I passed Steve and didn’t respond to his wave.
I sat down after reaching the top floor, and saw silverware dancing about the room. It wasn’t mine though, it was just made new, never existing until now.
“Let me get you ready.”
The last seeds of corruption sprouted in my mind, and I stood up, having changed.
I was an adult again, my eyes filled with fires.
A sharp, broken knife blade floated over to me and impaled itself into my head, the point upwards.
My body changed to accommodate this horn.
I checked the time.
It was six already.
More knives came over and melded together into two large wings, and stabbed themselves into my sides, then became a part of me too.
I was bleeding, but felt fine.
I gave them a quick test, and found they provided a great deal of thrust and lift.
More knives came and became odd horns going like mouth guards, and going backwards.
The remaining silverware melted and went onto my skin, then reformed into armor.
I closed my eyes, opened, them, and was ready.
“Here I come.”
I unknowingly lifted a pen and a scroll into the air with magic, and began to write on it these words: Celestia, you can’t stop me. The elements can’t stop me. Not a single being can stop me. Not any group. Nothing.
I set the note to the side, folded my wings against my sides, and walked down the stairs.
Steve had just left, the door closing as I came down, my medium weighted armor making soft sounds as I moved, clanking on the floor slightly.
Fable was too busy organizing books to pay attention to me coming up on her from behind.
I leaned my head in next to her ear, and softly whispered “Boo.”
She panicked, dropped the books to the ground, turned, and went wide eyed.
“Knifer?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to you?”
“I warned you.”
She was filled with panic and could not move an inch.
I move the books with my thoughts, sending them to where she had wanted them.
I then spread my wings wide apart.
“I am leaving until I am done, then I will be here, in this spot, and free again. Until then this land will be red.”
I winked out of there, leaving a panic stricken Fable to cower, unable to move or think, merely babble the words “This land will be red.” Over and over again.
I came into existence in front of Celestia hours later as she was preparing to rest.
“How did this happen to you?”
“Starry smoke, Celestia. I have a message.”
“What?”
“This land shall be red.”
I then blinked away, leaving her to ponder over those words.
I appeared over a sleeping Seka, and placed a small ivory knife on her bed stand.
“Sweet dreams.”
I walked out of the room and winked away.
I found Steve back in the library trying to comfort Fable, and appeared behind him.
He calmly turned to face me, un phased by my transformation.
“What did you do to her.”
“I merely told her something. ‘I am leaving until I am done, then I will be here, in this spot, and free again. Until then this land will be red.’”
I then winked out before he could grab me.
I came into existence over a sleeping Blitz.
“This is for making me panic many times.”
I cut her front left leg lightly and watched as her cloud bed slowly turned pink, then red.
I then winked away.
I appeared far away from there, my business done.
I then headed to a place only the Demon in me knew of, deep in the Everfree.
It was a broken and destroyed castle, one that hadn’t been visited for generations.
“Welcome to your new home.”
“Yadda yadda where’s the bed?”
“You must operate at night.”
“…”
“Or you will get caught.”
I flexed my metal wings and began to flap slowly.
“Fine.”
I turned around and found myself face to face with Luna, her being slightly taller than I.
“Why?”
“Darkness.”
“Not you too…”
“Kill her now.”
“No.”
“How did this happen?”
“Went to the mountain, got attacked by a starry smoke.”
“Kill her.”
“No.”
“You love her?”
“No, I’ve met her before.”
“We need to save you from it.”
“I HAVE TOUCHED HIM FOREVER.”
“You can be almost completely destroyed.”
“If you can catch him.”
“I can.”
I winked away and appeared hours later in front of the red mare.
“Where did you come from?”
“I dunno.”
“Why are you here?”
“Work I gotta do…”
“Well, ah recognize you, Knifer. Name’s Chicha…”
“Cerridwen told me. She also mentioned how you don’t like that name and prefer to just be called Apple.”
“That’s correct… S’ how did this happ’n?”
“Can’t explain.”
I realized my wings were spread, so I brought them back against myself.
“So now what?”
She pointed into the huge apple fields.
“One pony plus hundreds of apple trees don’t add up.”
“But two do?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m hardly the superior here.”
“But you got wings and a horn.”
“That’s racist.”
“How?”
“Just because I have wings and a horn does not make me like Celestia or Luna, and even if it did that does not automatically make me better than you. Besides, these may do the job, but they aren’t real.”
I flapped my wings to show how they were metallic.
“Let’s get working, show me how.”
