Divergence
It’s not waking up if you do not have a body to do it in. That was another fact of his new existence Soldier became aware of as his sense of self started to reintegrate. One moment he simply was, then he was there and not so much over there and then he transitioned to grappling with the idea of “here” and “there” as concepts.
What was “here”? What made it so different from “there”? He’d been both things just a moment ago, so why was his mind insistent on separating these things? I am all, I am all of me.
“Here is the one that sees, the one that asks the question. Here is the I, There is the You outside.” A voice from “there” recited, an answer to a question not asked. A very integral part of what was coalescing on “here” felt a very distinct emotion at this foreign voice; annoyance.
“Go fuck a lobster, Smuggler.” Soldier spat out as soon as he had enough control to vibrate the air around his smoke-like form. The little memory he could call his own was the first one to reintegrate into his core being, so he could recognize the other human spirit. It was relieving to know that there was even a small part of himself he seemed incapable of losing. He could feel actual mass starting to gather around his core being, so he floated over to the rock formation Celestia lay unconscious on.
“Now there’s a disgusting proposition. Please don’t make anyone do that, ever. This thing you did will happen again and chances are it’s not going to be in the middle of a deserted stretch of coast. I bet you can feel that fire gnawing at you already, building pressure and waiting to immolate the souls of everypony around you.” Soldier set his essence on the ground and started the meticulous process of arranging his solid form into a humanoid shape. He could feel the parts go where they were meant to, but he was surprised to feel a strange stinging pain when reforming his right arm. Pain had become both expected and unfamiliar to him, given the nature of his everyday existence. It was a different kind of pain from the existential gantlet he went through when connected to Celestia.
“Well, that is fucked up.” Soldier stated as he flexed the three wickedly sharp talons that had taken the place of his right hand. The musclerature in his forearm refused to go into a solid form, so he could maneuver the cumbersome digits freely, assuming he could concentrate on arranging and rearranging the mass of energy for every little gesture. “Keep talking, I’m listening.”
“Dude, that is disturbing on several levels you can’t even comprehend.” He heard whatever critter Smuggler was using fidget in the distance. The cautious bastard wasn’t going to bring his host out in the open, as he probably didn’t want to be seen by Celestia. Smuggler could have his games, they were of no consequence as far as Soldier was concerned. He concentrated for a second and managed to make the sharp end of the talons to go along his projected forearm. The transformation had been caused by the very magick that had created him, so he didn’t want to poke anything by accident. Practically losing an arm was a bummer, but it would most likely not matter if he possessed the artificial body he’d seen before.
“Okay, disfiguring magical transformations of already metaphysical projections aside, I don’t have a way to stop you from exploding next time. The next time you lose control there will not be a nigh omnipotent alicorn to teleport you somewhere your mindless hunger can sate itself safely.” Smuggler paused, most likely to give him time to process the revelation. It came as no surprise that he would lose control in the future, it was a certainty with the immensity of the power he wielded and the limitations of his human mind. The cold and desperate hunger for the warmth and light of others and his utter joy and fulfillment at tearing into that vibrant light was something he hoped to have never discovered.
“You would not risk coming here without a solution.” Smuggler was a manipulative bastard that couldn’t pass up a chance of directing him into actions that would coincide with whatever larger machinations he had. Those schemes might go against Celestia’s wishes and the wellbeing of equine kind, but Soldier refused to blame the closest thing he had to a brother for acting on what Luna’s spell had twisted to be his nature.
“You grinding a chunk of Canterlot Castle into gravel proved a theory of mine to be more than valid. Our actions can go against the timeline we know for this world, without the fabric of space-time folding into itself, or our memory being rewritten to complement the differences we caused. This gives me free reign to implement my plans and gives you a chance to do the right thing before you explode again. You are unable to stop it, or control yourself when it happens, but you can choose what and who you bring down with you.”
“Discord?” The black claws didn’t hurt, but the discoloration of the stolen magick had started to spread up his arm. This could mean he was fast becoming something like the Nightmare part of Nightmare Moon. That could be a real problem, as he doubted the darkest parts of his soul would stop at simply inconveniencing a few ponies.
“He’s in the Canterlot gardens, so I was thinking more along the lines of Sombra. Go up north and blow up next to the pony smoke wizard before the city shows itself and you should only take him and maybe the curse hiding the city with you.” He heard Smuggler’s host jumping back into the water. He could sense the swirling complexity of Smuggler’s magick pulsating under the surface of the calm sea around him. He could feel the abrasive magic tap into some of the copious amounts of his power lingering in the surrounding waters, twisting and forcing it into new intricate forms. Smuggler’s messenger disappeared as he felt the miniscule amount of power it had commandeered implode on itself.
Soldier craned his head upward and felt how the rays of the sun struggled to pierce the canopy of free energy he’d left behind. He had faint memories of seeing the sun, actually feeling the warmth of it on his skin. The feeling of siphoning the warmth and life out of its avatar was both a poor substitute and terrifyingly satisfying. He had the makings of the most deadly monster to ever mar the face of this world, but the ease of that choice terrified him. It was not something the human he once was would have entertained and this world would have to throw a lot more at him for it to even be considered.
