//------------------------------// // Unrepentant // Story: Daily Equestria Life With Monster Girl // by Estee //------------------------------// It could be said that she understood, in that moment when she first heard him speak. Recognized exactly what had happened to her, because the party involved had just confessed to what he could never see as guilt. It could also be said that electric words fell into her ears and skimmed the surface of her brain, looking for a place upon which they could truly alight. Some part of her knew, but -- not the whole. Not just yet, because there was simply too much to reconcile. To see and hear and scent, especially scent. The scents which carried her across the remaining span of her life. She had been moon-touched at the moment she'd entered Tartarus: something which had placed her senses into overdrive and left them there. Her choices were to either continually sort out a near-flood of data or drown. And when the myriad factors brought by emotion churned the waters, as the torment of Tartarus did its best to play... She had heard him, and some part of her understood. But those neurons held back the full message, because there was too much information coming in and sorting had to take place. Her survival might depend on it. He was... grasping the bars of his cell, as he stared at her during that brief moment of wonder and hope. Two columns of merged stalactites and stalagmites, one in each hand, and the stone seemed thinner than it should have been. Grasping. Something about that was trying to call for her attention, but in the midst of everything else... She was still looking at him. Deliberately trying to put sight foremost, because this was her first encounter with what Equestria thought of as a centaur, and she didn't know what all of the scents meant. And in Tartarus, where the olfactory miasma saturated all, gave her too much to sort through while deliberately trying to drown the most vital details... At first, she thought that multiple hooves had been damaged during the final battle: a fraction of an instant was required before she recognized their cloven state as natural. The one which had been split by Diamond's tiara displayed some degree of healing, but... it was rough. The new keratin appeared uneven, and the shade didn't quite match what surrounded it. The hooves were a silvery sort of grey, but -- dulled. There was nothing reflective about the color, not a single true hint of metal -- I keep thinking of the disc. About metal... -- and if she didn't have the evidence of the rough-grained poor healing before her, she might have thought he'd painted them. A minor act of vanity -- but the color was natural. When it came to her own stallions, she was certainly used to the lower torso possessing a different shade than the upper. Their upper torsos didn't have fur. His did. The burgundy was mostly present on the arms and face: from the upper waist down, the dominant hue was a sort of dulled black. There was also a darker growth of fur along his cheeks: sideburns of sorts, just above the white beard. And the tail -- less pale than the facial hair, and the fall was more lush than the herd stallions ever displayed, but... there was something about the color which suggested a permanent stain. They roughly shared the same ear placement. But in his case, the location represented their maximum height without being moved to the top of the skull, and she knew their range of motion would be more limited than her own. The horns would get in the way. He was wearing a rough-cut vest: something where the arm holes had ragged fabric around the edges, with no trims or attempts at hemming at all. And -- -- there was fur covering his lower torso. Just fur. She was desperately hoping he had a trick valve. Sounds: he breathed, and... the rhythm was off. For mares, the Second Breath was something which had to be learned and she wasn't always sure as to just which capacity her herd's stallions had lost: the internal, or that which allowed such refined levels of education to occur. But if you watched them, knew where to look -- then it was possible to see how they weren't managing it. He breathed, and the upper ribs shifted. That was all. She could hear water dripping somewhere in the caves. Water, or a fluid which shouldn't be confused for it. Soft trickling noises. Off in the distance, a living hill keened its agony to an uncaring world. And for scent -- metal, something about -- in the olfactory world... everything was strange. She knew he was a stallion. (Nothing could have made her try to get a look at the underside of his lower torso, and she really didn't want to see him rear up.) But when compared to those of her herd, a crucial odor had been muted. Testosterone had its own scent, and he possessed very little of it. Age, perhaps, or Tartarus not allowing such things to be produced at a normal level. He looked healthy. But the roots of his fur had gone rigid, it had raised the strands, uncovered what would have normally been hidden under a surprisingly thick coat and exposed it to the too-intense light. And... ...she had already seen the thin scars on his hands. And even when moon-touched, she could just barely begin to track the rest. Winding cicatrix rivers fed by endless keloid tributaries, winding across so much of his body, so much -- -- there was a pattern. They roughly followed the skeleton, stopped at the jaw (and the hinges felt wrong) and had their heaviest lines along the full length of the spine. But every such scar indicated an injury which had healed long ago, and yet -- -- her senses were frantic for relief, had been seeking it for hours, and there was an instant where they almost found it. There was fresh air. Fresh, something which Tartarus needed an extra moment to taint, and she only detected it because it had come directly to her. Not so much washed across her features as flicked, because there wasn't enough for a true current. It seemed to start somewhere in the cell's ceiling, and it briefly cut through the miasma, the constant stench, that which Tartarus had been inflicting upon her without bothering to have that fade towards normalcy at any point -- -- he looked healthy. There was a moment when he almost shone with hope. But there was a dominant scent in the stone antechamber with the too-smooth floor, and it was very much like that which had been in the deep place from the very beginning. It just happened to be coming from the stallion. metal, some kind of metal