//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: A Damsel, Distressed // Story: A World, Reflected // by Bliss Authority //------------------------------// Chapter 3: A Damsel, Distressed Twilight had not expected the spell to hurt. In transit - during the longest second of her life - Twilight had felt a horrible stretching sensation and heard horrible cracking sounds. They were like the soft pops between her vertebrae when she rolled her neck; only they were much louder, much longer in duration, and much, MUCH more painful. It was very bad along her back and especially bad down her forelimbs, where she perceived a sort of splintering and tearing sensation. The place where her horn met her skull burned with pain, and her sinus pressure was unbearable. Twilight felt her eyes watering and couldn't suppress a low whimper from the back of her throat. Distantly, she felt Spike roll off her back, and heard him howl in pain too. Twilight tried to get up, but her limbs wouldn't cooperate with her. She could feel horrible pressure in each of the bones that twined into her forehooves, and both pairs of her ankles were - and the thought was absurd, but there was no other accurate way to put it - much too low, and far too stiff. Rocking onto her heels helped, somewhat, but her sense of her own body felt subtly wrong in a million places. Her saddlebags had shifted down to her flanks sometime during the transit. She turned her head to them so she could point her horn - or rather, she tried to; the muscles in her neck seized when she tried. And while she was at it, what had happened to her peripheral vision? Her sight was now far, far too narrow; usually she could almost see directly behind herself, but now she could barely sense the edge of a hemispherical arc. It was then that she saw what had happened to Spike, and her eyes went wide. Spike had become a - Twilight shook her head and looked again, turning her whole body to face him. Spike had shifted shape into a dog - or rather, into something very much like one. His new form had the dense, curly hair of a poodle - offwhite, and purplish on Spike save for greenish strips on his belly and ears - with claws at the end of both sets of the large, padded paws he now sported. Yet she could still smell the ash and flame in his belly, and his hyperventilation in his panic sent wisps of smoke streaming out of his mouth and nose. Twilight rubbed her throat, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She could still feel a thick bundle of vocal cords, thank the Dawn. Now she had to test them. "Spike?" she said - and then she breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever baleful transformation she now knew with certainty had hit her in transit, it hadn't affected her ability to speak. "Spike, it's-" okay would have been a lie. "-it's over. We're safe now." Twilight tried to shift her ears around to listen for danger and was only a little bit worried when they refused to budge. "You don't understand, it hurt so bad," Spike whined - in a way that was so similar to Winona's down-pitched warbles when Applebloom left home for school that Twilight had to fight back inappropriate laughter. Now that she could see what had happened to Spike, what had happened to him wasn't nearly as scary - not to Twilight, anyway. Twilight took a few shuddering, painful steps towards her Number One Assistant and nuzzled the side of his head. "I know. It happened to me too. I felt like I was being pulled apart by each of my legs, Spike. But it's over now." Spike nodded and exhaled, flipping the curly bangs he now wore up and over his ears. "You PROMISE it's over," Spike said in the tone of voice he usually used when asking 'you PROMISE you saved me a slice of pizza.' And that, Twilight did laugh at - and Spike halfheartedly joined in, struck by the absurdity of their situation. Twilight sat down, tucking her butt behind her ankles. "I don't know why, but we - we've changed, here. Wherever here is." Spike looked up at Twilight - and stared. "Uh, Twilight?" "Don't tell me. I should - I should examine myself." "Okay," Spike said. "It's just that I don't know what you turned into." "Oh, boy." Twilight sighed and lifted her foreleg for inspection. She was clothed in a simple blouse with a sleeve the color of cream that reminded her of a grammar-school uniform; the clothing alone would have been surprising. But her (now furless) shoulder and foreleg was also thinner than it should have been; and it tapered faster, expanding a little at the knee and then down again at the ankle. Then the heel spread, flattened and widened into a thick pad; and the individual bones of the arch of her foot had indeed split and spread into five individual - (sublimbs? Digits?) - Digits, one splayed out opposite the other four, and each tipped with a small ovoid shard of hoof. Her skin was still purple, but of a more reddish hue - like the bark of an old sequoia tree; except on the heels and toes of her forelegs (if they even were legs anymore), where they faded into sun-bleached brick. She un-clenched her... not-a-hoof... and tried to move each