A really long time ago, before Yakyakistan had their big war with Blazing Rain and all that, there was a place in the mountains called Icereach. It was right up against the mountains, where the Yakyakistan glacier meets the western edge of that huge range Ironridge is just east of. Nothing but flat ice, jagged rocks, snow... and a bunch of cute little batponies.
Icereach was a colony that had just enough shelter to be safe from storms, had some caves to grow mushrooms for food, and was actually really survivable, if you didn't mind the only way in or out being the occasional yak convoy stubborn enough to walk there all the way across the glacier. Remotest place in the world, seriously. Don't ask me why the bats decided to set up shop there in the first place; they didn't keep history books. Maybe they actually have as bad of a rap as I do elsewhere in the world and were hiding, or something. Point is, they were... and it was nice.
Then the war ended, and there were suddenly all these windigo hearts laying around. And Yakyakistan noticed they did some weird, creepy magical things, and some dumbbell up in the government must've been like, "Hey, let's dump these in the most remote location possible so they don't hurt anyone and get a team of mild-mannered scientists to research them and make them safe and blah blah blah..." and that totally happened. One day, a train of yaks showed up with their wagons, and brought a few unicorns and a stockpile of hearts and left them there, and left. They probably figured that was the end of that.
So the unicorns did their experiments, and they and the bats were actually pretty nice to each other. Bats gave the unicorns food and room to work and live, they kept the bats out of their magic stuff and sometimes helped out with domestic stuff or even expanding the colony. They helped with agriculture, and got some weird varieties of wheat and potatoes to even grow in the shelter of the mountain slopes. They actually quarried some stone and helped build some sturdier stuff aboveground, including this big research tower for themselves so they'd have a safe place to work. Turned Icereach into something more like a town than a bunch of ponies in a cave. They were nice, they cooperated, they became friends... too good of friends.
See, one thing the unicorns always did was experiment on themselves. They figured out this sinister spell they could use that would destroy a windigo heart and use its essence to sever a pony's cutie mark from their body. But the effects only lasted a minute or two, and then it came back, and there was nothing anyone could figure out beyond that.
Eventually, the bats offered to help. You wanna know a really weird difference between us and other kinds of ponies? We're born with our cutie marks. Always have them, right from the get-go. Conceived with them, even, maybe. Not like the unicorns, some of whom were even blank... especially the foals. Did I mention there were whole families there, and they were starting new ones? It really was more like a town than a research station. But there were some bats who had the brains to get interested in this project, even if they didn't have the horns, and they volunteered themselves as test subjects to see if anything different would happen with their marks. After all, there are stories about bats without marks, but they're probably all made up, and all of them were pretty curious what would actually happen.
Big mistake. Like, life-and-death mistake. It turns out that when my kind lose their marks... first off, they go insane. Essentially feral, actually. Normal ponies didn't do that. And the transformation... We turn into these weird, bug-looking things that are kind of like ponies but with black shells as armor and pupilless eyes, and holes in our legs and tails that look like they're rotting. Forked tongues, and all that. And then... we don't change back. The marks don't return on their own. They never return. The unicorns were smart enough to stop the experiment after that only happened once, but it was like the bat had died. Or they were still alive, suffering a fate worse than death. It shook pretty much everyone to their cores, and they realized they had gone too far and were messing with things that weren't meant to be messed with. And since Yakyakistan had never been back to follow up on the experiments... they locked the hearts away in the deepest, darkest cave in Icereach and never, ever looked back.
Fortunately, the unicorns and batponies were good enough of friends that they understood it was an accident and got on with their lives, and hung out and were happy and spent the next few decades doing whatever ponies do when they're isolated and nobody's watching. I'll leave that up to your imagination.
...Seriously. I've imagined it plenty of times, and it's the best entertainment in Ironridge.
Then, one day, out of nowhere... Yakyakistan returned. They had more stuff and more scientists; a whole wagonful of this icky black glass they called obsidian, or moon glass. The new head scientist was this scumbag called Navarre. And he was all, "Yakyakistan has found this dangerous material that does stuff with cutie marks, and since your research station is suited to that, we're going to study it!"
