What Will You Do, Elspeth?
The flash of blades and beastial howling tore at her senses while images of everything from Valeron to Mirrodin sped through her mind, blurring into an indistinguishable gallery of emotionally charged situations. Elspeth knew what they were, but the glimpses she received were fleeting at best, barely allowing her to grasp the experience and leaving her feeling empty and cheated by each passing memory. Her mind retreated from the visions, trying to hide from their judging gazes. It was as if everyone she’d ever met was watching her at the same time, reprimanding her for her mistakes.
“I fight until I either win or lose,” a strange, dark-skinned man stated sternly. His red, tattered waist-skirt flapped wildly as the scene changed swiftly around him. Crumbling mountains, fetid swamps, quicksilver seas, and verdant forests washed passed them, but it didn’t seem to deter the man. He extended a stone-covered hand towards her, watching the woman with uncertainty. “What will you do, Elspeth? Fight for what you want against all odds for eternity until you have that which you seek, or will you surrender to your trials and feign complacency in a situation that you do not truly desire?”
She reached out, desperate to take hold of his arm. Something about his character exuded confidence and warmth. She just knew that he could be depended on to help her stay afloat even in the worst of times. Flesh touched living-stone, sending warmth through her entire body.
“Koth!” The mare bolted up-right, nearly tossing the covers off of her. Just as quickly as the surge of strength came over Elspeth, it faded, leaving her body feeling heavy and her mind sluggish.
She was no genius, but it didn’t take one to realize that something was very wrong. Though brighter and more vibrant, she had slightly more difficulty picking out fine details in the wood- grain floor of the room she currently occupied. Musical chirps entered Elspeth’s ears, relaxing her body with soothing melodic tones. Throughout her journeys, she’d never experience a sound as heavenly and clear as the nature around her at this moment. The mare’s ears twitched, swiveling on their own accord to find the source of the natural song. The only reason she was convinced that the birds weren’t in the room with her was the fact that their tweets, along with the rest of the ambient noise outside of the room, were slightly muffled by the walls.
As her wonder faded, what had once been a dull throb in her chest struck with a vengeance, sending burning agony through her with each heartbeat. Her hooves clutched at the fur on her chest. Worrying about where she was or what had happened to her body became secondary to stopping the pain. It felt as if the flesh under her coat was trying to split open from the breastbone. Slamming her eyes shut, she silently prayed to whatever gods may be watching over to end it. Never had she endured anything like it, but she refused to cry out.
The old door creaked loudly when it opened as if protesting passage across its threshold. The sharp screech had persisted since Sweet Apple Acres’ days of yore, back when the Apples thought that the hinge was fixable. Now, the noise was just accepted as one of the old farmhouse's many quirks. Even the pegasus entering the room rump-first didn’t pay the squeak any attention. Behind her, she dragged a small cart of supplies. Gauze, towels, and bandages were arranged neatly beside bags of cotton balls, a basin of warm water, and alcohol. On the cart’s lower shelf, covered by a tablecloth, was a meal of some sort. At least, that’s what Elspeth’s nose was telling her.
A plethora of new odors assaulted Elspeth’s nose, overwhelming her faculties. Her eyes shot open the moment all of the different smells registered with her. She would have smelled the antiseptics and baked apples normally, but nowhere near as richly as she was now. It was like before now she’d lived life with cotton stuffed up her nose. A whiff of perfume mingled with everything else. Surprisingly, she could tell that the fruity scent was coming from the mare who’d just entered. Who was this pony? Was she the owner of the property? Elspeth bit back the urge to curl up into a ball, instead, forcing herself to be vigilant. In her current state, she doubted that any effort on her part could truly stop an attempt on her life, but she was not one to be caught with her back turned.
Her guest grunted loudly, tugging one final time to bring the cart in. Fluttershy had never been a very savvy pony when it came to social situations. She was a mare of few words and many fears, and when one lives in a world where danger is around every corner (to her at least), you either develop your sixth sense or perish. Right now, that sixth sense was going off like a klaxon alarm. Slowly, she turned her head towards where the sensation felt the strongest.
