and even harder to find if we do not wish to be disturbed."

He began to pace, back and forth before her.

"As for the state of our souls," he said, "that be simple enow.  We be damned, as we have been for over a thousand years.  All of us but thee, my dearest daughter, and mayhaps thy mother, and 'tis one of my few delights in this dark unlife that ye are still stainless."  His eyelights flared with emotion.  "Forfend that ye should ever fall!"

"As for mine own self," he continued, "I be doomed, and damned, beyond any hope of redemption.  Mine only hope, for mine own self and my followers, be that we can win enough might to be reborn, in new and mayhaps immortal forms -- fight our way out the other end of the Curse, in the service of the Shadows."

"It is a vain hope --" Ruby began.

"It be mine only hope!" Grey Hoof shouted.  "Even if the chance be slim, I must stretch my mouth out for it!  What wouldst thou have me do?  Abandon all hope?"

"Abandon thy murders!" cried Ruby.  "Ask pardon from the Sisters --"

"And dost thou think they would grant it?" scoffed Grey Hoof.  "Daughter, despite all I have done to thee, thou still dost regard me with fond eyes.  Thou still seest me as stallion -- thou dost refuse to see me as I truly am.  I am become a monster!"

During this speech his voice rose in volume, and with it whipped up a wind, a cyclonic storm that roiled the black clouds overhead until they orbited Sunney Towne, scudding dizzily overhead.  By the last word, he was roaring, and lightning flashed close overhead, so close that the thunderclaps came hard on its hooves, almost immediately after.

"So," said Grey Hoof, "We shall be what we are, what we must be, and play our parts foredoomed in this mummery.  I shall take them as our victims -- as we have done before -- and we shall weather what force shall be sent to punish us -- as we have done before.  And all shall pass as it has so often aforetimes."

Ruby stood defiant before him.  "And I," she said, "shall oppose thee."

Grey Hoof nodded.  "As thou hast, so often aforetimes.  And the one thing I regret in all of this play is that I must needs hurt thee, the one I would least harm of all in life or unlife; all the world."

"As do I," replied Ruby, a sob in her voice.  "As do I."

They took a few steps back from each other, gazed into each other's eyes with what might have been love, or hate, or measurement.  They set their jaws with determination.

Then -- they flew at one another!





It was almost a literal flight; something between the leaps mortal Earth Ponies might have made charging into battle, and the air-walking Glittershell had previously seen from the Wraiths.  They started on the ground, but they were galloping on some shared imaginary surface when they met.

As they approached they shifted shape, first into their Death Aspects and then into webworks of lights:  golden for her and crimson-in-black for him; and only vaguely shaped like Ponies. Glittershell gasped in awe at the beauty that was Ruby Gift, and the horror that was Grey Hoof.

From these traceries of light their auras shone forth; shone and hardened into weapons of motile light, rather like shining wedges or lances facing forward, with curved shields between their main selves and their foes.  All this happened in an instant:  Glittershell saw the general shape of what happened, but could not glimpse all the details.

Then they clashed.

It was not as the previous duel between Ruby and Starlet had been.  This was less restrained, less measured, more a whole committment of their selves to the fray.  Glittershell did not know in what way, or how she knew this, but she knew this:  watching their meeting, it seemed plain, in some manner she could not quite comprehend.

Just before they met, Ruby slid slightly to one side, so that she took her father's onrush not dead-on, which might have finished her, for his aura was visibly larger and more powerful than her own, but instead to the left of her shield.  When they touched, lightnings flared between them, and both visibly strained against the forces projected by their foes. 

Ruby bent and turned at that impact, deflecting rather than directly blocking him, and then swiftly darted against his own exposed flank.  Her strategy was clearly one of maneuver rather than brute force.

Grey Hoof turned to try to meet this maneuver, but Ruby was the swifter of the twain, and she stabbed in with her lance before he could completely cover herself with his shield.  The lance bit home, and Grey Hoof emitted a dreadful roar of rage and pain as it tore loose some of his darklight-tracery, sending it spinning away in sparks and gouts of fading incandescence.