digit, experimentally; she found that she easily could, and touched each digit to the opposable one. Now that she wasn't terrified or in pain, Twilight found herself perversely enjoying this experiment with her new form. "Hands," she said, blinking at the realization. "Huh. That's interesting." "Say whahuh?" Spike replied. Twilight waggled what she now knew should be called her fingers at Spike. "Whatever I am now, I have hands. Which probably means that..." She rocked back on her hind heels, and stood up, wobbling only slightly before she corrected her stance - and she whooped. "I KNEW it! I'm a biped now, Spike! That's AMAZING!" Spike stared at her with a completely, and deliberately, blank expression. Then he scratched the back of his ear with his hind leg. "And I'm a dog. Whoopee," he said. It was then that they heard the scream. ~ ~ ~ ~ The victim was of the same species Twilight now seemed to be, and was a filly - or at least a child of the species and, if her denim skirt and pale homespun blouse was any indication, female in gender. Her skin was much paler than Twilight's now was, reminding her of the color of a half-ripe peach; the child's hair was halfway between red and gold, and framed her face in waves. She was running full tilt from someone or something as yet unseen to Twilight, with terror both obvious from her upward-stretched facial expression and her mingled sobbing and screaming. As she ran, she pumped her muscular arms, one of which had a bandage made of some curious material only slightly darker than her skin applied to some minor cut. Somehow, she seemed oddly familiar to Twilight - something about her strawberry blonde hair was setting off a siren in her mind that she could not, as of yet, rationally explain. Twilight would have dismissed such intuition as nothing three years ago; Twilight also hadn't learned better from somepony - someone - who always trusted her gut - her twitching tail, rather - two years ago. Whatever about the quasi-filly's braid - (tied with a rose ribbon, a huge rose ribbon, one she'd seen on a child before) - and ribbon that was setting her off was real; she just didn't have the proper context to logically process it. Yet. Twilight knew the rest of the clues would come if she kept her eyes and ears open, and focused on helping the child for now. Her new form was too Sun-blasted slow for her tastes, but she hadn't any trouble jogging towards the child's screams, especially once she had taken a long and sturdy stick from the ground as a makeshift walking staff. It helped that the child seemed to be running towards them. Spike was actually faster than her now - which was completely unfair, take it to the moon - but couldn't pour on the speed; he eventually slowed, panting with a lolling tongue, to stay alongside Twilight's more sedate march until they intercepted the child. Twilight walked out of the underbrush and held up a hand - an empty, unarmed hand - to the child, her staff still to the side. "Miss, are you alri-" The child responded by redoubling the volume of her scream, making Twilight clap her hand to her ear and wince. Dawn and dusk, she had a pair of LUNGS. For a brief, horrified second Twilight thought that the child hadn't understood - and that she couldn't make herself understood to the child; this was another universe, a place far more removed from home than Hourek or Nihihipon, both places where the language of the land was completely foreign to even such a scholarly mind as Twilight's. Then, to Twilight's great relief, the child spoke - and in Twilight's native tongue. "Oh, GOD," the child said, between wheezing breaths. "Oh Jesus, oh God. Cry your pardon, miss, for a moment I thought you were -" she twisted her head behind her, her braid and that eerily familiar ribbon whipping around her neck as she did so - "I thought I'd go see myself the Ladies fightan a monster, didn't want to till Scooter called me a chicken and I couldn't take being called a chicken lying down, but ah didn't expect a REAL MONSTER less a herd of them, too many for the Lady to deal with and it had flaming hair and sharp fangs and it chased me and - and -" "Calm down," Twilight said, holding her open hand up to face the child's forehead. "I'm here to help." Spike, for his part, trotted over and sniffed the child's hand without saying a word; when the child smiled at her and offered her hand, he then consented to a scratch behind the ears. "Calm, raiht. Calmin' down. I can calm down," the child said. Twilight frowned. More alarm bells were going off, more but not enough clues: her accent reminded her of Applejack, of all people - - And the name Scooter! Twilight's jaw dropped as the separate threads came together in her mind. The child had red hair tied back with a pink ribbon, a friend she called Scooter, the kind of clothing Applejack wore to work - the kind of drawl Twilight associated with the Apple Clan. Most of all, what little of her story that cohered reeked of a Cutie Mark Crusade that had, inevitably, gone horribly wrong. Twilight closed her jaw, still staring in shock. "Applebloom?" She looked at Twilight as if she had sprouted a