//------------------------------//
// Chapter Fifteen 
// Story: Clipped Wings 
// by Desrium 
//------------------------------//

Chapter Fifteen


Woe be the one the battle chooses.


Steiner was faced with another rendition of Hope, his hood ruffled by a nonexistent wind. Whereas Klaxon's was a literal recreation of the city and Alana's was one of exaggeration, Steiner's was a spellbinding, warped representation of it. He stood at the center of the old compound, a small section of a much larger whole floating in a gulf of a dark green nothingness; a floating platform with part of the ruins situated on the black, cracked flat of the city streets, below which craggy earth extended downwards into the void. Slowly, other platforms rose and fell in a silent rhythm. The objects in this realm were distorted, angles bent and dilated as if the blue unicorn found himself living in a fun house mirror. Steiner looked at the otherworldly visuals with a frown on his face but little else expression. He was perplexed and in a state of unease, he wondered just where had he been sent by the magic-spawn.

"A place made especially for you, blue one," the voice of the Magimus echoed in the strange plane. Steiner did not reply. This was strong magic, he could divine as much. A low rumbling rolled through the empty space, like an annoyed growl at that.

"Only one of you has given into the illusion. I suppose that speaks volumes of their integrity."

Steiner broke his silence with: "Of course, though I would not find your victory against Falcon Wing to be... substantial" 

"And how are you so certain it was the pegasus who faltered?" the arcane pony inquired and added in an almost scolding tone: "You really should not be so quick to jump to concl --!" 

"Because," Steiner interjected, cutting the Magimus' joke short. 

The blue unicorn surveyed his surroundings. In spite of the distortion and bizarreness, he saw what this projection was meant to be. His home, ruined beyond what the Megaspells did to Equestria. He was meant to feel small and isolated in an alien environment and admittedly... he did feel so.

"if you have subjected him to something like this, then of course the youngest of us who has endured what he has would succumb to it. But I have seen Falcon Wing at his weakest and I know what he has the potential to do when he is strong. Your triumph will be short lived," Steiner said. Though he was at the mercy of the Magimus, he would resist his efforts as much as he could. 

The Magimus' chuckle rippled through the ethereal expanse. "That has yet to be seen," he replied simply. 

"Yet being the keyword here... but that is an issue that is ultimately between you and him. What can I expect from our conflict?"


The Magimus laughed and said "Oh, I was thinking of bringing back the good times of your past, but your friends... I think having you watch them play my game will suffice."

A rift appeared in front of Steiner, light streaming out of the energetic tear. He turned his head and raised a hoof to cover his eyes, stealing glances at the rippling screen of various colors -- all of the colors. It was large and almost all encompassing, stretching around the unicorn. It was roughly rectangular in shape when it had cemented its shape, though its edges were wispy and writhing. Spread out across the magical projection were the others in the midst of their own tortures. 


Steiner was seeing them as the Magimus saw them as he observed their mental turmoil. On the far left, he was looking down at Klaxon as the bronze stallion thundered on through the ruins of Hope at full gallop, swerving around or vaulting over the debris that laid in his path. He was running from ponies, ponies Steiner recognized as peers, a small sum of which still resided in the citadel. Others he knew to be deceased. Two of those ponies he identified as Roxanne and Sparks. Klaxon's parents. The ones who took him in; the mare of a rich blonde coat and orange mane and the stallion which Klaxon took after, the burly bronze senior with a silvery one. Steiner felt himself tense up at the sight. Klaxon was running from his own parents!

... But he wasn't. "It's all an illusion," Steiner reminded himself. A terrible illusion to dredge up the worst kind of emotional pain. A ploy for the Magimus' amusement. In spite of himself, Steiner smiled. Klaxon wasn't terribly scholarly or well spoken, but that did not mean he did not possess a respectable intellect. He was a thinker, designer and a pony who just downright liked to read. 


The center of the screen was a world without brightness, without detail except for the washed out, green-gray clouds hanging in the sky. The point of view here was at street level, as if the Magimus were standing on the worn sidewalk of the city street. Through it, Steiner saw Alana walking through Hope, drooping. Her tail dragged behind her and her head was held low. Ponies lined up on either side of the street stamped their hooves, shouted expletives and slurs and spat at her. The group was comprised of ponies from the compound and complete strangers numbering in the tens, all arranged down the length of the straight. Steiner's smile faded, his expression turning blank and remaining like that for the duration of his viewing. He could see that the mare was fighting back tears, but she just carried on without lashing out at her tormentors. Steiner did not exactly get the context, he did not recall Alana ever being bullied or rejected so thoroughly...or was this a fear of her's that the Magimus was exploiting? Whatever it may be, Steiner did not want to continue watching. He could not tell if she knew the meaning of her circumstance, or if she had become aware as Klaxon did.

