— Tempered by Flame —
– Chapter I: Small Sparks –
“No! I don’t want to! I’m not going to hurt her!” His voice crackled like crumpled paper as he turned away from the quivering bundle on the ground, trying his best to seem firm in his resolve despite the tremors that plagued his voice. “You can’t make me hurt her, no matter what you try.” He winced as another whimper came from the floor, reminding him of just how much of a monster he, and the rest of his race, really seemed to be to the small, light-blue creature that laid there bound with glistening, green ropes.
He couldn’t help but turn around and look at the poor thing as his father’s jagged hoof pressed him forward just a tiny amount. “It doesn’t matter if you want to or not, Needle. You will starve if you don’t feed.” Their captive whimpered again at the word ‘feed’, but her protests went unnoticed by the two as they glared into each other’s eyes. The hoof that was pushing him along was lifted away for a moment and reasserted itself on the small space between his shoulders. “Listen, son, if you want to be alone while you do this, I can leave.” Before he could even respond, his father turned and began trotting away. “I will be right outside. Please, eat. If not for yourself, then do it for your family. I am not the only one worried about you, Needle Wings.”
"Of course you're worried about me, Father." His soft mutters went unnoticed as they drifted through the air, now silent after the door was shut with a click. "It's not as if those above you are forcing you to prevent my starvation." He looked out of the window, which was partially covered by a torn and rotting sheet of cloth. From the holes in the fabric, he could make out the walls of two buildings in the distance, both of which were abandoned. "And it's certainly not because of the fact that we are dying out as a species." He jerked his head away, kicking a rock across the room and wincing when it landed next to the pony on the floor, setting off another round of pitiful, muffled screams and silenced pleas.
"And why should I want to live on as a creature of nightmares?" Needle lifted his hoof to rest lightly on the broken mirror that hung on the wall before him, staring into his reflection's eyes. They were simply a wall of light blue, just like his father's and almost every changeling still alive too; only a select few were "gifted" with discernible pupils and emerald irises and as such were treated as if they were royalty, despite the fact that any changeling could obtain said eyes if the odds were in their favor at birth. A thrill of fear jolted down his spine as the reflection's mouth opened, moving around the word he hated. Feed. All Needle Wings could do was stand there and stare as the word came again. Feed.
"No! I'm not going to do it!" He jerked away from the mirror, almost knocking it over in his attempts to get to the other side of the room. Once there, Needle Wings waited until his breath had returned before looking at the door again, afraid that his commotion had brought his father poking back into the room to find his orders hadn't been followed. When a few seconds had passed and the door had remained closed, only then did Needle Wings relax the muscles that he didn’t know he had tensed. A few more moments passed before he moved away from the wall and towards the middle of the room, passing by the shivering pony on the ground.
“Seems like you and I are in the same kind of situation, aren’t we?” He knelt down beside the poor creature, reaching out a jagged hoof to gently rub against her side, where there was still a mark of where she had been kicked upon her abduction. Normally in the changeling culture, if you stole the pony then you get the kill as well, but his father had intervened in order to keep him from starvation and as such keep away the displeasure of those who ruled over them. “Stuck someplace terrifying that we don’t quite know how to get out of, desperate for a way out, searching and searching through the pain and unfairness of it all. We really do have a lot in common, if you look past the fact that I’m a monster and you’re an innocent little pony who got dragged into all of this, that is.”
Despite himself, he dug his hoof a little too hard into the soft flesh to draw a small rivulet of blood that stained the pony’s light-blue coat an ugly shade of violet. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he desperately craved the emotions that tumbled out of the pony’s wound and up into his body; it wasn’t a voluntary thing anymore, he was simply succumbing to the need that gripped him every second. “It’s terrible that we changelings have to consume to live as parasites on the goodness that you ponies somehow have despite the world you live in and its cruelties.”
A bang on the door drew him from his trance and the voice that he hated drifted through the blackened rock. “Needle Wings? Have you finished your feeding?” He yanked his hoof away from the pony that he didn’t know he had been feeding from, hate and shock coursing through his body upon realizing that he had let his needs get the better of him. “Do you need anything, my son?”
