Earlier
Markov paced around the royal guest chamber.
He was still contemplating what Princess Celestia had told him. The explanations about the lack of language barriers, about his past with these colourful creatures and finally, about the marshmallow stumps they call hooves and how they worked.
Of course, he was still at odds about it all. And how could he not be? Everything that the large white pony told him went against everything he was taught when he grew up; magic, colourful talking ponies, and all of it governed by a hybrid sovereignty, two if the sister she mentioned is of the same species as her.
After he asked to be excused from the impromptu reunion just hours prior, he was magically teleported to the very room he now paced in. Even then, he still found it hard to believe that actual magic was involved.
The room where he was left was beautifully decorated with all things pony. The dark wooden rails for the purple curtains that separated the bedroom from the balcony had prancing unicorns carved at their ends facing away from the curtains, the surface of an oak study table from across the bed had a carved picture of a regular pony holding up a book to its face with its front hooves, the bedpost was carved to look like a Pegasus with its wing open ready to take flight and even the tiles on the floor were arranged to look like a sea-horse with a pony’s face. He thought it all to be funny because he half expected to see a stable instead of a bedroom.
Initially, he was left in the room with a servant, a light blue ‘earth pony’ named Belmont, to help him get orientated with his new legs but things got awkward for both of them when nature called and Markov had to ask the unfortunate pony to show him how to use the lavatory. Afterwards, the servant pony surmised that Markov may have had a long day and wanted to be alone.
“If there’s any other... inquiries you have to make, just ring the service bell by the bed, and someone will come along and uh... explain. Rest well.”
That was the last thing the servant pony had said to him before leaving him alone to begin contemplating his experiences of the past few hours. Since then, his quadrapedal walk had gotten better and allowed him to pace the room while thinking.
After a while, he stopped his pacing and made his way towards the balcony. As he parted the curtains with his front hoof, he saw a view that took his breath away. His room was placed on a very high floor in a white marble tower and from his vantage point on the balcony, the colourful land of Equestria spread out in front of him. The thick green vegetation, the jagged range of mountains and the beautiful blue sky presented itself like a surreal piece of artwork that would belong in a museum. In the distance, he could see a group of clouds that could pass as a city due to their formation and a small town in a clearing of the thick forest.
For the ordinary man, a view like this would have held his attention just from its sheer majesty, but for Markov, it held him for an entirely different reason.
-----
Markov’s arms held on to something... blue, very tightly. His hair whipped along with the turbulent winds. He opened his eyes only to see a jagged mountain range from a bird’s eye view. The sound of wings urgently beating and flapping filled his ears.
He closed his eyes again as he tightened his grip on the blue creature.
“Ack- I said ‘hold tight’, kid, not ‘cut off my oxygen’!” screamed Wonderbolt
Markov could only respond with, “It’s getting closer!”
A loud roar came from behind them and Markov turned around to see a large creature bare its sharp teeth and-
-----
Markov quickly shook his head and paused. He took a second look at the scenery before him, especially the mountain range.
The same one... he thought. He looked up at the tower he was in.
This wasn't there in that 'memory'.
He thought about the creature that was chasing them. What was that thing?
As he struggled with that memory, he thought about the one constant that has been there in both of his flashbacks of the land called Equestria.
“Wonderbolt,” he silently mouthed.
He marched back inside his room as fast as his four legs could carry him. He approached the bathroom again, but this time it was for a different need. There was something that he had to get off his chest.
When he last entered the bathroom, he noticed a large mirror fixed into the wall, thankfully, opposite the wall with the previously used lavatory. How had he instantly known that his now deformed body resembled that of the blue Pegasus and not of anything else? How had he easily accepted all this ‘magic’ nonsense? Does he even look like Wonderbolt? In the flashbacks, he couldn’t get a good look at the pegasus’ face so, would the mirror reveal the pony’s face? These questions played in his mind as he made his way towards the mirror.
When he finally reached it, his eyes studied the blue pony in the reflection. He first studied the mark with the emasculating name. His was a greyish silhouette of a shark with wings on its back flexing its body so that it forms a ‘C’ and silver streak cutting diagonally from top-left to the lower right over the shark. He then lifted his front hooves to see if the reflection did the same. When his eyes settled on his face, he had the shock of a lifetime.