overlaid with rust He smelled like something which was dying. Dying and couldn't finish. She looked at him. He stared at her. And he smiled. It went too far up his face, only parting the lips at the far corners of the mouth. She felt as if his jaw could open much more than her own. A gaping maw. His head tilted to the right, came back to center. There was something a little odd about the movement of the neck. "Is she friend," he softly asked the caves, with no more than a light cascade of falling pebbles within the gravelly voice. "Or is she foe?" And then, as the cold smile spread a little more, "Neither. Something much more rare, precious and true." Another little gasp, a sound born from wonder, and his grip tightened upon the stone. "I didn't think..." he began anew, and that was briefly cut off by a tiny gulp of saliva and air. "When you didn't appear, right then and there, I thought..." One slow head shake, and then the gift of hope fulfilled brought new light to yellow irises. Something where there was barely any hint of pupil. She wondered how much he could truly see. "Neither friend nor foe," Tirek stated. "Ally. Step forward. And then we can both leave this place behind." She gave him one hoofstep. Just one. Keeping her gaze upon him, as he continued to look at her. He didn't want her: she knew that. Not sexually. There was no attraction, no drive to possess. But he had desire. Everything about the simian face was emanating raw want. He longed for her, for everything she represented. To have her at his side... A myriad of sensory information had been sorted out. Recently-acquired facts seemed to be next in the queue. "You called me," Cerea quietly replied. The question mark was mostly implied, because the question had been answered. No summoners. No cult. No grand plot. Just you. If it wasn't for you... She could feel her muscles going tense, her hands trying to close. Forced everything down into neutrality, just as if her mother was watching. His head tilted, to the left this time. Recentered again. "Is that why it took so long?" he asked, and the gravel grew a little rougher. Discontent, frustrated and not entirely sure where the blame was supposed to lie. "You were called, and you didn't know who had called you?" The snort was a strangely natural sound. "Or did you arrive well away from my vicinity, and had to find your way here --" He paused. Eyelids scrunched across the dark expenses of his sclerae. Something which looked very much like suspicion. "-- how did you even get in?" Not so much question as demand. "I knew there was someone in the halls, and that it wasn't a pony. Or a griffon, or a yak, or anything else. Something working its way down. But it usually takes a pony to open the Gate." Another snort. "I'm not even sure the other species even remember their own versions of the ritual. Not when they just let the alicorn manage everything. But the rituals are species-specific, and -- there is no centaur ritual." And for a single instant, his eyes closed with pain. "Because it could be said that there is no centaur species," the stallion finished, and the yellow pinpricks regarded her again. "Did someone open the Gate for you? If so, where are they? Do they know why you descended? And are they willing to watch you come out again?" One hand partially drew the sword: just enough to show about twelve centimeters of blade. Cerea roughly nodded sideways to the weapon, then slid it back into the scabbard. Tirek -- squinted. "Strange," he said. "I can see it. And yet..." Another head shake, faster this time. "...strange. The sword brought you in?" She pictured the moment when the blade had stopped the ceiling's descent, paired it with memories of truths told long ago. Tried to make her body react with the subtle scent of honesty -- -- he's not reacting. Not to that. Because he's not the kind of centaur I know. He doesn't have an olfactory bulb to match. He's watching my body. (He didn't want her. Not that way.) I think he's looking for shifts in posture. Something like the way his shoulders just went tight. There was no one like you in all the world. They had trouble with your body language. And your features are so different than mine -- but some of the ways they contort are similar. That little wrinkling at the top of the nose, tension in the shoulders... You're suspicious. You still have hope. But you're not sure. And... there's something else. You just sneered a little. Were you aware of that? Did you even try to hold it back, when no one knows what a centaur sneer looks like? What do you suspect? What do you know? All of that went through her mind. But for his answer, all she did was nod again. "Interesting," Tirek decided. "Still --" His grip tightened on the bars, to the point where she could see knuckles going pink under the fur -- -- the floor in here is too smooth. They told me I would barely be able to find any place to stand which wasn't full of spikes and hooks. There aren't any. I just looked at your cell. There isn't much in there. A few thin blankets in one corner. But the walls are almost regular, curved and -- smooth. If you tried to sleep, you would be sleeping on stone, but -- it's just stone. Why am I scenting traces of fresh air? Why aren't those bars extruding something to tear your hands apart? Something is wrong. "-- I have to ask," the stallion continued. "What did you get from the casting? A sense of my location, driving you onward? How did you find me at all?" He's talking because he's suspicious. Because if he can make me talk, it'll help him to figure out what's wrong. But two can play that game. ...I don't know if I can play that game... (Something was wrong. The bars weren't reacting to his grip, and it had gone on far too long for the deep place's favorite source of torment: the illusion of normalcy. She had to remember that something was wrong.) But it still means he's talking... The suspicion was probably most of the reason for his speech. But perhaps there was something more to it: that there was simply someone present to speak with. Not his kind, but -- as close as he might have come in years. Decades, or even centuries: she didn't know exactly when he had first been incarcerated. Just that he hadn't died. He only smelled like he was dying... Someone he could speak with. One to another. "Your location is rather well known," she offered. A small nod. He was willing to acknowledge that. "But my arrival didn't allow me to seek it out immediately," Cerea calmly went