“Twilight? Honey?” Mom looked at me, concern written across her face.

“Twily? Stars above, you could pass for ash’s cousin!” Shining cried.

“-and do a little shake! So what do you want to- Twily? You don’t look too good; are you okay?” Cadance leaned forward, nuzzling me.

“Twily? Honey?” Auntie Fleur leaned forward a bit, looking at me carefully.

The Aspect held. “... He’s safe.”

“Twily? Who’s safe?”

I looked at her, my eyes glowing with a deep, cosmic purple that seemed to draw in the darkness and turn it into light. “My husband, of course. That’s why I sent him here.”

“Fleur. Protect him, or I’ll take everything from you. He’s headed toward Hildegarten. Suit up.”

“Twily, you’re scaring me.”

I leaned forward and the world warped around me, bringing Fleur closer to me. “You’ve never known the fear I can bring to you; the despair. Protect my husband from shedding blood or you’ll pay with your limbs. Protect his life or you’ll pay with your own. Protect his mind or I’ll destroy yours piece by piece.”

“... Understood.”

Message sent. Sanity coming back. Slowly. He’s okay. He’s malnourished, but okay. Now I can keep an eye on him. It’s slowly getting easier to block out Nonexistence and The Outside; easier to resist the Call of The Void. Things are getting better. It’s easier to think now, but now I miss him. I missed him before, but I didn’t have to focus on it. I don’t have to miss him as much now. I can watch. We can see him. It’s healing. Growing. Strengthening.

I love being the strongest.

“Diliculum?” A young God asked, only a million years old in its base form.

“H-Hello… A-Are you… You know…?”

“I’m getting better. Is One-Oh-Eight still recovering?”

“Ah, we’re actually getting recruits from other Parallels that don’t mind scuttling a few ships. The Graylens are harsh, but they are effective.” I think Felsh was a ‘He’. I’m going with Xe though. Xe chuckled nervously.

“That they are. Is there something you needed, Felsh?”

“Just trying to see if you’re good, y’know?” Xe breathed a sigh of relief. “Things have been tense since you-”

“Speak of it and I’ll kill you.”

“Noted and avoided. How’s ultimate power?”

“Pleasant.” I patted Xer gooey head.

“Cool… Wanna mate?”

“No. Get away from me.”

Felsh shifted away and I went for a walk through the cosmos, casually snatching my sanity back in bits and pieces. The Aspects were warbling; shifting. Altering. And so was Jay…

I’d thought that burning up from superheated Mana from the inside out. I’d thought losing my brother was bad. I’d thought a lot of things were bad, but Lujei’s punishment… Defying that woman was madness. I should’ve known better, but even as I lay in a perfectly real, yet aptly symbolic puddle of my regret and remorse for my actions, Lujei had one of Grogar’s former servants drag me off somewhere dark and cool to recuperate. You remember how I started last time? When I told you about the breaking points?

Kinda. That didn’t happen until she lit up the chamber I was laying in, flat on my back. Fluttershy’s venom had been purged from my veins, but I was well and truly Super-Sane just like a Universal Council Member. I knew Lujei was coming before she arrived, and I knew that she was interfering with my senses; even the seventh one. Her glowing form entered the room and she smiled down at me, giggling as she floated about in a little circle.

My bones were sand and my muscles were jelly. It was a fruitless, painful endeavor.

She rolled her eyes. “Just shed your mortal body and follow me, Neophyte. Geez, I don’t know why you’re so attached to that form.”

It’s not like it was my original body or anything, but my original body was a prison made of razors that made my survival instinct peter out, piece by piece. The longer I resisted, the longer I suffered, and I knew it was pointless. Just by looking at Lujei, I knew that choosing ‘Option One’ had been her true hope, and by looking at her patient smile, I knew that she knew she had me. The only choices I had were to rip myself out of reality and hope she wouldn’t follow me through the Rift, which was pointless because she’d already done it before without me knowing. Going into the Nether without Grogar and Okthus was suicide, and Okthus was too piss-pants petrified of Lujei to raise so much as a finger against her. I did the only thing I could do.

[I hear that from all of you guys. Anyone who tells me anything about the Martyr.]

[Do you need a break? Mom taught me a few of her charms that might help to ease your heart.]

Shut up, Garrison. Vivi, don’t waste your time. There’s a scar on this wound and the ache goes away with over-the-counter shit-”

Ka-ching. Right. So does everyone feel a little better now? No one’s getting too depressed or anything?

Exactly, so listen close because I don’t like talking about this shit. When I gave up, I exhaled as hard as could, emptying my lungs completely because I knew I wouldn’t have the strength to fill them once they’d collapsed. True to form, they imploded and I started spitting up blood. Pain was all I knew for a little while and death… It was nice. It was nice to be at peace for the first time in who knew how long at that point. Time worked differently in Grogar's castle anyway. Peace didn’t last long since Lujei snatched my soul out of the muted array of the Ether and shook my Aetera out, snatching me up and carrying me along with her in the palm of her hand.

The sheer amount of Mana that she was putting out lulled me into a sleepy state, but my limbs were restless. I just wanted to close my eyes and fade away, but my Ethereal and Aethereal forms fought hard to keep me from being eroded away, making me struggle for survival even after the chemicals in my brain had failed me. Before I knew it, Lujei had me in this body, sitting in front of a vanity mirror. My skin was so fair and soft that my first thought was that I was going to get my shit pushed in the second someone decided to hit me, and looking at myself in the mirror… The stranger moved as I moved, touched her face as I touched mine, felt her chest as I just…

I’m good, it’s just hard to get through sometimes. To get back on Track, Lujei held me from behind as I cried, groping one of my breasts as she licked my jaw. “Beautiful, aren’t you~? The female form is just so superior to the male form, don’t you think?”

Her other hand slid from my cheek to my other breast before she squeezed them both firmly, the sensation arising from the act both alien and unwelcome. “Because, silly. I don’t like men and you were a man. Would you rather be dead?”