Yeah, no. The day after the convoy left, there was an uprising. The unicorns from the last expedition sided with the batponies and laid down the law, and pretty quickly made the new guys understand that dark magic is dark and not something they wanted any part of. Also, when I say new guys? I mean guys. The idiots didn't bring any mares with them. Everyone else probably should have taken that as an indication that they knew they could bring Yakyakistan back, but hindsight is twenty-twenty...
Still, the locals were nice and gave the scientists their big old research tower to work with, since they were uptight and everyone figured they'd keep to themselves. Everyone just thought they'd get old, population-starve themselves, and eventually go away. Mind you, if that sounds strange, living in the same cramped cave for generations upon generations makes ponies really good at playing the long game. They thought and worried in centuries, not years. And for the most part, that worked. The scientists did their things with the moon glass, and nobody else went near them or bothered them and it almost looked like things would be just as cool as they were the time before. Especially since everyone knew not to mess with those experiments.
And then those idiots betrayed us.
They must have thought the other ponies were stupid, or something. Expendable. No one in the rest of the town knew what they were doing, or what to watch out for, but even if they had, they wouldn't have been able to do anything. You heard how moon glass works last night when we were talking, right? Contains something that looks and acts like a cutie mark, and if a blank pony holds onto it for too long, that fake mark will enter them and start to change them? And then you get a possessed pony and an empty piece of glass that's basically a container for holding cutie marks?
Nobody knew how they had emptied theirs. Maybe they brought some that were empty from Yakyakistan. Maybe they did something with the windigo hearts, which they dug out a while before and took into that stupid tower. But those monsters... hid empty pieces of glass beneath the snow, like mines in a battlefield. They knew the empty pieces did nothing to normal ponies, marked or blank. They knew batponies had marks that reacted differently to mark-manipulating magic than others'. And they knew the bats would never, ever agree to be test subjects again after what had happened before, nor would the older unicorns help force them to... so they did it through treachery. They turned them into traps, and waited for someone to fall into it. And someone did.
T-That pony... was a young mare who was out for a walk with her sister, checking the ice potato fields. She stepped on one. By the time she realized what was happening, there was nothing she could do about it... not that anyone knew what to do.
It drained her. Sucked her dry, empty, until her mark was gone and she was exactly the same kind of monster everyone had seen all those years ago. Took less than a minute. There must be something that makes batponies' cutie marks' connections to their bodies weaker than that of normal ponies, because not only do they not come back when removed, but empty moon glass can pull them away, without even needing a windigo heart or that spell. And so those two bats sat there, one watching in horror as her sister turned into a mindless shell and a rock holding her soul, and didn't know what to do.
But the unicorns did. The good ones, they found those two, and immediately realized what had happened. Since they were safe from the moon glass due to not being batponies, they ordered everyone inside and to stay away from anywhere it could be hidden. They used their telekinetic fields to purge the town... found a lot more of the stuff. And they took the transformed sister and her soul to the scientists in the tower, and demanded they fix her. The scientists agreed.
Of course they didn't fix her. What kind of villainous scientists would stop and atone there, after going so far already? They wanted to study her. They didn't have access to the original case; that one had been put down as an act of mercy years before they arrived. And they must have known what they wanted to do, because they wasted no time in it.
That mare's name was Valey. Her sister, who followed her to the lab when the unicorns brought her there to demand she be fixed, was Nyala. And the scientists in the tower did what they said, and recombined Valey with the cutie mark from a piece of moon glass... the wrong piece. Not the one that held her cutie mark, but one of the ones that had fallen from space. One containing a parasitic look-alike cutie mark, the kind that enter into unmarked ponies and change their eyes and personalities. And that's how I was made.
There was a lot of arguing. Fighting, almost. The whole town was on Nyala's side, wanted her sister put back to normal... and I was just sitting there rubbing my head, wondering who I was and what I was doing and if I had lost my memories or if something bigger had happened. I wasn't the old Valey, see. Turned back into a cute, fuzzy bat, but didn't look an inch like her. Didn't have her memories. Did know a few basic things, though, like how to talk, how to tell who wanted to hurt me... and how to fight.
The scientists had expected the town to be angry when they used them. They had spent their time making weapons... real weapons, stuff that shoots projectiles and hurts ponies. They were expecting to put down an uprising of unarmed, peaceful villagers. They weren't expecting their own experiment to turn on them and have a cutie mark in invincibility.
