Infinity has boundaries.
This always fascinated the girl. Two is two, and one is one. Each a singular point in the endless series, defined and constant. It's easy to move between them, and the distance would always be the same. But to look between was to find infinity. The fractions, decimal places, all the myriad ways of slicing things finer and finer... there was forever one more way to narrow things down, an extra digit to be added somewhere. A border on this side, another on that one, and infinity between. It's a strange concept for a child, and didn't become any less wondrous for the adult. It was possible to spend a lifetime between digits, or make the transition instant through rounding things off, usually with a shrug. But to keep searching down, staying between...
In her dream, the girl (now a woman, but always so young in this particular kind of dream) dances between decimals, the only time when she will ever dance at all. She moves in ways which belonged to another, and her body does not betray her. Limbs sway, arms sweep, and the numbers are cut still finer. Every definition becomes more exacting as they narrow, things which can only mean one thing and would never be anything else. She slices through the bounded infinity until it seems as if there must be nothing left to cut, then she cuts further still, and when she has brought things down to the point where every additional digit is both meaningful and meaningless, that is where she finds the Quantum Damsel.
This is where the other piece of the girl's two-part soul lives. In the place between the numbers, where even definitions are variables. Where digits have yet to commit, waiting in a state of flux to see what they might become. The realm of entropy, and thus of creativity, for to have a single definition at the outset would be to calcify the world.
The girl has a need to quantify, and there are so many places that drive could have brought her. Might have locked her into for life and the death which would not have been escaped, if not for the dance.
The Damsel waits between the numbers, weeping quarks and bosons. The flowing trinary code which normally makes up her hair is limp and still. The Damsel herself barely moves, and that scares the girl. On the rare occasions when they meet (and the girl rarely spoke to other mages, didn't understand how special even occasional meetings were) and the parts of the soul interact, they dance. It is how they communicate. For when it comes to what the mage will ultimately perceive, there are many things which can shape the avatar. Its drives, its desires -- those are constant. But the form can be influenced, and that is why the Damsel is small and slender. Why the shifting features which refuse to commit to a single state might be seen as having something constant underneath. Why she dances, because at the moment that part of the girl's soul awoke, there had to be someone who would still dance.
The shimmering form (shifting in colors, assuming hues which can only exist here, things the girl can never define when waking comes) has buried her face in her hands, and it terrifies the girl. She needs to see that face. She wants to dance with the other part of her soul, for the dance is all that remains. But the Quantum Damsel will not dance. She weeps, and subatomic particles of pain form into words.
We killed and they died and we killed and they died and we killed and they're dead they're all dead they're all dead they're all
dead
they're all
Bree become aware that the white unicorn was looking up at her, and doing so rather awkwardly. The blue eyes were slightly scrunched around the corners, and the forelegs were twitching a little. This, added to the minor vibration of the tail, indicated a pony who was fidgeting. Unsure of what to say, or whether anything could be said at all.
She'd heard about this unicorn, during her brief prior stay in what the involuntary occupants liked to call New Cynosure. The mare who had designed so much of the clothing worn by the humans there, because she'd found it to be an interesting challenge and besides, very few people showed in Equestria with full suitcases. For Bree's part, her stay in the internment camp had only lasted a week (sent in undercover, looking for others from her world, and there had been but one), the unicorn had been unavailable, and she'd wound up washing the same clothes over and over...
They'd brought the unicorn in, and that mare was now awkwardly staring up at her. Fidgeting, with an expression that suggested something had recently been said to Bree and not only had there not been a response, but the mare was beginning to treat the silence as something to worry about.
"Sorry," Bree said. "I got distracted." She pushed her hands against the bed, forced herself to her feet. Her legs seemed willing to support her mass. No small task: she technically wasn't overweight, but she was solidly built, had worked out regularly because physical strength was needed for so many things... add that to a six-foot build and a body mass index which been thrown off by A Lot, and one of Bree's few remaining true complaints about her body was all things considered, her feet should have been somewhat larger. "What did you say?"
"Would you..." The unicorn swallowed. "...remove the gown? If you are ready to do so, of course. I require your measurements." Soft blue lifted a roll of carefully-marked thin cloth, began to unfurl it. "All of them. And then I can begin to sew something which will suit you. Something basic, to begin with. Suitable for moving about in, while still allowing you to meet the Princesses --" a brief pause "-- tomorrow?"
Bree nodded, for they had already sent word. They would speak about her (if they hadn't already), and then they would speak to her. Or, more likely, at.
"A rather short deadline," the mare stated, now looking vaguely irritated. "But of course, the palace is under no obligation to respect my schedule, nor would I expect them to be aware that I have one. However, that means we should begin at once, and so -- if you would..." Another gulp of saliva. "...remove the gown?"
Bree reached around to the small of her back, undid what few knots had been placed, slipped the entire thing forward and let it fall down her arms until the ugly grey-green fabric pooled on the floor.
The unicorn stared.
"Er," she said.
Bree didn't bring her arms up, made no attempt to hide any part of herself. There wasn't much reason to: ponies felt no attraction to humans, and so embarrassment was more or less pointless. Besides, there was just too much to be covered.
"That's an improvement," the redhead decided.
"...really?" the mare tried.
"Most ponies say 'Yearrggh...' Would you take the measurements, please?"
The tape began to wind itself around her body, never pressing too tightly against her skin: the mare had exceptionally fine field control.
"Er," the mare repeated as she looked at the uppermost number -- then shook her head, twice and hard: the elaborate curls in the purple mane nearly straightened themselves out. "Very well. I will simply have to -- adapt. Fortunately, I have dealt with ageládas --"
Bree blinked, for it wasn't often that a word failed to translate. "-- I'm sorry. Dealt with what?"
