---
“Your horn was still damaged at this point? Enough to affect your magic, that is?”
“Yeah. Can’t tell you how frustrating it was. Gained a whole new appreciation for the flatheads’ methods.” A laugh. “Of course, they’re also physically stronger than us pinheads. A Risen earth pony was just about the toughest thing in Equestria to kill, after Dawn exterminated the dragons, but unicorns or the few pegasi would go down in five or six shots.”
“Er, this was soon after your escape from Canterlot, then?”
“…I’m not sure, actually. I think it was three years afterwards.”
“You were unable to use magic for that long?”
“No, I got my magic back a few days after my horn got taken off, when…”
“Broken? Are you alright?”
A nod. A cough. “…I got my magic back moments after Cadance died, Princess.”
Silence, for a palpable time. “I see…”
“I was… it…”
“Broken, you don’t need to tell us now. Wait until you’re ready.”
“Yeah… yeah, okay…” Another cough. “I… I got the magic back, but I couldn’t use it, not easily. I had to relearn most of my spells from the ground up, like a foal, and I couldn’t use my horn as a focus, either. That’s all a horn really is, a focus for magical energy, but nopony really knew that because nopony could naturally focus enough to cast effective magic without it.”
“Until you?”
“No, I just pushed hard enough that magic started coming out anyways. Took me quite a while to smooth it out.” A third cough. “You, do you want me to talk about the camps, now?”
“That would be best, Broken.”
---
“You speak to me of the horrors within; now you expect me to join my kin?” Zecora stared incredulously across the table at the stolid-faced Shining and Applejack.
“Jus’ long enough fer us t’get our ponies in there, then we can break y‘out. You an’ yer stripey ‘kin’.” Applejack replied, tapping her hoof on the map that occupied the table’s surface. “The camp’s right on the edge’a th’Everfree. We have a couple’a stallions bring you in like you’d been caught runnin’ from the trap y’set up fer Twilight-“
“Dawn.” Shining growled. Applejack blinked.
“Right, fer Dawn. They get ya in, head fer the main barracks, then hit the commanders when we stage an assault on the outside. You get as many zebras as y’can t’one spot so they don’t get hurt in the fightin’.”
“You’re a high-profile prisoner, they won’t deny you entrance, and they’ll probably be too excited to check your escort closely. If everything goes smoothly, the guards break when they figure out their command’s dead, let us round them up without much trouble. Then we tie them to the flagpole while we hightail it out of there with the refugees.” Shining added, then shrugged. “When something bucks up, we have enough ponies outside to keep the guards distracted, and we can crack them by ourselves if we need to. The only big problems could be a Risen guard, or if Dawn decides to show up herself for a surprise inspection.”
Zecora glanced between them again before nodding. “And you promise to get them away from here? Somewhere safe and free, no wars to fear?”
“We have friends in Vanhoover, they can get the refugees onto boats within hours and to Saddle Arabia in days.” Shining answered. “And don’t worry about getting them there, either. The ‘Hooves seem to think that zebras are closer to earth ponies than the pegasi or unicorns, they’ve been running a smuggling circuit for months.”
Zecora gave another glance at the map. She looked up, into Shining’s eye, before nodding.
“You know what to do. Good luck, and may Celestia smile upon us.”
The three stallions (and one mare) nodded solemnly, muttering assent as they shifted under their vandalized armour. Zecora simply sat there, lip and eyebrow freshly bleeding. She’d insisted that she bear some injury, to heighten the believability of her ‘capture’. Shining had let her smack her face into a rock a few times.
The five set off down the edge of the road. They’d move a half-kilometre down before stepping onto it and marching back up towards the camp. Shining and Applejack moved forward to start with, along with five other loyalists, watching the camp from the edge of the clearing, barely one row of trees between them and the open grass.
“D’you think this’ll work?” Applejack mumbled.
“I wouldn’t have risked her if I didn’t.”
“Ah know, but… what d’ya think we’re gonna find in there?”
Shining shrugged. “Shadowbolts said their camp was overcrowded, but the ponies in charge were keeping the peace, and there weren’t any dead that hadn’t already been dealt with.”
“They did a gryphon camp, though. The ground ones’re supposed t’be different.”
“You heard the stories, I’m guessing?”
“I heard enough from the kids t’keep me up thinkin’.” Applejack glanced at the ponies following her, as did Shining. One lanky stallion’s helmet hung slightly loose, as did the rest of his armour; a mare peeked out at them from under the brim of her own oversized helm, her horn the only part that fit to the armouring. She grinned widely at him before catching herself and adopting a more stoic expression. Shining nodded at her.