on. "I arrived several hundred kilometers from the site of your battle." And briefly wondered how the unit of measure had arrived in his ears. The wires would have hissed -- wires, why am I thinking about the wires He sharply inhaled, and a surge of frustration bared his teeth. "That far." The anger was fully in the open, but -- it still didn't have a direction. A target. "And," she added, "there were more problems than that. It would take too much time to recount them all --" His eyes narrowed again. "What do you know of me?" It had been a demand. Careful. "I have your name in my mind," she told him. "'Tirek' --" "-- Lord Tirek," came with a sneer. "-- but it didn't come with an image," she quickly added. "So I knew I was called by someone with that name, and little more. It complicated the quest. And even now, after I managed to learn enough to find you -- I have to question the veracity of my sources. You might imagine that the ponies in particular were unwilling to speak well of the one who had nearly won." (Which got her a rather curt, extremely frustrated nod.) "Additionally --" and she felt free to let some of her own feelings rise through her skin "-- arriving after you did meant it was rather hard to get anypony to speak with a centaur at all. They had certain -- associations. The perception of commonalities..." The right hand came off the bars. Three fingers extended towards her, then curled back in. "We have one thing in common," Tirek quietly said. And there was a weariness in his voice, the thinnest coat of an ancient veneer over half-buried hatred. "Our form," Cerea granted. With some variations. A lot of variations. Evolution in rough parallel... He shook his head. The horns briefly grazed the bars. "No magic," he told her, and the heavy words had their way with his features, briefly dragging them down with the pull of regret. "You have no magic. No more than I did." And she nodded. He took a slow breath. Only one set of ribs swelled. "I thought..." The right hand came off the bars again, lifted to his face and briefly covered his eyes before dropping back down. "I couldn't be sure, with everything that was going on. In the midst of chaos and pain. Even now, all of these moons later, I'm still trying to sort some of it out. But the spell was seeking, trying to find someone, and -- it was like watching pages of a book. Each with a painting on it, flipping by too fast. Not a sense of movement, but... a blur. Overlapping images blending into nothing, as the colors distorted towards mud. But I've had time to reflect, and... I retained some memories. Glimpses." Looking directly at her again, and there was no disgust. Simply... want. "I thought I saw your home," Tirek just barely voiced as his eyes closed again, with the words carried by the briefest waft of clean air. "A herd. You have a herd?" He couldn't see her, not in that instant. And perhaps he'd never had any need to conceal his expressions at all, not when he lived in a world which had to learn how to read every one. It was, perhaps, the single worst instant of her time within the caverns. When she looked at his face and remembered collapsing in her own cell, buried away from the sight of ponies. Thinking about a lifetime of solitude, trapped in a world which feared her. With no others of her kind, none who would ever love her... She looked into the reflection of endless loneliness. And in that lone horrible moment, there was no monstrosity left. "...yes." It could have been a nod. Or the weight of eternal solitude had briefly pressed against his horns. "How many?" the hollow voice asked. It had to be hollowed, for all of the gravel had dropped out. "How many centaurs in your home?" She didn't owe him anything. He was the reason for every death. For all of the pain. And yet, she answered. "Across the world? Thirty thousand." His eyes opened. The yellow was almost damp. "Thirty thousand," he slowly repeated. "And none with magic." She nodded to that. "A herd," the stallion said, as longing tones reached towards the impossible. "There was just a glimpse. A dream. The sort of thing which Tartarus would craft, found outside the caves. A source of endless torment. The thought that somewhere, there was a herd. In a place I couldn't reach..." And then he smiled. It was just for an instant: something true and dark. Then it was gone. "I had parents," Tirek quietly told her, as the fit shoulders sagged. "There are those who wouldn't believe that, if you told them. Even with portraits, some would say we just appear. But whatever exists in the blood, to produce a centaur... it's fickle. It doesn't like consistency. I had parents -- of a sort. But my brother --" You had a -- Every muscle tensed. It was easy to see, when he was in such good condition. Especially for someone whose scent -- "-- brother," and the word had been spat. "Does that even apply, when someone isn't the least bit like you in form? Not even the same species. But we were told that we were siblings. And at the very least, we shared both thought and goal -- at the start. Because neither of us had magic. I researched, as best I could, before it all started. I couldn't find proof that any centaur had ever possessed magic, but -- there was so little recorded. Perhaps a few had, and --" the rage surged "-- I was the exception. I just knew that I could feel the void, in every moment when I watched another living within the joy of their magic. Donkeys, ponies, ibex, yaks, buffalo, zebras... name a species and find its power. Our parents -- if there was anything they might have possessed, they wouldn't speak of it. Said nothing through all the days of their lives. There wasn't even a single word just before their deaths. Or they didn't care that they lived with a void inside. And my supposed brother? He had no more magic than I did -- but at least the twisting of blood had gifted him with wings. Flight. All I could do was gallop. And people stared, wherever we went..." She could see the anger rising. The heat of it, evaporating everything which had made him briefly seem like someone worthy of pity. But it was in the name of that lost moment that she spoke. "I know what it feels like." Bitterly, "Do you? A herd. Always a place you could return in safety, to be with others of your kind." Not any more. Her hand tensed on the hilt. Because of you. "We needed magic," Tirek stated. "There was no other way to exist, as the only ones who lacked it. So we searched, we explored, and... it was something of a