//------------------------------// // Chapter 46 // Story: A Noble Death // by LSTS Connor //------------------------------// Six didn't know where she was. She couldn't even tell if there was a where to begin with. She could feel everything, and yet…she could feel nothing. She felt her aching muscles but could not see them. She felt the slow rhythmic beating of her heart in her chest yet could see no torso. All she could see was the inky black void that surrounded her. Then, in the distance, a star manifested itself. Then another, and another before a whole constellation made itself known. As seconds ticked by, the black void was quickly filled to the brim with dots of light, and before she knew it, Six was floating in the void between planets. Then she felt a pull and realized she was no longer floating, but falling. Falling to the planet below her, a planet she knew all too well. A bright light suddenly shone from the corner of her vision, making her blink rapidly. She looked away for a moment before focusing her gaze on the source, and then everything froze. The falling sensation was gone. The slipspace bomb tearing a covenant carrier apart above her ceased in its expansion and unraveling of spacetime. “I have witnessed thousands of acts of courage and bravery over my long life. I remember every face. I remember every word. I remember the looks on every one of the faces of their loved ones as I told them their beloved wasn’t coming home,” came a voice from the inky blackness of space. “I thought I had witnessed the worst this universe had to offer… and then you came along.” Six knew that voice, the moon princess, but she didn’t care. Her only focus was the black hole above her… and the friend that resided at its singularity. “With skills unheard of and armor impossible to understand yet with no magical interference to speak of. So naturally, I needed to take a look to determine whether you were a threat or not.” She could hear Luna’s hooves clack against the nothingness of space as she began to walk around the frozen scene. The alicorn’s eyes roamed the spectacle before finally settling on the Spartan. “Am I?” asked Six absentmindedly as finally tore her gaze away from the destruction above her. “Very much so, but that does not matter now. The past is the past. It makes us what we are today. But you… you're shackled by it with chains of your grief.” Six looked down at Reach. Luna slowly walked over before standing next to the Spartan, her gaze similarly pointed downwards towards the planet. “This was your home,” Luna stated. “How do you know?” “Because I have seen your memories, I have watched your dreams. I created a fantasy of this ‘ONI’ to discover your intentions, a violation I am deeply sorry for.” Luna braced herself for the tirade and possible beating she may soon be the target of for her confession. Six chuckled ever so lightly, surprising the alicorn. “Are you not…upset? Angry?” “If I was, would it matter anymore? Hell, I’ve trusted you ponies too much already. So what did you get? My technical knowledge on how to build a gun? I should warn you about that, though. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, there’s no way to put it back in.” “By my moon, no! I had only seen what you allowed me to see when you…’talked’ with those ‘marines.’” “…You know about the Covenant?” “I know what you know. I have seen what you have lived through, and listened to your retellings…And I know that nothing I could say could bring back what you have lost.” “Then why are you here? We have a war to fight, I…” Six closed her eyes and focused on recalling what she could before her arrival here in what she assumed to be her mind. Then she remembered: The Engine, Spirit, the collapse…her hail mary. Six’s breathing began to quicken, and her heart resumed to pound out of her chest as she quickly turned to Luna with eyes full of emotion she didn’t realize she could experience…fear. “Is Spirit okay?!” “Relax, relax, my little pony. She will be fine, thanks to you. You should be more worried about yourself, however. We have yet to extract you from the tunnel. The mere fact that we are having this conversation means you have fallen unconscious,” Six let out a breath of relief. “Okay…okay, good. I just–I can’t lose another one…not again, never again.” Silence overtook the pair as they looked down at the planet below. Six spoke up a minute later. “Why are you here?” “To help you.” “How can you possibly help me from here?” “I can help you move on, help you remove the chains that bind you to what you can never return to.” “What's that supposed to mean?” “Exactly what I said… Here,” Luna stood up and began to walk towards a door that suddenly stood in the middle of the void. ”Follow me. I want to show you something. Show you that I know exactly what you’re going through.” Six looked back up at the