Where he had expected to see the face of a certain blue pony, he saw something else entirely. He saw his own.
Although the face was elongated to fit in with the pony populace, he could tell that he was looking at the face that he once had as a human. He recognized his deep set brown eyes, his thin full beard and buzz cut, although they were now dark blue in colour, was still familiar to him. The reflection mirrored his expression of horror. At first, he attributed all the immediate weirdness as a dream but after seeing his own face, everything; the magic, the talking horse things, the flashbacks, started to seem very real.
His heart started beating faster. His breathing became laboured. He could feel cold sweat covering his now furry body. He reached his forearm to wipe his forehead with his palm but when he tried to flex his fingers, he remembered. He no longer had fingers. He looked in horror at the stumps where his hands used to be and then where his feet used to be. All the while the pony in the mirror reflected every move, every expression of terror as if taunting the poor man.
Suddenly, he felt an odd sensation on his back. It was as if he was stretching a muscle that wasn’t supposed to be there.
No…
He looked into the mirror.
NO….
The wings at his back flared and he could feel every muscle in them. He could feel the tickle of the feathers, his feathers, as they brush against each other.
The winged pony in the reflection reared in terror.
“NO!” he screamed.
In denial, he smashed the mirror with his front hooves. He felt the fragile glass break and heard the shards rain down to the floor. What little hope he had of breaking whatever hold this dream may have on him shattered along with the mirror as some of the falling shards cut painfully into his front foreleg. He had hoped that the pain would awaken him elsewhere but no. He was still there, in a bathroom, in a tower in this strange land.
Still in denial, he started biting his foreleg where the wound was, hoping against hope that more pain would somehow end the illusion.
“Wake up, wake up,” he repeatedly told himself while his teeth broke the skin and he started to bleed.
“Wake up, damn it!”
He looked back at the mirror-
Wait, didn’t I…
The large mirror stood before him, intact and undamaged. The reflection still imitated his actions but a few things were different. Firstly, he noticed that the cutie mark on the reflection was yellow thunderbolt with white wings. Secondly, its face was no longer his. The reflection had hooded eyes with yellow irises and a longer, shaggy, dark blue mane. It stared back disdainfully at Markov.
He could still feel the sting where he bit himself but he didn’t care. He was feeling too uneasy from the reflection’s stare.
Without thinking, he smashed the mirror again and again he watched the shards fall to the floor. To his surprise, the shards lifted themselves off the floor and floated themselves back into their position on the wall. They melded back together, removing the cracks, and got him looking back at the yellow eyed reflection.
He smashed the mirror again and again only to get the same results every time. With every hit, his wound stung more. After the eighth attempt, bite mark stung so badly, he curled up in a fetal position, nursing the injured leg. He looked up at the mirror and saw that the reflection did not imitate his actions. In fact, it was looking down at him in pity.
“Damn you!” he cried.
He tried to rise up, to break the mirror just one more time but he realized the futility of it. He resumed his curled position knowing that there was no way he could escape. He was trapped, helpless, and truly hated feeling this way. When he was a pilot, he felt like he could force the very hand of fate and break through all barriers to get what he wanted. For a brief moment, he did. But here, he was impotent. He was deformed.
Again he looked up at the pony in the reflection, and realised that this was no longer his domain, it was theirs.
He was trapped in their world, in their form, at their mercy and as their guest.
-----
Present
“What in the world…?” Celestia asked out loud. Her sister, Luna, stood beside her, both staring dumbfounded at the apparently injured pony sleeping on the shards of a mirror that used to decorate the wall next to him.
The light from the candle they brought broke through the night time darkness and illuminated the bathroom they were in and showed them the extent of Markov’s injury.
“Why didn’t anypony hear anything?” asked the lunar regent. She levitated the candle closer to the former mirror housing and saw hoof marks in the wall. “We should tend to his wound. Tia-,”
“No. Not yet,” Celestia interjected. “A healing spell would awaken him.”
“Sister, his wound may already be infected. For crying out loud, do you even see the pool of dried blood he is sleeping in?”
“He’ll live, Luna. For now, I need to know if what you told me about him is true.”
