//------------------------------// // [10] Fractured // Story: Queen of Storms // by Via //------------------------------// Fractured You'll never succeed... I often wonder what it's like to be a Spirit, unrestrained. With each footstep, you bring with you the full force of your sphere. Your magic is less an extension of yourself and more a fact of the world - the Spirit of Fire is not acting with fire, but rather they are fire. To be a Spirit is to have the power to grind mountains to dust and to tear the greatest structures ever conceived of to shreds in an afternoon. That is the fact of a Spirit, and it's that fact that weighs on my heart. As much as I hate to admit it - Celestia and Luna are much, much stronger than me. They were stronger than Starswirl, who - at the end of his lifespan, decades after his prime, was still far ahead of me. In terms of raw magical potential, they individually outclass me by a factor of at least four - and they're so young. They're only going to grow, and at a rate so hard and fast that within a decade they'll be stronger than I could ever be. And then there's Discord. Someone so disgustingly draped in power that he was more than able to dispatch the entire host of Spirits. It stings to admit, but I'm never going to be able to do much more than irritate Discord at best. Starswirl was right. I'm just a puppet in a game of divines...but my vow will still be fulfilled. It doesn't matter if Starswirl was right. All that matters - all that matters is that this ends with Discord's blood on the ground. ...Isn't it? The weight of Celestia and Luna on my back is more noticeable, all of a sudden. They're pressed against me and secured with my own magic, the constant ivory glow from my horns being almost soothing. Luna's forelegs are curled around the golem orb, its smiley face pointed up towards her. It's not capable of emotion, but sometimes it almost feels like it is. Almost. I'm not sure if the journey back to Olympus has been faster or longer than my initial trip there - but at the very least, it feels less...lonely. The nightmares are a constant, but the presence of others makes them bearable. My thoughts wander as my body goes on autopilot. As it stands, there are six spirits alive according to Gryphus. Celestia, Luna, Harmony, Order, and Discord were a given. The other one was an enigma - the conversation between Bellum and Discord suggested that it was potentially either Misika or Draelos, the Elemental of Water and of Fire respectively. But there was no way to be sure. Or maybe there was a Spirit that wasn't known at all. One that escaped all eyes but those of Gryphus, somehow. It's not as if that would be particularly useful to me unless they made themselves known. It's times like this that I wish I was a Spirit. The knowledge that it would bring - the ability to cross distances faster...that would definitely make this easier. My gaze tilts up towards the mountain towering in front of me. The moon hangs high in the sky. Luna and Celestia are fast asleep. I'm sure I could make it to Olympus by the morning if I pushed myself, but...as my eyes wander over towards the sleeping duo, I feel a wave of exhaustion wash over me. Maybe some rest would be good. My eyes close. The ground is cracked and broken. The air is thick with the smell of sweet goods packed to the brim with sugar. The ground is broken, cracked, and jagged with spires like claws reaching out towards me as if I'm going to be pulled in. Blood pools up beneath my feet. A light red dragon's head rolls over and hits my feet. Pink energy pours from the cracks as the ground gives way, gigantic plates of rock sliding closer to the void. Everything begins to fade away. In the sky - a storm rages. It's not any natural storm though, and I don't need my magic to tell. The clouds are black and heavy, the lightning is a constant deafening arc connecting to the ground. The sky is broken by the shape of pink, unrestrained power. There's a bloody tear as a jagged creature formed from lightning tears the wings off a gigantic creature. It's a gryphon with the head of a unicorn and the tail of a drakon. The unicorn flashes a glance at me as the shape slowly turns towards me. My paws tremble. My horns glow but the magic aura quickly sputters out. My mouth falls open as I try to make a sound - to remind myself that I have at least that much power. There's nothing I can do. My horns begin to crack and my world starts falling away. I gasp and sit up with a jolt. Luna prods at my horns, the golem limp on the ground by her side. Celestia