//------------------------------// // Chapter 21: "You… what are you? // Story: The Ghost of Coltistrano: Phantom Eulogy // by EthanClark //------------------------------// The unicorn cut down an alleyway, disappearing from view, betrayed by the small drops of blood trailing behind his limp. Amber eyes followed from the rooftops. Stumbling, crashing against the walls, Shield crossed an empty street into a dark building the Ghost recognized. He touched down on the street, studying the exterior of the tavern with a piercing glare. Gentle creaks of the wooden door echoed in the air as he slowly, carefully, approached the end of the trail. Worn wood floors and barstools were his only company. Drops fell from his bottle, a struggle for his trembling hooves to even hold it straight, let alone pour his much needed comfort into a murky, half-cleaned glass. Clinking against the cup’s lip echoed through the empty tavern. With his precious fluid captured he placed the bottle onto the table carelessly, kicking up a cloud of dust flowing along a gentle breeze from the open door beyond his booth. It was the same at every booth, showing days of neglect he now sat in, but for the weary unicorn a little dirt was a comfort compared to what lurked behind shaken eyes, aimlessly following the imaginary trails of his own thoughts before him. The glass pressed to his lips. No magic carried it, for the ache of the night’s battle still buzzed within his skull. It was a chore to push the generous glass of brandy up enough to pass its contents to him but by desire or spite he managed and gulped greedily before pressing the glass to his forehead to soothe his pain. It failed to help, but the silence was enough for him to loosen his muscles. The slightest sound of creaking wood, however, snapped his spine straight to scan the room. All he found were memories. Beside him stood the images of two unicorns, proper gentlecolts of distinguished rank and authority, addressing a white earth pony sitting in the other seat of the booth. Red curls flowed past his hazy vision on their way out the door, stoking the vestiges of some dying ember in him before the next scene smothered it entirely. “‘The seas are dangerous…’” Final words for painful thoughts as he elected to drown in his next drink instead of witnessing what he knew came next, casting the frenzied visions away and leaving him to his solitude, but something made a noise. This time he froze in place. Methodical hoofsteps trailed across the floor towards him, steady breaths reached his ears, and finally the unicorn could see his visitor in the corner of his vision, lurking just beyond sight as he always did. The bottle rose. Shield’s trembling subsided just enough for his sudden burst of hospitality, but the shape refused, stepping towards the seat across from him. Specs of blood dotted his face, the parts the mask never covered. A noticeable limp carried him as the pony slid into the booth, wincing slightly as his hoof eased him down, but always keeping the unicorn in his sights. Contended sighs escaped his mouth as he settled in his seat. Weariness turned to contempt as amber eyes he knew so well settled on him. They said nothing. For a few minutes they merely shared the silence and subtle notes of fruit rising from the bottle, a cloudy sensation holding no sway over his visitor. In time, though, he reached up to remove the shadow covering his face, gazing across the table to the only other patron in their darkened tavern of memory. “Of all places,” Silver muttered. “You could’ve ran anywhere, and you chose here.” “An exercise in futility. You would have found me, regardless.” “I would’ve,” Silver said with a thin smile.  Shield chuckled softly, pulling once more from the glass. “I suppose congratulations are in order, yes? The queen is dead?” “Defeated.” “Well, ‘Long Live the Queen’, and all that,” Shield mumbled. “A particularly degrading part of my history, now passed.” “I’m surprised you ever considered.”  “As am I,” Shield said, with Silver catching the barest hint of a quivering lip behind his false smile. “Then why did you do it? Of all people, for all possible reasons, why?” “Oh, do not act as if you are ignorant to hatred. After everything between us, how could I not? I wanted… needed control again. Control of the game.” “‘Game’? All the murder and terror, summed up in the most harmless word you could use. To think, I asked Gavel to save you.” Shield let out a laugh, thick with the scent of booze. “Better luck would have been had asking the changeling, or her brother, than Gavel.” “You’re right, seeing as you killed him, too.” Shield paused, his mind digesting Silver’s words slowly. Whatever smile graced his lips dissolved into silent muttering directed towards the liquid held in his glass. “Was it worth it?” “I… do not know.” Silver gave a deep sigh through his nose, staring down at the dusty table. “This is the same table I sat at with Abby and my parents, the night you came to send me to disciplinary service. Before you sent me to die.” “It is. Did you ever think we would make it this far?” “I prayed we wouldn’t,” Silver mused, somberly, but Shield huffed at his