Windows to the Soul
Chapter 8: Windows to the Soul
When the knocking on my door came half an hour later, I was still tucking my revolver and shotgun on top of the wardrobe, with their hand grips still within my reach, but certainly beyond that of any more potential overinquisitive, troublesome fillies.
I turned towards the guest room's door to answer it, once again cursing the complete lack of lockable drawers I had discovered inside here in very consternating hindsight. If I hadn't been so complacent, if I hadn’t just assumed that ponies wouldn’t even be able to use guns thanks to their lack of fingers, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t know. Maybe Applebloom might’ve found some other way, maybe Mac might still be okay, but either way, thanks to the guns that had belonged to me, both of them had been hurt.
Screw it, I was probably already dead anyway - Applejack was gonna kill me when she got back, that was for sure.
In the wake of the accident, I'd immediately dashed towards my room, and found a pale, ashen-faced Applebloom staring at the fist-sized hole the revolver shot had punched in the wall. The filly responded only after we had spent several seconds shouting at her, and Applejack had to holler at the top of her lungs right in her sister’s ear before Applebloom finally turned to us and yelled, "WHAT? SPEAK UP, AH CAN'T HEAR YA!"
Deciding that we'd start tossing the blame around later and focus on treating the injured first, we'd bundled the little kid together with her brother before Applejack had seen them off to Ponyville Hospital - Mac, thank his lucky stars, had sustained nothing more than a huge bruise across his entire back when the shed's thin wooden ceiling had collapsed in on him, and the big lug was still able to walk, albeit with an extreme limp.
Applejack had said it was probably nothing more than a sprain, but no sense taking chances - she'd taken both her siblings on a cart straight to Ponyville, leaving me on the farm to run the investigative board.
I ran aftermath cleanup, and I didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what Applebloom had done. Cursing my stupidity, I’d started looking all over the room for any lockable cabinets, and found to my consternation that there were absolutely no secure drawers whatsoever. Even if I hadn’t gotten careless and tried to make sure my guns were properly secured while I wasn’t around, there was no guarantee Applebloom wouldn’t have gotten her hooves on them anyway.
Another series of knocks on the door abruptly broke me out of my reverie. I strode over to the door, opening it, and when Applejack looked up at me with a haggard, strained expression, I stood there and braced myself for the worst.
"How is he?" I asked, and when the farmpony cracked a weary smile, I felt the intangible knot of tension between my shoulders disappear - the man lives to fight another day.
"He'll be fine," She drawled tiredly, stepping inside the room. “Doc said it’s a sprain, but nothin’ life-threatenin’. Just a couple weeks of bed rest, and he’ll be fitter than a minotaur on a protein binge. Applebloom had a burst eardrum, but the doc’s healing magic should fix it up quickly enough - just a couple days to make sure that she’s all right, and she’ll be back home.”
I let out a sigh of relief, sinking back into the dressing table’s chair. “Well, that’s good to hear. I was afraid the big guy was seriously hurt or something… Thank God he’s all right.”
“It'll take more than just that ta put mah brother down for the count." Applejack grinned with a hint of pride in her voice, but the smile rapidly faded away as she caught sight of the guns I’d tucked away on top of the cupboard, and she directed a severe look at me. “But now that we’ve got that outta the way, there’s another thing we need ta talk about.”
I hid my wince behind a hand, and took in a breath to brace myself. “Okay, Applejack, I’m really sorry about what happened, but-”
“Don’t ya feed me those lines now, Joe.” Applejack cut me off firmly, and while there wasn’t any overt anger in her voice, there was a definite hardness to it that made it plain that she wasn’t in a joking mood right now. “Ah trusted ya, but while ah really am thankful ya really aren’t out ta hurt mah family, fact remains that somethin’ happened here thanks to what you brought with ya. Ah don’t know if ya had anythin’ ta do with it, so ah’ll give ya a chance: what’d ya find out while ah was away?”
“There’s not a single lockable cabinet in here, AJ,” I said immediately, pointing at the wardrobe that my guns were now stacked on top of. “Even if I’d tried to keep the guns safe by stacking them on top of the wardrobe, there’s no guarantee Applebloom wouldn’t have tried to knock the guns off of them. I tried to tell her it was dangerous and I didn’t want her fiddling around with them, but I guess she just didn’t listen.”
Applejack’s hard gaze didn’t waver even in the slightest, but the slight pursing of her lips told me she was thinking about it. Several tense seconds later she nodded, and I resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief right in front of her. “All right, so I guess this ain’t yer fault. Ah’m gonna be havin’ a stern talk with mah sis after this, but… be careful with that stuff of yours, all right? Ah really don’t want somethin’ like this happenin’ again.”
“You have my word, Applejack.” I bowed my head solemnly, already promising myself that nothing like this would ever happen again. Not only would it jeopardize the trust I’d been painstakingly building with them, but someone just got hurt, damnit! I should’ve known better than to attempt to sate Applebloom’s curiosity - I should’ve known that she would have tried something like this.
“That ain’t the only thing we gotta be worryin’ about, though.” Applejack’s voice shook me out of my self-recriminations, and I stared at her in disbelief.
“Wait, there’s more?” I asked incredulously. The farmpony nodded, and I threw my hands up in exasperation, biting back a curse. “Great, can this day get any worse?”
“Don’t jinx it, Joe,” Applejack said warningly, and the inexplicable sensation that something was about to go very wrong intensified as I saw her cast a nervous glance out the window. “Some of the townsfolk got pretty curious on how Mac got himself injured like that; ‘farm accident’ don’t exactly cover it. Twi’s been tryin’ ta ease yer introduction to the town best she can, but rumors have been flyin’ around faster than we can manage.”
“What kind of rumors?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer, but when Applejack pursed her lips, I already had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
“Not the entirely pleasant kind,” She answered after a moment, glancing nervously out the window again as she bit her lip. “It ain’t good, Joe. They wanted ta see fer themselves what’s been the cause of all the racket at our farm that got Mac injured like this.”
I blinked, thought about the implications of that statement for a moment, and compressed my sentiments into two words. “Well, shit.”
“Ah hear ya,” She agreed wearily, sighing. “These rumors have been flyin’ around fer days now. Most of the townsfolk were just curious, but after Mac got injured, some of ‘em got scared. They won’t be easy to wave off when they’re like that.”
“Well, what if we just-” Before I could get any further, I got cut off mid-sentence by a knock on the door. Applejack opened it to let Twilight poke her head in, and that was when I realized that the librarian looked frazzled out of her mind.
