“Empty your mind, young one,” Luna’s voice reached me. The flashes and explosions around me drowned her quickly out. A spell fizzled past my face, just inches away from taking the tip of my nose with it.
A frightened look to the side showed me a face eternally set in torment, the body it belonged to looked twisted on a wholly different level than I had ever seen before. Fingers bent in impossible degrees, dislocated jaw, bubbling skin all over it as it continued on its way towards me while set on fire.
“Resist it! Focus your mental efforts,” Luna’s voice demanded, though I was too preoccupied with fighting for my life. I screeched as the walking corpse’s burning hand managed to reach out towards me, grabbing my ankle. I struggled as I fell to the ground, desperately clawing at the ground.
“This is not real, realize that! Fight it! Fight for control!” Luna once more tried to get through to me, a small part of my mind was confused by the disembodied voice. “Do not let this thing drag you deeper into your mind, for we might not be able to reach you there without forcing our way in.”
“I’m trying!” I shouted indignantly. “I’m trying to fight for my life, okay?! So whatever part of my psyche you are, stop trying to say the obvious and help me already!”
“This is getting us nowhere. If you think us part of your being you must already be on the verge of succumbing to this vision,” Luna muttered.
The next moment I let out a deep gasp, returning to reality. We were within the throne room, the sun barely peeking above the horizon in the distance. Our night wasn’t very restful, to be honest. All of us were trying to suppress our yawns, none were being successful at it.
And the fact I had screamed my friggin’ soul out while under the influence of Luna’s magic didn’t help any of them.
Now that I think about it, they were looking at both of my bodies in concern... What did I miss?
“Tell us, why was Sol screaming along with you as we dragged you into your subconsciousness?” Luna asked, demanding an answer with narrowed eyes. I gulped, seeing the rest of the girls looking on in worry as I was trying to catch my breath with both Sol and Lux.
Oh... I might have thought I would be able to still control Sol while I was locked within my mind... A slight oversight on my part, I guess. I mean, normally I am able to control my other body when one is unconscious, although that always leads to me being unable to dream and such while one half is awake.
“Must I explain this now?” I whimpered, still reeling from the experience of a mental assault. It seemed so real... even more real than my dreams usually felt at night.
“Do it now, or we will drag you back to where we saved you from,” she threatened me, and I knew very well that she wasn’t joking around. Seriously, this training was turning out to be way worse than the physical training we went through under their supervision.
“Okay...” I said, more afraid than ever. “Just, let me breathe for a moment.”
Celestia, Luna, Chrysalis, and the girls waited impatiently as I dragged the few moments out that I had left with my secret. I may have wanted to tell it to the girls, but Celestia and her sisters were another matter entirely. Would they want to study me, see what made me tick? I didn’t even know what made me tick!
Oh my gosh, would they cut me open? Would they even be able to find anything if they did? I mean, I don’t think my condition was a result of something on a genetic level. They wouldn’t do that, right?
I swear Earth’s wacky conspiracies were at fault for making me this paranoid.
Okay, just breathe, like you said. They won’t do anything to me, that would be silly. Especially not to me, so get yourself together! No need to panic. Alright, here goes, I guess.
“The thing is...” I started, Lux beginning the first sentence. “I am not exactly a normal person by any standards.”
“There is something different to me. Something that sets me apart from everyone on a fundamental level than anyone sane would be able to believe,” I continued with Sol. “Something that is so weird, so abnormal, that it is sure to make you laugh in disbelief. Are you certain you want to know this?”
Everyone gave me a nod. So, to prove it to them, I stopped trying to be two separate entities and gave in to the natural synchronicity my bodies strived to be in. The change was notable, although not all of my friends were able to immediately see it. Rarity, I was pleased to say, seemed to notice the subtle gestures first. A blink of the eye, too perfectly timed for it to be natural. A twitch of the lips in nervousness. A scratch of the neck, perfectly executed with both bodies.
“For I am us,” my voices said at the same time, now making every person in the room look strangely at me. “A single entity, in control of what you see before you.”
“Funny trick, now stop with this weird twin thing,” Rainbow muttered, getting slightly disturbed as both of my heads turned simultaneously to her. “This is creeping me out.”
“Oh! Oh! Now, look at me!” Pinkie said excitedly. “Say something like: We come in peace, bring us to your leader!”
I snorted and rolled my eyes at her random antics. Doing what she demanded of me, I snickered to myself. There is one thing you have to give to her, Pinkie knew how to have fun. Besides, I always wanted to say that. Who wouldn’t?
“I woke up like this in the Everfree, being in control of two bodies. Neither fully male nor female. My memories were left a fractured mess, giving me little answer to who we previously were. I thought I was a single individual, but learning about Moonlight and Sunfire changed my perspective quite a lot. Whatever must have happened to us in the past, it left my souls in a fused state. I have no idea who I was before that,” I explained.