riddle. How did you gain magic, without using it in the first place? But there was an answer. It..." His eyes had brightened. But the rest of his form had gone tight. "...took more research," he continued. "After we had the theory, and found it would be the only way. Each of us had to... help the other. I'll always credit Scorpan for that, even now. That he was willing. And as the elder, the one who had been without for the longer time, I was first." The white tail, its fall seeming forever stained, went limp. "Over and over," distant words told her, as if the speaker was barely aware of them. "He had to be so careful. To cut deep enough, and to do so without killing me. Every time. And I did the same for him. Because at the time... I thought that was love --" He stopped. Looked directly at her, and almost snickered. Don't look shocked. Repelled. Even when he just told me that his brother cut him -- -- can he read my features? Cutting. Over and over. What did they do? "I was wrong, of course," he bitterly announced. "How can someone be your kin, when they don't share your form? That's easy. They have to want everything you do, and give it to you without fail. He had. Until that day. After we'd both healed, when we came to settled lands and..." Stopped again. Perhaps he'd decided that he was saying too much, especially when the suspicion had just dropped back into his features. Asking a question now might cut off the flow entirely. And she'd always been so bad with words... But she had no other way. "Devices under the skin?" she guessed. "Made to respond with a thought?" His eyes widened. And then he snorted again: not with derision or contempt, but as an expression of something very close to true laughter. "We considered it! He and I spent moons asking about configurations! But it was too limited. It wouldn't really be our magic. We could only do what the devices offered, and there's only so much room within a body. Space to use. It had to be small. Small and fine..." She risked another hoofstep. The helmet shifted slightly, knocked against some of the other things she'd secured to the webbing. Two spheres bounced off each other within their soft bag. A canister rattled -- -- he was looking at her. Yellow pinpricks roamed up and down her body. Examining all of the things she was carrying, as the right hand pointed its fingertips at her again. But then the palm centered on stone. Fingers closed around the same bar. "I went first," Tirek said. "When we found someone alone. I went first. And I wondered, after that. Did he suspect what would happen? That it wouldn't be a partial tap with a sapient, a tiny moment of weakness for a few thaums which nopony would miss? That it had to be everything, every time?" Decibels were beginning to climb. Tones sharpened. Muscles bulged. "Did he let me go first, because he felt that he'd worked out the whole of it and wanted to see if he was right before he made the attempt? To find out if the stomach would change, where eating and drinking was ashes and waste in the mouth! That we couldn't create thaums --" His breath blasted into her nostrils, nearly drove her back as the shout came close to shaking the stone. "-- and it was never 'we' at all, was it? Because after he saw what had happened to me, he refused to use the power which I had labored to gift him! He flew to the ponies, asked for what he saw as help! But I felt that coming from him, knew the betrayal was inevitable! And I couldn't let him tell them exactly what we'd done. I followed him when he flew, stayed close and hidden enough to know he hadn't given them details yet. That was waiting for morning, for when their best thaumatologists would arrive. What if he told them how to reverse all of the physical aspects, and the changes were still there? With no way to feed, endlessly shrinking in on myself, eating myself --" And she knew. Because he'd said too much. Because she hadn't learned enough to reject what never should have been possible. Twilight said it. Ponies, anything with magic... calories into thaums, and thaums to power. But he can't do that. He can't metabolize food. He can absorb thaums, and that keeps him alive. He just doesn't have any way to create them. And he was draining the whole, every time. So he would have to keep finding new sources. How many hours of life does one pony grant him? One city? And he'd have to keep doing it. Over. And over. And over... He'd stopped. His chest was heaving. Muscles rippled. And then his body relaxed into a sort of detached serenity. "I don't regret it," Tirek evenly said. "Not even what I had to do with the corpse, to get rid of the evidence. That's how I know he was never truly my brother. And I kept his necklace for a time. As a reminder to never trust so deeply again." She wanted to vomit. She needed to hit him. She spoke. "I struck out against my mother." The words felt as if they were coming from kilometers away. "I didn't care. That's how I knew she wasn't really my mother." He blinked. "Not emotionally," Cerea added with a quick, desperate-feeling snort. "But my father! My father actually wasn't my father! Not by blood, and never by love...!" She'd almost been expecting the laugh. "Love," he openly dismissed. "Just as pointless as friendship, in the end. Another version of the same lie, hiding under a different name. You could almost pity the ones who believe in it. But it's so much easier to educate..." Think about the 87th precinct. This is an interrogation. Even if I'm the last person who should be doing it, I'm the only one here. Direct the topic. The scars. They did something physical. Something to their bodies... "How did you stay alive, once they put you in here?" Which just proved how bad she was with words, because she remembered the answer at the moment she'd finished asking the question. His expression suggested that he'd just decided she was an idiot. She felt it was justified. "I know Tartarus won't permit someone to die," she quickly added. "Only to be killed. But --" and the thought blazed through her "-- you're surrounded by magic right now. The deep place may not be fully aware, but it's alive, and there's magic here. Nothing about Tartarus works without magic! You could have --" The stallion's face had just twisted with the memory of pain. "-- I did," Tirek told her. "I..." Every strand of fur vibrated across the duration of the shudder. "...was nearly dead, when they put me in here. Nearly. But of course Tartarus wouldn't allow that process to