//------------------------------// // Darkness of Old // Story: The Light Within Us // by theOwtcast //------------------------------// My expectations had proven correct. I spent the night tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable and soothing way to position myself on the bed in order to fall asleep and failing miserably, wondering how to get off the bed without alerting Pharynx and whether or not I’d have better luck falling asleep on the floor… I did manage to doze off a few times, but never for longer than a couple of minutes at a time, and I knew this simply by how shallow these intervals of sleep had been, if they could be called sleep at all. I couldn’t even blame it on the bed’s creepy aura anymore; though still present, the aura was now barely noticeable! Either it had faded somehow, or I’d overstated it greatly! Unless I’d gotten used to it and managed to tune it out? Whatever the case was, I still had something keeping me awake! But what? I doubted it was the sudden change in my life; that would have been a problem on the first night too! It couldn’t be the hive itself for the same reason! Worry over the decisions I’d made? Yeah, that could explain it; the hive matters I could probably handle, but the declaration of peace and the other lands’ reactions to it… ...and Pharynx. Yeah, that would definitely do it. It must have been around dawn when I finally realized any further attempts at falling asleep were pointless and gave it up. I remained sprawled on the bed a little longer, lost in thought. The text of the declaration had seemed okay enough from my inexperienced point of view, but would its recipients see it that way? Should I have asked the ponies for advice before sending anything? Princess Cadance would have surely helped me! Were she not so far away, I’d have probably gone to her instead of Urtica, but I’d wanted to announce the changelings’ peaceful ways as soon as possible! Would the other leaders see my intentions and honor them regardless of any imperfections in the text of the declaration? And what about the bits and gems I’d sent? Psycho’s suggestion had seemed more sensible than Bandit’s, but how could I be sure that I hadn’t made a mistake in that regard in my hurry to dispatch everything? Would anyling else have offered a better option if I’d thought to ask? And what about Pharynx? He was the most ambiguous of all! There were moments when I got a feeling he was trying to cooperate and moments when I could swear he wanted to rip my throat out, even moments when those two states existed in him simultaneously! Granted, that was an improvement since the old days when the urge to rip my throat out had been much more obvious in him than anything that might be considered a desire to cooperate, even when defending me from other drones, but it still wasn’t making it any easier for me to figure him out. Maybe I would figure him out if I could just talk to him, but the way he was holding himself, a meaningful conversation would be nothing short of a miracle! Oh well, nothing I could do about it now. He was still asleep, like probably the rest of the hive, which meant that any other order of business would have to wait too. In the meantime, this was as good a time as any to familiarize myself with my new bedchamber better than the last evening’s cursory glance had done. I got up and made a round of it. I didn’t know what it had looked like before and what, if any, objects other than the bed it had contained, except that the walls were indented with unusually many niches and alcoves, and there weren’t any holes in them save for the entrance. There were no lamps, either; the animal-powered-cocoon ones had by now been released throughout the hive including here, and though wood-and-fire torches were placed elsewhere in their stead, none were present here, and the only illumination came from the bed cocoon itself, but I couldn’t figure out how since no creature was trapped inside. Maybe Pharynx would know? All in all, the room wasn’t that bad, if a little too big for my needs, and I could probably make it feel like home with a little time and effort. Maybe to get rid of the current bed and find another, and a desk and a cupboard would be nice, too; they didn’t even need to be anything fancy… and the walls could really use some paintings, even if hanging them on such uneven surfaces would be tricky… As I surveyed the room more closely, I noticed one of the alcoves in the far end was unusually deep, and aligned in such a way that it wasn’t obvious from the entrance and even from most of the room itself. It seemed almost strategically placed! Knowing the room’s previous owner, that would hardly be a surprise, but what could she have been hiding in there? Intrigued and uneasy, I went into