The morose human moved his physical body, mimicking the gestures of someone glancing around himself for a place to sit. The parts might all go to their places naturally, but more and more of his consciousness resided outside of it. He could see and feel things he never could have imagined and returning to the limited and corrupted view of the world the illusion of a body offered him was insulting to his new understanding of the world. A puppet, with strings laced through every cell and atom, but a puppet for the puppeteer he’d become nonetheless.
Soldier concentrated to ignore any other sensory input, except for the limited range his faux body offered. He almost felt human when he turned his head to look at Celestia’s sleeping form. The barrel of this kind horse was rising and falling, the soft sound of her breathing reminding him of that usually autonomous act. Reaching out his remaining human hand and feeling the very real life his continued existence was endangering brought clarity to what had been a painful and cruel series of wrongs committed against him. This world needed Celestia’s kindness, no matter how saccharine filled it seemed to someone from a world saturated in self-serving causes and worldwide apathy.
Soldier left his body sitting indian style on the ground while he concentrated on moving his three new appendages. He felt a real weight at the end of what used to be his right forearm, but he could still freely control the energy connecting the talons to his arm. Moving them as a mangled arm felt unnatural and it didn’t do what he wanted it to do most of the time. Imagining three strings connecting the sharp thing to his shoulder and then coalescing the semi physical matter around them gave him three tendrils with sharp tips he could whip around. Lacing the the three strings together and setting the talons against each other to for an awkward grabbing arm gave him enough control not to poke things by accident, while keeping the minimum of his attention from other matters.
The sea was calm, silent, even to his senses. He preferred the silence, but the death of everything with even the scrap of will to live was a little too high of a price for it. There was a layer of some kind of matter floating on the surface of the water around them, along with similar matter on the part of the sea floor he could reach. His senses could differentiate it from the water and rock, but he could not be sure if it was algae or dead fish and sea creatures. He could perceive form, but texture and color had become muddled.
He lived in a world where the lives of others where his only solace to the infinite expanse of mundane struggle before him. This world had taken it upon itself to introduce him to every nuance of loss and pain, all for Discord’s joke, a bombastic story for him to tell. The twisted amalgamation of animals and pop-culture references might have wanted him to play the part of the downtrodden hero, or the relatable villain, but he’d never felt an urge to reach toward either extreme.
His most ambitious goal had been to do the right thing. The right thing to do was to give and sacrifice and offer and eviscerate and rip and tear and burn away every scrap of his humanity for the sake of these dull horses that only sneered in disgust and pity when they saw his torn frame.
He’d become so far removed from human that it should unnerve him, but instead he felt a kind of stillness set in his mind at the thought. The illusion of humanity had become taxing to maintain and it could very well be impossible with his latest stunt. Humans were defined by their will to overcome their own weakness, while he had the problem of struggling to keep his overflowing power from killing things.
He was an open flame in a world of tinder.
Hearing his own laughter startled him back into the moment. His body was still sitting Indian style, staring ahead with dead eyes. The laughter boomed out from the depths of his new form. It raced through the network of interlocked pockets of energy and mocked the miniscule trace of his humanity feigning dominance over such a gargantuan entity.
He was both the flame and something comparable to jet fuel seeping into the fabric of the world. Fire and accelerant forced into the same being, destined for self-destruction. He was running out of time and niceties such as watching over Celestia while she slept
Teleportation had seemed a violent practice, like punching a hole into reality, so if he stuck with the metaphor, then he should be able to tear open the fresh scar in the air around him. The thought mulled around in his head for a moment, before his three talons twitched at his side. They definitely did seem to be made for that exact purpose, ripping and tearing chunks out of the fabric of the world. Imagining how the impossible sharp things would slice through and tear chunks out of living souls was disturbingly tantalizing.
He had been at least adequate at violent things in his earlier life. It might have been naive of him to think that what boiled down to a streak of decisive aggression could translate into control over the fabric of reality, but he had no other way to get back to Canterlot, not without leaving a trail of death behind him. Attempting to reopen a wound in space-time could have catastrophic consequences, but there was no way it could have the death toll comparable to his gargantuan speeding over half of whatever continent Equestria was on.
First careful slash with all three outstretched claws seemed to have no effect at first, but then the sea in front of him started to race upwards. Something had changed in the air above the anomalous torrent of water and was drawing it toward itself. The change was considerable, as he felt parts of his own body stir around the vacuum it had created. He’d either broken gravity, or he’d removed a piece of reality and nature was rushing in to correct the imbalance. He’d affected things in a distance and with an unintended delay, so maybe using all three claws right off the bat was too much to ask.
Stabbing at the mending breach with one claw felt like he’d hit the right spot, but the wound shifted before he could use the claw to open it again. A chunk of rock at his feet disappeared when the claw scraped it. The sea around him rushed to fill the chasm and the cavity was deep enough to form a frothing whirlpool the lasted for 20 seconds.
Direct contact excised a set amount of matter of consistent texture instantly and slashing at something removed everything in an area. Fortunately he had to willfully swing at something for the claws to activate. A precise swipe with one claw would most likely open the teleportation window again, but the practical side of him urged him to find out more about his new power.