is laying against my tail while I sleep, her face turned away from me. I blink a few times. "...luna?" I whisper. My brain tells me this is real, but my heart needs confirmation. Luna leaned in and squinted. "We're almost there, Tempest." She whined. "You've been sleeping for ages!" I shut my eyes and let out a deep sigh. I pushed myself up on trembling legs, stretching my body out and cracking my neck. I blink the last bits of weariness from my eyes and look back down at her. "...You're right, Luna," I said softly. I reach down and tap her head with a claw. Her head is pressed a bit closer to the ground. "Sorry." I crack a smile. I know it doesn't meet my eyes. Celestia turns to look at me. "How are we going to get up there?" She looked up at the mountain. I was silent for a second. "...I don't think we need to, actually," I said softly. "What? Then why did we come up all this way?" Celestia's eyes narrowed. Immediately on the offensive with her. It's hard to suppress my annoyance. "We're still going to Olympus. Discord dropped the mountain-top on me. I'm just...not sure where it is. We'll circle around until we find it." Celestia blinked a few times before she remembered the story I had told her. Luna, on the other hand, looked up at me and loudly said - "he what???" It sounds more ridiculous each and every time I say it. "Discord dropped a mountain-top on me." Luna stared, then her eyes widened a bit when she realized I was dead serious. She turned her gaze towards Celestia. Celestia reached out and put a hoof on Luna's head, running it through her mane slowly. I scooped them both up with telekinesis and placed them on my back, and began circling around Olympus - looking for wherever the mountain top had been dropped. It was a testament to how truly large Olympus was that at least two hundred feet of rock could crash down on top of me, and the mountain still pierced through the skies. It didn't take long to find. Luna was laying down on my back while leaning against Celestia, all three of us silent - when we saw a giant pile of rubble near a forest. There were remnants of a castle on its top - but it was nearly unrecognizable, more a collection of broken bricks and shattered walls than anything else. A flash of fear rushed through me as I realized the dangers of bringing them here. Not only was this a high-importance area, but there were dozens of bodies...including the bodies of the alicorns I had eaten. I didn't want to traumatize the poor girls. The fear subsided slightly as I realized that Discord was trapped by Starswirl, apparently. I'm not really sure what that entailed. I turned to them as I set them down with my magic. "Stay here. I'm going to go make sure it's safe. Keep the golem with you and scream if there's trouble." The golems legs twitched as it began to bring itself into an active state. I was mildly concerned about one of the glyph pairings on the golem - "Aude Murn." It was, quite literally, "Sound Empowerment." The intended effect would be for it to create a sound, but after a bit of consideration, it would probably just make the sound louder in a radius as large as its magical pool could afford. If the radius was large enough, it could technically drain me dry - but realistically I could just crush the connection between me and the golem far before that ever happened. Although, if I was particularly low on magic... That's irrelevant. The situation was mostly covered - if the golem detected life, it would at the very least make the two louder if it didn't create a noise of its own. I wasn't exactly a hundred percent on board with leaving them alone, so I might as well do this quickly. Celestia and Luna nodded at me as the golem began to circle them. My horns lit up with a soft glow as I quickly sliced a hole in the aether- the ocean weighed down on me. my bones felt heavy. coiling muscle twined itself around me. teeth sunk into my neck. -and exited a few dozen feet away from the edge of the pile of rubble. My eyes narrowed slightly. Visions of the future seen in the aether weren't entirely unheard of, but they did often suggest improper spellwork. I gripped down into the ground at the thought of killing myself because I stupidly made an improper aetheric shield during a teleport. If I were to die - it would be at Discord... ...It would be on my own terms. Mine. After a few minutes, I needed to stretch my magical muscles. There were at least a hundred bodies scattered around the top of Olympus - some of them quite horrifically mutilated, from both Discord's doing and from the amount