Grey Hoof was checked but for an instant by this blow, and then surged forward with terrible speed, so that Ruby had to back and turn hard to avoid being met head on and overwhelmed.  He caught her a partial blow, and her shield flared dangerously; here and there lightnings licked through.  

Ruby gasped, and parts of her own substance darkened.  For a moment, she seemed about to be driven under by his superior strength.

But only for a moment.  Then, the girl-ghost  curvetted away, and her father followed, and she spun nimbly to lash out at him in his pursuit, striking him a series of light but rapid slashes on his unshielded portion with a secondary spike from her aura, each of which elicited a cry of pain and a small spray of substance.

Grey Hoof paused in his pursuit, clearly re-thinking his strategy, and Ruby rested in midair.  A moment later the girl ghost emitted a stutter of golden light toward her father, similar to the cones with which she had fought Starlet in an earlier encounter; these, Grey Hoof easily blocked with his own shields, and replied with a spray of ebon darts, which Ruby parried in her own turn.

The two continued circling one another, probing with their arcane energies and each clearly awaiting a mistake by the other.





Glittershell heard a motion nearby and turned, to gasp in fear at what she beheld.

It was Roneo, risen halfway to his hooves, approaching her in what could only be described as a shamble.  He glanced at Glittershell, and smiled, his face drained but mostly handsome again in its Life Aspect.  This beauty was ruined by the way in which it kept flickering momentarily into the Death Aspect charred skull.

"Peace," Roneo wheezed at her.  "Thou art not mine to take, not now."  He pointed his snout at the battle between Grey Hoof and Ruby Gift,.  "One of those twain shall triumph, and the winner will decide thy fate."

"You think so?" asked Glittershell, her mood brightening.  If Ruby won, she was sure the girl ghost would let the living equines leave unharmed.

"Aye," replied Roneo, lying companionably down near Glittershell -- not as close as he would have had they been good friends, but far closer than he would have had they been foes.

"Be not so hopeful," said Starlet, plopping herself down on Roneo's far side.  She seemed very tired, but unharmed in the normal mortal sense of injury.  "By 'the winner' my true love does mean 'Grey Hoof.'  So, one way or another, thou and thine own darling shall be joining our merry company, as Grey Hoof's thrall."  She sighed.  "I wish I might have had thee for mine own!  Thou'rt a better fighter than any of my Posse save perhaps for Rooftop, and she is so crass -- I think thou wouldst better the tone of our conversations."  She smiled happily, a dazzling expression only a little ruined by her face's reversion to a corpse-mask for a fraction of a second.  "Mayhaps Father will lend thee to me for social gatherings.  There be no reason we cannot all be friends ..."

Glittershell was unsure how to take this declaration.  The two Wraith lovers had spent much of the day chasing Snips and her all over the landscape, and actually fighting them on the field of battle.  Still, if Grey Hoof won ... neither Roneo nor Starlet actually seemed all that bad ...

"Yeah ... I guess," allowed Glittershell.  "I mean you two are okay."

They both grinned at her, and there was nothing menacing about those smiles save for the situation.

"See!" said Starlet.  "I did tell thee she was a good sport!"

"Aye," said Roneo.  "'Tis almost a shame she cannot live.  Ah well!" he said, looking back at Glittershell with a happy expression, ears up.  "Thou shalt certainly brighten our parties!"

Glittershell smiled back.  This was one of the strangest conversations she had ever had, and that included the time Trixie had regretfully explained to her and Snips that she had not actually defeated a Star-Bear, at the very moment that one of the gigantic beasts was attacking them all.  Compared to this, most of her life had been almost normal.

"Might even be fun," Glittershell said.

"It shall!" agreed Starlet, shambling a bit closer, almost touching Roneo in the process.  "Dost thou know how to make party favors?"

"Yeah, I've helped the Cakes do it, when Pinkie was busy with other stuff," admitted Glittershell.

"Thou canst aid Merry!" the Wraith mare suggested.  "Merry's good at that, but Starbelle does not put her heart into it, Caramel's a bit too ... rotten ... and Rooftop only likes private parties.  I think ye twain -- Merry and thee -- might get along well."