“Good! Never try to sic a Demon on me again, okay, my little Mandarin? Oh! That’s a perfect nickname for you~ Mandarin~”

“Nope. This is what you get for tampering with powers far beyond your scope~” She kissed my cheek, her lips cool and plush, burning like dry ice against my flesh. “Now, I’ll give you another choice. You can come on a little date with me, learn how to do Astral, or I can just ravish you. What say you, Mandarin?”

Lujei tittered and forced my eyes open with Magic, grabbing my hand and dragging me from my seat. My damnably weak knees wouldn’t hold me, so I hit the floor after a second or two. “That’s the spirit! That look in your eye~ The lethality in your voice~ Who do you love?”

She giggled mirthfully. “And what a wonderful choice you’ve made! I didn’t think it would take you a full week to break, but you are a special case, now aren’t you?”

I looked up at her and she looked down at me, still smiling pleasantly. “There’s nothing I want from you.”

“... Hmm… Should’ve just killed her. Oh well.” Lujei muttered to herself, picking me up by the arm. “Come along, then. I need to introduce you to the woman whose body you’re in, and then we need to start making our modifications!”

“... My body was powerful. This… Shell, is pathetic. She’s purely Human. There’s no Arkaish Mana in her flow. Everything I’ve learned is pointless.”

I looked at her with actual intent for the first time since she’d started torturing me. “... You intended on taking me on as a student and didn’t realize that my Shell was the reason I was powerful?”

Lujei rolled her eyes. “It’s not your array, it’s your potency. We’ll sort it all out momentarily, so come. Along.”

I struggled to get to my feet, the body still awkward and unfamiliar to me. Everything was too small other than my chest and ass, but those… they were too soft, too feminine. Lujei waited while I dragged myself out of my despair, the clothed form in the mirror still mimicking me. “... I had a small mole under my eye…”

“... It would make you a little cuter.” Lujei snapped her fingers and I had a beauty mark; little more than an especially dark freckle. “And I was right!”

Lujei lead us out of the room and down a hall, floating lazily from side to side as if being blown along by a backwind. “Can you walk any faster, Mandarin?”

“Eight days, but it’s fine. You made it out quote unquote ‘alive’, and I don’t feel like you’re a pain in the neck yet, so feel free to ask questions about scholarly subjects.”

She turned and gave me a look. “My ass isn’t fat, and I’ll happily put you in a skeleton.”

“If only, if only the woodpecker sighed~ The bark on the trees was a little bit softer~” My tormentor sang cheerily.

Survive. Adapt. Overcome. I have survived. I am adapting. I must overcome. “Smoke your food out with fire instead of giving yourself a headache. Work smarter, not harder.”

“I see why your MRP was in your heart now~” She turned and buried her hand in my chest, pumping me full of Mana like she could have done before I was put into the body. That being said; shit hurt.

When she removed her hands, she jabbed me in both eyes and left me to wipe my tears away once she was done, clutching my chest and panting on the floor. That level of pain wasn’t terrible, but it was still pretty shitty to go through. “Fuck.”

“... Great. When I learn how to make this body do what I want, I’ll actually be a threat.”

“You tortured me, killed me, nearly erased my soul, and shoved me into the body of an innocent person of the opposite sex because of your preference.”

“Huh… Usually when I break someone, they’re ready to commit to my every whim.”

I didn’t glare at her because I didn’t know how to make the Shell’s face move. “How did you get a Human body to Equis?”

“The same way you got me here, silly.” She booped my nose. “And it was such a pain to find a sexy ginger. I hope you come to appreciate your body.”

Looking at it made me want to be ill, but apparently the Shell had nothing its stomach. “It’s not me.”

“If you’re not you, then who is?” She asked, her voice cool like a brisk draft in your house during winter; wholly unwelcome and discomforting.

It took me a few minutes to gather what I’d learned from my days in agony; what I’d seen in my future. “I am... The Confector… God-damn.”

I looked her in the eye and my lips twitched. “Why did you stop us from building Grogar’s Pentacle?”

The ‘Snack Sesh’, or rather, the act of grabbing fruit from a very hostile Ent, was fun to say the least. Dood ran decoy while I swooped in and made high-speed dives for bundles of the purple pods at a time. Once we’d gotten a few, we flew back to Dood’s nest and had a feast on the oblong seeds of the things. The seeds tasted something like walnuts and weren’t much harder to chew, but the flesh of the fruit was slightly sweet, though Dood wasn’t fond. He was, however, fond of the seeds, so we took our fill of our preferred parts of the weird nameless fruits and tossed the skins into a crevice.

I nodded. “Snacks are fantastic. Would you happen to know how to get out of this crazy jungle by any chance?”

“Uh… I’ve kinda been here for like, a few hundred years, my Guy. The forest doesn’t really like, let you leave if it doesn’t want you to…”

“Well isn’t that just Hellish.” I said blandly. “What say you and I make this forest bow to us?”

“Fair point, but what if we fucked with the forest enough to make it want us to leave? If it sends things to kill us, then it’ll chase us out somewhere, no?”

“... I like the way you think, Dood!” Dood cheered, flapping his wings excitedly. “Like, let’s tear it up!”

I looked off into the distance, shifting the winds from my position. “Say, Dood?”

“Could you catch a tornado on fire?” I asked, starting the process of making a tornado.

Gesturing toward the slowly descending funnel of clouds and dust, I gave him a smile. “Then I believe that’s your cue.”

“I shoulda knew you were the fun kinda crazy!” Dood spread his wings wide and took off with a plume of flame chasing him along the way.

Watching him zoom off was fun, and encasing him in violent winds was pretty great. Dood spouted tons and tons of flames into the winds that only made them grow even hotter over the course of the hour it took for the storm to gather. Soon enough, trees caught fire and there was a quaking in the earth, like something massive was moving, it’s steps shaking the land. With the tornado ready to go on Auto-Pilot, I flew over and dove into it so I could get Dood out of it, which wasn’t all that hard. However, with neither of us controlling the Fyrestorm, it kinda just did whatever it wanted and carved itself a merry path of destruction through the Everfree while Dood and I hovered in the air.

“Well isn’t that beautiful?” I asked, looking at the flames with mild interest.