of rubble that had crashed down on them. With little more than brute telekinesis, I dug a large trench that could fit all of the bodies. For now, I avoided the throne room: I wasn't quite sure I could go back there just yet. In order to make sure I didn't miss anything, I chained a more complex series of glyphs together. My goal was to sense bodies with a spell. My first instinct was a simple chain of Virtrus Myr or Mortrus Myr, but both of those didn't work off the bat. It took me a second to realize that while my magic was searching for that, I wasn't actually receiving any feedback. I faintly remembered a glyph for "Creation" in one of the books I read in Gryphum. It was very broad, so I didn't actually look at any practicalities of it at the time. After a bit of thinking I chained together Mortrus Myr, Lyl Somn. Death Search - Create Sound. I'm not sure how to specify what sound it created, so if this didn't work I was prepared to give up. With the first pulse of the spell, I heard the faint sound of crackling energy in directions all around me. I walked in a random direction - and found a body where I had heard the origin of a sound. Why it had defaulted to the sound of energy was beyond me, but at least the spell worked. My first visit here had been one born out of desperation. It was a frantic desire to do something, to find something - for anything. It had been one tainted by panic, hunger, and this desire for vengeance that burned away everything but the desire to tear the serpent into two bloody halves. Olympus had felt small, constricting - like it had been precariously balanced at the top of the mountain and I had no room to move at all. Now though, I was properly able to appreciate the remnants of its once illustrious beauty. Tendrils of candy mixed with flesh curled around ornate pillars inlaid with gold, adorned by broken shards of glass with fragments of flames flickering around their edge. Once likely beautiful streets carved with a near zealous level of attention and care from sheets of marble had been pulverized; reduced to calcified gravel. Yes, this had been a place of beauty and reverence. But now? It had been destroyed by a monster and was being scavenged by a monster who ate dead gods and lied to herself about her purity. All for my self-righteous, all-consuming vengeance- No. The word rang through my head. I had work to do. I didn't have time for these thoughts. The work was grisly but went by quickly - at first. There were piles of bodies that I promptly roasted with flames to prevent any chaos magic contamination from leaking through. I found it easier if I closed my eyes and instead relied entirely on the sound. I could almost pretend that these were just animals, not once-sapient creatures. Once they were burnt, I scooped them up in my body - or as much as I could in some cases - and dumped them unceremoniously in the trench I had dug. I stood over the trench and finally opened my eyes. The sight was disgusting, even compared to all I had seen. A choked breath escaped me. "...It won't be in vain," I whispered as I began to fill the trench in. "I'll make sure of it." With a flash of teleportation, I was back by Celestia and Luna. Luna was running her hooves over the golem repeatedly. I paused for a second to regain my breath - with proper technique, I had about four teleports a day. I could probably do five or six, but that would leave me too weak to do anything. Celestia and Luna looked back up at me. "It's safe?" Luna said loudly. I nodded slowly. Celestia stared at me almost suspiciously. "Yes. It's safe." My voice was soft and weak. Words came hard to me, and I found that I wasn't able to meet either of the Spirits in the eye. Not without seeing glimmers, glimmers of scarred and mutilated bodies - of teeth that sawed down around keratin, careful to avoid choking on the hooves; "Let's go to your thrones," I spoke in a whisper, unable to muster up any more strength. Unable to look at Celestia as she stared at me with such suspicion, like I was a monster. Luna frowned. "It's weird." She shook her head. "Please don't call it our thrones. I don't like it." I winced. Of course, that would be uncomfortable for them. I couldn't find the strength to apologize. I glanced at them. "Do you need to be carried?" Celestia shook her head. Luna looked up at Celestia. "...Cellie, can I ride on your back?" Celestia looked slightly surprised. "You haven't done that in ages. Are you sure?" "Why would I ask if I wasn't sure." She stared weirdly intensely at Celestia. Celestia snorted as she pulled