complete. So I was just weak and in pain which would never end. And I had the same thought, girl. Take what had been so generously offered to me. And I could. But -- consider the nature of the meal. I took in the power of torment, just the smallest portions -- and it was so much less kind than that of chaos. In the end, chaos merely changed me. Torment... did what it always does. I drunk it in, and... Tartarus wouldn't let that last spark of its own magic die. There was always a little left. Agony from within, to join the tortures pounding outside the skin. Building up after every attempt. Slowly. But I kept trying, because I hoped that I would find a way to make it work. And I had time to practice, because that's the darkest gift of this place. Time. And I learned." A single chuckle became the darkest sound of her life. "Learned that the act of draining creates a channel," the stallion evenly declared. "Thaums flow one way. But I could try to send orders back. Touching a dreaming mind. And it nearly killed me. If Tartarus had been truly awake, capable of real thought -- then it would have struck back. But it won't let any source of pain go, not unless we kill each other. And with enough time..." He doesn't tell her all of it: he doesn't think of himself as being anywhere near that foolish. But he doesn't really consider anything he's saying to be important. He certainly doesn't believe she can work it out for herself. He has changed, and those outside have not. There is a centaur here, merely a centaur, the one he called -- but she has no magic. Apparently the sword does something (and he can see it, yet cannot see it -- why?), but not the female. No magic. How can she possibly matter? The sword, however... It can take centuries to refine a proper plan, and the dark gift of the deep place is that centuries will be available. You learn the tricks, if you pay attention. That there are periods when the incarcerated will be permitted to wander the corridors. Getting almost all the way to the exit, in the name of thwarted hope. During a moons-removed moment of 'now', the centaur is in the corridors. For the second time in what he believes to have been no more than a few days. The plan has been refined. However, actual experimentation is -- limited. Every time he opens the channel, the amount of permanent residue trapped within his form builds. It has reached the point where he's barely mobile at that point of near-death, where it takes just about every effort he can muster simply to walk, and doing more than that threatens to make the frail shell collapse. Tapping brings back a degree of strength, yes -- for a short time. But he can't take the whole of the deep place in. That seems to be something limited to the truly living, or -- his body simply shuts down the channel before it does what Tartarus would never permit. Taking too much of the deep place at once, knowing what it does in the aftermath, would count as suicide. And even so, he'd thought about trying to drain more from Tartarus. To weaken it to the point where it wouldn't be able to fight him at all. But while his ability to steal might not have an ultimate limit, his capacity for withstanding pain does. And there's also a crisis scenario. The one where he takes so much that the agony sends him unconscious, and -- the magic he took turns out to be that which keeps the other cells closed. The soon-to-be-former occupants would know where to find him. And if they didn't, Tartarus might just give them a path. He has learned, over the course of endless time. There is a mind within the caves, and it is not fully awake. It may be dreaming. And if you whisper into the ear of a dreamer, there is a chance to direct the dream. It's a risk. Everything he does is a risk. Tell an endless dream of pain the wrong thing, something which doesn't entirely fit the rest of the eternal chimerical dance, and it might wake. But the dream knows that sometimes, prisoners go into the corridors. Because it hurts more that way. And you can, if you're careful, get almost all the way to the exit. He can't open it. Nothing he does will force that, because no part of the dream includes letting a prisoner go. But when you stand so close to the Gate, so close to freedom -- you can hear the guardian, because the deep place wants those within to hear it. The splashes of poisonous foam, and teeth grinding as they long for a chance at time-prolonged flesh. You can hear the guardian, when you're just about at the Gate. That means it can hear what's happening within. Tartarus makes sounds. It whispers. Moans are common. It speaks in the voices of the dead, and gave up on mimicking his brother a long time ago. There is no torment there. If you know that it produces sounds... if you understand that the guardian possesses, for all the horrors of its form, some aspect of the canine... The experiments almost killed him. (Almost. Always almost.) And when he tried this in his cell a few -- days? -- ago, there was a new source of pain. His hearing is not quite like that of the other species. A minor difference, in his opinion. Almost pointless. And perhaps if he'd thought a little more, chased that down across all the possibilities, he might have found something very much like magic. He chose another route. But knowing when certain frequencies are present... that is what allowed the first stage to go through. Tartarus produces sound. So if you can force it, just for a few minutes, to create ultrasound... He can hear the guardian's pain. The thrashing, as it tries to fight a foe it cannot see or reach. That pleases him. But it cannot strike. There is nothing which can be touched, and but one means of escape. He hears claws on stone. Howling becomes barking, and then... silence. The beast has plunged through the barrier, and it won't return immediately. The guardian would be wary of the sound returning, but -- this is the lesser self. It has not known Sun and warmth for some time. So it will run, until it is found. Because the lesser self is something those outside can hope to control. Control and... bring back. The centaur couldn't open the gate. He didn't have to. He went back to his cell, steadily shrinking along the way, barely able to cross the last few body lengths. And he did all of it in something very much like joy, because after the guardian is inevitably found... There are always survey teams. But their examinations are exacting. In the wake of the guardian's return, the palace will -- take a prisoner