Elspeth stared intensely at the mare as if she could build an entire biography on her with nothing more than a glare. Fluttershy didn’t even give her charge a chance to look her in the face. Like any other pony, Elspeth was met with a quiet little “eep” and the sight of Fluttershy hiding behind her mane, shaking like a leaf. If it was deception, her enemies were damn good actors.
“Oh my, she’s actually awake?” Fluttershy thought to herself. With the sort of injuries her patient had, she expected the mare to be asleep for at least a week. If anything, Elspeth looked like she was able to jump up and beat the stuffing out of her. “No, that’s not it.” It only took a second for her to read the stranger’s feelings. The body language said it all. Understanding ponies was no different than understanding her animals to Fluttershy, in some ways. The other mare’s chest heaved, and her body trembled; she tried so hard to hide it, to not look vulnerable, but it didn’t work on the experienced caretaker.
Fluttershy managed to swallow the lump in her throat and looked directly at Elspeth. “You’re probably confused and scared right now; I know I’d be,” she said quietly as she moved closer to the bed. “But it’s safe here, on Sweet Apple Acres.” Her words rolled off of her tongue as gently as a cotton ball.
Elspeth’s pulse slowed as her ears drank Fluttershy’s honeyed words. ‘It’s safe here’. The simple phrase was uttered with enough sincerity to end wars. It felt as if the mare had pulled her into the most comforting embrace possible. So comforting, in fact, that Elspeth hadn’t realized the pony had made her way over to the bed. In the split second that her guard was down, Fluttershy managed to fish a large pill and a glass of water off of the table behind her and present them both to Elspeth. “A-a painkiller. I shiver just thinking about the pain that your wounds are causing you.” Her whole body quivered.
“My name is Fluttershy,” the mare stated, poking herself in the chest with a hoof. “My friend’s brother found you, injured, inside of their barn and called me over to help. That was three days ago...” She put on her best smile, but she couldn’t stop her legs from trembling. Now the warrior had a little bit of information about how she came to be where she was.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Elspeth had woken up in the care of a healer. She’d seen all sorts in the past and figured that she had gotten pretty good at reading how individuals took their profession. It was a skill she’d developed out of necessity. She’d met liars and false healers; the creature in front of her was neither. Just a quick glance at Fluttershy told her everything she needed to know. The shaking mare’s mane and coat were slightly bedraggled, and she could see the beginnings of bags forming under her eyes; of course, she tried to hide it all beneath exceptional grooming, but there was no hiding the signs of a truly compassionate healer. Three days she had been unconscious, and Fluttershy had likely worried over her the entire time.
Reluctantly, Elspeth took the pill from her. The moment she placed the tablet on her tongue, she was instantly certain of at least one fact: no matter where you were in the multiverse, medicine still tasted like a Rhox’s bum. Like every other pill she’d ever taken, it was dry, chalky, and probably would have choked her if she didn’t have the glass of water that she was somehow holding in her hooves. After taking a quick swig of water, the pill went down surprisingly easy and went to work almost as soon as she’d swallowed it.
Icy numbness spread through Elspeth’s body as she relaxed and allowed Fluttershy to start the process of removing the bandages and redressing her wounds. Occasionally, she winced when the wrappings yanked a bit of fur out, but she was mostly in her own world. Fluttershy had started to calmly speak with her, but the attempts at conversation fell on deaf ears. All of these little details that she’d been paying attention to only served to cushion the two heaviest blows to her person. Once again, she had abandoned everything she held dear; another promising future for her turned to ash in an instant. But this time, there was an additional price for her transgression. She’d lost her human form. Now she truly had nothing, but Elspeth met the situation head-first with the grace and poise of a Knight of Valeron. At least that’s what she told herself.
Instead of focusing on what she couldn’t control right now, Elspeth chose to turn her energies on an issue that had been slowly picking at her mind since Fluttershy stepped into the room. She still didn’t have a name for what she or Fluttershy was.
While her wounds were being tended to, she took the moment to truly take in their appearances. They were vaguely similar to the horses she’d ridden on Bant, back when she fought alongside warriors like Rafiq or the pegasi of Theros. Yet that observation wasn’t entirely correct; it worked in the same way the common person might call spiders, leeches, and ants bugs, but used the logic of a child claiming that a caterpillar and a worm were the same thing. They had the basic form; however, their proportions were off. Compared to the horses and ponies that Elspeth was used to, their heads were more rounded and their faces were much more like those of a human’s, while their legs were strangely stocky. All she could really call them were ponies.