Dood clicked his beak twice. “Totally sweet, my guy, but like, should we follow it in case it gets out of the forest before we do?”

“Yes. Yes we should.” It’s not like I needed any further impetus to get a move on, so I sped off and left Dood to follow.

He caught up quickly enough for me to not get irritated, but still. It took an hour for the Everfree’s inhabitants to start fleeing from the storm, and it took another for them to start targeting us before we put them out of the air. However, as we came to a glade in the Everfree, our storm died in seconds after having gone strong for so long and Dood was nearly shot out of the sky by a spear-like tree-branch. More were soon to follow, though they weren’t terribly high in number or accuracy. The first one seemed to have been a lucky throw, so Dood and I doubled back and came flying into the glade, weaving in through the trees that had been spared from the blaze. We landed and approached on foot this time around, entering the glade with no problems. From the other side I could see a woman who was oddly Human, but then again, I was pretty sure that she had antlers, so there was always that.

“Hey, asshats! Whose forest do you think you’re lighting up here!?” The angry, gorgeous woman shouted.

“Like, fuck.” Dood whispered. “It’d be a super bro move if you distracted her right now.”

“How to fuck off and get buttfucked!? Yeah, come on over and I’ll give you a true-to-life demonstration for Free-Ninety-Nine you punk-ass wankwad! Fuck do you think you are!? Flying over my perfectly fine forest-”

A piece of her antler suddenly bent and started growing, not unlike a javelin until she broke it off of her head and chucked it at me. I channeled my inner fly and swerved out of the way, preparing for a thing. “I don’t give a damn what you think it is! How many things did you just kill while trying to do Lord knows what!?”

“Would you happen to be a Goddess of some kind?” Might as well keep being pleasant.

“I am! I’m Verdandi, Sister of the Present, and presently I’m thinking of kicking your ass!”

“I would love to.” She grumbled irritably, pointing to her right. “Go that way for five minutes and you’ll be out.”

“Thank you very much, Your Majesty. It was an honor to make your acquaintance.”

“If I see you here again, I’m beating you within an inch of your life!” She growled.

“Noted. Have a lovely day.” My thing was prepared, so I blew Dood over to me, wrapping his flaming arse up in my arms and speeding off for thirty seconds instead of five minutes. We exited the forest and I started steering down toward the town that was nearby, circling it to lose speed during my descent.

We landed soon enough and garnered a lot of attention for our descension, which was a good thing for once. I walked up to Random Stallion Number One and asked, “Excuse, my friend, but could you tell me where I am?”

“No problem, but uh, about your phoenix…” He looked at Dood who was looking at us.

“Oh, his name is Noms or something or the sort. I call him Dood because he says it often.”

“Aye, he does.” I nodded, backing away from the strange man. “Have a good day, Friend.”

I went over to Dood and said, “These people are odd. Don’t phoenixes usually talk?”

“Interesting. However, I need you to be able to fly so we can go to a place called Canterlot.”

With that, Dood changed back into his giant flaming bird form and I took off into the sky, looking for the Cloud Markers that would tell me where the Hell I was going. A few times we had to swoop down onto the road and check for a sign, but surely enough we eventually made our way around the Everfree, past a Pegasus town called Cloudsdale, and to Ponyville, though it had taken the better part of the day to make it that far since circumventing the Everfree, even while staying relatively close to it, was still time consuming. The forest was truly massive and the sinister energy it put off was plenty foreboding, so we had a veritable cornucopia of reasons to not try and make up a little time to get back to familiar territory.

I didn’t know where to go in Ponyville, so I went to Twilight’s house instead of going anywhere else because it seemed like a good idea at the time, but then as I chilled out in her tree with Dood, I realized that I could see Canterlot looming in the distance. Dood was tuckered out from expending so much Magic and flying all day, but I had some oil left to burn, so I took flight with him in my hands, having taken the form of a sparrow to conserve us both some energy. Making good headway wasn’t my goal this time: no I just wanted a place to rest my head and call it a day for the time being, but such things weren’t in the cards for me when I landed at the Castle Gates. Apparently I was being looked for and had been reported missing, so I was shuttled off to face the music once again, but this time I was sitting in front of Luna instead of Celestia and she wasn’t nagging me at all once I explained myself.

I shrugged. “It was fun, but I would hate to hit something while going that fast. I do apologize for disappearing again, though.”

She waved it aside. “The only person worried for your safety was Aria, and even then she was easy enough to calm down as long as we kept her distracted. You say you met a shape changing phoenix?”

I pulled my hood to the side and exposed Dood’s newly furry form, a chipmunk, as he sat on my shoulder. “Suh Dood?”

“Prinny, come forth.” Luna demanded. “I’ve not heard of your kind still existing in the modern era.”

“Aww, seriously?” He groaned, hopping off of me to take his true form. “I don’t wanna be the last Prinny, Dude!”

“Sadly it seems as though that may be the case.” She replied tenderly. “However, I would happily look after you as a member of an endangered, if not extinct, race.”

“I dunno, Dood. The only Princess I know anything about is Celestia and everyone used to say that she was moody.” Dood said uneasily.

“Yeah, I’m in then, Dood.” He answered lazily, flapping his wings a little.

She casually waved me off. “Find a servant and have them help you pick a room.”

She gave me a look and I got out of there before she could think about shanking me or shivving me. Either one would hurt and both involved handcrafted tools, but neither were things I wanted to happen, so I eventually found a room that looked worthy of having me in it. The door was outlined with pink and gold, which told me that it was most likely a girl’s room, meaning that the bed was going to be awesome and that it was going to smell lovely. Guess who was wrong?

After flipping on the lights, I saw that Aria was already tucked underneath some covers, snoozing away peacefully, so I memorized the layout of the room and snuck my way over to a sofa after flipping the lights back off. If it hadn’t been her, I probably would have hopped in bed and called it a night, but since it was, I kept watch, listening and waiting for the slightest sign of a bad dream or an invader; for some malady that never came to pass. Dawn was breaking as Aria was waking, so I finally let myself relax enough to doze off. I vaguely remember talking to my little sister before she went off to do something, but I do know that when I woke up, I was warm, smelly, and was covered by a quilt that I was sure she’d thrown over me.

