//------------------------------// // Interlude: All that Glimmers // Story: Northern Venture // by Chengar Qordath //------------------------------// Coldharbor was a mess. Half the city had been burned to the ground, and most of the rest had been smashed up by two giant dragons duking it out in the middle of town. Not to mention the damage Sunset had caused. It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t asked Blackfyre to do any of this. I’d even tried to warn them he was coming, and that holding me was a bad idea. If they didn’t listen to me, well ... then they’d pretty much brought it on themselves. None of this was my fault. I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. My conscience was clean. Really, if anyone was to blame for all this it was Frozen Finds. He’d promised me that the dragon was either dead or in such a deep sleep that he’d never notice us sneaking into his lair and stealing a few of his treasures. I guess he’d been half right; Frozen did get away with a few books while Blackfyre was busy figuring out what to do with me. At least the first job the dragon had given me was to hunt down the jerk who left me behind. The runes on my back twinged again. They always hurt a little bit, though sometimes it was like I’d almost gotten used to it. It was just another part of the job, and a small price to pay for finally having enough power to make a difference in the world. Now if only I could make the right sort of difference. My horn lit up and several fallen timbers shifted out of the way, uncovering the basement door they’d been blocking. “Come on out! It’s safe now.” After several seconds, the door slowly opened as a soot-stained caribou stepped out. I could see a couple more behind him, probably his family. “Are you sure?” I nodded and did my best to give him a reassuring smile. “Completely sure. The dragon isn’t here anymore.” He was in a cave about twenty miles north of town. One of the ‘perks’ of the job was knowing where the master was at all times, and vice versa. “H-how do you know that?” one of the children demanded from within his shelter. “It came out of nowhere! It could come back!” I clenched my teeth and glowered at them. “Do you want me to put the damned building back on top of you so you’ll be stuck in there until you starve or freeze? I said it’s safe and he’s gone, and I’m trying to help you out here. The least you can do is work with me!” “R-right.” The father slowly helped the rest of his family out of the basement shelter, directing through the rubble to safety. I couldn’t help but notice that the path he’d picked gave me an especially wide berth. Almost like he was as scared of me as he was of the dragon. Ungrateful jerk, I should give him something to be scared of— “No.” I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to regain control. Lately it seemed like everything pissed me off. Even getting angry about being angry all the time got my temper up. I’m not sure if that was another one of the side-effects of working for Blackfyre, or just normal anger at how much everything about this situation wasn’t fair. Here I was doing search and rescue work, and I didn’t get so much as a bucking thank you from these fools. Maybe next time Blackfyre decided to burn down a city I should join in on the fun instead of going around in the burned out remains pretending that— I growled and shook my head, glaring at the stupid refugees. “Get moving! They’ve got a camp on the south side, near the harbor.” The children cowered a bit closer to their father, and as he moved past me I noticed that he made a point of keeping himself between them and me. I growled and ran a hoof down my face. “Way to go, Starlight. You scare small children now.” I took a couple more deep breaths. “I’m my own pony. I can control this. He hasn’t taken everything from me yet...” One of the kids tugged his father’s leg, whispering to him. “Who’s she talking to, Papa?” “Just keep moving,” he whispered back, quickly ushering them away from me. Great. So apparently the people I’d just rescued thought I was some sort of crazy pony. Though I guess that was better than them knowing the truth. Crazies just get avoided. If they knew I was working for the guy who had destroyed their homes, they’d probably form a lynch mob even though I’d spent the last half an hour trying to help some of them. Ungrateful jerks. I snarled and unleashed a blast of raw kinetic force, reducing what was left of the burned-out husk of a home to kindling. Destroying things seemed to help a little. At least it let me vent in a reasonably safe way. I still wasn’t sure what to make of my magic being a completely different color. Burnt orange really didn’t look good, especially compared to my old teal. It seemed like a kind of petty thing to care about compared to other stuff like having a ton of runes carved into my back or the loss of free will, but it bugged me. It was a pretty fundamental part of who I was, and now every