Penumbra opened her eyes and stared up at the red ceiling. She blinked and frowned, confused. She had been unconscious, but she did not know why, and there had been strange dreams. She recalled a house made of wood, and a field of flowers, and holding a venomous insect that smelled like blueberries. Penumbra did not even know what blueberries- -or berries of any kind, really- -were, but she knew what they smelled like now.
She realized that a face was staring at her from above. A face was peering through a vent.
Penumbra gasped. “YOU! Get back here!”
Her head was suddenly slammed into the hard table she was lying on when her horn fired a bolt of blue magic into the vent, partially vaporizing it. The crystal pony within cried out and fled. “You’ll never take me back! Teehee, I’M NEVER GOING BACK!”
“Ow...” Penumbra rubbed the back of her head, sure it would bruise. Her horn was still smoking. “This is...new.”
She sat up, feeling her head swim as she did so. The table had restraints, but they were not in use. Penumbra immediately recognized that she was in Scarlet Mist’s part of the facility, but it seemed small and poorly decorated compared to the normal vast detail she gave it. Even the fog had grown thin; it was barely pink.
After a few moments of waiting for the world to stop tilting, she turned her head and noticed that Scarlet Mist was present- -and lying on the floor, unmoving.
Penumbra sighed. “Have you passed to the other side?”
“No,” grumbled Scarlet Mist in return, still not moving. “How long did I spend teaching you the difference? Of course I’m alive. Just resting.”
She sat up, but was shaking badly and barely able to stand. Her mane had progressed from silver to white to pale red-yellow, and most of it had fallen out. It was apparent that she was far thinner than any normal, healthy pony should be. Penumbra was amazed she could stand at all.
“You do not look well.”
“And you look like a winged idiot. We should have taken those off you, they look absurd.”
Penumbra jumped down from the table. She did not appear to be injured in any way, but she felt completely drained. Not nearly as drained as Scarlet Mist, but almost as much. “What is wrong with you? Can I help?”
“This body is used up. Depleted. Empty. Not enough life force. It was already weak, but they never last long anyway. I am not compatible with it. I’m not compatible with any of them, except for my real body.”
“You have a real body? Did you lose it?”
“Yes. Clearly I misplaced it somewhere, you fluffy moron. Of course I have a body. But that’s not the point.” She lurched forward, shaking badly but still managing to stand. “Do you remember?”
“Remember?” Penumbra paused, not understanding. “Remember what?”
Scarlet Mist lifted an atrophied, shaking hoof. Some of the fog wafted into Penumbra’s nose, and images came to her. Images of yellow flame and a horrible demon, and what she had done to poor Luciferian.
Penumbra gasped. “No! His horn! I- -I- -what have I done?!”
“You WON.”
“But he was my friend! I- -I was just trying to protect our king, I didn’t mean to injure him!” Penumbra put her head in her hooves. “What will he think of me now, knowing that I hurt him like that? He trusted me, and I...I...”
Scarlet Mist put a hoof on Penumbra’s shoulder. It was cold and remarkably light. “I do not have the physical strength right now to knock your teeth out for thinking like that. It was a fight, and you were stronger. That is all there is to it.”
Penumbra looked up and nodded. “I understand.”
“What matters is that the zebra was right. Actually right. You have power. Unimaginable power.”
“But why can’t I use it?”
Scarlet Mist paused, and removed her hoof from Penumbra's shoulder. “Because I don’t think alicorns are like unicorns. We...they...govern their magic with logic, training and intelligence. But for you, it is driven by emotion.”
“But I could never harness fear, like Sombra can.”
“There are other emotions. Sadness. Greed. Despair. And hate. Hate is the most important one, at least for you. That was the one you used to win.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you looked at him, what did you feel? Hatred. You hated Twilight Luciferian. Wanted to see him burn. And that was what summoned your power. I am sure of it.”
