Chapter 29:
Hybrid Matters
Welder sat, hunched forward, huddled in blankets. Books, carelessly tossed without regard to their condition, and tins in various states of emptiness were scattered around him like debris from a meteorite impact.
He didn’t think about anything unless he could avoid it. Thinking hurt.
At first he’d tackled the books with gusto in spite of his initial outburst. They were something to do, and he figured he’d feel much better if he could understand the local speech. He figured he’d surprise Twilight with some basic grasp of her language when she returned. But he’d hit a wall almost immediately. He only had one source of spoken Equestrian, and the children's book was anything but eloquent. Even pronouns were outside its realm – he couldn’t even do a ‘me Welder, you Twilight’ schtick. He suspected that Twilight vastly overestimated his mental capacity, or simply didn’t understand the difficulties involved in learning a new language from scratch.
He’d given up on figuring out the textbooks during the middle of his second day at the cottage. When he made that decision he'd felt terrible, but when he figured out the reason he was surprised – he felt he was letting Twilight down.
Why had he come to look up to and depend on the pony so much? The answer came quickly enough: she was probably the only creature in the universe right now who could carry a conversation with him.
That made him realise how utterly lonely he felt.
Scared by that epiphany he’d attacked the textbooks again, but after only a couple of hours he’d given up again in a fit of rage. The anger had simmered down into something that turned inwards, and he found himself thinking all the thoughts he’d tried to avoid, in an act of mental self-flagellation.
He’d never see a human face again that wasn’t his own.
He’d been single. He’d mourned his parents and planted their ashes next to each other. Then he’d gotten on with his life. He’d missed them, sometimes desperately, but hadn’t filled the hole with a close companion or a pet. Uncles and aunts had passed away or been distant acquaintances to begin with. On the other hand, some of the guys at the construction sites he’d worked on had been good friends. He’d been alone by choice, but never really lonely. Now he was utterly and truly alone. The only meaningful and intellectual contact with another being that he still had was with a purple equinoid whose glowing eyes unsettled him even in hindsight.
It didn’t take long with thoughts like that before he was emotionally exhausted and fell asleep, but the dreams were worse. He’d walk in cities he knew, but they would fall out from under his feet into gaping chasms, and he’d soon follow, screaming, into the darkness. In other dreams Twilight would be with him, and he’d reach out to hug the comforting presence only to have her snatched from his closing grasp by a bright star that started burning his flesh and the dream would dissolve into white and a ghost of pain.
Sometimes, for some reason, he dreamt of the big blue pony with wings and a horn. Princess Moon. She kept trying to say something to him, but those dreams always ended as soon as he saw her. He desperately wished he could stay and talk to her. Maybe she’d understand.
He didn’t sleep much after that. He just sat and tried to kill his thoughts. Because it hurt to think about it all.
He didn’t realise he’d started rocking until a hoof touched his shoulder, stopping the motion.
“Welder, what’s wrong?”
He looked up and pulled back seeing the flames wreathing Twilight’s form and pouring out of her eyes. She was still for a moment before closing her eyes... and suddenly the fire disappeared, leaving a gray unicorn with purple highlights in her mane and tail. When she opened her eyes again they had purple irises and large, black and sorrowful pupils with only a hint of ghostly blue in them.
“Speak to me, Welder.”
She laid a hoof on his shoulder again, and this time he didn’t pull away.
“They’re dead.”
The new voice was hoarse and weak, and it took several seconds before he realised that it was his.
“Who?”
“Everybody. Everybody.”
He broke down. His body shook and he didn’t cry as much as shout his anguish. The world and time became a blur, and in the few moments of clarity between the black veil of depression he saw gray, furry legs wrapped around him in a hug and felt something warm against his cheek.
He couldn’t tell when he fell unconscious, since his sentience had been shattered long before. All he knew was that when he opened his eyes he felt like himself again. He could probe backwards in his memory and knew that his recollection of the time before he fainted was essentially perfect, but the memories carried less significance than a particularly vivid dream. He felt distanced from the sobbing wreck he’d been, and he certainly felt better.
“Good morning.”
He only noticed he was lying on his back when he turned his head towards Twilight’s voice and saw her lying on the floor next to him, legs drawn close, reading a book. She still bore no trace of the magic that had constantly streamed from her.
“Twilight?”
“Yes, it’s me. Feeling better?”
Welder thought about it. He still knew he was alone. Everything from before was still true. But the edge of despair was gone. He was mystified: he’d felt much the same as last night (if it had been night) after burying his father, but it had taken several months, if not years, to go from that to the kind of stoic composure that he now felt regarding the demise of his entire world. He sat up and furrowed his brow while looking at Twilight.
“I... I feel strangely fine. I shouldn’t feel this good. I should still be a mess.”
“We don’t have time for the normal stages of grief, I’m afraid. I may have helped you along. I’m sorry, but I felt it was necessary.”