“Sorry to interrupt, Applejack,” The unicorn mare rushed out breathlessly, her eyes wild as she looked right at Applejack, giving me all but the most sidelong of glances. “But I really need your help out there.”
“Ah, shoot.” Applejack spat, shaking her head, and she turned to me. “Okay, just stay here and don’t make any noise, all right Joe? Ah’ll handle this.”
“Wait, handle wha-” Before I could even finish my sentence, the two mares rushed out, slamming the door behind them and leaving me alone inside the room with several unanswered questions.
What the hell was going on out there? What was it that had Twilight looking so frazzled and Applejack so on edge? The crowd couldn’t possibly be here right now, could it? It had only been half an hour since Mac got injured!
Damnit, I couldn’t just sit here and wait it out - the tension was killing me. I had to find out what was going on out there.
It couldn’t hurt to be prepared, though - belting on the holster for my .44, I slid the heavy handgun into its sheath and stepped out of my room, hand on the pistol’s handle just in case. Outside, I could hear hints of a rather large commotion going on, and despite my common sense screaming at me to just leave well enough alone and go back inside the room, I didn’t like not knowing what was going on any less.
From beyond the door I could already hear Applejack’s voice calling out loud and powerfully to someone, but what she was saying was still muffled enough that I couldn’t make it out entirely. Curiosity won out in the end, and I stepped forward to the ajar main door leading to the porch, pushing it open as I stepped out into the light.
“Ah’m tellin’ ya, there’s nothin’ ta worry about! Big Mac’s injury was an accident-”
“Hey, AJ, what the hell is going on-”
I froze where I stood, screeching to a halt mid-sentence as I stared at the massive crowd of ponies, which seemed like the entire freaking population of Ponyville, that stood clustered at the gates to Sweet Apple Acres.
They stared back.
Applejack and Twilight, who were standing in front of them in an obvious attempt to wave the crowd off, whirled around to face me at the same time, and the farmpony’s jaw dropped open in an expression that plainly screamed ‘What the fuck are you doing!?’
Aw, piss.
“Oh my stars, it’s a human!” I heard a mare’s voice cry out, and I immediately recognized the source of the cry - a certain mint-green unicorn, no surprise there, was hopping up and down excitedly in the midst of the crowd in her attempts to get a clearer look, and the crowd’s murmurs were rapidly intensifying as Lyra’s words began to sink in.
Without a word, I immediately spun on my heel, walked back inside the house, slammed the door closed, and immediately pressed my back against it, barely even breathing.
Outside, I could hear the crowd’s clamoring begin to grow in volume, and Applejack’s voice was steadily raising itself in a futile attempt to match them. One mare could hardly out-shout an entire town all by herself, and I sure as hell couldn’t step out there myself either; I wasn’t prepared to face off with an angry, frightened mob!
“You know, hiding away here isn’t going to solve anything.” Celestia said from next to me.
“Gyah!” I whirled around in a shock, my arms instinctively coming up into a ready stance and bracing myself for a fight before I even realized what I was doing. “When the hell did you come in!?”
In response, the statuesque, majestic alicorn before me that had certainly not been in the living room a few seconds ago let out a bemused chuckle, and she fixed me with a calm but reassuring look. “I have always been here, watching, young one. My name is Princess Celestia, ruler and steward of this land, and you have nothing to fear from me, young Joseph Ryan; I'm here to help.”
Of course. What were the odds that Twilight didn't spill the beans on my arrival to her mentor? Even if she hadn't, what were the odds that a goddess of the sun wouldn't have noticed my arrival anyway?
"Well, I don't suppose you could get the crowd outside to go away first?" I groaned tiredly as I fought the urge to just lean against the door and sink down on my ass, my heart still beating wildly in my chest - this was way too much stress to go through in the span of just half an hour. “I’m not exactly ready to face a mob right now.”
“Hmm… I’ll see what I can do.” Celestia simply gave me an enigmatic smile, and she stepped past me to push open the door, gesturing for me to follow her outside. The effect was immediate - the moment the princess stepped out into the open, the crowd outside fell silent so abruptly, I almost got auditory whiplash.
Twilight and AJ blinked in surprise at how suddenly the crowd had gone quiet, but when they followed their gaze to us, their expressions were priceless. AJ’s jaw just dropped open, followed immediately by the rest of her body as she knelt along with the rest of the crowd in deference to their ruler. Twilight’s eyes practically bugged out, and her body somehow seemed to go through the motions of bowing and galloping towards us simultaneously, finally deciding to go with a short bow before rushing to her mentor’s side.
“Princess Celestia!” She cried out, her mane already visibly fraying at the edges. “Thank the stars you’re here! I’m so sorry about the mess we made, I didn’t think you’d get here so soo-”
“It’s all right, Twilight.” Celestia simply reassured her student with a bemused smile. “Nopony was hurt, and I can let slide a little bit of unruliness.”
Turning to face her still-kneeling subjects, Celestia gestured for them to get up. “Rise, my little ponies. Everything is fine,” The solar princess spoke out in a voice that didn’t sound any louder than the one she had been using indoors, but somehow managed to carry itself across the crowd all the same - the effect was astounding. “You have nothing to fear from this human - yes, young Lyra was correct in her deduction.”
The mint-green unicorn in question seemed gobsmacked that her ruler knew her name personally, never mind the fact that Celestia knew what she had blurted out to the crowd in her excitement - it certainly reinforced her image of being an all-knowing goddess, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been intentional on her part.
“This human's name is Joseph, and he comes from a distant land far beyond our borders. He is still searching for a way home, but in the interest of our kingdom's security, I must ask you all to remain quiet regarding his presence here, as he is quite unlike anything we have encountered before. Equestria is not ready for this news yet. I can assure you all that he is of no danger to those around him, and had no involvement in Big Mac’s injury - you have nothing to fear from him.” The princess addressed her subjects firmly but gently, undoubtedly impressing upon the fact that they didn't have to be afraid, but all the same, the need to keep my presence here a secret had remained.
“Please return to your daily business; I will be negotiating the terms of Joseph’s stay here in Equestria until such a time he can return home.” All at once, the crowd began to disperse. Some were more reluctant than others, casting doubtful looks over their shoulders as they left, but if it was any consolation most of the fear I had previously seen building up had already been assuaged. Celestia's skill and influence must have been considerable in reality if she could sway such a crowd with only a few well-spoken sentences, rather than simply throwing around the weight of her crown.
