She wanted to go home.
Perhaps that was why the images manifested within her, as she stood before him in the lowest level of the caves. Separated from the only other centaur in the world by thin columns of stone, and now kept away from everything she had ever loved by nothing more than the strength of a waiting promise. There was a moment when both factors felt like nothing more than barriers which were waiting for the right moment to drop.
If it was possible at all... if he managed to rebuild the road...
There were certain factors which never fully entered the waking dream. A few vital neurons recognized that the stallion's initial aim on the ingress had been horrible, and there was no reason to believe it would be any better for her return. In the most absolute sense, she probably had at least a seventy percent chance of coming in over water and centaur endurance wasn't quite sufficient for swimming half of the Pacific. It was possible for her to appear upon a treacherous slope, followed immediately by the fall: 'midair' might just give her more time to think on the way down. In the middle of an airport runway or train tracks: the major uniting factor would be having the area in use. And would matter move aside to make space for her, if she came in a little too low? If it didn't, she would effectively find her hooves merged with the receiving surface: the amount of time she would require for bleeding to death was likely just enough to let her fail at amputation. And if she did shunt solid masses out of the way, and arrived well below ground level... an instant tomb, precisely sized to fit.
Practical considerations. But in the vision... it was the walkway leading up to the house. And she would step carefully, precisely onto the last part of the path.
It would be a sunny day.
Perhaps someone would be close to the door. Not outside, not where they could see her, but -- they had all learned to recognize the sounds of each other's movements: a scratching of talons across the floor, chitin scurrying along the ceiling and scales sliding over tile. It would be easy to determine that there were hooves on the approach. And perhaps a head would briefly bow, because centaurs were hardly the only liminal species to possess structured keratin. It was probably just a government visit. Or someone lost, who knew that this house was designed as a homestay site and could reasonably hope to get directions. Or join the fight for a single heart, whichever came first.
There wouldn't be enough time or distance to fully recognize that this particular beat was familiar. Not before the knock sounded, and someone went to see who it was.
Papi.
It would be Papi. Quickest to the door, just about every time, even when she's slower on the ground and there isn't enough space in most of the house for her wingspan. Because she always wants to meet someone new.
The builders modified the latches. Made one of them into something she could open. There's usually a little hesitation before she remembers which is hers.
She would open the door...
...and it would be a high-pitched cry, warm feathers pressed against her, tears soaking through the blouse and the others would be close behind -- well, relatively: Rachnera might hang back (as would Lala, silently watching for a few seconds, letting the others have their turns), and Mero needed to maneuver the wheelchair through the crush. But it would be mere seconds before Miia's arms wrapped her (and it might be hard to keep the body from following suit), Suu would have that little head tilt of puzzlement which she'd picked up from the harpy, and there would be one more coming up behind all of them
He would reach out for her hand.
There would be no questions, not in the first minutes. Simply contact and tears and hugs: she knew that so many of them would hug her. Touch her. More physical contact in an hour than in the last several months.
(The Bearers had touched. Pressed against each other, provided that constant reminder of presence...)
The words of the stallion's offer seemed to take up the whole of her inner hearing. Perhaps that was why it was so hard to determine exactly what the other girls were saying. But she could still see it, the playlet surging across the stage of her soul. And in scent...
...even for humans, scent was the surest key to memory. But there was nothing in the deep place which gave her the signatures of feathers and scales and chitin and that strange, slightly acidic odor which always came off Suu's membrane. She simply remembered strongly enough to bring all of it back, to almost bring them back.
But it had to cut through the miasma. Work around a background presence of rust and buried metal. Get past that which the vision had made her body produce. And there was something else: the tiniest hint of fresh air, that little waft coming from the cell's ceiling. Just enough to register, and to carry along the faintest traces of the forest beyond.
The outer sickness, as Tartarus spread into the wild zone. Brought its torment to everything it touched. Made it all start to die, and never allowed the process to finish --
-- but in the vision, dream, self-inflicted torment... there was none of that.
They would greet her as one returned from the dead and in that, they would be wrong.
"I'm fairly sure I need the last of him in order to make it work," the stallion rather casually said. "Something a little more... active."
"Active," the girl carefully repeated.
His right hand lifted, patted the battered vest just below the sternum.
"It's odd," the stallion decided. "Maybe it's a side effect of everything which happened while he was inside me. But his thaums... even after he'd thrown back the rest of what I'd earned, tried to separate... something lingered. It didn't drain as quickly as anything I've ever sampled from the other species, but it was draining --"
He tapped the healthy upper torso again. Smiled, and the corners were too far up his face.
"-- and then they put me in here. Back in the place where nothing can finish dying on its own. And I do feel as if there's something of him still left in me." With open irritation, "It's just not enough to use. I've tried, and it almost feels as if it's trying to shift away from me. The last bit which didn't drain away, acting like it was originally his survival instinct." And that triggered a soft snort. "Not capable of thought, but -- some degree of evasion, at least for now." Casually, "And there's times when it's as if I can feel it struggling. But I know I can use his power, girl, because I already have. I just need to acquire more of it, to the point where it can be used. That's why it's the most crucial part of sending you home."
"Because you had that power when you brought me here," the girl stated.
He granted her a nod. "And it's best to replicate the conditions as exactly as possible." Another snort. "Not that I was keeping count on the other factors involved. But there's an easy way to fix that. I just have to duplicate the path, as precisely as we can. Start out in whatever that town was, then work towards the capital. That's the one favor Discord granted us." The smile widened. "Something else he didn't intend to do through restoring their magic, not when it comes to how it helps here. But it still applies. I'll be dealing with the same population. I can get the same mix."
"And how are you measuring it?" The forced neutrality of outside observation. A scientist watching a disease course through a bloodstream, waiting to see when the organism would fail.
"Height and mass," he promptly told her. "We can measure by my size. I have a very good idea of how large I was when I called you. It'll be easy."
Easy.
She never took his offer seriously. There wasn't a single moment where she believed that any part of it was real. But she still imagined the results, because she wanted to go home.
