//------------------------------// // The sordid tale of Browngast of the Bloody Flatulence // Story: Princess Twilight Sparkle's School for Fantastic Foals: The Soul Thief // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Dying was a dirty word, at least when it applied to him, and Tarnished Teapot was less than excited by the prospect of it happening. At the moment, he could barely stand. He needed to find a spot where he could flop over onto his back and then pull the many slivers of glass from his frogs, because each step he took only pushed them in further. Though he’d been in worse scrapes, he had trouble recalling them at the moment. This was either going to be the fight that killed him, or it would be a great story to tell over tea and biscuits. For now, the outcome remained unknown, and that was kind of exciting. “What happened to Gentle Gust?” the mare asked in a voice that was only slightly screechy. “I felt his passing. He came here to secure the train so we could move the ponies we freed out of the dangerous city. What happened to him?” Tarnish, lacerated, burnt, battered, blown up, bruised, and still a little deaf, took a moment to consider his response. Gentle Gust? Probably a pegasus, before the transition. How strange, he expected a pegasus to be far more brutish, but that was probably a bit tribalist. Or perhaps the opposite was true; because Gentle Gust was a pegasus, he was used to suppressing violent urges. At the moment, Tarnish wasn’t sure what he thought, or believed, but he was positive of just one thing: this would end—badly. “You are injured. Let me save you.” The mare took one step closer, then halted with a puzzled expression. “There is something off about you. Something not right. Who are you? Perhaps more importantly, what are you?” Well, this one was perceptive, at least. He watched as her eyes narrowed. Was she trying to focus some kind of magical sense upon him? “Gust is dead,” he said to her, rather hoping to enrage her. “I killed him.” When she replied, her voice was considerably more screechy. “Who are you that you killed a god?” Was that fear? He suspected that it was. Injured as he was, he needed something, anything that might level the playing field. This was just more improvisation, but not the sort he was good at. He needed to be intimidating, as much as equinely possible. Perhaps if she was absolutely terrified, she would make mistakes that he could exploit. At least, he hoped. Looking down at himself, he found his inspiration, and then squinting at her, as menacingly as possible, he said, “I am… Browngast of the... Bloody… Flatulence. A maleficar. The more I bleed, the more dangerous I become.” The false-alicorn mare seemed rooted to the spot. “The one you call Gust tried to take the bodies I needed for my vile, disturbing experiments.” “You’re… a necromancer?” Incredulous, the mare’s head shook from side to side. “Tell me, do you traffic in the knowledge of souls? Me and my kind, we might have use for you. Compensation for your services will be fair and just.” This caught Tarnish off-guard, and he scrambled to recover himself. If the Ascendency was openly accepting of necromancers and soul-traffickers, then things were far worse than he believed. Sure, they were dabbling in animancy, that much was known, but Tarnish held the belief that there were worse things than animancy—such as necromancy. As a druid, his magic was all about life, and necromancy was the antithesis of that. Necromancy warped the natural order. “Are you aligned with Grogar, Maleficar?” This sort of improvisation only worked if things remained uncomplicated and Tarnish could feel the center giving way. He’d bought himself enough time to take a breather, but he had no plan, not even an idea of how to survive whatever happened next. He supposed it was time to tap into his druid magic, but that had risks he wasn’t prepared to deal with. If he summoned a massive hurricane that wiped Manehattan off of the map, Celestia would be more than a little cross with him, and there was no telling what Cloudy might do. “Tell me, are you the corpse-copulating type of necromancer?” she asked. “I’m not one to judge, but Mister Mariner might be hesitant to deal with you. It might be best to leave certain details out when I bring you to him.” A free ride to Mariner. This… this was an unexpected but welcome development. As long as he was alive, he could think, make plans. If he had a little face-to-face time with Mariner, he might unleash druidic fury on a worthy target. Sure, Manehattan might get swept off into the ocean, but so would Mariner, and maybe, just maybe, that anchor cutie mark of his might drag him down to the briny depths. As Tarnish stood there, contemplating his options, choosing how he was going to die, a confusing sequence of events all happened in quick succession—so quick in fact that he had trouble understanding everything that took place. Glass shattered as a shockwave burst through the area, steel structures warped a bit, bent, and twisted. Something that almost resembled a glowing orange blob of lava blazed along, almost travelling faster than the eye could measure, and the pseudo-alicorn just sort of exploded. She ceased to be in an eyeblink, vanishing in a poof of explosive, hungry flame. Tarnish couldn’t really make out what happened though, as the shockwave struck him, lifted him from his hooves, and sent him flying away from the epicenter of the false-alicorn detonation. The world was exploding again, and it was loud, so very loud. His ears, already damaged, balked at processing this new blast, and so he only heard brief blips of it as he was hurled through the air, propelled by invisible, violent forces. The spot where the pseudo-alicorn once stood was now a bubbling, boiling mess. While he tumbled end over end, watching as the horizon of the world flipped over and over, Tarnish thought of Pebble. She was utterly fantastic, Pebble. A real treat. Skyscrapers pointed up, then they pointed down, then up again, then down again. Sideways skyscrapers were the worst, and left him with a sense of vertigo. He saw blue, then rubble, more blue, more rubble, and if he squinted just right, he could see the remnants of the fiery blast that had just killed him. For a few troubled seconds, he worried that he might fall