words, drinking again. “I always wondered whether or not I would win, to rescue the world from things like you.” Silver gave a drowsy scoff. “Things like me… you made me.” “I did, did I not? Now, I have spent so much time trying to unmake you, and… well, here you are.” Shield had foregone the glass and pulled straight from the bottle. “For every endeavor I imagined, there was always you to consider. You needed to die.” “I gave you every chance to surrender.” “Every chance to submit, you mean,” Shield hissed. “You’ve killed dozens out of pride, and ruined the lives of countless more, including your own.” “You ruined me!” Shield’s teeth were bared, leaning over the table where the reek of booze could almost strike Silver. “All you had to do was follow orders. If you only did then I would still have my station, and the world would be as it should be, but you… you…” Shield fell back against the booth, chuckling as he peered into the bottle. “Darrox would never have been so direct. He and I were proper enemies. Respectful, ruthless, with an appreciation for the game. The ‘discourse’, as he would say. You, however… you have changed.” “Killing those I love has that effect.” “No, no. I killed your father, your mentor, your captain, and you maintained your impetuous morality, but something has broken in you. Darrox’s principles, you no longer believe in them, do you? You are now something new, something to truly haunt me, and you just won’t... die.” Silver watched as Shield took a long pull from the bottle, slamming it down onto the wood as once-glossy eyes turned fierce. “I killed you, Silver Spade. I dragged you out to that stretch of empty sea and let you drown. Wounded you in ways no one else can, with a malice few have ever known, but despite everything you… there is your ‘why’. Why I have fought you for this long, because no matter what I did you would simply not die. “I thought you merely some whelp to be culled like any other sick dog, an obstacle, but… then you returned, and when I thought you dead in Manehatten you returned again. Again, and again, until finally I knew I had you with no way out. Trapped in a burning city, mortally wounded, cornered and beaten beyond recognition, you fell from the cliff and I was finally free. Then…” Shield froze, eyes looking up from the beverage to Silver, jaw trembling with the weight of his next words. “That day in the rain told me everything. You never survived the ocean, or Manehatten, or the cliff. How could you? I killed you long before I swore any hopes of vengeance, yet here you are. You… what are you?” Silence was the last thing Shield’s rising nerves needed. The drink finally took hold in his mind as he slammed his hoof against the table towards the stoic pony before him, seething and feeling his grip on his emotions slip with each quiet second. Again, he shouted. “You cannot be real! Some specter of my mind, left there from the madness of these schemes, decades of sinister dealings while the rest of the world passed by. Something there to taunt me as my life, my dignity slips away with each new game played, pushing me to such base lows as this, cowering in some squalid hole. Have I been trying to kill a ghost? Tell me!” Silver only watched the display unfold before him, stoking Shield’s ire. “I still hear your cursed laughter in my mind, and nothing I do can calm it. Your shadow follows my every step, your eyes my every move. I am cursed! Cursed by the low-born whelp who always stood in the wrong place at the right time, but for sanity’s sake you cannot be alive! What are you, what…” Shield fell back in his seat, the glass falling from his hoof and crashing against the floor. The only power still available to him were the puffs of breath and aimless eyes wandering around the room, every now and then landing on the motionless Silver, and each time Shield would clench his teeth and threaten to rear up to face him, but never did. Instead, he stayed limp where he sat. Finally, Silver moved, slowly closing the distance to Shield’s face as he neared, watching the once-furious unicorn recoil at the proximity. He shuddered under Silver’s presence. Watching his trembling lip, the tension in his brow, a thousand words flooded Silver’s mind as the defiant grumble slowly turned to a whimper rising from Shield’s voice, and Silver could feel the same sensation he saw that day in the rain, the same thing his nemesis now reeked with: fear. Silence was his only answer. As softly as he came, Silver pulled himself from the booth and made his way across the floor, gaze locked onto a particularly shadowy corner where two pale eyes waited. He nodded to her, gone before she ever emerged. The stillness of Canterlot’s streets welcomed him with a gentle breeze kissing his wounds and rolling through his loose mane. No soldiers patrolled, and the sounds of battle were long over, leading Silver to make his leisurely way down the street towards the only other figure in the night. Violet curls bobbed in the wind, shifting to reveal weary azure eyes twinkling in the lamplight above her as Silver relinquished all tension left in his aching limbs, following the invisible trail into her embrace.