I crushed them. Beat them all to an inch of their lives. Didn't kill them... dunno why. It wasn't even close to a fair fight; I was too strong. Unfortunately, none of the villagers were remotely expecting that, either. They knew moon glass was bad, they saw that I had turned scary... and so they got scared of me. I could have destroyed them too, and they knew it. But I got talked down... by the real Valey's sister.
I dunno what Nyala's thing was. To this day, I don't. The only thing I had in common with her sister was that I used the same transforming shell of a body that had once been hers, and took her name, but she didn't care. She treated me like her sister anyway. Maybe she thought there was still the real Valey in there, or she thought she could "bring me back" or something... or maybe she was just that nice. But she got me to trust her, squirreled me off to a disused part of the cave so we could calm down, and started to care for me and teach me about the world.
Didn't take long for me to grow a conscience. I mean, I must have had one already, but I could tell when stuff was messed up. I could tell when I was messed up. I was some evil extraterrestrial imitation of a soul masquerading inside her sister's body, and if anyone doubted that moon glass was bad news after all the things it could do to ponies, the fact that my talent was destruction sure sealed that deal. I shouldn't have existed. I was an abomination given form, probably what that moon glass had come here to try and turn into in the first place... or maybe it fell due to random coincidence. Either way, I knew I was categorically evil... but I also was.
Despite all I knew about myself and how bad it was, I also had a self in the first place. Have. I felt like a pony... or as close as can be to my understanding of what a pony is, anyway. I wanted to live, be happy, have friends, everything real ponies want, bat or not. I wanted to be real myself. And really, I tried to. I went out in the town and did villager things. I took walks, chatted, helped farm... even made my talent useful once or twice, like the time I noticed an unstable snowbank that was one loud shout away from burying my party in an avalanche. But everyone knew I was the moon pony, the one who had once been a carefree filly and was now an alien manifestation; a killing machine who could obliterate the entire town if I had reason to. They couldn't treat me like a pony. Nyala was the only one who did, and I'm sure she's the only thing that kept me sane.
She kept me company. She treated me like anything other than a cursed being. She told me stories to pass the time, over and over, local word-of-mouth legends like the Mare in the Moon and the Immortal Dream. And she told me what the townsponies were saying when they thought we weren't listening... and there were some who still wanted to turn me back to normal.
Why wouldn't they try that earlier? Well, for one, I wasn't their Valey, and they were scared of me, and they thought if they tried to erase me and bring back the old one, I'd beat them up. For two, they weren't even sure if it would work, since if moon glass transferred my new mark from it to me, would it really pull it out again? They might have to use the hearts, which they vowed never to use again. They also weren't sure if the old Valey would get her memory back. Most importantly, though, nobody knew what had happened to my old moon glass, the one holding the original Valey's cutie mark. Also, after I was made, the lab was kind of closed down. A lot of the new scientists realized they had it wrong and gave up. Only a hoofful of ponies, including the leader, Navarre, were still there, teleporting in and out with stockpiled food. They had all the hearts and moon glass, so to get the equipment in the first place, they'd have to storm the tower and face those weapons again... or get me to do it for them. The latter, they knew I'd never want to fight for my own suicide. And nobody cared quite enough about me to risk their own lives to bring the old me back.
...Almost nobody.
Nyala had this idea that the tower was full of research notes, and was sure there were some beneficial spells the scientists had kept for themselves. The ones who left after I was made wouldn't talk about it, but she had this perfect dream-scenario where she could get my old mark back and somehow put both in one body, like what happens when normal ponies use moon glass and suddenly get multiple personality disorder. She missed her sister more than anyone, but also actually cared about me. So one day, she went up to the tower by herself to try and talk them into it... and of course I followed her. I didn't need my cutie mark to smell the danger from the other side of Icereach. That place reeked of nope, and I was ready to raze it to the ground if need be to protect her. Neither of us had any idea what would be inside, but we were sure it would be bad.
As it turned out, those stupid scientists had taken care of themselves for us. When we got to the tower's experimentation chamber, the place was completely frozen over and blasted with ice. There was this windigo heart on a central pedestal with all the jagged ice explosion lines and stuff pointing to it, so we guessed they had been experimenting and it blew up. They made a mistake or explosion or something that flash-froze the entire room. It must have been recent, too, because the scientists still there, who were stuck in the ice? They were all alive. Including Navarre. I don't know how, but he was alive and conscious and staring right at us, even with two inches of ice covering his horn and eyes.
