//------------------------------// // Chapter 8: Secrets // Story: A Grand Journey // by willow_whistle //------------------------------// They approached the tower, presuming that they’ll figure out what’s going on in there. as a flash of yellow light causes the tower to tremor and a stone to fall off the top onto a mail-carrying pegasus who was frozen in mid-air. The rock shatters against her, revealing that the frozen ponies are invincible. “I don’t like this one bit.” “Neither do I, but at least we know they’ll be okay.” “Pinky Pie, they’re frozen! We have to save them! They probably got stuck this way by her way up there!” “I know, I’m just trying to stay positive. You taught me that.” Minty nodded somberly. “S-sorry…” “Hey,” Pinky looks her in the eyes as they start to climb the stairs in the spire, “It’s alright, babe. ‘Our own advice is often the hardest to take.’ That’s what my mom says, anyways.” “Cheerilee sure has a way with words! Guess ya kinda need that to be a school-teacher.” They both smile before opening a door, which falls off its hinges and tumbles down the stairs, landing at the bottom with a thunk. They stared at the door at the bottom of the stairs, at least 20 feet down. Minty shrugs, and the two enter the room it led to. It was surprisingly well lit, much unlike the rest of the tower, which facilitated the two’s notice of a few disturbing things about the present environment. Firstly, blood. Lots of blood, splattered on the floor, on overturned tables, soaking books. Secondly, an enormous pile of pastel yellow feathers at the base of a chair in the center of the room. Underneath these feathers was a length of thick rope, that seemed to have been burst out of by some horrible beast. Minty and Pinky both strode much closer to one another, as they investigated the particulars of the room. “Okay, so…” Pinky began, “whatever’s up there did this.” “I, uh, don’t think this is my mom anymore…” Minty remarked shakily. “So that’s good, at least?” Pinky made a face, and lifted-- in her magic-- a large, very old book that was on the floor, near the feathers. Miraculously, it was not spattered with blood as many of the other times had been, but it was familiar. Pinky inspected it for a moment before gasping. “Minty! This is from Lamplight’s study!” “What the-- really!?” Minty gallops across the room to look at it, and reads aloud “A Complete History of Known Transformative Curses, Hexes, and Charms, by Lamplight, the last Medicine Mare; co-authored by Clover the Clever…” Her eyes widened. “Lamplight worked with my MOM?” There was a shriek from above, and Pinky dropped the book to the ground. The two mares didn’t need to say anything, both of them zoomed up the stairs to the very top, where they intuited the issue was occurring, only to see a huge, bloodied bat-pony-thing, looming over a unicorn mare around their same age. She was covered in bite marks, and her dark violet fur and predominantly white mane were stained with blood that it became apparent was hers. The creature above her bent down, with its jaws opening, huge fangs gleaming in the midday sun, as Pinky charged towards it with her horn out in front. “Get away from her!” Pinky shouted, which caused the monster to turn its head to face her, huge yellow eyes seeming to bore a hole right through her. She didn’t know this mare, but she didn’t think there was any way she’d deserve to be eaten. “Pinky, wait!” Minty chased after her, terrified for her love’s safety. “Wait, don’t!” A desperate, harried voice came out of the other unicorn’s mouth, as her horn flashed with an almost blinding golden light, and froze both Minty and Pinky Pie in place. “Um, I-It’s happening…” Flitter Flutter starts to sob uncontrollably, feeling the searing pain all over her body, but concentrated at her wings. This did not overwhelm her as much as guilt, and hate. She hated herself so very, very much for how she thought about Twilight Twinkle, and felt so guilty that she couldn’t stop herself from hurting her the other night, and that she was starting off this morning by doing it again. “Flitter Flutter! What’s wro--” Twinkle stopped herself right away, eyes widened with realization, seeing her poor friend starting to writhe on the floor, her gorgeous eyes turned from teal to yellow in a flash, and steam rose up out of her skin while she shrieked out apologies, mixed in with desperate pleas for help. Twilight Twinkle could not stand how much pain this poor mare was in, and hated herself for the way she thought about Flutter in private. She tried-- and failed-- not to tear up while she used her magic to move Flitter Flutter into a chair, sat her upright, and tied her firmly in place with a thick rope she kept for this purpose. The pegasus had never been able to burst out of it before, and she saw no reason it couldn’t contain her now. “Twilight, I-I’m sorry!” Flitter Flutter shouted out desperately, so desperately that she wasn’t trying to make it sound light anymore. “It’s okay, Flutter!” Twinkle said, scrambling to flip to a page in one of the books she took from her mother. “We’re gonna fix this, I promise.” But Flitter Flutter was already gone, mentally. Whatever was in there now did nothing but growl, hiss, and shake the feathers off her-- its wings, to reveal membranous bat wings underneath. The creature in Flutter’s body seemed to grow and contort beyond her size and form. Flitter Flutter had always been quite a tall mare, and a fairly stocky one too, but this was certainly beyond the known size difference between the two that Twilight had noted in the past. She thought of this, as she heard the ropes strain, and begin to fray and snap. She had to act quickly. Twilight Twinkle leapt forward, trying to appear confident and collected in the face of what very well may be her certain doom, over the table on which the book sat. Her horn began to glow, and she strained herself to perform the most technically complex spell she had yet attempted: Selective Time Stop; if properly cast, Twinkle could conceivably stop time’s effects on every other pony in town. “So if I fail,” she says to herself, struggling to contain the magic she drew into her horn, “nopony but me gets hurt…” She yelped in pain, feeling the enormous charge of magic rush out of her in a wave. Acting as a conduit for so much magic would have killed a less-experienced magician, but Twilight Twinkle was left with nothing more than minor burns on her head, and a body that was both overheating and exhausted. “Alright, Flitter Flutter,” she began, “Let’s get you out of there…” Twilight had foreseen the werebat breaking out of its bindings, especially seeing as it had a propensity to expand its host body, but she wasn’t by any