I raced to the forest while my hooves beat a frantic rhythm to keep pace with the drums of war that rumbled through my head.
I knew the beat, I felt the rhythm, I felt the melody painfully pound the inside of my skull.
It was coming, but no one else seemed to realize it!
Once I was hidden in the foliage, I threw up invisibility and dropped my disguise.
My noodly body popped, cracked, and stretched as I got used to my old visage again.
But I had no time to readjust, so I levitated upwards with my magic.
Only a moment passed before I found myself hovering over an ocean of swaying green.
I glanced at the oncoming hurricane before scanning the horizon opposite it, I saw a hill in the distance.
‘Pop’
I found myself over the hill and looked back to the doomed town. My home, my new home, not of towers that scraped the sky, but of squat wooden houses that huddled together against the terrors surrounding it.
It almost seemed to cower before the mountainous weapon of war that hovered above it.
Too close.
‘Pop’
Now I was even further away on a hill that was miles from the rebel target.
Too exposed, they need to hide, they need to be safe.
I scanned the rough green carpet below me for openings.
A few minutes of search revealed a divot that I knew would open into a small clearing below.
I dove in.
I landed in a clearing surrounded by a thick wall of trees.
Their branches were woven together into a palisade and their leaves all but covered the sky above.
I twisted reality to form a bunker.
The rocky brick of a building was partially buried and its walls were several feet thick. A gray metal door with a lock the size of my head marked the entrance.
I turned to leave but a nagging feeling pulled me back.
It’s missing something… Supplies!
Bandages, food, water, medicine, and anything else that I could think of were stuffed into the bunker with a familiar ‘pop’.
What if that storm doesn’t stop at the town?
Outside I planted several lightning rods.
Those rebels have to have mages, there’s no way they wouldn’t.
Placing the defensive wards took longer.
I had to start with a solid foundation of magic webs so that the enchantments would stick.
Every inch cost me a few precious seconds.
Forget-me spells, notice-me-nots, anti-fires, anti kinetics, basic shields, a basic scrying shield, an advanced scrying shield, a selective teleportation membrane, and so many more were woven together into a desperate patchwork defense.
Every spell had to be linked to the rest so functions didn’t clash and start a miniature war within the wards.
A fire shield would use cold to counter heat and an ice shield would do the opposite. A scrying ward could mess with detection enchantments.
Every little piece of the armor had to link up in specific ways that kept such opposites apart, otherwise, the whole web of magic would collapse in on itself.
Nothing short of an anti-magic nuke or a full-on null zone would pierce the defenses, I’d made sure.
I looked up and saw that the sun had moved closer to the horizon.
Two hours, I spent two hours on that? Not good, not good!
I frantically scratched out a beacon spell before I began portal hopping home.
In my rush to scramble home, I almost forgot to pull on my disguise.
However, I didn’t forget. I couldn’t forget.
I popped into existence in the middle of the town square and it was pouring.
Rain pelted the roofs of homes all around me, sounding like a horde of scampering mice in the process.
The water tapped away at my skull and when I looked up, the light gray clouds greeted me with brief flashes of lightning followed by the muted rumble of thunder.
I’m not too late!
If I looked closely I could probably pick out the forms of pegasi flitting from cloud to cloud in preparation for the assault.
The smell of ozone pervaded my nostrils and a metallic taste invaded my mouth as I bit my cheek.
I have to hurry, I have to be there, I can’t fail them!
With that thought, I set my jaw and broke out into a dead sprint for the orphanage.
The houses around me blurred into grayish streaks and my hooves clopped against the cobbled road.
I arrived at the front entrance in barely a minute but that didn’t matter to me as I flung the door open.
Ms. Heart was staring at me with wide eyes before she spoke.
“Please shut the door Pathfinder, I don’t want anything flying in while it’s open.”
I obliged before walking past her.
“We have to leave, I’ll make a portal in the common room.”
She blinked.
“Wha- wher- Why?”
“We’re leaving, we’re going to a safe house I set up, and we’re leaving because the town’s about to be attacked.”
Before she could recover, I turned the corner and trotted to the common room.
The place was just a couple of couches with a carpet between them.
However, the most prominent feature of the room soon became the portal that ripped open in the middle of it.
The disk was black as pitch and streams of white spiraled from the edges to meet in its center.
However, instead of directly going to the middle, the lines dove backward into the void between places.
I spun from the magical opening before shouting loud enough to make the floor tremble.
“Everyone come to the common room, we need to go!”
I tapped a hoof on the wooden ground as I watched fillies and colts file in while pelting me with questions.
Ms. Heart eventually joined us as well but her head was lowered while her eyes darted around.
“Pathfinder, why did you call the children here, it’s just a storm, right?”
I sighed before I answered.