“N-No, father, I haven’t finished yet.” He winced as his voice came out shaky and fearful, hoping with all the hope in his body that his father simply chalked up his nervousness to the fact that he didn’t want to feed in the first place. “Just… just give me a few more minutes and I’ll have finished here.” With that, he bent down to the pony’s ear, a plan already forming in his mind. “Listen, little pony, I’m not going to hurt you further.” He cut her blindfold with the edge of the hoof that had been cutting into her a moment ago, wincing at the whimpers the little thing produced upon seeing his body. “I’m here to help you, just do not make any sound and you will return to your world.”
He then began working at the bindings around her hooves, which were made of thicker stuff than what the blindfold had been made of; it was a special blend of changeling excretions that hardened when exposed to a bolt of green fire that almost every changeling could produce at will. While his hoof worked away, Needle began telling the pony of his plan. “Once I have freed you of these, you will not run off. If you do, there will be no hope for you to escape. A changeling is always needed to light the portal, something that the ancient elders had long ago put into place to prevent any… invasions of our realm.” The first legs to be free were her hind ones, the snap of the ropes coming apart sounding more like bone than anything else. Good, let that throw them off.
As he set to work freeing her other hooves, he continued in his briefing. “After these break, I will lead you to the portal and you will escape to your world. After that, it is up to you to never allow yourself to be captured again. Then again, your village likely has a patrol of Guards from Canterlot now that the changelings have surfaced and begun abducting ponies to feed on, so it is likely that you will be safe there for a long time.” Just as he finished talking, the next pair of ropes snapped, bringing about another round of whimpers that he didn’t hear before. “Please, little pony, be calm. I am going to get you out of here.” With that, he reached up and cut away her gag and tossed it over to a corner. “But if you make a sound, we will both be killed on the spot.”
Just then, almost as if he had planned it, the door opened to admit his father. A few moments of tense silenced came and went, within which Needle Wings and his father simply stared at each other. It was almost an eternity before his father could finally choke out a question, though it was loaded with anger rather than confusion. “Needle Wings, what are you—“ The changeling didn’t have time to finish the question, as the son he was directing it to had blasted him with a lance of green fire, not enough to do too much damage but enough to stun him for a few seconds while Needle Wings and the pony leapt from the window.
They left the angry shouts behind them as they galloped away from the building and through the streets of the partially abandoned village. Needle Wings looked back to see the little filly working hard to keep up but ultimately fall behind. “Hurry! We have to make it to the portal before the—“ He was cut short by the green fire that arched overhead, scorching a line of black into the greenish cobblestones next to him. “It’s too late, father has sounded the alarm already! We need to get to the portal before they catch us!” Needle lunged forward and grabbed the gasping pony in his hooves, working to bring them both into the air.
He dodged to the side as yet another bolt of fire jetted past him, crackling as it missed him by little more than a hoof's length. Their pursuers were getting closer, their destination seeming even more far away than before. As the jagged edge of a changeling hoof cut into his own, a dread-filled thought crossed his mind and settled somewhere in his stomach. They were going to catch them. He wouldn’t be able to save the poor pony that had been taken from her place in life.
Despite his mind's insistence that he was going to fail, all he did was push on harder, kicking the changeling that had gotten a grip on his leg and flying even higher to get out of reach of most of the fire. After a heart-pounding few moments, they were at the portal. Despite its "importance" it was of simple design and construction; a rectangular doorway made of crooked, blacker-than-black rocks that seemed to suck the light away from the air around them. It was a thing of darkness. It was, along with the other portals scattered around their realm, the reason why the changelings existed.
And it was also going to be where he died. Needle Wings nearly crumpled with the pain that washed over him as he shot a beam of fire into the portal, the screams of the ponies who had passed through it in the ages long gone deafening him. "G-go! Go back to your world! I can only keep it open for a short time!" He couldn't help but spare a glance for the crowd of buzzing monstrosities that were slowly making their way towards the pair, all of their horns lit with a fire that launched every so often to strike at the ground around them. Soon enough their attacks would stop missing and both he and the pony would die. "Get out of here!"
Naturally, the little filly whose life he was so desperately trying to save didn't react immediately. Instead, she simply stood there, staring at him. "Who... are you?" His mental groan didn't make it past his gritted teeth. He decided against answering for fear of having the portal collapse behind him, instead deciding to shove her unceremoniously into the emerald green light. When her shout of surprise had left the air, Needle Wings couldn't do anything but crumple to the ground. It was finally over; she was going back to Equestria, and he was going to meet his fate.