As smell-proof as my armour was, my clothes needed a good wash, so I stripped, took a bath to wipe off some dirt, sweat, and grime, and stole one of Aria’s super-plush robes so I wouldn’t be walking around in literally nothing but armour since I didn’t actually have pants for it. The stroll to the Court Hall was breezy to say the least, but no one can say that my timing wasn’t good. When I came across the entrance to the Hall, I met a young Alicorn who looked rather distraught about whether or not she should go in or stay out. She paced in front of the door, her pink forehead glistening with a nervous sweat as her tri-toned mane bounced with every step. I recognized her and completely forgot something rather important.

“You have the authority to just walk in, you know. You told me that yourself.”

“Yes. Your husband was rather interested in my sister.” And you wanted some of me, if I’m not mistaken.

“If your sister is the Mare in there with Celestia, sitting on the arm of her throne, then I see why.” Cadance sighed.

“No! No-no. I didn’t say anything about it, okay? Okay.” She said quickly.

I took a step toward, her, letting my hand rest on the pommel of my knife. “If I know that much, then your husband must really be a weakling. I beat him easily in the illusion.”

“Who couldn’t currently stand a particularly strong kick to the dick, now could he?”

Cadance took a step back as I approached her. “I’m capable of defending myself, if that’s what you’re trying to get at!”

“I’m not going to lay a finger on you.” I said pleasantly, giving her a disarming smile. “I just wanted to know where we stood. It’s nice where we are, so keep your husband away from my darling Robin.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Whew! I thought you were going to try something for a moment there!”

I gave her an obvious once over, raising a brow once I was finished. “If I wanted a married woman, I’d smelt her ring.”

Cadance blinked and I didn’t give her time to respond to that, walking the side entrance to the Court Hall and going to sit high on the dais opposite Aria. “Good afternoon, sleepyhead!” My little sister greeted brightly. “Did you get enough of your beauty rest?

“That’s right, little Robin.” Celestia confirmed, her tone warm and loving, gilded with motherly affection. “Though I wish you’d let me have something made for you rather than having you make everything yourself.”

“But how else am I supposed to infuse the Warmth of Love and the Calm of Kindness into them if I don’t make them?”

I looked at my irritated hands. “I knew there was a reason I was missing a layer of skin.”

“It’s fine, Robin.” I chuckled. “It doesn’t hurt, it just feels odd.”

Celestia giggled at me and I glared up at both of them. “I’ve never had a man complain about the way I smell or dress.”

Celestia and I took a moment to chuckle at her, the conversation dropping until after we’d had a few faces come and go from Court. Well, in between we chatted and talked about my history with Aria and her own years in Amelemme’s court, but it wasn’t terribly important chatter, nor was it terribly informative to me since I knew pretty much everything Aria was willing to expose about Amelemme’s main Temple. Eventually, as is with all busy-bodies and generally active people, I got bored and headed out to go do something, but this time I stayed within the Castle’s grounds. I headed back out to the Ranger training grounds and spotted Flash Frost firing off a full quiver into a now-feathery target. Once he was out of arrows, I approached him.

Flash gave me another look. “What are you trying to pull here, Meatsack? Because I don’t wanna be bothered with you, and it’s really nothing personal.”

He nodded and I walked away from him, studying the few faces I saw flashing here and there, going about their routines as required. I stopped and asked quite a few Rangers for tips about staying alive, but few of them had been Rangers long enough to pick up any specific tricks or actually know anything. As it turned out, Pony Rangers were the only ones who normally got trained, and the other races only trained each other. As one of the few Humans in Equestria, let alone being the only one with any skill with a bow, I was a little shit out of luck as far as training went, so I flew back to the Court Hall to be incredibly bored until one of the most striking women I’d ever seen came in alongside a ghostly, pale woman that kept a hand on the redhead’s shoulder.

Of course, the white-haired beauty with the thorny tattoos crossing her body was statuesque; a marvel to look at, but the redhead tapped Empress Twilight’s shoulder and let her know that she had competition, giving her a good shove off of the pedestal I’d placed her on. I locked eyes with her; grayish green stones meeting honey-laden gems with nothing behind them. In her eyes I saw The Grey, but in her face I saw a golden band. The gentle slope of her jaw seemed to be cut perfectly from stone to fit my fingers, her lips filled with ecstasy waiting to be exchanged upon first kiss-

… Sure, whatever, I’ll just tap you or something when I’m done. Vivi, why does your Aunt act like a child?

Hmm… My eyes slid from her lips to her cute little nose, begging for a smooch that would inevitably make her scrunch her face up. I couldn’t see one of her eyes since she had a few locks of her covering half of her face, but it only suited her further, making her seem a little mysterious. The way her hair seemed to just do whatever it pleased at the ends made my heart throb, and the slope of her neck, dipping down to her collar, caught my eye and nearly kept it for too long. My gaze drifted from her neck to her bust, down to her narrow waist and slightly wide hips. I could tell that her thighs were worthy of attention from the way her dress hugged her midsection, and I couldn’t wait to find out who she was.

I descended from the dais and Celestia said, “Halt! Garrison, don’t move!”

The temptation to turn and look at her was ridiculous, but I held my ground nonetheless. “Ah, I see you’re more observant than our little friend here~” The ghostly woman crooned. “Such a shame; I was interested in seeing what he was going to do.”

The ghost rolled in the air, lazily spiraling horizontally. “Oh, I’m just Lujei. Friendly neighborhood usurper of Grogar’s throne. And his protoge~” She grabbed ahold of my newest crush and licked her cheek.

“Oh, if you knew how to use your power, you could have done it too, Princess. Too bad, so sad~” Lujei taunted. “Well, anywho, I just stopped by to drop my widdle Mandawin off in your love and care since she refuses to learn from me right now. I’ll be by to pick her up later though, so take care of her, okay~?”

Lujei faded out of existence and the redhead started walking forward, so I walked up to meet her. “Wotcher. Name’s Garrison.”