"Female minotaurs," the unicorn clarified, which explained the hiccup: those who had first arrived in Equestria were locked into that language. "A favorite customer of mine has brought her friends to see me before. And your build is... well, you are shorter than they are, but in the... other aspect..." She visibly rallied. "At any rate, I can accommodate you. With some work. Although I am rather hoping that your meeting begins later than scheduled." The tape moved lower. "And with your natural hues... yes, the color palette can be rather extensive. Are there things you prefer?"
"Just that it fits." Between biology and budget, 'fits' was all she could generally ask for, with the request frequently being denied. "Plus maybe an outer jacket. A light one, not too thick. Waist-length. With pockets."
A small nod. "Skirt or pants?"
"Pants." It was too cold for shorts, and she never wore them anyway.
"Now," the mare said, currently measuring Bree's hips, "regarding the blouse -- do you typically show..." Her lips twisted without speech, trying to find a word which she probably hadn't used in moons, "...cleavage?"
"No." Never.
"Whyever not?" The mare's head briefly tilted to the right. "I have fitted those who are considerably smaller than you, and they --"
And the familiar answer almost made her smile. "Where would I stop? Pullover blouse, please. No buttons. No cleavage."
The mare nodded, measured and recorded the length of Bree's arms, the circumference of each bicep.
After a while, "If I may ask -- and I do apologize if this comes across as rude or offensive, please understand that such is not my intent... I have fitted many humans. Nearly a hundred females for those currently in the camp, of all ages. And..." Another little gulp. "...more for those in the cells. Although in those cases, my tapes were simply one additional, rather temporary binding. I have seen none who looked like you. Is your appearance common to your world?"
She wasn't offended. "No. It's... hard to explain, because of the way your own traits are passed on." She still hadn't figured out the rules which determined a newborn's race. "But try to imagine that every pony from Manehattan, regardless of their species, had a few things in common for their appearance. Something about the fur, a given shape of the hoof. And every pony from Vanhoover would possess a certain tail curl, a little inner curve to their snout. And if two of them met, and had a foal... the child would have a little of everything."
The mare thought it over, and then nodded. "So the hue of your skin...?"
"My mother."
dead
"And your height?"
"My dad."
dead
The blue eyes moved. "Er..."
Bree took pity. "That's a genetic condition." Which didn't help anything. "...in the blood."
"No cure, then," the mare said with open pity.
"Oh, there's a cure," Bree replied, and was surprised by how airy the words were. "Actually, there's a choice of two. You can go to a doctor, hand him a knife, and tell him to cut off anything which everyone else doesn't like. Which takes a while, because obviously first he has to cut off your breasts, but then it turns out you're also too tall, so he starts slicing at your legs. Then someone points out that your fingers are too long for your hands, so those, they clearly have to go. And your eyes are either the right shape or the wrong one, but instead of fighting about which it is, they just start cutting there, and then they get to your skin, your hair, your face, they keep cutting and cutting until you run out of blood and then you're cured. And dead. But as far as they're concerned, it's the same thing, because either way, no one has to look at you any more. And if you can't afford that, because they charge to kill you, there's the other option. Which is that you take that same knife, and you do it to yourself at home --"
The white jaw was hanging open, and the blue eyes had gone wide with horror.
"-- sorry," Bree said.
bleed for them
they always want you to bleed
but they're dead too
and no one had any blood at all
"...yes," the mare shakily said, and the tape unsteadily floated to Bree's right thigh. Pressed lightly, so as not to bring pain to whatever was under the bandages. Bree suspected that wasn't much: she was no longer feeling aches there, and while she had never been much for the magic of life... well, as it turned out, mastering entropy had its own effects on the body. Aging was a form of natural decay, and so that had slowed to a crawl. Scars were inefficient, and that meant she didn't really have any major ones. When her legs finished healing, they would be virtually pristine.
All of the truly permanent wounds were inside.
"'Where would I stop...'?" she mused.
"Pardon?" the mare eventually asked.
"Sorry," Bree repeated, standing nude upon stone. "It's... an old answer."
It was the best time of her life.
The classes, those were joyous. She was being challenged everywhere she went. Surrounded by those just as intelligent as she, and even if they refused to see that spark in her at first glance, they had a hard time denying the results she produced. (Some tried, and a number never stopped.) The textbooks were more expensive than any book should ever be, but also delivered an experience which she would have willingly paid for. She was an engineering student, and she took to the field like a bird who'd been in the nest far too long, soaring endlessly on currents of rapture.
Of course, it couldn't all be math and science. There was also what had initially looked like certain torture, and that came in the form of mandatory electives. No one was allowed to be completely pure within their major: they had to take courses from the outside, and there was nothing on the list which particularly intrigued the girl. For a language, she chose German: it's a language of science, and the nature of her former household will eventually make it the fourth one she speaks. But that still left one course for this semester, and the quickly-closing classes left her with -- philosophy.
She had anticipated hating it. She intended to be an engineer, and that meant she was most interested in problems which could be solved with answers like Five and A Little To The Left or, on a day of purely inner boldness, It's The Keystone, You Idiot. Questions with answers like Human Nature, The Eternal Spirit, or, so much worse, What Do You Think? -- well, she had felt herself reasonable in praying to scrape out a bare pass. But the teacher was a wonder. He had ways of discussing history, moral quandaries, and the unrelenting need of the human animal to make things that much worse for itself. Ways which made her pay attention, which got her to actually raise a hand during class, and the sight of that hand going up couldn't be missed. Admittedly, it was hard to say much during class itself, for she was still very shy. But the teacher was willing to meet with her during office hours and go over the material. She enjoyed those meetings, loved that he looked at her eyes. That in philosophy, it was hard to have a wrong question, although it's rather easy to come up with a stupid opinion. That he spoke to her as an adult, almost a peer. She liked talking to him, and wondered why so few other students did it. Why nearly a third of the class quit during the first week. It couldn't have been the material, which was unexpectedly and endlessly fascinating. It was as if they couldn't stand to be near him...
And then there was Allyse. Allyse, who was everything the girl was (in many ways, still is) not.