To go home.
She didn't believe him. But the inner vision responded. So did her body, and that was what truly told her that he possessed no capacity for perceiving the olfactory world, not on her level. Even without any associations to grant the new scent, the sheer strength of it would have drawn a response.
They would greet her as one returned from the dead and in that, they would be wrong.
She would have been returned by the dead.
By the death of a world.
She didn't believe him. But she had wanted. And she kept her upper torso straight, prevented her tail from lashing and made sure no hoof tapped or cantered...
But the caves were saturated by the reek of her shame.
Her hands tightened. One joint on the left gauntlet creaked.
"Are you strong enough to leave?" Assess and evaluate.
He nodded.
"Now," Tirek casually decided. "Not at first. I... didn't recognize exactly what had taken place. Not until I was back here, and tried to tap Tartarus again."
He said chaos changed him. That's part of how Discord fought him, but...
He's been draining magic from the outside world. He didn't have that kind of range before. Not even when he was just about a living mountain.
He said... that during the first test, he was going for a partial tap. A moment of weakness, and a few thaums nopony would miss. But it didn't work that way. He had to take the whole of it, every time. And Wordia said she felt herself starting to lose something, but -- then the effect released.
So...
(She didn't know enough to dismiss what seemed possible.)
...what if there was a permanent change, produced by the chaos magic? Something unintentional, but... that's why he's been able to act. Why he's healthy and --
-- ready to leave.
I'm not a good liar.
(She could hardly believe she'd gotten this far.)
I need an excuse for leaving him behind...
"And after that," Cerea guessed, "you decided you needed to test yourself."
Another nod. "Testing, and rebuilding my strength." The next words were spat. "I needed to have some small amount of strength before I left this time. I'd rather not have to crawl again, to feel so weak and frail. Tartarus took enough pleasure from that portion of my torment. But as my ally has arrived, the time seems rather --" This smile gave her a glimpse of his teeth. There were no canines. "-- opportune."
Just lie.
He can't scent when I'm lying.
"I should scout ahead," the girl told him. "The path I took to reach you had a few problems. If there's any way we could use the Struga --"
"-- I can smooth the path," he cut her off.
The bars are too thin: just enough to grasp, maybe thin enough to be broken with the right strike. Even surfaces on the walls and floor. No spikes or hooks.
Both of the stallion's arms warmly gestured outwards, with the left nearly grazing the stone bars. It was like watching someone extend their reach before moving in to grasp. To hug. "Allies need to help each other, don't you think? Besides, the sword brought you in. That means it can bring both of us out."
His arms dropped. The stallion stepped back from the bars, paced a little as Cerea desperately tried to think. To come up with another falsehood --
Tirek stopped trotting. Facing the left wall of the cell, as his right arm came up. Fingertips brushed against stone.
"Or it would," the stallion casually remarked, "if you hadn't lied to me."
The scent reached her a split-second after the words: something which wasn't new in the cave, simply intensified. Rust and metal, with the latter briefly making her think of the disc --
-- the grinding sound came from behind her. It was faster than most of the sounds Tartarus had produced when the mass of the caves tried to shift, it made her think of the partial rockfall in that one corridor and by the time she turned neck and torso just enough to see, the new bars were already in place.
There was something about the new blockade which felt clumsy. It was if a bored child had been asked to construct columns from modeling clay: the material had been roughly rolled and abandoned to dry. And there weren't very many of the thickened extrusions stretching from floor to ceiling, but numbers weren't really required. There just had to be enough to narrow down the spaces between them. Making passage impossible --
"I told you, girl," Tirek's voice evenly sounded from behind her, and where words did not echo, tone did. For an instant, the trapped girl found herself wondering if he'd needed to make any degree of effort to get that exact familiar note of condescending disappointment into his voice. "I told you that I knew there was something in the halls, working its way down. I also know that there are at least six ponies in the entrance chamber." Thoughtfully, "It could be seven. Or it could be twelve. There's a single source of magic in that group which possesses a certain amount of... overlap. Is that an alicorn? Because it isn't an earth pony carrying an assortment of devices and wonders. I would know."
She slowly turned back. His smile had cracked at the corners, just enough to give her a hint at how his jaw was hinged. Something which looked as if the mandibles weren't fully fused. Connected by ligaments, like the mouth of a snake.
"Let's say seven ponies," the stallion casually continued as the girl's body went rigid within metal. "Because I'd like to believe I've earned an alicorn. And there's something else, too. Something I've never tasted before. It's coming across as being somewhat spicy."
Things changing faster than they should.
The terraces on the way down. Too tall for a pony, but -- they're just right to serve as a staircase for my height. For his.
He's been altering Tartarus. Some of it was probably experimenting, but --
Smoothing the path.
"Seven ponies," Tirek repeated, and the leftwards head tilt came across as something obnoxious: this was only reinforced by the smirk. "Including one alicorn. Probably a relatively new specimen, because I did hear something about a plural when I was last out and about. One currently unidentified. I've known about them for hours, girl. And I thought that you might have done something. Forcing them to put you through the Gate."
He squinted a little. It took Cerea a moment to realize he was looking at the sword. Or trying to do so. It was as if the yellow pinpricks couldn't quite manage to focus.
...there's trickles on that wall. Running down from where his fingers are touching the stone. Not quite wet. Like someone rubbed the surface with thick mud.
They smell like rust.
Like congealed blood.
"But you said it was the sword," the stallion evenly continued. "I felt the sigils. I felt the ritual: the one which ponies use to enter. They put you through."
The girl took a hoofstep towards his cell. Towards the thinned bars, because she wasn't going to be getting out past the thickened ones. There were gaps, but the spaces weren't sufficient for her use. She'd already taken visual measurements: she could remove her armor, use every bit of double-jointing which a centaur body offered --
my body
-- squeeze her breasts inwards, and none of them would do anything for her lower rib cage's width. The stone was crude, but it was also thick. She couldn't break it with sheer strength, and repeatedly hitting it with the sword after the magic-triggered change had completed... that just stood a chance to break the plastic. A centaur couldn't get out.