“They aren’t children.” He bit his cheek. “Not foals, in any case. And I honestly doubt the rumors are true.”
Applejack glaced sidelong at the stallion. “You’re opposin’ a rumor that makes Dawn sound bad?”
“I’m not opposing it, I just don’t think it’s what really happened.”
“How else d’you explain an entire camp clearin’ its population in a week without any influx’a zebras into the local populace? Hollow Shades should look like a wavy checkerboard right now, but our ponies’re reporting a distinct lack’a stripey newcomers.”
“They could’ve moved them, Waltz said the Appleloosan camp got an expansion recently, and we don’t know how many she’s holding in the jewelbitch mines.”
“Maybe…” Applejack nickered. “You think she’d even bother, though?”
“C’mon, Applejack. Two-hundred-fifty zebra corpses don’t just vanish into thin air.” Shining snorted. Applejack gave a half-hearted laugh and a mumble back; the beating of hooves on packed earth grabbed both of their attentions, and they were soon watching four tan-armoured ponies escort a chained zebra to the front gate of the camp. One guard came out from the small shack on the side; he conversed with the group before peeking under Zecora’s hood. Stepping back suddenly, he nodded at the lead pony before re-entering the shack. The gate swung open, and the group walked slowly in.
“Four minutes.” Applejack muttered beside Shining, quiet enough for the others to know she meant it as private. “You think they’ll need four minutes?”
“If they don’t, they send an early signal. We’ve got this planned out, worrying now’s not going to do anything.”
“You’re not worried somethin’ might feather up?”
“Of course I am, I just can’t show it. And I have confidence in them. If something goes wrong, they’ll make it known.” Shining brought up a spyglass, focusing his eye on the gate. “We just need patience.”
Time passed, seconds and then minutes without action or reaction. Applejack paced around the small patch of dirt and grass just inside the forest border; Shining stood still, maintaining his watch, punctuated by glances at the other three hidden groups of loyalists. Everypony was well hidden and stationed, not that it mattered; the guard towers for the camp didn’t even seem occupied, let alone on watch.
A bright flash above the camp set Shining’s back legs stiff. He dropped the spyglass to the ground, front hoof lifting as he heard the ponies behind him shift in their armour. He and Applejack inhaled at the same time, then he brought his hoof to his mouth.
The guard in the shack stumbled out, gazing up at the spot where the signal shone. His head whipped around when he heard Shining’s piercing whistle, standing in apparent shock as Shining and his squad emerged from the treeline. The stallion didn’t move until Shining was only a few metres of him; then he seemed to realize exactly who was galloping up to the camp.
“Hey, you ne-“ he began, before two orange hooves met his snout. The stallion was knocked back, hitting the wall before Applejack reset her hooves. The other squads quickly joined them, and there were soon forty ponies milling about outside the camp’s gate. Shining slipped into the guard shack, searching it for what would hopefully be labelled-
“Gate lock.” The stallion said, grinning at the small wheel under the sign. He withdrew from the shack, grabbing two unicorns and pointing them to the wheel. One quick instruction, and the gate swung open, Shining’s forces forming to the wall on either side of the opening. He nodded across the road at Applejack; she slipped inside the camp, four loyalists following her. Ten seconds passed.
“Clear!” The mare’s voice called. Nopony relaxed. Shining quickly motioned the other squads in, the unicorns from the shack merging with their battle-group. He moved in with the final few ponies, washing his gaze over the camp’s internal structure.
The oddly clean, completely deserted structure. The wide dirt road continued down towards the camp’s centre; a total of four dirt paths split off of it, running parallel to each other and the wall in either direction. Rectangles of grass lay between these paths, with long, low-stilted structures in ordered rows taking up much of the unpaved area. These buildings bore no sign of use, their ramps unmuddied and windows shuttered. This was normal, based on the maps of camp spies; the second wall, however, was not.
“Aw, buck, there’s another one?!” Somepony cursed. Shining glanced at the smaller version of the structure they had just breached; it stood around the centre of the camp, holding maybe as much as a quarter of the camp’s land area. The logs comprising it were thicker and slightly higher, and there was no gate. Shining gazed blankly at the structure before inhaling.
“Right! Applejack, take squads five through eight, go around the right side, look for the breach party. Squads one through four, follow me, keep your eyes peeled for movement. We’re still in enemy territory, we’re presuming they know about us, we have ten minutes. Move!” Shining finished with a bark, jumping everypony into action. Applejack trotted up to him as the squads organized themselves.
“Two-hundred-fifty can’t disappear, huh? How ‘bout two-hundred flat?”
Shining snorted at the mare. “Look at this place, nopony’s ever lived in these. If they have anybody held here, they’re in the second wall, and that shouldn’t hold more than fifty zebras.” He laughed. “Looks like we got off easy, here.”