count. Make sure nothing got out. And that's it. The ponies come. (He's lucky enough to be tapping the channel when they arrive. He has nearly been killing himself in checking. Nearly.) He can feel the ritual. It's possible to count the sigils. There are seven -- Eight. It almost feels as if the deep place pulls back from itself. Trying to find a perspective from which it can examine the thought. Eight. Tartarus twists. That which is not quite waking thought seems to surge towards consciousness. If it wakes -- -- he doesn't care. Eight. The ponies came. They reached his cell. He stared at them until they left. Intimidation doesn't come naturally when he's been reduced to bones, skin, and just enough muscle fiber to make the whole arrangement twitch. But the twitching usually gets them to depart. And then he tapped Tartarus, for what he told himself was the last time. Donned the traveling cloak which he'd been wearing during the capture, and... told the deep place to dream about a prisoner in the corridors. Then he'd hurried, as best he could. It is a new now. Seven are leaving. They gallop towards Sun and warmth and air which doesn't burn their lungs. The Gate begins to close -- EIGHT! It had not been the proper bargain. But he had given the deep place (and through it, the guardian) a lie to revisit. The echo of a recent dream. There's just enough of an opening left to pass through, once he's lost nearly all of the stolen strength. To crawl, as only a centaur can. Poorly. They made him crawl. He stays next to the wall. Following the exact curve. The guardian watches him leave. The bargain of blood and soil. One pony. Once he's out of the exit tunnel, he can find one of the roads. Try to reach the nearest settlement before he dies, now that he's in a place where he can die again. If he's especially lucky, he might find a monster along the way. He never tried that before they locked him in for the crime of trying to survive. It's not tasty, but -- it'll sustain him. He knows he can steal from monsters now. He had time to try a lot of things. But when he stole from the monsters in the deep place -- their essence has been corrupted by Tartarus: it's part of why you're not supposed to eat and drink what it offers. Taking from them was... ...he couldn't get more than a fraction. He wanted to die... But he's heading for the surface. Once he's under Sun and Moon, a single monster will keep him alive for a time. After that, he just needs one pony. Then another. And another. And another... ...he could take it slowly. Stay in the shadows. But he hasn't truly dined in a very long time, and the alicorn will figure out what's been happening rather quickly. (There was a world left which he could escape to, so the alicorn still exists.) He tends to leave evidence behind, and most of it is still moving because disposing of a body properly takes too long. The last lesson gifted by his false brother. So he'll have to build up his strength as quickly as possible. Reach the point where they can't match him. Beat him. Take him prisoner again. Of course, there's only so many ponies. But there used to be other nations. Still are, as some of them send in a prisoner now and again. A few of them could exist under the old names. He wonders what they taste like. "Snowball effect," Cerea heard herself say. His ears twisted for a moment. She wondered if he'd heard any hissing. "Yes," Tirek eventually replied. "It gets easier, after the first few. Faster." And your range starts to go up. I asked how they'd caught you the first time. And it was actually simple. Total evacuation. You hadn't figured out the limits on what you could do yet. Hadn't experimented enough. You knew you could drain from a living sapient being, and that was as far as you'd gone. So they cleared out several square kilometers, pushed animals and monsters ahead of them as a just-in-case, and waited. Because the population density was apparently lower, and all they had to do was get a fairly small number away from you. Stay ahead. Then they waited. Eventually, you collapsed. They found where you'd fallen. Kept you asleep as much as possible, and stayed out of range. But they were afraid to examine you. To get too close, when you could still drain them. You can't metabolize calories and when you drained someone, they lost the ability to produce thaums. No one you hurt in the first attacks ever recovered. Just trying to analyze you might have woken you up, because it would have meant using magic. Given you a power source. And if it all started again, with you able to reach more people, get to the point where you could sustain for a while... You had to be locked away as quickly as possible. For the sake of the world. Before you destroyed it. "But you weren't expecting Discord." His face wrinkled with amusement. "Oh, I was," he declared. "Just not in that fashion. I managed to send him a message, early on. An offer, you might say. And he was thinking it over. Cooperate, or... well, I imagine he understands the alternative now. Since he went through it." He let go of the bars. Stepped back, then turned the long body. Paced to one wall, turned, came back the other way... "Something of a surprise," Tirek admitted. "But --" Stop smiling. Or at least don't smile until I can reach your teeth. ...assess and evaluate. I know he's active. He's clearly been draining magic from the surface, or he wouldn't look like this. But we don't know how yet. That's what has to be shut down. Because we have to be a few hundred meters underground and he didn't have that kind of range when he was a walking hill. So I get all of the answers I can -- practicality reared up -- I hope there's actually some real answers in this, or that somepony can sort them out from the lies -- and I get out of here. Give the information to the Princesses, and see what they do with it. Hope there's anything they can do with it. Anything at all. "-- all things considered," the stallion continued, "I'm grateful." "Grateful," she just barely managed to repeat. "Things change," he casually remarked. "And without him, I'm not sure I'd have you." The smile became that much warmer. "I don't think you've provided a name," Tirek added. "Allies should introduce themselves, don't you think?" She had two to offer. He had no right to one, and she wasn't sure she ever wanted to hear the other again. He can't scent when I'm lying. He can't. ...please let this work... "I have some concerns about this alliance." He paused in his pacing, casually