The bloodied lord crawled out of the ashes. He growled, hissed, uttered every syllable of the darkest curses he could imagine, and yet he couldn’t get up. The pain he could withstand, but the fact that still plagued him—how he couldn’t get back up—hurt the most.
It could have been his shattered foreleg and how it dangled uselessly below him. It could have been the nausea he felt as he pressed his palms into the cement, the thought of torn tendons, broken bones, and a wounded mind and spirit pushing him back down. The unnatural weight atop his head didn’t help, the loss of a certain horn pulsating constant migraines in his forehead.
As if his skull wasn’t nearly split open enough, a pestering thought pounded against him again and again. A feeling, actually. All it really took was a wavering glance, his eyes adjusting to the returning light of the afternoon sky. The lord turned his eyes skyward. The darkness—the evil of Tartarus—was beginning to fade, yet the heavy clouds still remained, signaling the approaching storm.
But before the sun should fade behind the clouds, a golden ray of light appeared above his eyes, flowing, flapping in the wind in a mystical, unknown manner. The gold was a cape—heroic in its sense—and it belonged to the figure slowly descending out of the vanishing sunlight and breaking through the clouds.
The figure was much like the lord had seen before. Bipedal, tall, powerful in both size and determination. His skin was red—as was the lord’s—but with silver clothing and plating. However, mysterious in all that he was, even with the golden gem shimmering in his forehead, the lord was transfixed and caught by the figure’s eyes.
He saw the dignity in them, the pain. An understanding.
Something Tirek would have never expected when he asked, “Was it all worth it?”
Tirek remained silent, his heavy breaths being his only response for the time being. The Vision looked to him pitifully, at his broken stature, his bleeding wounds.
He said, “Even now with the destruction of your forces, the world bleeds. It cries out in unimaginable pain. For the loss of so many lives, the desolation of so many cities, all that remains…is you. Tartarus’ finest warrior. Here you are struggling to remain, even after all that has been done to you…all that you have done to others. So I must ask again…with this world torn and your armies skewered across the land, air, and sea…”
The Vision landed softly onto the street below, his feet grazing pebbles. He took a step forward, then another, then stopped and stared.
“…Was it all worth it?”
Tirek leaned on his forearm. Blood leaked from his forehead and blinded his eyesight. With a few blinks, spitting in the road in front of him, he growled, “Just get it over with.”
Vision looked down. “Yes, I suppose that is the only way,” he whispered. “You are against life after all, and I am for it. So you must fall.” Tirek looked away, blood dripping from his twitching lips. Vision tilted his head, muttering just loud enough to say, “But perhaps it doesn’t have to end in your destruction…”
Tirek slowly, very slowly, turned back to him. The madness in his eyes began to cool, a thin trail of blood dripping from his mouth into the street. Vision’s irises expanded, the gem glowing and showing Vision all he needed to see in the broken lord before him.
“If you surrender the magic you have stolen, I can personally assure that you will not die this day,” Vision explained soundly. His cape flowed behind him from the cool winds. “But…you will be held guilty for your crimes against this world…and embrace the punishment you so rightly deserve.”
Tirek chuckled, coughed pools of blood, then chuckled some more. “And why should I?” he asked through a mess of slurs and repulsive gurgles. The Vision stood in silence, watched as Tirek lowered his gaze then brought it back to him.
“These…ponies are undeserving of this magic, this power that was granted to them. You have seen what they are capable of, I’m sure of it.” Vision only watched, listened as Tirek continued. “They locked away so many lives to be punished, tormented for generations while they lived in peace, harmony…and the sickness they call ‘friendship’. They’re no better than the monsters that burned this city.”
Tirek saw the Vision turn away, his gaze slowly observing the battlefield. He growled, blood painted across his face, making him look like a feral warrior. “They’re no better than me.”
In continuous, unnerving silence between the two, Vision stared out into the gray, dull landscape ahead of him. Buildings lied in ash and ruin, smoke towers in the distance with flames accompanying them, but slowly retreating back. Human machines, helicopters, appeared in the distance, their blades tearing through the silence.
Heavy clouds, daring thunder, and hardly any sunlight. Still a brighter day than once was.
“No species is perfect,” Vision whispered. Tirek coughed, but remained silent otherwise. “They all make mistakes…including you. What I have seen is a creature infected with pain and misery, a chance at redemption for the land he believes is his…a chance to prove himself once again.”
He slowly turned back. Tirek caught Vision’s gaze with his own, silence building between the two. A silence that could never last, especially when he said, “Perhaps to prove something…to someone else.”
He knew what he meant. Every word of it. Despite this, Tirek hissed in agony and shook the feeling away, instead choosing to cover his feelings with hate and disgust. A kind he felt only for the traitorous acts of one he once called his family.
“If I give up this magic that I deserve…” Tirek began, crumbling under the weight of the pain, fighting back with the resilience and the hate he felt in his heart, “…these ponies…they’ll only embark on their own destruction.”
He almost smiled at the look on the android’s face.
“Come now…you know it to be true. After all…no species is perfect.”
Vision shook his head, returning to Tirek’s previous statement. “Not today they won’t.”
Any hope for some kind of smile to grace Tirek’s features faded the moment Vision said those words. Instead, he replaced them with anger, pain, the kind that flooded his veins and nerves. He spat out undecipherable curses, yelling, “And I suppose you think I’m just going to hand over my magic to those weak-minded equines?!”
He shook his head once more.
“I don’t,” muttered Vision.
He pressed his fists into the earth, pushing himself up off the gravel. His mouth fell open to suck whatever form of magic the android held within the glowing gem in his forehead. It was all Tirek could manage before his sight was enwrapped within its golden light.
That very same gem lit up like the sun, blinding Tirek in its majesty and mystic arts. It was an unknown power to the centaur, an alien power, a kind he had wished he had never felt and prayed would never feel again. As his final moments dwindled to nothing, the strength that fueled him fading from his heart and soul, Tirek fell and fell.
He fell back into the dark, the overcoming stillness he had become accustomed to for years. He fell back into his cell surrounded in black, his weak limbs now healed still failing to keep him standing. In a final act of grievance and horror, Tirek cried out into the pits of fire and torment beyond imagination.
Yet this time it was quiet. This time he was alone.
The last and only prisoner in a damned prison.