With that out of the way, once the last of the crowd had disappeared down the road leading back to Ponyville the solar princess then turned to me, and her expression took on a more somber, serious tone. Without even turning to look at Applejack and Twilight, she said to them, "Twilight, Applejack, please make sure that rumors don't run out of control in Ponyville - I need time resolve this matter, and Joseph's presence being made public will only attract more attention that he does not need."
"Wait a sec, then what do I do? What's gonna happen to me?" I blurted out without even thinking, and immediately wished I could just suck those words right back into my mouth. The moment I spoke, the alicorn princess locked her eyes with mine, and I literally felt her intense, piercing gaze bore right into the depths of my soul.
"I need you to come with me immediately to Canterlot, young Joseph," Celestia stated, her tone brooking no argument. "Now that the immediate crisis has passed, I have many questions for you."
---
If there was any doubt to Celestia’s power, they were put to rest when the light faded from around us, and I found myself standing in an opulent, luxuriously decorated room, with all of my belongings lying on the floor around me, perfectly organized. The window outside showed the sun still high in the afternoon sky - barely even a moment had passed since she had teleported us from Sweet Apple Acres.
“This room will be your residence for the foreseeable future, until we have decided what course of action we shall take.” Celestia stated as she stepped forward without even looking at me. Her horn sparked briefly, and I felt the most peculiar tingling sensation prickle over my skin before it rapidly faded. “Leave your belongings here first, and come with me. I will have to ask you to remain silent while we are outside - it would not do for us to attract undue attention.”
Before I could reply, the doors leading outside the room swung open, and she stepped outside into a corridor of white marble. Not wanting to be left behind, I started after her at a brisk walk, but when I stepped out into the corridor proper, I had to practically hold myself back from gawking openly at my surroundings.
There wasn’t a doubt where I was - this was Canterlot castle, the heart of the capital city of Equestria. Opalescent marble and rich, red carpets decorated the walls and floor, and the ceilings were intricately carved with ostentatious designs that would have had Renaissance-era artists and architects green with envy - seriously, the decor here made five-star hotels back on Earth look like two-bit motels.
In all my life, I had never seen such lavish decorations in the flesh. Such things belonged to the realm of fairy tales and fantasy video games, but as I passed by another stained glass window that looked out upon the mountainside city and it's gleaming, elegant spires, it truly hit me.
I was really here.
This was really happening.
I could have easily passed off the past few days as an intensely vivid and realistic hallucination, but faced with the stark reality of the entire world splayed out physically before me, the fact hammered home harder than ever - this was real.
Engrossed as I was in the world around me, I barely even noticed that the halls around us were completely quiet. As I walked through the corridors behind Celestia, I realized that there wasn’t a single other pony in sight.
“Did you… like, clear the entire castle out for this or something? I haven’t seen another pony since we got here.” I asked quietly as we passed by another empty hallway, and Celestia let out a mirthless chuckle.
“Not really - I just have a rather good sense of where ponies are and are not sometimes.” The diarch gave me an enigmatic look as she turned briefly to face me, continuing on walking without even batting an eyelid. “Still, I took the liberty of casting a minor illusion spell on you before we entered the corridors - to any other pony’s eyes, you would simply appear as a nondescript earth pony. It should help keep some attention off your back, at least for a while.”
Staring at Celestia’s back, I found myself getting more and more confused with her every passing second. Her demeanour seemed to shift from whimsically cryptic to frighteningly serious every few moments, and try as I might, I just couldn’t get a read on her.
For a second I thought it was the infamous Trollestia at work, but I immediately discarded the thought - if I assumed Trollestia was at work when Celestia was in fact being utterly serious about the matter at hand... well, let’s just say I didn’t want to find out what happens when you piss off a physical goddess that embodies the sun.
We continued walking in mutual silence for several more minutes, and in that short period of time, not a single other pony crossed our paths. If not for the fact that I could faintly hear conversations being carried out in some of the rooms we passed by, and I saw a pony or two walking through the corridors we didn’t go down, I would’ve thought the entire place had gone all ghost castle on us. Soon enough, we came to an enormous set of double doors where the first ponies I’d seen since coming here stood - two unicorn Royal Guards, dressed to the nines in immaculate golden armor, and just as stoic and unblinking as I remembered them being in the show.
In an impressive and slightly unnerving display of coordination and discipline, the two guards saluted as one, both their horns lighting up simultaneously to pull the doors open. Even as I passed by them, not once did their gaze flicker towards me, and they stared unflinchingly straight ahead as Celestia and I walked into the room beyond.
As we stepped through the doorway, I realized just where we had walked into: Celestia’s throne room, glorious and resplendent in all its magnificence. Lining the walls were familiar stained glass designs that I recognized easily - scenes depicting Nightmare Moon’s return and subsequent redemption at the hands of the Elements of Harmony, Discord’s second imprisonment, and the royal wedding between Shining Armor and Princess Cadence. There was one particular mural that I realized was missing, however - the stained glass window after the scene depicting the royal wedding was still blank.
That meant Sombra hadn’t shown up yet, then - the Crystal Empire had yet to make its appearance. By extension, I guess that also meant that I was most probably in between seasons - this was apparently Equestria as it was in between seasons two and three.
“Well then, now that it’s just the two of us here,” Celestia’s voice echoed throughout the spacious throne room, shaking me out of my reverie before I could get any further down that train of thought. “Perhaps we can begin our discussion. Twilight has told me everything that you told her about yourself - who you are, what you are, and where you come from. But there are still other questions that hasn’t been answered yet - how you came to be here, and why.”
“In my defense, Princess, I already told Twilight everything I know about that,” I replied, perhaps a little too hastily for my liking. “I honestly don’t know how I got here, much less why. As far as I know, I was out on a hiking trip when I fell through a hole. Walked through a tunnel, came out the other side, and bam, there I was in what you call the Everfree forest. I really don’t know anything else aside from that.”
The look that Celestia gave me was skeptical, if the raised eyebrow was any indication, but she didn’t seem disinclined to believe me. Probably giving me the benefit of the doubt, but not totally buying my story at face value at the same time.
That, I guessed, was a rather promising sign at least. I would actually be kind of worried if she’d bought the story wholesale without even batting an eyelid - now that would have been far too easy.
“Well, even if you had no knowledge of how you came to be here, there is still the question of what you will be doing while you are here.” Celestia’s expression didn’t change, and the disconcerting intensity of her earlier gaze began to return. “Forgive me if this may seem… rather draconian of me, but I have to be sure that your intentions are pure if you are to stay with us in the castle for the time being. You understand, after all, that I have to care for my subjects’ safety as well.”