“Couldn’t we just-.”
“Now,” Celestia said with finality.
Luna could only sigh in resignation. She had the ability to look into ponies’ dreams and memories but only when they are asleep. She could also bring another pony into the dream world, to see what she sees. Her sister needed this ability to confirm for herself the things that Luna saw in the human world. Unfortunately, Celestia was not her usual patient self, especially after what she had heard about their old friend.
“Are you ready, Celestia?”
The older sister nodded.
Luna’s horn started to glow as she focused her magic. She felt a prickling sensation at the back of her head, indicating that the spell she had chosen was ready but first, she had to establish an extra link with her sister in order to bring her along. She pictured in her mind, the spell as a glowing thread looping around her sister’s head before coming to rest at Markov’s forehead and then, she cast the spell.
-----
Luna and Celestia floated above a crowd of humans. They were all staring at a large stage where a tall human wearing a military uniform was being saluted by another human in military garb. When the latter turned to address the crowd, they saw that it was in fact, their old friend. Andrei Markov.
“What’s going on?” asked Celestia.
“He’s being commemorated.”
“How do you know that?”
Luna just stared at her sister before saying, “It’s written on the banner right there.”
She pointed to the large poster with Markov’s face on it.
“I can’t read Cyrillic, sister. What does it say?”
“It says ‘Geroy Rossiyskoy Federatsii’, Hero of the Russian Federation.”
The scenery suddenly blurred and faded into white.
“What are you doing?” asked Luna.
“We’d be wasting time if we have to comb through every single memory so, I’m skipping to the most recent,” said Celestia as her horn glowed and the scenery was replaced.
“How did you… never mind.”
They were now floating just above what appeared to Celestia as a metallic demon, flying at the speed of sound. They were apparently floating along at the same speed as the machine, allowing them to see into the glass dome on its head. Inside, they saw a human fiddling with its innards.
“This is called a fighter jet,” Luna explained. “Since humans don’t have wings, they fight their aerial battles with flying machines like these.”
Celestia floated herself under the aircraft and saw a shark’s mouth painted on its nose.
“Grendel,” she silently mouthed.
“Luna, the human in this fighter jet, its Markov isn’t it?”
Luna was silent for a few seconds before nodding.
If what Luna said about Markov was true, then they were about to see their old friend commit some horrible atrocities.
The aircraft hastily approached a small burning city with more fighters tearing each other apart in a deadly aerial dance above it. The shark mouthed one entered the fray and launched a barrage of speedy projectiles at another aircraft from a small tube near the nose. It gave chase to the other fighter, launching more of the projectiles and occasionally launching bigger, slower ones that leave smoky trails. All the while, the pursued jet evaded all if not most of the barrage but it looked as if it wouldn’t end well for it.
Suddenly, another aircraft appeared behind Markov’s and launched its own hail of missiles at him. Not to be outdone, he broke off his chase and tilted his aircraft’s nose upwards, making the jet vertical while still maintaining its original trajectory. His momentum slowed drastically, causing Markov’s aircraft to swap positions with the offending aircraft.
Instantly, the tables turned for the attacker. Markov gave no quarter to the newcomer and fired more of the speedy missiles and launched one of the slower ones. The slower one exploded when it hit the target aircraft’s rear end and gave Markov every chance to finish it off.
Celestia and Luna were both amazed and terrified as they watched everything unfold. They had expected Markov to destroy the weaker aircraft but to their surprise, he broke away and flew off in a different direction, allowing the other fighter to safely fly away.
Luna suddenly breathed easier and watched their old friend continue on his trajectory, away from the city. Seeing how Markov spared his attacker, Luna began to have doubts about the newspaper article that she saw on Earth.
She wanted to share her thoughts with Celestia but a sudden flash of light stopped her. It came from the city a few distances from the one they were above and looked like a miniature sun had suddenly appeared in the middle of the city.
“What…”
The ball of sunlight suddenly exploded with such force, the shockwave spread out for miles. Even the pilot that was grounded in the nearer city was knocked off his feet.
The sisters looked at the resulting mushroom cloud in fear.
Luna was first to react by erasing the scene to white.