“But darling... what was that about your mother and father dying as we first met? Was that... just a lie?” Rarity asked me, feeling conflicted. “What about your uncle that kicked you out?”
Oh, yeah... that part. I almost forgot about that, to be honest. Never thought that would come back to bite me in the ass. Fuck... okay, if I was already telling them about this, why not come clean entirely?
“I... We are sorry for that small lie...” I answered. “We were fearful of what people might think of us, for being what we are. We tried to hide it because how could anyone ever believe something like this?
“So, we came up with a story. Being lost in the woods, that part was true, but the camping trip? A believable lie we came up with to explain why we woke up within that deathtrap of a forest. We wish we could have told you the truth about ourselves, but the truth is... We don’t know ourselves.
“We are sorry for having withheld this information from you for so long, we hope you could forgive us... me, one day.”
“I think I understand why you said I should wait before we came to a decision about what our relationship might turn into,” Twilight spoke up, nibbling on her lip. I felt my heart skip a beat fearfully in Sol’s chest. “But I think this show of trust just proves to us that you are genuine about that. That you trust us to such a degree... I don’t know what to say. I feel honored, Sol. It must have been a terrible weight on your shoulders...”
“Thank you, Twilight,” Sol said, my synchronicity breaking up again. It might feel more natural to stay in that state, but it also made everyone around me uncomfortable. Understandably so, I suppose. “I know this might be a bit much to accept, so let’s take things slowly for now. I think you, Rarity, and I need to have a talk later this evening about this. See where we stand in all this...”
“As happy as I am to see that Twilight has finally opened her heart to someone, we still have to continue with your training,” Celestia interjected. I grimaced at that. I really didn’t want to go back to being subjected to the new kind of torture they came up with. “There remains one last question to be answered, though. What do we call you? I imagine it must have been difficult responding to two different names.”
“I...” I hesitated a bit. Did I really need two names, or would one do? I mean, I always liked the names I gave myself, they felt right. But it also couldn’t hurt to have a shared name for just me. Like a last name, really. “Honestly? I don’t know... I think it would cause a lot of confusion for me, perhaps also for you guys, should I go with only one name. Sol and Lux just feel so right, like a perfect representation of myself, and I always know which body is meant.
“But if we have to give my single nature as a being a name, I might as well adopt the name that Pinkie gave me. Solus does sound very fitting, and if we had to put it to paper, I would like my male half to be known as Solus Sol, the lonely sun, while my female half could go with Solus Lux, the lonely light. Put together, I’d be known as Solus Solis, the lonely sunlight.”
“A beautiful name, paying tribute to yourself, Moonlight, and Sunfire. Your previous incarnation would be proud to bear such a name, even though it sounds quite a bit melancholic,” Luna commented, a smile gracing her lips. “Now that that is out of the way, let us continue. Prepare yourself.”
Steeling my nerves, I gave her a nod. Absentmindedly I noticed that Celestia and Chrysalis were getting ready to begin training the other girls. My observation was cut short as I was thrust back into my psyche.
“Center yourself, do not allow the assault to cloud your thoughts. Repel the images!” Luna’s voice reached me in the dark void I was floating in. In the next moment, I was back in the middle of the battlefield.
I tried resisting the pull from the false memories. But the longer I was here, the harder it got. The smoking eyes of the man that would stand against us very soon entered my field of vision, causing every sound around me to flatten out until I heard nothing anymore. Not even the guiding words of Luna.
It gave me a queasy feeling in my gut.
“Your fate is sealed, foolish mortal,” the sound of Sombra’s voice grated against my ears. It was the only thing I was able to hear now. The deafening silence returned, slowly making me go mad. Have you ever experienced total silence? It was an unnerving thing to experience.
It was such an unnatural thing, total silence. One would think that the heartbeat would drown it out, but usually, that gets filtered out by the brain. Absentmindedly I pondered that even if I could hear it deliberately, I wouldn’t be comforted by it now.
All because the world around me shifted in a weird manner.
My vision twisted in strange ways, and the assault on my mind got gradually worse. Images flashed left and right, while the man in front of me began to stalk his way towards me. The pictures were something I had never seen before, but they seemed so familiar. They had to be actual memories if I had to guess.
Faces I could not remember taunted me, streets I had no recollection of mocked me, a place that looked suspiciously like an orphanage belittled me.
My rage started to well up within me, unbidden and unwanted, and I could not control it. I thrashed from side to side, trying to throw the images away. They stayed, no matter where I looked.
“Give in,” Sombra said and my wild eyes were drawn to his as his hand gripped me tightly around my throat. I tried kicking and screaming, but the more I resisted, the more he would begin to crush my windpipe. “Trust only in the darkness of your heart, it is the only way.”