Allyse... the girl couldn't understand her. Why she was being treated as she was, not as a freak or a victim-to-come, a live-in punching bag upon whom anyone in the dorm could work out their rage. It took a while to recognize that Allyse had love, love for the world and the people in it, a desire to be both in that world and part of it. Longer still to recognize how rare that was, and then a lifetime of mourning its loss.
The girl eventually suspected that she was being treated as a bedraggled puppy found on the stoop during a downpour: clearly incapable of taking care of itself, and so someone must feed it, train it, and make sure it doesn't socially piddle on the party's carpet. But it was more than that. Allyse saw something in her that the girl couldn't see in herself. She wanted the girl to learn about makeup. Then she found out her roommate couldn't afford such things and left a full supply of colors on the desk, without word or comment (although there was some later giggling denial about how it got there in the first place). Allyse wanted the girl to try new hairstyles, because that shade of red doesn't come along every day and so it must shout its presence to the world. She understood the girl's financial situation and tried to help her look for part-time work, but that problem was never solved: there were thousands of students fighting over a few hundred jobs and while the girl is beautiful (in her way, something she has yet to see), those who were more conventional, acceptable -- they got the paychecks. So it turned into stretching the loan check, hitting the thrift stores, improvement of sewing skills.
There were parties. The girl had no idea what to do at parties and tended to wind up in a corner, cringing away from music and noise and those who approached her. She just barely accepted a drink at one point (it would have been her first) and her roommate stormed through the crowd, swatted glass to floor, planted a knee in the boy's crotch and then offered to get him a refill, only after adding more of what had been in his pocket. There were apologies back at their dorm room, there was a careful explanation of what could have happened, and then there was another party because it's college and now the girl knew what to watch for, so the next party will be better.
Allyse joined a sorority, and it took a while to sort through the ones which were fighting over her. Allyse made friends just by walking into a room, and because those girls were friends with Allyse, they had to show some courtesy towards her roommate. Allyse began to sort through boys and tried to match the redhead up with a few choice selections, but that was something else which never quite worked out: the girl just wasn't good at dating, and too many of the males (six, during the time when they lived together) were bravado-curious among their fellows, then showed their true tastes by not appearing at the appointed hour. Allyse taught the girl to laugh those off, and then spread rumors about how they just couldn't handle her.
And Allyse danced.
It was her major. She danced in class. She danced at parties. She danced in the dorm room, or would break into a spontaneous twirl while going down the hall. Allyse told the girl that life was dance, that dancing was how you knew you were alive, and so you'd better dance because life as dance meant stopping was a really bad idea. She tried to get the girl to dance, if only in private, and... it never happened. The girl was shy (but getting better), and that was part of it. But they had completely different bodies. The girl couldn't move that way, and Allyse understood that -- but she insisted that the girl must have a dance of her own. Everyone did: it was just a matter of figuring out what it was.
Allyse had six classes that semester, still found time for parties and sororities and the seemingly-endless course that was Bree 101. Her lone elective engineering project. A social rebuild from the ground up.
It took some time before the girl could really talk to her. And then they talked about everything.
"We have to do something about your wardrobe," Allyse said one November day, and not for the first time.
"We just did," the girl protested, for they had just come back from the lingerie shop. That which was in the blood (a term which will actually be secretly embraced in later years, because there's just an elegance to it) still progresses, and so money had been sacrificed to a fresh round of support. Allyse had offered to go with her, claimed it would be easier with two. Stayed outside the fitting room. The shop was an unusual one in that it was willing to do custom work, but there was plenty available in the standard sizes, and Allyse walked out with a fair portion of it.
"About your blouses," Allyse clarified. "I went into your wardrobe, Bree. You have nothing which shows cleavage. You're carrying all that and you never let any of it touch sunlight."
"It's too cold." She was starting to learn about Michigan winters (which liked to provide sneak previews in November), and it was making her wonder whether the afterlife actually punished with ice.
"And when it was September?"
"Too hot."
A merry sort of sigh. "I show cleavage. I barely have anything to show and I'm showing it." Some of Allyse's party dresses were rather low-cut. Even on someone who was 5'2", the waist could be considered as low.
The girl spread her hands. "Where would I stop?"
Allyse's lips quirked. She laughed, and kept doing so for some time. The girl watched.
Eventually, Allyse got up from where she'd been straddling the chair, stepped a little closer.
"Ten percent," she said. "Let's look at it that way. Ten percent. They're going to look anyway. After all, you're one of the rarest specimens in North America." Her tones shifted, took on tones of the midway. "Come see the only Irish-Vietnamese unreduced macromastic in captivity! Come one, come all! Only five dollars a ticket to see the last surviving --"
"Cut it out." She could say that now, and a few other things.
Allyse giggled, came closer still.
"We'll get you there," she said. "I'll get you out in public with tan lines by May. Or without tan lines. I've been scouting some places... actually, do you tan?"
The girl shook her head. She mostly just burned.
"Then tanning cream," Allyse decided. "I'm going out. Possibly for tanning cream. And some new fabric scissors, so we can try you out with cleavage." And before the girl could protest, she came right up to that chair, leaned in.
"Later, silly," she declared, and kissed the girl on the tip of her nose before leaving the dorm room. Dancing away.
The girl didn't move for ten minutes. Didn't sleep well that night, and the dreams were... strange.
She had very little concept of her own sexuality. Before coming to college, she'd been isolated, forbidden to date or socialize or pretty much everything else. Even masturbation had been nearly impossible, not in a tiny apartment with thin walls and inner doors which wouldn't lock, not to mention siblings. Most of her hidden desires expressed themselves at night, and she hadn't remembered any of the details: simply waking up in twisted sheets which had to be hidden, then cleaned when no one could watch. Ultimately, there were a few fictional characters whom she'd had vague crushes on. (What's left of her child self still carries a flickering torch for Jupiter Jones, although at least half the flame is envy for having ready access to a scrapyard.)
