//------------------------------// // Rage/Fakes // Story: Dead/Light // by Lord Destrustor //------------------------------// Shining Armor solemnly levitated a candle to place it on a low table near the fireplace. The small flame joined a few others standing at attention in front of a large, black-framed picture of myself, surrounded by flowers. He seemed to whisper a few words, his whole body shaken by sporadic sobs. After a couple of seconds, he backed away from the display to take a seat next to Cadance, where the two hugged. My parents were nearby, embracing each other in a perfect mirror of their son and his wife. All four were shedding tears and occasionally patting their backs for comfort. “W-wha…” I stammered. They were mourning. “Wha-What?” I snarled through gritted teeth. They were holding a funeral wake. For me. “What. What…” I lost sight of them for a moment, a blinding flash of light smothering the scene playing before my eyes. “WHAT IS THIS!?” I screamed as soon as my teleportation into the room was complete, the instinctive, barely-controlled burst of magic displacing and scattering the table and its contents into a room-wide shower of splinters. The various gasps and panicked cries caused by my explosive irruption were all mostly drowned out by the ear-splitting scream that my mother made before fainting. “What do you think you’re doing?” I screamed to those who were still conscious as they scrambled away from me. My father dragged his wife with him as he scurried away, while Shining took position between them and I. He bore a neutral expression, the one he had practiced during his training and the years of service as a guard. The ‘duty’ expression, the one that meant business. I could still see the fear in his eyes, though. “How dare you?” I asked, my ears splaying back. “How dare you act like I’m dead? How could you of all ponies believe those lies? Who told you I was dead?” “Stand back, who- whatever you are!” Shining barked at me when I took a step forward. He even went so far as to charge magic into his horn. The seconds stretched, our eyes locked and unflinching. The fireplace was reflected in his eyes, from somewhere behind me. A flash of purple was visible when he snarled at me. “How dare you take my sister’s identity, monster? Don’t you have any respect for the dead? “I’m not dead!” I screamed, the cry loud enough to reverberate faintly in the room. I lowered my tone to barely more than a whisper. “Who told you I was dead?” I asked once more. “No one! I... I did. My eyes…” His face fell a bit, a crease forming on his brow as he looked down at the ground with sorrow. “My eyes told me she was dead when I found her in the ruins of that Canterlot University lab. My hooves told me she was… dead when I picked up her cold, limp body. My heart told me she was gone when we put her in her tomb!” Tears were streaming down his face when he looked back up at me. “So whatever you are, you are not my sister! Twilight is dead!” Never in my life had I seen my brother cry. Not those pitiful, pathetic tears at least. Never in all these years had I heard his voice so… broken and defeated. My brother had never acted that way. My real brother. “Oh,” I said, “I see. They got to my family already. Of course.” I took a step forward. Shining Armor immediately raised a shield to block my path. Cadance was charging up her own horn, though she did not seem to know what she even planned to do with that magic. My mother was still splayed unconscious across the legs of my father, the latter pressed against the wall and staring at me while both shaking his head and clutching it. Impostors. Filthy lookalikes. “My family”, I began, “my real family, I mean, would never betray me like this.” I took another step. “My family would never have agreed to participate in this… disgusting charade,” I pressed my nose to the shield and locked eyes with my so-called brother. “So where are they?” “W-what? You…” His eyes narrowed. “You come in here, pretending to be my dead sister, while we’re mourning her, and you’re actually implying we are fakes?” “Where. Is. My. Family.” “We’re right here you deranged monster!” I never knew pure anger could facilitate spellcasting so much. I barely felt the slip between dimensions when I teleported through his shield. And despite earlier worries about my reserves, I almost didn’t even register the drain when I emptied half of my magic into a pure discharge of ambient mana. Fun thing about unicorns –or alicorns, for that matter- : we can actually sense the general level of ambient magic. Variations in that level are fairly easy to acclimate to, but in the case of say, a top-tier magic user suddenly flooding a room with more magic at once than most unicorns use in a whole year, the effect is roughly similar to a punch right in the horn. I didn’t give ‘Shining’ any time to recover before