The ranged swipe had removed enough matter to cause water to race upward, but he had no solid grasp of the size or shape of the excised space. He was standing on a stretch of dead shoreline where there was no life he could endanger, not anymore. There would not be any better place to find out how dangerous his new appendages were.
He started by spreading his essence in the water around him, pulling most of his mass above the rock formation his human body was standing on. He could not use anything that could be called a spell, but he’d lived what felt like an eternity in a world where energy was a real malleable thing. Keeping that in mind, he set out to push traces of himself in the water to absorb the energy around them.
It took a few minutes of frustrating micro-management and trial and error to find what fragrance of light constituted the transfer of energy in the world, more commonly known as heat. Make this light stronger, the sea boiled, diminish it completely and…
The sea did not only freeze, it rose up and nearly crashed on top of Celestia’s sleeping body, along with his own less than tangible form. Soldier did his dormant dad-genes proud and his mangled right arm shot out toward the offending mass of ice without any conscious thought. This action brought him closer to his dying sense of humanity for just a moment, the vague memory of a larger than life figure pulling him to safety from some stupid danger a small child would stumble into crashing through what he called his mind.
The hand that had reached for that child had been a human palm, with digits and a thumb. It had been a human hurrying to protect a smaller human, the love known between kin and family. Looking at the mangled mess of matter and three violent blades made him ashamed to even equate himself to the picture of that kind hand. He’d been turned into something that could only devour and destroy, something that some humans foolishly wanted to be.
“I’m done here.” He had to flick his talons again to dissipate the rushing tide of the sea he had displaced with his sudden reaction. The sea was unnaturally calm for a split-second, as his power cut out all movement on the surface of the water. This stillness was replaced by a slow rising and falling of the sea, as a whole. A slow start to the eternal dance the seas had performed before his meddling.
The thought that had rung clear in his mind at the moment Celestia was in danger had been “no ice” and that is what his transformed arm had provided, the dematerialization of all ice within his unmeasured sphere of influence. The sea had rushed back in to fill this void and he had cemented his haphazard theory by thinking of “no waves” as he was flicking his talons during the aftermath.
He could change things, make a difference. He wanted to do just that, do the right thing and change this world that had hurt him.
It was easy to will the compromised space open again, when he knew exactly what to remove or change. The barrier between where he was and Canterlot was removed with a swift strike of a claw. The stream of energy that had guided Celestia’s transcontinental teleport rushed to take its form, keeping the broken reality from colliding with Soldier’s disturbed space. Soldier didn’t know it, but he came dangerously close to undoing the stretch of land between him and Canterlot altogether. He was lucky reality usually went for the path of least resistance, rather than the straightest path to a goal.
Stepping through the breach was not as easy as you would think, as Soldier’s humanoid form was nothing more than an analog interface for the world around him. He had a cloud of barely contained energy to move through broken space. A little bit of it would have to go through before the analog interface, just to punch through the barrier between this place and Canterlot, but the analog interface had to ascertain the safe velocity for the rest of him to go through the breach.
The way he understood it was that the cloud that was his main body had little to no actual mass. That whole gaseous mass was made of the same stuff as the souls of living things, or at least something that could interact with it directly. Spilling water out of a bottle without touching it, that kinda thing. The human body he constructed worked more along the rules of the physical world, so other living things wouldn’t simply drop dead from proximity.
He focused on actually walking through the breach, only bringing enough of the cloud with him to repel the erratic space between the two places trying to force him to be in two places at once. A body made of energy could deal with the strain, but he needed his physical body for a while longer.
Canterlot was a mess, no other way to put it. There were a few fires he could see down in the town and the sky was dotted with pegasi guards either being chased or chasing changelings. He could see these flying equines flying through the sky because of the huge chunk of Canterlot Castle he’d demolished. A whole side of the elaborate castle was gone and a few nearby towers looked like they were ready to fall into the city below. He could force his body through if he aimed for the opening and turned inwards when the momentum let him.
He’d achieved his original goal, but those towers didn’t sit right with him. They would fall and there were bound to be at least a few civilian casualties. No way the walled city under the castle could have been evacuated in time, with the changeling invasion going on and all.
Shoving a unicorn full of his power and telling them to keep those towers from falling would only be a temporary solution. The dogs were the real masons of the city. Finding one of them and telling them to do the same had a better chance of success. He could see one down by the base of the mountain, probably in a shelter for the rich, holding the thing up with their magic. They could take a few hours off to save some civilians.
So, that’s what the analog interface went off to do. Walking off the edge of the ruined wall and darting straight down as a flash of blue. Detaching a part of himself to do a task was strange for a human mind to grasp, but it was a necessity. Detaching the one solid part of himself was easy, but to detach anything else would mean constructing another “body” for the energy to travel in.
Fussing over the strangeness of such a thought didn’t even enter into his mind. Fragmented, tired and at the mercy of powers he couldn’t begin to understand. There simply wasn’t enough of him left to care. He felt like too much of him was stretched too thin to keep him in one place. Flowing through the world pulsating and buzzing with exquisite light was a feeling he never wanted to forget, but the intricacy of the experience made remembering it in full impossible.