Now she was dating, and that was due to Allyse. But that wasn't really working out. Many of the boys weren't even showing up. ('Chickening out,' as Allyse put it. Implying they weren't good enough for her.) She was trying, she -- had reached the point where she wanted to try, but dating was just something to do which kept going wrong and...
Allyse was her friend. Her first friend, her best friend: she would never have another relationship as close, all the way through the end of the world. And for that, she loved Allyse.
But there had been a kiss.
Allyse loved the world, and so many of those in it: that was what the girl told herself, until she finally fell asleep. Kissing was a natural thing for Allyse, more natural than it was for so many. In that sense, it didn't mean anything at all.
And still, the dreams were strange.
Marble was porous, and so it absorbed blood. It also did interesting things to sound and in the castle, those effects seemed to be variable. There were places in which footsteps would echo, others where you could stand right outside a room's open door and barely get any sonic hint of what might be happening within.
In this case, the doors of the Moonrise Gate were closed, and Bree had been left outside in the hallway. She was supposed to be meeting the Diarchy, and the time of that meeting was becoming progressively more postponed. All she could do was stand outside in her new clothes and wait.
There were three Guards watching her. It was possible that more of those were inside, with the Princesses. It wasn't that they considered her to be a threat, not when measured against two alicorns. She was strong for a mage --
technically the strongest
-- and with proper preparation or exceptionally quick thinking, she could do a lot. But she would never move against Equestria, and even if she tried to run... she was distinctive. She'd never really managed to advance in life magics, not beyond basic biometric readings, and that was the path which led to shapeshifting. For appearance, Bree was... Bree. A number of mages had laughed behind her back (sometimes while hoping she couldn't hear them), under the assumption that she had deliberately altered herself, something which could never be permanent. And then they'd laughed all the harder when they found out she hadn't.
She could run. There had been rumors in New Cynosure, that some of the other nations allowed the peaceful humans who had no way home to live in the open. One claimed the minotaur nation was considering a path to citizenship. But it was but a rumor, and... she was easy to spot, when the rotes which made others ignore her wore off. Harder to catch and return, but...
To run would mean she became a fugitive. Given her power, she imagined that the Princesses might send the entire CDA after her. Or... take care of things themselves.
There were Guards watching her. But no staff members had passed by: for this, the palace's Lunar wing had been partially evacuated. It wouldn't do to have some ponies see that their leadership was going to be speaking with a human.
Bree leaned her back against the wall. Tilted her head until the red fall made contact with marble. Concentrated.
Strictly speaking, she didn't need the lost tablet in order to cast -- not any more. At the start -- at least, for the start which had existed after the surge of her Awakening, once her death had ended -- it had been mandatory. She had coded reality. But she had been told that it was a crutch, a tool which she might eventually discard, if she simply lived long enough. Came to understand enough, while reaching terms with the other part of her soul. And it had been the truth. Before the world had ended, she'd been working rotes in her head. But the tablet still made them easier, and -- some categories of magic were harder than others. Entropy, spirit... the two Spheres she'd awakened into had been the first to be freed from the now-lost screen. She'd never been good with the magic of life. Forces: decent. The magic of distance which some called 'Correspondence': a washout.
if I'd learned it, I would be
But with matter...
She had to concentrate, and it was harder than she would have wished. The effort gave her a minor headache, and she felt that the Guards were watching her hands clench. But after a minute, the patch of marble directly behind her head had changed, just a little. Enough to let it channel vibrations in a new way.
Bone conduction did the rest.
"-- it was your policy, Luna."
"Yes," the younger softly said. "Mine alone. As the Immigration Department was within my dominion, before it became the Agency. My category of law, sister. My decisions. And sometimes... even my consequences. That the humans would be returned to the worlds of their birth, and no others. Because as badly as they disrupt us, as much as those who are more invaders than incursions try to kill us... to put them in other worlds would be another form of disruption. The peaceful placed in lands which could never be their own, the violent finding new territories to conquer."
A long pause.
"It... seemed like a good idea at the time," Luna stated.
"And then one of them got pregnant," Celestia replied. "She's maybe a moon away from giving birth. A child born to parents from two worlds, native to neither. That was bad enough. But it was a decision we could have made, if one of those paths opened up."
Luna said nothing, and the silence itself was surprisingly loud.
"But now," the elder continued, "we have four. Jake. Aashita. Shanu. And Bree. Four who can never go back, because there is nothing left to return them to. Four with magic of their own, who would disrupt any world we dropped them into." More loudly, "And one of them is a mass murderer on a scale I barely want to think about --"
two hundred and eighteen
"-- an assassin," Luna softly, evenly cut in. "She killed for us, Tia. She killed to keep our nation safe. Over and over again. You have seen the devices she captured, the books of rituals she brought here for safekeeping. The hours she earned... more than any other agent, and mostly unspent. Every death she created meant ponies lived. How do you wish to reward her for that? Would execution be suitable?"
Bree wondered how it was possible for the absence of sound to just echo like that.
"I don't want to kill her," Celestia finally said. "I also don't know if she's safe. She's killed, Luna. She's killed and killed and killed, she's piled corpses to the sky. You heard her talk about her Chodana, her Tradition. It's not a case of death following wherever she goes. Judge, jury, and executioner, with no court of appeals."
Quietly, "Seven billion."
"...I know."
"You can barely make yourself consider her count? I have been trying to make myself understand that number for a week now. Seven billion. It is too large for emotions to comprehend. To see every digit in that total as a soul lost... I cannot think of it that way, for to do so would be to lose myself. And I do not think Bree has truly recognized it. Accepted it. I have seen those whom the battlefield wounded in more than body, Tia: we both have. I believe she is in shock. She had already lost so much, lost nearly everything, and now... there are four. Four, where once there were billions. I can do nothing about the events which brought the number to four. But I can stand against watching it turn towards zero."