The ice was painful. It hurt to walk on, and not in a cold or sharp way. You could tell it had been made using black magic. I punched it, but couldn't break it with my hooves; it just completely rejected both of us. Navarre, though... He could still use his horn, and had an audio projection spell he could use to talk.
He blubbered like crazy. Beats me where he learned how to act like a foal so well. Must be something they teach at villain school. But he told me if I could dig him out, he'd give us back my original cutie mark and all the spells we needed to put me back together. I demanded payment up front, since I wanted to see that glass safe and sound. I dunno how I planned on verifying it was the right piece; I figured I'd just know since it had been her body. Pointed us into an adjacent supply room. I sensed danger, and went in first. Good thing, too, since there was an entire stack of moon glass chips... and a bunch of them were empty. I knew I'd be able to dig through them safely with a shovel given enough time, and throw out the ones that would drain me. Kept my danger sense as sharp as I could the whole time, constantly watching for anything that could hit me... and that's how I found it only works for me, and not danger to my friends.
That jerk... he... levitated a piece of moon glass into Nyala while I had my back turned. I spun around instantly, but had no idea how to do anything. When she screamed, it was like the rock was melting slightly into her. She flailed around and it wouldn't come off, and I couldn't pull it off her without something to touch it safely with. Never gonna forget... She called my name, asked what was happening. Talked about how gray everything looked. She fought it, but I watched her slipping away. Finally found a crowbar, but it was too late. She turned into a monster, just sitting there, looking like the ice hurt and she was confused.
I wasn't a sorceress. I didn't know how to put her back together. What I did know was how to kill. I took that crowbar to the ice Navarre was trapped in like a spear, stabbing and gouging and chipping it away and going like a maniac straight for his heart. He threw stuff at me too, but I could feel it coming and dodged or struck it down without even having to look. I thought I had him. I saw the fear in his eyes. Maybe he really was afraid. His horn was glowing the whole time. And then I got him... impaled him, just like I wanted. Watched him bleed out; saw the light leave his eyes. And the cutie mark leave his flank.
And when I looked around... We had known... moon glass captures cutie marks. Batponies are receptive to cutie marks not their own. Windigo hearts can remove marks from anyone, and we had no idea what other kinds of magic those scientists had invented. And there had been a windigo heart in the center of that room, already enchanted and ready for whatever ritual they were attempting.
When I looked, Nyala wasn't a monster anymore. She was him... as a batpony. Makes sense, doesn't it? If you can stick a fake alien cutie mark from space in a batpony, you can stick in one you pry off a normal, living pony too. He had the materials. He did that to escape the ice and me.
I don't know if he lost his memories or not, but his instincts were there. He was still holding the glass that had drained my sister, saw me preparing to kill him for the second time inside a minute, and bailed. He flung the glass out one window, and dove out the opposite himself. I could only chase one, and if the glass holding Nyala's mark shattered on the rocks below... I could never get her back. I chose that over revenge. Caught it. Took a hit against the rocks to reach it in time. By the time I could get up, he was completely gone.
That should've been the end. I should've taken that rock and... I dunno. I didn't see a way I could go on, or a way to bring her back. Maybe a scientist could've, but not me. Less than a year of memories, remember? But I didn't need to. It didn't matter. Because something in that ice explosion activated a distress signal at the tower, and in a matter of hours...
An airship stopped by. We had seen them on the very distant horizon in the years before, making the voyage between the Yakyakistani capital and Ironridge to the east. It was a commercial ship, a merchant one, carrying a cargo of exotic spices from the northwest. Fancy stuff. But it stopped by, and then the villagers realized something was up with the tower, and went to investigate... yeah. They found the ice. Dug the other scientists out. A lot of them needed medical treatment, but research colonies aren't known for their hospitals. The ship's captain offered to take them to Ironridge, free of charge. I watched them being taken on, holding onto Nyala's moon glass like it was my own life... still hadn't found mine, if it still existed. And I knew that those ponies that were being taken away were the only ones who might have knowledge of how to bring her back, even assuming I could ever find her body again. But I think I was proof body didn't matter. I just wanted something I could do.