The iron grip on my throat caused me to panic, while I felt him hold me up closer to his height. The tips of my feet left the ground, dangling helplessly in the air. I felt like I was about to lock up, my whole body tingling in a frightened fashion. As if I was dangling above a shadowy pit of despair, an abyss that held no end.
“There is only me now,” he told me with a sadistic grin and for a moment, I thought he was actually the real Sombra. That couldn’t be though, right? He was just a figment of my imagination, I told myself, struggling futilely. “You belong to the dark one, you always have. Her hold on you is unimportant, her words are false promises. The blessed one is the true danger to this world. You are only a puppet to her.”
I shook my head, trying to make his words go away. They were all lies, I knew that with absolute truth. They couldn’t be anything else. Spectrum was my mother and I would not betray her to such a monster that didn’t belong here.
It was a bit strange, though... So far, it has only been zombies and mind-controlled soldiers that I had to fight against, so why this now? Why this vision of Sombra all of a sudden?
In the moment following his declaration, I felt him pushing his disgusting tongue down my throat and I wanted to gag. Its slimy wetness forced its way past what was humanly possible.
The tongue forced itself into my stomach like a gross imitation of a worm. Tears of revulsion dripped down to the ground, my distress completely ignored by him. Even as I tried biting the thing off in a last desperate act, he seemed unfazed by the attempt.
This wasn’t happening, I thought, this was not how I wanted to experience my first kiss! Not like this, and certainly not by this revolting figure in front of me. This act was everything but the gentle gesture it was supposed to be, this was nothing more than rape!
I wanted to throw up, the thought of being raped with a tongue down my throat was too much for me. A small part in the back of my mind asked me how Luna could allow this to happen. Why she was subjecting me to this vision of Sombra.
My rage turned ice cold. It sharpened to an impossibly thin edge of cold fury, and for the first time, I felt my mind clear.
Not one thought distracted me.
Not one emotion went out of line.
My mind was my own fortress and none are allowed to trespass.
There was only one goal left within me. It was the single one purpose of my very being now.
With surgical precision, my hand extended. It tore through the fake Sombra’s armor like tissue paper, slipping in and cutting through his last defense in the form of skin and bones.
Suffice to say, that tongue was ripped from his maw first and flung away.
Then, I ripped out his heart. The liver came out next. Then the lung. After that, I held the mangled contents of his stomach in my hands. All the while, my expression remained cold-hearted. Detached. Disinterested.
The memory version of the man remained alive, though. Screaming in silent agony, no sound leaving him because he quite literally couldn’t make a sound anymore. He strangely felt real at that moment to me, as if he was truly here with me. He deserved worse than what I had done to him so far.
So I continued my work. I pulled out his intestines like a wet noodle. The spleen was haphazardly thrown behind me, as it too went out. The kidneys were ripped out next, followed by the pancreas. Nothing was spared, even his tiny sausage of a dick.
I had to huff, it didn’t even give me the satisfaction I had wished for. Bored, I ripped out his eyes, shoving them up his ass in a sudden fancy. Now he can’t see where the sun shines... Wow, even that left me feeling empty.
“What has been going on here?” I heard Luna ask incredulously. Turning around, I saw her standing there, while my hands cracked open the skull of the mutilated figure beneath me.
“He kissed me,” I answered monotonously. “So I ripped out everything in him. Do you want to see his brain?”
“No... We do not want to see his brain. The fact that this monster invaded your mind... he must be far more powerful than we assumed. We have to hasten our efforts, but for now... we think this has gone on long enough,” Luna answered, a grimace turning her pretty face ugly. “You have been trapped within your mind for five hours now. Your mind is literally at war with itself right now.”
“I’ll come out as soon as I am finished here,” I answered back. “It won’t take much longer. I’ll just tear the skin from his muscles and carve out his bones, first.”
“This is far beyond revenge, it has turned obsessive! Stop with this madness, return to the waking world, please! What did you do to yourself?” she asked me, grimacing as I tossed his brain to the side. “Mutilating a specter like that because of a kiss is...”
“I made myself a monster,” I interrupted her with a smile. “He deserves everything I did to him.”
“Enough!” Luna’s voice boomed and everything around us crumbled away. First in large chunks, then everything blew away like dust. Until nothing but the dark void remained. Absentmindedly I noticed that it was supposed to be grey-white, but now the black had returned.
“Let your emotions back in, so we may bring you back to your friends in the condition we sent you in with,” Luna ordered me. I snorted at that.
“I am feeling good now,” I answered simply. “I just turned my emotions into an uncaring weapon.”