time I cast a spell it was just another reminder that now everything I did had Blackfyre’s talons sunk in. As if to remind me of that fact, the low-level twinging in my back flared up into a sudden stab, almost as bad as when he’d carved them in. I knew what that meant. The master wanted to see me right now. You’d think the guy who could fly a hundred times faster than I could walk would come find me rather than the other way around, but that’s dragons for you. For that matter, he could’ve come and actually gotten me out of town in the first place instead of just tearing the jail to bits and then running off after Sunset-bucking-Shimmer. I was about to start the long and unpleasant walk to Blackfyre’s current hideout when someone tapped the back of my leg. I turned around to find another caribou calf, this one carrying the upper half of a badly charred teddy bear. “Miss? Have you seen my mama? I hid ‘cuz of the noise and now I can’t find her.” Probably because her mother was just a clump of ash on the ground. “Go to the harbor!” The child squeaked and jumped back from me, fresh tears carving tracks through the soot stains on her face. “B-but I can’t cross the street without her! It’s the rules, she says I have to be with her, but I can’t find her! I’m not supposed to talk to strangers either, but...” I groaned as my back twinged again. Blackfyre did not like to be kept waiting. If he found out I didn’t promptly answer his summons because I was busy playing hero to a kid, he’d probably make me bring the kid to him so he could do something horrible to it. “Just go! Find another adult!” I spotted the caribou family I’d rescued earlier and fired off a blast, collapsing some rubble in front of them so they couldn’t get away. “Hey, you! Take this kid with you!” The family stared at me in baffled confusion, probably expecting me to attack them or something. After a couple seconds the father seemed to get it, nodding and waving to her. “Over here, little one. We’ll help you find your mother.” I let out a relieved sigh. “Right, go with him. You’ll be better off.” The calf seemed to agree, bolting over to the family as fast as she could. I was just glad she wasn’t my problem anymore. As the runes Blackfyre had carved into my back were all too happy to remind me, I had more than enough trouble to deal with already. Blackfyre had set up a temporary hideout in one of the caverns about twenty miles outside of town. Normally it would’ve taken me a day or two to get that far, but with his summons driving me onward I didn’t really need to stop to rest. I could catch up on all the sleep I was missing out on after he had whatever he wanted from me. I smelled his lair before I got there. Apparently the cave he’d chosen for his hideout had been occupied when arrived. Too bad for the local ice trolls; Blackfyre wasn’t a big believer in sharing his living space. The first thing to greet me when I entered the cavern, other than the smell of blood and burnt troll, were half a dozen of his Blightspawn. The things had horrified me the first time I saw one, but by now I was almost used to them. Or at least, that’s what I told myself. Usually right before they found some new way to horrify me. A great example of that was waiting for me when I got past the spawn and into the main cavern. Blackfyre’s latest creation, the Warpmouth. Blackfyre must have let the twisted little abomination out of its cage for a bit, probably to laugh at the thing as it pitifully tried to pull itself along the cavern floor on its three misshapen limbs. I was tempted to put the thing out of its misery, but if I did that Blackfyre would probably make me the next Warpmouth. No. That wouldn’t be horrifying enough for a sadistic jerk like him, he’d probably punish me by using someone I cared about instead. Like Dad, or someone from the commune. Then I arrived before the master himself. He wasn’t looking as good as he usually did, sporting several large rents in his scales from his fight against Argentium. I probably should’ve felt good about seeing him wounded, but from what little I’d seen of the fight he’d given as good as he got. Besides, it’s not like my prospects were great if he wound up dead. His runes probably had some sort of built-in kill switch for me if he died just to give me a little extra incentive to serve him well. He hadn’t said anything about that, but it sounded like the sort of thing he would do. Even if he hadn’t, and even if I somehow survived his downfall, my prospects weren’t exactly great. If Freeport got hold of me the best I had to hope for would be a short rope and a long drop for killing Frozen Finds, and that had been before they even knew about Blackfyre. Now ... well, the only thing likely to keep me alive for more than a couple days would be everyone who wanted to kill me arguing over who got to do the deed. As I stepped up and knelt before him, I realized he was sitting next to a a hole in the cavern floor where he’d dumped