//------------------------------// // Drain // Story: Immortalus // by Imperator Chiashi Zane //------------------------------// “Luna, you told me you had to come to the old castle to check on something. Alone. I need to know why, for your own safe…” Celestia’s voice cut off as she saw the two armored figures behind her sister. She recognized the style of the armor. It hadn’t been made in centuries, let alone in that color for nearly a millennium. That was the armor of the old Night Guard, the ones who had turned in their armor, or worse, turned traitor, when the Nightmare had risen. But those looked flawlessly preserved, and the two Guardsponies stood at attention in the ancient manner she had grown accustomed to. Neither held a weapon, which in itself was unusual. Her eyes were drawn to a glint of blue from the larger’s eye-slit, and leaned closer to look, “Guards, I do not recognize you in that armor. State your name, please.” “Raedfaest Integra. Legio Nocturne Immortalus.” “Starlight Overdusk. Legio Nocturne Immortalus.” Both together concluded, “First and Last Regiment, Lady Celestial Solus Faustdatter.” The two Pegasi who had escorted Celestia to her sister’s location just stared. Then immediately glanced at each-other, then Celestia herself. Celestia turned to them, and stopped, her horn glowing softly as she erased the last few moments of their memory. She did not need the kind of stress that came with the low guard knowing her true-name. She spoke softly, “Leave us be. I will call if you are needed,” the Pegasi flew away quickly as Celestia cast a silence spell and scowled at the two Night Guard. The Royal Canterlot Voice burst out of her throat, “WHAT IN FAUSTS NAME ARE YOU DOING! NOPONY ALIVE KNOWS MY NAME BUT LUNA!” The sheer force of her words would have been enough to erase the memories of any pony who had learned her true name recently, and wasn’t an Alicorn. She looked at Luna as the two Guardsponies shook their heads. Not dazed shaking, but scornful, “Luna, explain.” “Sister, I believe you already know my loyalist Guard. You killed most of them.” Celestia stared at her sister for a long minute, “You were turning your own Guard to dust. Tartarus, you built a shrine to yourself in the basement, with two statues even. A…” it dawned on her that the two Guardsponies behind her sister were identical matches to the stone ponies in the basement. “Those suits of armor you built on the statues, they were cursed, weren’t they?” The larger of the two guards shook his head sadly, “Not the armor, Lady Celestial. The pony inside.” “But, that means she was able to turn you to stone without the Elements of Harmony, and turn you back without killing you,” her mind was spinning at a thousand trots a second, “We can finally free Starswirl!” “No, sister. We cannot. I didn’t free them from the stone.” “But they’re moving, and alive, aren’t they?” Celestia was so close to jumping for joy when she saw the smaller of the two remove their helmet, revealing a skull. Bleach-white, completely without flaws. Completely without life, but she knew the skull was looking at her, even as the Guard spread a pair of skeletonized wings. “Necromancy?” “Not exactly. I think the Nightmare made them, well, Immortal in a way. I don’t know how, exactly, but I intend to find out. I need to know what I did, so I can fix it.” The two Guard looked at Luna, and the taller spoke up, gravelly and rough, “Lady Lunari, you cannot. Returning us to mortality would kill us as soundly as any death spell would.” “I did not give you that curse to suffer for eternity. You do not deserve to suffer for my mistakes.” The guard reared up, and Celestia finally figured out that it was male by the contour of the belly-plates, before grabbing his helmet and removing it in a way that would be sure to injure a normal pony. He twisted it and shook the metal form several times until a glass orb fell into his hoof. He pressed it back into the socket in his skull, “Lady Celestial, Thou knowest me before. Even when I had mine life within me, mine own, that is, I swore loyalty to thine sibling for so long as I couldst draw mine blade. Give me a blade once more, that I wouldst raise it in defense once more.” Celestia stared at him. Yes, she had known both of them. She had seen the statues, had inspected them, even personally studied them inside and out for any hidden magic. She had found none, yet here they stood. No traces of Necromantic magic in them either. “How are you still moving if you do not draw breath?” His muzzle shook up and down with a clattering of bone on metal, “I have no idea, Milady. The details were sparse. The Nightmare said she was making us immortal. Not undying.” Celestia groaned, “Fine. Look, my sister has new guards, who aren’t skeletons, and won’t terrify everypony. I can assign you to her personal guard, but you will not be participating in any out-of-armor events, do you understand?” “I do. But, I fear that you are mistaken,” Starlight pulled her boot off and shook it, dumping her arm bones onto the ground, and put the boot back on after shaking out her hoof, “We are not skeletons. I may have participated somewhat more in-depth in my own curse than I revealed to your sister. She does not remember everything she did, and I wish to keep it that way as long as possible, for her sake. The spell required a number of Pegasus feathers, identical in every way, laid out in a circle around her in order to work properly. Mine were donated to the cause. As was a measure of Raedfaest’s blood and etchings from the Nightmare’s horn.” “Why her horn and not a Unicorn horn?” “Specifics. I