//------------------------------// // 1313: 9 // Story: They're EVERYWHERE! // by Nameless Narrator //------------------------------// A quick crack of the wooden floor makes 1313 wake up immediately, instincts flaring up into full alert mode. Normally, his instincts wouldn’t let him sleep after something like last night, but now he feels well rested and ready for anything. “Hmm?” Zamira, her head on his chest and one foreleg draped over him, gives him a bleary look. 1313 catches the eye of the zebra bodyguard standing by the door who shifts her weight, causing another quiet creak, and moves a step to the left to avoid doing so again. With a sigh of relief, 1313 pulls Zamira into a hug. “Sorry, still a bit on edge from yesterday,” he whispers and traces the part of the now dim markings that’s on her neck, “But this did wonders, I think.” “Heh,” Zamira rolls off of him, “And to think most unicorns consider zebra shamanism just silly superstition. Show what they know about magic outside of dusty old books.” The zebra at the door clears her throat. “Zamira?” Zamira looks at the bedside clock showing half past nine and sits up. “I guess it’s time to get up then. Did anything happen throughout the night, Zaida?” “This came for ‘Blueblood’,” Zaida replies, fishing out a scroll case from her saddlebag and putting it down on Blueblood’s work desk while 1313 and Zamira are getting out of the bed, “Otherwise all clear.” Zamira examines the delivered case. “High quality, no markings.” “Well, open it,” 1313 nods at her. Zamira unscrews the top of the case, shakes out a rolled-up envelope on the table, opens it, and once she reads the first few words of the note inside, she breathes out: “Oh fuuuuck…” 1313 walks over and freezes as he’s seen this envelope before. Namely, in Stable Fade’s apartment. “I knew someone followed us home last night. I thought I was just freaking out, but…” he lets the sentence hang.  “Did anypony see who brought it?” Zamira shoots at Zaida who shakes her head, “Crap,” she turns her head back towards 1313, “So, smart guy, how do we deal with this?” 1313 glances sideways at Zaida who raises an eyebrow. Zamira catches the look and adds: “She knows what happened and who you are.” 1313 nods and taps his hoof against the carpet before walking over to the envelope and pulling out a note it contains. “Keep an eye out on anything unusual,” he says, “I don’t want a repeat of last night.”  “Got it, no sharing bed anymore,” Zamira snickers while assuming a position across the room from Zaida so that the two cover each other’s blind spots. 1313 sticks his tongue out at her and starts to read out loud: To anypony who finds this, I can’t do this anymore. I read the newspapers. I know that ponies started going crazy and killed themselves. I saw young Torchlight do the same. I mean, I found his body in his room lying on the carpet in a pool of blood. He slit his fetlocks. I got a day off and… When I came to work the next day… Master Torchlight greeted me but it couldn't have been him. They all keep telling me I didn’t see what I saw, that it was just a trauma caused by changelings who broke into the estate and messed with my head, but I know what is real. I tried to talk to Feather Duster and the others, but they all just kept saying it was the changelings. I almost believed them but then I started waking up multiple times a night, hearing things, and one time I saw Serving Grace standing over my bed, just staring. When I reached for the lamp, she just smiled, and when I pushed the button she was gone. I haven’t slept for a week and I know I see the shadows move. I can hear them chuckle. I’m afraid that if I go visit my family they’ll find them too. I can’t go on. I’m sorry for being this selfish. I’m so sorry. I’m sor- “-the rest is illegible. She started crying,” finishes 1313 in a distant, controlled tone. With a sorrowful expression, he looks at the two zebras, “I’m sorry too. There’s more going on but it’s clear our invasion caused it,” he slumps before looking back up with fire in his eyes, “But they made a mistake in attacking us, whoever they are. If we just found her last night and nothing happened, I might have believed it was just trauma caused by changeling feeding, but it wasn’t. She knew what she saw and everyone else tried to gaslight her. We have to stop it no matter the cost,” he touches the explosive necklace around his neck, “And maybe I deserv-” “Keep your head clear,” Zamira firmly interrupts him, “We have to stop this.” “The question is how,” 1313 starts pacing back and forth, replaying last night's encounter in his head, “The only way we were able to escape was with your dreamcatcher and chanting. Not to be a buzzkill, but if we’re going straight into the enemy base I’m not sure it’ll be enough. The problem is that we don’t have time to prepare and if the knowledge of specifically our involvement has spread then if we arrive with a bunch of