Applejack gave him a flat look. “Shinin’, we’ve seen more’n fifty zebras get brought here, there was over a hundred in that carriage train a year ago!”
“It could have been a fake-out, AJ. Those things happen. We just need to verify the other camp intel, make sure we haven’t missed anything.” Applejack opened her mouth again, but Shining raised a hoof. “Later. We need to make sure this place is clear.”
Shining attached himself to one of the squads, led by a mare, Petal Light, who was likely born when he was taking the Guard entrance exams. She controlled her ponies well enough, as did the other leaders; two squads took each road, one advancing while the other covered them. The advance was synchronized, both pairs of squads moving forward at the same pace. The group rounded the corner in just over a minute, continuing down along the deserted outer area.
---
“I’m sorry, Broken, this is terribly interesting, but could you perhaps move it along to a point more relevant to your topic?”
“Er, I’m sorry, Princess?”
“Oh, don’t worry, you aren’t in trouble, it’s simply that some of us have a medically-mandated bedtime that is creeping ever closer. I’m sure you could summarize up to the point that illustrates why these ‘internment’ camps were the morally reprehensible constructions that you and Twilight seem to hold them as?”
“Oh, right, um… yeah. We kept moving, rounded the corner again, and met up with Applejack’s half of the loyalists, right in front of the camp’s administration building, it was a re-ed originally, which was basically a much larger version of the shack outside, with a much smaller gate to go along with it. One of our infiltrators had set a signal on the outside, and when we came in they had already tied up the eight remaining camp guards.” A laugh. “Nine guards for two-hundred zebras, can you believe it?”
“Didn’t you say that the inner wall couldn’t have held more than fifty zebras, Broken?”
“Yeah. I did.”
---
“What in Faust’s name…”
Shining’s invocation had been one of the calmer reactions to the scene inside the second wall. Several ponies had vomited, one had actually fainted. Applejack had taken one look inside, turned around, and bucked the gate-door hard enough to break the logs it was connected to.
The smell hit first; the smell of sewage and rot, pushed up by the heat that the close walls trapped at ground level. Within the walls stood eight of the stilted buildings from the outside. Unlike the outside, the buildings were extremely dirtied and lived-in; the fact that the ground was bare dirt didn’t help with the image, nor did the smearings of what Shining sincerely hoped was mud on the walls of most of the structures. With bunkbeds no inside walls, they could house ten ponies each, semi-comfortably. Subtract one that had been deigned as a school, one that had been meant for storage, and two that had been built together in order to form a dining hall, and you had accommodations for forty zebras.
There were forty zebras standing in front of him, and dozens more milling about down the small length of road or emerging nervously from the stilted structures. Every zebra he could see was covered in dust and grime, their eyes red and watching him with some kind of dull mix of fear and resignation. The general positions of their bodies implied that they were used to running away from ponies.
“Where is Zecora?” Shining heard himself ask. The zebras looked odd, their bodies warped in some way his eyes weren’t used to seeing. Zecora matched the general body shape of a pony, why did these ones look… smaller?
“She went lookin’ fer supplies in the outer buildin’s.” A drawl answered. Shining turned, fixing his eye on Applejack.
“What supplies? We need to get these zebras out of here, and I’m sure they’ll follow one of their own easier than us. We can’t have her just run off-”
“Shinin’, look at them.” Applejack interrupted. “We need t’get them outta here, definitely. But they need something t’eat first.”
Shining gave her an odd look before turning back to the zebras. Of the ones closest to him, six shrunk back when his eye fell on them. Two just stared blankly back at him, and one of these happened to be standing mostly to the side. Beneath the dirt and the matted, turned-up coat, Shining realized that he could see the zebra’s ribcage, its spine, its hips and collarbone and individual joints.
Shining had seen starvation before. He’d been starved before, everypony there had, when the Revolution was on high and flathead farmers would have burned their fields before letting a pony loyal to the crown buy any of it. It had softened in the last two years, for varying reasons, but many days consisted of one-and-a-half meals plus whatever one could scrounge on guard duty. The thinned legs, stomachs, and cheeks of many of the ponies he commanded spoke of the kind of hunger only spoken of but never really felt in Equestria.
That’s what he had thought up until now.
“… go find Zecora. Bring some unicorns with you. Tell her to come here, and them to go outside and pull as much grass from the field as they can carry.” Shining fixed his gaze on the zebra. It opened its mouth, small bulbs of blood swelling up and then coursing down its chin as its lips cracked, its empty gums curving into a disturbing smile. “Get a pegasus, no, two of them, tell them to grab some clouds and bring them here. Large ones, heavy ones, not enough to thunder but enough to rain for quite a while.” The zebra blinked, slowly. It watched him for a few seconds before turning away and staring at a point on the wall. Shining realized that he couldn’t tell whether it was a mare or a stallion.