all the troll corpses. One of his talons sat in the middle of the charnel pit, idly mincing the bodies. Yup. Wonderful new horrors to find every day. I added a little more deference to my bow, just to be safe. “You wanted me, Master?” “Yes.” He picked up a gobbet of flesh, and I saw some of his dark orange magic flowing into it as he worked it between his talons. “I burned down an entire city to free you, as well as correct your failings. It is past time you made an account of yourself.” He placed the dead troll flesh into one of his wounds like it was some sort of healing poultice. Judging by how it started fusing into his wound, maybe it was one. Blackfyre’s fleshcrafting magic did some very creepy and disgusting but undeniably useful things. Against my better judgment, I felt my temper flaring up. “You sent me into a city the size of Coldharbor without any support. How did you expect that to end?” Blackfyre barely spared me a contemptuous glance. “I told you to capture Sunset Shimmer after you provided me with news that she had received one of the stolen books.” He tapped a bloody talon against his teeth. “A wonderful bit of serendipity, that. Though really, is it any surprise that an item stolen from a dragon’s lair might appeal to another dragon? When you told me about her I saw her value as a pawn, and then she just so happened to provide me the perfect excuse to target her within the law. Dragon Law might be worthless to most of my kind, but only a fool discards an advantage when it falls into his lap. I almost wish I’d planned that. When we write the history of my victory, we’ll have to say I did.” His eyes narrowed as his gaze shifted to me. “As to your failure, it is entirely on your own shoulders. Do not seek to blame me for your inadequacies; I tasked you with capturing the mare. How you did so was none of my concern. You were the one who chose to attack her in an urban area, level buildings, and announce yourself. Perhaps I was mistaken as to your value, and you would be more useful with further ... gifts.” He nodded to a few crystalline cocoons in the corner, where fresh Blightspawn were in the process of mutating. “But you might be able to convince me otherwise.” He lounged back, a faintly mocking grin on his lips. I grimaced at the cocoons and tried to come up with something good. The prospect of having my free will stripped away completely and being reduced to nothing more than a feral beast was ... well, I wasn’t kidding when I said killing Sunset would be kinder than letting Blackfyre have her. That very thought gave me the angle I needed to win Blackfyre over. “You want Sunset alive. Blightspawn aren’t great for capturing targets alive. They’re too violent and they don’t have much in the way of options to disable a target that resists. Sunset would never let you take her without a fight, and if she knows what you have planned for her she’d probably break out a death curse before she let herself be captured. You need someone who can disable her.” He didn’t look convinced, so I broke out another line of attack. “Back when you first bound me into your service, you said you needed an agent who could go out into the world, reach the places you couldn’t and blend into the crowd. I can’t do that if I’m a Blightspawn. I wouldn’t have the intelligence or free will to manage it, and everyone would attack me on sight for being a monster. And you already have plenty of those.” I took a deep breath, then fell to my knees. I hated to look like I was groveling, but he’d probably like seeing it. “I won’t fail you again.” Blackfyre finally responded to that. “Oh really? You failed me before. What makes you so sure you could win given a second chance?” Thankfully, I had a good answer for that. “She only beat me last time because her friends got involved. I had her on the ground and at my mercy before that happened.” No need to mention the part where she kicked my plot and broke my armor with that one trick she used, especially since that wound up backfiring on her anyway. It was probably just a fluke. Sure, she might still have Chainbreaker after she stole it from me, but that didn’t matter either. It was just a sharp hunk of metal that only really mattered because of its historical and symbolic value. Okay, there’d been a couple stories about it having some sort of extra magical powers that could do things like free slaves from bondage, but I’d held the sword in my hooves and I still had Blackfyre’s leash tight around my throat. Should’ve just left it to rot in the museum. Blackfyre stared down at me, nodding slowly to himself. “I see. Numbers will tell. Very well then, that imbalance can be corrected.” He punched a hole in the rock with a single talon, then dipped that into one of his open wounds. After he dripped some of his blood into the hole he crooked a claw, and three of his spawn came over. He repeated the process with each of them, mixing all the blood together in his improvised bowl. His talons