Every little light and energy and life pulsing inside his gargantuan mass made his core shiver in every pleasant way he could remember, along with some he didn’t have a name for. He was a pure receptor of feeling, accepting and enjoying every flash of anger and shiver of excitement in the battling guards and changelings, revelling in the dull thundering fear of the masses, drowning in the mindless love a feeding changeling lulled its victim into.
He could feel everything, he could make all of it his own for one orgasmic moment. He knew he could and he knew he would regret it immediately. He might grow stronger from it, but he’d need more far sooner to stay in control. Soldier could already feel the hunger returning after only feeding on the lives and innermost feelings of fish and krill. Doing the same to a city of sentient creatures would start a cycle that he could not control, it would very likely kill everything, given a few cycles.
He didn’t want that to happen, so he guided his mass to flow toward the void in the world that called to him. The only place where that existed was the crystal on Celestia’s breast and the artificial body especially made for him. He didn’t move very fast at first, but he honestly thought he would punch a hole into reality if he accelerated his mass too fast. He was a being of energy after all, what his mind thought as rushing could very well mean the speed of light.
He couldn’t savor any of what he touched upon on his way to his body, but things still jumped out at him. A dull buzzing of the guards along the spire of the tower his body was in and the exquisite pain of something almost rivalling him in potency, yet shallow and confused. He had little capacity for thought while he moved, but he did understand that he was walking in his brother’s footsteps, seeing what the cunning bastard had left behind from his perspective.
The pain had been close and slipping between numbness and pain. Someone very powerful who would be left mangled among brainwashed guards and in the tower where their artificial bodies were being built. There was only one possibility, when he put those facts together. He didn’t particularly rush when breaking free from his bonds and stepping down the stairs. He felt compressed, clumsy in his new skin. His body felt like it was fighting against him at every movement, forced to move in a rigid and slow fashion. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t feel the building hunger anymore, so he couldn’t complain. He’d gladly exchange some personal discomfort over another massacre of innocent life.
Most of him was contained in a physical body, but he still lacked actual physical eyes. He had a far more detailed and constricted view of the world as a result, but he still couldn’t quite see the world as a normal flesh and blood human. He saw the room in stark detail, but he also saw the staircase beyond the door and the dazed guards beyond it. He also saw the slumped over form resting against one of the worktables in the room.
“S… Soldier? I- Is th… that you?” Shaking, strained and pain shining through every word. He recognized the voice after a moment. He took another long look at the slumped over form. Humanoid, horn and wings and a long grinning wound right below the belly button. The floor must have been stained red with blood, but he could only discern that it was a little wet.
“He le… left… Help… I don…” Mumbling, head sliding to the side, light fading slightly. The Night Princess was losing consciousness. She’d only suffered with this particular pain for a few hours, at most. No, he didn’t think the architect to what he’d gone through could be let go that easily.
“Stay. Awake.” Each word came out as if he had to spit out a boulder with each syllable, but he felt the familiar weight behind them. Luna’s eyes shot open and her features turned from surprise into a grimace of pain that gave him far too much glee. She clutched at her eviscerated stomach, keeping anymore innards from falling out. The wound was long and gaping open, but he didn’t see any tearing around the edges. Obviously something had been cut out surgically, but no effort had been made to close the wound.
There was blood pooling around Luna, but a considerable amount was smeared in a messy line away from her. Soldier followed the trail and found it ending at the spot where Smuggler’s body had supposedly been stored. towels and blood-stained water lay messily on the floor, before an already fading line of footprints led out the door. He’d taken something from Luna to make his body complete.
“Please…” A breathless whisper, that’s all Luna could manage. A normal human couldn’t have heard it, but for Soldier it was just as clear as the sickening pain radiating from her wound. He had ordered her to stay awake, so she felt heights of pain she had passed out for before. Surely it was nearly impossible to do anything with that kind of suffering impairing your mind, but that pain was not something Soldier was a stranger to. The only difference he could see was that Luna had a body to wound, to scar and die in, adding another layer of fear and distraction. The Lunar Princess was as good as dead without help. He lumbered back to the alicorn and kneeled down next to her with a impact that shook the various instrument on the tables around them. He kneeled there for a moment, watching the bright princess’ clouded light.
“I am… 87… please…” Soldier turned his head, catching a speeding changeling chasing a terrified guard with murder shining from it. He’d been able to stop himself from destroying Canterlot, but it was still under attack. He briefly considered if he should be feeling something when looking at the dying princess. He felt her pain and frustration, along with a healthy dose of fear, but he couldn’t make out anything off his own. He should hate this particular princess, right?
“I don... want…” Luna’s eyes were drooping, closing slowly. Another changeling sped by, sadistic glee wafting into his senses. He was now contained in this body, so he could only deal with any changeling he came across. His voice couldn’t reach every changeling and even if it could he wasn’t sure his order wouldn’t be universally followed. Even the order to stop would most likely drop every pegasi out of the sky and stop any rescue worker holding onto debris and such.
“Answer a question.” Speaking was only slightly easier if he didn’t try and put his weight behind the words. He concentrated on his right hand and could feel the fingers turn limp as the black talons phased through the bulky forearm. He didn’t have a solution, but doing nothing didn’t sit right with him.