Like I was saying, I got to snogging Jay and she didn’t do anything to stop me, so I pulled away after a few seconds and said, “You’ve got better lips now.”

“... I fucking hate this body.” Jay growled, her voice a fierce, middling alto.

I put my hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Whose body is this?”

“It’s been disintegrated. I held it together for as long as I could, but…” She sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

My voice died in my throat and I tried to use whatever Magic I could to see if it really was Jay behind those empty eyes, but even as I mingled our Magicks, I couldn’t feel anything familiar. Nothing about her was Jameson any more. All I could do to offer support was wrap my arms around her. “... I’m so sorry…”

“It’s deserved, Gauche.” She pushed me away after a few seconds, her face devoid of expression. “Nothing I can do is going to make me me again, and it’s all because I fucked with Black Magic. I deserved this…” Jay shook her head and checked my shoulder as she walked past me. “Celestia. You have a mission for me, right?”

“I wasn’t listening to your conversation all the way over there.” Celestia lied. “It would have been rude.”

“Very!” Aria agreed, hopping down the dais. “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?”

“Ew.” Jay said. “I’m not trying to have two siblings come after my newly minted lady-bits.”

“There is no carpet.” She answered flatly. We fist-pumped simultaneously and Jay gave us a shitty look. “You’re not coming inside the house, so fuck off.”

“Yeah, but we both know that I have little reverence for you and barely do what you say when it benefits me.”

“Oh Garrison, please?” Aria begged. “You always used to tell me stories about how we’d have a nice Mommy who would feed us and have a nice house and hug us and kiss us and tuck us in at night and love us and Celestia’s that Mommy! She’s nice and kind and warm and she’s just the best!”

“Our needs are different, Robin. You need a mother like Celestia. I never have.” I answered, trying not to be bitter about the balance between us.

“Didn’t you tell me that you had a woman you considered a mother nonetheless?” Celestia asked.

“I’d rather not insult you in front of my sister, so I’ll thank you to leave the past where it is.”

“You had a Mommy and you didn’t tell me?” My little sister asked, sounding hurt.

“See!? That’s why you need a Mommy like Celestia! To teach you how to be like me!”

“I don’t need the back up, but it’s appreciated. I don’t want to join Celestia’s family, Aria.”

“... Even if that means leaving ours?” Aria queried softly, giving me the Sad Eyes.

“Already do.” I grumbled as she sped off to go get my damn coffee. I turned back to Jay and asked, “Are you trying to find out what sex as a female feels like?”

“They make fake dicks for that, faggot. I might not remember what my original Shell feels like, but I do know that I used to be a guy. Stop trying to fuck me.”

“God, this is fucking with me noodle.” She muttered, rubbing her temples and walking away from me.

I watched her as she walked, her movements stiff and a little awkward. “So you’ve truly changed forms.”

Jay flipped me off and got over to Celestia as best she could. “When do you want me to do this stupid mission so I can come back and kill myself?”

“Just call me Jay. I don’t want to hear that name anymore.” The Human said bitterly, taking a seat next to the Princess.

Celestia sighed. “You’ll get used to it, Jay. It’s still reversible in some fashion, I’m sure?”

“... Okay, maybe not so much, but still. I’ve been a man as well and I can tell you that I much prefer being a woman.”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “I thought you were just wearing a robe to be eccentric or because it was soft. I’ll have someone guide yourself and Jay to your room.”

“Shut up. I got enough of that shit living on Arkaid; I don’t need it here.” She growled.

Celestia sighed. “Jay? Try not to kill him. Garrison? Don’t sexually harass her or I’ll turn you into a female as well.”

She should have known better than to say that. Jay should have known better than to stand next to me. I should’ve known better than to do it, but I still almost got turned into a girl for copping a feel.

Shut up. Anyway, I jumped out of the way when Celestia shot her Lady Laser at me. It wasn’t hard to do since I doubt she was expecting me to move so fast, but she also didn’t try to follow up with another blast, so that was nice. Once the pink energy faded from her horn, she summoned a servant to take Jay and I to my room so I could get changed and whatnot while Jay stole some of my clothes so she’d look more masculine. It didn’t work and she eventually just put her dress back on, complaining that she was not appreciating the gap between her thighs at all. However, neither of us where shy about undressing in front of the other, so I’d say it was a worthwhile experience, and from the blush on your face I’m gonna say that you remember it pretty well, no?

Right. So Jay and I relaxed for awhile until Ladesa finally schlepped her arse out of Godsholm and back to Equis, or rather, she told me she was in Godsholm and was really spending time elsewhere. I didn’t really care what she did since we weren't doing anything time sensitive, but I still wished that she hadn’t teleported to the front gate of the castle instead of just coming directly to me. It didn’t matter too too much, but it still meant that we were going to have to go and wait one more day to complete the damn task, and I wasn’t sure how long Jay was going to hold it together. The longer I spent with her, the less stable she seemed. Just… More…

You were adjusting and it was obvious. Ladesa and I commented back and forth while you tried to figure out how to make your face move properly again, how to get your digits working, and I’m sure you remember Ladesa telling you how to use the loo as a girl.”

{And Lujei didn’t have to turn me into one of you, so shut up and let Garrison tell his part of the damn story.}

So Ladesa and I observed Jay for a little while longer until we all decided to go to sleep. Jay tried to use his vagina to make me sleep on the couch, but there was no going on that one, so we all found a place on the enormous bed and didn’t have to get close to sleep with anyone. Ladesa was used to it from her days in the Guild, Jay from his childhood with a house full of family, and I from most of my life. No one that I was aware of got touched, but I did end up following Ladesa into Godsholm for a chat.

“So it’s all going down as planned?” I asked once we were outside of the stone outer walls of Godsholm. I’d describe the place, but it’s truly something you have to see for yourself to even believe it existed. Seriously.

“Yeah, yeah, I talked to her and she’s working on it. We’ll probably have better luck in Minosia, though. At least, that’s where she says your Cell is.” Ladesa answered unenthusiastically.

“You enslaved my mother instead of me? Why no, how could I possibly hold that against you?”

