Chapter 43 - Rolling Thunder
She had barged into the barracks like a mad mare, mane askew, wild-eyed and clutching the remains of a dead animal in her mouth.
Sure, it was just a leather glove but, you know, ponies.
"Stellar?" a bleary-eyed Shimmer murmured, rising up from her bunk, half her head covered in bandages and a splint on her wing.
"Mm sfg hmm rfmmm!"
"…What?" a nearby unicorn asked. Stellar spat out the glove on the ground and gasped for breath.
"I need the sergeants right now! Where are they!?"
"In the back talking with the other officers. What’s this about, Stellar?” a pegasus asked. Stellar ran a hoof down her face, shaking her head. She was still seeing spots.
"Look, it’s mission critical. There’s a serious threat to the safety of this city, and I need to get to the sergeants and the commandant now!"
"Mission critica— Wha? Stellar, we failed our mission." Shimmer groaned, the injured thestral lying back down on her stomach.
"No we didn't—the human is here. He's right here in the city. I've seen him!"
"Uh, Stellar, I think you may have gotten a little knock on the head there," another guard chimed in. "There's no way he could be here this soon without anypony noticing him."
Stellar glared at the offending pony in question, swiped a wing down, and hooked the abandoned glove in the claw of her wing, holding it aloft with an unamused face and a cocked eyebrow.
"Yes, clearly I am imagining things." The dryness in her voice did not lack venom or bite.
"Could be a minotaur's glove…"
"Minotaurs only gots four of dem, dem there… thingies."
"Fingers?"
"Yeah, dem."
"…Maybe it’s a five fingered—"
"OH JUST LET ME THROUGH, YOU IDIOTS! WE'RE WASTING TIME!"
--=--
He waited.
He waited and he waited and he waited and he waited.
She still had not contacted him. Still she had not given him an order, a command, a purpose. He had forgotten so much, but he did not forget her, could not forget her. He should be dead, for he had failed at… something. He could no longer recall. He ran, from place to place, from bolthole to hideout. He hunted, searching for… something.
Spells. Magic. Words. He needed to read the words. He needed to read the arcane script that had given him his power before he forgot the spells he had just so recently used. He knew because he had found his journals, his books, his little keepsakes to help him remember in case he forgot. Oceans of ink detailed each one of his memories he could recall as precise as he could, everything about him that mattered. He had kept copies upon copies, along with a map of where they were hidden so that even if he forgot them, he would know where to find them again.
And to his horror, he found nothing more than a pile of blank books. They were timeworn, yellowed and faded manuscripts with nothing written upon them, with no sign of ink ever having touched the pages. No, that was not true. Here and there were the blots of ink that fell from a quill, the stains of years accrued from aging. Every sign and aspect of having suffered the rigours of time littered their surfaces and interiors.
Just not the words. Just not the memories. Just not the physical proof of their existence. Forgotten by his mind, so too were they forgotten by the world itself, as if they had never happened in the first place. It seemed to follow a pattern, however. The earliest memories disappeared first, evidenced by a few non sequiturs here and there. He, in a fit of whimsy, had recounted how one event of his early past echoed another, later point. To his horror, he saw the page completely blank but for his later additions. The written paragraphs spread across the pages, and the ink the words had been written on seemed to fade, as if written ages ago at the beginning, and slowly faded to nothing as it reached its end. An island of information in a sea of oblivion.
So much, he had lost so much. He had used up so much magic and could not find his scripture in time to recall the spells used before they were forgotten from his mind and took their pound of flesh with them. The Mistress should have killed him.
She had not. That frightened him more than anything. What was worse was that he had forgotten so much that he was not even sure what potential reason she could have for being merciful. Chopper… yes, the dog. Chopper, he sat on the council too. He had not been specific regarding the Mistress' mercy. He did not dare contact her, or anypony else in the council, not even any of their underlings.
Underlings. He had nopony to call such. He had always found the idea such a bother. Now he was paying for it right when he needed help the most.
So he waited. Waited until the day she contacted him. Until he could redeem himself. He did not dare be where she couldn't find him should she need him.
Maybe…
Maybe there was a way. Some spell or… or incantation. A means by which he could have restored to him what had been lost.
She never contacted him, not once. He had not left his apartment in weeks, subsisting off food brought to him by the worried and subdued waiting staff of the estate, cowed by his fury. He remembered the harlot who had led him to falsely believe she was a maid, she who robbed him. He had exacted a terror upon the remaining servants. He would brook no further treachery. So great was his fury that even other private residents elected to stay away from the estate, or at least as far from his apartments as possible.
So it was that with some degree of surprise, he heard a loud and vigorous knocking coming from his doorway.
"Manehatten city guard, open up!"
Thunder Strike blinked. His room was dimly lit by a lonely, shallow light flickering with half-life from a lantern on a corner table. The pathetic illumination was insufficient for most ponies of good sense, but he had long since been accustomed to it. The knock came again and the warning was repeated. He huffed in dry amusement, a smile threatening to tug at the side of his mouth. Bizarre, so bizarre. Whatever could the guard want with him?
He pulled himself from the blankets bundled on the floor where he lay, practically dead to the world. The floor was covered in a thin layer of dust, and the floorboards, long denied polish and care, creaked under his hooves. The bright, garish clothing he so adored was revealed to be moth-eaten and dulled in the light as he opened the door.
Before him, in the corridor, stood two Manehatten guards. Flanked behind them were the grey-cloaked City Watch, and behind them… the gold and onyx of the Equestrian Royal Guard. A lump developed in Thunder's throat.