Penumbra blinked. It had felt nothing like that. She had barely even noticed Luciferian; her only concern had been for her father- -but her memory was clouded. And Scarlet Mist knew far more than she did about such things.
“I...hate.” Penumbra frowned. Saying it tasted strange in her mouth.
“And that gives you power. More power than any pony ever imagined. Your magical potential is astounding...magical potential and an immortal body. Not like mine. Look. It has started.”
Penumbra looked down. One of Scarlet Mist’s rear limbs was turning to dust before her eyes.
“Lady Mist! Your leg!”
“It is not my leg. But it is still a problem. I NEED my body. My REAL body. I need to be whole. I never sleep, you know. The hunger never stops. The desire to return...”
More of her body collapsed, leaving her with little more than a torso and front legs. Penumbra grasped onto her, holding her mentor upright. “How can I help?”
“I need a body strong enough to get me to my real one. I need one that won’t burn up so fast...or one that can burn brighter than all the rest.”
“Lady Mist?”
Beneath her mask, Scarlet Mist smiled- -and her whole body collapsed to dust. As it did, though, her last act was to strip the Mask of Red Death off her face- -and to push it onto Penumbra’s.
The world was silent. It was empty and vast, yet Penumbra could feel the walls; though at an infinite distance, they pressed from every side.
There was a sound, but it was quiet. A low hum, a sound of something beating- -and something small and sickly beating alongside it, growing stronger every second.
Penumbra looked up. Above her was an endless spiral of slowly drifting crimson clouds, a funnel through which no sky could be perceived and through which no light descended. There was no clear source of illumination; Penumbra could simply see.
Below her, an endless smooth black floor seemed to stretch for eternity. This place- -if it was even a place at all- -looked strangely like Scarlet Mist’s mask-generating facility. Except that it was so much more empty.
“Hello?”
Penumbra’s voice came back as an echo, but the echo returned in voices that were not hers. They propagated upward through the endless column of mist, and through it Penumbra was momentarily sure that she could see the forms of ponies looking down at her, whispering questionably and silently.
The entirety of the world rippled, and suddenly Penumbra was not alone. She looked to the ground and lifted her hoof, not understanding why it was so wet. As she examined it closely, she saw that it was covered in a thick black fluid. It was like ink, but smelled like metal and ash.
Penumbra’s eyes widened, because this was a fluid she knew all too well.
Her eyes followed the trail, and she saw what her mind already knew would be there. To heaps lying on the floor. One clad in broken armor and tatters of a red cloak stained with black, the other holding him but likewise still, her mask splintered and thrown across the floor to reveal her striped face.
“My...my king? Lady Crozea?”
Penumbra heard the endless thrumming increase, and the silent voices of the endless vortex grew. She ignored them and ran to her father’s side. She picked him up and held him, finding that he was profoundly light. Though he appeared youthful, he had the body of a profoundly ancient stallion; it was like holding a bundle of sticks. She had not realized how truly frail he had been simply because of the power of his presence- -but that was now gone.
She did as she was trained and, with one shaking hoof, checked the pulse of both, even though she was not sure if her father actually had a working heart anymore. Regardless, she already knew the answer.
“You...you can’t be,” she said, shaking them. “Crozea! Sombra!” She shook harder, and realized that for the first time in her life she was crying. “Father! FATHER!”
They did not respond, for they had departed to the other side- -the side that Penumbra would never reach.
She bent over them and wept, because she did not know what else to do.
“No,” she moaned. “Sombra, I was supposed to stand at your side! I was supposed to be your weapon! You were supposed to open the doors- -to make a kingdom where ponies were FREE- -” She sniffled. “But now...now your dreams won’t come true.” She turned to Crozea. She was laying beside him, and in an instant she understood the relationship the two were meant to have- -and knew the answer to Emeth’s question.
“Not yet,” she said. “Please not yet...you cared for me. You were always there, but now you won’t get to see me and...” She paused. “And I won’t get to see what you could have been. You were almost...almost my mother...”