second head. "Wha?" "Is - is your name Applebloom?" Twilight said, holding her staff hand to her heart. The child tilted her head in confusion. "Fleur. Mah name's Fleur." Which sounds a lot like 'flower' - 'flor' - in Imperial, Twilight recalled. Applebloom is to Fleur as Scootaloo is to Scooter. This doesn't invalidate your hypothesis; it refines it. She shook her head and looked back at her. "Right. You just - reminded me of someone for a second. Where did the monster come from?" It was the child's turn to gape. "Ya believe me!?" "I've seen weirder." This was a massive understatement; Twilight had faced everything from Parasprites to Changeling Hives to con artists to the Primordial of Chaos. "Yer the first adult 'sides Sissy to think tha' monsters and the Ladies are real!" THAT was unusual; Twilight raised an eyebrow. It could be that this was a boggart instead of an actual monster, but it didn't feel like it to Twilight. Not at all. "Say rather that I'm willing to entertain the - " she said, before the explosion. She saw it, off in the distance; a brief, strobing flare of teal light that illuminated up the woods with an eerie glow, followed by a hissing noise and the death throes of something that sounded to Twilight like the piteous whinny of a newly whelped foal. To say it was unnerving was to speak a massive understatement. "What from Tartarus was that?" Twilight said, her voice low. The child was considerably more cheered at the sight and the sound. "Ah, don't be scart of that - that was th' GOOD news. One of the Ladies caught 'n did in one of the monsters nearby." Fleur looked up at Twilight, now grinning and much more relaxed. "What's your name, missus? And what's Tartarus?" Twilight almost said 'My name is Twilight Sparkle,' then caught herself. If she was right, and this was a twin of - a reflection of - Applebloom, then her using an Imperialized name meant something here. Twilight took a brief moment to mentally translate. "Sorry, distracted." She winced a little at the white lie. "Say again?" "Wha's yer name? And where's Tartarus?" Fleur asked, her fingernails digging into the soft greenish fur of Spike's underbelly; Spike either loved it or was a frighteningly good actor. Or both. "...Lucia. Lucia Bolido." Twilight nodded. The name would work; 'Light of a Falling Star' wasn't an exact translation - but then, she didn't think it needed to be; Fleur was by no means a direct translation of Applebloom. "Tartarus is - where bad people are locked up. I shouldn't have said it to you." "You were swearin'," Fleur said with a knowing grin - then she leapt up and around Twilight's leg. "I ahm so glad ah met you, Lucy. I thought ah was a goner, I thought no-one'd believe me." Spike rolled over, back right-side up - then raised his hackles. Twilight looked up - and froze. "They'd have to be idiots not to believe something staring them in the face," she hissed. "Wha?" "Fleur?" Twilight raised her staff to eye level, holding it horizontally, to ward off the thing in the shadows. "Stay silent, stay back, don't run, don't make noise. Do you understand me?" Fleur looked up - and clapped two hands over her mouth, but nodded, and did exactly as Twilight bid her. Twilight and Spike both stepped forward, face to face with the creature that Fleur had been running from. It was as tall as them, but this on all fours; the creature was longer from head to tail, and powerfully built from jet-black fur and muscle reinforced with barding of blue metal that Twilight really hoped wasn't starmetal - or moon-silver, worse. Instead of hair, it had a lick of blue flame trailing all the way from the crown of its head to its massive shoulder-blades, and another blue-hot flame for a tail. Its eyes had poisonous green irises and slit pupils, like those of a cat on the prowl; its nostrils flared malevolently, and its teeth had the serrated edges of a carnivorous wolf's. "You, I take it, are a Nightmare," Twilight murmured. Yes, that sounded right to her; the only thing about it that didn't remind Twilight of Nightmare Moon was a certain dullness around the eyes. This thing wasn't sapient. She hoped. Twilight pointed her staff, and started to gather her will to her forehead so that she could fire a bolt of kinetic energy through her horn - then felt a dull pressure between her eyes, and then nothing. She clapped a hand to her forehead. It was as smooth and flat as an Earthpony's. No horn. Not even a nub. Twilight looked up at the creature she was facing - the creature she was facing without her magic - and started to hyperventilate, stepping backwards, twirling her staff at least as a defensive weapon to hold it at bay. "Don't - don't get any closer," she said, wincing as she heard the growing panic in her own voice. Spike took one look at Twilight and his eyebrows shot up. He took a deep breath - "Spike, no! If I can't use magic then you won't be able to -" - and exhaled. A gout of green, corrosive dragonsbreath streamed out from the ludicrously small toy-poodle figure of Spike. It flowed upwards, connecting with the lightly-armored flank and belly of the much, much larger Nightmare - which