She cast a couple of furtive glances around her before cracking a tiny smile. “I still don’t believe you pulled it off.”

“I know, I know, it stays between us until we know where Jay’s loyalties lie. For all we know, he could be gunning for Capital G too since Max was a friend of his, right? It would make sense for him to try and get revenge on Empress Twilight.”

“Ah, she prefers Kauku, and it’s suicide to challenge her. Which is why we’re not doing that.”

“And she hasn’t killed us for it, so I’d say we’re doing it right, no?”

“You also play with molten metal, which is a lot more dangerous than fire. You’re a really smart guy, Gauche, and it shows, but how long do you think you can keep this up?”

The golden sky caught my attention once more and I watched Lumos’ Moons as they hovered overhead; feeling so near, yet out of reach. Just like Kauku. “... I don’t know. Dissida’s devotion is already being tested by this Discord fucker and Furladra’s going to find out about our ruse before the plans are done. I know that much.”

“She can’t betray me. You can’t betray her. If she tells you to free her by any means necessary, then it won’t count as a betrayal by the First Edict since freedom is a right from birth.”

“Not in Godsholm. The First Edict? That shit’s Human, Gauche. The only Edicts that are real are the ones the Gods themselves put out there. Kinda like how Mum’s is based offa Lemme’s, but there isn’t actually a universal code or anything.”

“Very. Still; I’d suggest telling her not to like, torture me or anything-”

Ladesa folded her arms and waited for her mother appear alongside me. “You called, Garrison?”

The look on my face must have been predatory because Furladra said, “You can’t make me do that.”

I stepped toward them both and wrapped them up in a hug. “I need you both to know that something’s terribly wrong. Furladra, I need you to seek out Somnelle and find out what’s attacking my dream. Ladesa, go wake Jay up; I don’t think this is just on me.”

“It’s not bothering me at all, but I’ll go see if I can rouse you two.” Ladesa winked out, leaving Furladra and I, and then just myself.

I started heading back towards Godsholm Proper when I felt someone wink in behind me and saw another in front of me. They were pinching me off and I didn’t know exactly why, but I did still have my Magic, so I took off from the ground and soared through the air at speeds that left birds flailing about in the sky in my wake. Sadly, I was in the land of the Gods, meaning that for every one of them that was landlocked, there was another that wasn’t much for touching the ground. My Air Bubble made the first fellow who wanted to make a snack out of me bounce off easily enough, but it was destroyed when someone threw a fucking fireball at me, trying to knock me out of the sky.

Evasive maneuvers were the only ones I could work with since my assailants were staying tight on my tail, but the thing was that I shouldn’t have had a chance against Gods. What I realized all too late was that I was being baited; forced into Godsholm while my mind was likely being torn apart in the dreamscape. With that knowledge bouncing around my skull, I started flying as fast and as hard as I could in a circle, hoping to make a funnel of wind strong enough to get the fuckers off of my back, but there were so many Gods in the sky that I had no hope of getting my funnel to touch the ground. Things just kept getting worse and worse as the pursuers closed in one by one until I was kicking and punching them off of me mid-air.

One of them eventually got the drop on me and speared me from above, using his body as a battering ram, driving me face-first into Godsholm’s hallowed grounds. Nothing can die in Godsholm, but everything feels pain, and getting slammed into the ground? Pain. A lot of it, but not exactly like having your bones melted for a week. I’d been through worse and had picked up from it just fine, but being pummeled by minor Gods was just pretty shitty in general until my sweet little Dissy showed up and started claiming souls. Her battlecries rang out against all others, and when Mark dragged me out from underneath the mass of Gods, I’d never been more grateful for flagrant sexual assault and slavery in my entire life.

Mark and Cluck guarded me while I got my shit together, but I didn’t have any of my weapons with me in Godsholm since they’re banned unless you’re a craftsman. I’m not one of those, but Dissida did teach me how to kill more efficiently and how to channel my pain and anger into raw, lethal strength, as well as how to stoke the fires of fury to get your steel tempered just right. In other words, once I shook off the worst of the damage, I was gouging eyes, breaking trachias, and snapping whatever bones I could get my hands on, because fuck those guys. I was fully intending on finding out whether or not I could gore some Man-Cow’s horn into a Man-Bird’s beak when Dissida grabbed my hands and smashed them together, doing the experiment for me. We succeeded and I immediately turned to give her a Hunter’s Kiss, which was touching cheeks whenever weapons are/should be drawn. We stood back to back, but no one was willing to approach Dissida, and I was proving to be worthy of the title ‘Emissary’. Mark circled back, officially stepping down to ‘Envoy’ and the pack made a perimeter around the remaining Gods who weren’t trying to piece themselves back together.

I tsked and leapt backward, turning in the air as I did so to land feet first in Dissida’s antechamber. “Alright, so the fuck is happening?”

“You’ve been plotting something behind my back, Master.” Dissida said angrily. “You’ve been doing something behind the scenes and I-”

“Have a place in my plot as whatever you wanna be. Dissida, do you think I’m just going to use you up and throw you away?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.

She bore her fangs at me, her eyes glistening with her pink tears. “You’ve made it obvious that you don’t really care about me, so save your honeyed lies!”

“... Discord’s been feeding you all sorts of evils, hasn’t he.” It wasn’t much of a question.

“No, he loves you for what you are. I love you for who you are, as straight up fucked up as that is.” I replied drily. “He loves you because you’re a being like him. Chaotic. Hard to look at in his case, and I’m sure you still get your fair shares of terrified looks,” Her cheeks lit up with a purple blush, “but that’s just about wear the similarities stop. I know you, Dissida. We spent a long time together-”

“Made love after I was tortured; eaten alive by your subordinates for five hundred years. I know you kept me an extra century. I wasn’t all that crazy the first time I went insane, but I just watched you… I’ve been watching you for a long time, Dissida. None of your own family knows you as well as I do.” I closed the distance between us and placed my hands on her arms. “... Why did you come for me if Discord’s been manipulating you? Or should I be asking why it took you so long?”