Glittershell had to admit to herself that there was a certain strange comfort in the thought that she might have a place -- would even find a welcome -- in Sunney Towne.  She would no longer have to think for herself and make hard decisions:  actions at which she knew she was notably incompetent.  She would only have to obey her Wraith.  Provided that Wraith wasn't Gladstone, this probably wouldn't be so bad.  Indeed, it would be familiar; most of her life, Glittershell had largely done the bidding of either the RIches or her own kin.

Yet still, something within her was saddened at the prospect of becoming an undead thrall.  There was the undeniable fact that she would have to, well, die first; her vital young soul recoiled from the concept.  She wanted so very much to live -- to know love, to gain fame and fortune; to adventure all over Equestria and the whole wide world and introduce them to Glittershell, not to literally moulder as a walking corpse in timelost Sunney Towne.

She wanted to be beautiful, not become some gruesome thing, more at home in a coffin than on the stage.  It had only been in the last few years that she had started putting on makeup and nail polish, trying on pretty clothes, letting the filly within her express herself.  She had just learned that she might indeed be able to become a good singer.  It seemed so wrong that now, when she had thought herself so close to starting to achieve her dreams, they should all be so cast down.

Besides, there was Snips.  He, too, wanted to live.  He, too, would become an undead thrall.

I can't let my best pal down!

As if the thought had summoned him, a whisper hissed from the right.

"Snailsy, what the hay are ya doin?"

She turned to see her stocky blue-coated friend.  He looked beat up, and his legs were wobbly, but it was amazing that he'd gotten up again at all so soon after all they'd been through.  Snipsy's always been so tough! she thought admiringly.

"I am watching the big fight," Glittershell replied.

"But Roneo and Starlet are right next to you!"  He motioned with his snout at a point on the other side of Glittershell's withers.

"Hi," said Roneo, grinning broadly at Snips.

"Well come here, dear colt," added Starlet, with a gracious smile.

"We are stallions now!" Snips shot back at her, his expression defiant.

"As thou likest it," allowed the Wraith mare, waving a hoof airily, to show that she considered the terminology unimportant.  "In any case, I am so glad that ye both shall attend our little rustic celebration."  Starlet inclined her head and lowered her lashes slightly, and Glittershell was weirdly certain that, had the Wraith not been lying down, she would have curtsied to Snips.

Snips stared at all three of them in clear confusion.  "How come we aren't all fighting any more?"

"Truce," explained Roneo.

"Indeed," agreed Starlet.  "The issue be now out of our own hooves."

"We're all watching them fight," explained Glittershell, jerking his snout towards Grey Hoof and Ruby Gift.





That combat was escalating in both speed and violence.

When it had started, the two combatants had, despite their somewhat abstractly-equine forms, still been moving more or less in the manner of mortal Ponies, if one ignored the ways in which they frequently galloped through thin air and hurled energies at one another -- not by means of any nonexistent horns, but rather somehow from the very cores of their selves.  But, as the battle wore on, both of them began to move faster and faster, swirling around and around one another and loosing a dazzling series of energy bolts and more seemingly-physical attacks at each other, most of which Ruby dodged or deflected, or Grey Hoof absorbed on his shields.

Some of those bolts went wild.  Most simply streaked away into the sky, to vanish into the sullen black stormclouds that swirled above.  Others arced into the ground or the furniture in the square.

The ones that struck the ground simply blew little craters into the hard-packed earth, from which rose wisps of steam.  When a golden bolt struck a table, though, something much stranger happened.  The table wavered and stuttered out of existence.





Roneo winced, his ears drooping.  "Darn," he said.  "There will be much work for me and mine Crew when this be done."

Starlet nodded.  "And thy Crew must first be renewed afore they can labor."

"And I be renewed afore I can renew them."

"I would aid thee, my dear love," said Starlet, "but I fare no better than thee now."

"Sorry," said Glittershell.

"No grudge," replied Roneo, giving her a dazzling grin.  "Blows be given and taken in a brawl:  'tis but the way of things."