the alcove. What I’d seen before was simply an atrium of sorts, narrowing a little on the far end into what might be described as a small hallway, then making a sharp turn and opening into another chamber. Inside, a table stood next to a wall, a quill and some scrolls laid onto it, and more scrolls on a shelf indented into the wall. Beneath the table was a nondescript chest, and a cockatrice lamp hung from the ceiling, probably unnoticed by whoever had cleared the other lamps in the area. My first instinct was to open the lamp and let the cockatrice out, and it would have probably been safe as I doubted it was strong enough to turn anyling into stone given the amount of light it was providing, but something drew me to the table first. I was just about to unroll one of the scrolls when I heard hoofsteps. “You’re up early for a change,” Pharynx said. “Couldn’t sleep,” I told him. “Did you know about this place?” “No, I’ve never been in her bedchamber until tonight, and she’s never exactly been keen on sharing information randomly.” “Not even to her First Commander?” “About what her bedchamber looked like? Why would she? I wasn’t her consort! I might have gone in if I had to wake her up for an emergency, but that never happened!” We stood there in silence for a moment. “So what do you make of this?” I asked eventually. He shrugged noncommittally. “What’s in the chest?” “I don’t know.” I pulled it towards us, opened the lid, and recoiled, wishing I hadn’t touched it and letting the lid fall back down. Pharynx gave me a look and proceeded to open the chest himself and rummage through its contents. “Okay, so another torture kit,” he stated. “‘Another’? How many did she have?” “One in each armory and a few more stashed around. Think she ever used this one on you?” “How should I know? I wasn’t keeping track!” “Eh, probably not,” he said, eyeing a few… items… more closely. “No blood on any of this. Which isn’t to say that she never cleaned the stuff or had someling else clean it, or that this wasn’t a spare set.” “Are you done with that?” I asked feebly. “Why, you want some?” He tossed me a cat-o’-nine-tails. I cringed and levitated the whip back to him. “I was hoping to throw it out…” We just stood there, looking at each other. “Now?” he asked. “Yeah… Would you be so kind?” “You sure you won’t need any of it?” “Are you crazy?! Do you have any idea how much those things hurt?” “I know how loudly you scream on the receiving end.” “Then you know why I don’t want them!” “What I know is that you could use a tougher attitude and a higher tolerance for pain!” “Pharynx…” “What? A good soldier shouldn’t succumb to getting hit a few times!” “But we’re not soldiers anymore, and that stuff can’t be compared to a few hits!” “You’re still insisting on that, are you?” “It’s a done deed, Pharynx. I’m not having us become savages again and the sooner you-” “And I’m not going to sit idly by and watch the hive crumble under the onslaught of invading armies!” “What invading armies?!” “Just you wait, Thorax! They may not be here yet, but they will be, and I can promise you that!” “You’re starting to sound like Shining Armor when he first met me…” “That only means the guys’s sensible.” “More like paranoid!” “Are you sure? The invasion was already being prepared!” “But I wasn’t its scout!” “No, you were a bait! Did you really have to parade around looking like yourself? What if the infiltrators had been ordered to grab you while I wasn’t there?” “I’m sure my friends would have tried to help-” “‘Tried’ is right! They’d have been captured themselves! Actually, they were captured!” “Not all of them were!” “And sure, a few random untrained crystal ponies would have definitely succeeded where five alicorns, a military commander, five vigilantes, and a fire-breathing dragon had failed! Gimme a break! Even that wizard turned out to be helpless despite knowing we were there!” I had no answer to that. “So…” I said after a moment, “can you throw this out? Please?” “Ugh, fine.” He stuffed everything back in the chest, closed it, and dragged the thing away. I expected he wouldn’t be back so soon, if he returned at all, so I moved on to examining the scrolls. The first few I grabbed were completely illegible, but not due to messy hornwriting; the script was perfectly clear but written in an alphabet unknown to me. There were a few sketches and diagrams too, but none of them made it even remotely clear what the text was about. I had a vaguely bad feeling about the scrolls and that was the full extent of what I could get from them at the moment. Dark magic, maybe? If that was the case, I absolutely didn’t want anything to do with them! I decided to ask Sunburst for an opinion when a chance presented itself, or maybe Twilight or Starlight if I ended up seeing