“... I wanted to see how long you would last without me to help you... B-But I did it as your mentor! I didn’t want to just swoop in and save you when I knew you weren’t going to lose your life!” Dissida answered, not realizing that I’d turned the tables on her.

“That’s perfectly fine and I understand it, but then why?” I asked, still trying to get my answers.

Hahaha! Haha! Hahahaha! Ha! Bwahaha! “I didn’t expect that. I’m honoured.” I said as honestly as I could get.

[Oh my God, I’m getting a snack if you two want to stop making fun of some poor woman who probably felt used and unloved.]

She was being used and the love I felt for her was like kissing your kidnapper.

On it. So Dissida took my shock in stride and actually smiled. “You- You actually expected me to have been with someone before you?”

“Well, am I supposed to say no?” I scratched my head. “I honestly- Oh, yeah, yup, I see why. Sorry, I just kinda forget that you’re a Goddess sometimes. Chaos and Destruction and all that.”

She kissed me, her forked tongue hugging mine in just the right way to make it more comforting than creepy, her snakes giving me kisses of their own before she pushed me away. “I can get you to your dreamscape and stop the horde, but you’re on your own with the stragglers.”

“Later. I don’t have time to deal with this love dodecahedron bullshit.” Dissida winked me out of her realm and into the Dreamscape, but finding my dream was a little on the difficult side since it was currently such an abyssal black that it blended in with the area around it. The sad thing was that I had to stand at an angle to even see the damned thing, it was so dark.

I didn’t actually know how to Dreamwalk since I’d only ever used it as a gate to get to Godsholm, but I did know that the only way to help myself was to do something, so I threw myself headlong into the spinning black mass of whirling death because it was the best idea I had. Little did I know that I’d literally just done the worst bloody fucking thing possible, which just so happened to be the only thing I could do at the moment. What I should have done was try to look for someone else’s dream and try to get them to carry a message and see if that would work to get a message to Celestia or some shit, but nooo, I just had to hop into the middle of a nightmare where I was fighting off hordes upon hordes of familiars of all shapes, sizes, and rarity.

When yours truly jolted into his dream-form, he lost all sense of who he was and got lost in the battle in seconds. Transitioning between mental states can be tough under duress, and while my night terrors generally suck enough on their own, I didn’t need any Gods-be-Damned squirrel trying to get up my trouser leg, so I ended up shooting the damn thing with Pam and took off into the sky since birds all tend to have hollow bones, and whacking them out of the sky is fun. There were a few hummingbirds that got too close for comfort to my eyes, and I had to fling a centipede onto a condor and blast them both because some orange simian with lanky arm kept lobbing shit at me. Sometimes it was actual shit, so I shot that son of a sow with a Marked Arrow, creating a thin stream of ‘vacuum’ or whatever nothing is supposed to be called-

[Wait, so you basically made like, a vacuum tube to suck your arrow straight to the target?]

{It’s misnamed, not ineffective. A rose by any moniker should still stab the fuck out of you.}

Can I get to the part where that poo-slinging Shitbag had the muscle and fat from its chest blown out of the front of its torso by the force of the arrow, breaking off chunks of bone and dealing with that particular nuisance for good?

Fling poo at me and you die, which is a lesson that a few other simians learned over the course of the next few minutes. My Air Bubble or Air Shield, whichever I want to fucking call it at the moment, kept my aerial attacks from doing anything once I got it up, and the Vacuum Field I created around myself was enough to get most of the created that flew with wind out of the sky. However, everything only sounds easy right now is due to the fact that the shadowy Angels stalking my every move, taking unpleasantly accurate shots at me with wicked bows that flung arrows of bright pink light that streamed a Miasma wherever they flew, had only just come into sight. The sickeningly sweet perfume that streamed from the arrows made my head feel foggy and my stomach rolled with the tides, but I soldiered on and continued dodging as best I could, cursing Magic for not solving all of my problems like it did for everyone else, apparently.

It took me a couple of seconds to actually realize what that thought had been, and it wasn’t something I liked to cast any kind of perspective upon. Out of nowhere, I’d suddenly started relying far too much on my Magic to get me out of trouble, and that infuriated me. Made me feel weak and helpless in a world where the odds were sketchy at best and abysmal at worst, even as I tried to stack the deck in my favour. It hurt my heart to realize that losing Maud had weakened me, and that Furladra’s willingness to betray her most loyal servant was evident enough that she’d risk me losing everything. It hurt my heart to realize that I’d come to rely on Daywalkers again and had started seeing them as more than contacts, and it hurt my heart… It hurt most of all to realize that out of fucking nowhere, out of the fucking Wild Blue Yonder, I had something to lose.

For once since Aria’s death, there was a reason for me to keep struggling when even my usual amount of willpower would have faded, as inhuman as some people may have called it. There would have been a point in the One-Man-War where I would have succumbed and just figured out who Hypraedes was and why he wanted me. There would have been a point in time where I would have reached into my pocket and drank my vial of nightshade, cyanide, and niacin; the Left Hand’s ‘cure all’, to say the least, and just let the darkness take me. But no. Not now. Now I had Aria back, and she was the same as she ever was with a heart just as big and full of love as I remembered. And then there was Twilight who was like the smarter, more bashful version of Aria, who was more outgoing and outspoken. I could see similarities in both and I knew that I’d come to love Twilight as I did Aria if given the chance… And as much as I hate to admit it, I had Dissida and Furladra to fight for. Ladesa and my Guild. My life wasn’t that important to me, but my life? My close ones and aspirations, my love, dreams, hopes, and ambitions all boiled down within me and turned from a warm scarlet, a creamy blue, a vivid yellow, and a fiery orange all turned pitch. Black.

I hated the weakness. The emotional chinks in my armour that anyone could exploit. The dependence on literal Deus-ex-fucking-Machina Magic.

… When I snapped to, everything around me was red, pink, white, and yellow. The fight had gone on in the middle of Maric apparently, though the last thing I remembered was being in a forest where entrails weren’t nailed to every window, streaming along every transom, pierced into their positions with the bones of other animals and familiars wherever they may have been. I was already standing ankle deep in a pond of blood while I looked around at the carnage that I’d wrought by my soul finally bonding back to my body. At that point, I couldn’t help but crack a smile and wonder how many guttural screams had been sounded in a fruitless attempt to garner attention as I fell to my knees, exhausted magically and physically.