silent black hole, contemplating what Luna had offered. The Spartan stood up and followed the expectant Luna through the doorway. Light washed over Six, and as she stepped through she found herself bare, her armor vanishing with the dim glow that materialized into the form of Luna beside her. She could feel the breeze brush against her skin, the grass beneath her hooves, and the chill of the midnight air. Looking down, Six could see the two-pronged burn scar across her chest in the moonlight. The rubbery pink skin clashed with her dark blue fur. “Follow me,” spoke the moon princess as she began to canter towards a nearby hill. Six followed suit after a moment of inspection. They appeared to be in a forest of some sort, where exactly she didn’t know. Making their way to the top of the nearby hill, the pair found themselves looking down at what looked like the remnants of a military camp. And standing in the middle of the burning wreckage was another Luna covered in silver armor and wielding a dark blue scythe. Bodies of ponies littered the ground, blood slowly pooling on the grass. “What am I looking at?” “A memory from an age long past… The ponies of the present call you Angel, and our enemies call you Demon. Back then, I had no such luxury… they just called me Nightmare,” Luna took a breath. “What you are seeing here is…was one of my duties a thousand years ago. The following morning my sister arrived to find this camp reduced to ashes, with myself waiting among the remains. They never stood a chance.” “I don’t see what that has to do with me,” Luna laughed mirthlessly at the Spartan's response. “Come now, miss Grim Reaper. Surely you see the resemblance?” Tilting her head in confusion, Six looked back down towards the scene below them, though she could not see Luna standing there. She saw herself, clad in her armor, standing over the bodies of insurrectionists among the ruins of what had been their camp. Her trusty rifle and magnum were in hand. Luna continued. “Like you, I had to do many things some would consider deplorable. I had been fighting bandits since I was but a filly. Celestia could not always be there to protect me after all.” The scene before them changed once again, from a burning camp to a decimated village. A small blue filly wearing a ripped cloak was wandering the desolate streets, crying out for anypony that could hear as the remnants of dried tears clung to the sides of her face. “This was my home over a thousand years ago. It was meant to be a happy night.” With a blink, the surroundings became that of the same town but filled to the brim with music, laughter, and the sounds of merrymaking. And where there was once a crying child now stood a smiling filly playing tag with a bigger snow-white mare. “There had been an extremely bountiful harvest, and in such times of strife, an occasion like this was to be celebrated… What the village elders didn’t know was that all this ruckus had alerted a nearby flock of pegasi.” Screams began to ring out among the crowd as pegasi clad in plate armor came from the night sky. Some landed on rooftops while the others continued to circle the town like a pack of vultures above a rotting carcass. Then, in a moment of synchronicity among the bandits, they all struck at once. Chaos reigned, for there was nowhere for the panicking masses to run. The little filly stood in shock before she was scooped up by the white mare and began running through the streets, looking for somewhere, anywhere they could hide. Six watched them burst into a nearby building as the streets began to run red with the blood of those foolish enough to fight back. But just before the pair entered the building fully, the white mare was grabbed by her golden tail and pulled back into the street. The filly was dropped from the mare’s forelegs in the doorway as the white mare rolled and attempted to fight off the pegasi above them. “Luna, run!” she screamed out before a blade was suddenly thrust into her side. She yelled in pain but continued to weakly struggle against their attacker as the little filly looked on in terror. More pegasi came as the mare gave one final yell of “Run!” before she disappeared. The filly did what she was told and galloped as fast as she could through the building and out the other side. “I don’t know how long I ran, nor how I wasn’t spotted. This entire night is but a blur to me. I must admit, my memory is not perfect, but I remember one thing with absolute clarity.” The scene returned to the desolate village, the wandering filly standing where the white mare had dropped her, the corpse of one of her attackers lying against the building. “I remember what those pegasi looked like.” Luna turned to look Six in the eye. “I can’t even remember that mare's name anymore. Were they a friend? Nanny? No matter how hard I try to recall, the only thing