“Uh. Okay. I guess.”
Twilight uncurled her legs and stood, stretching her back.
“Come on, let’s take a walk. You could use some fresh air.”
She walked over to the door and looked back at Welder expectantly. He rose stiffly, wincing at his aching muscles. Then he walked over to Twilight, who pushed open the door with her magic and waited until he’d stepped outside.
“Just how long was I out? I figure you can’t have been gone more than three days.”
A gray half-day reigned outside. The air felt cold, perhaps just below freezing. It felt invigorating to Welder.
“You slept for about nineteen hours. I cast a spell to help your spirit heal from the shock. I should have done that earlier, but you seemed to cope with your situation back then.”
“It just hadn’t sunk in, I guess.”
There wasn’t much more than a light dusting of snow on the ground. The trees were leafless but carried buds on the tips of their branches. Twilight led the way, heading down a path leading to houses barely visible in the gloom.
“Let’s talk about your situation. I’ve managed to contact and join the ashen, and their research was beyond what I’d dared hope. They’d managed to catalogue and compare Equestrian matter with yours, and created a list of spells that actually enables Equestrian matter to simulate yours. From that I got all I needed to convert your matter into Equestrian without hurting you. It involves creating a stable shell of Equestrian matter that uses enchantments to behave as if it was alien. That way you can have a body that behaves like it used to, but without the hard limit of matter decay to worry about.”
“All right... so when will you cast it?”
“I already did.”
Welder stopped and looked down at himself, spreading his hands and staring at them. He looked and felt just the same as always.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. You’re officially made from native matter now. Welcome to Equestria, buddy.”
He laughed nervously.
“So is that it? I can survive?”
Twilight grimaced and tilted her head from side to side.
“Yes and no. You can breathe, drink and eat, and the magic will help your body convert what you ingest into usable material. You won’t accumulate magic, so I’ll have to periodically recharge the enchantments that let you function. This is a step in a long process, Welder. A big step, to be sure, but it’s not the end. Your anatomy is still weird and doesn’t really function without magical aid. You’ll need big changes before this is over.”
“Couldn’t you just magic me into a pony?”
“No, that’s ridiculous. It wouldn’t work at all.”
“Why not?”
Twilight turned and walked up to the side of a building. The house looked like someone’s home to Welder. It was low, the roof ending at level with his eyes. The wall seemed to be whitewashed adobe. Round windows with four panes of glass and wooden frames completed the, to Welder’s aesthetic sense, horribly saccharine look. Twilight’s horn started shimmering with a blue-black aura and a cone of light shot from it, projecting images onto the house’s white surface.
“Our brain structures are very different. I’ve examined yours and I assume you have a general idea about how it looks? Well, this is a pony brain. Note how it doesn’t rest on top of our spinal cord, but is surrounding it, the cord ending just above our foreheads where the horn begins for unicorns? There’s also a completely different structuring to the brain. Yours is basically divided in two bigger parts and two smaller. We’ve got four major sections and three minor. I doubt that our brains are even remotely similar in how they are ordered.”
“To put it simply: if I just unceremoniously changed you into a pony then you’d not be able to think as before. Best case scenario you’d become a different personality as your mind adapted to pony neurology. But that’s if – and it’s a big if – you’d be able to use your pony brain at all. It could also end up with you tasting thoughts and feeling memories. Or with you just dying, unable to breathe or to keep your heart beating. And even that is not the worst-case scenario. And that’s just the brain. We’ve got major differences in the rest of the body as well.”
Welder nodded. He was actually relieved, even if it did leave his future uncertain.
“Will it ever happen? Will I ever have a life again?”
“I hope so. You might not believe it, but I do think your arrival could have a long-term positive effect on Equestria. I see it as our duty to make you as comfortable as we can.”
“Long-term you say...”
“Yes.”
They walked in silence for a while after that, looking at the dark and silent houses of Gallopwood. The village center wasn’t that impressive. The town hall was only a slightly larger building, looking much like the actual dwellings, and Welder hadn’t guessed its function before Twilight had pointed it out. Eventually they agreed to head back to the house where Welder was staying.
“What’s up with you then, Twilight?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your eyes and your mane. They’re no longer burning, or whatever. Did you find out what’s causing it?”
“Oh, that. Yes. It’s worse than I thought.”
Then Twilight laughed, making Welder raise his eyebrows and stare at her. She caught his expression and giggled some more.
“Sorry! It’s just that it was the first ashen I met who actually guessed right. They mistook me for a windigo! Uh, do you know about windigos? No? All right, they appear around the time when our civilization first dawned. I’ve talked about that time period before. The windigos trace their roots back to a small nation of ponies attempting to deal with the sun being extinguished.”
“The sun?”