Luna onto her back. I picked up the golem with telekinesis and set it down on my back, and the three of us took the last steps towards Olympus. They trotted along at my side. Within claw's reach if so I needed, within magic's grasp if such was necessary. I was a larger target, and would attract the attention of any attack from a distance; anything from the front, I could shield with my body. Our rear was left undefended, and while I did have a theory that I could, with a little push, see through the golem that rested on my back - it wasn't one I was too keen on testing right at the moment. Quick, rapid glances served to make sure we weren't being followed. This was a risk. One that I was starting to regret taking. We were at the peak of all pony civilization and the seat of ancient artifacts, including ones that Discord was rather personally entwined with. Not only was he more than likely to be monitoring this place in some regard, but it felt as if every step I took here threatened to set off a ticking time bomb that would signal him. But what else was there? I was new to this world. New to this game that these spirits play - of resistances, revolt, power, slaughter. I didn't know where to look, I didn't know what to do that could possibly give us a fighting chance. Maybe if I was able to train the sisters, then there would be some semblance of a chance...but how could I do that when any minor spell from them threatened to send off a surge of energy that Discord would find? And if they died - hope was lost. All hope was lost. I blinked as I felt a sudden impact, and realized that I had just impacted the doors to the palace face-first. I stepped back and collected myself from my inner monologue, shifting my attention back to my surroundings. I had gotten distracted in my own self-pitying monologue. I was careless. I was - I was doing it again. I snapped out of my state from Luna's slight snickering. It was moments like these I was thankful that scales hid my blush. "You're supposed to open them, silly. You don't run into them." "I-I know that!" I exclaimed as if that had ever been in doubt. "I was just. Distracted." "Mhm." Luna smiled smugly at me. Even Celestia's lips curled into the faintest glimmer of a smile - and for a few moments, I had not a care in the world. I pushed the doors open and we entered the throne room, and those moments ended quickly. A long hallway lead up to a small flight of stairs that in turn lead to a circular room with huge windows of vibrant stained glass - thrones decorated around it in a semi-circle. The thrones were adorned with markings that had been blemished by dried blood and fragments of fur and flesh mixed with bone and even fragments of brain. It was grisly, it was gruesome - it was a mistake. I shouldn't have avoided the throne room, I should've cleaned, I should've protected the children from seeing this- I glanced down at them, and immediately my self-loathing faded away by a surge of fear. Their horns were glowing. Their eyes were glowing. They were using magic. Discord was on his way. Minutes passed in the span of seconds. My bones felt frozen, my scales felt as if they were crawling all over my body - and there was a surge of pain in my right hind leg as it felt like it was about to fall off. There was a pressure weighing down on me, squeezing me so tightly it felt as if I was going to pop as my mind rushed through a hundred possibilities a minute. Discord comes. I teleport them away. He kills me. He kills them. Discord comes. I fight him. He kills me. He kills them. Discord comes. We fight him. He kills me. He kills them. Discord comes. I sacrifice myself to stop him. He lives. He kills them. My mind races, my mouth opens slightly and my magic begins to surge. I don't know how long I have - I don't know how fast he is, I don't know where he is. I have no information, and I've just doomed them. I calm my surging magic and immediately begin shaping it into a teleport - before I'm interrupted by a hoof hitting me across the face. Luna's horn is still alight with a soft glow, her eyes glassy and locked on something just past space. Celestia's ivory horn juts up in my vision, her face contorted into one of rage, one of anger that solidifies her as a goddess of the sun. Embers dance over her form as her wings flare out to give her any sense of size. She barely reaches up to half my height including her horn, so the effect is greatly diminished. "You didn't tell me." She spat out. "W-what? Celestia, we have to-" Another impact. Her hoof smashed against my scale with