"Shock," the elder tried, and didn't seem to make it fit. "We can't exactly send her to a psychiatrist."
Thoughtfully, "It might be possible. Some of their thought processes are closer to ours than I originally --"
"-- it doesn't change what she is," the elder insisted. "It doesn't change that she is death --"
"-- what kind of death?"
A long pause.
"Explain," said the elder, and didn't sound happy about having had to ask.
"She described herself to us as a doctor cutting out disease. Remove the corrupted cells so that the healthy might survive. That is one form of death. There is also the quiet ending in the night, gently slipping into a final sleep at the end of a long life. The release from pain, when no other escape is possible. The transition into the journey where we finally reunite with the lost, among the grasses of the last pasture." Barely audible. "The path we cannot follow. If she is death, sister, then judge her as every kind of death she might be. And... do not hate her. Not from jealousy or envy." And on the absolute edge of hearing, "Not because she goes where we cannot, grants what we have each sometimes wished for... "
Celestia didn't answer that. She only spoke to the Guards outside, and what she said was "Send her in."
The best days of her life were defined by the dance she could not share.
The worst began when the dancing stopped.
Sound echoed, and so did time.
It had been nearly three years since she'd been in just about the same position. In a throne room, in front of the Princesses. Knowing she could die at any moment.
let it
Knowing she wouldn't try to stop it. Waiting to be... judged.
Luna was on her throne. The elder was standing near the base. And technically -- just barely so -- Celestia was only present to provide advice. The final judgment belonged to the younger, for this was her dominion.
Bree stopped, about twenty feet away. Noted the lack of Guards, and didn't care. She wasn't going anywhere.
She was standing before the Diarchy, and also fairly close to the stain from her own blood.
"Ms. Daniels," Celestia tightly said.
"Princess," Bree softly replied. Looked up at Luna. "Princess," she repeated, and then brought her gaze down again.
"I want to start," the elder told her, "with what happened in the recovery room. Why did you attack your doctor?"
"He was trying to keep me here," Bree answered, arms limp at her sides. "I had to get back. With everything that had been happening -- I didn't think I could stay in Equestria any longer. I wasn't trying to hurt him, Princess: you won't find a single bruise on his neck. I just wanted to buy time, get home, and..."
Her shoulders slumped. She curled in on herself.
"...I wasn't -- if you think I was going to kill him, I wasn't..."
A soft snort from the throne. "To be in the doctor's presence for five minutes and not think about killing him," Luna stated, "represents a rather remarkable achievement. I myself barely managed three, and that was at his own hearing."
Celestia didn't take the bait. "I'm choosing to believe you," she told Bree. And before that could sink in, "I could still question your sanity. The girls... they hardly had a full picture of what had been happening."
"I don't either." Tiny bits and pieces, added to the moment when her mind had nearly shattered. "Our media went early. I never had much contact with the other Traditions, or even others from mine. Less after I came here, because I couldn't risk them finding out about Equestria. And other supernaturals..." Took a breath. "...are mostly what I was trying to stop."
Including mages.
I killed mages.
"So there wasn't anyone I could really ask, and... all I know is what I saw. What happened to me."
"And that is what you were trying to return to," Celestia softly countered. "I could question your sanity. But... I know something about going into madness in the name of saving lives. It's arguably an act of insanity in itself. But sometimes it works, and..."
No answer from the lone human in the room, beyond that which came when Bree's posture continued to collapse.
"Can you speak of it?" Luna carefully asked. "What happened, as it was seen by your eyes? We will understand if you cannot at this time. But eventually, we will need to know."
Bree raised her head, just enough. Spoke to the marble, told it about dark skies and a red star, shadows and bread and blood.
She had to wait after she was done. The Princesses needed water.
"You are in Equestria," the elder finally said. "Under our law. Do you recognize that?"
She nodded.
"In your world," Celestia went on, "you killed. And you told us that you did so because there was no other choice. Corrupt courts, police who wouldn't make arrests in the first place. Those who were so far above the law that they spent their lives creating it for everyone else, in order to trap the innocent. That the only chance at justice was yourself and your kind."
we weren't enough
She didn't nod. She also didn't shake her head, or move in any way beyond that created by breathing.
"And what would you do here," the elder said, "if you came across a situation which you felt warranted death?"
say the wrong thing
She couldn't say what they wanted to hear. She could only tell them the truth. And the truth was the worst thing she could possibly say.
Bree looked up. Took a deep breath, and waited to die.
"I haven't known Greg for very long," she began. "I don't think he's the best person. But I do feel he's a good doctor. And I think that if you asked any truly good doctor, human, pony, griffon, anything, what they wished for most... it would be a world where they were out of a job. That there was no more sickness, no more pain, and they could just find a hobby to follow for the rest of their lives."
Both sisters nodded.
"I don't feel any urge to kill," Bree continued. "No desire, no drive. No need. I never have. In that, I'm..." Her eyes closed, opened. "...one of the lucky ones. I followed the Chodana, even when I most wished to break it, and... it let me stay sane. I didn't get to see others from my Tradition much. Two of those times were when I was helping to stop someone who'd decided it was a need. Who was just acting to fulfill it, and who didn't care that it could never be satisfied. But I had to break off contact with my own Tradition, and..."
Looking down again, for she could not bear to see their eyes.
"...my plan -- if I needed to die -- was the two of you." Talking through the soft gasp. "I never told you that. I should have. But I trusted you to kill me. It's... probably not coming across as flattery. But I never had the urge. I still don't. I only had the duty. To act because no others would. And your courts aren't corrupt. Your laws are more fair. The police do their jobs. I want to think there's no need for me. That I could just -- stop."
They weren't saying anything. They were simply listening, and that meant they would hear the words which might ultimately lead them to end her.