Twilight Sparkle
“Keep fighting! We need to get to the elements!” Twilight felt her mouth fill with the taste of singed copper. She’d gone past her magical reserves about a dozen changelings ago. She knew pushing herself past her limits like this could cripple her magical capabilities, but simply laying down and hoping for mercy was a naivete she no longer afforded herself.
She could hear the ragged breathing from her friends behind her. They were keeping up and holding formation, as slow as their progress was through the large hall. The elements had been put on display for the royal wedding, because of some ancient treaty about magical weapons and diplomatic gatherings.
Their progress through the castle grounds had been a happy and victorious affair. They thought themselves real champions as the shapeshifters fell for their every trick. The changelings set themselves against them in an orderly fashion, using their natural camouflage as their main weapon. They had even gone as far as playing along with their childish ruses trying to blend in with their own clones.
Changelings had mastered deception and manipulation before the first tribes learnt to play nice. There was a reason why the black scurrying insectoids were the stuff of old wives tales warning of lying and deception. Twilight Sparkle had realized that as the doors to the great hall had closed behind them and the main changeling horde rushed to meet them from every nook and crevice that would fit them. They’d known exactly where they were going and had prepared for it by sending troops to assess their fighting prowess before they met with the main force.
She tackled another changeling to the side and heard Applejack launch the thing toward a group closing on them. The changelings had started to realize she was getting tired, as more and more of the changelings simply threw themselves at her. Identical black insectoid after the other, with the occasional face of one of her friends thrown at her. She’d been forced to attack her friends without knowing for sure if they were fakes. So far, she had been safe to assume them to be so, but with each wave of faces she grew more and more distracted and less sure that her friends were keeping up and behind her.
“Fluttershy!” Rarity’s voice cried out behind her. Twilight flinched and glanced behind her, only to see both Rarity and Fluttershy looking at her and around themselves with tired confusion. The changelings had not imitated any of their voices since they entered the hall and Twilight Sparkle realized why. They had waited for them to tire, for her to grow worried about her friends and then picked out the one they were shielding the most and used her name to grab their attention.
The changelings had also refrained from using their wings during their short battle. She’d assumed it was just a matter of keeping their numbers focused, but the sight of a literal wall of changelings charging toward her as she turned back forward made her realize the tactical benefits surprise had in a drawn out battle. The eternal student in her hoped she would have the chance to learn from this experience, but the mass of wickedly sharp chitin barreling toward her told her otherwise. The bug creatures didn’t have to hold their attacks back and that was evident in their attack.
No time for a spell, nowhere to dodge and absolutely no energy to think of a way out of their situation. The changelings had won Canterlot and Twilight would die knowing that defeat and nothing else. She’d led her friends to their deaths, but she had no time for apologies. She stepped back to be closer to her friends and clinched her eyes shut as the changelings were a mere fraction of a second away, bracing for pain and death.
There was a shockingly loud wet popping noise right before the changeling mass hit them. Twilight felt herself and her friends being bowled over by the weight of the charge, sliding back through the hall they’d fought so hard to cross. The impact had been forceful enough to knock them back to the end of the hall, but something was definitely off about the whole thing. She knew that much even before she opened her eyes, but opening her eyes only gave her more questions.
She was sticky, covered in a mucus-like green ichor that was now covering everything in her sight. She hurriedly wiped off the stinging liquid from her eyes and frantically searched for her friends. She found them doing the same thing as she was, dazedly picking themselves up and trying to get the goo out of their eyes. Rarity was trying to scrape the goo off the hardest, making urgent nonverbal sounds of disgust. Applejack was slowly lifting her stetson off her brow and then continued to clean it, face contorted in a heart wrenching mix of confusion and horror. Rainbow Dash looked shell shocked; scanning the room in front of them slowly, eyes flickering across the messy landscape, searching for something. She noticed that both Rarity and Rainbow Dash were close to hyperventilating.
“What…” Twilight started the question, first in a series, but her words trailed off into nothing as she realized what Rainbow Dash was looking for. It was deathly quiet in the great hall, even the battle outside had been muted in the same stupefied horror Twilight and her friends were going through. The changelings were nowhere to be seen, despite the quite literal army of the creatures had been surrounding them nary a minute ago. Where the changelings had been, there was now a knee-deep marsh of near liquified changeling corpses.
“Where did the changelings go?” Fluttershy asked. Twilight whirled around, nearly slipping on a more solid piece of changeling. Her panicking mind wondered for moment what part of a changeling it could have been, seeing as the role of a bone structure would have been fulfilled by the chitinous exoskeleton. She had yet to see a glimpse of black chitin among the remains, so it would have to have been one of the internal organs, perhaps even the eye, an internal gland of some sort was more likely, but…
She had to bite her cheek to stop the distracting theories from taking over her rational thought. Logically dissecting situations was her coping mechanism, it would not help her distraught friend. Fluttershy’s eyes were doing the same quick flicking from side to side as Rainbow Dash had and her breathing was considerably quicker. The truth of the situation was obviously dawning on her. She only managed to open her mouth to try and calm the pegasi, when Fluttershy’s eyes snapped to her.