all the strength of a spirit. A scale cracked, and I stumbled backward - reminded that she has the ability to kill me if she truly desired to. "You didn't tell me." She repeated. "He sacrificed himself to save us, the one stallion who we had for a father - and you didn't tell us." "Tell you what!?" I hissed out. For a faint second, a glimmer of fear rushed over her eyes - but she straightened herself up and spoke with all the authority of a goddess. "Starswirl is dead!" She mirrored my anger with an equal amount and a heavy serving of venom on top. "He died to stop Discord, and you didn't even tell me! I'm not - I'm not a child. You don't have to protect me. You don't have to protect me from things that I need to know, to protect my sister." She hissed that last word out with such vitriol that I stepped backward. "H-how-" "I saw it!" She shrieked. "I saw it in a vision, and you didn't tell me! Why!?" "...I didn't..." I stammered blankly. Why hadn't I told her? She was just a year younger than me, it wasn't as if she couldn't take it on account of her age. I - I just... "He gave us time, and you've wasted it." She snarled. "You've made his sacrifice in vain. Weeks without Discord looming over us - and we've spent it walking instead of doing something important, something worthwhile. Why? Tell me, WHY!?" "I don't know," I answered honestly. "...I don't know." We were silent for a few seconds that felt like a few minutes. "You have to stop treating me like a child." Celestia stepped forward and looked me straight in the eyes. "Only if you stop acting like I'm a monster." I retorted snippily and immediately regretted it once I saw the fear in her eyes. "Y-you...you don't know why-" She stared. And I didn't. "I don't," I said quickly. "...I'm sorry." "It was my mother." Softly, in a strangled voice. "...just a few months after Luna was born. She doesn't remember." I didn't say anything for a second. I dropped down onto the flat of my stomach and pressed my head lightly into her side. She flinched from the touch, but didn't recoil instantly. She just stepped away after a few seconds, and I felt painfully alone. "C-Celestia. I didn't- I didn't know how long we had. I didn't want to risk it. I've seen Discord, I've seen how strong he is. Starswirl - he couldn't...he couldn't do anything for long-" "You're wrong. We have weeks. Weeks. Starswirl - h...he died to fuel his spell." She whispered. "The stallion I knew as a father. I watched him turn to dust. And- and I should be sad. But I can't even cry. I just...I just feel angry. I feel..." "Hollow." I finished. "Hollow." She mimicked in a soft voice. "Like something is-" "missing, and you know that you should feel bad about it but-" "-you can't, and you just feel anger." She finished. She's like me. "I'm sorry," I said gently. "I'll tell you everything from now on." "Everything?" She repeated, and I was thankful that I couldn't see her - for I'd undoubtedly see Apollo. "...everything," I whispered with a soft nod. I don't know how long we stayed like that. Celestia turned away from me, my form flat on the ground. It could've been seconds, minutes, or even hours - but we didn't break out of it until we heard Luna fall into a coughing fit. Immediately, I shot up and rushed over to her side. I placed a claw on her side to steady her and Celestia planted a hoof on her barrel to soothe her. "Luna!" "w-wha...ce...cellie?" She whimpered and pushed away from my touch into her sister's. She looked up at her with wide eyes, trembling lightly. "Wh...where's the ocean?" The ocean? Celestia blinked a few times and looked just as confused. "What do you mean, Lulu?" "I was...here," Luna said slowly as she organized her thoughts. "Then I wasn't. I was...it was that place that auntie took us to that one weekend. Horseshoe Bay. Then I saw...a stallion. He was tall. And he had wings, and a horn, like us. And he was in the ocean. And it was wet. And heavy, and gross, and - and there were chains, and..." She trailed off. "The ocean," I said softly. "That's...Order. You saw him. You saw Order." And the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. The ocean was a place antithetical to order - it was shifting currents, erosion, constant change. Trapping him there would sap him of his power. Discord had trapped his greatest enemy, and we knew where he was. Luna and Celestia looked up at me. "Order?" Luna whimpered as Celestia ran a hoof through her mane. "He's a Spirit. He can help us." I stood up, and said with absolute resolution in my voice - "we're going to Horseshoe Bay." -