He turned to look at Applejack, only to find her already running back out the gate. Shining gave the entire inner camp one last glance before picking up his voice.
“Hello.” He called. Most of the zebras in the area flinched; several stumbled over themselves as they jumped away from his voice. The staring zebra didn’t move. Shining put his voice a little lower. “Hello, I’m… we’re here to help. We aren’t going to hurt you, I promise. I have ponies, good, kind ponies, with me here, and we’ve come to rescue you. They’re outside now, getting food for all of you, food and water, and… and we’re going to get all of you out of here. Nopony’s going to hurt you anymore.” Blank stares met his speech. Shining swallowed. “If, er, if anypony in there understands me, can you, can you tell the others what I said? Please?” The stares continued, all incomprehensible and uncomprehending. Shining screwed his eye shut.
“I do believe that I could aid, if such a speech is to be made.”
Shining watched as Zecora walked up to stand beside him, her working eye sliding its gaze back and forth over the crowd. Most of the crowd seemed to gain some light in their eyes when they saw her; Shining tried not to think about the fact that they were less scared of a horribly disfigured zebra than a slightly injured pony.
“Faust… Zecora, could you translate what I said? Did you hear it all?”
“I heard enough to speak well and true; the ponies outside are asking of you.”
Shining nodded, once more moving his eye to glance at the zebras. The staring one still watched the wall, even as Zecora started speaking in their language. Shining tore his eye away and stepped outside.
“You.” He said at one of the gate guards. “Go inside, make sure the zebras don’t try anything.”
The mare stared at him for a second. “Sir, what in Celesta’s name would they try?”
Shining swallowed. “I don’t know. Do it anyway.” The mare took a breath before nodding, stepping stiffly inside and keeping fairly close to the gate. Zecora continued speaking, apparently oblivious to the actions outside. Shining kept walking, his face blank. He hardly noticed as a pony thum-thum-tak-thum’ed up to him.
“Are you alright, sir?” Jade asked. Shining put his eye on the stallion.
“Have you seen what’s in there, Sergeant?”
“I was helping restrain the camp guards, sir.” Jade replied. Shining blinked.
“Where are they?”
“The structure, they called it a bunkhouse, one row down and on the left side. You designated it yourself, remember?”
Shining did remember, he had simply forgotten until that moment. He said as much, and added to it.
“Listen, Jade… don’t go in there unless Zecora or the mare guarding her need help. Just stand at the gate, stick your head in. Don’t make eye contact with any of them, try to make sure they don’t notice you. Look for, I don’t know, five, six seconds. If you feel sick-“
“Sir, are you alright?” Jade asked. Shining blinked again.
“Yes, I am. Is something wrong with me?”
Jade took in a breath. “You… you looked like you were going to be sick, sir. Your legs are still shaking.” Jade pointed his pegleg under Shining; small quivers shook up from the stallion’s hooves towards his shoulders. Shining shook himself, and the shakes subsided.
“I’m fine, Jade. Just go get a look at them, then wait outside the gate for the food and water to show up. Come get me when it does.”
“Sir.” Jade nodded, giving his commander another glance before trotting away. Shining took a few breaths, leaning against the nearest bunkhouse. Celestia had debated building similar buildings in low-class areas, to get ponies off of the streets and out of even worse habitation; when the cost was brought up and the nobles got their hackles raised, she shelved the project. Twilight had seen it as a Princess, lobbied for it, and been shot down.
But she didn’t freak out. She didn’t revolt. She accepted that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with it.
Did she really, Shiny? Or was our dear sister biding her time, waiting-
“NO!” Shining shouted. He took in another breath. No, buck you. Twilight isn’t Dawn, Dawn’s like Nightmare Moon. None of this is Twilight, it can’t be.
Are you sure?
Yes! Twilight wouldn’t have used necromancy, Twilight wouldn’t have started a Revolution, Twilight wouldn’t have made these camps, Twilight wouldn’t have killed Luna or Celestia or Cada- A lancing pain beneath Shining’s horn cut his thoughts. When the pain subsided, the other voice returned.
Everypony has something, an edge they stand on, and when they get pushed hard enough, heh, well, they might just break.
Shining shook his head; he wasn’t going to keep arguing with himself. He stood up from the building, dragging his hooves to the only guarded bunkhouse in sight. Everypony gave a salute; he gave one back.
“How’re the prisoners?” Shining asked.