If the Magimus' words were to be trusted, she did. Which meant Falcon Wing...


The far right of the projection had Magimus' point of view right beside the red pony who had tucked their self into the corner of the room, staring with wide eyes at the mob that now filled Patchenfix's office. At the forefront, the dark shapes of the raiders. They appeared to be made of shadow, smokey wisps and writhing whips reaching out from their bodies, flailing and dissipating like black flames. Along with them were the ponies who took pleasure in abusing what they viewed as the weakest link. pegasi adorned in olive green Enclave uniforms with golden accents, fillies and colts that were training to join the pegasi military force. They held their heads high and proudly but their faces all bore expressions of scorn for the pony they gradually surrounded. Around them were the only pegasi that Falcon ever cared about; Erasure and Flint to the left and right of the shadowy assembly respectively. The blurry forms of his parents were behind them, the product of few vague memories, half formed. The blurry, pony shaped machinations were both a light gray. Falcon Wing did not even remember what color his parents were. Coming up from behind was the headless doctor, her body shambling after the group in a way that actual ghouls did not.

Steiner bared his teeth. "How damaged must he be to think this is real..." he mused.

"Oh, very damaged. Just not broken. Yet. What did you say about my triumph being short lived?" 

Steiner's blank expression flashed to simmering anger abruptly, his eyes and horn glowing brightly with a sudden surge of power. The phantom's laughter rolled out from all around the unicorn. 

"What do you think you can do in here? You are nothing but a toy --!"

"The game must end!" 

In his fury, Steiner mustered the will to pull of a telepathic spell and drew from his vast reserve of magical power. Through the Magimus, his proclamation reached his friends, his booming voice tearing through the snare the ethereal pony had created for them. 


Klaxon tumbled through the snow, taken by surprise by the sudden shift. The city of Hope had flashed back to the frozen fortress almost instantaneously. He scrambled back to his hooves and looked back the way he came. Ghouls. A pack of them charging after him with eyes glazed over, milky white with a few of them having one eye missing from its socket. They all growled and hissed, their fleshy bodies sickly looking. Unbelievably, they all had shards of crystal protruding from their decayed bodies. Klaxon looked repulsed, the thought occurring to him that these were what the ponies of the city had become. That he had been manipulated into seeing two of them as his parents. With the pack of crystalline ghouls closing in on him, the bronze stallion shot looks to and fro, locating an alley way and making a beeline for it at full gallop. His blood started to boil after what he had gone through, after what the Magimus attempted to do. It made him run ever faster...


Alana blinked several times then wiped the specks of liquid from her eyes. Color had returned to her... as well as the frigid grip of the north. She looked around the snow buried street, seeing nothing but destruction and rubble on either side of her. Rubble and ice. Like ghosts those she ignored had faded from her presence...and somehow that only compounded the loneliness and isolation she had been feeling. "But this is no time to be feeling sorry for yourself!" she chided herself. She had on her face a determined look as she broke off into a trot, moving down the long streets towards the gigantic tower at the center of the city. Though she had no means to validate her hunch, she had a feeling the most prominent structure of the ruin was where she had to be. After what happened in Baltimare, he was more inclined to trust such feelings. Falcon Wing did and he ended up being proven horribly right...


The shadowy figures merged into one the closer they got to the red pony. Falcon Wing felt as if he was having a waking nightmare, nightmares he hadn't had in weeks! Nightmares he thought he had rid himself when he departed from Ponyville the first time! But there he was, frozen by the trauma which raced through his mind, every memory and emotion bombarding him, making him senseless in the face of a power he did not understand. By time Steiner's message reached him, the raiders had become something that frightened him much more thoroughly: the Shadow Sweep. "What happened to your pledge, boy? You did not even fight back!" the gryphon ghoul rattled just a few feet away from his terrified face, then seconds later it was gone. All of it was gone. It took him a minute to register the change and he was still shaking afterwards. He was lying in the snow somewhere in a ruin, subjected to his innermost horrors.What he was told before it was over filled him with shame and made him feel ill...