"I want to stop," Bree softly told the blood which had been taken in by the marble. Her final contribution to Equestria. "I've wanted to stop for so long. But there was always Equestria, and there was always one more incursion, and there was no one except me. But my world... those incursions are over. I can't reach any other, I can't take the fight somewhere else. Before I came here... it was listening to cries in the night. Calls for help, prayers which no one ever answered. I want to think... that here, someone comes. And... I was an engineering student, I remember telling you that the first time we talked. I never graduated. I had to drop out of college. My mentor was dead, my family had died, and... there wasn't anything left for me there. There wasn't anyone. But I loved math, and the thought that I could build something. When I was a kid, I lived in... a place which needed to die. But it would be the death of a rock which becomes a sculpture. You lose the original so something else can be born. Buildings like prisons, apartments as cells. I wanted to tear it all down and start over. So much of me wants to go back to that. To just build. I've dreamed of that."
on the nights when I didn't wake up screaming
"The human settlement camp," the elder said, and Bree heard the smile, "is, shall we say, perpetually under construction. It may remain so until all of the incursions end. There's certainly a call for --"
Bree's left hand came up, and the thin, fast-fading cut line on her palm called for attention. Created silence.
"I don't have a need," she repeated. "And I want to think that here, everything can work out. That prayers are heard --" there was a reaction, and she missed it "-- that cries are answered. That justice exists. So if I found a situation which warranted my acting... it would mean the police, the law, the courts... everything had failed." Starkly, "Everything. Including the two of you. And if nothing can be done, if no one and nopony else can act, if there's no other way..."
She looked up for the last time.
"My world is dead," she quietly told them. "My Tradition is gone. I'm the last mage. Nothing changes that. Nothing changes the fact that my soul is that of a Euthanatos. The bringer of the good death. My mentor said... that I might have been born to it. I died my way into it. And that means what I told you in that first meeting is still true. Because duty never ends, and so if there's no other solution... I will kill."
They looked at her, elder and younger. Looked at each other.
"Go wait in the hall," Luna tightly told her. "Now, Ms. Daniels. Do not attempt to go anywhere else."
She did, and she didn't.
It started slowly.
There were times when Allyse didn't seem to be herself. The graceful movements would turn awkward, words tumbled out instead of flowing forth. Initially, the girl put it down to exhaustion. Finals were approaching, and even a dance major needed to put in the extra prep work.
(She was still having the strange dreams. There are nights, even now, when she has them. She waits for them, longs for them, and they have never failed to produce that final waking scream.)
But it was getting worse. She saw Allyse fail to remember who a friend was. Missing one party, behaving oddly at another. The girl began to suspect drugs. She searched her roommate's desk, clothing, found nothing, and wondered what she'd missed. If she had to reach out to the school itself, ask for an intervention -- but if she was wrong, it might would destroy their friendship, and if she was right, she might just get Allyse expelled. She didn't know what to do, and every possible answer felt as if it might be the wrong one.
She became desperate enough to speak to her philosophy teacher, begging for confidentiality while using, unknown to her, one of the oldest lies on the books: the friend of a friend. And all he told her that she had to do what she thought was necessary.
(Those weren't the exact words he used. She still felt she should have paid more attention to the words, and knew it wouldn't have changed anything.)
She'd sought help, and hadn't found any. She didn't have a solution.
It was right around then when she started seeing things.
Initially, she thought it was stress. Lost sleep. It started as nothing more than shadows at the corner of her eye: she thought she would see someone passing by, their passage marked only as shade, turn and -- nothing. But that started happening over and over again.
She spotted a student who was dressed strangely: too much leather, and using a long chain for the world's oddest belt. No one else paid him any attention at all. He turned a corner, and then he was gone.
A pale woman with hollow eyes was standing on the edge of the sidewalk. Then she carefully, purposefully stepped out into traffic and before the girl could move, scream, wonder why no one was doing anything, a car hit her. Went through her as if she was no more than mist. The woman vanished, the driver ran a yellow light, and then a pale woman with hollow eyes was standing on the edge of the sidewalk. She carefully, purposefully stepped into traffic...
That was when the girl decided she was losing her mind.
(She wanted to believe it had been some kind of hologram, and she barely understood them to exist, didn't understand how they worked yet. She still went back that night and futilely searched for a projector. Anything to keep from believing. Anything which meant she wasn't going insane.)
She didn't know who she could turn to. To talk to the school's psychiatrists might be to lose her scholarship, and Allyse was growing more distant by the day. Forgetting things. Showing disorientation, having no memories of things she'd said and done, and not even displaying a normal amount of concern about the lost time. The girl was afraid, more afraid than her parents had tried to make her of gangs and bullets and death. This fear was worse than death.
The girl was wrong about that.
There were many things worse than death. She would learn about several of them, before the world ended. Witness more than a few. And none would be worse than what happened the next day.
She saw Allyse from a distance, on the Quad. December now, and it had been snowing: light flurries which had left a thin coating of snow on the pathways. Just about no one else about. And Allyse was dancing. Spinning through the flakes, uncaring as to whether anyone was watching. Moving with the seasons, flowing to the natural beat of winter. It made the girl feel better, just for a moment. It made her resolve to talk to her friend about everything, and she began to cross the distance.
She saw the man coming up behind her friend. The one whose skin was grey, whose lower jaw had almost sloughed off. The one who was walking with a hole in his chest. The abomination which put its hand into Allyse's back, in the same place it had been touching her for weeks.
She saw the displacement. Something pale and pained falling out of the slim body. Something which was screaming in silent agony, for the only second in which it was still present. She saw it vanish.
The man slid into that body. Overlapped, sank within.
Allyse never danced again.
Allyse no longer existed.
The girl raced from the Quad, only stopped when the pain of running became too great to continue, collapsed into the cool of the snow near a dumpster, where no one could see her. And somehow, with the cold soaking deep within, she reached a simple conclusion. She had not gone mad. The world itself was madness, an insanity no one would ever believe in and
her friend was dead
her only true friend was dead and no one knew, no one would believe her, and
someone had to do something.
