//------------------------------// // The Last Beloveds // Story: Innavedr // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// Hours later, Captain Filta spun around from the Steel Wing's bow. "I do not understand..." He trotted furiously foward, snarling. "I have endured the unpredictability of your orders because of the faith that I have in your legacy, sir. Even as the Council of Ledo showed their disdain, I remained loyal to you, in the face of absolute carnage and utter adversity, no less!" Evans stood besides Shell as the Prime Enforcer stared across the ruins of Deep Ridge. "He has his reasons, Captain," the young officer stammered. "You know that—" "I know that his 'reasons' have cost me the lives of several of my own soldiers!" Filta growled. "And what has it cost his pride?! Huh?!" "I really don't think we can afford to allow this sort of disorder to hound us—" "What is there to afford?!" Filta yelled, causing nearby members of the crew to flinch. "For that matter, what is there to lose?!" He pointed at Shell's back. "It was his task to bring in the suspect! A task so dire that he turned it into an insufferable crusade! I gave him my resources, my patience, and my loyalty—but now that he's let the target go upon the very precipice of triumph, I no longer have the strength to retain any of those qualities!" "Captain, please. Think about what you're saying—" "No, you think, enforcer! You were not there at Foxtaur! You did not see a hundred soldiers fall to their death, and him not even bat his one eye!" Filta roared directly at Shell. "It matters little to me what you experience you have or don't have! The moment you start losing grip of your sanity is the moment I have to reevaluate my devotion! And, if you ask me, I should have been the better stallion and made this epiphany days ago!" Shell didn't look his way. He simply stared out into the desolation and scars of battle. He took a deep breath of the ashen air and relaxed. Evans fidgeted before saying, "Perhaps he just needs time to reflect and come around with a better strategy. He was lenient on me for the f-failure at Blue Nova. Can't we extend the same grace to him?" "Enforcer Evans, the only reason he extended any grace at all to you is because you still serve him as a prattling young victim of naivete!" Filta stomped his hooves again. "If he was smart, he'd make contact once more with the Council and ask for much-needed back up!" The air was ghostly still, even in the high altitude winds. "Well, Enforcer?!" Filta folded his uniformed forelimbs, frowning. "What will it be?" Shell tilted his head up against the noonday sky. Slowly, he turned around, his hooves scuffling across the deck. His dull gaze swiveled across Filta. Filta stared back. Shell marched towards him. Filta blinked. A tremble or two wracked his figure. Shell trotted forward, paused, stared at Filta... and brushed past him. Filta exhaled as soon as the Prime Enforcer was gone. With a sweating expression, he brushed his mane back, shaking from the inside out. Every stallion watched in quiet silence as Shell trotted lonesomely towards the cabin doors towards the ship's stern. He brought his hooves to the frame, but paused. With a lethargic expression, he looked aside. Nightshade sat between several guards, shackled with heavy manacles. Her gaze lifted, and for once it was colder than her captor's. Shell swallowed. With a melancholic breath, he opened the cabin, shuffled inside, and closed the thick oaken doors behind him. Darkness covered him. But he wasn't alone. The shadows extended over a soft figure seated at a wooden table, bathed in the faintest hint of candle light. The flickering aura painted the edges of Imre's coat a soft amber from where it was exposed beyond the cloak. Shell stared, breathing slowly. With only one eye, the shadows faded in and out before him with each dance of the candle, so that her coat almost looked gold. He flinched, gritting his teeth. It took a mountain of determination, but he was at last able to stand up straight. With a deep breath, he trotted forward and stood before the mare. At that point, nothing happened. Silence huddled between them like a continent, and all of it lit wit rampant flame. The candle almost died, but Imre's breath fed it life. "You... you have a big ship." Shell said nothing. Imre's eyes twitched. She sighed and loosened the hood of the cloak around her shoulders slightly. She stared into the flames, her face as distant and lost as ever. Eventually, she again uttered, "I guess it makes sense that they would give you something like this. Not just the command, but... all the guns. All of the bombastic, Ledomaritan flare." She breathed out the side of her lips, then muttered, "You could never settle for less." Shell stared at the floor. She glanced up at him with a soft expression. Gulping, she pointed. "I... uh... I can't help but notice your... I mean..." Shell's brow furrowed slightly, but then he brought a hoof to the scarred half of his face. Imre grimaced. She fidgeted a bit before saying. "I could have... y'know..." She shrugged and gestured at him again. "I could have fixed that... if I had stayed around. I am... I-I'm a good healer, you know." She nodded slowly, clenching her jaw shut. "I've healed more ponies than I can count. I think that was my talent all along... really..." Somehow, the jitters finally left Shell. He removed his hoof from his face and stared across the table, gazing over Imre's horn. "But you did not stay around," he muttered coldly. "And I, for a fact, know what you're good at." Imre slowly, slowly closed her eyes. She clenched the edge of the table as her body tensed and untensed slowly. "That's why we gave you so much," Shell said. He was beginning to pace, beginning to talk, his voice groaning metallically against the bulkheads of the cabin. "That's why we put so