glanced towards her. "Oh?" "An ally summoned by magic," she made herself say, pushing each word through the miasma, "could be removed in the same manner. If anypony reverses your spell --" He seemed to find that amusing. "They can't. They're missing a crucial ingredient." He lightly tapped his sternum. "Forever." He has taken in the power of chaos, because that was merely another kind of power and so it had to be his. If power exists, then it will ultimately be his. Because he has the ability to take it. What right do others have, to do what he cannot? What kind of creator would deprive so? It should be his. All of it. A long time ago, and forever after. The ability equals the right, and he has simply been exercising his right to catch up. And he has swollen vast with stolen power, and it will last this time, it will last because he's surely taken a sufficient amount to let some portion linger. But it's best to play it safe. If some is good, then 'all' is better. And 'all' means the rest of Equestria, followed by crossing the first border. Eventually, he'll find where the alicorn went. And with her power... He'd been debating that part of the plan. Is it best to leave the alicorn intact? Shortly after he took his first true meal, he tried to use the magic. To cast. And he can do that, but -- it's hard. (He feels that his lack of skill is easily justified: exactly how was he meant to practice?) Basic effects seem to take three times the effort which he feels they should, and -- casting burns thaums. He's had to fight a few times since his victory began. The initial round (and that reminds him: he has to find a calendar and discover what year it is) allowed him to discover a means of creating kinetic blasts. But he has to work for it. The blasts grow more powerful if he puts more strength into them, but -- it took a lot for him to get that strength. There's only one way to replace lost thaums. Fortunately, recharge sources are all over the place. Even if some of them are trying to run away. They're trying to evacuate again: he knows that. But he's become strong enough to let his ever-increasing range chase a few. And now that he's had a little more time to experiment -- he's been able to tap the magic of monsters and plants and the wild zone: all things he hadn't tried before. They can't isolate him from everything. And the alicorn can't hide forever. So when he finds her, if he's strong enough that she won't matter -- maybe he should let her keep that magic. After all, there's only so much one can practice raising Sun and if he gets it wrong too many times in a row, he's going to have a new problem. Or maybe alicorn thaums come with a side dose of skill. Solves everything. At the time he'd reached Canterlot, he'd still been trying to decide if he should find out. But then they'd evacuated the Princess, he heard some shouting ponies suggest a plural, and it made sense to get more power before he took on multiple alicorns. Ponies had been expanding their civilization over the years. That town to the west was new. It looked delicious. He'd gone for it, taking on new mass along the way. At his current size, it was becoming easier to ignore the screams. The sensation that his hooves were occasionally squishing on (and in) something was irrelevant. Smaller things had the option to move. Nothing which happened if they didn't was his fault. And then chaos appeared. Chaos offered itself to him. ...well, that was fine. He'd always intended that deal to be a lie anyway. And in this 'now' of memory, chaos is ripping him apart. It's not fair. His blood (the blood of betrayal, that which a just universe would have empowered at the start) becomes water, becomes acid, becomes some kind of syrup and that's the first thing he's truly tasted on his tongue in a very long time. The power is being stolen from him, that which he deserves, has the right to, and it's happening because chaos thinks a world where he's the only one with magic was going to be boring. The ponies allied themselves with chaos. He could easily believe they were that delusional. But the other way around? -- there's a sensation associated with having one's bones turn into marshmallow fluff. It isn't a pleasant one. He's screaming. Magic is flowing out of him in all directions. He can feel the mind moving around inside him, taking this apart and dismantling that, becoming part of the base structure in order to wrench more free. But he can also feel it weakening. Every time it touches the construct, some part of it is truly taken. But it has to do so, that's happening willingly, chaos is losing itself and -- -- why? Perhaps it fell into the trap, as another once did. But the centaur has learned. He knows any emotional bond constitutes imprisonment of the self. You can't change who you are for another, because freedom cannot be anything other than an absolute: something which is never moderated, much less locked away. Chaos is no longer as free as it once was, and so it is dying. It just isn't happening fast enough. Spines erupt from his back. More power leaves him. And it's unfair. The ponies have their ally, someone who is in the middle of dying for having made that choice and that's the fate which chaos deserves. But who is willing to stand with the centaur? Who understands the fundamental injustice of the universe, of being made to live in a world where everyone else has what you lack? ...he had a brother once. Then there was a betrayal. And he'd realized that he'd never had a brother at all. Not a gargoyle. How could that one truly understand, when the gift of flight was his every day? And now he was out of Tartarus, in the world and of the world and draining from the world, he'd stolen from ponies and zebras, donkeys and yaks and griffons and minotaurs to take back his denied birthright. And from the vast heights he'd assumed, what was supposed to be a mere preview of what he would inevitably reach -- -- he hadn't seen a single centaur. He was alone. Chaos was tearing him apart (and it felt as if the structure within was shifting, a sensation almost lost in the middle of losing everything), and it was happening because he was alone. There was no one to stand with him. (He'd never really had a brother.) No one who understood. No centaurs. And the thaums were going away, he was shrinking, he was going to be frail and weak and in Tartarus again, frail and weak and an hour away from dying forever, chaos couldn't give it all back if he burned a portion and he