danced over the hole in the stone, carving out runes I probably didn’t want to study too closely. I was attached to my sanity. After a couple more minutes he was done, and the entire thing was glowing a particularly nasty shade of blood orange. I had a sinking feeling I knew what he would want me to do even before he gave the order. “Drink.” Ugh. Drinking blood was gross enough, but twisted mutant Blightspawn blood? And who knows what the dark magic he was working into would cause? “What’ll it do to me?” Blackfyre glowered, probably annoyed I was asking questions instead of immediately obeying. “You said you failed because of her companions. If that is so, then I will provide you with some of your own. These Blightspawn will be bound to your will and obey your commands.” “Oh. I see.” I suppose that ... was one option for how to give me an edge in the rematch. Kind of an obvious one, considering I’d been complaining about being outnumbered. Blightspawn might be murderous brutes who couldn’t take much more direction that being pointed in a general direction and told to kill everything they came across, but three of them would be more than enough to counter the spy nag and her two bugs. One probably would’ve done the job, but I wouldn’t complain about overkill. That just left the really nasty part. Though compared to some of the other things I’d done since I joined up with Blackfyre drinking some blood wasn’t the worst. I took a deep breath and got to it. It’s not like I had any choice. If I didn’t do it voluntarily, he’d just force me to obey. For the record, mutant blood mixed with dark magic tastes horrible. Though really, the flavor of it wasn’t the worst part of it. The real problem was that it was way too warm and thick, like the world’s most disgusting milkshake. Between that and the fact that I had to lean down to drink it, there wasn’t any way to just get it done quickly. It took way too long, and before I was even close to done I wanted to vomit. I resisted the urge, mostly because I knew Blackfyre would not be happy about that. I’d be lucky if all he did was make me start all over again. When I was finally done I fell to the cavern floor with a gasp of relief. I felt sick to my stomach, but before long the nausea faded away, replaced by wracking pain. I think I did eventually throw up, but either it was too late to make a difference or Blackfyre just forced me to drink again while I was in too much pain to even realize what was going on. I’m not sure how long it took, but eventually the pain started to fade away, replaced with something new. It started with a strange sense of ... dissociation. Almost like I could feel an entire second body on top of my own. No. Not just one other body. Three of them. All with different limbs and proportions than anything I’d ever had. The Blightspawn. I groaned and coughed a couple times, trying to focus on the real me. It took a bit, but I managed to push the new presences in my mind back. I could still feel them, though. I closed my eyes and concentrated on them, trying to ... it’s hard to describe exactly what I did. It was kind of like making one of my legs move, except it was a leg I’d only had for about two minutes and shaped completely different from a normal. It was the same sort of half-conscious mental effort, just going out to an entire other creature detached from my body. The Blightspawn approached, a bit clumsily at first but they evened out their gait after the first few steps. A few more mental efforts got them to back up, turn side to side, and few other simple commands. I turned to Blackfyre. “Are there any limits to my control?” “Distance makes it harder,” he answered. “Especially if you want fine control. It is much easier to control them if you allow them to revert to their instincts and simply give them a target.” He smirked. “And, of course it would most unwise to try to turn them against me. Not that you need to know that.” I grunted and nodded. Tempting as the thought might have been, even without his control runes on my back he had dozens of Blightspawn to my three. No point in even discussing it, so I focused on more realistic concerns. “What will you be doing while I go after Sunset? I can handle Sunset and maybe even Archmagus Runeseeker, but if Argentium shows up...” Blackfyre waved my concerns away. “Argentium and her herald are my concern. I will see to their destruction.” “Right.” I frowned up at him. “But if you can destroy her that easily, why didn’t you when you fought in Coldharbor?” Blackfyre shrugged, dipping his claws into the charnel pit again for more raw material. “Had I attempted to bring my battle to a conclusion with Argentium in Coldharbor, the outcome would be uncertain. She is not a foe to be taken lightly.” “Isn’t that true of every fight?” I pointed out. Blackfyre scoffed and applied more of his bloody poultice to another wound. “Such a mortal perspective. You can afford to take chances and risks in the hope