[Blazing's Entry]
Out like a candle. Everything is gone.
[End Entry]
I mirror the Corrupted mare's circling around while getting a grip on my returning divine power. My whole body must be under the impression that this is a situation where I either give it my all or my road ends. I wouldn't die, no, but there would be no 'me' to die anymore.
As seconds pass, I gather all the information I can about her. Perfect build, strong, lean, powerful, and yet sleek and beautiful. It's as if there was a combination of Hunter speed, Protector strength, and Breeder seduction characteristics with the Protector ones being prevalent.
Alright, get it together! Corrupted don't use magic or divine power, so my special talent is next to useless. However, my wounds have either healed completely or my rising divinity has covered them for the time being. I need to be careful, she must be faster, stronger, and will regenerate, but I might be sturdier, maybe out of her realm of possibility to damage if I'm even barely close to how I used to be.
The Corrupted weak spot, if I use the term loosely, is their head.
A thin spike of black ice erupts from the ground underneath her about to impale her skull. My left foreleg is suddenly dragged to the side along with me. The flaming glove around the leg blazes, burning the tentacle coming from the ground, and I roll to the side before getting back up.
She's watching me, amused smile on her muzzle, and drags her long tongue over the surface of my summoned icicle that didn't even touch her. Looks like we both had the same opening idea. Good to know this Corrupted doesn't need to spawn things from her body, but can do it in the vicinity as well. I gasp as her claws wrap around the icy spike, and crush it. Her foreleg claws turn to hooves, and blades disappear from her tail, leaving only a thick, prehensile whip.
So she wants to play first? Well then... I don't mind others underestimating me. I drop my saddlebags and crack my neck.
She pounces, clearing the entire distance in a fraction of a second. I'm ready, and swat her away with my wing growing in size with my flames. As she's in the air, I summon shards of black ice, the devastating power of Despair, line up the shot with my foreleg, and shoot.
They cut clean chunks out of her armor and body. Her black blood splatters everywhere around as she spins in the air under the continuous barrage, and drops on the ground. Instantly, she jumps on all fours, changeling-like holes left behind by my projectiles closing as she moves.
She melts, draining into the ground.
"Wha-?" I open my mouth.
World blurs, my legs leave the ground, and I find myself bouncing off a nearby tree. I shake my head, getting up just to see the image of the grinning Corrupted swinging her tail wildly, standing where I was a second ago.
Okay, the melting thing is a teleportation. We're learning as we go.
She could be a Corruptor. Desert Shade couldn't tell me much about them, but Hammerhoof called them 'liquid bastards', and this one's definitely iffy.
As I shake my head again and blink, she's right in front of me when my eyes open again. The 'thud' of her head hitting an icy wall I summon instinctively would be almost comical, if the thing that followed wasn't a 'crack'. I jump backwards to create a little distance, but nothing comes.
I hear a deep intake of breath.
Her hoof shatters the wall, scattering shards everywhere. In the shower of dissipating ice, she rushes straight at me. This time, however, I am ready. She can't change direction mid-pounce, and has nowhere to dodge when faced with the power of Hope, a ball of pink and gold fire coming straight at her.
Vapors and black droplets are the only remains of the Corrupted. I quickly leave the area in case I'm being decieved, but return back safely on the road.
"Phew," I raise my leg to wipe off sweat dripping from my forehead.
My leg stubbornly refuses to move, just like the other three.
Long black tendrils are binding each leg completely, and an open muzzle full of sharp teeth appears from the soil liquifying under me. Tentacles on my forelegs pull forwards, and those on my hind ones backwards before I recover and burn them off. She's already underneath me, though, and kicks my stomach so hard my eyes cross despite my divine protection.
My power might be protecting me from real damage, but I sure as hay feel the pain.
After a pirouette Canterlot ballet society would consider a five-star affair, I land on my back. Coughing as breath is knocked out of me, I feel warm, thick, and firm hips straddle my lower extremities. She's sitting on me, wild grin never leaving her face. Okay, it temporarily did leave her face when I melted the entire thing off, but that was in the past several long seconds gone.
"Hello," I give her a manic grin, hoping to earn myself a second of confusion to think.
Unfortunately, all I get are splatters of her black saliva over my chest which seep in, leaving distracting warmth in their wake. What is worse, she drags her hips lower over... my bits, leaving a sticky trail of hot enough to melt steel beams. Her wide hips... tongue long enough to savage my throat... teats and long nipples pressed against my belly... tentacles that can reach anywhere and grow to any size...
"Urgh!" I try to focus against the taint taking hold.
To be her alicorn... to serve her... to belong to her...
"STOP!" my scream is accompanied by a hail of shards from the ground.
She literally blurs, moving faster than my eyes can catch and dodging each and every one. I know what she can do, but she learned fast as well.
More ground tentacles bind my legs and spread me wide for her to take. She opens her mouth, ignoring my struggling, and drags her thick tongue across my barrel and neck, leaving a black trail that electrifies my body and makes my hair stand on edge. I can't hold much longer.
