//------------------------------// // 48 — The End of Neigh V: Death for the Sake of Love // Story: Ms. Glimmer and the Do-Nothing Prince // by scifipony //------------------------------// Like Blueblood, Mudflats released his magic. The sensora, as they called themselves, had a magic. I couldn't fathom how it was truly love, but whatever it was, the radiation grew and grew. It felt amazing bathed in the glow, like being caressed and accepted unconditionally. Warmed to the marrow of my bones. Firefall gulped, but now looked away. Were I more than a shadow of myself, I'd have knocked her down and out. Now, I'd merely break the enchantment we were under. Within hoof range, she'd kill me, then Blueblood. Desert Sands shielded his eyes with a fetlock, but kept us all in sight. He licked his lips, as if he were experiencing a feast. For them, feeling love was akin to that? "You could share, too," I said his direction. The unicorn impostor fixed me in a stare that could kill, hissing like a snake. All this time, I patted the ground with a free hoof. I knew my targeting ability was unreliable, but I hadn't bobbled the salve. I was certain I could impart accurate momentum to a moving object. I had used my right hoof for the salve at the cost of applying wound pressure. I'd used it to move a weapon into place. The light radiating from my left brightened and the sound resolved into a ringing that crescendoed as a crystalline chime. Sparkles that accompanied all magic sizzled in random directions and popped faintly. The result bobbed in my peripheral vision. The breeze jostled it, nudging it closer. Seeing Firefall's gaze captured, I chanced it wasn't a ruse and glanced. It almost captured my gaze, too. I had the presence to force my eyes back. Midair— Well, their queen had a name: Chrysalis. With their insect features and naming themselves for body parts, that made sick sense. —Midair, knee high, a pearlescent pink-tinted moth's chrysalis floated. Fashioned of magic, or love, or a transparent substance unique to their pony kind, it resembled swirled, faceted, cut crystal. Something foal-like, head-down flank-up, connected by faintly pulsing arteries, squirmed gently within. It glowed with pink light. Magic waves vibrated across the surface of my horn that alternately tinkled and tickled, feeling like an itchy back well-and-thoroughly scratched by a dear friend. Did innocence feel this way? Or was purity? I remembered holding Blueblood, leaning from the tub, covering him with suds. Contact had resolved the mysterious magic outburst. I'd hugged him until... Not hugging Mudflats' chrysalis! —Were I even in the position to do so. Instead, standing—slowly not to break the enchantment—I reached out my left rear leg, felt, and then tapped— Plink! The glow flared and went out. A limp body fell wetly to the wood chips with a plop. A pony grunted and I looked. Ocelli resembled the black sensora in shape, but looked covered in moist velvety fur rather than chitinous armor. He, or was it a she (no stallion parts), had a light yellow-green coat, with an orange underbelly and lime beetle wing-covers she shuffled, revealing translucent gauzy violet wings. Her ears were thinner, longer pony types that wiggled as she realized she was very different than before. She wore those strapless goggles I'd seen on Facet; through the metallic orange glass, her orange pony eyes sparkled with wonder. I tore my eyes away. Had I done that? Ocelli gasped, standing. She examined herself, emitting squeaks and gasps of amazement. Blueblood said, sounding stronger, "You're no longer starving, are you?" "I—I've never felt so well fed before! Not starved of love, not even hungry, though it radiates deliciously from... her—" A hoof pointed my way, in my peripheral vision. "Love will feed your magic, but you can make it now yourself, even share it," Blueblood said, obviously aiming his words at Desert Sands, if not— Her name was Facet. "You need to eat pony food, but hay no longer tastes like ashes." "What is this Facet? Me? Huh?" Ocelli waved metallic orange hooves at herself. "What has Chrysalis hoarded, kept from her workers, from all sensora!?" "Delusion, cull," Facet hissed. "Delusion." "Traitor. Filthy traitors, you both!" Desert Sands added. "Slacker! Parasite!" Ocelli shot back. Both the transformed sensora and fake unicorn tensed. I thought they might throw themselves at each other, but no. The former Mudflats sidled closer to me, facing the other two sensora, interposing her body between us and Desert Sands. She reeked of honey as her damp fur dried in the sun. Stuck wood chips fell off, but a faint bitter-orange scent presented itself when she fluttered her lace wings. Was she protecting me? The standoff was tenuous at best, if more stable. I positioned my best chance to fight back under my hoof with what I hoped seemed random movement. "Did you kill Firefall?" Blueblood unexpectedly answered, "They didn't. They moved her, though." He sounded stronger. The flow of blood from his neck had stopped! "I couldn't find her. New safe house, Facet-51?" "We weren't the only infiltration cell, Thorax-7," she hissed back, smugly—using generic