“I’m… Needle Wings… And today is the day I die.” He turned and glared at the creatures that he considered monsters, hating each and every one of them who considered a life as a parasite a just one. “I am not afraid! Take me, end it! I am through being one of you!” His heroics were met with a green bolt of fire striking his chest. Then another. And another. A pure wave of fire rushed over his body as what seemed like the entire village let loose a barrage of hate-filled magic, throwing him back despite his best efforts to stay anchored to the spot. A sickeningly green and swirling light surrounded his vision, blocking out the convulsing fires that were rocketing toward his face. With it came a pain more agonizing than the fires that were washing over him, bringing Needle swiftly to the realm of the unconscious as he drifted along the currents that he was now lost in.
Needle Wings had only one thought before the blackness of pain closed his mind to the world. The portal was still open.
He was going to Equestria.
She woke up screaming.
It went on for what seemed like ages until her throat was ragged and raw, unable to release any more of the anguished sounds that her body still wished to produce. It wasn’t as if she was still in pain, but rather it was her mind’s way of expelling all the bad emotions that it had been forced to bear in that sloshing vortex of green. After the last of the echoes of agony had faded from the air, she fell back onto the ground with the sudden fatigue that washed over her. For the longest time, she simply lay there; completely content to be a rag for the rest of her life with no concern for the outside world.
Of course, the sounds of a wild forest soon drew her out of that numb trance and replaced the feeling of nothingness with a pressing sense of dread, along with some panic ripping away at the edges of her thoughts. She was alone. That was nearly enough to almost throw her into a screaming mess again; an eventuality that was only stopped by the last-second intervention of common sense and a hoof pressing against her mouth. Slowly, so as to not alert anything in her immediate vicinity of her presence, she lifted her head to get a good view of the surroundings.
What she saw really did make her scream, if only for a brief moment. There, just a few inches away, were the fangs of one of the creatures that had kidnapped her and taken her to that awful place where everything wanted to feed from her. It took all her self-control to not gallop off in a random direction and get as far as possible from the thing on the ground before her, the only thing stopping her being the fact that the thing seemed to be sleeping, a green goop leaking out from underneath his body.
Despite the panic that jolted along her spine, the filly stepped forward and nudged him with a hoof, jumping back and letting out a small scream when he let out a strained groan. A few gears in her mind clicked into place, the creature on the ground becoming suddenly recognizable as she stared fearfully at him while he made the small, struggling movements of something that was in a lot of pain. “He… followed me?” Her words seemed foreign to her as they broke the eerie buzz that the forest seemed to possess, being lost in the trees as they seemed to leech her words' strength from the air. She looked around, sure that she had heard laughter from somewhere in the trees. A frustrated groan worked its way out from somewhere down in her chest and all the way up to her mouth as she tried to see through the layers of darkness around her. “This is why I always tell Bright that being a unicorn is better! I wouldn’t have to be stuck in the scary dark like this if I had a horn."
She was tempted to groan again as the words that her sister would undoubtedly say passed through her mind in their usual, annoyingly condescending way. Yes, Cherish, but an Earth Pony has her own powers as well.
“Well, a fat lot of help those powers are going to be if I can’t even see anything!” She kicked out in frustration, desperate for something to point her in the right direction. When nothing of the sort came along, she dropped back down to the ground and allowed a few tears of desperation to fall from her eyes. “What should I do, Bright? What can I do?”
Beside her appeared a misty figure, its tall legs being the only thing Cherish could actually see. The voice it spoke in was mysterious, yet it was also familiar; and it also held a bit of amusement. Well, Cherish, what do you think that you should do?
Cherish turned back to look at the changeling that was still smoking from whatever had happened to him, an occasional groan making its way out of his mouth. “W-Well I’d go and get h-help? I’d try to leave the dark and find some light?” She waited for a while to gain some sort of further guidance from the figure, but when she turned back to look at where the pony had been there was nothing but forest. That’s when it hit her. She had to get herself, and the changeling, out of the forest where there were things everywhere that would eat them in a second. “Th-thank you, Bright Light.” Sometimes that annoyingly condescending voice was right, as much as Cherish hated it, though she was also thankful for the wisdom that she didn’t have herself.
Her mind now strengthened against the fear of the forest with the resolve that came from having a plan at last, Cherish turned to Needle Wings and crouched down next to him, reaching a trembling hoof to touch his charred body. She found herself almost leaping into the air as his groaned yet again, louder than before. It almost sounded like it was turning into a scream before the force behind it was lost. “H-How am I going to get you out of here, though?”