much faith in you, that you could stay true to your talent... and that you could stay true to your loyalty to this Confederacy... and it's secrets." Imre was shaking her head by this point, and a pitiful snicker was escaping her lips. "You know..." She waved a hoof, her grin turning wider... bitter. "I had dreams—nightmares, really—that this day would come. And I imagined you saying a lot of bullcrap to me." She suddenly frowned as a steaming breath escaped her nostrils. "But the last thing... the absolute last thing that I expected from you was the audacity that you could actually speak for her." "Of course I can," Shell said. "I loved her." "Oh really?!" Imre hissed. "Enough to kill her?! To gut her on the table like..." She held back her vomit in order to add, "Like so m-many of the citizens you sent m-me?!" Shell's hooves scuffed the floor as he came to a stop, glaring over at the mare. "I ended her life... and her pain... because I loved her..." Imre literally snorted, shaking her head towards the floor. "I look at you and I can't imagine anything inside that husk being capable of love... ever." Shell took two bold steps and telekinetically swiveled the wooden chair so that the gasping mare could look him in the scarred face. "And it was that same love that spared you from having to die when I saw you taking on the same qualities as her..." His one eye narrowed. "Casting the same fear and doubt... upsetting the politics of Pale Shelf... threatening to spill our secrets at every turn." Imre balked at him, her face looking positively nauseous. "You... spared me?" With a rising growl, she leaned forward and stared him down. "I left you! I left you and this country and I threw myself at the hooves of the Xonans so that they might have the guts to do to me what you couldn't, and yet you could somehow do for Mother..." She bit her lip before spitting, "She's the luckiest of us all. She doesn't have to see what you've become." Shell leaned back, trying to contain his heaving breaths. "She would have been proud of me." "Oh! Really?!" Imre howled. "Prime Enforcer Shell! The living machine of destruction! Preserving beloveds by tearing them apart! Yes, she would have gladly applauded the lengths you have gone to defend the Queen's glorious Confederacy!" "I am the sword of Her Majesty, defending us against utter annihilation. I cannot expect you to understand that. But I can expect you to know one thing." Shell stopped pacing to face her with a frown. "The one reason you lived long enough to reach Xonan territory, much less end up sitting here in this ship's hold, is because I allowed it." He sighed and said, "And that is because I've remained loyal to a commitment... a promise that I made... above all else that I serve and protect." "And what's that?" "I promised your mother... th-that I would not do the same to you as was done to her," Shell said as solidly as he could. He still had to keep from choking at the end of it. "It goes against all of my convictions... but I am willing to risk everything I stand for to... to assure that this promise remains unbroken." His face winced slightly, but returned to icy solemnity. Imre watched with quivering eyes. Her face grew long as she said, "And here I thought that nothing could hurt you..." She gulped. "And yet... it pains you to do this, doesn't it? To spare your own daughter?" Shell's breathing quickened. He looked away from the candle, towards the shadows. Imre stood up from the chair. "With every fiber of your being, you feel one urge... and one urge alone..." She muttered as she stepped forward, "You want to tear me apart... to gut me... to kill me for information. For what? To get at Rainbow Dash? To push back the Xonans? Father, the war will always be going on. What matters now—what always matters—is what you've been protecting... or at least what you used to protect. But... that's all gone now, isn't it? It faded away just as Mother's breath did." She choked on a sob and whimpered, "Can't you talk to me... and keep me alive... because you love me?" Shell said nothing. "And I mean... truly... truly love me? Not... s-something that's excused through diction or protocol or strategy, for Spark's sake! But the love of a father for his daughter..." Her ears drooped as she sniffled. "The love that we used to have... like the home that we used to have... with Mother...?" Shell took a deep breath. "All that matters is wiping the forces of destruction from this landscape," Shell said. "Such luxuries can later be divvied up by the citizens of this land..." "And just what are you then? Huh?!" Shell's eye glistened upon the edges of the candlight. "Somepony who doesn't have that luxury..." "But it's still out there!" Imre shouted. Tears were falling down her face now as she gestured across the firelight. "I've seen it! I've seen beloveds seeking each other out beyond all barricades! I've seen a monster—a vagabond—become tame with the spirit of devotion! I... I..." She hissed in pain as she whimpered, "I've seen such light... so many colors... such joy." She smiled bitterly. "A spirit that is loyal to one thing and one thing only: prosperity." "If you refer to the target, with whom you've obviously become acquainted..." Shell turned to glance at her with a dry expression. "Give her enough time and torment, and she too will become the target of your lofty disdain." "I don't believe that for a damn second," Imre growled. "You think that Rainbow Dash is just... j-just another cog in your machine?! As cold and hopeless and lifeless as you?! Well, you're wrong!" Imre stamped her hoof. "Because although she's not perfect, she knows that loyalty is but an element of all the things that make us whole! She has friends and she's not afraid to make sacrifices to keep them!" "You think I haven't made sacrifices?" "I think you've made massacres, Father," Imre said