//------------------------------// // Daddy's faja // Story: Deer Me: Black Snow // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// Stelimus and Grimliss had returned to the capital after a long trek through the snowy wastelands. The undead deer suggested only going through the tundra with a small party comprised of only him, his nephew, and his four guards, in an attempt to look like a small and insignificant target to the giant in the snowy lands. It worked. They all returned behind the safety of the massive walls of reindeer architecture. Stelimus was expecting everyone to welcome him, perhaps not with open...forelegs, but at least with a simulacrum of joy at seeing him again. Instead, he was met with alienating gazes from the civilians in the streets and the soldiers during their patrols. They all seemed none too happy to see their prince again when they didn't seem to have much of an issue with him before his departure. "What's wrong with them?" Stelimus whispered to his uncle. "They most likely think that your elongated stay meant you were preferring the ponies or some other, nonsensical thing such as that. Your father isn't exactly that well versed in diversity, as you well know." "Wow. So he really has brainwashed them. That's pretty sad and, quite frankly, a little pathetic." The two arrived in front of the palace where King Anglacite and his Queen, accompanied by a cohort of guards, awaited Grimliss and Stelimus' return. When Anglacite saw his son, he calmly trotted over to the stag, an air of certainty muddling his view. "So," he said as he approached his son. "did you see the pony song?" "Yes." "Horrid, aren't they? They consider themselves superior to others because of how vast their empire is." Anglacite wrapped a foreleg around his son. "That's...not what I observed upon further analysis." The God-King slowly moved away and narrowed his gaze. "What are you talking about?" "As any creature, many of them have their faults, namely the 'artists', but I did not see anything pertaining to what you have mentioned thus far over the years." "What are you..." Anglacite looked down and Stelimus could see his eyes darting left and right as if trying to comprehend what he just heard. His own son? Every child he had up to this point believed in his truth. After all, he shared it with them since their birth, and he did the same with this one. So what could be the cause of his thoughts? "Wait...The others never had much contact with my siblings, which means..." Anglacite looked up and his gaze almost immediately darted towards Grimliss who seemed dispassionate about the reunion. "You! It's YOUR fault he's adhering to the wrong methods of thinking!" "Hm?" Grimliss hummed. The undead stag found himself being punched hard in the chest and sliding back several feet from the resulting shockwave. Unfortunately, the strike did not do much to Grimliss save for creating a thin sheet of frost on his chest. "What's wrong with you, fool?" Grimliss chastised. "You're the cause of my son's wrong upbringing!" Anglacite accusingly pointed towards his brother. "I've barely had any contact with him! And you're the one who asked me to escort him personally!" "No!" Strong winds started to flail around, creating a blizzard with the particles of frozen air within the city. "I've done my best to raise the children I have had over the years, and all was fine, yet YOU always had a preference for the pony song rather than your own kin! You're a traitor of your own species!" While Grimliss was usually always of a calm nature, his brother always knew what got under his nonexistent flesh. While he did not express his emotions facially, his essence started to seep out of every part of his body, causing the few living plants to rot immediately and the stones around to crumble and decay. "So you want to fight just to feel better about yourself? You wanted an excuse to tussle with me, brother? Then so be it. We'll do it right here in front of everyone and maybe even wipe this entire city off of the map due to your inflated and corrupted ego." Anglacite was loathe to do so, but he agreed and calmed down. "Apologies, brother. I did not think well. I have...been on edge, lately. I know that you would never betray me, let alone your own kind. The thought that it even crossed my mind sickens me." Grimliss calmed down and let his energy seep back into his decayed body. "Right, but don't do that again." Anglacite turned to face his son. "As for you, I want to know everything you saw at the pony-song's city. I am...Curious," he trailed off. Stelimus' mother brought him with her into the castle, where many guards followed them. Stelimus was used to his father's capricious attitude by now but he did not approve of his attitude, hence why they never really got along. "Say, where is my 'sister'?" Stelimus wondered. "Out. She's at your aunt's home." "What's she doing there?" "Learning to control her anger issues, among other things." "Or learning how to kill me from her aunt considering how I treated Effervescence at the Crystal Kingdom." When everyone was out of sight and Anglacite was walking back to his palace, Grimliss walked next to him and spoke rather eerily: "You know, brother, in the past, I wasn't as strong as you." "This is true. You were far from being the weakest, but you could not reach my power." Grimliss walked in front of Anglacite, cutting off his path. "However, your