“Then, please, turn them back to what they were before that. Don’t linger in this... perverted version of the emotional suppression,” she said, a hand holding my cheek. “You can’t stay like this. We should have been here sooner to rescue you, please... forgive us. We never thought that this could have ever happened... Your defenses must be incredibly weak to allow him to invade your mind like that.”
Huffing, I did as I was told. The void turned back into the greyish mixture it was before but was a tiny smidgen darker now. Whatever Sombra had done to my subconsciousness, it left behind a stain upon my being.
On a side note, I just now noticed that I was only in one single body. It was a fusion of Sol and Lux, androgynous in nature. Neither male nor female. But still male and female, if that made sense. My hair looked like bacon, so that was a thing. I guess this form made sense, what with me having stopped hiding my nature from my friends and (unknowing) sisters.
Chrysalis was my sister now, too, right? How far did this family of mine extend, actually? I knew six of my siblings by name, and there was probably a brother I had only heard of briefly during the explanation from Chrysalis.
Anyway, once I was returned to my normal state of emotional feelings and whatnot, we returned to the waking world. By now, my bodies had been moved to the bed in the room I had stayed in the previous night.
And a lot of concerned faces greeted me. I assured everyone I was (relatively) fine and gave only a summary of what happened as an explanation. They didn’t need to know the gritty details of what I did to the vision of Sombra. Neither did they need to know about my special brand of insanity.
That made me think... Was it insanity? I mean, I didn’t think using your emotions as a weapon against your enemy was something that made you insane. If I were to be laughing and giggling like a loon while doing what I did? That I would consider insane.
With the reassurances out of the way, most of the girls left me alone with the two I wanted to talk with. It was best that we get this out of the way now, rather than later.
I stared at Pinkie, waiting for her to get the hint and leave. Said girl grinned sheepishly and skipped out with a whistling tune getting quieter being the only indicator that she wouldn’t be eavesdropping on our conversation.
“How do you two feel about me, now that you know what you know about me?” I asked, breaking the silence after it went on for too long. I still felt numb after what I went through in my own mind, but I stubbornly told myself that this was more important now. Otherwise, I would be confronted with those images, again and again, something that I didn’t want to happen anytime soon. I knew I would be having more nightmares of that encounter, there was no doubt about that in my mind. But perhaps... if I simply don’t go to sleep...
Rarity and Twilight perked up as I spoke up. They still looked like I was some sort of injured animal, pity in their eyes. I gave them a wobbly smile and both of them returned it hesitantly.
“What does it feel like, darling?” Rarity asked me, her curiosity managing to make her forget for a moment that I was trapped within my mind for the past few hours. Twilight gave a tiny nod, also wanting to know the answer to that. I sighed, fidgeting slightly. At least this was distracting me enough from that... that ordeal.
“I don’t know... I don’t remember what it feels like to only have one body,” I answered truthfully. “I guess I get double the input? Does that make sense? If I were to touch my nose, for example, I would feel two, but also one? No, more like two. Sometimes it is difficult to separate the feelings correctly, it gets confusing really fast.”
“I see,” Rarity nodded. She probably didn’t, but who would? “Darling, I... I don’t think I could be attracted to Sol, just as I think Twilight wouldn’t be able to feel something for your female body, does that... does that make you still like us?”
“Why wouldn’t I? My female body isn’t attracted to Twilight, while my male body is. I have no idea why that is, so I could only guess what the cause for that is,” I answered. “The better question is, how do you feel about technically sharing me? I... I don’t want to make one of you jealous for some reason. I understand if that is something you would be unable to look past...”
“We talked about this while you were still... trapped,” Twilight said, looking at Rarity. A tiny little blush appeared on her face and confusion quickly overwhelmed me. Please don’t tell me they are ditching me to be together instead. Don’t do this to me, I beg you.
That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it? Screw up the courage to ask Rarity out to a dance, and that is how it ends up? Only the universe could be so cruel as to take my happiness away from me.
“Rarity and I...” she began and my heart plummeted. She was going to ditch me, wasn’t she? This must still be a test in that nightmarish assault on my mind! That must be it, there is no way that she... “We are willing to enter a polyamorous relationship with you as long as we are the only ones your heart belongs to. There won’t be ogling other women, or men, for you. Do you understand me, mister?”
I nodded up and down, my vision becoming blurry with tears. A tearfully mumbled ‘Thank you! ’ couldn’t put to word how grateful I was at that moment. The thought of a harem was off-putting though.
Or was it a harem when it was two couples that were probably more like one and a half couple? No, that sounded stupid. Let me see, we have Twilight and Sol, that’s one, then we have Rarity and Lux, that would be two, but if what I understood there correctly it was also Rarity and Twilight? Would that make it a three-way relationship? Two and a half?