“It is a storm, but it’s a war storm, we really don’t have the time for me to explain at the moment. On the other side of this portal is a gray stone building. We should be safe there.”
I turned to go through but stopped when Ms. Heart cried out.
“Stop! Why are we leaving, where are you sending us, are you sure the portal’s safe, w-”
“I already told you, the town is going to be-”
The screams of several hundred pegasi thundered through the air outside and one punched through the ceiling of the top floor before he screamed.
“For order, for freedom, for justice!”
“-is being attacked.”
Ms. Heart began rapidly sucking in deep breaths at a frantic pace.
“We’ll be fine, I have a safe house set up far far away from here, so as long as we have everybody we should be-”
She cut me off while tears began to streak down her face.
“Sugar Plum and Helga are both out, we have to go fi-”
“No, I will go find them. You will take the children that are here to my bunker. They will be safe there, it has food, shelter, and more wards than the royal vault. Now go, everything will be fine.”
A lie, a white lie, a comforting lie, but no matter what I call it, a lie is still a lie.
I popped a key out of my mane.
“This should open the front door.”
I tossed it to Ms. Heart before addressing the dozen or so kids.
“I want all of you to go to the bunker while I go get Helga and Sugar Plum.”
Some of the children tried to speak, some looked at the hallway behind us, and some stared at the ceiling in horror as they heard smashing glass, but they all ended up nodding before streaming into the portal.
Ms. Heart hesitated for a moment before following suit. Once everyone was through, I sowed the portal closed.
I spun on my hind legs and galloped out of the orphanage, or at least, I tried to but a pegasus twice my size was crouching in the door frame.
“Where ya think yer goin’ ya dirty little loyalist?”
“I resent that comment, I am neither little nor a loyalist. You’re just huge and unobservant.”
He stood up and blinked at me.
“Wha-”
I cut him off by sending him about thirty seconds forward in time.
Normally I’d worry about possible butterfly effects, panic about snowballing events, and such, but really I don’t think that going forward in time really changes anything as long as you don’t get sent back.
I sprinted through the streets while calling out for Helga and Sugar Plum.
I rocketed through the main street, dashed through alleys, and zigzagged through open areas to dodge plummeting pegasi.
I heard war cries bellowed in fury.
I heard the faint clashing of steel coming from the distant wall.
I heard screams of terror.
I heard…
Children? No, no, no!
I grimaced in anger as I charged towards the shrill sounds of a screaming child.
I turned the corner and saw a unicorn holding a crying Helga with a knife to her throat.
Little Liar stood in front of the assailant to shout at him.
I noticed Sugar Plum off to the side, huddling into the shadows of the alley walls to the best of her ability.
The rain soaked my mane and the water trickled down my face, giving the impression of tears.
Thunder roared, steel clanged, and my ears rang, I saw Little Liar's mouth moving but didn’t hear her words.
The edges of my vision faded away as all of my focus was put onto the stallion.
The thunder became even more muted, the clanging steel faded, and the raindrops slowed mid-air.
I can kill him, but I need time.
There’s no time! He’d kill Helga before I could even cast a spell.
Time, time, time, I’m supposed to be immortal but I still beg for time!
Lightning?
No, might kill Helga.
Fire is right out.
A mental break would take too long.
Time, time, time.
Time…
I could stop time!
I felt my face begin to stretch into a grin as I began casting.
Then time sped up
Then the stallion glanced at me and saw a smiling unicorn with a glowing horn.
Then the knife flashed.
My eyes went wide, my jaw went slack, and my throat went dry.
Red, such an ugly red, splattered the cobbled street.
I glanced down at the hideous color, then my gaze settled on the breathing corpse of the monster who just murdered a child.
My breathing slowed and I set my jaw.
My head emptied of thought as I reached for the strings that held reality itself together.
I didn’t hear Little Liar scream, I didn’t hear Sugar Plum whimper, I only heard the scoff of the unicorn I was about to unmake.
The unicorn lowered his glowing blue horn, the spirals lit up a brilliant white as a midnight blue surrounded the protrusion.
I could see his eyes fixed upon me, his own face twisted into a grimace of rage.
He showed no fear, he showed no regret, only anger.
I glared into his hateful eyes and saw that this idiot didn’t deserve the air he breathed, that he shouldn’t have been blessed with the very matter that made up his body.
A thousand evils stretched out behind him, both large and small, to culminate in this one horrific act.
I pulled, twisted, shifted reality, and watched as the unicorn disappeared.
There was no flash, there was no sound, just the infinitesimally small, silent shard of time where something became nothing.
I stared at the empty space as my mind scrambled to restart but what came back was a mess of errors.
I just killed someone.
I killed him.
He’s more dead than anything that has died before.
Helga’s dead and I killed her murderer.
My chest felt hollow and cold, but my heart smoldered.