One of the guards spat. “Better than theirs, sir.”
Shining gave a dry, barking laugh. “We’ll see about that.” He stepped up the ramp, knocking on the door. One of the guards inside opened it, letting Shining squeeze inside before shutting the door tight again.
“Oh Faust, no…” a moan came from the corner. Shining turned; the camp guards had all been chained together, their uniforms torn away, levelling them all as captives. The one in the far right, as far away from Shining as he could be, was the outer gate guard; the one in the center of the group was far more composed, and a good deal older than even Shining.
He was also a pony that Shining recognized.
“Hello, Captain.” The stallion said.
“Hello, Long Path.” Shining replied. “You’re the leader here?”
“Yep. Got a nice, prestigious commission for my work in the Revolution.”
“You mean selling out Manehatten. And the Princess.”
“That’s the one.” Path shook his head. “If I’d known it’d be like this, though…”
“You can’t go back, you son of a whorse.” Shining bit off, his voice a rough whisper. “None of us can.”
Path regarded his former commander with sad grey eyes. “I am sorry, Shining.” He lowered his head. “You can do whatever you want to me. Just let these ponies go.”
“Sir?!” One of the chained ponies exclaimed. “Wha-“
“If you know what’s good for you, colt, shut up NOW.” Path cut the pony off before turning back in Shining’s direction. The loyalist leader seemed frozen in place on the spot he’d first seen his former subordinate. “Listen, Shining, please. I know what you’re thinking. These ponies weren’t involved, they all joined up after the Revolution ended, they’re barely out of foalhood!”
“Old enough to guard this place.” Shining put his eye on every one of them. “Old enough to do that.”
Path flinched. “What happened in there-“ He cut himself off. “I was promised a contingent of twenty guards, with one Risen. They gave me nine, plus some teachers from the former School for Gifted Unicorns. Said a large force would draw too much attention. We only had thirty… forty refugees here, including the foals, so we just kept them in the inner walls because they didn’t need the outer area. It wasn’t too bad, really.”
“For you or the zebras?” Shining asked.
“Both! They were happy here, happy to be in real beds and real buildings and getting a real education. We were doing something for them.”
“And then?”
“Then her Ladyship broadened the Inequine Security Act. We got a mass influx of zebras, with the promise that we’d get more guards to help contain them. We thought the ones that came to get the teachers back were going to help, but no. We just needed to wait, supposedly.” Path scoffed. “We couldn’t let them out, not with the ten of us. It wasn’t horrible, then, but we couldn’t risk going in, getting surrounded. We requested more rations, and we got them, until they started disappearing on the way here.”
A shock of ice punctured Shining’s stomach. “Disappearing.”
Path nodded. “It only got… bad, I guess, around six months ago, when we hadn’t gotten a shipment in weeks. We had to cut them to half rations. They got angry. Our translator, High Sight, tried to explain, he opened the gate-“
Silence, for a few seconds. Path gave a shrug.
“They let us recover his body, at least.”
Shining felt himself move. He turned to the door, saw the faces of the guards that he’d forgotten were even there.
“You tell nopony.” Shining growled. The guards both nodded, swallowing. He slid out the door, taking several quick steps down the road and going at a hard walk back towards the inner wall.
They couldn’t have known. They should have guessed, but they couldn’t have known. The shipments looked exactly like the ones they’d raided from other supply lines, no special designations, and they were going in the direction of both the camp and a known Revolutionary military base. It hadn’t been a choice so much as a need. Shining’s ponies were starving. They took the food to stop themselves from starving.
They’d started raiding that particular supply line eight months ago.
“Sir!” A voice tore Shining from his thoughts. Jade ran up to him. “Sir, they, there-“
“Breathe, Sergeant.” Shining said. Jade took in several breaths.
“Zecora, she explained what we were doing, and then we brought the grass in, and the water, and they swarmed us…”
“Is everypony alright?” Alarm crept into the captain’s voice.
“Yeah, but we had to break up some fights, get everypony ordered again. Then one of the zebras screamed, he started yelling something, and suddenly all the zebras were jabbering and Zecora was staring wide-eyed at them and-“
“Jade!” Shining barked. The peglegged stallion stopped. “What’s going on?!”
“He was asking where his daughter was.” Jade said, his voice abnormally high. “Zecora, she said they said that the foals and the teachers were all brought into the outer areas, that’s what they were told. Sir-”
Shining spun on his hooves and went back to the prisoner bunkhouse.
“Sir, is everything-“ One of the guards began, before Shining’s horn glowed and the side of the building tore off. Shining flung it into the side of the one to his back-left, his eye never straying from the faces of the prisoners.