delivering an actual punch to his horn, bringing him to his knees with a cry. To be honest, at that point I had stopped thinking about my own actions. I just wanted those impostors to suffer. Having them tell me where they kept my real family would be a nice bonus of course, but the punishment came first. I tackled him, throwing us both to the ground where I landed on top of him and began hammering at his face and neck with my hooves. “Where! Family! Who! How! Why! Are! You! D-this! AAAH!” Words stumbled out of my mouth with every strike, each one a part of a sentence that my anger couldn’t even let me finish or follow coherently. I could not tell for how long I kept this up. The anger, and no doubt a fair bit of adrenaline, dulled my sense to almost everything; even the blows he gave me in retaliation felt like gentle taps. I might have continued this for a while, the fury in my mind fueling my violence to the point where I didn’t even feel myself tiring. Aside from my indignant, disjointed shouts, I wasn’t nearly out of breath as much as I would have expected from such a physical activity. I could have done this all night. And I probably would have, were it not for a sudden shout of “Leave him alone!” immediately followed by a heavy object striking my head with a deafening crash. My head was jerked to the side and a thousand porcelain pieces bloomed in my vision, surging away in the direction I found myself looking at. A deep, orange clay, almost red, one side of which held a layer of shining paint. Light blue with lavender flower motifs. My mother always loved the contrast between the light, gentle outside shell and the deep, vibrant tones of the interior. As the pieces settled on the ground, I slowly turned my head back towards the obvious thrower. The room was deathly silent, save for the quiet twinkling of the few still-spinning pieces. I didn’t have to raise my voice to make my seething fury known as I spoke to ‘Cadance’. “That… was my mother’s favorite vase, you BITCH!” I took a single step towards her. *ftlp* The room, despite already being in a state one might consider ‘frozen’, grew even more so. ‘Petrified’ would be an adequate descriptor. I slowly looked down, trying to find the strange purple object I had felt slipping through my mane and seen from the corner of my eye. My gaze traveled down, searching among the red-and-blue debris of the vase until I spotted it. An ear. A severed ear, matching the color of my coat, lying on the ground. Bloodless cuts could be seen over most of its surface, although none were as horrifying as the jagged rip where it should have been attached to somepony’s head. My ear. NoNoNoNoImpossibleThatCouldn’tBemyseveredearPreposterousWhoCouldEverBelieveThatNoNONowhywasn’titbleedingitshouldhavebeenbleedingIfItWasRealWhichItCouldn’tBeObviouslyBecauseThatWasImpossibleEmpiricallyImpossiblebutIrecognizeditasmyowndidn’tINoNoNoNoNoThatWasALieAnIllusionIdidn’tevenfeelitgetcutoffBecauseTheIllusionWasAHackjobFromAnAmateurFakeFakeFakeFakeBadIllusionFakeEarHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaNotCredibleForAnInstantIWasAliveAndLivingPoniesFeelPainAndLosingAnEarIsPainfulAndIHadn’tFeltAnythingAndErgoIwasdeadIHadBeenTargetedByAnIllusionOrSomethingAndTheRoomWasSpinningAndIHadToGetOutOfHereBeforeIacceptedthetruthFellUnderTheInfluenceOfEvenWorseLiesLiesLiesLiesLiesGetMeOutOfHereOutOfThisNightmareOutOutOut The window exploded away from me as I plunged through it while simultaneously shooting a beam of magic forward. The instant my hooves touched the ground outside I was already pushing upwards, immediately jumping while my wings pushed down. My take-off was worthy of Rainbow Dash yet it wasn’t nearly fast enough; I also teleported fifty feet straight up to get as far as possible from the sever- To get a clearer view of the castle. They had so much more power than I could have guessed. They had such reach, such dedication, that they could abduct and replace my entire close family, two members of which were either highly trained or extremely well-defended. This conspiracy ran deeper than I would have imagined, and much deeper than I would have liked. Someone very powerful was behind this, someone with reach, resources and contacts. Someone whose assets either allowed them to take the very throne of Equestria, or had been acquired by usurping the position some time ago. Yes. Definitely. The only logical explanation. Yes. And even if neither she nor her sister were the masterminds, they were beginning to look increasingly like my last hope. The castle grew closer, its white walls and countless gardens forming a patchwork of blues and blacks punctuated by twinkling pools of light where torches or enchanted lanterns stood to brighten key points along the paths. The windows either reflecting the moonlight or shining from a light within. It was time to pay the princess a visit.