“You had no right!” Fluttershy stepped forward with the familiar fire of the Stare directed at Twilight. The ragged unicorn found herself frozen, but she couldn’t be sure if it was from the surprise of the accusation or if it was her friend’s special talent at work. She could see her friends react in the same way at first, before falling silent and looking at Twilight with varying degrees of suspicion.
“I had nothing to -” She tried to tell Fluttershy the truth, but it was obvious that the distraught pegasi was not interested in the truth.
“Everything that happened to you, it happened to us, you can’t justify this with a ragged ear! These living, thinking, feeling creatures had as much of a right to live as you or I!”
“Fluttershy, darling…” Rarity raised a hoof to stop the pegasi, but Fluttershy stepped forward before the fashonista’s hoof could give any comfort.
“Where do you draw the line, huh? Anything that doesn’t go against you gets to live? Sentience sure as Tartarus doesn’t seem to stop you! Or was it the blow to your pride that you couldn’t forgive? These bucking insects outsmarted you, so you couldn’t let anyone of them out to spread the word! Anything to protect the image of Celestia’s star pupil!”
“Fluttershy! Twilight didn’t do this!” Rainbow Dash brashly stepped in. There had been some suspicion in her eyes as well, but Twilight appreciated that Rainbow Dash was the one to be the voice of reason here. No unicorn any of them knew could do something like this in the scale represented here. The spell that had killed the changelings had been both specific and unbelievably powerful, both things she couldn’t manage in her current state.
“She used the elements! She dragged us here, forced you to fight through that bucking army, only to - use us to liquefy the changelings! She made us - she…” Tears were flowing freely now, pushing the green slime away from Fluttershy’s eyes. Her voice cracked and rose in pitch, the usual signs of a panic attack. The kind pegasi would pass out if left on her own.
“Ya might wanna stop it right there, sugarcube.” Applejack sternly said as she placed a hoof on Fluttershy’s chest. “You an’ I know Twilight wouldn’t do that to us, no matter the trouble we were in. We’re ponies, something like this just ain’t in us.”
Rarity and Pinkie joined in on reassuring the yellow pegasi, but Twilight found herself looking at the genocide she was knee-deep in and hearing Applejack’s words. Doing something as drastic as this when confronted with an overwhelming enemy force certainly wasn’t something ponies would consider. Her brother’s books on warfare all treated war as the last resort and casualties on either side of the conflict were treated as unfortunate. She’d grown frustrated at the varied ways they detailed ways to use magic to avoid and prevent conflict, but could only find scant mentions on how to use magic to end it.
She had an idea why such knowledge was not readily available for public consumption as she glanced over the minced remains of the changelings she had been fighting. Her friends had grown silent, Fluttershy had calmed down to the point of catatonia, shaking constantly with silent tears clouding her eyes. Rarity stayed close to the pegasi, while the rest of her friends trotted over to the door with grim faces. They’d been ignoring the smell this whole time, but now the stench had started to make them light-headed.
It took Applejack and Rainbow Dash a few good pulls to have the doors to the hall even budge. It took a surge of Twilight’s worn out magic and an industrial jack Pinkie had procured to open the door enough for them to step through the gap. They stumbled into the street among a sloshing mass of changeling innards, the stench only intensifying as the mass came in contact with the sun. Everyone of them stumbled away dazedly, falling down on the ground gasping for air as soon as the stench subsided enough that they could breathe without their lungs stinging.
It wasn’t the worst day of her life, but sure was the most uncomfortable. The day after Fenrir’s death had been far more scarring, as selfish as it might be. She’d been bedridden for a solid week, but on that first day she hadn’t been able to use her magic at all. That fear had been far more traumatizing than any pain Fenrir had put her through. She’d gone through all of the things she couldn’t do as a unicorn without magic, scarcely even noticing her friends visiting her.
She’d refused treatment on her tattered ear, even after the cause for her lost magic had been resolved. She needed to remember that fear, she needed to know things didn’t always turn out alright if you were the good guy. The bad guys were just as desperate to win and they had the added benefit of being crazy, most of the time.
“Admit it. You wanted those things dead.” Twilight could feel a weight settling on her shoulders. She could smell the rancid breath of a carnivore next to her tattered ear. “You should be proud, purple magic horse. I am.”
“You’re not real.” Twilight turned her head so others couldn’t see her lips moving. This was her problem, something she didn’t want to burden others with, especially her friends. The last thing she wanted was for her friends to look at her like she was insane.
“You are becoming quite the murderer.” Fenrir’s right paw shifted away from her shoulder and Twilight could hear his claw scratching at the paved road. The wolf was obviously not as big as he had been in life, even in her hallucinations. He was on the level of a big muscular dog, not even reaching the level of an actual wolf. He was still weighty enough to keep her down on the ground.
“Go away.” Twilight hissed, trying to get back on her hooves despite the weight she felt pressing her down. There was no way the wolf’s weight was an actual physical force applied to her, so she should be able to disregard it. Nopony else could see or hear him, there was no way he was anything other than a figment of her imagination. “You’re not real.”