“Oh, it’s no problem, Princess, I totally understand.” I held my hands up noncommittally, simply relieved that she was still being reasonable about it - frankly, I was still waiting for my luck to turn around and for Luna to suddenly appear and condemn me to the dungeons or something. Things seemed to be going a little too quickly and conveniently for me to be comfortable with, and something about the whole thing was just setting off subconscious alarm bells ringing in my head as I waited for the other shoe to drop. “But, uh, how exactly will you make sure that I intend to do no harm?”
The alicorn gave me an unreadable smile, and the pressure of her gaze on me inexplicably grew even further. “There is a certain way that I can… gain the measure of somepony, by gazing into the essence of their very being, to see them as they truly are. It isn’t quite so much as reading their mind, as it is simply looking through a window to have a glimpse of their soul. The method is called a-”
“Soulgaze?” I finished for her, and tried not to grin at her slightly widened eyes - totally called it.
“How did you know it was called that?” Celestia cocked her head quizzically at me, and I shrugged.
“I have some pretty similar stuff back from where I came from - I just didn’t think the name would be the same.” I answered, trying to hide my grin at the sheer irony of it - I’d honestly just thrown out the reference to the Soulgaze from the Dresden Files at random as an inside joke, but I didn’t think I’d actually get it right. I waved a hand at her, trying to wave it off. “Never mind, it was just an inside joke thing. I hope this is a consensual, non-invasive procedure?”
“No need to worry, young Joseph,” Celestia replied, smiling reassuringly. “In order for the soulgaze to be maintained, your mind would have to willingly remain open to mine, and I would not be able to initiate it unless you willingly maintained eye contact with me.” Okay, eye contact? Seriously, the sheer number of coincidental match-ups with the actual Soulgaze I knew of was starting to get very disconcerting. “Now, shall we begin?”
Nothing to lose, I thought to myself. Might as well just go ahead and get this done and over with. With the thought, I shrugged and nodded to her, signifying my readiness as I locked my eyes with hers. “All right, do what you have to, I guess.” Here goes nothing…
In front of me, Celestia nodded as her eyes bored into mine, and the pressure of her gaze became almost impossible to resist. “Very well then. Try to relax, Joseph - this may feel a little strange. Just relax… and embrace eternity.”
Hearing those last two words in that particular order made me anything but relaxed. Embrace eternity!? How the f-
The blackness of Celestia’s orbs rushed forward to encompass me completely, and I found myself falling into the depthless ocean of her eyes, their incomprehensible magnitude crushing me completely from all sides as I found myself blinded by a searing flash of light. An overwhelming sense of vastness overcame me, so inconceivably infinite that it complete defied my imagination - seduced it and utterly defeated it. Vertigo tossed my senses up and about as I lost all sense of up and down, left and right, and all I could feel was the immense, soul-searing heat and pressure of the sun itself all around me. I was a gnat, burning within the very core of a star, and I helplessly flailed for purchase within its crushing depths.
I would have screamed, if not for the fact that I had no vocal chords, or even any skin or flesh to burn and melt off to begin with. All that there was of me was my tiny little soul, stripped bare of its mortal, earthbound shell and exposed to the searing power around me - power that I realized was Celestia.
This was who she was, all that she had ever been and ever would be. There couldn’t have been a more poetic, more symbolic expression of the constant, immutable force that she represented. As comprehension dawned upon me as I beheld her awe-inspiring power, I realized something: Celestia didn’t just control the sun - she was the sun, and she would remain so until she or the sun itself perished in an age still eons in the coming, washed away by the tides of time.
Yet for all of the blinding, scorching heat and light of her soul, there were still marks and stains of imperfections, dark sunspots that blemished the otherwise perfect luminescence of her spirit. Past mistakes that she had made, traumatic events of her past - even as I passed by one of them, images flashed through my head, faster than I could comprehend them, yet each one irreversibly and indelibly imprinted upon my memories, where they would stay starkly and vividly fresh till the day I passed on.
Luna’s first fall to darkness, her transformation into Nightmare Moon as the Nightmare took over her body, the blackness spreading through her body like a vile corruption as Celestia struggled against all odds to save her sister. The two sisters battling each other as Nightmare Moon vied for her rule, mercilessly battering her sister as Celestia held back throughout the entire fight, unwilling to harm her only sibling. The elder alicorn eventually resorting to her final, most desperate option - the Elements of Harmony - and her subsequent anguish and crushing guilt as fully hit her that she had sealed her sister away for a thousand years.
More images flickered by, images of events that I realized hadn’t been part of the show, but recognized nonetheless. Her battles against Sombra with Luna by her side before his imprisonment, the desperate sealing of Discord with the Elements of Harmony in the chaos of Equestria’s early history; every significant, traumatic event of her life that had marked her, I experienced flickers and images of those moments and emotions as though I had lived through them myself. Yet, even though those flickers were nothing more than mere shadows of the memories they represented, I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer vividness of what I was experiencing.
As the flickers of her memories continued, they continued to grow more hazy and indistinct, and I felt the coherence of the stream of her consciousness - and mine - fading as my view of her past continued deeper and deeper. The images became less vivid the earlier I delved, the heat and pressure around my soul easing as I felt the intensity of Celestia’s presence around me slowly dwindle. Just as it was about to fade to nothingness, there was a sudden wrenching sensation, and I found myself back inside the throne room seated on the floor, looking up in awe at Celestia as she stared back at me with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“That… That’s unusual,” She whispered, evidently as surprised as I was overwhelmed by what I had just seen. “Usually, there… isn’t a glimpse back.”
I blinked, uncomprehending as I tried to gather myself back together. Right then I should have been in gibbering hysterics thanks to what I had just borne witness to, but I was determined not to embarrass myself in front of the ruler of an entire nation, and I drew myself back together with an effort of will. “W-wait, what do you mean by that?”