"I did consider that you might have threatened them into it," Tirek added, and the deep place's translation gave him the perfect note of dejected hope. "The sword might have been good for that. But if that was the cause, even if you'd convinced them through a few strategic blows -- then why would they stay in the area after you left? Why are they waiting for you to come out? Because that was the ritual, girl: one enters, and then one leaves. Brutality as control... call it a guess on my part, but I don't think you managed to completely break them. Finding outside magic, something which would effectively control their minds... I suppose there might have been innovations, but in my day, you would have at least needed to be carrying a device. Something emanating the right resonance. And you have nothing, girl. No magic at all."
"I tricked them!" The words had been too frantic, and Tartarus would also carry every bit of that to his ears. "They think I went down to evaluate --"
"-- I suppose that's possible," the intelligent stallion offered: something which failed to come across as polite. "But then you still would have lied to me, in saying it was the sword. Why would you ever lie to your ally? Still..." The free hand came up, thoughtfully stroked at the beard. "...there is a way for you to prove yourself. And fortunately for both of us, it just happens to be the next part of the plan."
She was trying to make herself look as if all of her attention was focused on him. It was giving her some difficulty in preventing her tail from lashing.
"The next part," she repeated. It took no effort to make the words come across as angry, because nothing about that was a lie.
The bars across the exit are too thick.
The ones blocking his cell...
"Eight sapients at the entrance," Tirek casually observed. "And the guardian, of course. But the ponies, plus the unknown -- those are the current problems. When it comes to my departure from this place, leaving it for the last time..."
His right hand pulled away from the wall. Three tiny portions of the fingertips briefly glinted in the harsh light.
"...there's been certain practical considerations," the stallion continued. "Like being able to fit through the corridors." With another snort. "Draining the entire wild zone would produce an interesting question: whether I could break through the caves before the compression of the stone broke me. So as much as I despise having to operate at this rather minimal level of power, I had to hold off on a true meal until I got outside. And I also had to make sure that it was just the wild zone. I felt as if ponies had come into my grip a few times. I'm almost certain that I got a zebra once. But I had to let go, as quickly as possible. Because if they were truly and fully drained, while I was in the cell... well, I was the first and best suspect, wasn't I? It wasn't as if I could stop them from dragging their way to an alicorn. And I knew I'd released in time, that I hadn't taken the whole of them..." He sighed. "Pleasures denied. Another price of this place. But I suppose there was enough suspicion in the end, that I might be up to something. That's why I've been waiting for someone to investigate."
The pinpricks tried to focus on the sword again. Failed, moved to her face, and she saw his disgust rise.
"Which may be you," Tirek decided. "But -- let's say it's not. I've had some time to practice the use of Discord's unintended gifts. Practice after I couldn't try anything during my last few hours outside, because I was too weak. I felt that something had changed, but... I was afraid to try absorbing, just in case that didn't work any more. " Much more softly, "And that meant I needed Tartarus, and quickly. Before I lost the last of it, before..."
He stopped. It took a moment before he managed to dismiss the final portion of shiver.
"There are ponies at the Gate, which means they're suspicious of something," the stallion stated. "That tells me it's time to leave. And if I drain them now, where they currently stand -- they will drag themselves back to the wild zone. They'll crawl."
The thought almost made him smile.
"To sound the alarm," the stallion continued, as the gravel in his voice deepened. "And it'll take time for us to exit: time during which they can scatter in all directions. We might not be able to find and stop them all. One of them might manage to alert the palace. So we're going to go with the easy solution."
He turned his entire body, and she watched the process. The ways his legs moved in order to execute the partial rotation, allowing him to fully face her again. Every means by which his upper waist hadn't.
"We're going to wait," Tirek announced. "Because if you tricked them into sending you down... then there's a time limit, isn't there? A point after which they'll just have to check on you." And the simian face contorted into a sneer. "Especially if you played the grandest trick on them."
"I told you!" (Her words were too fast, too sharp, anyone could hear it and in here, everyone could...) "I did trick --"
"-- if they decided they were your friends," the stallion spat, and the glob landed on the stone floor.
She had to force herself not to stare at it. The expectoration had landed as a half-congealed gel.
"Would they do anything for you?" Tirek snapped, and she saw his fists clench, scars standing out on the backs of his hands in sharp relief. "Because that is the trap, and you would have done well to set it. I nearly fell into it with Scorpan. Too much time in Tartarus, and they'll wonder if you're coming out. They'll descend. And when they reach us... that's when I drain them. Completely." With a snicker, "Even with an alicorn potentially involved, I'm almost certain that eight won't leave me needing to remodel the deep place too severely. If all else fails, I'll just burn some of the thaums off as they're being taken. And we leave them here, head for the surface and close the Gate behind us..."
There were gaps between the nearest bars, and they were only too narrow for a centaur to get through.
...he was looking at her. Waiting.
"They won't come in after me," Cerea softly said. "They won't."
This time, the stallion's head tilted to the right.
"Really?" There was a certain childishness about the word.
"They don't have any reason to," the girl stated. "If they think something went wrong, they're more likely to move for Canterlot. Sound the alarm immediately. We're..."
She had been about to say better off going to them. Proposing that he drain them as soon as the Gate was open again. It would put them both in the corridors, working their way out. Give her time to try something. To think of... anything.
But she always thought of the wrong things.
What if we do reach the exit?
If I can't get away from him. If he twists Tartarus to the point where I don't have an escape.
If he... drains them.
Discord's gone.
It doesn't matter if he does it down here, or just outside the Gate. It would be permanent.
They were ready to face that. Every one of them was willing to give up their magic to stop him.
To die, if it meant stopping him. That was the price.
(They weren't an elite military unit.)
(They were something else.)
(She almost had it...)
But not like this...