Of course, the former human had been aware of her current situation since she’d woken up. Even before the fog of confusion slowly started to leave her mind, she’d felt wrong, like her body had been rearranged. Venser had talked to her about this briefly when they discussed compleation. Proprioception, the artificer had called it. He’d said that it was the ability to sense where body parts are relative to other body parts. It was through that awkward feeling of having her body assembled incorrectly that she knew something was wrong.
A weak smirk inched its way across Elspeth’s muzzle. I can’t even begin to understand how this came to be. Is this some ploy of the gods or my personal Promised Land? The gods of Theros were usually reasonable, but they definitely had a fickle streak in them, and she wouldn’t put such a trick past some of them. But the deal she accepted from Erebos made a plot against her unlikely. This… this is not that bad. I can think of much worse things that I could have become. Much worse...
---*****---
The blast was like nothing Elspeth had ever experienced. Despite her current predicament-- waist deep in rocks and behind a recently erected stone barrier-- she still managed to nearly jump out of her armor. The cave rocked from the force. After such an explosion, she knew that what little safety the improvised wall was giving her would be short lived. Cracks snaked across the rock barrier in front of her, each thud from the other side both increasing the severity of the damage and reminding her of what was just beyond it. She could feel the Blind Eternities nipping at her skin, its energies waiting to pull her into the obtuse space between worlds. It always took her so long to perform a planeswalk, and now, she cursed that fact more than ever.
The wall burst like an over-inflated balloon, spraying dust and stone in every direction. Elspeth could barely see through the grey cloud, but she didn’t need to. Its darkened silhouette and coiling tendrils were more than enough for her mind to fill in the blanks...
‘Just a few more moments… please,’ she silently pleaded to herself. She flinched, its blades prodding her prison. That minute movement was all the Phyrexian Obliterator needed to find her. Icy cold breath washed over her as it roared. This was the end--
---*****---
Elspeth’s eyes shot open, her mouth releasing a quiet squeak as she jumped forward a little. “O-oh, I’m so sorry...” Fluttershy apologized meekly. “I must have poked a little too deep while stitching your wound.”
“Its alright. I shouldn’t have been daydreaming.” Elspeth’s voice was coarse, as if she’d never used it before. Which was technically true, all things considered. Her right eye twitched when Fluttershy returned to her work. Within the second, she had sunk back into the recesses of her mind.
Her trance was broken when when another mare entered through the creaking door. This one had, perhaps, the most vibrant orange coat that she’d ever seen and a decently kept blonde mane and tail. Elspeth’s gaze couldn’t help but be drawn towards the pony’s emerald eyes. While she couldn’t say that they were completely innocent, those eyes, like her caretaker’s, carried an amount of kindness that she’d rarely seen so openly expressed; but there was something else there as well. Worry. She was worried about what Elspeth’s appearance here meant.
Fluttershy took a moment to look behind her and acknowledge the mare. “Ah, there you are, Applejack,” she greeted with a warm smile. “When you told me to continue up to the guest room, I thought that there may have been trouble.”
“It’s nothing to worry over, Shy.” Her accent reminded Elspeth of that of some of the more worked members of society, what the learned would call peasant speak. Elspeth simply considered it the drawl of the common farmhand. Applejack straightened the brown stetson resting on her head. “So I see our guest is up and alert. That girl must have the sturdiness of an earth pony.”
Elspeth watched as the two friends shared a brief laugh at her expense, but there was nothing malicious behind it. It wasn’t too difficult for her to start putting a few pieces together as she watched them. She was on Sweet Apple Acres, likely an orchard or farm of some sort, and chances were high that this Applejack mare was heavily involved with the running of the operation.
Elspeth swallowed. “You had nothing to gain from helping me, and possibly everything to lose. Thank you. Both of you.”
Applejack lowered her hat in an attempt to hide her smirk. “Well shucks, girl. What kind of ponies would we be if we had just left you to the elements?”
“I don’t think I could ignore somepony who’s hurt, either,” Fluttershy admitted from behind her mane.