“That… do you think… that… Was that his doing?” Luna stuttered.
Celestia said nothing. She just used her magic to skip to the other memories.
Again they were flying along with the sharkmouth. This time, it was carrying a large orange pod under one of its wings. The city they were flying over looked to be in the highlands, not the desert. But just like the previous city, it was torn by war.
The pod suddenly detached and propelled itself free of the aircraft. It zipped this way and that before choosing a singular course towards the heart of the city.
When it finally hit its target, the pod exploded in another ball of sunlight and the resulting blast levelled the entire city.
“So it was him,” said Celestia, tonelessly. Luna witnessed the devastation with disgust.
“What in the world would justify this much carnage?” Luna asked aloud.
The scenery shifted again. Luna turned towards her sister but she noticed that Celestia’s horn was not glowing.
Noticing the shift without giving much thought, Celestia looked around for the imminent memory but instead, she found herself looking at a rain of blue feathers that suddenly appeared from above.
In the vast ocean of white, amid the rain of blue, the sisters saw two figures in the distance. One was a tall human wearing a dull grey full body flight suit while the other was a small human child, wearing nothing but a makeshift poncho made from a large, dirty rag.
The larger human turned his back on the child and slowly walked away. At that moment, the falling feathers, as if blown by an unseen wind, gathered around the child, engulfing him.
The feathers suddenly flew upwards and disappeared, along with the child. The only figure left in the milky void was the larger one.
“We must be in his dream,” Luna reckoned.
“Why did you bring us here?”
“I didn’t. I assumed you were the one who did, until I saw that your horn wasn’t glowing.”
Wasting no time, the older sister tried to magically bring out another memory before Luna stopped her.
“I think I should do it, sister. We are currently in the dream world, not his memories. You might… damage something.”
They returned to the white void and immediately, the surroundings shifted again.
They were now in a lavish looking room, looking at Markov who was holding an L shaped weapon with a smoking end with both hands. Behind him were two men in military garb. Markov relaxed his posture and said, “Бросаю так скоро, генеральный?”
“What did he say?” asked Celestia.
Luna responded by casting a translation spell.
“Мы должны сдаться. Переворот не удался,” they heard someone respond.
Markov walked over to the other end of the room and it was then that the two princesses saw the prone form of an older man, profusely bleeding from a wound on his chest.
The translation spell began to take effect as Markov approached the old man.
“ваш переворот means nothing.”
Markov knelt at the old man and said “This is about revenge.”
He stood up, aimed his weapon at the old man and a sound, like thunder, came from the weapon.
Blood sprayed all over the room and the old man went limp.
The view blurred to white again as Luna skipped to another memory.
They were now floating alongside Markov but this time, he was riding a grounded, four wheeled vehicle and he was accompanied by another man. The surroundings were that of a war zone, similar to the ones they saw when they were in the sky.
The vehicle grinded to a halt and Markov and his friend exited with haste. Worry clearly etched on his face as they traversed the rubble that used to be a building, searching for something.
Celestia and Luna looked up and saw fighter aircrafts crowding the air space.
“Krista!” they heard their old friend scream.
He was holding a woman in his arms. She did not stir. He cradled the dead woman’s head and held it close.
He looked up and said, “I will never forget this!”
His companion could only offer a comforting hand on his shoulder and say, “Yes. Never.”
-----
Markov woke up with a gasp.
He was hoping that he would get to use his fingers again but alas, he was still in his pony form.
All of a sudden, he felt something tightening around his neck. He tried to paw whatever it was off but his hooves found nothing.
The choking force lifted him upwards and he was suddenly looking in the eyes of a very angry looking princess.
“Tia stop!” he heard someone say but the force tightened itself further.
His eyes watered and the edges of his vision started going red.
“Stop!” The voice was slowly going distant.
Then, just as abruptly as it started, the choking stopped and Markov desperately gasped for air.
As he lay gasping on the floor, he felt his body go weightless. He felt around and knew, somehow, that he was floating.
From his blurred vision, he could see a blue aura surrounding his extremities. He also saw a large white blur that looked as if it was writing something with a quill.
“Dear, Twilight Sparkle…” He could barely make out the words it was saying.
And then, everything went black.