them first, and set the scrolls aside for now. The next scroll was legible and described a spell that looked easy enough at a glance, and didn’t seem to have anything sinister about it. Pharynx returned when I was about halfway through reading the scroll. “What’s it say?” he asked. “It’s a spell of some kind,” I said. “It’s supposed to do something to the hive but I’m not sure what exactly.” “Have you tried casting it?” “No… you think I should? What if something goes wrong?” “With you, it’d hardly be a surprise.” “Do you wanna try?” “Me?! I’m not a magician! I can levitate stuff and fire combat blasts, but that’s about the extent of it!” “And I’ve always been useless in even that…” “Didn’t you say your magic feels stronger now? You can levitate things just fine and you broke Chrysalis’ sword easily!” “Yeah, well, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I can do other things!” “It doesn’t mean you can’t, either!” I stared at the scroll. “Look, whatever that thing does, I doubt it’ll make the whole hive collapse or anything, and it could be useful.” “So you think I should try it?” “Chrysalis had a reason for keeping this here. Dunno about you, but I’d like to know what that reason is, and aside from asking her directly, I don’t see how we can get at that reason unless we try the spell.” I pondered this. Despite what Pharynx had said, I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but if he thought it was a good idea… “Okay… okay… just, stand back a little, would you? I don’t know what’ll happen…” He did, and I called up my magic, focusing on wielding it the way the scroll said to, and fired a burst of it into the floor, and a wall sprouted rapidly from the spot, extending upward and to either side to merge with the preexisting walls and the ceiling, separating me from Pharynx and almost trapping me inside the secret room! “Mother of all trouble…” Pharynx shouted from the other side. “You okay, Thorax? What did you do?” “I don’t know! You think this is supposed to happen?” “How should I know? You’re the one who read the scroll!” “Well, it could be that the spell was meant as a construction tool… but I didn’t read the whole thing…” “Can you undo it?” “I’m not sure…” “Well, what does the rest of the scroll say?” “I don’t know. The lamp remained on your side and it’s too dark in here.” “Have you tried using magic as a light source?” I hadn’t, but I was pretty sure I knew what he meant. I tried to create an orb of light in the tip of my horn like I’d seen some unicorns do. “Oh hey, it worked!” I read on. “No, it only describes how to use the spell with a bit more finesse. It does seem to be a construction spell, and what I started with must be a version for when you need to build a wall quickly, probably in emergencies.” “Can you do the finesse version?” “I think so… the way it’s described, I’m supposed to something like levitate the wall to where I want it while making sure it stays in place… sounds convoluted but I think I get what it means…” I did as instructed; the newly-formed wall yielded to my magic and, little by little, shrank back in on itself until it was almost gone. I didn’t bother smoothing out the edges; all that mattered was that I’d figured it out! I could come back to it later! “Nice to see those antlers are useful for something, by the way,” Pharynx said, smirking. “What do you mean?” “They lit up together with your horn when you were casting spells.” “Really? Huh… You think that’s why my magic is stronger now?” “Don’t know, don’t care. What about those other scrolls? More magic?” “Well, I found a couple I couldn’t read… maybe you can?” I gave him one. “Nah, never seen such a script, but I sense something severe stirring in it… Dark magic? You’d better be careful with that, Thorax.” “I know, I sensed the same thing. I’ll ask the ponies if they can figure it out.” “Yeah, they’d probably know more about it than any of us,” he said reluctantly. “And the others?” “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far.” “You gonna check them now?” Wow, he almost sounded like… like he genuinely wanted to know what was on the scrolls - no, like he wanted us to find out together! “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. “You sounded like you were making an effort to spend time with me and be friendly and I can’t believe it!” He gagged. “Thorax, you’re new to magic and you’re messing with spells you’ve never seen before. I’m trying to keep you from hurting yourself. Or to put you in a healing cocoon if you do hurt yourself.” “Aww, that’s really sweet of you!” I reached out to hug him, but he pushed me away. “Sweet?! I’ve gotta do something with myself! I mean, it’s not like I have any troops to command or any duties to take care of!” “You’re still mad about that?” He huffed. An