sister and I both have our own essence now and can no longer be compared to you." Anglacite cocked an eyebrow, inciting a devilish curiosity within his mind. His slightly evil grin attested to this. "So, you're saying you're stronger than me?" Grimliss did not respond and remained stoic. "Fine then. Your silence speaks tomes. Would you be willing to have a little...sparring match with me in the tundra?" Grimliss grinned just like his brother, and both decided to take their leave, the people bowing to them and their presence while others cowered at the sight of Anglacite's sibling. It took them a while to finally enter the tundra and get to a safe distance away from the metropolis. "Ready?" Anglacite poised himself. Stelimus sat in his room, as wide as it once was but filled with many an empty shelf rather than toys, playgrounds, and, maybe, a nacho fountain complete with cheese and salsa. He was sitting at his deck, reading through some notes left by the creepy spirit that served as his teacher. He even got a few pieces of mail from the two ponies he met before leaving with his 'uncle'. Gregary was really starting to hate his brain for conjuring up such a weird reality. "Ugh. Homework? I didn't think I would have to suffer through it again. Nearly thirty years of torture just to get a worthless degree, then I have to study again..." The room started to vibrate gently, making Stelimus' pencil holders topple over after a brief clogging session. "Woah. Feels like there's an earthquake happening." After the shaking stopped, at vicious wave of discolored energy flew over the capital, knocking the young stag over briefly and nearly causing him to enter yet another form of unconsciousness. He put a hoof to his head and shook it. "No way am I going to pass out yet again. This isn't inception, and I sure as hell won't let it become like it." Another wave blasted over the entire capital, but this wave was even more vicious than the last. The walls were crumbling and the windows were starting to crack underneath the massive pressure being created. Another wave tore the doors to Stelimus' room off its hinges and threw one side through a window and into the courtyard in one clean movement. A dark flash coming from the hallway caught the young stag's attention, flash which immediately captivated Stelimus' attention and made him try and determine the source. Throughout the castle, guards were collapsed onto the floor, furniture had toppled over, some bricks in the floor had cracked into a small, uneven hole, and paintings had fallen from the walls. Trekking further through the waves increasing in intensity, Stelimus pushed the castle doors open as best he could and immediately regretted the decision, what with him flying backwards and slamming against yet more wall. "Too many damn walls in this place. Couldn't have an opening with support pillars or something? Gothic architecture is a thing, you plebeians," Stelimus mumbled under his breath. The stag adjusted his shoulders and massaged his neck while looking outside. The sight...He immediately realized what was going on. Grimliss and Anglacite were fighting outside of the city and were practically destroying everything around them in the tundra. Several of the young 'mountains' were razed and no traces were left. The stag gulped loudly and started to shake for a reason he did not understand. "Wh-what's wrong with m-me? Am I scared? Why would I b-b-be scared? Th-this is just a coma dream...but the more I go through it, the more everything starts to feel actually real. I can feel the pressure of their powers crushing me. Is this what it is like to...Are they truly gods?" Further away, the two god-kings were acting quite casual about the whole affair and were oblivious to the damages they were causing around them. "I have not had the pleasure of releasing my full potential in so long!" Anglacite shouted. The king jumped around his brother and flicked his head towards Grimliss, causing two icy vortexes of tremendous size to smash into each other like drills, but they met with a deathly mist that decayed them in seconds. "Quite. I have not been able to test the extent of my new essence since changing like this. Perhaps your childish outburst was a boon rather than a bane?" "WHAT?!" Anglacite was outraged. The deathly stag planted his hooves into the ground, creating two bizarre black vortexes that bubbled like sludge and emitted semi-transparent rings around them. Pulling outwards, Grimliss extracted two demonic, black spirits and unleashed them onto his brother. Anglacite reared his head in surprise, and maybe some hidden terror, and kicked the ground below him. He started sliding backwards at high speeds on a path of ice that formed behind the reindeer the further he went. Standing on his two hind legs, the stag put his two fore hooves together and started to mumble an incantation. When he released his hooves, the world seemed to warp briefly and both Anglacite and Grimliss found themselves floating on a block of ice within a starry abyss that was illuminated by a purple nebula. The black spirits had turned into ice, and the encroaching frost was being kept away from Grimliss by his deathly miasma. "Quite impressive. You've learned some new tricks, but dimensional shifting isn't as easy as you think," Grimliss said. Grimliss narrowed his gaze and smiled at his brother's apparent, increasing exhaustion. "I thought so."