names based on body parts and numbers, but sarcastic, like I would use a pony's full name to bring my ire to their attention. Firefall was alive. A relief in itself. I asked, "At the townhouse? The otter dance? The kiss? The after—the after the tub? You, Thorax?" He nodded, smiled. His chest, though bloodied and smeared with pink, moved less labored. He coughed, however, and groaned. Facet said sadly, "Gloriously good at performing as a stallion, since he is male, and I trained him myself. What a waste." I met Facet's fake-Firefall magenta eyes. She wasn't missing Ocelli's positioning or that I was distracted by the impostor prince. "The green nightmare, came out of my mouth unbidden. Ocelli's form in the sensora chrysalis, head-down flank-up, tubes shoved into every orifice. I gulped, gulped again, as the orange juice threatened to return to its point of origin. "You did that?" The fake Blueblood quieted. He wheezed as he breathed, not answering for long enough that I inhaled to speak. He said, "Chrysalis' sensora ponies replace other ponies. We weave them into dream capsules. When I got you upstairs, they wanted us to subdue you then and there, but I made them remember that if we were to replace you as well as the prince, given the opportunity, we needed to know you better." "So you—?" "I wasn't sure. You're so different. You're a liminal, a pony undergoing so much life change that pent-up emotions flare blindingly. Your personality defies prediction, bounding from vulnerable to diamond hard. Instinct screamed you might be my destiny—" "So you captured me?" "I did. After I gathered your love, the transition was instantaneous. Instinct did the weaving, but I became lost when I had your dream capsule to move around like an anonymous sack." Facet took a step toward me. I stood instantly, heart racing, tail thrashing. I did my best to make sure the sensora didn't see that the change of elevation made my head whirl. My aching wound made me want to cringe. I sat. She held her more advantageous position, in reach of Blueblood. Thorax continued. "The hormones and spice in a chrysalis is like what swims in your head when you dream. You never wake encapsulated; you're not supposed to; but you woke within five minutes. I'd encapsulated you in the tub so I could clean the residue, but you squirmed even as I hung you up. You thrashed, you moaned, you bit down on feed-lines. I imagined you ripping them, ripping the others out, poisoning the respiratory gel. Worse, your love shriveled, evaporated, and turned to cinders. Gathering love is the whole purpose of a dream capsule, to allow you to dream thinking you're awake, enjoying a full life in your dreams while emitting love. You woke to an unexpected reality. Fear sours everything. It crushed you until your heart beat irregularly. I feared I'd lose you before I could act. I understood then that nothing in this world could ever be as precious as you." "That's when you freed me?" "That's when I realized that love wasn't food. Love is caring for someone more than your own life." "Jellyhead!" Facet hissed. "Cull, don't you know how to titrate the dream mixture—?" "He was right. I wanted to die," I said. "Trying to, because living that nightmare was making me go insane." The green nightmare was so vivid because it was real. Thorax had turned me into a food generator. "Don't know if I can forgive you." "I can live with being unforgiven." Facet made gagging sounds, but judging by the set of her muscles and her stance, she communicated derision. I was giving her further motivation to kill us. "You'd better live," I admonished him. His condition seemed more stable now; I hoped it wasn't shock setting in. "I'll love you, regardless. Allow me to be your prince, my queen, and I'll gladly die for you." "She's not a sensora pony, you stupid drone! She's a unicorn. You can't mate with her—" "I already have—" "Nor can she make you a prince—" Facet jumped at me. Somepony yelled, "Ms. Glimmer!?" In recollection, underneath Blueblood/Thorax's words, I'd heard running hooves. We'd had our attention, stupidly or otherwise, riveted by the true story of my green nightmare. Maybe intentionally, if Thorax had been more situationally aware than us all and had heard my rescuers' approach. With my senses dulled by feverish exhaustion, my situational awareness extended only a few pony lengths to Facet's eyes. The fake Firefall got half a pony length extended when she heard the shout— It was the real Prince Blueblood—! —She shrieked and aborted the maneuver, guessing a closer attack. Desert Sands, however launched at Ocelli at the same time Facet's horn sparked and a curtain shot around her. "Coxa!" cried the colorful sensora at Desert Sands, "Don't do this!" They collided with a crunch and a bang, rolling behind me out of view, as Facet completed her transition back to a black sensora, twisting as she did. Her burnt—once again smoking—horn sparked and I had time enough to think she might shoot Force or had forgotten she might now be incapable. Thorax's back legs flung me back and away as they connected with my chest. This wasn't a buck, but measures to throw me out of reach as he used me