awkward silence followed, and having drawn a blank as to how to dissolve it, I invested my attention into the scrolls again. The first few I grabbed off the shelves were unreadable. After that, I came across one that looked like a blueprint of something, and Pharynx thought it looked like some kind of weapon Chrysalis may have been developing but couldn’t say anything more without taking a closer look, so we set it aside. Not that I wanted that weapon, but he insisted that Chrysalis could still build it from memory and wanted to know what he’d be up against. Then there were more unreadable scrolls, after which we found one that appeared to both of us like designs for a torture device. Pharynx set that aside, too, though without elaborating what he intended to do with it. The rest of the shelved scrolls were, unsurprisingly, unreadable. I thought for a moment that we were done, but then I remembered I hadn’t finished looking at the scrolls on the table; I’d started with them and gotten distracted by Pharynx’s return from disposing of the torture kit! He had disposed of it, hadn’t he? I decided to trust him on that and grabbed the remaining scrolls. Again, one was unreadable. The next one was a long list of names. I unrolled it completely; it was really long! Most of the names were crossed out; in fact, only a few remained uncrossed: Celestia and Luna near the beginning, and then nothing for a long while until Discord, Cadance, and Shining Armor, the three of which had actually been crossed out and written again, and a little further down, it listed Princess Twilight and her friends, Spike, Flurry Heart, and at the very end, my own name and Pharynx’s, both written in capital letters. I showed it to Pharynx. “Is this what I think it is?” I asked, fearing he’d say yes. “That depends on what you think it is,” he retorted, skimming through the names. “Some of the crossed-out names are unfamiliar to me, most of the others are the enemies she defeated or was told they’d died of other causes, and I think you know who the uncrossed ones are. Yep, definitely a hit list.” “Why did she keep it? I mean, I don’t think she’d have forgotten who her enemies are.” “Okay, a list of mementoes and a to-do list in one. Happy now?” “No! That’s an awful lot of names!” “Have you met her?” “Okay, point taken.” “Next!” There was one scroll remaining. It was written in normal script, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Well?” Pharynx asked. “I’m not sure… It looks like a collection of spells, but it doesn’t say what any of them do… and they’re awfully alike, almost like variations of the same spell…” “Can’t you guess what they do?” I shook my head, still looking at the scroll. “Think you could try them?” “Maybe…” I picked one at random and cast it on the wall. Nothing happened. I tried aiming it at the table, with the same result. I shrugged at Pharynx. “You sure you’re doing it right?” “I think so…” “Is it supposed to be cast on inanimate objects?” “It doesn’t say. What else would it be cast on?” “Many things. Weather, living creatures, the caster himself…” Then, after a moment, he added, “Try it on me.” “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t want to hurt you or anything…” “Just do it.” “Without knowing what it does?” “Thorax…” I knew that tone; he used it as a last warning whenever I didn’t realize discussion was over and any further attempts would be futile in a way that would only result in cuts and bruises if I kept pressing the matter. Reluctantly, I fired off the same spell as before, and he stumbled and collapsed onto the ground, curling up into a defensive position and gasping for breath. “OW! What did you do, Thorax? Ugh!” “Oh no… are you okay? I’m so sorry!” “What did you do?!” “I… I don’t know… I thought I got the spell right but-” “Think again! That felt like you threw me in a pool of superheated lava!” I froze. That description was unnervingly familiar! I looked at the scroll again and felt knots forming in my stomach as I took a closer look at the words written tiny in brackets at the end of each spell. Crucio seca… Crucio caeda… Crucio coqua… Crucio algea… Crucio misera… Crucio frema… Crucio calca… Crucio lapida… Crucio morsa… Crucio flarga… Crucio acori… Crucio franga… Crucio trunca… Crucio apida… Crucio rumpa… Crucio scabi… Crucio icta… Crucio igna… Crucio ultima… I didn’t know all the words, but I still managed to recognize some I’d seen in Sunburst’s books. If I remembered their meaning correctly, and I couldn’t be sure as I hadn’t been especially interested in the ancient language in question, that would mean these were- “Torture spells.” Pharynx had by now recovered enough to join me in reading the scroll, and hadn’t needed long to reach the same conclusion as me. “Might have