Panicking, I lose precise control over my power, but the strength of my desperate call incinerates the tentacles binding me again, and my hoof covered in a living inferno strikes her face.
The grip of her thighs doesn't let up in the slightest despite her missing all the flesh on one side of her head. I see cracked, charred bones rejoin, flesh, skin, and scales recover in front of my eyes. She touches her muzzle, raising an eyebrow...
... and melts all over me.
No, not metaphorically, nice and sexy-like. Her entire body turns to black goo that completely covers me, seeking holes, ears, mouth, nose, other...
I gasp for breath, but find nothing more than sticky warmth filling my lungs.
"Be mine," I hear her sweet, seductive voice dripping like honey and smelling like a mare in heat, "My own alicorn. Imagine what I could make of you..."
"I am yours. Your life is my life and your end is my end. I promise I will stand by your side in anything you choose to do. You are more important to me than the princesses, the Empire, or my own goals. I will protect you from all harm in any way I can and I will fulfill your every wish. No god, no mortal ruler, and no danger will stop me. This is a promise I make right here and now never to be broken. Will you give my life meaning and accept?" I hear Crom's promise he gave me in the Griffon Foreign Legion fortress. A memory I have forgotten until now...
...a memory that reassures me that Cromach, my Cromach can never be behind the hunt on me.
N-e-v-e-r.
Fire burns through my veins. Not her burning arousal all around me, but flames, agony, rage, pure hatred and need for destruction. After all I lost, I have ONE LAST THING TO DO AND ONE FINAL DUTY TO FULFILL! No damn dripping whorse is going to stop me from finding Crom and making sense of all this.
I wake up in a circle of sparks and ash scattered everywhere, forcing myself to get back on all fours.
My coat is back to bronze, no black trails left after the cleansing flames. The half-charred, still smoldering body of the Corrupted is groaning at the edge of what must have been an eruption of flames.
A pulse of power shakes the ground. I don't see anything, but with the Breeder and her pack before I could 'see' a transfer of energy using my tracing spell after Des gave them the berries. I use my emergency vision...
...and freeze.
Like a spider web of white lines centered on the Corrupted, I now see the enormous amounts of raw energy flowing towards her from... everywhere. Fighting her is like fighting the land itself. Life, pure life-giving resource from all around is being funneled into her, and when I stop my vision magic and look up...
...she's standing there, frowning but giving me an intense, appraising stare.
"That was even better than I thought. Care for one more dance?" she bares her fangs.
Two things - at least I wiped that smug grin off her muzzle, and she's not in my head anymore.
I summon a flying blade of fire as she jumps at me again, shear off half of her body, a wound that recovers just as the blade passes, and...
...everything goes dark.
I feel the flames die inside me, and my blindness returns.
I've just used up everything I had. The power of Hope, the power of Despair, my meager martial arts skills, my ability to predict enemy movement, and it still wasn't enough... as if I was trying to kick a continent into submission.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" the pain of all my wounds returns at once.
I shake as hit the ground, not feeling my legs anymore in the maelstrom of agony. I have enough control to bring back my fake vision, and all that gives me is the Corrupted once again sitting on me, the heat from her crotch straddling me spreading from the point of soft and wet contact throughout my entire being.
"Help!" I scream, realizing that up until now no Separated came to help me against the Corrupted, "HELP ME!"
On cue, through the hammering of my heart, I hear galloping hoofsteps. Five Separated, two Protectors and three Hunters stop by, and...
...turn their tails and leave as fast as they came.
I'm boned... metaphorically, and soon quite literally.
Gasping for breath as I try to subdue my pain, I feel her lips seal around mine, and gulp down a hefty serving of her thick saliva.
There's nothing I can do anymore. My body doesn't listen to me. It's getting cloudy in the old hollow coconut, and waves of desire to rut the mare here and now are beating against the remains of my will.
But... at least it doesn't hurt anymore. Here, at the end of my road... nothing hurts anymore.
Void was right when he once said I could take his place one day. Death is the final Hope for those with nothing left but pain.
Void's a really smart guy.
I close my eyes, and shut the tracing spell down. I'm not sure whether the tongues licking me all over are real or just the construct of my mind giving in to her corrupting influence, but I ease into it.
My body failed, but my final thought will not belong to you.
Emerald eyes, pure, white coat and feathers, strong embrace, and the warmest smile I've ever seen on the face of somepony looking at me.
Breathing out, I blink away tears of longing...
...and my eyes go wide.
I see normally.
My vision is back.
Screw the mare still sitting on me -again, not literally- my eyesight is back!
"Wh-wha-?" I shake my head, only to earn her amused smile at my fruitless thrashing against her nethers. She must be enjoying the stimulation.
Alright, quick recap. What now?
Her hooves turn to claws again which she runs through her dark but silvery mane dripping with sweat. Now I can see her scales are black, but with the undertone of dark purple which I considered before just a reflection of my fire.
"Phew, still got it," she whistles, "Not even Celestia was this much of a workout. You sure you don't want to stay with me?" she leans towards me and licks my nose, making sparks light up in my groin, "I can feel how much you're enjoying it."