A voice echoed through the silence, one that Penumbra had never heard before but recognized instantly.
“It is all your fault,” it whispered. “You were not strong enough to protect them. Now you are ALL ALONE. There will be no one to protect you, no one to guide you. You no longer have a purpose. Your existence is redundant and unnecessary.”
“I know.” Penumbra closed her eyes. Then she wiped them and stood.
“There is nothing left for you in life. Alone, unprotected, unaided. You are nothing and no one without them. What is the point of a weapon with no one to wield it.”
“I know,” repeated Penumbra. She ignited her horn, and opened her eyes as the area before her was lit with blue fire.
“What are you doing?” demanded the voice, its tone rising in the slightest indication of panic. “You are AFRAID. Afraid that you will be ALONE. Afraid you were not GOOD ENOUGH.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m just sad. Sadder than I’ve ever been. But they would not want me to stand here and weep. That would be pointless. They created me for a reason. My duty to them is to continue on. Supersede them, if I can. They did not train me to wallow in my own pain when there is work to be done.” She turned her head to look behind her. “And neither did you.”
A pony was standing behind Penumbra, watching her. Like her voice, it was a pony that Penumbra had never seen- -but knew instantly.
She was a unicorn, but not a type that Penumbra had ever seen in person. Her body was willowy and strong, and her ears long and pointed. Her horn was enormous and curved, and the mane that surrounded it drifted behind her like a cloud, eventually dissipating to a fine mist. Her mane had once been blue or green, perhaps, just as her body had once been violet, though both were now fully consumed with an infection of deepest red. Pooling around her feet was a long scarlet kimono of the finest silk.
“I see,” said Scarlet Mist. “Your mind is too small and to empty to comprehend fear properly. You have no context to understand just how royally screwed you are. Barely any of you is YOU. Just Eternity’s programming.”
Penumbra looked up at the pony before her. “Is that what you really look like? Behind the mask?”
Scarlet Mist smiled. It was a hideous and pained smile, not one of humor but one of hate. Her teeth were pointed, and there were a considerable number of them. “This is similar to how I once appeared, yes. And how I will appear again, when I am made whole.”
“You were very pretty. May I ask what happened to you?”
The smile on Scarlet Mist’s face faded and became a glare of rage. “Do you not understand? Are you that simple that you don’t know what has happened to you?” She drifted forward, barely appearing to step so much as to float on her perpetual cloud of mist. “Once the Mask is placed on a pony, it can NEVER be removed. It is bonded permanently. Until your life-force is depleted, and you turn to dust. For an alicorn, that could be centuries. Centuries trapped in this place, exposed to nothing but pain, fear and hate.”
Penumbra laughed, and the whole of the illusion shook. Scarlet Mist lurched backward, unable to understand what had just happened.
“How DARE YOU- -”
“My apologies.” Penumbra cleared her throat and bowed. “Forgive me, Lady Mist. But this is a very good thing.”
“A good- -you are trapped! Do you not realize that? You will never be free, never allowed to live your own life, to see the world again, to stand beside your father- -”
“So?”
Scarlet Mist took another step back. She was beginning to feel something rippling within her, something she did not understand.
“Everything you ever wanted...”
“What I want doesn’t matter. The part of me that’s Penumbra, that part doesn’t matter. That isn’t what Sombra and Crozea care about. It’s not what YOU care about.” Penumbra sighed. “And I understand that. It’s just my body. My utilitarian use. It doesn’t matter if it’s my mind or yours controlling the body, so long as it serves its purpose.”
“You’re insane.”
“No. I’m thinking logically. My only goal in life is to defend the kingdom, and to serve my father. But I can barely control my magic. YOU can.” Penumbra smiled. “I’m surprised we didn’t try this earlier. With you at the controls, Celestia and Nightmare Moon don’t stand a chance.”
“YOU IDIOT!”
Scarlet Mist’s voice boomed through the endless silence, and this time Penumbra took a step back, not understanding what was happening.