Introductions were kept short, but were much more proper than her muttering her name and then passing out from weakness in their barn. Small talk was made between the mares of the usual variety. Elspeth mostly remained silent, though, only answering the occasional question sent her way, and only if she could answer without causing a stir.
“So, um… where are you from? If you don’t mind answering.”
“Far away.”
“What does your name mean?”
“Oath of gods.”
“How did you… ya know...?”
“A very long story.” Elspeth wasn’t new to the planeswalking game. She knew that if a name was given, they’d want specifics. With her limited knowledge the denizens of the plane she was on or how things worked in their society, telling her company that she’d been stabbed by the god of the sun could be the fastest way to find herself at the guillotine for all she knew.
“What about friends and family? Do you have a special somepony?”
Elspeth froze. The wording was strange, but context made the question clear. Did she? If she really had died, and Erebos had kept his end of the bargain, then Daxos was alive. He’d have a new life. A life without her. Would he wait for her to find a way back? What if she couldn’t return to her human form, would it be over between them? She didn’t know exactly what happened to the group she traveled Mirrodin with or where Ajani was, but those were some of the truest bonds she’d ever forged. If any of them were alive, it’d only be a matter of time until they came to grips with her death, slowly forgetting about her until nothing was left.
“I...”
Applejack registered the expression on her guest’s face and her rigid body language quicker, whereas Fluttershy failed to see a change. What the farmer saw play out before her was a scene she’d been the lead actress of countless times in the past. Like lightning, it was there, and then it wasn’t. Applejack only needed that fleeting glance to recognize the eyes of somepony who’d just dove into their heart in search of comforting memories of loved ones only to return holding nothing but a dark loneliness. Even though Fluttershy didn’t catch it, Applejack wasn’t surprised. Her friend may be the most empathic pony she knew, but she couldn’t catch everything, especially if one were as efficient and quick about hiding their emotions as Elspeth was. Her ears flattened against her head and she crossed her legs awkwardly. All of a sudden the specks of dust on the floor were much more interesting. “Y-you don’t have to answer that, Sugarcube.”
Fluttershy looked between the two other mares, confused.
With that pressed into Elspeth’s thoughts, Applejack had essentially killed all chances of addressing the elephant in the room. She sighed; it just wouldn’t be appropriate to keep at it after such a heavy moment.
“Well, I’m glad that you’re fine, Elspeth.” Applejack smiled genuinely in an attempt to push past her faux-pas. “Feel free to stay here as long as it takes to get yourself together.” After nodding politely, she turned her attention to Fluttershy. “I’m sorry for keeping you so long. I know how your critters get when you don’t feed them on time. C’mon, I’ll walk you home,” she said as she walked to the door.
“It was no trouble at all.” Fluttershy graced them with her smile. Elspeth couldn’t help but smile back. “Be sure to let Applejack know if you’re in pain or think you need help.” She leaned over and removed the tray from under the cart and placed it on a well-built and nicely polished oak nightstand that sat near the head of the bed. “Don’t push yourself,” she warned.
Fluttershy waved timidly before exiting the room with her friend.
Applejack’s head poked back through the closing door. “My brother will be up after dinner to get your dishes. Don’t hesitate to tell him if you need something. Take care.” The door clicked short behind her, leaving Elspeth to stare at the wood-grain barrier.
“So, what held you up on the way inside, if you don’t mind me asking…” Elspeth heard Fluttershy’s muffled voice ask. The volume of their conversation slowly tapered off as they moved further away.
Elspeth let her eyes fall on the covered plate. Now that things had slowed down, her stomach took the chance to make its needs known by rumbling loudly. If her stomach was trying to impersonate a landslide, it was doing a bang-up job.
She may not be in a fight for the fate of an entire world, but the future was still uncertain for her. Koth gave good advice once and now felt like the perfect time to take it to heart.
This world she was in, her new body, all of it; it was just a new challenge, another battlefield. What would she do when her back was against a wall and she’d hit an all time low, Koth once asked. She couldn’t answer him back then, when the world around her was in turmoil and she didn’t have the luxury of believing in tomorrow; however, now, with a clean slate and no chains tying her down, she reached down into the depths of her soul and found an answer worthy of the friend who asked the question. A smirk formed across her face as she turned to watch the evening sun.
“I’m going to do what I’ve done my entire life: fight, persevere, and thrive.”