"...we're not friends," Cerea told the stallion, and the word were soft -- at the start. Every subsequent syllable picked up an extra unnoticed decibel, harshened enough to scrape at stone. "We never were. I couldn't make friends, out there. It was impossible. Everypony had one thought when they saw a centaur, and that thought --"
His ears were going back. It wasn't from fear. She was just that close to shouting.
"-- was you!" Her tail was lashing, with the right forehoof repeatedly stomping at the floor. "Making friends? How is that supposed to be possible, when everypony was convinced the world would be better off if I was in here forever? There was no way to do it, no point in trying! Not when they looked at me and saw corpses, the deaths of their friends, the death of magic itself and the death of a world --!"
Nightwatch.
Barding.
Yapper.
She stopped, all at once. Brought the forehoof down to the stone and kept it there, forced her tail to still, and felt her breasts heaving inside twin shells of padding and metal. Heaving hard enough to hurt.
There was something new in the stallion's dark eyes. She was desperately hoping it wasn't respect.
"You're better off," Tirek intoned, and the sincerity of it tried to burn her skin. "How much would a centaur have to change, in order to befriend those who were so different?" And he slowly, almost thoughtfully shook his head. "You would only betray yourself through trying to become what you thought they desired you to be."
Ice closed around the girl's mind.
the magazines
the websites
everything I saw and read
everything
"They won't come down?" the stallion asked her, as something in his tones almost begged for belief. She wasn't sure whose. "Are you certain?"
Her right hand, acting on something very close to instinct, moved towards the hilt. "They --"
The realization hit with enough force to nearly drive her back.
They might not follow me.
If I don't come out, that's enough of a sign that something's gone wrong. They might not assume it was because of Tirek: I might have gotten lost, or come too close to another one of the incarcerated. But I was the only one they could send without giving you more strength. Retreat to Canterlot, search for a new plan. That's practical.
They might not follow me.
But they have to chase the sword.
They can't leave it in here. It might just lie fallow, negating magic wherever it fell.
But what if something else in Tartarus were to take it up?
It would probably sicken them, disable their magic while they carried it, because that's what it did to everypony who tried.
But Tirek doesn't have any magic of his own.
It might weaken him. Prevent any draining while he held it.
Or it might give him the choice between offense and defense. He can steal magic, or he can block it. One more way of disabling any attempts at stopping him.
They can't leave the sword in here.
Not in the deep place. Not in any part of the world.
It's too dangerous.
It shouldn't exist.
I shouldn't --
She recognized the thought.
-- him.
I wouldn't exist here if it wasn't for him...
It took a moment before she realized that some part of that had reached her face. And perhaps he'd never had to read centaur features, not even in a mirror -- but they both had something of the simian in their ancestry.
"Ah," Tirek breathed. "They do have to come in, don't they?"
...merde seemed inadequate.
He looked disappointed again. It came with a side order of condescension.
"Allies really shouldn't lie to each other," he told her. "But that's not you, is it? Maybe when you first arrived, but... too much time among the lessers. Too much change. Because friendship is weakness. And freedom can never be anything other than absolute."
He had the complete lack of grace to follow that up with a sigh.
"It's a pity," Tirek solemnly declared. "I would have liked to work with another centaur. Someone who understood. I waited my entire life for that. I thought you were a wish granted. And all I ever had was someone who'd lied about being my brother, because he wasn't a centaur and he wouldn't support me to the last. Followed by you."
...he keeps rejecting his brother on form.
Twilight and Spike.
And there was something beyond that...
...he won't believe me now. He's been suspicious since I implied I'd come in on my own, because he knew the Bearers were out there. But I don't have the lies which can convince him. I'm no good at lying.
I was the wrong person to send.
If he manages to get the sword, figure out what it does -- it might make everything worse.
A knight would think of something...
She didn't have a plan. She just knew there was no point in pretense any more.
"You don't have to do this."
It won her another head tilt.
"This is amusing," Tirek decided. "I don't have to do what?"
"You don't have to drain everything," Cerea desperately pushed out, even as she took another hoofstep towards his cell. "You didn't get a choice at the start. But that changed." Which left her in what was just about an entirely new position: trying to compliment a male. "If you saw my herd, then you saw my stallions! Wouldn't you say they're healthy? And you're much better proportioned than they are! -- as you are, right now. Just look at that upper torso! And your legs...!"
He looks confused.
One of my stallions would have tried to squeeze something by now.
Maybe he's proudest of his horns.
...horns which get bigger after he steals magic.
Don't bring up the horns.
...I'm so bad at this...
More softly, "Whatever Discord did to you, whatever changes chaos made -- it left you with what you wanted at the start. A moment of weakness, and a few thaums which won't be missed." Her arms were coming up, going forward with metal-covered palms turned up. "If we told the alicorn what had happened, if you demonstrated that you had control... then maybe you wouldn't have to stay in here --"
He killed.
He killed his brother and he didn't care.
Then he kept going.
And yet, she watched his face. Hoping to see that single moment of recognition, and the acknowledgement of a new path.
"The thaums," Tirek stated, "always drain away."
But hope was torment.
"There could be volunteers." Trying to keep her tones level, even as every bit of her posture begged. "A few every day. Once they know that it's just a little --"
"-- they'd come to me, of their own free will?" There was no humor in the laugh. "To me, if they can look at you and see their dead? No. It doesn't work that way. And I may look healthy enough to you, but I know how I feel. Like my body isn't right. I haven't felt right since the first moment I saw someone use magic. Others doing what I couldn't. All things which should have been mine by right. And I took that right, after the blood had stolen it from me."
"I don't want magic, because I can't have it. Wishing for magic, for power, over and over to the point where it's the only thought you can still have..."
"I have my own solution," the stallion placidly finished.
"Which is?"
She saw his face.
"If I take enough magic," Tirek calmly stated, "then eventually, some of it will have to stay with me. It'll stop draining. I won't lose strength from the act of taking a breath. The one thaum I didn't take could be the last one I needed to stabilize. What's better, girl? To always be in search of nourishment, knowing the hunger will return? Or to reach a state where you never have to eat again? And all I need to do is keep taking magic, until I find out where that point is."