The Moonrise Gate opened under the pressure of a dark blue field. It was the first sound Bree had heard in some time. She could have continued her eavesdropping, and hadn't bothered. It gave her the option to pretend the verdict was a surprise.
"Enter," Luna stated.
She went in.
Four days.
She continued studying for exams, because that was what she was expected to do. She could do so in peace, because the body wasn't in the dorm room much. It had completely stopped attending classes. The girl was no good at following, but the body wasn't particularly good at being alert: the combination allowed her to make one successful attempt at shadowing, and she found the body was going around to some rather odd places. Talking to people Allyse had never known. At one point, she saw it talking to air, and then she blinked and there was a decrepit woman in that alleyway, so rotted as to have the right hand as no more than bone.
The girl noticed that the body still ate. (It loved to eat. It loved drinking more.) It seemed to need some sleep. It was also using an increasing amount of perfume, and the girl got up in the middle of the night, got close enough to pick on the scent of slow-rotting meat.
She tried to work the math, accelerated the figures when pancake makeup got involved. The body was dying, or had died and was only being animated by the intruder. But the decay process couldn't be stopped. At best, she estimated two weeks from the initial murder before it would no longer be usable. And then the occupant would...
...move on.
It wouldn't die when it left the body: she was sure of that. It would simply continue to exist. It would look for something else it could use, someone else it could wear as a suit of flesh. Allyse was dead, there would be a corpse left behind, and then after a while, there would be another corpse...
The girl did some research in the library, going through newspaper archives. She was used to bodies in the street. Now she wanted to know about bodies in the woods. As it turned out, there were a few. Many of them were students. Some appeared to have been mauled by animals, and she was nearly a year away from encountering (barely surviving) her first shifter. Others had -- apparently been there for some time.
There were bits in the articles about accelerated rates of decay produced by weather conditions, and she didn't understand how anyone would believe that in winter.
She felt cold, inside and out. She went through the daily routine because she was supposed to, and it kept anyone from suspecting anything. She had the first of the nightmares, when the body wasn't there to witness it, and they would never truly end.
She was sleeping in the same room with a mobile corpse.
The world was madness. The world was cruelty. Injustice. Hatred and stinking rot. The thing in her friend's body would abandon the results, never caring about what it had done, the light it had extinguished, and there was nothing she could do to stop it...
...but she'd noticed something.
The body still felt pain.
Allyse had moved perfectly. Allyse could dance between snowflakes. The body was clumsy. She saw it stub its toe, curse in a language she'd never heard. And after that happened -- it was more clumsy. Just for a few seconds, until the pain went away.
The thing inside felt what happened to the body. In theory, that meant enough pain could potentially make it completely lose control. Possibly even drive it out. But... that left it free, to seek and choose and kill again.
The world was horror, on a level her parents never would have been able to shield anyone from. The world was a place where horrors won, and she distantly wondered how many lost their lives every day.
Allyse was already dead, and the girl... felt as if something in her had died too.
She didn't know if she wanted to live any more. Didn't know how it was possible to exist in a world of darkness.
She wanted to die.
She wanted her death to mean something.
The intruder would just leave, and then...
...it was the fifth day. A Sunday. Exams would start tomorrow. And the girl went around the city a little. Used what little remained of the semester's student loan check, spent the money which would have allowed her to go home over break. It didn't matter. She would effectively be traveling for free, and her family would be paid upon delivery.
She waited until nightfall. Until the body came back, closer to midnight than the girl would have liked.
"Good," the girl said, pushing herself away from the desk. "I was hoping you'd come in."
"Why?" the body asked. It tried to avoid speaking to her too much, as it really wasn't that familiar with her. Anything about her, including her finances.
"Exams are tomorrow," the girl said, and felt herself smile.
"I should probably sleep, then --" the body started to reply.
"-- and because it's tomorrow," the girl finished, "and we'll both be wiped when they're done... I thought I'd treat you to a drink." She went around the body, opened her own wardrobe, took out the oft-patched, ill-fitting jacket. "I know a place that's still open."
"A drink," the body said, and sounded pleased. "Yes. I could go for a drink."
She'd noticed. "So come on! We're young, and the night is getting old..."
The body had followed her into the darkness. Moving under something close to new moon, on a freezing night when just about no one was out and about. Not so close to exams, and certainly not on foot.
The body shivered. "I hope you picked something close," it said after four long blocks.
"Down this alley," the girl said. "We'll shortcut."
The body nodded. There was a bar at the end of the shortcut: they both knew that. The girl had recently scouted it, to make sure there were no security cameras in the area. The body's occupant had simply been in the city for a long time. And the girl started into the alley, moving into the dark.
"Hey!" she exclaimed. "Is that Brit? Hey, Brit!" Moved a little faster, faster than she should have been moving. Shifted into shadow and vanished.
The body, whose occupant might have been thinking about nothing more than having two people to buy it drinks, followed. Looked around as it neared the garbage, as if wondering where the girl had went. Perhaps she was already inside. Perhaps that was where the humming sound was coming from...
And then the tall girl abruptly unfurled from the shadows, bore against the body with all of her weight, and rammed the exposed wires against its skin.
It had taken some research. She'd originally thought about buying a car battery, but while the amperage was there, the voltage wasn't. She wasn't even sure she could cause enough pain to do anything real. So it had been a generator, the smallest she'd been able to get at the secondhand shop, buried under half-frozen garbage which wasn't due to be picked up for another three days. Tested it for excess noise before smuggling it there, prayed to an uncaring deity that no one would find it, hooked up wires, stripped off all the safeties, and now every bit of that voltage was being channeled into a body which could still feel pain.
It screamed, and no one came. No one heard it, for the bar was far too loud inside. The attack took place with distant music playing, a song which had helped to conceal the generator, the soundtrack for nightmares to come. It screamed and staggered, but the girl was taller and stronger. The body had lost so much of that former grace, and the electricity made the muscles respond with spasms. It couldn't get away from her. It couldn't keep control.