What? How? What's going on?
I raise my foreleg to push her off, and stop. There are splatters and strands of black all over my bronze coat. I've been tainted, and the pressure and buzzing in my head must be her presence. It's different from before when she just shoved herself inside me. This time she's outside, if it makes any sense. I know she's there, I would know even if she wasn't sitting on me and if my eyes were closed. I can sense her, but she's not inside me and in control.
"Can you, please, get off?"
"I'd love to, my tainted alicorn," she snorts, "but isn't that what you've been resisting all this time?"
And she has a terrible sense of humor. I think she's starting to grow on me.
"Ummm, please?" I try again because she's still sitting atop me, dripping the liquid corruption from her loins all over mine.
"Few things first," her voice turns serious for the first time, "You are a threat. Where are you heading?"
"Manehattan."
Her claws grow longer and sharper.
"A bit too much south to go to Manehattan. That way is Ponyville. Got lost?"
I get the feeling that my answer was a very wrong one, and that the more she thinks I'm lying, the more the threat of becoming her pet returns.
"I-I need to visit Ponyville first. I'm looking for a village called Pine Hills, or at least the place where it used to be."
She leans backwards, completely taken aback.
"Whatever for?"
"I... it's personal. Sorry, miss," I avert my gaze.
"Pine Hills is a place of insanity and death, alicorn."
Well, that doesn't bode well for me. I've already decided, though. That way I won't harbor any crazy hope about Guiding.
"I still have to go."
"Your power... your power could restore a tainted pony into his original form, right?" she asks, "It worked for you one time."
"I don't know. It seemed to hurt you Corrupted, and the one time I could try it out safely it just burned away a little bit of taint that came back instantly. It's different than when I used it on myself."
"How would you like a little deal?"
"A deal?"
"Yes," she nods, "You are dangerous to us, but I... think I can trust you on this. How about I give you a little advice for your trip, and you agree to never use your cleansing power against my kind?"
From the way I'm feeling right now, I DON'T have any power anymore, and neither it feels as if it could ever return. It's as if I spent everything that was left over from my previous life.
"I need to defend myself if I'm attacked," I just answer.
"Of course, just don't go around spreading any ideas about 'rescuing' tainted ponies or returning equinity to those who embraced... me."
"Miss, whoever you are, I have no desire to butt into anypony's business but my own. I'm going to Pine Hills, and if it's as bad as you say it is there, I might not be coming back. If I survive, I just want to get to Manehattan to find a... friend. I am no hero. I have no desire to become the big savior of ponykind or anything. Yes, if I'm ever in position where I can defend ponies from a threat, I will, but I don't intend to go around 'curing' corruption or anything. Is that enough of an answer to you?"
"If you're ever in a position to defend ponies from a threat, you will. Heh," she stands up, allowing me to move again and witness the complete extent of my clearly visible taint, "I'm glad that if that happens we'll be on the same side."
"I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about," I check myself to see that my wounds have fully healed, leaving black stains of stickier and slightly oily tainted coat.
"Good," she grins, "Now to uphold my end of the bargain. In Ponyville, ask for Twilight's son Mana Burn. He was in Pine Hills once. He's a Hex Guard turned into a very powerful Corrupted, and he barely got out alive. Maybe he can dissuade you from going there, and instead persuade you to stay in Ponyville with us. Trust me, I can make you love your new life."
"If I ever find myself completely lost, I'll think about that offer. Mana Burn you said?"
"Yep."
"You know... I'm starting to think I'm getting really lucky with you Corrupted."
"We're not brainless animals. Don't trust that Canterlot unicorn propaganda. Oh, one final thing," her smile stays, but her eyes make sure I know they aren't as forgiving, "If you break your word, I will find you. And trust me, I will know."
I have no intention of doing that, lady. The threat was really unsettling, and unnecessary.
All I can do is just nod and gulp as my throat suddenly feels desert-grade parched.
Without as much as a nod of approval, she melts into the ground. A quick tracing spell shows me her spark of energy travelling north at insane speed. Several breaths later she's gone along with her mental pressure in my head. There's still slight buzzing coming from somewhere, but that might be a fly that flew in through my ear and got lost in the vast emptiness of my skull.
I shrug.
Alive, healthy, pretty heavily corrupted. Lost all my previous divine power, and this time it feels final.
Two out of four isn't that bad.
All in all, a pretty good outcome. None of my things aside from my robe got damaged, and I think I can hide my wings underneath the saddlebags, sort of. If I'm careful, no pony will notice I'm an alicorn, and Corrupted know and don't give a damn apparently.
Hmm, that mare was definitely no normal Protector... or whatever. I think she... healed me for giving her a good workout or something. Although if I couldn't handle myself when she first got inside me she would have transformed me completely. Perhaps she really was a Corruptor and the physical characteristics were just misleading?
Shut up, head! I know it took me a while. In my defense, I was being either dryhumped or dry-slammed-into-the-ground repeatedly.
Oh well...
...ONWARD!