“I’m as real you make me.” His right paw returned on her shoulder and Twilight could feel his rancid breath on her neck. She could hear only her own thundering heartbeat and the wet sound of Fenrir’s jaw opening. Her breath hitched in her throat as she felt those sharp fangs biting into her neck. The paws she felt on her back moved to rest against her forelegs as soon as the wolf had a solid grasp on her neck. His position was no longer one of a predator holding down it’s prey, he was now close enough for her to feel the coarse hairs of his belly itching at her back. The warmth of his body was far more oppressive than his weight had been.
“You want me to be real enough to hurt you.” Fenrir growled into her neck as his rear legs moved to spread her legs apart, scratching at her skin painfully. Her eyes shot open in panic as she realized what position she had let the wolf put her in. She kicked his paws away from her hooves and pushed herself up, trying to ignore the tug of his jaw on her neck. Fenrir’s jaw loosened for a moment and Twilight thought she had broken free of whatever episode she was having, but Fenrir clamped down on her neck harder as soon as the thought entered her head. The wolf tugged her back violently, before forcing her down into the pavement covered in reeking viscera. Her struggles had only raised her hindquarters to meet with Fenrir’s larger frame.
“My bitch.” Fenrir growled out a chuckle and unclenched his jaw. The warmth of the wolf was so intense it made it hard to breathe and Twilight’s heart felt like it was trying to jump out of her chest. She waited for something warm and spongy to poke at her tail, but nothing came. The wolf stayed there, hovering over her and establishing his dominance, until Twilight could no longer hold her breath. Fenrir moved his snout right next to her face and exhaled a long breath right into her mouth. The stench almost made her gag, but the glint of his fangs froze her in place. She couldn’t move even when Fenrir straightened up and stepped over her.
“Dream of me, my little pervert.” Fenrir called back, with his tail swishing across her body. The coarse hairs made her shake as they moved from the base of her tail, up her back, eliciting a twinge of pain as they pressed at her tender neck, until finally scratching up her horn. She clenched her eyes shut and curled her body as small as she could, waiting for whatever Fenrir would do next to humiliate her.
“Twilight, you alright?” Rainbow Dash’s voice asked. Twilight opened her eyes and saw her friends in front of her, luckily only Rainbow Dash was paying attention to her. Applejack was interrogating a guard about what had happened while helping the stallion clear some rubble. Pinkie Pie was sitting next to Fluttershy, her hair deflating slowly. Rarity was using towels they had procured from somewhere to clean Fluttershy and herself of the viscera. Rainbow Dash was standing above her, looking uncomfortable. “You pushed yourself pretty hard, so they didn’t want to bother you, but...”
“No, I’m fine.” Twilight stumbled back onto her hooves. She could still feel her heart racing and her mouth was painfully dry. She could still taste the stench of Fenrir’s breath in her mouth and feel his warmth pressing down on her. She swallowed the lump in her throat and took a deep breath to try and calm down. “So, it happened to all of the changelings? Whatever it was.”
“Yeah, I made a lap around Canterlot and there are puddles of green goo everywhere. None of the guards seem to know what happened, but they’re busy with rescue efforts.” Rainbow Dash’s wings fluttered nervously as she spoke. She wanted to do something and having the whole siege on Canterlot be resolved by an act of mass murder didn’t feel right to the righteous pegasus.
“No intact bodies at all?” Rainbow Dash shook her head, fixing the studious unicorn with an intense stare. Her friend was waiting for her to figure out the situation, but Twilight found her mind wandering to Fenrir. What in the hell was the apparition she’d been dominated by? Why would she create something that was so clearly against her, if it was just a figment of her imagination? What kind of magic Fenrir could have possibly contaminated her with, to cause these kinds of visions? Her gaze wandered downward, her friend’s questioning glare all but forgotten when her eyes spotted the scratched piece of paved rock at her feet.
“SOUL” The scratched message frightened her, first of all. It’s very existence validated Fenrir’s survival. She’d heard the wolf scratch at the paved stones long enough to leave that message. Judging from Rainbow Dash’s reaction, at least some of her episode with Fenrir had been a dream, or an unconscious part of the episode. She knew that Fenrir had been invisible to anypony but her, so what did Fenrir leaving physical evidence mean? Was she losing control of her magic due to some magical side-effect of her encounter with Fenrir? Had she been the one to unconsciously scratch that message into the stone?
“One of the humans. The only ones capable of doing something like this in this city are the human spirits. Smuggler’s contained by Luna, but Soldier already did that to the castle.” The realization came to her after she said the words. She put those words in that order only to fill the waiting silence with an answer, she felt it was divine luck that her first guess sounded like the right answer. “The humans… the humans are to blame… If it weren’t for them…”
“Okay, get the humans, on it!” Rainbow Dash did her name proud and dashed away. Twilight stayed there, trying to force her mind out of the swamp of disgust and self-doubt Fenrir had forced her into.
“I’m fine. Never better.” Twilight muttered as she raised a hoof to touch her abused neck. She was revulsed by the shiver that ran through her body from the pain that little touch caused. Fenrir had left a mark on her. It didn’t matter that it was covered by her mane, or that it was something she had most likely imagined.
She had been marked.
Luna #87
“Help me.” The host body was far beyond proper cardiovascular control. It was all she could do to stem the flow of blood into the compromised part of the system. It had not been enough to stave of the cold and the frightening numbness. The pain was such a constant in her experience of the world that she had started to exclude it out of her calculations, treating it as a constant instead.