'Have you ever seen someone in chronic pain?" the kudu had quietly asked her. "One for whom potions still work, but... only for a little while? Have you watched their face, as the effects begin? Because there's a moment when they feel almost normal again, as if nothing might be wrong, another second and all will be well, their life can go on because it won't wear off this time, it won't --'
Hope was torment.
'Insanity' could also qualify.
"And then it'll all be mine," the stallion evenly finished. "Just as it should have been from the start. Forever."
He didn't really have an aura. (She wondered if it was something his body had absorbed.) It was the weight of monstrosity which made it so hard for her to speak.
"And what if you're wrong?"
"Then there's always more magic," Tirek placidly told her. "Always. Mine, by right of being able to take it."
"Not if you take all of it every time," and she was pushing, she knew he wasn't going to listen but she was the only one there, the one who would fail... "What happens when there's no magic left? When the entire planet's been drained, and you're still losing strength?"
and the monster shrinks back down to fit the corpse of the world as it slowly starves, blaming others for having been so weak as to die
It was easy to read this expression. Pure annoyance.
"I've had this argument," he shot at her. "It didn't go particularly well for Scorpan, either. There's always going to be magic somewhere. And if there somehow wasn't..."
The next thing to reach his features bore certain similarities to an earlier specimen. It was slightly wistful, with hints of loneliness around the edges. It was also saturated with hope.
"...I recently learned," the monster informed her, "that there are other worlds." And the smile grew wider. "I would love to see a herd..."
...no
There were ways in which her world had very little magic. Very little -- but the dullahan existed, as did those who were even closer to fae. Add that to all of the little rituals, and there was enough to take.
Of course, it might not be possible for him to reach her world.
On the first attempt.
But he'd made a decision. One which said that he was the only one who mattered. Who was real.
Everything else was just something to break.
That was when she knew.
It could be said that it wasn't a choice.
She didn't see it as a choice at all.
She'd... noticed that the temperature was more stable in this part of the deep place: something else Tirek had done, to make himself comfortable.
I've never...
So all of the new chill was coming from within.
She was going to fail.
A knight lives for something.
She always failed.
My liege wanted this from the start.
They were all ready for this.
To pay the price.
She was never going home.
A knight fights for something.
The girl had made her decision: something born in the heart of the deep place. A non-choice willingly made, an offer freely given. Because as it turned out, the world did need a centaur -- at least, for another minute or two. It just didn't need the one in front of her.
She had made her decision. But she was scared. Her body was motionless within the armor, her features felt oddly placid, there wasn't a single hoof tapping against the stone, her tail seemed to have gone completely limp -- and yet, she was scared.
Perhaps that was a good thing.
I can't get the helmet on without looking suspicious. It'll take time, block my sight, and it might draw an attack. Guard my head.
She risked one more step forward. Measured the gap between the cell's bars, trying to figure out how to deal with the stone. It looked thin enough...
He has horns. They're nowhere near as long as they were when he was at his previous top size, but they could still do some damage. Watch for a charge.
He was looking at her again.
He was sneering.
"It's been -- novel, speaking with what's almost another centaur. But I had this argument once," Tirek semi-repeated, and his head tilted slightly forward. "I don't need to have it again."
It was all the warning she received: that he had decided to endure any degree of wait in silence.
It was enough.
She saw the field spark into existence just above his head, warped reds and corrupted oranges, something which started as a single flare of light and built into a sphere during a single heartbeat, gaining in power and size and --
-- there was just enough time to see it. To witness as his arms thinned, the horns receded, luster dimmed within the fur --
-- the kinetic blast had been aimed, meant to pass between a gap in the bars, and the stallion almost succeeded there. Part of it hit the stone, knocked a surprisingly large piece free. The rest went directly for her head.
But she had already drawn the sword.
The blade slashed up, blocked, energy dissipated in front of her in a flash and twinkle, she had to move the sword away from her eyes because she needed to see where he was aiming next and she was expecting a feint --
-- but it just let her spot the moment when dark pools of malice flooded with denial.
"WHAT?" It had been a scream. "YOU CAN'T! YOU DON'T HAVE ANY --"
She didn't. It had never been the wielder. It had always been the sword.
Cerea began to back up. Running backwards, if only for a few meters. And there was still a danger of having that end with a broken leg, but the stone was smooth beneath her hooves --
-- because he has control here, not Tartarus
but if he thinks of it --
There was rage on the baboon features: something which was almost lost in the outpouring which said none of this was supposed to be happening. And he didn't use the moment to fracture a pastern. He just summoned more energy, his legs thinned and two ribs stood out along the lower torso, he chipped a piece out of another bar and she smoothly deflected the blast to the right, still while moving backwards...
She would know she'd gone too far if she jammed her tail.
Her free hand was going back. Reaching for one of the bags which she'd carefully secured within the webbing, shoving the drawstring aside, going into its mouth. Reaching for a sphere, and the tightly-compressed load she'd attached to it.
Don't squeeze --
"NO!"
He shouted a lot. It told her something about his potential as a singer. She didn't think he had any.
A third blast, equally useless: its central purpose was to visibly cut down on the length of the horns. And he was starting to sweat, something which smelled horrible and half-congealed, but she'd been through far worse, it was nowhere near a scent bomb and a hot Tokyo day was magnitudes beyond what his body could offer.
How do you fight?
He's never been taught how to fight another centaur. He may not know how to be fought. And he has magic, but he's not really thinking about what he could do with it. No attempts to twist my ears or go for a hoof. No finesse and one tactic, something which is just making him weaker --
If nothing else, the stallion recognized that the effort was costing him energy. Because the thaums always drained, always, and now he was burning them, three blasts and he hadn't hurt her yet, but he was visibly losing body mass and --
-- she saw it.
She smelled it, at nearly the same moment. A scent which reminded her of the disc.