“Normally, the Soulgaze is one-way, from mine to yours.” Celestia explained as her horn sparked, her expression rapidly reasserting itself into a queenly mask of serenity, and I felt a force gently tugging me back onto my feet. “But it appears that you may have gotten a glimpse back into my soul in return as I looked upon yours. This is most unusual…”
“Well, unusual or not, are you satisfied with what you saw?” I tried to redirect the conversation back towards more comprehensible ground as I attempted to calm down my hammering heartbeat - whatever the reason was for the Soulgaze going two ways instead of its usual one way, it was far beyond my understanding, and I didn’t want to know why, much less even begin to broach the topic of what she had seen in me. If the soulgaze she had cast on me really was as in-depth as the one I knew from the Dresden Files was… well, let’s just say I wasn’t ready to take such a deep glimpse inside of myself yet. “I would hate to have unintentionally scarred you or anything…”
Something in her expression shifted, but the celestial diarch quickly covered it up with an amused grin before I could catch any more of it, and she shook her head. “No need to worry, what I saw inside was more than enough to convince me of your innocence. You are more than welcome to stay in Equestria until we have found a way for you to return home, young Joseph Ryan.”
Oookay, I guess that meant she’d deemed that I was harmless thanks to whatever it was she had seen in me through the Soulgaze. I wasn’t going to speculate on what she had seen, but as long as it meant that my ass was out of the fire, I was totally fine with that.
“Now then, since we have established that you aren’t a danger to my little ponies, I believe the next point of discussion is in order,” Celestia continued, turning around to walk towards the throne as she gestured for me to follow her. “I would like to know more about the place that you come from, Joseph - more about your race, about humanity.”
She only knows that I call myself human - how did she know that the word for my species was humanity? My mind whispered its suspicion as she took her seat upon the throne, gesturing for me to join her as another chair flashed into existence next to it, but I cast the paranoid thought aside quickly.
Celestia was a millennia-old goddess; a literal force of nature that had more than likely borne witness to the rise and fall of entire civilizations. She was bound to know a few things that I didn't - did I really want to start suspecting her of something just because of that? The way I figured it from all the fantasy and sci-fi fiction stories I had read and video games I had played, when you got to be several thousand years old, you'd pretty much earned the right to keep a few enigmatic secrets.
Deciding to ignore the fact that she knew something that she wasn't telling me (that much was practically a given, due to her age), I decided to let the revelations come as they did instead of seeking out answers - in fact, it seemed that Celestia was the one seeking them out this time, and it was now my turn to dispense them out.
"All right, then.” I sat down on the chair, and started digging through my brain for answers to whatever questions she might ask. “What do you want to know?"
---
We spent the next half an hour just sitting there, Celestia asking me questions about what mankind was like, what Earth was like back home, what our civilisation was like, and I had absolutely no way of dodging those questions this time - it seemed like mankind was all that she wanted to know about. The more the discussion went on, the more it seemed as though she was looking for something in particular in my answers, and whenever I told her something about what life was like back on Earth, she seemed mildly perturbed, as though the answer she had been expecting wasn’t the one I had given her.
“So, humanity itself doesn’t have a single culture to begin with, because there are so many different nations despite all of you being the same species?” She asked me, a questioning eyebrow raised she slowly sipped at the tea she had conjured for the both of us, though I had politely declined a cup.
“Well, humanity is a… melting pot if you asked me, honestly speaking.” I scratched at my head as I pondered my answer to Celestia’s question. “We seriously have all kinds of different people ranging from the inspiringly great, all the way to the atrociously horrible. It would take ages just to list out all the examples, so you’ll just have to take my sweeping statement for it.”
“I see…” Celestia murmured, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “And yet with so many different nations and their cities scattered all around the world, your race still manages to keep everything linked together in a single network - how do you achieve this without magic?”
“Technology,” I replied simply, shrugging. “It relies on something we call electricity, with a whole bunch of additions like microchips, transistors and circuits coming together to make bigger things like computers, making all sorts of things possible. Basically, us humans studied the laws of physics and experimented with chemistry so much that we ended up understanding the laws of nature so well we almost made it our bitch.”
The solar princess nearly looked in askance of that, her eyes widening visibly at my description, and it was a few seconds later before she started speaking again. “Oh, my… To be able to achieve so much, without even having access to magic! Twilight would certainly have a rather engrossing time grilling you for answers and knowledge on everything you know.”
There was a slightly amused twinkle in her eye as she mentioned her student, and I quickly shook my head. “No disrespect intended to your student, Princess, but I think Twilight could grill me for thirty days and thirty nights on everything I knew, and she still wouldn’t be able to learn everything there is to know about my race - I just don’t know that much compared to some of the real experts out there. I’ve just got general knowledge and a few specialized topics on my side.”
Celestia let out a small chuckle, nodding in agreement, and the discussion continued. The questions just kept on coming, asking more about our culture, the locations of our cities, more elaborations on our level of technology, and though I told her everything that I knew to the best of my ability, every answer that I gave seemed to make her grow more and more disconcerted.
By the time I finished answering her questions on how life was America and what the country was like, her expression was a study in consternation. If anything, she seemed more puzzled than anything else despite all the explanations I had given her, and it seemed as though she had ended up with even more questions than answers after all I had told her.
“Well, that was certainly… enlightening,” Celestia said slowly, leaning back on her throne with a thoughtful expression as she began muttering to herself. “Perhaps I was mistaken about where you had come from…”
Wait, what? I raised an eyebrow, frowning. “Uh, pardon, Princess?”
The solar diarch’s gaze shot up, almost as though she had forgotten I was there, and she quickly shook her head, waving me off nonchalantly as her expression quickly reasserted itself into a friendly, reassuring smile. “Oh, my apologies, it seems that I had made some erroneous assumptions on your origins. I had actually thought you to be somepony else, but no matter - I stand corrected now."
The unspoken implications were not missed by me as I connected the dots: Humans beings portrayed as mythic figures in their legends? Thousand year old goddess seemingly knowing about humanity and having expectation out of it? Said goddess actually recalling a specific individual that she had believed to be human? Humanity definitely had a connection of some sort to Equestria, I realized with growing certainty, but what that connection was, I couldn't even begin to piece it together without making several potentially hazardous, and erroneous leaps of logic.
I waited for the Princess to explain further, but Celestia did not say anything more even after the silence between us dragged on for several more moments. “Well then, I… guess we’re done here?” I hazarded cautiously, and internally sighed in relief as Celestia nodded.
“That will be all that I will require of you today, Joseph Ryan.” She rose from her throne, gesturing for me to walk with her as she strode towards the throne room’s exit. “Hopefully, your stay here will be as short and uneventful as we can make it - it would pain me to have to put you through any unnecessary trouble.”
On the surface, it sounded like anything polite a diplomat would tell a visiting dignitary, albeit one that was visiting a particularly dangerous country, I mused to myself as I walked outside with her and back through the corridors leading to my room. But then, something about the way she had worded it sounded… suspiciously specific.