Suddenly Scarlet Mist was looming over her. Penumbra felt magic slam into the side of her face, and several teeth were knocked free.
“What the he- -”
“It doesn’t matter? IT DOESN’T MATTER?! You ungrateful foal, I wasn’t building a WEAPON! I was training a PONY! You have the chance to be everything I never could, to be the thing that haunts my every waking moment- -and you would THROW IT AWAY, just like THAT?! Like it doesn’t even mean ANYTHING?!”
“Lady Mist- -”
“I just took everything from you! EVERYTHING! And I’m STILL not whole! Not even CLOSE! Where is your HATE? Like you felt for Luciferian- -HATE ME! I demand it, Penumbra, HATE ME!”
Penumbra looked up at her, spit several teeth out of the side of her mouth, and smiled. “Thank you for training me. The least I can do is help you get your body back. You’re my mentor. My friend. I want to help you.”
Scarlet Mist stumbled backward as if she had been struck. “I don’t- -I don’t understand- -”
Penumbra looked confused, and took a step forward. “Because...because it hurts.”
“Pain...”
“You’re so sad, and so angry, and hungry...and so very, very lonely.”
Scarlet Mist looked up, her red pupils narrowed in horror. “What- -what are you doing?”
“I can feel it.” Penumbra frowned. “So much pain...but so afraid. More than anything, you’re afraid. Afraid you won’t get back. Because she took your body, and she left you behind. That was selfish of her, and it was wrong.”
“Stay back! STAY BACK! I don’t- -why can’t I understand- -”
“Shh,” said Penumbra, finally reaching the larger pony- -or what remains of her, trapped eternally within a lifeless mask. Then, without warning, she hugged Scarlet Mist. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”
An endless, limitless scream pierced the whole of the world, tearing through the deadly fog as Scarlet Mist’s very being was torn apart by a force that she could not even begin to fathom.
The door to the procedure room was blown to cinders by a plume of amber magic. The Blue Knight Zither Heartstrings leapt through the gap, his sword drawn and held aloft in his magic. The chronoplexer Thirteen of Thirteen teleported beside him in a flash of blue light. The two armored ponies stood over Penumbra and beheld a terrible sight.
“By the Sign...” whispered Zither.
The sound was terrible. Penumbra was lying on the floor, writhing in agony, her body partially overgrown by the red leather that accompanied infection by the Mask of Red Death. Yet the screams were not hers, and did not emerge in her voice. They came from Scarlet Mist.
“NOOOOO!” screamed the voice, barely recognizable as that of a pony. “It burns! IT BURNS!”
“Thirteen!” cried Zither. “The mask once attached cannot be removed- -quickly! Reverse time!”
Thirteen did nothing. She only watched the events unfold in silence.
Another shrill scream came from Scarlet Mist as she clawed at the air, her wings stretching outward and flapping wildly as she rolled on the floor, her clothing only half-formed. “It don’t understand! I DON’T UNDERSTAND I DON’T UNDERSTAND! It burns! IT HURTS SO MUCH!”
“Thirteen!”
Zither growled and jumped forward, as if prepared to use hid sword to pry the Mask off by force- -but he was stopped with a wall of blue light.
“How dare you- -”
Thirteen pointed, and Zither looked- -and found himself staring, transfixed before the sight before him.
Scarlet Mist was weeping through her shrill cries of pain and roars of rage. “No! NO! I can’t- -I CAN’T UNDERSTAND! I have to- -HAVE TO ESCAPE!”
Her hooves suddenly shot up to the sides of the mask, and with a scream of rage and desperation she pulled. The mask began to separate, and Zither very nearly spilled his oats. Even as a battle-hardened knight from an endless line of warriors, he had never seen something so terrible.
The mask went far deeper than it appeared. The inside was covered with long projections, like tendrils, that dug into the host deeply. Something resembling a thick vertebral column protruded from the rear of the mask and had lodged itself down Penumbra’s throat. All of this was pulled out, and the Mask of Red Death broke its tendrils in a desperate bid to escape its agony.