His left hand thrust towards the nearest cell wall, didn't reach it. The platinum wires came out of his fingertips, twisting, spinning, the fine tips blurring as they penetrated the stone --
The girl is moon-touched (or Moon-touched): psychosomatic or not, it's something she carried through the Gate. Her senses are in overdrive: something which includes the capacity for processing the extra information at a higher speed, in order to prevent overwhelm. Without that, a centaur of her herd would risk a faint by trotting through a meadow on a warm spring night.
It means she has to think a little faster. And at the moment she sees and scents the metal, she understands.
She couldn't tell you exactly what he did, not when it comes to the full thaumaturgy of the process. Perhaps the fine details mean stabbing into marrow in order to make this work, or replacing the interior of a few key bones entirely. But she's worked out the core.
Platinum absorbs magic. Constantly, from everything, unless you can tell it not to. Small pieces leak when they reach capacity: large ones explode. And platinum can be pulled into an incredibly fine wire. A pound of the stuff, drawn with care, could stretch across a kilometer with ease. Barely visible from some angles, not quite monofilament while still posing a danger to anyone who contacted the length at speed -- but it could be done.
The exact process, the necessary treatments -- one living being knows how to do all of it, and he's not particularly prone to sharing. But she has the core of it. Cut the body open, following the lines of the skeleton: one or two major wounds per month is probably the top speed. Take platinum wire, guide it through bleeding flesh and wrap it around bone. And then let it do what platinum always does on this world, only under the direction of the one who took it in.
She didn't identify the metal at first: the miasma of Tartarus blocked some of that, added to the fact that the wire itself smells corrupted. A mineral echo of sickness and forever-dying flesh. But she has the heart of it now.
Platinum can only hold so much. You don't want it to leak (and it may be doing so anyway). You definitely don't want it to explode. And it's the same thought she had in the forest. The absorption is the platinum, but the storage medium? Energy-mass conversion. When he drains more thaums than the metal can hold, the energy is converted into extra kilograms of centaur. Eventually, kilotons. Burn it off -- or just exist -- and he starts to shrink again. Lose everything and the body starts to feed on itself.
And after chaos had saturated him, made changes without intent or thought? Now the wires are under his direct control. They can erupt through the skin, and platinum can be pulled so fine. Penetrate stone. Stretch out to wherever he's trying to drain, and Tartarus leaks through new channels while the smallest of puddles drain in the other direction. And when he reaches a location, when he drains or, with the deep place, tries to make it act in accordance with his wishes -- little glints of metal glisten with the rock.
He can release raw blasts of power, and he hasn't thought of anything else yet. But each one is costing him: strength, health, mass. He needs a recharge.
It won't come from Tartarus, not unless he goes beyond normal desperation.
Not when he knows where to find seven ponies and a dragon.
How long will it take for the wires to reach them? To drain everything they have, to steal away magic forever? It has to be at least a few seconds. The girl would pray for that time to act, if she could think of anything worth praying to at all. That any price be hers alone. But the wires are heading for the stone, her left hand has found the correct sphere, fingers work the compressed bundle away from the light beige wood, this is going to be two throws in quick succession, throws because the sling will take too long to get spinning and she has to be exactly on target --
-- the bundle goes first. It's just barely bound together with fine, light strings, and she had to do so in a way where any impact would make the whole thing come apart. She also had to weight it with a small rock. Finding a small loose rock in the palace had been the hardest part --
-- it passes through a gap. Hits the stallion's diminished upper torso, and effectively explodes.
The fairly minimal force of the impact makes him look down. It's reflexive, and it happens just in time for him to get the first pinion fragment up his nose. The rest work into his vest, portions of fur, spread out in a cloud and coat his arms.
"WHAT?" Which is followed by a sneeze. "WHAT IS --"
The sphere rockets through the gap, shatters against his upper ribs, and the thin purple liquid splatters across the scavenged debris of lost feathers.
Then it turns into glue crossed with springs.
The force of the change pulls thinned arms inward, clamp them against his sides with enough force to draw out a cry of pain. And he's lost strength, he's straining to move the limbs and failing, but the wires only forfeited about a meter of distance. They're still trying for the wall. Temporarily freezing his arms didn't do anything to stop them, he's going to get mass from somewhere, she may have just pushed him across that desperation line and once he's strong enough --
-- the girl is thinking as quickly as she can: something which leaves her with no time for second-guessing herself.
Now she has to force her body to match.
She stops backing up.
Takes the first breath.
The Second --
There are always secrets. And in a world where they can be attacked at any time, knowing that even self-defense is a ticket to deportation... the centaurs have kept a few. Just in case.
The girl didn't tell anyone about this, no more than her herd informed a single human doctor about how it's done. Not even when the first piece of evidence was right there on the charts. Because some organs are duplicated, and a centaur has four lungs. And under normal circumstances, they'll run on the upper two. After all, there's only one airway, and the tissue in the lower pair is -- slightly different.
But they function. It takes some mental discipline to make it happen on purpose: there's a specialized flap blocking the lower extension of the trachea, and the exercises which allow a mare to move it at will aren't easy to master. However, if that can be done... if the mare can find true control over what every other species considers to be a fully automatic system...
There are two typical uses for this technique.
First: a centaur who receives some warning regarding necessity can hold their breath for a surprisingly long time.
And then there's the Second Breath.
Imagine that you could truly hold your breath. Not just inhale and refuse to release it until internal suffocation threatened to close in. Take in the air, and not use it. Keep it on hold, because the tissue in your lungs won't process anything until you tell them to do so.
Now imagine there are four lungs. Two work at all times, with the others on standby: an organic backup system. The upper lungs are more than enough to manage oxygenation on their own.
What happens when the lower pair joins in?
What if you could make them work only when you wanted them to, processing the extra oxygen precisely on rhythm, flooding the bloodstream in the same moment when the adrenal glands kick into overdrive...