I eyed the princess critically as we made the walk back to the suite she had assigned me, trying to decipher just what it was about her words that kept on nagging at me. Something didn’t feel quite right here; Equestria was largely known to be a peaceful nation, practically devoid of crime on its streets - kind of like the country that I had grown up in, now that I thought about it. So why would she specifically mention making my time here short and uneventful without putting me through any ‘unnecessary trouble’, if Equestria wasn’t known for such things, much less in Canterlot itself?
The thought kept worrying away at me throughout our entire trip through the corridors, which was as silent and uneventful as our earlier walk to the throne room, but even by the time we had reached the doors to my assigned suite, the answers still didn’t come.
As we stepped in front of the doors, Celestia turned to face me again, her expression warm but strangely distant. “Now, keeping a low profile will be absolutely critical for you until I am able to piece together an adequate cover for your presence here. In the meantime, I will appoint a single contact to attend to your material needs - you will meet him tomorrow. As for now, please do get some rest. I understand that it has been a rather harrowing day for you, no?”
That would have been an understatement - everything had just rushed by me in a blur ever since the accident that had injured Big Mac. Now, for the first time since the shit had hit the fan, I had a few quiet moments to gather myself, and I realized just how exhausted I was. Right now, sleep sounded like a very tempting prospect.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I admitted, running a hand tiredly through my hair. “So, you just want me to stay inside there for the time being and not come out, huh?”
“Only temporarily.” Celestia reassured me, opening the door to the suite and ushering me inside with a wing. “There is no need to worry about needing to stay inside for long, I will be working on a means for you to walk amongst us incognito eventually. Now please, do take whatever time you need to regain your bearings - I must go attend to the Day Court now.”
I still had a million other questions that I still wanted to ask her, but before I could say anything else, her horn sparked, and the doors closed between us, leaving me alone inside the spacious suite she had seen fit to give me.
With nothing else left to do, I turned around to inspect the room more closely, thoroughly impressed with the lavish decorations and opulent furniture that adorned the place. A single window framed by luxuriously red curtains overlooked the castle courtyard, where I could see nobles and royal guards alike walking through it, but that was my only view of the outside world. I briefly tried opening the windows, but after a couple of seconds, it became obvious that even if I had a crowbar to try and pry them open, they weren’t going to be budging anytime soon. I tried the door leading back into the corridor as well, and finding it similarly locked, I came to a rather disconcerting resolution that I’d rather not have arrived at.
As luxurious as the room was, I could recognize it for what it was - a prison cell; albeit a very comfortable one.
Celestia wanted me to stay inside here, with minimal contact with the outside, and only my own activities to keep me occupied - I recognized what house arrest sounded like when I heard it. Justifiable as her reasons were, since I could literally cause a panic if I appeared in public here without a prior explanation, I still found myself rankling at the decision she had made on my behalf to keep me here anyway, bristling with offended indignation at the choice being foisted upon me without any concern about what I wanted.
Well, on the other hand, there were certainly worse alternatives, weren’t there? All things considered, I actually kind of had it pretty good already. Staying in a castle suite, with all my material needs provided for at the snap of a finger until they found a way to send me back home? I could hardly complain about that either. Huffing in resignation, I brushed my feelings of indignation aside, swallowing my pride and accepting that Celestia had simply been acting in the interests of her citizens, which rightly should have been her foremost concern.
Still, it didn’t change the fact that I was probably going to be here for a while. I may as well start making myself comfortable. Turning to my belongings, which were still laid out on the floor as neatly as they had been when we had first arrived here, I started arranging them around the room, stashing them in the appropriate cupboards and making sure this time that the guns were stashed inside someplace lockable and secured… and as I did so, my mind wandered back to the words that I had heard Celestia say before the soulgaze had begun: embrace eternity.
The little things that I had been telling myself to ignore thus far were starting to add up one by one until I could no longer deny them. Rainbow Dash making a Modern Warfare reference before she knocked me out, rust beetles straight out of The Powers of Harmony fanfic that looked like rust monsters out of a Dungeons & Dragons monster manual, a soulgaze spell all too similar to the actual soulgaze from the Dresden Files, and now Celestia saying the exact same words the asari from Mass Effect did before beginning a mindmeld? What the hell was going on here that this place was starting to seem like an amalgamation of every sci-fi and fantasy series I had ever read and played?
There was no doubt that this world I had ended up in was real, so why were all these little things that were beginning to make me question if all this was really just a hallucination cooked up by a fever-addled brain starting to pop up all over the place?
If anything, Celestia was more than likely to have the answers, but even as I laid back in the suite’s bed and tried not to sink too far into its ridiculously soft upholstery, I realized that I didn’t know just how forthcoming the millennia-old diarch would be with the explanations. If there were any reasons for any of this, I would probably have to find them out on my own.
Well, if anything, I mused as I closed my eyes for a much-needed nap, it looked as though that my stay in Equestria had just gotten a little more interesting...
---
Celestia sat within her chambers, looking out through the window upon the city of Canterlot. Though the solar princess was the very picture of serenity for anyone who looked upon her from the outside, inside was a very different story.
Her mind continued to race as she digested the visions that she had seen when she had opened up the Soulgaze between herself and Joseph, and found herself growing more perturbed by the minute as she contemplated the meaning behind it. Her sister was still holding the Day Court in her absence, but night was about to fall, and during the few hours that they had in between the closing of the Day Court and the opening of its opposite number, she had called for Luna to meet her within her chambers to discuss her findings.
She did not have to wait for long - minutes after she had lowered the sun and the moon had begun its slow ascent into the sky, her dearest sister had quickly come trotting through her chamber’s doors, a concerned look on her face.
“Tia!” Luna exclaimed as she quickly came to kneel by her sister’s side, looking at her concernedly. “So what did you find out? Was he what you expected? Did he know anything about our guardian and what happened to him?”
Celestia slowly turned to face her sister, and Luna’s face fell as the sun princess shook her head sadly. “Unfortunately, it seems that I was mistaken, Luna. Wherever he is from… whenever he is from, it definitely is not from humanity as we knew it, however little it was that we knew. And he most certainly does not hail from the Unknown Regions, or from the Old World at all. I saw as much when I looked inside him.”
Luna’s eyes widened as she let out a small gasp of surprise. “You soulgazed him? Sister, but the use of that spell has been forbidden for millennia, has it not? Ever since…” The lunar princess faltered, biting her lip as she hesitated to continue, and Celestia felt a pang of pained empathy as she understood why.