as a backplate to roll against. With Facet's attention directed toward Blueblood and— Not Cadance but Moon Dancer, galloping our way... Had they seen Ocelli's flash from his suite? —Thorax leapt at the sensora. His tendons clunked as his action pulled his dislocated shoulder back into place. His rib looked whole again. He breathed like a bellows. He'd said it, hadn't he? Love healed a sensora pony. Mudflats/Ocelli's transition had released an immense load of it. Facet had been completely distracted. Thorax's attack was neither stealthy nor particularly quick. Facet had twisted away and thus leaned away. She used her legs to try to catch and flip him over herself. He—and I guessed that drone/stallion sensora were plenty more massive then worker/mare sensora—dragged hooves at the last moment so that he fell atop her. What happened in the next instants, I didn't see. I heard meaty thuds, grunts, and pained whinnies. I didn't run; that response was never at the top of my reflex actions. I had a weapon. I scrambled closer to Facet and Thorax fighting, to retrieve it. Mustang used the ivory sheathed jackknife in the usual mode, since the deceased mare had been an earth pony. She bit the sides, to actuate the spring knife and to grip it with her teeth in the indents carved into the ivory. The thing even had a secondary razor that popped out laterally from the body, taking it from a three hoof length blade to a six hoof length single edged short sword. With that, Mustang had charged at me down a dead-end alley, prepared to slit my throat for having dissed her gang colt friend, and having led her cohort into—what had they called it—a rumble? I used my hoof instead. The blade spun dangerously when I actuated it on the ground, but it had been a dual hilted weapon, not custom for an earth pony. I frog-lifted it on a ridge carved to look like a dragon's crested spine. I did not trust I could throw it accurately, or make a deadly swipe with it. I had none of that type of weapons training, though I will admit I'd played with the jackknife a few dozen times. I could fling it with my magic, but never at a pony thanks to my unicorn magic limitations. Could I skim and slice her hide, or something? I felt in danger; that allowed more defensive accuracy. If she charged me, I might be able to protect myself— I looked up in time to see the fake Blueblood with his green enamel leg, no longer completely lame, again shoulder butt. He succeeded, but had repeated the tactic one too many times. He caught her only at belly height, which dragged her back, legs folding, but left her beside him, not pinned. Perhaps it was instinctual. Perhaps it was calculated. Nevertheless, it proved deadly. She ducked her head. I was correct that a sensora's horn resembled a sword. I wound up and threw the jackknife as she craned her head down, jabbing her jagged horn into his neck above the shoulder and pulling it back in one ripping stroke— that— it— "No!" I screamed. I punched the thrown knife with my magic, shoving it at her jawline, hoping to score any sensitive spot from an ear down to her shoulder. As I did that— Facet used her momentum from pulling her horn free to thrust herself up, forward, and away—to the left from my perspective. In the subsequent instant, as she stood, her knees locked. She froze so suddenly, her stiff legs dug four lines clear down to the dirt in the wood chip mulch. Dark green eyes, widening under metallic green goggles, peered down. The jackknife waggled in the hoof length between the peytral plates of her insectile armor. The notched upturned tip stood embedded a quarter hoof length. In that heartbeat, as her horn sparked as she thought Levitate, I condensed a nebula of magic on the hilt. Teeth gritting, I thrust the knife in. My magic should not have let me. But. It did. Because I thought I'd seen her kill Thorax? Elation flooded me as my mouth dropped, but then I saw... Blood, crimson as any pony's, welled up around the blade, bubbling and popping as it dripped. My thought, Murderer! followed. I'd never intentionally killed a pony, though I had certainly tried once, coincidentally with a knife used by an assassin, fueled by emotions inflamed by Carne Asada's revenge-driven evil words. The orange juice-flavored tea fountained up my throat, by this time mostly bile. Even that didn't break through my shock. Hot bitterness leaked through my closed lips and dripped down my chin and jaw. I gagged, but focused on the knife. I'd done that. Luck compounded by hate. Her horn continued to spark, even as Thorax's blood seeped down her horn's black length, then dripped red down the sides of her face to form a scarlet cap. She continued to stand. So... I'd missed her heart, but I'd cut– Sensora green magic appeared like an aurora over the knife even as my magic fizzled out. I couldn't think numbers at the moment, though I realized then I really needed to. Her eyes went to the knife as she stood there rigidly. It wiggled in time to the beat of her heart. Her eyes went to Blueblood, sundered, but alive, his breathing labored, rigid from pain and falling into shock. Her eyes flicked back to the knife. The weapon slipped a