A harem was something like one person loving many, and many loving one person, right? Or was I just confusing myself more and more with this? Why wouldn’t it be possible to have everyone in a harem love everyone? But that didn’t sound like the things I knew about a harem from literature and so on... Why was I even thinking about this so much, couldn’t I just go with polyamorous?
You know what, that three-way relationship sounded better in my opinion, I’ll just go with that. That was what described this in the best way, why not just stick with it? I really needed to stop overthinking things.
“We will still need to go on dates to see if it will work out in the first place, so don’t think everything is done with this because we just had this one conversation, okay?” Twilight said so I agreed readily before she could change her mind.
“Well, with that settled, I think it is time for dinner. What do you think, darlings?” Rarity proposed. Both Twilight and I had nothing against that idea and I was hungry, after all. That mental training sure managed to drain the energy right out of my bodies. Considering all the things I had seen here in Equestria already, I wasn’t even so sure this was the worst one yet.
To be honest, I was debating whether seeing Fluttershy murder someone was worse than this.
During the night, I found myself in the embrace of a slightly confused Spectrum. Looking down on my bodies, I saw what the problem was. The two little fuzzy ponies that represented my form in my dreams previously were gone and in their stead, was a single fuzzy little pony. Okay, not so little anymore. Perhaps taller by a head or so, if I had to estimate the new height.
Not the first time that I found myself in a single body, but it still left me feeling odd. Like an essential part of me was missing the sensation of moving two separate bodies around. It almost felt alien to only have one body, now that I thought about it.
Never thought I would think that way.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Mom piped up, gleefully wrapping her hooves around my single body in a full embrace. Normally she held two bodies at once, never having been able to squeeze the living daylights out of my whole being at the same time. “I quite like this form of yours, it’s just as fluffy as a mare and sturdy as a stallion would be.”
“Thanks, I guess?” my voice sounded like Sol and Lux combined, talking at the same time. At least one thing was familiar with this body. I looked between my legs, and yes there were both parts there.
Don’t ask me how that works.
“My, my, quite curious, are we now?” Spectrum tittered. “Should I leave you alone for a moment? Perhaps conjure up a ponified version of the ones you hold feelings for?”
“What?! No! Mom, stop teasing! I was just curious, jeez,” I pouted, feeling my arousal start to act up, making me uncomfortable. “This feels so weird... Why couldn’t you just shut up?!”
She just continued to laugh in mirth while I tried to stop my body from doing what it wanted. There was no way I would start with this now, thank you very much! It felt awkward as hell, even more so as a pony.
Especially not in front of friggin’ Horse God.
I might have been trying to avoid touching my private parts the last half a year because it felt like it would be as if I had sex with myself if I were to do that. I might still need to come to terms with my bi-gender nature in that regard. Although I have accepted my genders as they were, that didn’t mean I had the desire for... the more carnal pleasures, yet.
I’d rather ease myself into thinking it was okay to have such feelings.
It wasn’t like I didn’t fantasize about it, no that much was a given with how hot most people around me looked. It was just... harder to look at myself like that. Both of my genders, actually. There was something in my psyche that was majorly embarrassed to do something like masturbate when the other half of myself wanted to drown in shame witnessing what I did with myself.
The best thing I could compare that to would be to walk in on your sibling while they... played with themself. While I knew some people might fantasize about something like that and never admit it, I wasn’t one of them.
And there was also another thing that prevented me from... that. Technically, my bodies were only half a year old... That might just be an irrational fear, but it was a fear that made me shudder to think what I would be doing was fundamentally wrong.
Wow, that thought made things even worse. Would it be considered pedophile for Twilight and Rarity to be in a relationship with me? If my body was comparable to that of a newborn, what kind of person was I to drag them into this?
So, I asked my mom and what did she do as I laid bare my thoughts to her? She roared uproariously in laughter, unable to keep herself together afterward. I grumbled in indignation and sulked a few paces away from her.
“I’m... I’m sorry, my child,” she apologized after it became more and more painfully embarrassing to listen to her laugh for half an eternity. “I truly am. To answer your question, how old are you? Five? No, you are just as much an adult as the ones you seek to court. There is no reason for you to fear such a thing.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled. She enveloped my pouty self in her wings and hooves, giving me an apologetic nuzzle. Not being able to keep being mad at her, I cooed happily at the attention. We stayed in the hug for the rest of the night and it felt good just staying there doing nothing.
It was nice to have her be this understanding, even though it sometimes came off like she existed for the sole purpose of making fun of me. Perhaps it simply was the privilege of a mother to make their child feel embarrassed with her behavior.
For one small moment, I debated whether or not to tell her about how the mental-training went but thought it better not to. I didn’t want to worry her. No... I didn’t want her to panic because my mental defenses were apparently abysmally bad.
