//------------------------------// // Memories // Story: The Winds of Change: Fog of War // by AgentSnail //------------------------------// Memories "Okay, so if this works, I'm ready?" Jason asked Evening, who looked over a rather long list. "You should be, I hope." She chewed her lip. "It's been two days to get only this much further." "Yeah, and that mare that wouldn't stop asking questions definitely wasn't helpful." He sighed. "This is really starting to wear on me, I'm not sure whether it's the constant magic or the time constraints." Tears welled in his eyes. "But then I think about it, and I just want her back so bad. I tell myself it'll be okay this way, that if I fail I'll have known it was unachievable anyway. But the thing is, I know that's not true, I'm too close, and I know that it's possible. I'm more scared of not being able to do this and facing that I've lost her forever than I was when she died." "Well like I said, only two more spells." "And the memory thing for Scoots." "I told you, that'll be easy. Chrysalis used stuff like that on me, I'm sure I could teach you in a few minutes." "But I don't have a connection with Scoots!" "Not yet, but it didn't look like you tried all that hard." Evening replied, frowning. "What, you don't want her in?" "That's not it, I just don't want her to see a nightmare. It's not like one of her's, you can feel everything." "What was it you said? Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet?" "Yeah, but what if I get rid of some of her memories?" She shrugged. "You don't take them, you just kinda make copies." She took a step forward and pulled his head down, touching her horn to his. Memories raced through his head, things he'd seen, but from a different perspective. The ceiling, the blurs. It all felt so surreal. "Now try giving me something." She said, shaking his head around to try to get his attention. "Do I have to use my horn like this? Does it only work that way?" "Well that's the most efficient." She replied. "You won't have a lot of time when you're back there, we'll have to plan everything, paths, obstacles we saw. Because there's a time range for the spell, and if it's on the short end, well, we're going to have to work fast." "God damn, more speed." He pushed his horn back against hers and tried a few techniques, but he wasn't sure where to really direct the memories. "What do I do here?" "Just- you know how you push stuff to the back of your mind when you're trying to forget about it?" "It's the opposite, but you push it along with the magic, kind of." Jason sighed and tried again, pushing through a memory of his childhood to the best of his ability. "It's a little scattered, but we can work on it." She replied, smiling. "Why do I feel like when I put my horn against yours that I'm cheating on Dash?" "Well it's probably sensual for unicorns." She replied with a shrug. "I can't prove it, but that's what I've learned under the hive mind." "Well thanks a lot for telling me." He replied with a hint of a smirk. "You trying to make moves on me?" Jason said jokingly, although it only really made him feel bad. "No, but listen, you need some rest. I know I'm supposed to be the irresponsible free spirit, but seriously. Changelings aren't supposed to get bags under their eyes like that, and you could use some extra love." "Using it all up, huh?" "Yeah. Now come on, I'll try to get some work done while you're out. I just got up a couple hours ago anyway." "Fin, you win." Jason replied, walking slowly back over to Fort Book, which had grown under Scoots' industrious eye. He walked through the arched door into the small courtyard, laughing as he got hit by an eraser. He went along with her little game, falling over and sticking a hoof to his chest. "Oh, I've been hit!" He yelled, watching as the filly came out of hiding and peeked out from the top of her keep, which she had somehow given a partially working front door. She jumped off a portion of the wall and landed next to him, looking down at Jason tiredly, yet at the same time triumphantly. "So how's progress?" "A little slow when I'm missing my moral support." He replied, pulling the filly against him and tickling at her stomach as she giggled and tried to escape his grasp. "Jason, stop, that tickles!" "I had no idea!" He replied with a hint of sarcasm, letting her go after a few more moments. "So why are you inside Fort Book?" She asked. "Shouldn't you be working?" "Evening gave me some homework. If you want your memories, I'm going to have to get you in the hive mind, and this is the only way I know how." He said, curling up against some slanted books as she trotted back over. He'd had trouble sleeping without Dash already, but these conditions sure weren't helping. "So is that sleep then?" She asked, at Jason pushed a hoof into his forehead as a slight twinge of pain lanced through his brain. "Yeah, but I'm worried that there'll be some sort of nightmare, and I'm sorry if that happens to you." He said, smiling slightly as she sprawled out on top of him, letting her eyes close. "I've had nightmares before, this can't be that bad." "Well the thing is, it feels real. It's like a really vivid dream, sort of." She giggled. "You don't have to worry so much." "Yeah, well that's my job. I'm supposed to be worried about you." "Oh shush, dad." She said, putting a hoof against his cheek before she found his mouth. Jason chuckled and let his head lay backwards against a book, feeling Scoots shift again before going silent, as her breathing became steady. He wasn't far behind her, as the abyss of sleep overtook him. ______________________________________________________ Jason couldn't get a hold on where the dream started, it was just a stream of disjointed frames flying by as kinks worked themselves out and a link was slowly formed. Whatever