I see is that Tartarus damned armor and the faces of those monsters as they dragged her away!” Luna found herself panting heavily. Taking a deep breath to calm down she continued in her usual serene tone. “It would be nearly a day later when my sister found me surviving among the wreckage. From that day on, I vowed to myself that I would find and make every single one of those pegasi pay.” “I let my hatred fester and grow. I became the very nightmare I dreamt of every night to my subjects. And eventually,” an image of Luna appeared, clad in the same silvery armor locking her scythe against the halberd her sister wielded on the fields of battle. “I let that nightmare loose.” Silence overtook the pair as Six remained as stoic and unreadable as ever, but Luna knew in this realm of dreams exactly what was going through her mind. “I’m sorry for your loss,” spoke Six after what seemed like an eternity, but something was off with her. The words had left her mouth, but her mind was lightyears away. Seeing this, Luna lit her horn again, and the scene around them changed as its progenitor was switched from the alicorn back to the Spartan. Another flash of light overtook the pair, and when they emerged, Luna barely had time to process the change before her senses were overcome with the sounds of warfare.  A jungle of concrete now surrounded the pair, its structure vaguely reminding Luna of Manehatten. The visible destruction that marred every inch of this street brought Luna’s stomach low as flames and smoke licked the upper floors of the white skyscrapers surrounding the pair. Luna looked back at Six and found her staring at the entrance to one of those skyscrapers. The words ‘Biku Tourist Office’ were inscribed on the closest wall in golden coloring, black burn marks dotted the stone, and Luna could see melted concrete dripping out of the holes. A glass entryway stood between the two melting walls, but before Luna could get a good look at the writing on its surface, its structure was suddenly shattered as a series of rapid ‘bangs’ echoed throughout the street. A large dark-blue figure fell to the ground in front of the pair, purple blood and indigo lighting pouring out of their armor. She recognized this creature, an ‘Elite’ she believed it to be called. One of the soldiers of this ‘Covenant’ Six and her people had been fighting for the very right to exist. She couldn't help but sneer at the entity that lay dead at her hooves, a feeling shared by her present company as Six spat onto the elite’s face. Six’s teeth were bared, and Luna could swear she heard some sort of growling come from the pegasus as they glared another hole into the elite. A phrase made literal by the Spartan’s mind as the princess watched the elite's mandibled face lose all distinguishing features and collapse in on itself. The sound of footsteps drew the pair's attention back to the entryway as a group of five humans clad in green armor jogged out, their weapons at the ready. No words were exchanged, but hand signals were as another pair of humans excited the building, the larger one holding the other smaller girl in their arms and close to their chest. They were wearing some type of ramshackle protection of scrap metal as they carefully stepped out and hugged the closest wall. Her eyes attempted to focus on the faces of the humans now standing before her, but no matter what she tried, their faces remained a blur. As if watching the scene through a watery lens, the detail of every person's face was blurred beyond recognition. But the look Six gave that pair of humans covered in scrap metal told more than anything the scene before them could explain. “Is that your father?” Luna guessed, snapping the silent Spartan out of her staring and causing her to nod slowly with reddening eyes. Six’s composure began to strain as she turned back to watch the blurry scene. The marines used more hand signals, directing those at the rear to move up and into the street, their weapons pointed at the sky. Luna watched their tense postures begin to relax, exhaustion cutting through. Only for the marines to be thrown from the street as a large monster of some kind landed next to them with a massive hammer in its grasp. Surprisingly, this creature wasn’t blurred, giving Luna a full frontal view of its deformed and minotaur-like face. The creature roared and slammed its hammer with an eardrum-shattering *BOOM*, sending the marines beside it flying down the street. The alicorn heard their spines snap like twigs as they hit the asphalt thirty meters away. A warcry by the remaining three marines followed as they opened fire on the creature, who simply shrugged the bullets off with a thunderous roar of its own. With another swing of its hammer, a hurricane of debris was thrown toward the remaining humans. Shards of glass and spikes of metal that flew