Then his horn’s glow shifted, and the prisoners were pulled out into the road. Each of them landed roughly, painfully. Shining grimaced as Path stared at him.
“Shining-“ Path began. Shining slammed a ball of magic into his face, the small frays in the loyalist’s magic burning Path’s coat. The struck stallion fell back, pulling the two ponies chained to him with him.
“WHERE ARE THEY?!?” Shining roared. He stalked up to Path, placing one hoof between the stallion’s legs and a heavy magic on his neck. Path coughed.
“What are you-“
“THE FOALS, YOU FAUST-DAMNED SHIT!” Another magical punch. Path groaned.
“They left with the teachers… I don’t…”
“The feather you don’t.” Shining lifted him by his neck, watching his legs kick before dropping him back down onto the ponies dragged beneath him. He let them sort themselves out before continuing. “You lost one guard. How many did you take?”
“E-excuse me?” Path blinked at Shining. Shining bared his teeth.
“The zebras in there were scared of us. They thought we were going to hurt them. Directly, not passively, not like letting them starve.”
“We left the supplies in there, we let them sort them out-“
“SHUT UP!” Shining was yelling again. His head throbbed, the corners of his vision were red. He hit Path again, in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. “They thought we were going to attack them. Like they’d been attacked before, by ponies in armour.”
“They were torn from their homes and brought here by ‘ponies in armour’!” Path spat. “We didn’t-“
“You lost a stallion. You’d served with him for months, at least, before they killed him. It couldn’t have been quick, he must have been suffering under their hooves.” Shining’s voice was acidic. “He was the one that was trying to help them, to make them understand, he must have trusted them to open the gate and go inside, and they killed him for it. And you didn’t do anything? Just gave them what they wanted, no vengeance against his murderers?” Shining gave a dark laugh. “That’s not the Path I know, to let one of ‘his colts’ get killed without retribution. So I want to know; What. Did. You. Do?”
Path sat, staring in a mix of anger and shock at Shining. He opened his mouth, but another voice cut him off.
“We gave them what they deserved.”
Everypony’s head turned to a mare, right at the end of the chain, opposite of the outer gate guard. Path moved to speak, but Shining pushed him back to the ground. He walked closer to the mare, who glared him in the eye.
“And what, exactly, did they deserve?” His voice was calm, careful.
“They took my brother, one-tenth of our force.” The mare’s voice was terse, angered. “We took the same amount. One-tenth, the twenty nearest to his body, the ones with blood on their hooves.” Her voice broke, tears running down her face. “We could only recover High because they were running from us.”
Shining stared the mare down for half a minute. He saw no doubt, no fear in her eyes. He glanced at Path; the stallion returned his gaze, same as the mare.
“Please-“ Path started.
“You miss your brother, I presume?” Shining said lightly, addressing the mare. She blinked, her brows furrowing.
“Of course.”
Shining laughed, his eye never leaving Path. The other stallion’s gaze became confused, before he saw past Shining’s eye.
Then his eyes gained fear.
“No, Shining, please-“
Once more, Shining cut the chained stallion off.
“How about I reacquaint you?”
Then his horn glowed, and before the mare could speak he jabbed the tip between her eyes. There was a flash, and he pulled his head back up, his horn still glowing as he released her shackle. Everypony watched the mare, as the small point of charred fur settled. Her eyes were dull, her jaw loose. Then the charred spot got slightly bigger.
Then she began to scream.
Several minutes later, when her twisted, smoking corpse lay a dozen hooves away, he informed Long Path and the remaining conscious prisoner that the mare had gotten off easy.
---
“We ended up locking them in the inner area, chained them all up around the well. Mysteriously, the entire camp burned down a few hours later.” Broken laughed. “Apparently one of them tried to jump in the well to escape, ended up dragging everypony along with him. Path held onto the side of the well, keeping them all above the water until he burned to death. Then they fell and drowned.” There was silence for a few seconds before Broken turned to Dr. Long Path, who had dropped his clipboard and was staring at the cycloptic stallion with wide, wet eyes. “And now that I think on it, I’m willing to bet that your father is in the Guard.”
“Ah… I…” The psychologist choked out. He made several small sounds before Broken spoke again.
“In my time, he was a good stallion. I was proud to have him under my command, and I’m sure his death was an attempt to keep his ponies alive.” Broken stood and walked over to Path, placing a hoof on his shoulder. “I can only hope your father is an even greater pony here.”
The doctor stood, suddenly enough to make Broken jump back. He turned and nodded at Celestia before stiffly walking to the door, opening it, slipping out, and closing it again in under a second. Broken flicked his eye to Shining, who sighed.