“I’’s mighty simple, just run at th’ tree, turn, and buck it in the center.”
I picked out a tree and approached it.
“If you can buck that one, ah reckon you can get th’ rest, even ah can’t”
I did as she said, charging it full speed, turning last moment and kicking with all my might.
Somehow I managed to get the apples down from the tree, into the baskets meant for other trees, perfectly.
Apple just stared, her eye twitching.
“Too much?”
“…”
“Let’s get to work…”
She just stayed silent and bucked trees, which I obviously joined in on.
By the end of the day, almost all of the farm was picked clean, and I quickly left without a word.
“Now that we are in private, I should tell you something.”
“What?”
“You remember when you were out for over a month?”
“Yes.”
“That was me.”
“What.”
“I possessed you, made you see Celestia in the sun, made you want to watch closer. I made your eyes bleed, I tried to kill you, I made you a slave while you were in the Mental Clinic. Now, you are mine again.”
“Fork you.”
“You can’t do a thing about it. Time to run a crimson river.”
“I don’t want to harm any living being but you, and Celestia.”
“You will soon enough.”
It was a struggle to keep going forwards into the Everfree, but I managed it and got back to base.
I found myself face to face with Luna again.
“I won’t let you stay like this.”
“Equestria will be red.”
“No, I know how to stop it for now, you can’t possess the young.”
“The how did this thing get me?”
“She means extremely young.”
I fell onto my knees in pain, and felt, not heard, but felt, a loud, sharp shrieking in my head.
“I will be merely delayed!”
I tried to speak, but couldn’t, I felt my energy leaving me.
I managed to force myself to look up at Luna with pleading eyes, and she simply shook her head.
“No.”
I snarled, the demon in me in control.
She continued to stare at me.
My wings and horn fell to the ground with a thud.
I leapt at her, and stopped mere moment before I impacted.
I thrashed.
“No.”
“THIS IS NOT OVER.”
“It never will be.”
I didn’t even know I had blacked out, but I did.
I opened my eyes to find everything huge, moving by slowly.
I was laying across Fable, and I was not even a child.
I was a baby.
I figured my vocabulary was probably the same too.
My vision was blurry, like a baby’s vision would be, and I could only perform basic movements.
I had another target on my hit list for later.
Until then though, I was even more helpless than before.
I closed my eyes and waited.
I opened them when we came to a stop, and just hung limply in the air as Fable used her magic on me, making me float into a small basket bed.
“You knew you would be so cute as a baby?”
A small bottle of milk floated from the side of my vision and into my mouth.
I tried to spit it out, but I apparently had baby instincts too, and ended up drinking from it.
“Good boy!”
I glared at Fable.
“Don’t be like that.”
I close my eyes and looked forwards, eyes still shut.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up on Fable’s back as she waited outside Shy’s cottage, the sun most likely setting.
She entered the cottage with me still on her back.
“Thanks for offering to care for him while I’m on business for Celestia.”
“It’s no really trouble, all the animals are off on their own today.”
I felt the base of my neck getting pinched by Shy’s mouth as she lifted me off Fable and took me up the stairs into the bedroom.
It calmed me almost instantly, and I went limp.
I just waited for what seemed like ten minutes as she slowly and carefully went up, nearly slipping several times.
I just hung there patiently.
Eventually she got to the top and set me down in her bed, then curled around me, pulling the blanket over us.
I was less angry than happy, or more appropriately, amused.
After all, the most crippling thing has occurred to me, and it is keeping me safe.
I kept those thoughts in my head as I used Shy’s wing as a pillow, her warmth slowly driving me into sleep.
In my dreams I was the way the Demon had made me, and I had just finished the murder of a small family, the mother, the father, and all three children, having stored their souls in an amulet, and using their corpses to make “shells” for them, to become slaves.
“You have done well, my servant. Continue, and our army may soon grow strong enough to take on even-”
It was then I awoke violently, struggling, thrashing.
“Please don’t be like that.”
I would have stopped, if I could.
I could just barely make out a tiny amount of smoke.
Shy followed my gaze and saw it just in time, before it disappeared.
“Oh, it’s waiting for the spell to wear off? Don’t worry, you’re safe.”
Secretly, I was more worried for her than myself.
I crawled closer to Shy, for comfort more than anything, for my physical responses were exactly like the response my current form would have had.
“It’s okay.”
She nuzzled my side and hugged me.
I let myself drift off into sleep again.
This time I was fleeing from the same beings I had been making in my previous dream, as a colt.