hair. A rivulet streamed over the top of the hilt to drip beyond at the end of the weapon. The knife kept her from hemorrhaging. Stronger than bodily tissue, the steel acted paradoxically as a pressure seal. "Don't do that!" I yelled. "You pull that, you die." "This cull needs to die," she said, a matter-of-factly. "He— I— we know too much to be captured." A bloodied Desert Sands backed off. A glance showed he'd knocked out Ocelli. He glanced at the approaching Equestrian prince, then at Facet. "Report our failure," she commanded in a frightened sounding monotone whisper. He unveiled himself as a black sensora. Gossamer wings buzzed, creating that cicada sound I'd first heard in Blueblood Park when the sensora impostors had escaped me. His yeasty marjoram scent pumped into the air. Blueblood or Moon Dancer could have caught the creature, but I was the important pony. The buzz-buzz buzz-buzz faded rapidly. I sensed their magic reach my direction and I cried, "Stop. These ponies are under my protection!" I'd meant Thorax and Ocelli. I spun up my healing spell. Maybe it was desperation, or that it was intimately tied up with my cutie mark magic, maybe adrenaline, or love, but the numbers balanced at a minimal level. Keeping my eyes on the yellowed blood-spattered ivory hilt, and with a renewed aura on my horn, the standoff continued. What I read from the spell told me I had no time to dawdle. I stepped closer, then closer. I soon crept with striking range, giving her the two targets she desired most. She held herself ridged. No doubt that was as much fear as it was agonizing pain. I crept a bit further, then sat. The knife was at my nose level. I edged my hooves toward the prince. I stepped in warm wetness and fought new nausea that would ruin everything. Nopony moved. Blue magic pulsed around the real Blueblood's horn five pony lengths away, purple around Moon Dancer's. But for unconscious Thorax, everypony could strike, even Facet. I faced a blade. I blinked, now seeing spell-induced visions— metaphors— They were alternately in Facet's chest: the axed redwood tree representation of a nicked major heart artery; and in Thorax's neck: an opened earthquake fault through a Canterlot street—showing cobbles, under pavement, and pipes—that represented sliced muscles, tissues, and a collection of feeder veins. The pipes filled with suffocating fluid. "What are you waiting for?" I asked. I meant the question for me; maybe I meant it for my entire audience. I thrust my muzzle forward, mouth open, clamping my teeth to hold the knife in place. The secondary hilt razor sliced my lip and my incautious tongue. Her blood filled my nostrils. I tasted salt and iron. The jackknife clamped in place so it would not move, I plunged my magic into Thorax. The metaphorical universe of the healing spell bloomed to surround my perception. I worked to force his body to seal his throat by cramping muscle and knitting windpipe. I let my awareness flit to an aorta that could rip any second, asking the rubbery walls to knit as if a life depended on it. It did. So it went. Back and forth. Despite burning facial pain, beyond exhaustion, beyond the impression that my heart palpated and might soon burst... I could barely breathe, but continued. I thrust splendor after splendor into my horn as I kept the spell spinning. If I had to use up my life when I ran out of splendors, I'd do that for Thorax and Facet. I would not let the label murderer ever be applied to me, not at least today. Nor would I let Thorax die. Nopony had ever told me I was the most precious pony in the world. Nor that they cared for me more than life itself. This made me stupidly happy. It fed me strength. The right to be happy? Did I deserve that? No. Ponies found Teleport the impossible spell. Technically, the confounding tracts strapped to the primary obscurities necessary for violating normal physical law took a lot of crafting and determination, and the ability to understand infinities and singularities—essentially thinking inside-out and in reverse. The demonstrable miracle warped space and time. Anypony determined enough could eventually master this. When they spun it up enough to trial cast, though, every thaumaturge realized the truth: It. Felt. Like. Death. To pass through a singularity was death because nopony could survive being crushed through a dimensionless point. It was capital D Death—and you needed the faith that you might be reconstituted, or... I'd cast Teleport fully that first time because deep down I'd feared I'd die if I didn't. You experience black, silent, vacuum frigid enough that it could be absolute zero. Blood or sweat turned to frost that steamed furiously up in ribbons when you Teleported back into the pony universe. It took a warped pony, like Carne Asada, to enjoy the experience because it was the singular thing she thought her arch-nemesis Princess Celestia, her "white windigo," could experience that she could not. Now you understand justifying insanity. I worked my healing magic until the world went black, silent, and frigidly cold and I could no longer breathe. This felt like death, because for the sake of love, it was death. Mine.