Then, in an instant, it was pulled away. It clattered to the ground, and inert red mask, no different from any ordinary mask save for the thin plume of red smoke that was still drifting from the inside. Even that soon faded, and all was still.
Penumbra suddenly sat up and blinked. “Huh?” she looked around, and saw Zither standing over her. “Lord Heartstrings! Hold on, I need to bow- -”
“Now now,” Zither stabbed his sword into the ground and knelt by Penumbra’s side. His voice was shaking. “Move slowly, and carefully. Are you hurt, my princess? Injured, sick- -”
“I have a headache. Why?”
“Do you- -it is merciful you do not remember- -”
“Scarlet Mist putting her mask on me? No, I remember that. We had a conversation in there. It was...informative.” Penumbra frowned. “But I think I need to...well, think.”
“You must be jesting...” Zither retracted his face-plate. “Had I not seen it with my own eyes...”
Penumbra looked up and her wings twitched. She blushed and closed her legs. “Seen what, exactly?”
“None have ever escaped the grip of the Mask of Red Death. Wearing it- -wearing it is surely fatal. I thought...I thought I had lost you. How did you manage such a feat?”
“I don’t know.” Penumbra suddenly grew somber. “I...I tried to help her. But I don’t think she heard me.”
“There is nothing that can be helped,” said Zither, coldly. He stood. “This...this is unfathomable. And I am so deeply ashamed.”
Penumbra stood suddenly. “No! Lord Heartstrings, please don’t blame yourself, I should have been faster- -”
“That I could allow a treasonous betrayer into the midst of the maiden I had sworn to protect while I stood outside, my sword still in its scabbard? The insult is immeasurable, my shame incomprehensible.” He pulled his sword from the ground and glared at the Mask. “So at the very least, I will be able to avenge you.” He raised the sword and held it over the Mask. “This behavior cannot be allowed.”
“WAIT!”
Zither pushed the sword down- -but was stopped by a surge of blue magic around his blade.
He looked up sharply at Thirteen. “Release me, time-witch. Unless you want to meet the same fate as this filthy parasite!”
“No one will meet any fate!” cried Penumbra.
“Scarlet Mist is a traitor! She tried to steal your body, to betray you AND our beloved king! It is intolerable! SIMPLY INTOLERABLE!”
Penumbra puffed up and spread her wings in a display of royal authority. “Your princess orders you to CEASE THIS IMMEDIATELY! This is a direct order!”
“But my honor- -”
“Depends on serving ME. And my father, the king! If you would dare to execute one of my father’s generals without his express order- -without even SPEAKING to him- -then you are unworthy of serving the royal family! Thirteen and I will purge you IMMEDIATELY!”
Zither’s eyes widened, but he also smiled. He immediately sheathed his sword and dropped to his knee in a deep bow. “Yes, my princess. My apologies, Lady Penumbra. The threat to your life and the wound to my honor simply inflamed my passions beyond my control, and for this I offer my deepest and most sincere of apologies. You are correct. To behave this way would only besmirch my honor more deeply” He looked down at the mask and picked it up in his magic. He held it out to Penumbra, who took it in her own. “The criminal has been apprehended, and by your own strength. Forgive me for darkening this profound accomplishment.”
“Thank you. I understand. I didn’t mean to yell at you. And the king doesn’t need to know about your near indiscretion.”
“Thank you, milady.”
Penumbra looked down at the mask. It felt cold and inert. Even if she put it back on, she doubted Scarlet Mist would return. Not to her body. Not ever again. Yet the mask was still very much alive; she had seen that at least in the way that Zither had handled it so gingerly, but knew it in a deeper way, too. She could feel it. She could still feel the pain and the hatred...and the profound, endless loneliness.
“I will make the report to the king myself,” she sighed. “It is my duty. To them both.”