The Second Breath is biology's nitrous oxide. A mare who can use it will, for a few precious minutes, have her reaction time accelerate. She moves faster. Pain resistance goes up. There's extra energy available for every system. She's essentially burning all available fuel while ignoring design specifications, and she can't keep it up for long because the centaur body isn't supposed to be doing this. From the moment the Second Breath starts, the mare is running a countdown until it has to stop. Any engine which runs entirely on boosters is going to burn out, oxygen overload has its own set of problems, and a centaur who doesn't stop it in time...
It's short-term: it can't be anything else. It's also the reason why a liminal species which lacks any truly supernatural tricks managed to carve out a place in the world. Because a centaur who understands how to use their size and mass is a formidable opponent, but one who's also running on the Second Breath is a terror.
But there's always a point when they have to stop. And if they kept it up for too long, they'll be winded, worn out, exhausted, shaking from excess adrenaline, finding themselves having to force six heavy limbs into doing anything at all. Easy targets.
If they went beyond that...
Mares have died from the Second Breath.
Second and last.
She stopped running backwards, and did so at the exact moment when the world slowed.
Air currents resolved into individual puffs. Every scent untangled from every other, and she discarded the ones she didn't need. The struggling stallion on the other side of thinned stone bars either lost half of his frames or discarded any unnecessary animations: which depended on Papi's level of distraction when she was asked for the definition.
Heat suffused her muscles. Blood surged under the pressure of an accelerated heartbeat. Overloaded capillaries gave her skin a slightly different tinge of red.
Moon-touched added to the Second Breath. It was all she had. The most she could do, for the short time she had in which she would be capable of doing anything. And if it wasn't enough...
A knight fights for something --
-- she focused on her target.
Then she charged.
(For Menajeria, the fastest sapient being on level ground over a short distance had always been a minotaur.)
(That status ended.)
The untested armor, put through new and unexpected strains, rattled. Her bra was given its effective final exam: the padding and shells provided reinforcements. Hooves pounded, she rushed across the scant meters, she ran because she would run until she never moved again, and she jumped.
But she wasn't going for height. Just force.
The left pair of hooves pushed off first.
The girl's body twisted in midair, and a few hundred kilograms of centaur and metal slammed sideways into thinned stone.
Normally, she would have felt the impact through the armor. Even with the padding in play, she might have spent two days in feeling very little else. But the Second Breath was at work, and most of what she felt was the moment when the bars shattered.
Stone fragments rained down into the cell, a hailstorm like nothing a pegasus had ever created, and some of them impacted Tirek with enough force to break the skin. Something gel-like began to seep through the fresh wounds on his right arm, the same was rising from a cut cheek, and the wires were still stretching out --
-- she landed, skidded somewhat, easily regained her balance and pushed off the stone. The left hand was going back again, reaching for a different bag. The right had the sword, and she swung directly for the wires.
The force of the impact partially wrapped them around the blade: the fineness of the drawn metal scored the plastic. And she thought that he must have reacted instinctively. Something had just attacked him, he had no finesse, not much in the way of tactics, up to one solution for everything and he used it.
She would never be entirely certain of what he'd done. But based on the way he began to scream, followed by the moment when she saw his left arm collapse in itself so sharply as to let her see the gap between ulna and radius, she was almost sure he'd tried to drain the sword.
There was no point in stopping the charge. She wrenched the sword down, kept going forward --
-- she wondered what his mother had looked like, somewhere in the sparking, flashing depths of a mind being forced to work at maximum speed. If a long-dead mare had ever cradled a lost foal against her, in the years before monstrosity had produced a second birth from the womb of jealousy.
She wondered how he felt about being rammed by an armored bustline.
Judging by the newest scream, he didn't seem to like it.
She used the impact, kept wrenching down, and she was the larger of them now, he'd lost too much mass to the attacks, she was trying to tip him over, put him on the ground, but four legs were more stable than two, he still had enough to resist and the wires were unwrapping themselves from the sword, whipping around and she got ready to parry, aware of just how quickly the metal could whip through her exposed flesh --
-- but he had one tactic. The points were now heading for the floor.
She'd made him that desperate. Fearful enough to take in the magic of the deep place, no matter what it cost him. And it was close and plentiful, she gave up on the second sphere because ramming drydust down his throat was going to take too long, her left hand changed targets --
-- he desperately grabbed for that arm: something which did the wires no favors in their quest. The smallest use of flexible joints twisted the limb away from his clutch, and then her arm came forward again.
The weighted baton cracked his skull.
All of the wires briefly went limp. He staggered, reeled. And she brought the sword back, hit him again, the staggering increased, but he was going to wind up pressed against the wall and if she did drop him to the floor, that was so much less distance for the platinum to cross...
She was right on top of him. There was so much he could have tried, even with shortened horns. So much which she was ready to counter. But he'd never had a Sergeant, didn't know how to fight or be fought. Strength was optional, size transient, and skill absent.
But he kept trying, with his one tactic. The wires stiffened, started to move again. So she hit him again. And again. Upper ribs, and the flesh caved in over bone. Jaw: the skin twisted, puckered and tightened as it shrank.
And yet, the wires writhed. Because she hadn't stopped him. That was her job. She hadn't put him in enough pain that he had to stop, and she could blame Tartarus for that. After all, unconsciousness was a form of temporary escape.
She decided to distract him.
Shouting at him counted.
No matter how it all ended, there was only a little time left. There were things she'd been longing to say.
"I never wanted to come here! I never wanted to be part of this! All I wanted was what you gave up, what you threw away and murdered!"
The next impact broke two ribs.
Did you ever realize you have a compound fracture?
The thought seemed to be oddly separate from her spoken words. The words just kept coming, as something with no thought behind them. Perhaps that was the only reason they emerged at all.
"I wanted someone to love me! And they did! I crossed half the world and I found the ones who weren't shaped like me and didn't think like me and cared about me anyway! The Bearers aren't a military unit! They're what I lost! Because the shapes don't matter, not when they love you! I had a family, I finally had a family, I had sisters and you stole me away from all of it! I HATE YOU, I HATE --"
It was, on several levels, something which had been waiting to come out for a very long time.