“Lieutenant Long Path Sr. was killed several years ago while rescuing a foal from a burning building in Canterlot’s Third District.” The guard captain stated. Broken brow furrowed a second before his eye widened, and he slapped a hoof to his face as he bit off a curse.
“Of course he was. Of bucking course he was. Most of Third District was burned down a few years before Luna came back, of course it would just be one building here, not big enough to keep a guard from trying to do his job...” Broken put his eye back on his younger self. “Did the foal-?”
“The colt was fine.”
“Thank Faust…” Broken breathed. “We never found the zebra foals, they’d disappeared, gone without a trace. We promised we’d keep looking, but we never found anything.” He put his eye to the floor, sighing again.
Shining and Celestia regarded Broken with guarded expressions. Twilight’s mouth was tight, and a few stray tears slid down her cheeks.
“You asked why I find the camps so deplorable, Princess? There’s your answer. They brought out the worst in everyone. They made good ponies, zebras, gryphons, anyone who was trapped inside into desperate, fearful beasts, and that goes for the guards and the prisoners, given that ninety-percent of them were understaffed.” He lifted his eye to Twilight. “The other ten were the source of our healing spells, among other innovations.”
“…came at the cost of dozens of test subjects, all of whom were supposedly dangerous criminals…”
Of course, if it’s a crime to be anything but a pony…
“I’m well aware of how much of a monster Dawn was, Broken.” Twilight said quietly. Broken’s eye narrowed.
“Yet you keep her favourite little sycophant around to play with.”
Some part of Twilight’s mind broke. Heat flushed into both her face and her forehead, a cloud of red creeping in from the edges of her vision. The little other-voice spoke, and for the first time, Twilight listened.
“Pip is as much a victim as you are, Broken.” She heard herself say. She wasn’t aware of thinking it, the words just came out, the voice behind them tight with fury. “You are going to stop attacking him, and I don’t just mean physically.”
“Excuse me?!” Broken growled. “What the buck do you mean, a victim?! That thing wasn’t a victim any more than Dawn was!”
“How not?!”
“One-hundred Guards! Countless Loyalists! PRINCESS LUNA!”
“And how many have you killed?!”
This caught Broken up short. He opened his mouth, but Twilight started yelling again, stalking towards him.
“You hold yourself up above him, like he’s some insane murderer and you’re some knight in Shining Armor!” She watched as he flinched slightly, almost enjoying the discomfort that was replacing the anger in his eyes. “But that’s not what I’ve heard! You’ve done horrible things, worse things than I can even think of, you’ve killed ponies and other beings in evil ways and you only seem to regret it when Celestia gets mad!” She pushed her face up to Broken’s, her eyes digging into his.
“He doesn’t regret-“
“CAN HE?! Did Dawn leave him the capability to show remorse, or anger, or pity or compassion or happiness or anything?! Who’s to say that he’s not tearing himself up inside his own head, unable to do anything but watch as his body acts like a puppet for whoever holds the strings?!” She slammed a hoof down. “But you! You’re your own pony, everything you do you do willingly! You have no puppetmaster, no controlling force other than some idea that killing me, or killing Pip, or traumatizing everypony, or whatever you’re trying to do now, will magically fix everything that went wrong in your Equestria! All you’ve tried is hurt, hurt, hurt, without any attempt to actually help anypony that doesn’t involve brutalizing somepony else! So I ask again, HOW MANY HAVE YOU KILLED?!?”
Broken was leaning back, his eye wide as Twilight’s tirade ended. She stared him down as his jaw worked soundlessly before turning away in disgust.
“Dawn was... was bucking Pip almost every night. He didn’t understand, he thought she was playing a special game with him. The way he thinks, what Dawn did to his mind, he’s still a foal, Broken.” Twilight could swear she heard the gears in Broken’s mind grind to a halt, and she turned her head to give him a venomous glare. “Maybe he did bad things, horrible things. Maybe he is evil, an unredeemable murderer. But even if that’s the case, there’s still one big difference between him and you.”
Broken made a noise that sounded vaguely like “What?”
“He never enjoyed it.” Twilight gave a sharp grin that did nothing to her words. “I’m sure Cadance would be proud of you.”
She didn’t bother opening the door. Her horn glowed for a second, and she disappeared with a magical flash.
Twilight’s old room in the castle had been left unaltered; aside from what she had requested to be brought to Ponyville, everything was exactly as was before she had been sent to Ponyville. Before the Elements of Harmony. Before her friends.
She’d magicked up a large swath of curtain over the windows, blocking the sun as best could be done. She needed to sit and think, away from distraction. Darkness and silence, avoidance of sensory stimulation to better encourage her mental processes.
What the buck did I just do?