The body fell, and the perforated man, wisps of plasm evaporating from phantom skin, was still standing.
"You bitch!" (She didn't wonder why she'd finally heard one, or how it was talking with a jaw that was barely attached. She was the only one who ever heard anything at all.) "You're dead! You're --"
It was raising a shaking arm. She heard some of the garbage behind her starting to tremble, as if it was getting ready to move. So the intruder had other tricks.
That didn't matter. She had a grand finale of her own.
Without knowing why, the girl smiled. Flipped her hands around, and rammed the wires into her own chest.
The girl died.
A second body fell.
The intruder lowered its intangible arm. Stared at the fresh corpse.
"Idiot," it said. Uncaringly, "Saves me the trouble --"
-- and the left hook took his jaw off.
The woman, her soul sent into the same layer he occupied, a place it should never have been, briefly saw the alley through a shroud of decay and rot and centuries of age which had dropped into every part of the world. She ignored all of it and hit him again, saw pieces of plasm fly everywhere as more wisps rose from the fast-disintegrating form. Going through the electricity had cost it something, and her hands were doing the rest. Hands which glowed with the deepest purple she'd ever seen, a color which hadn't existed until the moment she'd entered what she would eventually know as the shadowlands, and she hit him until his right arm came off, she got her hands into the hole in his chest and widened it, ripped it open, she hit him and hit him and then she hit him so hard the ground felt it.
It was the one which went through his throat that did it. The one where she thought she saw a second arm superimposed on her own. He fell backwards, went partially into the wall. And the ground beneath him opened onto a howl of thunderheads and acid and screams.
He fell in. He fell apart, and the hole swirled shut behind the fragments.
She stared at that spot for a few seconds, her hands still glowing. She didn't know why they were doing that, assumed it was just natural to whatever she had become at the moment of her death. Looked down at her body, noticed that it had somehow fallen in such a way as to not be on top of the wires. Odd leverage from the upper torso, probably. There was likely some math in that.
She regarded the abandoned shell. Its odd contours, seen from the outside for the first time, all the more distorted by the jacket. Wished, for Allyse's sake, that she'd put on makeup --
-- and the man rushed into the alley.
"BREATHE!" her philosophy teacher screamed. Dropped to his knees, repeatedly pushed his hands into her sternum. "Breathe, Bree, goddammit, your heart's going but you have to breathe..."
She didn't have to. If it was an option, then she didn't particularly want to. After all, her friend was still dead. Nothing could change that. Monsters moved through the night, they killed, and...
...no one had said this was the only one.
There would be more monsters. More bodies...
...she breathed.
She breathed and she was back. Her jacket was singed, she hurt horribly, her hands glowed for a few more seconds and parts of the alley floor evaporated around them. She saw the color just before it faded, and that somehow brought her more pain. Focused, just barely, on her teacher.
Who was smiling.
"We've got to get you out of here," he told her, and started trying to get her up. "Right now. I felt that. Every Awakened in the city probably felt it, and it's just the old --" followed by a word she didn't know, one which would soon describe her "-- luck that I was closest. Gods and ancestors, Bree, I've got to get you to safety before the hordes converge..."
He did something with his hands, something complicated, for that was what he needed to do, and snow rather coincidentally fell from the roof, burying the last of what the woman had once loved.
Physically, she was on her feet. Mentally, she was still reeling. "What -- what just..."
"I thought you might have a chance to become one of us," he told her as he staggered her out through the darkness of her future. "And here it turns out you're one of mine."
Near the bloodstain again. Waiting.
"Your case," the younger began, "is a unique one. Yours is the first world to be lost. You are the first agent to be stranded on this side of the Barrier, with nowhere she can return to. We have no fully reliable method of placing you in another human world, and to do so... the usual restraint on your magic, the force you named as paradox, does not operate in Equestria, any more what you term as resonance makes others here fear you. Both may have been unique to the abattoir."
She knew what the ponies had named her world on the master charts: it was simply the first time she'd heard it spoken aloud. It fit. Or once had.
Or had one last time, on the grandest of scales.
"And ultimately, your magic is in your soul," Luna continued. "It travels with you. Even if we were willing and capable of sending you elsewhere, or asked an agent to take you... it unleashes you on whatever that world is. A place where you could likely work your form of magic, unleash your Spheres, without a natural consequence. And there are worlds of powers, where such could pass for something else... but they know not your Tradition, the signs of your presence. Those who occupy such worlds fight injustices as best they can... but for the most part, they do not kill. They do not know you, Ms. Daniels. They know of nothing like you. Eventually, you would find a situation where you felt action was necessary..."
The dark eyes briefly closed. The elder simply continued to watch Bree in silence, wings slightly unfurled and a touch of corona dancing on the point of the horn.
"You have served Equestria," the younger said. "Served it through assassinations. And I believe you, when you say you wish to stop. I simply do not know if any world exists, behind any Barrier, where you could stop. For those who perceive duty, it will always come calling. Even in this world, I could not hope to keep all such situations away --"
As death sentences went, Bree felt it was well-reasoned. The explanation was sincere. She couldn't argue the logic --
"-- but this is the only world where you can be watched." The alicorn's eyes focused on her. "Until such time as we can find another solution, you will be placed in the temporary human settlement camp. You may build as much as you wish. You will, as soon as we can locate one who is suitable, be speaking to a psychiatrist. And if we locate a single body where you can be proven as responsible for the death, you will be put on trial for murder."
The elder looked away, as the Guards closed in. So did the younger. And the former agent, the last Tradition mage, the woman who had gone on after the girl had died, once again finding herself alive when she should have perished, let them take her away.
But the younger said one last thing, just before the doors closed, and the words stayed with her. Irony had a way of doing that.
"This," Luna softly told her, "is not personal..."