It also nearly kept her from spotting the moment when he finally had a new thought, and the wires from his right hand went directly for her face.
She dropped the baton, heard it clatter on stone debris as she moved that arm up and across. Grabbed, twisted, yanked, and she was pulling on metal and she was pulling on his bones, but she'd also pulled him closer still, almost an embrace, he was too close for the sword to be effectively swung, she heard his hooves scrape on the stone, trying to find a push or stability without slipping on rubble and --
-- she got the sword away from the wires. Shoved it back into the scabbard, just for a moment, because it freed up that hand to do something else.
"I have a Tartarus, where I come from," she panted. "It's a place for the dead." She grabbed what she needed, and her hand came forward. Pressed the canister against his left ear. "The dead have something they wish to tell you."
She squeezed.
It was the sheer volume of it, the sound which Tartarus would always allow to pass, perhaps even amplified, and pony screams shattered the air, moved through stone and down the passageway as they headed up towards a saner world, he howled in agony and twisted away from her, the depleted canister was dropped and she went for the sword again, took up a two-handed grip and the untested pauldron over her left shoulder stuck --
-- it gave him a second, as she tried to wrench it free. Enough time for wires to enter the closest wall.
The collapsed forearm began to swell. Horns started to lengthen, and it happened in the same moment when every newly-bulging muscle writhed against itself. She was losing time, he was gaining mass and power, he might actually think of something to do with it this time and --
Do the job.
Understanding the price.
In an instant, without thought.
She strained. Two internal ligaments did their best to tear --
-- the metal came free, both hands were on the sword again, he was swelling and getting taller and right now, all that did was give her a bigger target.
In the end, all she had was a practice blade. It let humans say the laws had been followed. A scaled-up toy, which existed without an edge. Suitable for cutting nothing more solid than vapor and light.
It didn't have an edge.
It did have a rough approximation of a point.
And even with a blunt object, as long as there was a single surface upon which all strength could be concentrated, focused -- all she needed was force.
She didn't swing. She thrust, and the plastic penetrated his skin.
Sparks erupted from the new wound, sparks of all colors and no colors and she felt resistance as she pushed and he screamed, his limbs were swelling as his torso started to collapse around the blade, sparks fountained and she pushed harder, using all four legs for the strength which came from pushing off stone, trying to get through the muscles and the ribs --
-- there was a fresh source of resistance within his body, as if she had tried to push an apple through a wire fence. She pushed harder.
Sparks fountained. Some of them skidded off her skin: others attempted to sink in. She could barely see the half-congealed mass which kept dripping from the wound. (She wondered how long it had been since he'd had true blood. Diamond had written about seeing a split hoof bleed, and that could have been the last of it.) Most of her attention was focused on the flow of escaping magic, and there was something left over for seeing how the finger wires had gone limp again.
She used the sword for leverage. Moved it, and him. Getting him into the center of the broken cell, dragging him by the pectoralis major as he shrunk, he was shrinking again, down to her height, she pushed and pushed --
-- it was, perhaps, only then that he realized what she was trying to do. A feat which, in terms of time required, indicated a rather impressive deliberate ignorance of all previous evidence.
His eyes widened for the last time.
"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IF I DIE!" the stallion screamed. "YOU CAN'T --"
You're right.
Twilight didn't know. She said it was a fascinating academic question.
I don't know how much magic you've taken in, or what happens when you aren't controlling any part of it. An explosion is possible. But the world won't miss the monsters. If it's more than that... then all I can do is hope that Tartarus contains it. And if it doesn't, then everyone up there was willing to pay the price.
But you're not that big yet.
So it might just be me.
But that wasn't what she told him.
"I know what happens if you live."
Her entire body felt hot: a price of the Second Breath. But on the deepest levels, at the core of a wounded soul, all she felt was the chill of acceptance.
There had been a vow.
My life for your life.
She pushed harder. The space between two weakening ribs shrunk down around the blade: a twist broke bone.
"I'm..." The gravel was starting to fill his throat. "I'm your only way home..."
"You were never going to do it." Not when he'd had no real idea of what he'd been doing in the first place. Not when it would have been for someone whom he didn't see as real. At most, a passage for himself alone, to the first world he could reach. The next meal in the quest to end a hunger which could never be sated.
My life for all lives...
Blitzschritt had sworn that.
Had lived it.
That was what made her a knight.
He shrank again. It was a sign of progress. It was also making it harder to push. She had to stare down at him now, the angles for leverage were changing, she was forcing him towards the floor and she had to worry about the wires again --
"Who..." The yellow pinpricks were dimming. Fighting to focus on her face. The last fight he would ever win. "Who are you...?"
There had been a time when he'd had a family. A brother. There had been people who had loved him and if it had been possible to mourn, then it would have been mourning for a lost foal.
But that particular body had been cold for a very long time.
Those were his last words. The next six were hers.
"A centaur," Cerea told him. "That's all you get."
She shoved.
The blade went in.
A corpse couldn't hold magic.
Everything else came out.
and it was sparks and wind and petrichor, joined by something very much like adrenaline existing as concept alone, a low hum in the air and a feeling of weakness and strength and renewal and destruction and something else, something intangible, invisible, which contained all of it because it had to contain everything and it all erupted from the wound, the blade was growing hot in her armored hand, there was something trickling across her gauntlet and everything she had went into pushing, pushing all the way to the end, making sure it was done but it was all coming out of him and the invisible tide was carrying it into her and through her and it was in her and there wasn't enough room left for her and
-- she barely understood that he was still shrinking, as her own knees collapsed. She told herself that she was just trying to follow him down.
She lost the scent of his death, as his sphincters began to let go.
Lost the sight of his darkening eyes, the final echoes of the traveling screams and the feel of cold stone against her folded legs and a tail which could no longer be moved.
Lost the sensation of her own heartbeat.
Lost almost all thought, but for one.
A knight dies for something...
The Second Breath stopped.
The first...