That was the first thing she’d thought. It was quickly responded to.
You let loose.
I lost control.
And for the first time you might actually have gotten through Broken’s thick skull.
I should have stayed calm, yelling at Broken like that is just going to make him see me as more of a threat-
Good! Let him be scared of you! Better than letting him walk all over you!
I was giving him too much leeway, I know that. Celestia was too, she knows that. But what I said… “He never enjoyed it. Cadance would be proud.” Faust, those were terrible! He’s mentally unstable, I can’t hold that over his head, and mentioning Cadance might make him get even worse!
…would that really be a bad thing?
Twilight opened her eyes in shock. Of course it would! We’re trying to help Broken, get him out of this mindset of violence and vengeance, show him that he doesn’t need to worry about Dawn here! Horsefeathers, he might think Dawn was the one yelling at him!
The other-voice was silent for a few moments. And how has he repaid you for your efforts? Violence, hatred, trying to push your friends against you. We should just leave him here to rot, let Celestia squeeze what she wants out of him and forget about it. If he doesn’t want our help, then we shouldn’t give him any. He wants to die; I say we tell him how close he is already. Let him waste away knowing that he’s never going to stop us.
Twilight shook her head. That’s, that’s-
The kind of thought you’ve been constantly pressing down.
Because it’s horrible!
Sometimes horrible is needed. It’s nowhere near what he’s done.
That doesn’t make it okay! Why am I even thinking like this?!
Buck if I know. Broken mentioned that little voice in his head, telling him to do ‘bad’ things; maybe I’m your Broken. Except you aren’t insane, so I’m only out and about when you’re… piqued, scared, pissed off. I’m probably your safe zone, now that we’re putting some thought to it; the part of your mind that keeps you grounded in self-interest and self-defence.
Twilight blinked. …Faust, that’s it! Broken’s a safe zone for Shining’s mind to deal with trauma! If we heal his trauma, he’ll revert to Shining again!
Right, you just shower him with kindness and friendship and he’s sane again. IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT, ME.
Well, of course not, but if I suggest it to Dr. Path, if he thinks it’s viable… this just makes helping him even more important! If we get him out of Broken-mode, he might be much more receptive to the idea that Dawn isn’t going to rise here, and everything else besides!
Twilight could feel the other-voice smack itself. So we’re just ignoring all self-preservation and throwing ourself at his mercy even more, now? Were you even listening to the part of your brain trying to keep you alive and safe?!
No, Broken has the Oath now. The stringent one. We’re going to be far safer than we were.
Still not as safe as if he goes away… and what makes you think he’s not stuck as Broken? Brain damage to frontal lobe, hello?
It’s still worth a try. He’s not a bad pony, at heart – he’s just scared, and angry, like Dr. Path said. We need to let his good side come out more.
The other voice didn’t respond. Twilight heard a door creak, and the pages of an open book rustled behind her.
“Hello, Pip.” Twilight said, turning. “Weren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
“Celestia woke me up, Milady. She claimed that you were missing. That was forty-six seconds ago, and I promise that I slept for the hour and forty-eight minutes before it, Milady.”
Twilight nodded, a smile teasing at her lips. She glanced at Pip’s stoic face, hardly visible in the dark.
She remembered what he was.
“Pip, I… I need you to lean your head down and stay still.” The unicorn said, her horn gaining a small glow. Pip did as she asked.
“Might I ask what your intention is, Milady?” He asked through barely-opened lips.
“I want to check something.” Twilight’s horn’s glow grew as she moved it towards his forehead. The tip of it made the barest contact, enough to look without touching.
She felt dozens, hundreds, thousands of magical threads coating Pip’s mind. Each bore a different spell, a different effect, and they were overlapping and twisted together into a morass around the psyche beneath them (a psyche that would be incomprehensible even if no spells were blocking her view of it – if one could read a pony’s mind so easily, neither psychologists nor lawyers would need to exist anymore). Twilight didn’t press forwards – that way lay memory stealing, mind control, other things that left an irrevocable damage in the mind they were performed on. Instead, she simply ‘looked’, examined each thread, the magic that had formed it and been tied off to maintain it.
As she had expected, the magic felt almost exactly like hers.
And if I made them, I can unmake them…
“Thank you, Pip.” Twilight brought her head back, glancing at Pip’s face again as he raised his head. His expression hadn’t changed.
“Celestia requested that I bring you back to the hall in which your friends were waiting, Milady.”
Twilight took in a breath. “Was she… angry?”
“I do not believe so, Milady. She appeared moreso worried than angered.”
Twilight let the breath out. “Well, let’s not keep her waiting.” Her horn glowed, and the room was empty again.