that your own limited lifespan will expire before the odds catch up with you. Those of us who live forever do not have that luxury. Given sufficient time, even the slightest chance of failure becomes an absolute certainty. I have waited over a thousand years for the chance to defeat Argentium and Celestia; I will not squander the opportunity you presented me by rushing now.” He pointed to the cavern wall, where he’d scratched a crude map of Northmarch. “Argentium’s weaknesses are twofold in nature: first, she cares for her mortal playthings. I shall send my spawn far and wide to ravage the land. Predictably, she will send Runeseeker to one front and attempt to contain the worse attack herself. My children cannot defeat her, but every battle will require more of her strength, and she will not find rest while the mortals perish. In time, she will exhaust herself. Especially when I will be waiting for her, sapping her strength with each battle.” He pointed to the first wound I’d seen him cover, which already had fresh scales growing in. “We may each suffer wounds, but all I need to recover is a quiet cave and a few tons of biomass. She limits herself to much less effective means. I will destroy her by inches, with the slow grind of inevitability. She could only avert her defeat by abandoning the mortals to their doom, and she is too weak to make that choice.” “Or she could get help,” I pointed out. “Celestia fought against you a thousand years ago, and you can bet she’ll come back once she finds out you’re active again.” “Of course,” Blackfyre agreed. “Which is why you must capture Sunset Shimmer. She is one of the keys to my plan to destroy Celestia: the Warpmouth is a potent tool, but I would be a fool to depend solely upon it to deliver my victory.” I frowned at him. “What do you mean? Sunset can’t beat her.” “Of course not,” Blackfyre agreed. “At least, not in pure a contest of power. But Celestia cares for her student, and that is her weakness. Perhaps when she faces the Blightspawn that was once Sunset Shimmer she will hesitate and allow herself to be wounded or even killed. More likely, after the battle I will face a Celestia emotionally compromised by being forced to destroy her own corrupted student. Either outcome is to my advantage. And even if the inhabitants of Northmarch are not her subjects, Celestia still cares for them as well. Righteous anger is such a predictable emotion.” “Right.” I grimaced and quickly put aside my first half dozen reactions. I ... didn’t exactly love the idea of all that happening to Sunset, or even Celestia. Sure, both of them were part of the repressive system that created inequality, but they weren’t evil so much as misguided. Even if they were villains, nobody deserved what Blackfyre had planned for them. Besides, if Blackfyre did end up taking over Equestria and Northmarch, it wasn’t like he’d make things better. The only equality he would bring in would be that everyone else would be equally beneath him. Blackfyre seemed to be in a good mood, probably because he loved talking about how certain he was of his victory. He grinned down at me. “Serve me well in this, and if the Sunset Blightspawn survives I will bind it to your service. I am sure you would enjoy that.” No. No I wouldn’t. Especially when it would be a constant reminder of what would happen to me as soon as Blackfyre decided letting me keep my free will was too much of a bother. Or he just got bored of me. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Blackfyre nodded, probably assuming I was trying to contain my excitement. “Do you need anything else to succeed?” I shook my head. “I think this will be enough.” “Then go.” I’d gotten halfway to the door when he casually added, “Oh, and finish off as many of the surviving refugees as you can. A few are good for spreading terror, but too many and it starts to look untidy. Especially the children. Orphans can inspire righteous fury with their sad stories and sweet tears. Dead children are just depressing and soul-crushing.” I smiled because the alternative was screaming. “As you say, my lord. I really should get going with all due haste. Sunset might escape if I take too much time.” I started throwing together a plan as I talked. “If I was her, I'd be getting onto a ship and running back to Freeport as soon as I could. After what you did to her she has to be absolutely terrified of you. Plus her mother and Argentium are probably going to try to get her out of Northmarch, and if Celestia does care that much about her she’ll probably make getting her to safety a priority.” Blackfyre nodded. “True. Much as I would love to see you sowing chaos and spreading terror, we can’t afford distractions from the true matter. Capture Sunset Shimmer and bring her to me. All other concerns are secondary.” I almost let out a relieved sigh, dropping down in another deep bow to hide my face in case anything gave away what I was thinking. “I will see to it at once, my lord.”