The soulgaze was a spell that had been forbidden from use by the general populace of unicorns because of how it afforded to viewer such a deep, vivid insight into the soul of the one that they had cast it upon, that if the subject’s soul was particularly potent and strong enough in its essence, it could potentially leave its own mark upon the viewer, affecting their own behavior in some way as they inadvertently adopted some of the traits of the one they had cast the soulgaze upon.
And Luna remembered just where her first soulgaze that had gone wrong. More than a thousand years ago, when she had gazed into the blackened, shadowed heart of a king gone mad, the seeds of darkness had been planted inside her heart, where they began to fester and take root, showing their effect only decades later. If you looked into the soul of a being that was mad or evil enough, you could very become like that very monstrosity you had gazed into, and Luna still carried the mental and spiritual scars of the internal battle she had fought, and lost, against the Nightmare to regain control of herself.
On instinct, Celestia reached out with a wing, and brought her sister into a comforting embrace, nuzzling Luna softly. “It’s all right, Luna. It wasn’t entirely your fault - I know that you fought against it with every fibre of your being when it took control of you. And there is no need to worry about young Joseph either. What I saw was heartening in the sense that we truly have nothing to fear from him, but yet…”
The elder princess bit her lip hesitantly, and Luna looked up at her sibling curiously. “What is it, sister? What did you see?”
Celestia remained silent for several more seconds, and when she finally spoke, her voice was an awed whisper. “When I looked inside him, Luna, I… the Aether spoke to me.”
“It spoke to you?” Luna backed away slightly in surprise as she stared at Celestia in shock. The all-pervading field of ambient arcane energy that made all life and magic on Equestria possible to begin with, the one that had sometimes been perceived to actually have a will of its own, had finally spoken to Celestia again after so long? “But such a thing hasn’t happened since we founded Equestria!”
“That’s exactly it,” Celestia emphasized. “Nothing like this has happened in millennia, which makes me want to heed its warnings all the more. I couldn’t decipher much of what it was trying to tell me, but the one thing I did understand was this: great, dire events are about to come upon us, and the Aether showed me that he is but a part of the centre upon which it all revolves around.”
“He is the centre of it all?” Luna arched a skeptical eyebrow, but the lunar princess still looked thoughtful nonetheless. “Were it not for the fact that it were the Aether itself speaking to you of this, I would not be very inclined to believe that. Then, what of his soul? Is he a protector, or a destroyer?”
At that, Celestia gave Luna a tired, knowing smile - trust her sister to still always assume the worst, if only to be prepared and ready for it. Sometimes it really did make her seem like a pessimist, but Luna had also always been the colder, more pragmatic of the two. “I did tell you earlier, Luna, I knew that we had nothing to fear from him when I gazed into his soul. But all the same… he is indeed a troubled one.”
“Troubled? How so?”
Celestia pursed her lips as she struggled to find the words to describe what she had seen. The young human was a scarred individual indeed; his soul bore the marks of loss more acutely than most of her little ponies in this age, and yet he held on to his pain like a lifeline, wearing it like a suit of armor as he stood guard valiantly against all other threats, defending his loved ones with a determination and doggedness that she had only seen in few others.
“I saw…” Celestia began…
---
As Celestia began to cast the spell, the brown orbs of the young human’s eyes rushed forward to meet her, and she found herself falling inwards, a familiar sensation that accompanied every soulgaze spell she had ever cast… but when the world reassembled itself around her, she found herself greeted by a sight unlike anything she had ever seen before.
All around her, for as far as the eye could see, a dry, barren wasteland stretched outwards, the sandy ground cracked and pitted, and overshadowed by an eternally twilit sky. All around the wasteland that she gazed upon, numerous swords and rifles stood where they had been thrust into the ground, each serving as a marker for a headstone that wasn’t there. The endless struggle, the utter war that seemed to stretch on eternally for those who walked it; Celestia could feel the anguish and agony that the world around her bore, the scars of pain and loss that had desecrated and destroyed this land so.
Yet, as she turned around, she beheld a sight that was a complete contrast to what she had borne witness to; for in the centre of the barren field of blades, there stood a lush, verdant field of vibrantly green, healthy grass, a sanctuary of life and hope that had been sealed off from the desiccated, destroyed wasteland that surrounded it by a large, glowing barrier.
Finding herself moving towards the field of her own accord, Celestia passed through the barrier with some minor discomfort, and looked up in wonder at the tall, mighty oak that stood tall and proud in the centre of the field, towering over the saplings and younger, smaller trees that grew in the shade of its wide canopy. Upon setting her gaze upon the oak, she could immediately sense the aura of protectiveness that it emanated, the purpose of guardianship and unshakeable faith and resolve that composed every iota of its existence. The oak had grown tall and strong to protect the younger saplings and trees under its charge, casting its canopy protectively over them as it sought to shelter them from the storms and the other elements of the wasteland outside, yet she could still recognize that in doing so, it deprived its younger charges of the sunlight that they so vitally needed to grow, stifling them and limiting their growth.
The sheer symbolism of it all was not lost on her, and she found herself being more and more impressed with what she was seeing as she moved closer to the oak. As she drew nearer, she realized that the oak bore not fruits, but rather large, silvery drops of memory - concepts and principles given form.
Chivalry, honor, and compassion all featured prominently, and she immediately recognized the principles of a knight when she sensed them, but every now and then she would catch sight of a darker, blackened splotch of diseased fruit, a sickness that threatened to eat away at the health of the oak, even as she felt the tree itself fight back against the sickness that threatened to consume it. Anger, pride, and ruthlessness were all concepts that she recognized, and there were more than their fair share of diseased patches fighting for domination against the principles that the oak had built itself upon.
She began to approach the tree’s base, and as she did, a metallic glint caught her eye, and she realized that there was a sword stuck in the base of the oak, having been thrust in blade-first. The sword’s blade was incredibly rusted, yet somehow it still managed to gleam in the light, its simple, unornamented handle giving off a soft glow that still managed to speak volumes of its untapped, unrealized potential. This here was a primed spell, a loaded gun, just waiting to go off - all that mattered now was where the sword was going to be directed, at once it was drawn from the tree’s base.
And just as she was about to grasp onto the hilt of the sword with her magic to pull it out and find out just where the sword would take itself, a torrent of images rushed through her head, meaning and concepts forcibly imprinting themselves upon her synapses, and she comprehended.
