//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Am I a mare, or a monster? // by Rarity Belle //------------------------------// The dark blue mare turned herself around on the stone table. She tried to catch up with her breath. After everything she went through did the feeling of vomiting came up. Shiva tried her best to keep everything in. The force of going out was much greater and everything came rushing out. The side of the table would be covered in a mixture of yellow stomach content, but also the gray substance of the tendrils. Her eyes looked shocked at the sight they saw as she shook her head, “N-No!” No amount of feeling either guilty or miserable could possibly stop nature. The vomiting was only the first step of it all. The skin on her back began to stretch and tear open, all under a loud scream of pure agony from the mare. Out of the freshly created, blood gushing gabs had pair of black boned, grayish skinned wings emerged. A pair that fell beside her. In her mouth there were two of her teeth that elongated under a loud hiss of pain, they became deadly fangs. Her eyes began to lose their original color slow. Yet in return was there a crimson red color that took over. The irises changed themselves into cat-like irises, thus letting the new color to truly take over the eyes. “Aah, a winged sister, I see,” the priest spoke to himself. He just watched the events that happened before him with glee. “Hmhmhm, now this will get interesting,” the red maned mare besides him replied. She still held her tail tight before her private parts as she was having trouble to relief herself from the buildup pressure. “Just the normal hypnotizing and training I presume, high priest?” She had to distract herself with something for the moment. He nodded to her. Though before they both could do anything, there emerged one last change. Shiva's body began to grow a little. She was nearly matching the size of the princess of the moon. They both looked in utter confusion to it and each other. “By everything dark and unholy.” With all of her strength still left within her body managed Shiva to stand up from the table. She took note of the changes in her mouth as her tongue went passed her teeth. In the corners of her eyes she saw them. She narrowed her eyes in anger. Her muscles clearly felt the newly gotten ability to move the wings under her own power. “What did you, do!?” Shiva bellowed to them both. “The gift of the lunar church, my child,” priest Orcen spoke with a regal voice. “No... You, cursed me,” Shiva replied to them. Her eyes were fixed upon the two of them while her horn began to charge itself. It got coated within a dark blue aura. Her eyes closed themselves a little bit, almost as if she was targeting the two before her. “Should I..?” the gray mare next to Orcen asked. Yet the stallion shook his head. He charged up his own horn. If it came to a fight, he would have been the one to cease it all. “Think before you act, you truly wish to throw your new life away like this? Firing blasts of magic aimlessly?” the priest asked of Shiva with a firm tone. He wanted her to think straight. Shiva just erupted in a soft laughter before she released her spell. Under a cold wave of air that originated from her horn, all the fires in the room would have been dimmed. Some even extinguished before it returned to her. The light came to her and it was being consumed by her with a great but guilty pleasure. As soon as the room was dark, Shiva made her escape. She galloped over the church benches and back up the stairs, hoping to get her freedom back in the process. The stallion and the mare were surprised by it all. It was an unseen turn of events. Recnam Orcen allowed the fires to return in their respectable places with the help of his magic. “Magnificent magical ability. Shadow her, guide her back to here. She's probably going home,” he said to the mare. The other mare only gave him a nod before turning herself around and picked up her blades in case they would be needed again as the branches locked themselves around the forelegs. And she was off to the stairs, up to the world above in order to carry out her duties. ---   In the meantime had the just changed unicorn mare managed to get some hold of her wings. They were then gently tucked away against the side of her body. She was indeed galloping towards home. Shiva had to go to her remaining family and pray for the best of things to happen. Through her deep panting she noticed that small house she always called ‘home’ to come closer in her view as her pace slowed itself down in order to catch at least some breath.         Her hoof knocked on the door three times. Some rumoring sounds could be heard from inside. Sounds that were both male and female. They silenced themselves until a male voice finally spoke out. “Name and intention!” it spoke in a loud and clear tone.         “Father, it, it is me!” Shiva replied with desperation in hers. Soon enough was the door opened for her. The warmth of the home left and began to surround her. The stallion in the opening gazed a bit surprised at the being before him for it wasn't his daughter as he remembered her.         “Where is she, you monster!?” the stallion replied. Then he assumed a charging stance. He was just ready to take out the monster if he had too. For that what he caught in his eyes, was everything but his beloved daughter.         “F-Father, it’s me, your little Shivy,” she said in a whimpering tone. Some tears began to form below her eyes. She was at the verge of crying. She couldn’t believe that her own father didn’t see it.         “You are nothing but a foul creature of the night! You don’t even look like our daughter, for she is the sweetest thing that ever came into my life.” His expression changed into a more caring one before a mare joined them. A mare who was shocked at the sight before her. She landed a hoof in the back of the stallion's head, hitting him hard enough to feel it.         “That's not how you talk to your own daughter, Bertus! Come in, Shivy, come,” she spoke to her husband and daughter. The grown mare passed her father who was rubbing his head under some under breath muttering. ---   All three of them took place in the living room while her mother prepared from tea, the stallion was still skeptical. It couldn't be hold against him though, given the rather odd form his ‘daughter’ had taken. “So you claim to be our beloved little daughter, then explain to me just why you are so big.”         “Father, that is because I received something this night...” Shiva confessed to him.         “Ya received something this night? Mind to share what that might be?”         “T-The gift, o-of the lunar church...” Even more shame had filled her voice at that point.         Those words caused the entire expression of the stallion to turn blank. Her mother walked in with the same look, having overheard the words. The both of them were processing the given information as they couldn't believe it that their little Shivy had turned itself to the moon. They knew from her brother he had turned himself towards the sun and accepted that fact, but this made everything a lot more different as two sighs filled the room.         “How could you have been so, so stupid!?” her father yelled in anger all the sudden. Thus abruptly broke the silence. The fury he carried within his eyes was just terrible to watch.         “I didn't had a choice! One moment I was walking together with Dante, the next moment he gets his head chopped off by a mare saying he was a lycan! She brings me to somewhere of I don’t know where and end up like this. It wasn't my fault, father!” Shiva replied in her defense.         Then it was her mother who took over the word. She was mentally devastated from the revelation. “O-Out, Shivy, just, get out!” she said with a defeated tone.         Before the changed unicorn could even ask or say anything, there was a sudden force that began to pull the unicorn back towards the door. The invitation got rejected, she had to leave the home. Shiva was sent out by an unknown force. The mare pleaded for her dear life while the door came close to her. It even opened on itself itself to let her out. Though the both of her parents didn't do anything for they knew enough. They would have been childless from this day onward. “Mother, father! How can you be so heartless against me!?” Those were the last words to be spoken by Shiva in the house of her parents. She was thrown outside and the door shut itself tight. Shiva wasn't welcome inside of her own house anymore and she knew it. Her own parents had dumped her out on the streets like a piece of garbage or a broken toy.         Yet just after the door was tightly shut behind her, the parents had erupted out in tears of sadness. Tears that were for the loss of their only and loved children. Shiva cried tears of blood on the cold streets of the nameless settlement. ---   Out of the shadows emerged the mare that had caused it all. That gray coated, blade wielding mare came out of the shadows. She spoke her words with a voice filled with something unusual. It was filled with a sympathy aimed towards Shiva. “It seems the same happened to you, as what happened to me fifty years ago... Come, I can give you shelter for the day,” she spoke to her. Shiva sniffled a couple times. The mare allowed the words to race through her ears before she stood up under a small nod, “Y-Yes please... A-And how do you mean, d-day?”  “Just take this from me, you don’t want to be out during the daylight unless you are having a death wish for yourself,” the bladed mare replied in a much more serious tone. Together they walked back through the streets of the settlements. They were going back to the building of the church. The place that Shiva would be calling ‘home’ from that night onward ,if she intends to stay there and not roam around the world. But while they were walking, the mare could feel something that grew between one another. Not a feeling of true love but the feeling of sisterly love. The gray mare placed ones of her wings over the back of Shiva, smiling a little bit.