“Yes. Back then we had an actual star, not like today. Anyway, they used magic to reshape themselves. They wanted more power than the unicorns, the weather control and flight of the pegasi and the emotion feeding of the changelings. Then the forces of Harmony absorbed their nation and the windigos were incorporated with the general population, taking pegasus or unicorn forms. I’d say roughly thirty per cent of ponies alive today have some windigo ancestry... Including me.”
“Soooo...”
“So when I say I have windigo blood, I mean that I have a lot of it. I checked with some divination spells the other day. My ancestors going back almost for eight generations are all mixed unicorn and windigo.”
She took a breath before continuing.
“They never knew. Social stratification had made the old windigo population marry among each other, creating a group of lesser aristocrats that were almost exclusively unicorns. Wars had erased their history, but social dynamics kept the group cohesive. And now that Harmony no longer keeps me in check my heritage is awakening.”
Twilight snorted and glanced at Welder.
“In a way you were right after all. Would I have had the usual mix of ancestors I probably would have become an alicorn. But Harmony didn’t choose the Element of Magic at random. As nearly even parts unicorn and windigo... Control and power. I was the obvious choice, really.”
“Braggart.”
Twilight shot Welder a sharp look with her ears flat against her head, but he was grinning. She relaxed, laughed softly and they walked on. Just as the front door to Welder’s hideout came into view he cleared his throat and turned to Twilight.
“What does a windigo actually look like?”
She stopped and looked at him with an eyebrow raised.
“Well like me, of course.”
“So windigos looked like unicorns in general?”
“Oh that. No, they don’t.”
“Can you show me?”
Twilight stopped and stared ahead of her, deep in thought.
“I don’t know. I just figured out how to suppress my windigo heritage so I’d look like a normal pony. I guess I could also enhance it, but it hasn’t crossed my mind to try before now.”
She tilted her head looked at Welder.
“Shall I try? Windigos are pretty scary.”
Welder folded his arms and gave her a challenging smile.
“Do it.”
Twilight shut her eyes and focused. Harmony had kept her windigo aspect dormant through enchantment, and it had been easy enough to duplicate. Twilight had always preferred finesse to raw power when it came to magic, so a return to her unicorn norm had been very relaxing. Even so she admitted to herself that Welder’s question was intriguing. So she focused on her enchantment and inversed it, having it suppress her pony aspect.
Welder nearly fell backwards as black smoke and blue fire exploded from Twilight’s form. He stumbled backwards, arms pinwheeling and mouth agape, while ogling the expanding cloud. Suddenly a comet of blazing sky-blue flame shot out from the top, with a keening that only with great difficulty translated to laughter in Welder’s ears. He gulped nervously as the shooting star abruptly changed course, heading straight for him, and he involuntarily shielded his face with his arms.
When a few seconds failed to produce an impact he cautiously removed his arms and looked ahead.
“I knew you’d be scared.”
The voice was Twilight’s... but it had harmonics both lower and higher than her usual one, and there was a gentle rustle of ice crystals in it. It was coming out of the mouth of a pony-like creature that was hovering in the air in front of Welder, its front half a gray pony surrounded by blazing blue flames and the back simply a billowing cloud of glowing blue smoke that slowly darkened to pitch black as it receded. She radiated such intense cold that Welder had to back away. The ground beneath Twilight was emitting crinkling and cracking sounds as it settled into rock-hard ice. Moisture in the air condensed directly into snow around her.
Suddenly she looked up with wide eyes. Then she looked around.
“I can feel your fear. But I also felt the fear of another just now. Whatever it was it went away.”
~~~~~
Whisper gazed at the image of Queen Diamond Dust.
“I’ve tracked Fulcrum to a village called Gallopwood. Here she’s spent the day talking to a monster whose species I cannot name.”
Whisper’s jewel of sending was wedged between two tree branches. The image it projected was grainy and flickering, but she still saw the queen narrow her eyes and lean forward.
“Tell me more.”
“Fulcrum appeared in three forms. She can apparently disguise herself as a unicorn pony. The form she uses when she carries her suit of armor seems to be a hybrid of unicorn and windigo. Today she revealed her true windigo form to the monster. It looks approximately as the legends portray. The monster looks like a starved and sickly diamond dog with a small and narrow head. Its paws lack traditional claws and have more and longer digits. They are very dextrous. It speaks in an unknown language.”
“What did they speak of?”
“I do not know, my queen. I could not risk moving close enough to hear. My research indicate that windigos are aware of all living beings capable of emotion that enter their vicinity.”
The image of Diamond Dust remained still for a moment.
“I will have to take that into account. Was there anything else?”
“No, my queen.”
“You have done well thus far, my faithful servant. Carry on.”
The jewel of sending dimmed and the image winked out. Whisper grabbed it with her magic and tucked it in her tool belt. Then she shut her eyes and focused. She felt the pull of the lodestone and headed silently in that direction, invisible among the shadows.