means expecting it to have grown quite as large as it now had. She hated this thing. She hated how it had taken her very best friend’s body and twisted it into this enormous killing machine. She wished she didn’t care so much about Flitter Flutter, that she could bring herself to just destroy the body pursuing her so doggedly, but she could not. Twilight had tried every single method in the book, as well as in several others, to try and slow down the werebat, but not a single one offered any way to return Flitter Flutter to her normal form other than to kill her, which was out of the question. Flitter Flutter was the only pony Twilight Twinkle had ever met who she felt truly understood her, and didn’t expect the impossible, like so many of her mentors had. Flitter Flutter didn’t ever make Twilight feel like she was unworthy of love or trust, as her mother had done. Flitter Flutter didn’t know Twilight was a stallion before the two met, and that fact made Twilight feel like she was able to not worry about being perceived as stallionish around Flutters. At least, when that omitted fact about herself didn’t stop Twilight from feeling like there was any way Flitter Flutter would have the same feelings for Twilight Twinkle that she had for her. With those thoughts, she had an idea. It was a foolish, desperate one, sure, but it was better than killing or being killed. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I mean that!” Twilight shouted, narrowly avoiding a lunge by the werebat. “I don’t think I would have ever believed I could be happy if I hadn’t met you,” she shrieked desperately, barreling over a table in avoidance of enormous, snapping jaws. “The books all told me all I could do is hurt you, but I won’t!” She shouted, before tripping over a book she had left on the floor earlier, and turning on her back. Her pursuer rapidly gaining, a predatory glint in its yellow eyes, before it lunged and grabbed a hold of one of Twilight’s hind legs. She felt its sharp fangs pierce into her skin, and heard it growl as it shook its head from side to side, the way a wolf does to break a caught rabbit’s neck. Searing pain shot through Twilight, as she barely broke free with her mangled leg, and scrambled to the door, which she slammed behind her. “I-I’m so sorry, Flitter Flutter!! I’m trying so hard,” she shouted over her shoulder as she made a mad dash up the stairs, hindered considerably by the injured leg. She didn’t have time to take stock of just how badly it was hurt, but she was incredibly aware of how very badly it hurt when she accidentally fell against the wall, smearing it with her blood. She heard the door thump repeatedly as the monster it held back pushed it closer and closer to its limit. Even as the werebat in her body used it to sink its fangs into Twilight’s leg, her side, and barely missing her neck, Twilight did not, at any point, give up on Flitter Flutter, and she wished so desperately that she could indicate how much she appreciated this, pointless though it may be. It was so horrid, and so fitting for one as pathetic as herself, that the closest she’d ever gotten to some kind of intimacy was turning into a monster and sinking her fangs into somepony else. Hating the feeling of hot, sticky blood dribbling down her chin and filling her mouth, Flitter Flutter tried her very best to say she was sorry, but it only came out as snarls and growls. It felt like every time she tried to resist her body’s attempts to maim and kill her very closest friend, it pushed harder to do exactly that. She could hear very clearly all of Twilight’s attempts to calm her down, but they just made her feel worse, and that seemed to give power to the monster that had hold of her. Enough power to bust down the door that was keeping her at bay, and heard a thud outside a few moments later, presuming that her tackle had been enough to dislodge one of the loose bricks at the top of the spire. But Flutters couldn’t just not fight back! That was precisely what she had always done before, until Twilight taught her otherwise, and gave her the gall to believe she deserved to be happy. She was so grateful to Twilight. She was so kind, and smart, and beautiful, and in so very much danger. Flitter Flutter hated that she almost felt okay about having fallen in love with this pony, even if she knew there was no way she could possibly feel the same way. Flitter Flutter had kept it a secret that she had been a colt growing up, and the fact that Twilight didn’t know that was probably the main reason she’d felt comfortable around her, but that was about to be taken from her. She was about to take that away, to take her best friend’s life, and there was nothing she could do about it. “You know,” she mused in her own head, wistfully, “maybe if I had just told her how I felt before, I wouldn’t have to wish I could still do it now…” She climbed up the stairs with the graceful movements of a stalking leopard, but felt disgusting and bulky and stallionish regardless of this. She hated how she had to feel predatory, even when she hadn’t shifted. She always had been worried about fitting in with other mares, and petrified that they’d find out she was some freak stallion who had to play pretend at being a mare to not cry himself to sleep at night. She heard what Twilight had said earlier, about not being able to hurt her, but as she stalked her prey closer to the edge of the tower, her prey who had been weeping, and begging, and screaming at her not to take her life. Flitter Flutter wished so very, very desperately that she could stop, but she had no control over what was happening. Her mind and body were operating on their own, and she was only a terrified observer. She heard shouting behind her, and her head turned around in time to see another unicorn, about half a head taller than Twilight, charging towards her. Flitter Flutter was so grateful to see that somepony else was able to stop her from doing this when she couldn’t, and mentally prepared herself to have her neck lanced open by-horn, as a flash of yellow-white light blinded her. Twilight could tell that she nearly took her last breath with that spell. It hadn’t been to freeze a whole town this time, but even just two ponies was plenty difficult when she wasn’t bleeding out and afraid for her life. She could tell this was the end for her, as the monster turned its head back around to her, growling like wolf. “I’m so sorry, Flitter Flutter…” She said weakly, sniffling, “I-I’m so sorry… I love you…” The monster opened its jaws, and rushed down towards Twilight Twinkle’s neck. She closed her eyes, and prepared for death to take her, content in the knowledge that she had at least told that secret before she went.