"Yes, dear," said Starlet, also smiling.  "Thou art both swift and graceful in the fray -- 'tis naught of which to be ashamed."

Glittershell blushed at the compliment.

A black-and-crimson bolt blasted a bench into nothingness.

Roneo winced again.

"I wish I could help," said Glittershell.

Roneo and Starlet both turned to that, and there was something distinctly predatory in both their smiles.

"Well, thou couldst ..." began Roneo.

"And in a sense thou in the end shall ..." added Starlet.

Glittershell didn't wholly grasp their meaning, but still she shrank back from the two Wraiths.  Their smiles were showing altogether too many teeth for her peace of mind, and she did not at all like the manner in which a greenish-black essence seemed to be leaking from the corners of their eyes.

"Wait, wait, time out!" interjected Snips.  "Isn't this supposed to be some sorta truce?" he asked.

Roneo and Starlet looked at each other, nodded in agreement.  They shivered slightly, and returned to their normal appearances, though their expressions were strained and their forms somewhat translucent.

"Thou dost have the right of it," acknowledged Roneo.  "We shall not harm thee ... now."

"We shall not harm thee save under the let and leave of our Master-Wraith," explained Starlet.  "Which we do not now have.  Nor will we lie to thee.  I would not begin what might be a very long friendship with ye twain with base deceptions."

Snips nodded, and Glittershell sighed in relief.  They could rest a bit longer.

They resumed watching the fight.





The combatants were whirling faster and faster, and the energies they emitted became a single dazzling glow, which pulsated with their contention.  Glittershell's merely-mortal senses could not easily discern the details of the fray, but both her eyes saw and horn felt it as Ruby's golden light struck the crimson-black mass of Grey Hoof again and again.  She could already tell that Grey Hoof faltered, and Ruby followed up on her advantage to punish him unmercifully with bolt after bolt.

Finally, a bolt went home with what must have been especial accuracy and force.  Grey Hoof roared in rage and pain and fell, forming his Death Aspect and trailing a sputter of golden sparks from his right side, to crash into the ground with great force.  When he struck the ground, the hard-packed earth shattered and sprayed in all directions in a rain of semi-solid clods.  He lay there, gasping in exhaustion.

Ruby resumed her Life Aspect, streaking down right after him, following up on her advantage.  She planted her hooves right upon him, an action which elicted a grunt from Grey Hoof, and gazed down at him, her golden eyes fixed firmly on his dark ones.

"I would hurt thee no more," she said calmly.  "Yield, Father, that we may now end this quarrel."

Grey Hoof glared up at her, but he did not appear to be able to do much more than that.





"She won!" shouted Glittershell.  Her heart leaped with joy, and she exchanged glances with Snips, who was grinning with similar emotion.  "We won!  We can go free now!"

She turned to look at Starlet and Roneo, expecting them to be crestfallen.  To her surprise, they seemed unmoved at the outcome.

"It is not done," said Starlet.

"'Till it be done." added Roneo.

"Huh?" asked Glittershell.

A moment later, what the two Wraiths had meant became obvious.





Lightning flashed; the winds howled; the great bowl of black clouds wheeled madly above the combatants.  Suddenly a bolt of black lightning -- it was of an impossible hue that Glittershell was only ever to see again under very terrible circumstances -- arced into Grey Hoof.  Whether it struck down from the sky or up from the ground, Glittershell could never decide.

As the energy waxed, Ruby Gift had stepped back from her position atop her father, so she was not struck by the colossal bolt.    Grey Hoof was hit square on by it, and for a moment Glittershell expected to see the Master-Wraith blasted into ectoplasmic vapor.

Such was not what happened.

Instead, Grey Hoof roared, expressing some not entirely-equine emotion -- whether it was joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain, Glittershell never knew -- and sprang back up on his hooves in a single dynamic motion.  His eyes blazed with terrible energies; little lightnings played all about his spectral form.

Amazingly, Ruby Gift did not seem particularly shocked at this turn of fortune.  Instead, she huffed, set herself firmly, and lowered her head, awaiting Grey Hoof's next move.