With all of the familiars that I could sense out of sight, I picked myself up and entered one of the houses in the downtown area since I’d been inside before and had a seat, closing my eyes and trying to wake up. However, when I opened my eyes, I came face to face with an ugly fucker, and I do mean ugly. I glared at him and my lip curled, hatred forming in my gut for the creature before me. Bloodsoaked as I was, I’d imagine that I cut a pretty daunting figure to most people, but when you’re facing a thing with enough appendages to make a centipede sweat and a mouth full of tentacles creepy enough to give anything with an octopus fetish wet dreams for decades, it matters a little less.

The being bleated a dark, insidious laugh that made the marrow in my done vibrate as if my very cells were telling me to shut up and run. “Bravado... Admirable.”

“Just in case any of those were questions, I’m just gonna run down the list: Joined my Guild, chose my Guild, decided on my Guild, and I believe I’ll lead my. Guild.”

‘He’ laughed some more and drove much of the strength I’d been gaining from my body, leaving me feeling weak and chilly. “Wrong... Change… Equis...”

“... Which side makes me strong again?” I asked, thinking I was prepared for the answer.

Its mouth-tentacles spread and revealed a plague-rotted mouth, both the tentacles and the mouth forming the facsimile of a smile.

Ithaca spread its wings and enveloped me, it’s glowing eyes burrowing into my mind, forcing me to see what I’d wanted to see for a thousand years: Odysseus’ full and complete death over the course of a month and a half. By the end of it, his corpse was unrecognizable and Frieda put him out of his misery against my direct orders, but I understood and sympathized with why she did it.

“Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate… Fate…”

“FATE!” It thundered, blowing me out of my dream and straight into Ladesa arms as she tried to shake me awake.

I gripped her arms to get her to stop shaking me and looked at Jay, who looked pretty shaken herself. “... Ithaca.” I explained the situation as I knew it to them, ending with a rather stressed, “Who the bloody fuck is Ithaca!?”

Jay gave me an odd, worried look that made my panic waver in favour of concern. “As far as I know, it’s not a ‘who’ so much as a ‘where’. It’s the birthplace of Odysseus the-”

“Oh. Shit. Shit. I don’t like the connections here, Gauche! Aren’t we-” Ladesa said weakly.

“Literally slated to go back to the slaughterhouse tomorrow? Yes; yes we are. Looks like Pops might have something left to say.” I answered, looking at Jay. “What can you do?”

She raised a brow. “I still need my E.Q, but I’ve got the Mana to back us up. Just don’t expect me to be throwing wards and shit; I don’t do White Magic.”

“I mean I specialize in Artificery, Runic Enchantment, Alchemy, and Blood Magic as far as Magic in general goes, in that order. I don’t actually know how to heal anyone without cutting into them, and it’s a patch job at best.” Jay explained.

Ladesa pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, no, we both already know Blood Magic is a no go, and I don’t see how suped up gear is going to do shit for us if we don’t actually have it.”

“Have gun. Make dead fast.” She gave her a thumbs up with one hand and a strange firearm with a cylindrical chamber that was most likely a ‘revolver’ with the other. “You strong, so you get big one.”

Jay held up a rather gaudy satchel of some kind. “Lady can’t leave the house without her purse, right?”

Jay shrugged. “I wouldn’t think about it too hard.” She pulled out a fucking ridiculous hand-cannon that made me slightly erect (Don’t judge me) when she exposed its full might. “Bunker Buster. Huh. Thought I lost you. Mine.”

“Fair point. And I have Timothy, which I might shoot you with if you don’t tell me how you know what my gun’s name is.”

Jay rolled her eyes, and I knew for a fact that, when it happened, she had absolutely no control over what she was doing. Her eyes softened as she looked at me once more and her lips curved into one of the most… Just… Heart-melting. It was like she knew exactly what to do to shut me up and stay my hand. “I guess I just like to know things about interesting men~” She blinked. “The fuck?”

“Hella.” Jay snapped. “Fuckin’ Shell’s just gettin’ to my head.”

“Damn. And here I was hoping to make my dubious sexuality even more dubious.” I sighed unhappily. You know, because I was you know, unhappy.

“Aw- Fuck!” Jay hopped off of the bed and jammed a finger in my direction. “We sleep on the bed. Keep your ass on the couch.”

“Well, you keep tryna fuck a brotha whose brain is loco mocha right now, and it’s basically like trying something with a drunk chick. I don’t want you, Bruh. I never will. The Shell might want some dick, but I’ll be damned if I give into that gay shit. Jay don’t get fucked: he doth fuck” She seethed, her warring emotions obviously causing her turmoil, as obvious as it was on her face as the muscles twitched seemingly randomly.

“Um…” Ladesa said. “I’d rather not sleep in the bed with a man, but I don’t give two shits about what equipment Gauche’s got. It is his room, anyway.”

“So I’ll sleep on the damned couch! As long as hand- Fuckin’ sketchy ass stays away from me.” Jay huffed fiercely.

She looked between Ladesa and I, seeing Ladesa’s mild annoyance and my understanding for what they were and why they were. “... Sorry. Freaking out here.”

Lade nodded and ga Jay a hug like I wanted to do, but apparently I was cred to be irresistible or some shit. I dunno I guess we won’t find out why Jay was into me until-

{erhaps… The ly wa I adse you try and gri me is if you’r willing to get hit.}

We all tried to rest up and not let the fact that yet another threat loomed over head. We all went more in depth about our powers and found different synergetic ways to use them, but by the time dawn broke, we were still feeling uneasy about our journey. I mean, apparently the beast grew a new, even more acidic belly and our supposedly expendable arses were supposed to go there and stealth kill a King.

[Fine, but only if you promise to explain what you were going through. It’ll really make it better if you try and find new things to talk about!”]

A Thief's Tale: The Path To Penance

by Ringtael

Chapter Twenty-Four: Face Off