known.” “Oh, Pharynx… I’m so, so, so, so sorry! I never meant to hurt you! I should have known...I should have recognized what this was! Please forgive me!” He said nothing. I looked at the scroll again, feeling a storm rising up inside me. This thing should never have existed! How long ago had she devised it? How many drones had it brought the worst day of their lives to? How many times? How many of them had thought they’d deserved it? How many could say that one of these abominations was the last thing they’d ever felt? My eyes filled with tears as I tried in vain to convince myself that these spells had been created for me and me alone, that no other being, changeling or otherwise, had ever wronged her so deeply to make her resort to such horrors, that she hadn’t been aware of just how indescribably painful her spells were… but deep inside, I knew better. She’d known exactly what the spells did and how horribly they did it, and she hadn’t held back! Hornet had said so! But I was in a position to do something about it, no matter how insignificant. I couldn’t make Chrysalis forget any of these spells and I couldn’t keep her from using them on anyone unless I tracked her down and devised a good enough supervision system if reforming her turned out to not be an option, and I couldn’t turn back time to prevent the spells from being invented, but I could make sure no one else got their hooves on the scroll! I prepared to unleash a burst of magic that would incinerate the parchment, but then Pharynx snatched the scroll out of my magical grip and stormed away with it. “Hey! I shouted after him. “Where are you taking that? Come back!” When he didn’t reply, I went after him, but he was already gone. Now what? Knowing him, he’d put it somewhere I wouldn’t think to look for it, and he’d refuse to tell me where it was or what he intended to do with it no matter how hard I tried to get him to tell me! What did he want with it, anyway? To destroy it, not having realized I’d been about to? I sure hoped so! That thing was dangerous beyond words! Well, at least I hadn’t blasted him in the face again. There was nothing more of interest here. The illegible scrolls were pretty much piled up together, and Pharynx had forgotten to grab the ones he’d set aside for further review, and whatever was on any of it, I didn’t want anyone messing with them until I had them looked at and declared safe. I detached the lamp and placed it on my back, built a wall to block off the chamber, and on an impulse, built another wall in front of that one, and then one more. I was under no illusion that it’d stop anyone determined to get in or that the other walls wouldn’t yield sooner assuming any of them were of the same thickness and quality as the ones I’d just erected, but at least it felt better than leaving the room open for anyone to stumble into or putting up just one wall. Barring any unforeseen developments, I intended to keep the room closed off until a chance presented itself to take the scrolls to Sunburst, Twilight, or Starlight. I left my bedchamber and ran into Psycho. “Oh, hi,” I said. “Have you seen Pharynx anywhere?” “No, why?” “Nevermind. I’ll find him sooner or later… I think… In the meantime,” I passed him the lamp, “I found this. Can you or someling else release it and nurse it back to health?” “I thought we got rid of them all… okay, I’ll find someone. Anyway, the courier from Klugetown just came back.” “How did it go?” “He tried to give the declaration to the local crime boss - there isn’t any kind of normal hierarchy there and the crime boss is the closest thing they have to an official leader, in case you didn’t know - but he didn’t get there. Says a landshark tried to grab him and he got chased and had to toss some of those gems around as a diversion. In the end he just stuck the declaration to a wall somewhere in town and scrammed while he could.” “At least he made it back!” “Yes, but we still don’t know how much we lost. Bandit is counting the remaining gems.” “Nevermind the gems! Is the courier injured?” “A couple of scratches, but otherwise fine.” “Thank goodness! Any more of them back yet?” “No, Klugetown is the closest. I don’t expect anyling else back before tomorrow, and that’s assuming they don’t run into any complications.” “Okay. Has anything happened in the hive that I should know about?” “The arts-and-crafts group and the feelings forum are due to start today, and I’ve assigned them to former Drill Chamber B-5 and Armory H-17, respectively. The choir is still looking for members and Antenna is still collecting the seeds and saplings. If you meant if there was trouble, no, none that I know of.” “Thanks. I’ll be in the throne room, I guess.” He nodded and trotted off with my lamp in tow, and I went to tackle today’s duties.