whinnied pain and rage, rearing up on its hind legs to stomp on Twilight's familiar and Number One Assistant and crush his skull. Twilight heard shouting and confusion in the distance, somewhere between where the pink wind had come from and the battle between Spike and the Nightmare. Spike darted in under it, clawing with both forepaws, biting anywhere he could find purchase, spitting little gouts of flame where and when he could, delaying the inevitable final kick of the Nightmare as long as possible, drawing the Nightmare's full attention. It was an act of utter selfless courage, and Twilight would not allow herself to waste the danger that Spike had placed himself in. "Changed my mind!" Twilight screamed. "Fleur, run! STRAIGHT HOME! Now! Don't scream, don't stop, just RUN!" "But the others -" Another flash of teal rocked the forest - this one much closer, judging by the much briefer delay between the teal light and the subsequent gurgling. The beginning of a plan started to form in Twilight's mind. "- the other Nightmares have their hooves full!" Twilight was almost screaming. "Your 'Lady' is picking them off, one by one - and I'm going to lead her here, but you have to get to safety!" Fleur hesitated - then bolted a split-second before Spike stepped directly behind the Nightmare's hind leg. The Nightmare raised it and casually punted him backwards; Spike caught it directly on the chest. The blow sent him flying, sailing in a parabolic arc through the air until he landed, back-first, on a gnarled tree root and crumpled backwards with a sickening snap. Twilight's howl of rage was probably what saved her. She rushed the Nightmare with her staff, swinging it in wild arcs, raining blows on the Nightmare's neck and nose and eyes. When it's fiery mane ignited the staff, Twilight waved it like a baton - trying to attack the creature and to draw attention to the unnatural flame tipping her staff at the same time, until it burned too hot and she reflexively dropped it from pain. Even then, she kept fighting - bringing her hands together to keep clouting it on the snout. The Nightmare clouted her, instead, with a vicious slash of its forehoof that sent her sprawling back, and the wind - not to mention her adrenaline rush - was knocked out of her as she slammed into a tree. The creature raised its hooves again - - there was no time to dodge, noWHERE to dodge, nothing to do but instinctively raise her arms and pray to see the next dawn - - and kicked downwards into two blurs of light, one pink and one blue, that interposed themselves between the Nightmare and Twilight. ~ ~ ~ ~ The Nightmare reared back, howling in pain; for one of the newcomers had wounded it - cut its hooves and along its lower foreleg with a razor-sharp blade. It was some sort of subtly curved one-and-a-half hoof saber that one of Twilight Sparkle's saviors was sheathing in the scabbard tied to his back. This one of the pair was a young stallion - or rather, a coltish male of what Twilight now suspected was the dominant sapient species of this world; he wore (and Twilight let out a second of hysterical stress-giggles at this thought) a suit of shining armor, emblazoned with the device of a shield struck by lightning. Layers on layers of laminated steel plates protected his chest, belly, back, shoulders, arms, and upper legs. They, along with a ballroom mask of the same material - and Did Twilight's eyes deceive her, or was it starmetal? Was it iridium from a fallen star, alloyed with metal of the Earth? - which gleamed in the light of the Nightmare's mane and in the single ray of dawn's light that was starting to creep through the forest. He had a face and frame that were both delicately featured and rugged, like a stone carving of a young colt, and almond-shaped eyes that were as grey as stormclouds. He smiled (barely) at the monster and cocked his head, as if inviting it to take the first move, his cobalt blue crew-cut hair fluttering from the motion. His stance and expression had that rare combination of relaxed and utterly alert that Twilight had come to associate with professional soldiers, and with Rainbow Dash before a competition - if Twilight was translating the body language properly from quadruped to biped. Twilight sunk to her knees and let her head roll and drop, grateful to be alive. "I wouldn't relax quite yet, miss." The coltish lad made no move to strike the increasingly agitated creature, but also didn't move from his interposition between the monster and Twilight; she had the idea that she SHOULD have recognized his voice, but couldn't quite place it. "I can't do much but hold it off. I can only riposte, not attack; please don't ask me why that is, because I don't know, nor do I know HOW I know that." "The Knight-Protector will keep you safe, no biggie! But killing the meaniepants is MY job," said Twilight's OTHER savior - and this voice, Twilight did immediately recognize. Twilight was intimately familiar with that bubbling, lilting, contralto voice, and when she looked up at its source - - Twilight was shocked, but only for a second. She was of the same species as Fleur, the same