was a chemist before the Guard recruited me. The difference between Alicorn and Unicorn horn shavings is very specific. Without it, we would have died right then and there, turned to stone for real.” “So why did you two survive and the others didn’t?” “Part of the spell. It was never meant to take two at a time, let alone five. I imagine the extra drain was partially responsible for us seeing Lady Lunari before us again. Unfortunately, the spell was never meant to preserve the flesh. Only the mind.” “I thought I banned all of those kinds of spells, after I used one on Starswirl to preserve his mind until his body could be restored. He didn’t forgive me for almost six hundred years.” The Pegasus bowed deeply, “Say hello again to the greatest bucking thief in all of Equuis.” Celestia stared at the suit of armor, now wearing her crown, “How?” “Part of the curse. The body is merely a physical restriction of the mind. Without the body, the mind takes on traits more like its natural state,” her hooves pointed back to herself, “A cloud, for example,” pointed to the Stallion across from her, “or a solid stone. Go ahead. Hit him. Whack him as hard as you dare.” “What? Even if he was made of stone, not armor with a skeleton in it, I’d take his head off.” “Lady Celestial, I promise you, we are more than that. And, at the same time, less. Now that the stasis spell has broken, our armor will begin to degrade. We will need things from you to survive.” Celestia looked at them, trying to figure out what to do about these two, “What would you need to survive? And to pass for normal ponies?” The Pegasus dropped on her belly, armored hooves pounding the dirt as an airless laugh pushed out of the skull, “We will be never again normal. The spell will force us upon new hosts. Artifacts, our souls themselves, are trapped in our artifacts. Take them, give them to another pony, our hosts, and we will be able to survive.” Celestia was about to respond that she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t give up two ponies for two others, when Luna interrupted, “Sister, I remember reading about the spell, before the Nightmare. They will not harm the hosts. They were never intended to be trapped in the armor.” “What do you mean, never meant to be? Of course they wouldn’t have intentionally trapped a soul in a suit of armor. Tartarus, I can’t even remember one that allowed a soul to animate anything.” Starlight’s chin turned up, and with her hooves, she pushed some grass up on the sides of her muzzle to mimic a smirk, “Soul Sword. Starswirl the Bearded, notebook Fifteen, Mind Altering Spells and Traps. Binds the soul of the target into the included object. Often used to rip the soul out of adventurers and imprison them in puzzle boxes for the trap-setter to later destroy.” “But the targets of that spell became immobile. I used it on Starswirl’s stone body to keep his mind tethered to it. And that one doesn’t require Pegasus feathers at all.” “No. But Platinum’s Passive Puppetmaster does.” “You mean you’re just puppeting your own armor around?” “Not exactly. See. Entrapped minds cannot utilize that spell. But Loren’s Life Leech allows an entrapped mind to cast spells as though a Unicorn, such as Platinum’s Passive Puppetmaster.” “Which can only be cast by Unicorns and Alicorns.” “Exactly why it had to be cast ON us. That was why we needed Earth Pony blood.” “So you’re saying a simple Dispel Magic on you would kill you instantly?” The Stallion shook his head side to side, bones crashing around in it, and the Pegasus continued, “That was the reason we had another Earth Pony and Pegasus in the room. Stone-heart’s Spirit Shield, blocks Dispel Magic up to class seven. Not Alicorn level by itself, but enhanced by the class fifteen default of an adolescent Alicorn, it has a much higher break strength. You could probably dispel it, unless there was an unexpected interaction between Soul Sword and Spirit Shield. Even if it does work, it probably won’t do more than make us immobile artifacts.” “So you need the hosts why? I didn’t hear anything in there that requires a host body.” A huff from Luna this time, “Sister, what is the first spell Starswirl always told us to cast before we started a large scale enchantment?” “Body Bind? So the spell would default to leeching power from the user’s body, rather than the environment?” “Yes. Now, you’ll notice the lack of bodies in my guards. They will need hosts to supply enough magic to maintain the Body Bind, else they will begin to consume the forest at a great rate. It was why the castle never had anything living in it while I was gone. I suspect life will return to it soon.” “So how am I supposed to find hosts? Just go around and ask everypony if they want to be the host to an undead soldier with ties to the darkest part of our history?” “If you think that will help, go ahead. I was thinking less sarcastically, give them to the Elements of Harmony. They will figure it out. They always do.” The Stallion spoke up, “So, the two of you are no longer the Element bearers?” Celestia shook her head, “Not since that day. They abandoned me, took on new hosts.” Starlight nuzzled the solar princess, “Perhaps, milady, we could meet them before we start killing plants, or you?” “How long do you have before that starts happening?” “Minutes, maybe hours. We have been leeching energy from Lady Lunari at an increased rate since we were awakened, so faster would be better.” “Why her?” “She cast the spell. It was bound to her by default, but together, we draw more than a lone adolescent can handle. It would take great magic to preserve us.”