Then there was the familiar, yet sudden wrenching sensation of the soulgaze ending, and Celestia found herself thrown back into her own body. The alicorn blinked as she recovered herself, and when she looked down, she found Joseph staring up at her and shaking madly, his face white as a sheet as he visibly struggled to control himself.
And as certain as she was right now that she had nothing to fear from the young human before her for her little ponies, she was also just as certain that as deep a glimpse she had gained into his soul… he had also looked right back into hers with equal intensity.
“That… That’s unusual,” She whispered. “Usually, there… isn’t a glimpse back.”
---
“And when I grasped onto the hilt of the sword to try to pull it out with my magic, that was when the Aether spoke to me.” Celestia finished. “It’s entire message didn’t get through, but when it felt that I understood, it withdrew, and the soulgaze ended.”
“I… see…” Luna said slowly, her expression perturbed. “Sister, I… This cannot possibly bode well for the kingdom. You know what happened the last time the Aether spoke to us directly like this.”
“I know, Luna.” Celestia nodded morosely, her expression growing pained. “And yet he, a singular lost soul so far from his home, may be our only chance at weathering the oncoming storm. He wishes nothing more than to return home, Luna - and knowing what lies ahead of us, I have to deny him that chance if our kingdom is to have any chance of surviving.”
“You’re going to keep him here!? Against his will, and hiding that fact from him, no less?” Luna gasped, and she gave her elder sister a cross look. “Sister, I know that I myself advocate the cause of acting in the interests of the greater good, but there are limits even to my pragmatism! I may understand the necessity of your actions, but I cannot condone them!”
Luna had nearly half-expected her sister to give her a defensive reply, but to her surprise, Celestia merely gave her a tired smile, and nodded in resignation as she turned to gaze out upon the nightscape of Canterlot.
“Indeed you should, Luna,” Celestia agreed unexpectedly. “It is a good sign that you are starting to learn the beginnings of compassion. All the more that it will help you to understand just what a ruler must feel when making the hard decisions that have to be made.”
Luna didn’t know what to say to that. Stunned into silence by her sister’s own unexpected admission to her own necessary cruelty, the younger sibling of the night simply walked up to her sister’s side, and sat down next to her, leaning into her and watching the night sky together.
She may not have understood the situation as thoroughly as Celestia did, but if her sister was this torn up over the decision that she had to make… then the very least she could do was support her all the way through with it.
Never again, She swore to herself as she and her sister draped their wings over each other, finally able to truly enjoy each other’s company regularly after having been separated for a thousand years. I will never leave your side ever again, sister.
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so i'm guessing joe's gonna be the one that releases sombra ^^
Great chapter once again, and loooong! Thanks
Will there ever be a mention or at least a burial of the corpse that was in the Everfree? I feel that RD should at least know that one of her fans died in the Everfree.
Maybe he should at least partially come clean?
It just bothers me about the corpse in the Everfree.
YUU A BANANEN,JOSE
OKI DOKI
Through technicality he owes them nothing celestia wishes to use him even if that means keeping him from his own home and people to carry out her own wishes it's in his best interest to leave the country the second he has the chance to if he wishes to be free.
Well this can't be good for Joe, but I'm guessing he'll go along with their plans. After all, Celestia would only be looking out for her ponies, and he's understanding like that.
How very. . .
weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/interesting-you-may-proceed.jpg
I am guessing that Celestia's choice will tilt the balance towards him being the Destroyer.
Which chapter's the Modern Warfare reference in? I need to see this!
Celestia, Celestia... When will you learn keeping the Human there against his will will always end badly? At least this time they understand why you are doing it, but still...
3541357 i agree it just doesn't seem right to leave that corpse just lying there in the everfree
Wait, I may be mixing up my HiE fics... was it explained before what he's troubled with? Any reason behind that, um... soulscape?
3544429 No, it hasn't been yet, not in any published chapters at least, heh. I did write out a scene that explained his history that was meant to come out earlier, but I scrapped it and decided to save it for later.
3541357 3544112 Well, let me ask you guys this, then - even if he did mention it, what difference would it make? Looking for specific items within a forest several miles across is like finding a needle in a haystack, especially since by now they probably would have been lost to the elements, or to scavengers like the timber wolves. Also, how relevant is it to his current predicament exactly? What reason would he have to bring it up, especially if going back in would be to put himself and whichever ponies accompany him inside at risk?
3543705 It's at the end of chapter three, bro, heh. Just when RD knocked him out.
3542354 3541307 Good, good, it means I'm doing sufficient foreshadowing for his future... Heheheh
3544557
I still feel there should at least be a burial. Hell, you could be non-descript, but have the mane 6 tag along and RD, for some reason, just explode over the whole ordeal.
Look, I understand what you are trying to say but I'm just saying it just feels....hm....
Unfair.
Yeah, I guess that will work for now.
Anyway, I feel it's just unfair to the corpse even though it adds very little to the story, it does add to the question, "How'd he get there? And was it mere coincidence he was wearing a MLP-based shirt?"
Basically all I'm asking is maybe half a chapter or a few paragraphs detailing he was found, buried, and maybe the Mane 6 reacting accordingly.
Or just ignore me
. Either way is fine.
3544557 For some reason, I get the feeling that he would have agreed to staying to help them out, and that this will make him feel even angrier about being lied to.
lolno. America has a pretty bad crime rate. Go to a city like New York or LA or Miami at night and walk down a few dark alleys. See if you don't get mugged.
3557663 Dude, I'm not from America. I said my HOME country which I was born in, which is Singapore.
3558296
Oh, sorry.
3669725 Nobody said anything about Joe having come back in the same direction that he left. He could have attacked from the side.
Also, I think you have your shotgun pellet spray patterns in real life confused with those from Call of Duty.
Even if we assumed that he'd fired from at least 25 yards away, which is 75 feet or about 23 meters (and I can tell you he was certainly standing only at least half that distance away) and was firing a shotgun with a cylinder choke, the pellet spread would have been only three feet - certainly smaller than the height and width of a rust beetle (a creature the size of a small bear) while it's rearing up, and there is plenty of potential for the pellet spread to actually be smaller given the fact that he was standing closer than 25 yards and the shotgun might have been using a different choke.
The chances of stray pellets hitting Rainbow Dash who was directly below it at the time, much less Big Mac who was lying off to the side, are virtually zero. These aren't your video game shotguns now.
3670032
Agreed. I've seen a guy put a single bb into a beer can from as far as he pleased time and time again. Shotguns are awesome, but you gotta know your pattern.