was alone and it is now. There is a single instant which sees him wish. A wish for someone who could fight against magic and chaos to save him. A centaur -- -- his head goes back, as if he's just been kicked in the chin. And the burst of power which comes from him is every color and no color. Perhaps it's all of the colors, mixed and blended until nothing can be seen but a muddy brown. There's a single mind forcing all of that magic to work together, and now it has the power of chaos to add into the mix. Something which reaches out, searches through possibilities and choices -- -- to living eyes, the burst of magic vanishes. But all it's done is determine that the local set of possibilities doesn't contain an answer to that singular demand. So it has to look elsewhere. Possibilities and choices. Put enough of those together, and they make up worlds. He may be hallucinating: the pain is certainly that severe. But the visions are both too brief and too coherent. He sees metal which thinks for itself, he sees flight without wings followed by ground of fused glass which radiates something worse than heat, then stars are confined inside spheres and this and this and this and -- -- he sees a herd. They don't look like him, not in features or hue. But the shape is right. Centaurs. Somewhere, there are centaurs. But he needs a warrior -- -- possibilities divide. Swarm the world, focus on a target, and all of the wild numbers produced by chaos, the imaginary and the fractal, all that measures everything there could ever be -- -- equal one. It is not, in any way, a fully controlled casting. The stallion will admit that it took chaos to create such a path between worlds, especially when no living summoner has ever reached so far. But it's chaos which has been forced to temporarily unite with unicorn magic, pegasus techniques, earth pony tools and zebra harmonics, minotaur strength and donkey endurance to go with griffon domination and darker things besides, still lingering within his form. (The darker aspects get a vote.) It's just about everything. The little alicorn flying towards him while trailing boulders in her field's wake would give her wings to put together a true unified theory of magic and at the moment of the summons, the stallion is very close to existing as exactly that. It's not a controlled casting. The base is a summoning, one performed through raw power and desire. Knowledge, finesse, skill -- none of that has any part in this. A wish is being granted and like so many genies who decide to trick their tormentor by taking the terms as literally as possible, the magic is going to work with the first answer it found. A warrior possessing youth and strength and the willingness to chase a faint hope across the whole of a planet. The girl is chosen. And magic starts to build a road -- -- but it's magic barely controlled, with no true understanding of how the effect is being created. Something where the massive effort required to make it happen at all cost too much, and the caster is already collapsing. The conscious mind behind the wish isn't going to be conscious much longer. The spell never would have held for long. The road has been created, and it has to lead back through the original trail of rejected possibilities. But now it's starting to fall apart. The collapse starts at the back, surges forward, makes the girl gallop all the faster. And the spell weakens, burns thaums of every flavor in an attempt to stay intact just long enough as worlds blur under the girl's hooves, but there is chaos in the mix and some things are becoming randomized. One of them is the aim. Another is the exact, fragile nature of the link between two places with their own definition of 'now'. The girl runs through space, across dimensions. She doesn't know she's crossing time. Her own 'now' remains where it was, will move in linked pace starting with the instant she reaches the forest -- but when it comes to the anchor point of the connection's sending end... And the spell found a warrior, one carrying a weapon, but all she has is skill and senses and a few biological tricks. The wish was for one who could fight against magic and chaos -- -- it all finds the blade, as the girl gallops. A mixture of energies which will never exist again saturate the plastic: material resonance and a quick flicker from the law of similarity carry the effect to anything of a similar composition. Magic turns to chaos for assistance, and they create something which can stand against everything. Within the falling, shrinking form, the living, thinking remnants of that chaos does what it must, because that form of love demands no less. For those who still live, strength is returned. Not always all of it, because the stallion burned through so much -- but enough to allow healing. Natural regeneration, with the changes caused by the drain reversed. And then chaos tries to separate from the stallion. It fails. It gave too much of itself. And even then, there might have been enough left to recover, but... the structure has shifted. The stallion, weak and frail and changed, collapses. The chaos storm, brought below the threshold, is carefully brought to safety. The world buries the dead. Mourns. Waits in fear, for it might all happen again. A lost girl gallops across time and space and possibility. In the measure of the calendar, it will be moons before she arrives. But for mere distance, there is a forest ahead. Oblivion close behind. She is running towards her death. "So it's simple," Tirek told her, smiling from behind the bars. "You accompany me. We go back to Canterlot, or wherever they're storing what's left of Discord -- and I know there's something, because I felt him try to break free. But that's the key. We find where his remnants are, with my draining whatever we can find along the way. And once I have enough strength again, added to some of the final dregs of chaos..." The smile became wider. "...I'll send you home." The metal of the gauntlets creaked as the girl's fingers went limp. The miasma of the dying washed through her. Saturated, until it felt as if it filled lungs and body and soul. There were no traces of fresh air just then, or memories of feathers and metal and training grounds and cells. Simply loneliness, endless loneliness as the only one of her kind to exist here, condemned to live within an endless fog of hate. That was the sentence which had been pronounced by this world. There was another. The right hand fell away from the sword.