So I stowed away. Brought the last heart from the tower with me; there was only one left and I figured it might be useful. Haunted the bay where they were kept. Watched as one passed away from their injuries, then another. Nearly died of anxiety myself. I wasn't a medical pony; there was nothing I could do for them, even though I both loathed them and needed them alive. By the time the ship got to Ironridge, there was only one left. A big dude... probably helped, having a lot of body fat for insulation.
They got him recovering. By the time he was able to talk, up in a Stone District hospital, I was used to sneaking into his room. I had a conversation with him. He recognized me. He knew I could end him then and there. I knew he could spill secrets about me no one could ever know... since I wanted to be a real pony. We both needed each other, and so we formed an alliance: I'd protect him and get him in a position where he could re-open research into cutie mark happenings with windigo hearts and moon glass, and he'd work in secret on some way to resurrect my sister. I learned to fudge documents, got good at bureaucracy stuff, became the world's best opportunist, and messed with enough stuff behind the scenes to get him a job... That dude showed up a few times in our story of Ironridge from last night, but was never a major character. He was Dorable, one of the Sosan factory chiefs. And he stuck to the bargain.
I wound up basing myself in the Stone District. Wasn't too hard to point the ambassador to all the right channels he'd need to find information about me and realize I'd be an invaluable hired asset... That was before I knew what a jerk Herman was, or I'd never have done that. But still, I didn't want anyone to know me and Dorable were in cahoots. We almost never had contact, anyway. But he got himself in on Sparky's little plan, offered his expertise to the pool... He was the one who helped her remove her cutie mark and seal it away, using the windigo heart I smuggled. And he was the one who suggested taking a suit of power armor and turning it into a body that could use a cutie mark as a soul.
I dunno how long it would have taken that plan to pan out, if ever. I hadn't planned on getting stuck with Herman. I hadn't planned on seven out of my eight years of existence being spent enduring the exact same kind of unpopularity I had in Icereach, only baseless and without Nyala to help me. I dunno how much of what Dorable helped the Sosans on was for my sake and how much was for theirs... Probably a lot more theirs than mine. But that's what happened, and that's my life.
For several moments after she finished, Valey couldn't speak. She was more paralyzed than Amber, sitting with her shoulders slumped and head staring at the ground. Her golden pendant clinked gently as it swayed, Nyala's moon glass inset like a black gemstone in the center.
"That's crazy," Amber whispered, draping a foreleg around Valey's back.
"I thought you couldn't move," Valey said, dull and toneless.
"...There's a trick to it."
Another moment passed, and Valey felt the silence itching at her scalp like sweat. "So... yeah. That was a long time ago. Funny how the one thing I actually got out of it is this prototype pendant that does let me safely have two cutie marks at once... far too long after we wanted it for it to be of any use. I'm so tired of this, though. I got tired and distracted long ago, gave up, left her buried in a safe place where only I could go and resigned myself to constantly being the bad guy. I don't know if Ironridge is prejudiced against batponies or me or what, because they can't have known what I really am. But I couldn't keep it up. I just... rolled with the life I had, and only this last week have ever seriously been able to consider stuff like this again. But now that I do have friends... who don't want to listen when I warn them I'm not a pony, but some sort of parasitic alien... and I remember Icereach so well, still... yeah."
Amber hugged her.
"They brought Braen's armor along," Valey remarked. "It was working fine, and I don't think anything happened to it. I've got Nyala right here. All it would take is a bit of sneaking, slip her in, see what happens... but the life I've got now is better than anything I've had in... ever. And I don't know if it's better that chapter remains closed, or if I should go back to my old goals, or what. Keep in mind, I've never known who or what I am, but it's even harder now because I feel like I've completely changed in the last few days. Made friends, did something selfless to help my enemies, lost an easy fight against a bunch of mooks... Meh."
"For what it's worth," Amber said, wobbling dangerously and barely not collapsing her head back to her pillow, "that story was so crazy and... so far out of what I have experience with that I have no idea how to react to it. None at all. But you seem more like a pony than an eldritch monster to me, and I like to look for the best in ponies where I can. Besides, there are a few parts of that I can relate to better than you think..."
Valey looked up, still dazed by everything she had just narrated. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Amber grinned. "Can I tell you about the time my own best friend's husband dumped her, and I mercilessly hunted him down and punched his teeth out for a trophy?"