made the connection was much stronger than before. Where he'd previously felt nothing during his time with Dash, he could specifically feel tendrils of consciousness extending outward, taking root and slowly but surely mingling his consciousness with hers. He felt a sense of relief as the dream started to flicker into his reality, and he caught slight glimpses of the filly he'd probably been forming a bond with over these past few days. But while nothing had happened, he'd been all alone in there while Evening wasn't asleep, to such an extent that his own nightmares were starting to sound like they had grains of truth to them. Normally when something came up Dash would be there to help him dissuade his own mind, but as time went on he had more and more trouble facing the things alone. And he'd only been asleep twice since then. "J--son?" Came a voice, disjointed as it passed through half an octave and skipped. "I'm here." He replied, watching as the dream seemed to pick up its frame rate and the filly came into focus, looking around the cobblestone streets as several buildings burned. So it was the capitol then. He looked down to watch her say something, although no words came out. He could feel his ears twitch almost like there was sound to hear, and Scoots quickly repeated herself. "So where a-- we?" She asked, the skip attesting to the mostly unformed connection. The first one with Dash had been only pictures, there hadn't even been sound involved. "Well first of all, welcome to my mind. And this-" Jason said, gesturing around the city. "Is the griffin capitol." A building exploded as Jason's missile came down, sending out a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke that briefly took the shape of Dash's face. "Ow!" Scoots yelped, pulling her hooves away from her side. "How come I can pinch myself?!" "It's not like a regular dream, Scoots. You can get hurt, and all we have is what we've already got on us. Sometimes that's a lot, and other times, well..." He looked down, finding himself bare. "We get nothing." "So this is where you fought?" She asked, looking up at one of the taller buildings. "How did you clear all this?" "We didn't. Troops are still there, as far as I know, and they're doing the job, I hope. I guess I'm not sure if they surrendered or not, but the death of their king should at least be a big morale drop." "You got to kill the king?" Scoots inquired, trotting along as they walked past a few griffins civilians fighting one of their own soldiers. "Yeah..." He walked into a building, the same one that Eravel had been stabbed in. Ghosts appeared as the events played out, and Eravel's face contorted in pain. The griffin grabbed at the spear before his face turned blank and he looked over at Jason. "Bang up job, boss. Some leader you turned out to be." His body got up and stabbed at the griffins, making a break for the door as he faded away into wisps of dust. "That was Eravel?" "Yeah." At least this dream isn't Dash related. He said, wiping an eye. "It's still not good though." "You have things like this all the time?" "Well kinda. A bunch weren't all that peppy." Jason replied as the environment shifted, sliding away into blurs before it seemed to choose a new location and focus back in. He was just inside the throne room, watching as he got taken over by the Nightmare. Tank ran in and threw a punch that looked like it could kill, and Scoots yelped as Jason's head cracked to the side. "Get the fuck out!" He yelled, before the dream sped up and then slowed back down as Tank flew back slowly into the door, as it splintered and Morning came to his aid. Jason heard a chuckle as Nightmare rose through the roof, and the building was mostly silent as the pair went slightly out of focus and Morning yelled up about Tank's shoulder, before working on getting it back into place. They looked around as the building shook and came back into focus, and Morning rotated Tank's arm and pushed it back, cringing as he yelled out. "We need to get out of here!" She yelled, pulling the stallion to his feet as a pillar came down and the floor cracked in half, part of the foundation completely removed. "You did this! It was your fault!" Tank said before a rock landed between the two of them, cutting off Jason's view as tears started to pool. As much as he knew that he would've been hard pressed to change anything, it still hurt to hear their voices blaming him. And part of him knew they had a point. "Jason, come on, don't cry!" Scoots said, hugging at his leg as he teleported them outside. "I- I just- I wish I didn't have to choose Dash over them. I mean, I would no matter what, but it hurts to feel like I've abandoned them." "You don't know they're dead though, it could be a waste!" "Yeah, but it also might not be." He replied, hugging the filly as the dream started to flicker. "See you in a minute, Scoots." He said, watching her disappear. ___________________________________________________________ "Jason, come on, I got a bunch done!" Evening yelled, poking at Jason's side. "You don't always have to sleep like a corpse!" "Yeah, well it's the best I got. It's not like I don't have enough trouble without a bed or Dash next to me." He sighed, walking through the arched book-door after her. "That's really something I miss, besides everything else. It becomes the small things after a while." "I know what you mean, sometimes I just don't feel comfortable without Sky." Star said, shuddering. "I told him to come by when he could, I wonder what's keeping him?" "Could be the foals." Lyra answered with a giggle. "You've only got two, you should see what happens when Jason's daughter get's together with her friends." "Yeah..." Jason said, throwing a glance towards Scoots, who shrugged with a yawn as she walked back out of Fort Book. "She's