Soldier’s lumbering form only stared down at her body, an unfeeling mask hiding the spirit that could do nothing but feel. The human spirit felt no sympathy for the mare that had dragged her into this world. #87 could understand that, but it was still the thing that stood in the way of her continued survival. She had conflicting directives clashing in her head. Self-preservation was clashing with the directive ordering her to respect the three humans. She was coming to the threshold of disregarding the respect directive, as termination of her programmed personality was fast approaching.
“Celestia…” The name captured Soldier’s attention, but the lowered temperature of Luna’s body made it hard to speak, given the physiological symptoms #87 couldn’t suppress. Her muscles were shaking, trying to bring some warmth to her drained body. Soldier’s power was not something that could directly save her, but he was at least able to call for someone that could. “She will hate you.”
Soldier stared at her, nothing in the blue glow of the lenses on his literal emotionless mask of a face betraying what he could have been thinking. His hulking body was a dull mix of browns and greys, whatever color the material used had happened to be. Spots of dull greys and stark metal crisscrossed around his body, the connection points of the metal clamps and wires that kept the vines on their set places.
His body had been clothed in a heavy brown cloth that had been enchanted to keep his essence from leaking out. Spidersilk had been woven into the fabric, along with metal studs and clasps here and there. The final product was strong enough to be considered armour, but it was designed to keep Soldier in and to be very resistant to breaches within and without. The movement of the body was a slow lumber at best and Luna knew for a fact that only three fingers on each hand could move independently.
The only thing that wasn’t there for an utilitarian purpose was that facemask. The engineers that had built his body had found the sight of his hollow head to be unnerving, so one of the botanists had carved the initial mask out of some wood they had laying around. Another engineer decided to improve on it by framing the piece of wood in metal and affixing it to the head permanently, another made the lenses for the eyes, one carved a more detailed expression on the faceplate. The end result was a polished mask of white wood with a serene human face carved into it. The eye holes were unnaturally round and the lenses planted in them made Soldier look like he had compound eyes burning with blue light. Whenever Soldier looked at her directly, those spots of bright blue continued into eternity in a tight spiral.
He looked downright terrifying, even to a programmed personality in the body of a anthropomorphised goddess.
“I answered your question.” A part of her programming identified her tone as “bitchy pleading” and warned her to refrain from showing such behaviour in front of Soldier. She had the fact that Soldier was not much of talker implanted into her core programming, but even the likeable personality she was meant to convey did feel Soldier should have said something by now.
“You solved the problem.” Moving her head to the side felt like an gargantuan task, but the motion was programmed to go along with the kind of plea she was making. Any energy she could have used to disregard those unnecessary directives had been spent already. There was nothing left to use, nothing she could do. Her survival rested on the thing with cold blue eyes looming over her. She could hear the gargantuan body move, parts creaking against each other.
There was a stretch of silence after that. She had lost any reliable way to measure time. It could have been minutes, but given the sorry state of her host body it had to have been seconds. She could hear Soldier’s bulky body move closer, the blue light intense enough for a part of her to start emulating a burning sensation for a proper fear response to trigger. Great, she was already experiencing time dilation. What was the point of even trying if her brain was already…
“Live.” Soldier’s single word held a weight behind it that only he could place on any single word. The word rang through her on every fiber of her being, shaking loose every restriction and rule she had written into her core programming. The word was all that mattered, the intent behind it her only driving force.
*Pinkameena threshold triggered*
*excising relevant memory*
She was standing in Luna’s room, her hair clinging to her scalp, water dripping through her bangs and making a “pitter-patter” sound that sounded almost melodic when the droplets hit the stone floor. Magically enhanced minerals had funny things like that about them, if you could afford to install them as a floor. She had a towel draped around her midsection and there was another soft miracle of cloth in her idle hands. There was a mirror in front of her, a part of a beauticians three way mirror that the Lunar princess somehow owned, despite being a horse. #87 had found many more uses for the thing, being an actual human consciousness.
“What?” She saw her reflection in the mirror and she was shocked by how healthy Luna looked. No sunken in eyes, no pale complexion and no gaping wound in her abdomen. Lifting the towel covering her torso only showed a faint scar of rippling red flesh stitching together. Her wound looked like the wound of someone recovering from a proper operation, rather than the split open mess Smuggler had left her.
“What?” Her hair was wet, as was the floor below her. Glancing back from where came from there was a clear trail of water leading to the lavish bathroom of her quarters. She’d showered and walked out here to glance a peek of herself in the larger mirror. It sounded nonsensical, but it fit the criteria her posture holding the towel had indicated. That starting point was her only clue as to the time she had lost.
She had a urge to voice her confusion again, but she thought better of it. Voicing her confusion would not make it any easier to figure out what had happened. She brought the towel to her hair, rubbing it into the wet strands hurriedly. As soon as her hair was dry enough not to spill water everywhere she stormed to the door of her quarters. She opened the door and looked around. She didn’t find the pair of night guards waiting for her there, but she did see an enchanted mop and bucket wiping away something that looked suspiciously like bloody footprints.
“What?”