Breakfast was a simple affair the next morning, no conversations were held in the nervous atmosphere. The whole group knew what would await us as soon as we finished with the food. There was little motivation to be observed for it among us, even if a conversation might have helped distract us for a moment or two.
Today would also be the day we would see the group going for the Frozen North be sent off. Among them, as we learned, the brother of Twilight Sparkle. He was also the captain of the guard, and if I didn’t make that promise to Twilight about not fantasizing over other women and men, I totally would have gotten the hots for him. And the lady that accompanied him. Both of them were the perfect embodiment of what their respective genders could hope to be.
What? I had estrogen running through one of my bodies, I could admire a man for the sexy devil he was. I mean, seriously, look at those muscles he was packing. Even with Sol, I had to admit that I was tempted to give him bedroom eyes. To be honest... I think I mostly had the hots for him as Sol. Rarity and Twilight gave me the stink eye as I oggled him perhaps a bit too much.
Anyway, after those were off to their new icy home up north, we were subjected to the mind horrors our sadistic teachers could conjure up. There was much screaming involved. A great deal of screaming. In a few years, when little kiddies would tell horror stories over the campfire in the woods, they would tell each other about the rumor that you could hear echoes of tormented souls still to that day within the throne room.
The worst thing about this? I absolutely made no progress. Last time I might have been successful in mutilating Sombra, even though I was pretty sure that was in no way a representation of what he might actually be like, strength-wise. I doubt I could actually overpower his physical self like that.
Not every vision Luna subjected me to was as bad as the one with Sombra had been. No, that one had been the mildest vision, in comparison. She made extra sure there were no uninvited guests in my mind, but that didn’t mean she went easy on me. Most of the time she made me go through fighting a whole army at once, trying to desperately cling on to my life. Sometimes it was just me all alone on the battlefield and sometimes it was me amongst the quickly slaughtered army there to fight the tyrant.
Every time before restarting the exercise I knew I was in no danger of being mortally wounded, it didn’t make it feel less real though. It was like I actually thought I was there for real, each and every time, thinking that it was the actual battle and being convinced the time had actually fast-forwarded to the point where we had been sent there.
It was practically like I was unable to realize that I was under the influence of mind magic. As much as I vowed that I would be able to recognize something wrong going on before we started a new attempt, the fact remained I was so bad at this, the other girls were getting concerned with my lack of progress.
Luna continued to be patient with me throughout the days, although I could tell she was getting frustrated that I was unable to distinguish vision from reality. So she went with a different approach. A milder one, for sure, but none the less difficult for me. I didn’t have to fight, no. Instead, she made me go through seemingly normal days.
Normal days like any other, it seemed at first glance. The thing about that, though, was that in each and every vision there was something so blatantly obvious that it didn’t belong there. My task was to recognize that thing while not falling for the pretense that it was the actual reality I was in.
Things like Sweetie Belle being a bad student. Or Rainbow Dash being the farmer at Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight still living in Canterlot. Luna being the princess that had to banish her sister.
Most prominently among those was the blue sun, though. I swear Luna was just messing with me with that one. That one was the start of my progress, though, so who was I to complain?
Over the days of training with her, me and the girls slowly got better at resisting the mental assaults. Seeing that I was improving (if slowly), Luna ramped up the difficulty for me.
Sometimes the vision consisted of just passing encounters with the thing I was supposed to spot. Other times she made me believe I was in the place of one of the girls, seeing myself from their perspectives. Well, at the time I believed that I wasn’t myself but, say, Twilight for example. It was surreal noticing that I was the wrong person, but with each time I noticed something essentially wrong with me being... not me, I got better.
I started to pick up things. Things that got gradually more unnoticeable to spot. A quill Twilight wrote with being the wrong color. A book that wasn’t there before. Some pieces of clothing missing from my wardrobe. An eye color on a person being wrong. Some pieces of furniture standing slightly to the side.
A pattern of speech differing ever so slightly from what I knew to be true. Someone suddenly writing differently than before. Or someone that was previously able to read and write was at a total loss when they were prompted to read something.
Then, things got even more difficult to spot. A missing star in the night sky. A pebble out of place on the corner of a street. Stitching on a dress with a barely recognizable alteration. All things that I should have not been able to distinguish, by any rights.
Although it got to the point where I started to get an intuitive feeling coming from the world around me that I started to know it was wrong. But with me now being able to tell falsehood from truth, Luna decided that I was ready to go back to her trying to break my mind.
Horrific vision after horrific vision. At some point, I felt myself get desensitized to the bloodshed and carnage around me. Nothing she could throw at me could faze me anymore after that.
When you see people get mutilated a hundred million times in front of you, it starts to make you feel like your efforts to stop it were futile in the end. Why bother with something that wasn’t real, to begin with? I just feared I would start thinking like that with real innocent people.