close to the speed of sound peppered the survivors. Time began to slow as she watched the human holding the little girl turn to shield her from the oncoming shrapnel as the other two marines were shredded by the blast. Though the human shield was not perfect, several flakes of shrapnel cut across one of the girl's eyes, bearly missing her cornea. Luna turned and could now see tears openly flowing from Six’s eyes as she watched the memory before them play out. The brute snorted like a wild animal as it inspected the carnage before it, looking for any signs of life. Luckily, the little girl was too shocked and scared to make a move as Luna could just barely hear the dying wheeze of ‘I love you’ leave the father's lips before going limp.  A yell of rage from her companion snapped the princess's attention away from the carnage and towards a charging Six. Luna didn't even have time to process what had just happened before the sound of a blade plunging into flesh over and over and over again filled her ears. Six had pounced on the brute in rage and began to brutally stab the life out of it as the knife she had seemingly plucked from nowhere rended the creature’s flesh with ease. “Die!” she yelled as she raised her blade for another blow. “Die!” A spray of blood splattered the Spartan’s face as she continued to butcher the creature again and again and again.  The Scene around them began to flicker between that of a city and a desolate brown wasteland as every stab from Six was driven deeper and deeper into the Brute. “DIE, YOU ABOMINATION! YOU’VE TAKEN EVERYTHING FROM ME!! DIE!!!” yelled the Spartan with such ferocity and emotion that it made Luna’s very soul shiver. Seeing Six this overcome with rage would be an image forever burned into the alicorn's mind. One final stab to the forehead changed the scene for good. A vast desert surrounded them, its sand utterly barren of all life as corpses upon corpses upon corpses dotted the land. Luna knew where they were. She had seen this memory play out countless times in the dream realm, the place where Six crossed over. The Pegasus was breathing heavily as she sat atop the dead brute, her hooves still holding onto the blade lodged in the creature's skull. Luna approached slowly, careful not to step on the bodies around her. But unlike those close to the horizon, these bodies were humans, clad in armor similar to that of Six’s, only made to fit bipedal creatures. Yet, it was the bodies closest to Six that truly grabbed Luna’s attention because one of them wasn’t humanoid in appearance. Lying directly in front of the heavily breathing Spartan was a light blue unicorn, their body sprawled out among those of her previous, human, friends. Luna could recall all their names. How could she not after the number of times she had watched them die alongside Six, unable to change the outcome? It would always lead to this place by the end, a mountain of alien bodies paving the way. Yet no matter how many she killed, be they Covenant or changeling, she would end up here. More bodies, more blood, and Six never felt any different. “I lost everything to the Covenant,” Six said as she looked up at the orange and dust-filled sky. “My parents, my home, my family…everything.” She looked the alicorn in the eye, tears and blood staining her face. “I enjoy watching the life drain out of an elite's eyes. I relish the sounds of a grunt’s bones shattering under my boot. Now I can't do that…I can’t help humanity from here. Hell, I’m not even human anymore.” A silence descended upon the pair, the only sounds being the rustling of the wind in their feathers and the drip of blood from the dead brute. Luna spoke up after a pregnant pause. “You have lost more than anypony could possibly imagine…but you have also gained something you would have never found in your old world.” Six snorted, “And what’s that?” “An opportunity to heal, an opportunity for peace.” Six snorted again. “Some peace. I’m currently buried under tonnes of rock.” “Not a physical peace, not yet anyway, but one inside of yourself. You have killed thousands of this Covenant in search of revenge, yet now you cannot. So you have focused that rage on finding vengeance for Spear, and you will find no peace there. You have friends who will run through Tartarus for you should you command it, but if you continue on this path, you may find yourself alone once more.” “What do you want me to do then?” Six asked as the world around them began to fade to nothingness. Their time together coming to an end as consciousness began to return to the Spartan. “Put your past to rest, you have done your duty there, and you have been given a second chance. Use it. Do not let your nightmares consume you as they did to me. Do what I could not and become stronger from it. Be more than just a Demon…Be the Angel they already believe you to be.”