A freezing chill spread from that warm core to cover every inch of my body.
I killed him.
I could barely breathe as the houses seemed to close in around me.
I smelled ozone.
I smelled rain.
I smelled blood.
But she’s dead.
I heard whimpering, was I whimpering?
No, my jaw isn’t moving.
Who’s whimpering?
I killed him.
The pitiful noise grew closer and I felt something warm and furry latch onto my leg.
She’s dead.
I looked down to see a teary-eyed Sugar Plum staring up at me.
“I killed him.”
Sugar Plum flinched at my words but gripped my foreleg tighter.
I shook my head as I gritted my teeth.
He deserved it.
I flicked my magic to tear open a portal that led to the bunker; to safety.
Before Sugar Plum could react, I threw her through the portal where I knew she would end up fine.
Then I zipped up the opening with a grim scowl.
Another trio of shrill screams pitched above the fighting, so I spun towards the distress and charged.
A unicorn, a pegasus, and an earthpony were all huddled together, cowering before a shouting armored rebel.
“Stay away from that smithy you little pieces of-”
I’d seen the kids before, gave them some advice even, but that metal-coated monster of a pony was completely unfamiliar.
I felt that I should know him, that I should recognize him.
However, the steel mask that clung to his face and the armor covering his mark prevented that.
I called out.
“Stop, you don’t have to do this, the children have done nothing to you or your cause!”
He snorted.
“No, they haven’t, yet. They could easily become spies, miniature saboteurs, or do some other sort of dirty work for you loyalists.”
I grimaced.
“They’re children, why would you harm children?”
I could see his eyes roll behind the mask.
“I’m not gonna kill ‘em or anything, just gotta make sure that they understand that they can’t be messing with our stuff. Which is what they were trying to do in the smithy!”
He punctuated his sentence with a kick to the chest of one of the trio.
I bellowed at the rebel.
“Why did you do that?”
His eyes squinted.
“Didn’t you hear me? These kids need to be taught a lesson.”
Monster.
He didn’t even get a chance to blink before I teleported his head outside of town.
Without his body.
Chills raced down my spine and nausea began to worm its way into my stomach, but another scream pierced the air.
I cut off the dread before rushing to the next scene.
When I turned a corner into an alley I saw a cowering mare with a shield for a cutiemark.
“Please stop, I’m not fighting, see? I'm not resisting, please don’t hurt me!”
The mare’s pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears as the pegasus raised a sharp blade.
The victim raised her hooves in front of her face as she cringed backward, but she was too slow.
The wingblade slashed down and the metal flashed while a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.
No, no more knives, no more innocent blood!
I didn’t know her name, I didn’t remember her face, I didn’t remember the face of the pony I murdered.
No more knives.
Then I killed to protect a smith who was pinned to the ground in the streets.
They were about to cuff him but a blast fried his attackers.
No more prisoners.
My mind descended into a red haze as I killed.
A griffon talon appeared where my left foreleg should be.
Easier to grasp their throats.
I killed.
One of my hind legs transformed into a dragon’s foot.
To rend the cowards who would stab me in the back!
And killed.
The overcast sky lit up as I perceived a change in my vision.
To find those monsters!
My teeth began to poke at my gums and a salty metallic flavor invaded my mouth.
To rend, to rip, to tear!
For hours I sprinted from one place to the next, slaughtering rebels, and protecting civilians.
I ripped pegasi apart, I blasted earthponies into smoking craters, and I unmade the unicorns.
I killed pairs, dozens, hundreds, but they just kept coming!
For every pegasus that I left in pieces, three more would plummet from above.
For every earthpony I fried, two more would sprint from the gates of the wall.
The unicorns ran from me though, they screamed in terror for they knew their fate.
Every time I saw one of those horn-headed bastards, I would smile and hunt.
Eventually, my hunts led me to the walls.
The guards there were barely holding on, only a dozen of ours for every hundred of theirs.
They came in heavy waves of bodies and I heard horns blaring out a call to charge as one.
But I was there.
Huge swaths of the enemy force withered under my scrutiny in the most literal sense possible.
Pegasi, earthponies, and unicorns were all reduced to skeletons. The corpses piled as high as the wall wherever I looked.
You deserve this!
I smiled.
I laughed.
I cried.
They screamed.
They ran.
They died.
You were warned!
After what felt like hours of that butchery, I found myself standing atop a mountain of corpses at the town gates. I grinned as I panted.
They earned it, I warned them. I. I. I failed.
All went black as I felt tears run new tracks down my face. My fake face; my lie.
I failed in many ways.
I failed to tell the truth, I failed to save Helga, I failed to avoid the butchery, I failed to comfort Sugar Plum, I failed and failed and failed… I even failed to notice my disguise dissipate completely by the end.