Still, I wasn’t able to break out of the forced images Luna subjected me to. As much as I tried, and believe me I tried with every bit of my being, I couldn’t bring myself to awaken.
There was something I was missing, something I couldn’t put my finger on.
So, to give me the right incentive to work harder and actually succeed, Luna changed her tactics once more. And this time? Her cruelty knew no bounds. We already were at it for more than four weeks at this point and she was getting cross with me for failing to latch on to her teachings.
Six hours after we had started with the training for the day, she told me that she would hold nothing back. If I was incapable of destroying her hold on me with the massive battle she placed me in, then she reasoned I would be more successful with the tormenting images of my friends being subjected to every kind of horror my own mind could conjure at her prodding.
Each and every time a new vision started, I was incapable of moving and being forced to watch as my friends were made the chew tow of various monsters from the Everfree. Or I had to watch as I relived the moment in Manehattan where that bastard raped the poor woman. Only, it wasn’t the woman I remembered in the place of the abused.
No, those were the ones I loved most. Rarity screamed for me to help her, begged for it to stop, but my body was frozen against my will. I raged with hot burning fury in my chest, cursing Luna for subjecting me to this torment. All the while, tears ran down the sides of my cheeks.
Luna would pay for this.
Taking a breath, I slowly let it out. Luna always told me to focus, perhaps I went about it the wrong way before. I always tried to stop the events in the vision itself and seeing that it never worked, I needed to rethink my approach. Instead of trying to stop what was happening in front of me, I focused on Luna instead.
She was the one behind this, right? Luna was connected to my mind with her spell, but a connection could be used both ways. A door once opened... If I could figure out how I could turn the tables on her, let me travel into her mind instead... I could let her feel my fury for once.
I’m done with being useless within the confines of my own mind.
The answer to that came unexpectedly easy to me for once. Her voice was the key. So I focused more on where she spoke from, ignoring the heartbreaking sight in front of me in favor of my revenge.
Luna really should have known better to assume that I was above retaliating in kind once she started to involve my friends. They were sacred to me, and what she did went over a line. So I would cross that line as well if I had to.
“There you are,” I whispered, eyes glinting in anticipation. I followed the link back to its source, throwing Luna off her game. She had no time to react as she was suddenly subjected to the horrors my own mind inflicted upon her now.
And she wasn’t prepared for it.
I used the one thing that I knew would work for sure. The only person that she respected more than her own sister. Me. I used myself in the form of her surrogate parents. Sunfire and Moonlight appeared in front of her, finally giving me an image of their faces. My previous faces.
They obviously appeared way older than I currently was. More mature and wise. Both of them looked eerily similar to my current bodies, so much so I would assume them to be future versions of myself, were I to suddenly be gender-flipped.
Both of them would do nicely for what I had in mind.
Then, the torment began. Luna watched helplessly as I subjected her to everything she had previously subjected me to. Sunfire being raped by a corpse. Moonlight being gutted like an animal. Both of them dying over and over again. I knew no mercy, just as she had known no mercy with me.
“Focus, my dear,” I taunted her and she raged against my control. I didn’t feel right doing this, but my pettiness got the better of me.
“You insolent little...” Luna snarled back and then I was back in her shoes. “You would use yourself in your old forms against me?! We will teach you a lesson!”
And her revenge was even worse than mine. I was subjected to the images of Rarity getting raped by my male body while I had to watch helplessly with Lux. Or I had to witness how my female body ripped out everything within Twilight’s body with Sol.
Nothing was too sacred for her to use against me. And I regretted ever going against her. My mind broke, more than ever before. I begged her to stop, but the righteous fury I invoked in her was unable to be swayed by my words.
Hollowness took root in my heart and I shut off completely. I retreated so far into my own mind, I couldn’t tell if I was still alive or not. It was better than to continue watching myself go against everything I believed myself to be. To betray the only ones I would never betray.
On the outside world, Luna tried to desperately fix the situation, she regretted that she went too far with me. She tried to beg my forgiveness, but only my lifeless eyes greeted her. Nothing she did could reach me and Celestia, as well as Chrysalis, were unable to accomplish what Luna had failed to do.
No sound disturbed my rest. No light reached me within the darkest parts of my psyche. No feelings were able to wake me from my self-imposed exile.
Not until a hoof made contact with my soul.
Luna, Celestia, Chrysalis, and the girls watched as a pillar of radiating rainbow light enveloped my bodies. Ethereal feathers fluttered through the room the group was standing in, floating through an unexisting breeze.
“Awaken, my child! Your time has come to rise against the darkness. Do not let these false images keep you away from your duty,” the booming disembodied voice of the Goddess Spectrum spoke out, making the eyes of three occupants in the room widen comically. “The Horseman of War has finally arrived in the physical realm, there is no time left to prepare yourself further. I did what I could to delay his return as much as possible, now do what I brought you here for, my champion.”