as the stallion/male she called the Knight-Protector, the same species as Twilight had become in this strange world; a little heavier in frame, short and mesomorphic and curvy, and with skin the color of dusty brick. But there the differences between her and her reflection ended. There was the hair, for starters; a dense tangle of magenta curls that lagged a second behind her pivoting head as it swished in the wind. There were the eyes, blue as fresh berries, that twinkled with one of the thousands of jokes she kept in her head - as opposed to the ones Twilight KNEW this person saved for telling out loud, the ones she considered the best of them all. There was even the clothing - not the clothes that Twilight had expected her in, but ones she'd certainly seen her reflection wearing before, save for the addition of a powder blue domino mask. It was a fancy dress, fit for a Gala, in alternating stripes of blue and white and pink like a swirled peppermint candy cane; layered pink and white petticoats swirled around her expansive hips, tied with a pale blue ribbon fastened with pins the shape and color of candy corn, and with a matching blue cap with pink ribbon like a soda jerk's. Pinning a pink bow tie to her surprisingly ample chest - Twilight had no idea what function THAT served for this species - was an orichalcum brooch, to which was mounted a jewel; specifically, a balloon carved from a single piece of pink amber. And THAT, more than anything, left Twilight no room for doubt. "You, I take it, are the Lady of Laughter," Twilight said to her. She turned to Twilight, her face lighting up. "Wow, I guess word really has been getting arou-" And here she casually backhanded the theoretically sneak-attacking Nightmare with a gloved fist; it actually made a sproing! noise as it connected from straight out of a slapstick routine, and there was a burst of teal fluid splashing out - "- well, I'd love to chat but this guy is REALLY begging to be the punchline," she snarled. "Can this wait till after my routine slays our audience?" "Got all the time in the world," the Knight-Protector said, his exasperation starting to show in the strain of his voice as he drew and parried a kick from the Nightmare's hind legs in a single motion. Then, curiously, he slid his sword back into its scabbard with a dull clack; Twilight wondered if this was ritual, technique, or both. The Lady of Laughter - Pinkie Pie's reflection in this world - turned to face the Nightmare with a smirk, putting a hand over her brooch. From her back - from under her dress, it seemed to Twilight - she drew a long rod the size of a thick staff, but hollowed; this she split open where it met a handle, and stuffed with confetti, noisemakers, uninflated balloons, and hard candy, all while not only dodging but dancing around the Nightmare's attacks in a way that made it look humiliatingly incompetent. "You've been a lovely audience, but it's time to bring down the house!" she taunted, with the cadence of a stand-up comedian calling out and putting down a heckler. She snapped the staff back into a whole piece and braced it against her shoulder, then shouted four words in a sing-song rhythm- "Laughing~! Party~! Cannon~! Show~STOP~PER!" - Pulled a small lever on the handle, and the Party Hand-Cannon bucked in the Lady of Laughter's hands and burned teal with a glowing stream of bubbling water. Streamers and confetti gushed from the cannon, clinging to the creature's limbs and head. Balloons, perfectly inflated and tied, escaped as the cannon fired. Shards of candy cracked against the hide of the Nightmare. The noisemakers extended from the barrel with a festive squeal. But it was the water - a water that glowed with a teal light and that sounded to Twilight like bubbling, relentless, mocking laughter - that scoured the Nightmare; that stripped away layers on layers of hair and skin and muscle, which burned away into blue embers in the night as the Nightmare piteously whinnied it's death rattle until it knocked the creature tail over teakettle - - and there was a flare of pink over blue - - leaving another child of this world's sapient species where the Nightmare had been. Twilight gasped. The Lady of Laughter and the Knight-Protector both rushed to the side of the child, checking it's pulse; the Knight Protector nodded, waving the Lady away, and pumped it with his hands - laying them on the child's shoulders with great force. It groaned and rolled over, asleep. They nodded to each other, then turned to Twilight. "Any wounded on your end?" the Knight-Protector asked. Twilight put a hand over her mouth; she had forgotten about... "Spike! Spike, my dr- my dog!" she corrected, mid-stream. "It charged the Nightmare - it kicked him, it was horrible -" "Found him," said the Lady of Laughter, who was - for the first time that night - not in a smiling mood. "He got banged up pretty good." The Knight-Protector swooped over to Spike's crumpled form - then nodded, rubbing his hands together. "Broken leg -but he'll live. I can heal him." Twilight took that opportunity to collapse into a heap, close her eyes, and sigh relief for real.