really taken out all the stops while I was gone. Flash-Bang in town square, some sort of prank on Cherilee... A colt friend..." Her face turned red as the other mares looked over. "You seem pretty cool with that, Jason." Star pointed out, not taking her eyes off the filly. "Sky would have a hay day with that, he has a plan and everything." "Well I just kinda want to get to know the kid. If he turns out to be a total scumbag, then I can kill him. But if he isn't, I don't have any problem with it so long as they don't do anything past their age." He stared again. "So Jason," Evening started, "This stuff." "Yeah, go ahead." "Okay, so the way I see it, you're going to go back there, save the girl, and then what?" "I dunno, I propose?" "Well yeah, but remember how Luna said the spell doesn't last?" Jason thought for a moment. "Yeah, so I'll have to go back again?" Evening nodded. "It should follow the same rules, but the second time, you want the past to stay the same. So you'll have to recreate what you do pretty closely. That should create the loop you need." "How do you know this?" "I just reasoned my way through it. What I'm not sure about is where you'll take over after this spell." "Oh, cuz this future won't exist?" "Yeah, so I want to get finished with time in case you have to cast the spell again within the same time period." "God damn, this is getting complicated." He said, shaking his head. "I'm guessing what you were working on had to do with me recreating the past?" "Yeah." She handed over a pad of paper, with writing covering its surface in neat lines. "You gave me lines?" Jason asked, "I have to learn these?" "Or just read them. As long as it stays the same." She took the pad away and pointed over to a book. "Now this is the last thing you have to do, stop time. It says it's relative, it's really just a more extreme version of the other spell. Nothing can apparently stop time completely." "Well if it's the same, it shouldn't be too hard to learn, right?" "I hope not." "Come on Jason, you can do it!" Lyra yelled over, preoccupied with her own book. Probably concerned humans or something. "Hey Lyra, I have something you might like." "Like a gift?!" She asked, getting visibly excited before rapidly deflating. "But I didn't get you anything." "Really? I don't care." He walked over to Dash's saddlebag and rifled through for the first time since...a while, and pulled out his hoof as he felt the cold cover of a book. He lugged out the history textbook, although to be honest he'd been expecting one of the other books she'd kept, and floated it over. "That's a textbook of AP level US history, and it looks like it's pretty recent. But the thing is, it's biased, and you'll have to take everything with a grain of salt." "Sure thing!" She yelled, before flopping down on her chest and flipping to the first page. "Wow, a map of the world!" "So Evening, let's get this rolling." He said, looking over the spell again. More energy, less time under the magical effect. "Here goes nothing." Jason continued, flaring energy as he attempted something harder than everything he'd tried before. But Evening was right when she said that rest would be good, and he opened his eyes to see them all frozen in place, as light seemed to stretch and slow down. Jason looked around at the motionless ponies and chuckled, enjoying Evening's expression, halfway through blinking with her mouth open. He grabbed an eraser from the table and slipped it into her mouth, before he took Lyra's book and put it over Scoots back, letting the two sides of the cover hand over her orange furred sides. Jason ran the counter spell, watching things speed up as he let out a deep breath and Evening's speaking turned to mumbles. Scoots looked at the book as Lyra pretty much had a heart attack, screaming and yelling before they both connected the dots. "Alright you four. Only one thing left to do." ________________________________________________________________ "Jason, hold on, one more time." "Fine." He stuck his hoof to her forehead and funneled back through the memory for the millionth time, watching as her face lit up. "Nice, you've still got it. So, you know where you're going and what you're saying?" "Completely. I've looked at those things a million times." "Good." "Get my memories!" Scoots yelled, hopping around. Jason chuckled and bumped a hoof into her forehead, slowly grabbing the ones from the last few days. "Listen, before I go... Thanks for all this, sticking with me, whether you had a choice or not." He said, shifting around the riot shield on his back as the other ponies smiled. "Hey Star! They told me you were up here!" Sky yelled as he walked in, ogling the large hourglass. "So I brought you a care package, figured you might need it." "That I might need it? You were the one taking care of foals for three- four- some number of days." Star replied, smirking. "Yeah, but you've been in a library, how fun could that possibly be?" "Shush!" Evening yelled. "We're about to attempt something important!" "Oh, you got this far with that time spell?" Sky asked, taking a few steps back. "Well, fire away!" "I don't really want to think about fire." Jason said, concentrating as he squared his feet and slid the straps of the shield onto an arm. "But here goes nothing..." The light from his horn intensified as a bolt of lightning flared and arced across the floor, as the others backed up another step and the pressure in his horn intensified. Another string of lightning swirled, followed by a third as the pace picked up, and the room took on a bluish tinge. Time slowed down to a crawl before all movement stopped, a bolt glowing as it hung midair. Then the ponies started to reverse direction, moving backwards in slow motion before the lightning swirled into a bluish wall and his world went black.