It was the middle of the night, and I was the only survivor left in Ponyville.
I was trying to leave the town, but it was blockaded, nothing goes in, nothing goes out.
I was cornered by the zombie forms of the only ones I could think of a friends, with no way out.
I could only scream in panic and pain as they fell upon me, and began to consume my flesh.
I awoke crying loudly, and Shy nuzzled me, calming me.
“Shush… it’s okay, nothing is going to hurt you. You’re safe.”
I nuzzled back and grabbed her wing as she stood.
“You’ll fall from there.”
She grabbed my tail in her mouth and set me across her back, something which I found to be humorous, for if I were a child instead, I would have had to walk down.
Everything was being done for me.
Then the shock hit as I realized I may have been turned into a baby for other motives.
I thought about whether or not the spell was supposed to remove memory as well, and merely failed in that regard.
I didn’t even noticed that Shy had taken me outside.
“I’m taking you to ‘school’, I need to do some work around here on the animals for a long while.”
‘School’ was most likely a form of daycare.
“It’s fortunate that the spell took away your cutie mark. How could you find your talent when you can barely see or hear?”
I cried lightly, no longer happy.
“What’s wrong?”
I just threw my front legs up and let them drop down, then gave in to a deep, unnatural, dreamless sleep.
She somehow managed to get me to the daycare, because when I woke up, I found myself face to face with Nurse Redlock.
“I know that’s you Knifer. I’d recognize you anywhere. You remember me?”
I slapped her with as much force as I could, which wasn’t even enough to move her head slightly.
“Apparently so. Want a cookie?”
I shook my head slowly, feeling abnormally tired.
I knew babies were supposed to sleep a lot, but I was as tired as I could get without passing out, and I had just woken up.
“No? Why not just a little nibble?”
I was adamant about not wanting the cookie.
“Alright then… just… scream or something if you need me.”
She walked away.
I looked about very poorly, just like how she is at caring for ponies.
I gave in to the exhaustion.
I woke up with wearing socks.
Stupid looking, fuzzy, green socks.
With what looked like a filly form of Luna snuggled up against me.
In fact, that’s exactly what it was.
I was a baby, made so by Luna.
She made herself a filly.
She was stalking me, most likely to make sure I’m safe, but there was the chance of some other reason.
One which was already filled by Seka.
I inched away slowly, unsure of how to react.
“Don’t go.”
I felt compelled by an outside force to go back, and the more I fought, the harder it was not to.
In the end, I inched back towards her.
“That’s a good baby…”
She turned her head and nuzzled my side.
“That spell I put on you, it wiped your mind, and will again in a few days, when your brain will be able to remember again, replacing it all with memories of your mother being dead and your father a terrible person, never having any siblings.”
She couldn’t have been closer to the truth.
Before I can go on, I need to add this insert, no matter how much I hate them.
My mother died in childbirth and my father was an abusive drunkard.
I ran away when I was six and quickly learned how to survive, going nomad style, and travelling across countries on foot and oceans on rafts.
It was a miracle that I survived.
Possibly because I was insane during that time due to abused, and ended up making friends with silverware.
I then went back home when I was in my twenties and found out my father had died a happy man shortly after I left.
I bought my old home, got a job, went and got a really good education, and began making silverware.
Then, after a particularly good business trip, I fell asleep in my house, and this occurred.
Back to the journal.
I needed to find a way to get someone to stop the memory wipe before it was too late.
But I felt a compulsion to stay next to Luna.
Until she disappeared.
I immediately scrabbled away from that location.
“Oh Knify, I’m here for you!”
It was Shy.
I made my way over to her as she came, and grabbed her leg while looking up at her with a ‘oh dear god please take me home’ face.
“What’s wrong?”
She brought up her leg and I crawled onto her back, then wrapped my forelegs around her neck.
She didn’t say anything, and instead just walked out and took me back to her home.
After being treated to a very rather decent bottle of milk and being tucked into bed, I went back to thinking.
After a while of thought, it hit me.
Of course Fable would be called back to Celestia for business, its effects were twofold.
Firstly, it would allow Celestia to get something done involving Fable.
More importantly, the only pony for miles who could let me keep my memory was most likely her.
I decided I was doomed to a life in this world, being raised all over again with Equestrian values, never returning home again, everything a waste.
I also decided one thing, one of, if not the most important things I ever chose during my stay in Equestria.
“I’m gonna be the most relentless bastard this world has ever met.”
I managed to say it.
I smiled properly for the first time in a long while, and slept.