up into the blue sky, and wondered if this is what Pebble felt when her hooves left the ground. Poor Pebble, terrified of heights. Riding the concussive force of the ever-expanding explosive shockwave, he waited for his end. “I’m sorry.” The deadpan was awfully familiar, and even though he was half-deaf, he could hear just enough of it to make it out. An apology? Groggy, he tried to recall what had just happened. Right, he’d been exploded. For the second time this day. Day? No. It was dark. Why was it dark? Was he blind? He blinked, and things came into focus a bit. But it was still dark. “I threw a rock.” “You threw a rock…” he groaned. “I threw a rock really hard,” was the monotone reply. “It smashed the sound barrier like Octavia smashes cake and transitioned into a liquid state about a third of the way to the target. By the time it struck, it was trailing streams of superheated gas as it boiled from the friction. On impact, there was a massive release of energy—” “Yeah, I felt that,” he said before Maud could really get into it. “Why’s it dark?” “The sun went back east. I’m not sure if Princess Celestia is in control of it at the moment.” Wincing, he gingerly attempted to move, and suffered instant regret. His body seemed to be one giant bruise, but he was alive though, and would recover. The false-alicorn had been, well, it was either vapourised or de-atomised, he couldn’t tell in his current state. Maud—encased in her centaur-steel armor—was standing guard just about a yard away. Upon seeing her, he was immediately relieved and angry, so much so he couldn’t decide which one to feel first. “Never thrown a rock that hard before,” she deadpanned. “Wasn’t sure what might happen. Never applied that much strength to anything before. I saw you were in danger. Was trailing you with my Maud Sense and when I saw the pillar of fire rising up from the train station, I sort of figured that just had to be you. Browngast of the Bloody Flatulence, huh?” Again, he groaned. “You know, after all our years together, you never stop impressing me, Tarnish. Even in your current sorry state, you remained in control of the situation. She was terrified of you, you know. And for good reason.” “Buttering me up doesn’t change the fact that I’m pissed at you,” he said as he flopped over and tried to get his hooves beneath him. “Really, right now—” “Yes, right now!” He tried to stand, but failed. “You shouldn’t be here!” “You don’t get to tell me what to do,” was her stolid response. “That’s not how we work—” “The foal, Maud… the foal. What if something happens? Do you really want to lose both Pebble and the foal? What were you thinking, coming here to do this? Do you know what this is doing to me? I could very well lose almost everything important in one fell swoop! How can you do this to me?” The suit of armor didn’t move. It didn’t rattle. Nothing clanked. He rose, his legs wobbling like those of a newborn, and somehow, he managed to stand. Blood was running down inside of his ear, which annoyed him, and he tilted his head off to one side so it could drain out. There were no stars overhead, just a curtain of blackness, and the city all around him was alive with the sounds of violence. “I couldn’t stay at home,” Maud finally replied. “Like you, I couldn’t bear losing what I hold dear… namely you and Pebble. Don’t you understand? I had no choice. I had to come. Tarnish, don’t you insult my intelligence, I know the risk I’m taking. We can fight about this later, but can we please just focus on what is important? Our survival? Finding Pebble?” “I don’t want to fight about this at all,” he whined while he fought to keep his legs strong. “Fine.” There was a faint wavering in Maud’s response. “We’ll sort this out later.” “There shouldn’t even be a later,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t be here!” Maud’s armored head turned in his direction. “As much as I want to find Pebble, I have orders, Maud… I’m supposed to bring back Sumac above all else, even if it costs me Pebble. It’s awful, and I don’t like it, and if you’re here, that makes everything so much harder if the situation gets out of hoof! I can’t make decisions like that in front of you! This just twists me into pretzels!” “I understand.” “You understand?” “I do.” “You do?” “Yes. I do. While I might not like it, I understand the necessity of it. No matter what happens tonight, no matter how this ends, I will not fault you for doing your job. I give you my word.” “Maud, that’s… that’s quite a thing to say… especially after I acted the way I did.” “I love you because of your sense of duty,” she said with a soft quaver in her voice. “You do what is right and you never back down. What sort of mare, no… what sort of wife would I be if I prevented you from doing the very thing that makes me love you?” “I… uh…” “If you stand there with your mouth hanging open, you’ll swallow yet another bug.” Defeated, Tarnish’s ears drooped. The pain in his frogs threatened to make him swoon, and he really needed to pull the slivers of glass out. Ideally, finding a drug store and borrowing some supplies would be a smart move, because the constant, steady blood loss would be his undoing, sooner or later. Probably sooner. “I know Pebble’s general direction,” Maud said to Tarnish. “If we find her, we’ll probably find Sumac and Moon Rose. Hopefully they’re all together. Not sure how we’ll recover them, but we’ll have to think of something. Preferably together. Throwing more rocks probably isn’t our best option.” He nodded in agreement. “Getting you patched up is a priority. What a mess.” “I’ve had worse,” he replied, almost boasting. “Husband, you look like a zombie in a horror movie.” “Thanks, Wife. That makes me feel immeasurably better.” “Don’t mention it,” she replied in a sweet, demure deadpan. “I got shot in my ass—” “Again?” “Yeah, again!” Baring his teeth, he sat back down, and then flopped over onto his back so he could start pulling out slivers of glass. “I give as good as I get though. Made myself a harpoon, and connected the power main for the subway to it. Then I stabbed him in his ass.” “Shocking.” “Keep an eye out, Wife. I gotta pull glass out of my frogs. Don’t let danger sneak up on us.” “Well, hurry up,” Maud urged. “We must find Pebble. Nothing feels right. Bad things are about to happen.”