guards nothing might happen.” Zamira walks over to the desk and examines Stable Fade’s suicide note. “Do you think this is a challenge aimed at us?” “I don’t see who else could have known about us and then got the scroll case here during the night,” 1313 frowns, “But the timing means that Torchlight was already dead when I met him during the paladin reserve training. I know squat about magic, but wouldn’t the paladins have caught on to something being off?” Zamira shrugs. “They didn’t detect you. I told you pinheads were overrated.” “Hmmm…” 1313 ponders their options, “We have to come alone and we can assume we’ll be tracked once we leave the estate so we can’t have backup leave after us and lie in wait, but it seems we’re safe here inside the house. The more time we take to prepare, the more time they will have as well, and the only place we can do it in secret, potentially, is here. How many dreamcatchers can you comfortably fit around those thick thighs of yours?” “We’d have to get proper, zebra-made ones, plus some other preparations,” Zamira taps her hoof against the table, “Zaida, mind running some errands for us? It might be dangerous.” *** Getting all the items on Zamira’s list, unfortunately, took most of the day, and all preparations devoured what little time was left afterwards. They did ponder whether to put off visiting Torchlight until broad daylight, but in the same way it could be more dangerous, the litany of peaceful rest Zamira taught 1313 would be more effective at night as well… or effective at all. Of course, despite any potential of reinforcements being gone, Zamira still instructed Zaida to, in case of them not coming back by morning, immediately start shaking the nearest Royal Guard and don’t stop until they sent a unit to help. So finally, with both of them covered in invisible shamanistic drawings half-remembered from Zamira’s earlier days and equipped with a combination of powders supposed to do… probably something, the two find themselves standing before the gate leading to the garden surrounding Torchlight estate.  “So far so good,” 1313, looking like Blueblood again, breathes out, staring at the mansion in the back, “The lights are on, I can see servants moving here and there, and there’s complete absence of unstoppable undead monstrosities.” “I was thinking,” Zamira frowns, “What if we’re wrong? What if we go there, say that a maid killed herself, they just say -Oh, really? That is horrible!- and ask us to leave?” “Then we go with the original plan and call Torchlight out on sending an assassin into the castle in an attempt to kill princess Luna’s changeling friend, or did you forget that part?” Zamira looks away, mumbling: “Maybe…” 1313 pats her back. “Can’t blame you, with all that happened. Let’s go,” he pushes a button on a stone post next to the garden gate. A moment later the gate buzzes and clicks. Without thinking, Zamira pushes it open while 1313 follows her into the gardens and along the paved path leading up to the mansion. “You know,” he says after a moment, “I don’t know much about nobles but did any you ever met feel like the type to let someone who just rang a bell in without checking who they were?” Zamira winces, not having thought of that. “Uhh, magic… camera maybe?” 1313 chuckles darkly. “Yeah, let’s go with that.” The door to the estate is cracked open already, which makes the two exchange glances before entering. Once they’re inside, the door closes on its own. Experimentally, Zamira pushes the handle which results in nothing. “I guess that settles that,” she whispers. “Yep,” 1313 looks into the left hallway and at a servant passing a T-section at its end without giving them as much as a glance. A large door directly ahead at the end of the hall cracks open, clearly inviting them. With no other real option, they head towards it and can’t help feeling as if the shadows cast by the occasional lit candle on the wall are dancing and reaching for them in a way completely inconsistent with the flame. “Can you hear it?” whispers Zamira. When 1313 shakes his head, she adds, “Whispering. I can’t make anything out but it’s there whenever I-” 1313 stops, wraps his foreleg around her neck, and leans against her. “It’s just in your head,” he whispers into her ear, “My hearing is better and I’m getting nothing. Whatever is causing it isn’t used to changelings.” With a determined frown, 1313 pulls both wings of the dining room door open… …and all that determination instantly drains from him. The long banquet hall is filled with tables creaking under the weight of changeling body parts arranged on plates, green blood filling the accompanying glasses. Changeling heads are impaled on candle holders, and there are entire bodies hanging from chandeliers. Amidst all that, blank-eyed pony servants are walking around with plates on their back as if this was a ball full of guests. “Welcome, welcome!” Torchlight greets them while standing up from a chair on a raised dais on the opposite side of the room. When he sees that the duo are still only standing there, he adds with a wide smile full of saw-like teeth, “Come in.” The banquet hall doesn’t as much pull them inside as lengthen, making them suddenly stand on the other side of the door which closes behind them. They don’t need to test it to know it’s locked tight.   “So, obvious question,” 1313 narrows his eyes, quickly getting over the gore everywhere, “What are you and what have you got against changelings?” “Yeah, you speciesist ass,” adds Zamira, if only to reassure herself she can still speak.  Torchlight laughs, his hoofsteps echoing as he walks towards them. “You creatures wouldn’t understand what I am even if I told you, but the dreamkeeper calls us ‘Dreamweavers’. We are ancient, and all this,” Torchlight points at the changelings corpses and pieces, “is what these toys gathered for me, bug,” he nods towards the servants now standing around the room at attention, “My personal… dislike for your kind is quite new. You see-” “NOW!” Zamira calls out, reaches for a pouch around her neck, ripping it off, and swinging with it as the glittering dust inside scatters over Torchlight and their immediate surroundings. Torchlight smirks, and suddenly the previously invisible markings in Zamira’s and 1313’s coats burst with bright silver light which freezes all the servants completely, a faint glimmer of rime appearing all over their bodies. “Interesting ‘protection’,” he sneers, “but pointless nonetheless.” A mix of hooves, talons, and claws burst out of the floor, grabbing 1313’s hooves as Zamira charges forward, pulling out a dreamcatcher which catches on blue fire and gets incinerated even before she can say the first words of the litany. 1313 strains in vain against the limbs holding him as Torchlight punts Zamira away with a simple swing of his foreleg. She slams into a pillar from which more limbs burst out and immobilize her. “Even the best laid plans never survive first contact, do they? Aaanyway, where was I?” Torchlight’s smile grows wider, “Ah yes. You bugs are interesting, and cracking your mind will give me power over an entire new species. And I will enjoy doing so, especially after one of you stopped me from finally breaking the dreamkeeper herself! She was my prize and now the damned usurper has her. No matter, however, while the dreamkeeper might be out of my reach I now have your reality to feast upon.” “I have zero idea what the hole you’re talking about,” growls 1313, “but if you think you’re in any way more terrifying than my queen or pretty much any changeling of higher rank than me you must be insane.” “Not afraid of death, are we then?” asks Torchlight. “Pretty much burned out on that one past the old survival instinct, yeah,” snarls 1313, “Any changeling would laugh at a threat like that.” “Let’s see then,” darkness twists around Torchlight’s horn, a dark tendril bursts out of the ground and reaches into a swirling black portal appearing next to him. It pulls out a terrified servant mare by her neck, whom 1313 think he’s seen before work for Blueblood, “It wasn’t difficult to break into a pony around you once I figured out what you were,” he laughs, “And when I learned about that wonderful thing around your neck, all it took was to take control of a pony who knew how to trigger it.” 1313 suddenly becomes aware of the explosive necklace he’s gotten so accustomed to that he hasn’t even felt it most of the time anymore. He glances at Zamira who isn’t looking at him at all, rather at the servant with eyes wide open. To an infiltrator, her look says it all - Torchlight isn’t lying and that servant knows how to blow 1313 up. “Still not afraid,” says 1313 with a sigh, “More annoyed, really, that after all the bullets I dodged it ends like this. To be honest, I think that if you spent a week in the hive as a low rank you’d be shitting your pants and begging for a straight up quick death. Besides,” he smiles at Zamira who is finally looking his way, “I never expected Blueblood to let me go after all this, not for a moment,” seeing her eyes tear up, he adds, “But I still had the best time of my life. I loved being with you, Zami.” She screams something unintelligible over the hoof in her mouth as 1313 stares Torchlight down. “Whatever you are, monster, you won’t get into a single changeling. We’ll always be more afraid of each other than of anything then you can conjure.” “So be it,” Torchlight frowns, giving 1313 at least this moral victory, “I still have the real world to toy with. Do it,” the black tendril chokes the servant as it jerks her forward. She raises her foreleg, drawing some sort of a symbol in the air, and says flatly: “Gloom and doom, my problem goes boom.” Zamira screams again. 1313 tilts his head at the silliness of that all. “That’s so stu-” The necklace around 1313’s neck heats up, clicks, and everything goes white.