“Is... is that you, mother?” whispered Celestia, disbelievingly. “Have you given us Moonlight and Sunfire back?”
No answer greeted Celestia from the Goddess. making herself known for the first time with her actual own voice in her presence. Always having wondered what her creator sounded like from the tales of her surrogate parents, she was quickly overwhelmed by the quality of it.
Spectrum, on the other hand, had little time left to accomplish her task without starting to break the very fabric of reality around her, without breaking her own seal and thus, break her brother free of his prison. The amount of magic she brought to bear was at the utmost limit of what the world could withstand without forever damaging it.
“Take this last boon,” her voice got gradually quieter. “Your mind will be shielded from the attempts War might make on you. It is the last thing I can grant you, my dear sweet child.”
The oppressive force of arcane might suddenly cut off, and I was left standing there in the middle of the room as everyone around me stared at my glowing irises. One of the ghostly feathers landed in my outstretched hand and I could feel the spell woven into it.
It would do what Spectrum said it would do. Shield me from the mental intrusion of the Horseman known as Sombra. I could feel reality protesting the very existence of the feather and instinctively knew it would only last for so long.
She knew... didn’t she? Without this, I fear I would have been lost... possibly forever.
Putting it away in Lux’s hair behind the ears, I turned my gaze to Luna in sorrow. Tears dripped down both of my faces and I went over to her. She looked unsure of what I might do, but that look got quickly replaced with surprise as I slumped to my knees in front of her and started to bawl like a little baby clinging onto her big sister.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, don’t hate me!” I cried heavily. I felt her move within my arms as she too fell to her knees, returning my hug in kind.
“Nay, we... I am sorry, Lux,” she sniffled. “We... I shouldn’t have done that in the first place.”
So, we sat there together, me hugging her from two sides, weeping together about the first sibling spat between us, even though she might not yet have recognized that we were such. Those days might be coming to a close, though. You didn’t just go and ignore what the Goddess of your world said about her having declared someone her child. Least of all the champion thing.
Sometimes I think our mother was a massive troll, waiting to be amused by the shocked faces of her children and whatnot. She had a special fondness of putting me into the focus of those situations, be they surprising or embarrassing in nature. Oh, well...
Seeing that I now had a perfect defense for Sombra’s mind games, our training finally found an end. I was the worst one in our group of friends when it came down to the mental defense department, after all.
Even Fluttershy was better at it than I was. Fluttershy! I chalked it up to my unique nature of being figuratively split into two bodies. There was no other possible explanation for this crap...
And with that, our journey up north actually began. As Luna had promised, she would be accompanying us. While Chrysalis had recovered slightly, Celestia was still too concerned to leave her on her own without sufficient defense.
The announcement that Sombra was finally out and about in the world wasn’t particularly reassuring. Over the last month, it had been unnerving to hear that nothing had happened up north yet, making everyone feel antsy about the impending doom. Especially for Shining Armor and Princess Cadance. Both of them had sent letters back every once in a while, stating that the calm before the storm was driving them stir crazy.
A courier from the Frozen North arrived the same day as the one we were about to get on the train, returning with the news that the Empire had finally been found in the blizzard after much searching, and with it, the man that stood between us and the city-state.
Needless to say, Princess Cadence and Shining Armor were unsuccessful in securing the Empire before Sombra could get to it. The letter wasn’t packed full with all the details, but what we learned concerned us greatly. They had to erect an outpost a mile or two away from the Crystal Empire, trying to defend their position against Sombra and his mind-controlled army.
It was to that outpost we were traveling to with post-haste. With us was a majority of the Equestrian Army as reinforcements. Most of them, I feared, would sadly never see their families again. I was dreading that our numbers might not be enough for what was to come.
The train we were on was the longest I had ever seen, requiring multiple engines to tow the massive amounts of train cars after it. Most of them held the soldiers and us, while quite a few held things like supplies and construction materials.
It was essential we fortified our outpost to the best of our abilities. It needed to be able to withstand an assault of Sombra’s army for some time, should the shield of Shining Armor or Princess Cadance fail. The little garrison that was currently our outpost could barely be called that, to be honest. It needed to become a fortress asap, or lives would be needlessly at risk.
While the fortification had come a long way, it was nowhere near what was necessary. Hopefully, we could buy enough time to give the workers enough room to complete their work.
As soon as we got there, I was certain that all hell would break loose.
Let’s hope no one important to me dies. Having to use a time rewind would surely come to bite me in the ass should I use all of them recklessly. Better to do the job right the first time around, then screw up big time.
Fate, though, had other plans for me.