quietly. "And you've masked the gravity of those mistakes with a fine layer of arrogance and zeal. But Rainbow Dash? She lives with her mistakes. She processes them. She shares the pain equally with her friends, so they can help her as much as she wishes to help them! She's healthy, and for the longest time I despised her for it, because I realized with each passing minute how much more wonderful it would be to live like her. But instead... I... I was becoming cold, heartless, a metal blade to sew flesh open and shut and nothing more." She gulped. "Sterile." "Being with her has simply polluted you," Shell said, glaring hard at the mare. "The equine is a monster at heart, a force of chaos that hast to be tamed and tempered to serve a higher purpose." "You can't weaponize harmony, Father" "And yet, you can achieve the same purpose, given enough time and resources—" "Oh, like you've been doing?! And for how long?" Shell growled. "The target has been a constant thorn in my side and—" "You can't blame her forever!" Imre shouted. "At some point, you're going to look back at all of this and realize that the only reason your happiness and the tranquility of your fellow ponies is unsalvageable is because you and you alone have made it that way!" "There is nothing left to salvage when this kingdom teeters upon the brink everyday." "Who cares about the country, Father?!" Imre stamped her hoof. "I don't! I could care less about this stupid nation and what it's robbed from souls like you and me!" "Then what is it that you think that you desire, Imre?" She inhaled and exhaled in shallow breaths. Swallowing a lump down her throat, she trotted forward and placed a hoof on her shoulder. "I want to be your daughter again," she whimpered. "I want us to ditch this war... this carnage... this insanity. I w-want you to give up the chase so I can give up the guilt and we can just... just be happy again, like a family should be... like we used to be..." Shell merely stared at the contact her hoof made with his coat. "Please..." She stammered. "It is not too late, Father..." Shell looked at her eyes. She smiled painfully. "It is not too late to begin again. No matter the mistakes made or the things that have been lost. We can find harmony. We can leave this nightmare behind and... and go home..." Shell raised a hoof to her chin, giving it the littlest of strokes. Imre's breath left her. But then, like clockwork, his arm moved down and brushed her hoof off of his shoulder. "So long as the target remains at large, I do not have a home worth going back to..." Imre's features melted. She trotted backwards from him, her face awash in tears. Shell looked into the shadows once more. "I will live up to your mother's request, but... you are still an enemy of the state. I can protect you, even in spite of your abandonment of Pale Shelf years ago. It will cost me, but even from the front I can provide... resources to see to your asylum." "Father, please..." Her voice wavered as she pleaded with him. "I'm begging you. Don't do this. Don't spiral down further. I know you must think that I hate you..." She hissed a little as she toyed with the folds of her robe. "And... yes... I have tr-tried so long to hurt you. But... Now I don't know anything anymore. I don't know what's underneath that exterior anymore... if there's anything left at all. Please..." She fought back a sob, "Speak to me. Speak to your daughter. Maybe... m-maybe something in there will remember what I'm talking about. Maybe he'll want to go back there with her..." Shell didn't even look at her. "I can't. The matter is over, Imre. I've... delayed my pursuit long enough, and now it is time that I get back on track..." She trotted backwards, stiffly now, and slumped into the chair. All the tears were gone, as well as the warmth in her voice. She droned into the candlelight as it faded before her. "Then, that's it, then? You're just going to chase her into the night? Even if it ends you?" Shell shook his head. "Nothing will end until I have her seized. It's..." He took a heavy breath. "It's my burden to bear, Imre." "Then it is a lonely burden." A shuffling sound. "I do not envy you." Shell's eye fell to the floor of the cabin. "As... well as you shouldn't, Imre—" A clap of thunder roared between the walls, magnified by a rush of blood to Shell's eardrums. He crouched, the very basic instinct of a soldier. Blinking into the wooden finish, he felt his chest, then his flank. Then he felt his heart, for it had just ran cold. Breathless, he twisted around, then swiveled around. His eye widened. The candlelight had blown out from the blast, its smoke joining a fume of another kind towards the ceiling. Through the darkness, Shell spot a limp leg lying on the edge of the chair. Pale-faced, Shell trotted over. He spotted the cloak—loose on the floor—wrinkled then crumpled then soaked in blood. "Imre...?" A breath shot out of him. A second, sparked by the glint of silver as he spotted the pistol lying besides the pool. "Imre...!" He swooped down, grasping her shoulders. When he lifted her, only part of her head lifted up. The smell from within was pungent, and it brought a flash of gold before him, as if he could see with both eyes again. The yard. The cottage. The sunlit mane and a pair of chapped lips encrusted with blood, murmuring, pleading. "Imre!" He wheezed, then wailed. Her name had mutated in his mouth, churned to a pulp by gnashing teeth as he clutched what was left of her, nuzzling the soft-as-snow coat to his cheek as the stallion that was left inside him melted instead. Shell sobbed for the first time in over a decade, and it was a horrendous thing, louder and hotter than any cannonshot, wavering in octaves that he had never produced in all the years that had scarred him. He huddled there in the darkness for hours, cocooned in his own sobs, a beloved alone.