"Mister Thunder Strike?" the first guard asked, a mare with green fur.
"That is…correct? What can I do you for, ma'am? Is there something amiss?" His voice was soft, adopting his lazy smile that felt so familiar resting upon his face. His relaxed demeanour was obvious to anypony and would work very well to give ponies a reason to respond in kind… if it were not for the ragged and worn state of his clothes, his matted fur, unkempt mane, and the dry musty smell. The guard’s partner held aloft a piece of paper, containing the seal of the city of Manehatten and the Marquis' signature in bright red near the bottom. Her partner walked past him and into the room. It took him a moment to realise everypony in the hallway beyond his door were unicorns. "What is going on?"
"We have orders to search this building in case of a suspected threat to the city. Mister Thunder Strike, we would like to ask you a few questions if you could please step outside with us?"
"N-Now, just hold on a minute, aheh. What threat? W-Why do you need to search my home?" Thunder’s mind raced, recalling the precise locations and hiding places of otherwise compromising documents. More unicorns calmly filed in, their horns aglow, looking for something. His breath hitched in his throat as he saw one wave his horn over a drawer, relaxing only when he had passed. The obfuscation ward had held.
"Sir, you have been accused of possessing hostile intent towards the Kingdom of Equestria, the Municipality of Manehatten in particular. However, as there is currently no proof, you are not under arrest, but we need to take you into protective custody."
"Why on earth would you do that!?" Thunder blustered, his room increasingly filled with the guards, Goldcloaks, the City Watch, and the occasional Royal Guard. All unicorns.
"Because we believe you have been targeted by a potentially hostile provocateur. We need to establish the truth of the matter. Please, come with us." Thunder jerked his head back and forth. The unicorns were all over his apartments, searching under everything. The wards were good – he was sure of that – but with this many ponies scrutinizing this closely, it was only a matter of time before they discovered something was off. He had made more copies since his return and secured them elsewhere in the city, but he still couldn't afford them finding even one sliver of parchment here. He saw a pegasi and a thestral emerge from around a corner in the hallway, trailed by two more.
"Captain, the surrounding buildings have been secured," the white pegasi in front intoned. The City Watch mare in front of him turned her head and nodded before looking back at Thunder.
"Sir?"
"I will not leave my home! Out, everypony out! You have no business snooping around my private affairs!"
"Sir, we have a writ—"
"I don't give one whit about your writ! Brutes, the lot of you! Out!" Thunder demanded, stomping a hoof. His heart was racing and he was breathing heavily. Panicking. Panicking was bad, he remembered that much. The surrounding unicorns slowly drew to a halt, eyeing Thunder carefully.
"Sir, please." The mare’s tone was more authoritative and demanding, yet still possessed that calm professional air. "Do not make a scene. We are just trying to make sure nothing is wrong."
"Wrong? Haha, why would anything be wrong?! Other than waking a stallion up at this unseemly hour and then rummaging through his home like a roving band of vagabonds!"
"Sir, if you prefer, we could ask you some questions here," the armoured white pegasi offered.
"Oh yeah, because you aren’t doing yourself any favours by staying in the same building as Handy the Milesian." The golden-eyed thestral by his side rolled her eyes.
"W-Who?" Thunder stuttered. He remembered that name. Yes, the festival, the… the mistake that cost him nearly everything. "Fine. Fine! Ask your questions, then leave me be!"
"Alright," Cloud said, raising a wing and gesturing in a placating manner to try to calm him down. "Just relax. I know this seems like overkill, but the threat is very, very real. We just want to know what, if any, relationship you have to the one known as Handy."
"Never heard of him!"
"So you have not been outside of Equestria in the last six months?" Midnight asked.
"Haven't so much as left the city in a dog's age." A trickle of confidence leaked back into his voice.
"So you have no reason to fear why this human would be targeting you in particular?"
"My word, never! I would never bother anypony. In fact, I hardly ever leave my rooms." Looking around, one could very well believe that last statement.
"So you don't know what Handy's relationship to the Mistress is?" Dead silence. Thunder's eyes went wide, looking past the head of the Royal Guard sergeant, straight into the green eyes of the mare who had spoken up. Stellar held his gaze for a long, tense moment, his deafening silence causing unease in the gathered soldiery. Cloud ruffled the feathers of his wings, glancing back at Stellar for speaking up and then staring straight ahead. Thunder was as still as a statue. His silence was his condemnation. They knew. That was why they were here. Somehow they knew. They all knew about the Mistress. They were not supposed to know. They had come to get him, to interrogate him, to find out what he knew, to force him to fail the Mistress once more by stealing what he knew of her.
To steal what memories he had left.
And that was just unacceptable. He had to flee. And to that end, he let out a sigh as he thought of the inevitable exertion this was going to exact.
"Such bother…" He breathed, his eyes closed and head bowed. The guards looked at each other.
"Sir," Captain Honey Comb began, "I think it'd be best if you co—"
It was a whisper as loud as a tempest.
Guttural words and cracking noises in a mockery of language, intermingling vulgarly with sibilant hisses and slurs spewed forth from his gullet. Time seemed to slow to a standstill. The very motes of dust in the air, disturbed and borne aloft by the sudden intrusion upon their sacred slumber by numerous clumsily trotting hooves, froze in the air as if frightened stiff by a terror without name.
The pseudo speech erupted from his throat at a speed faster than his tongue and lips could form them. Shining wards, sigils, and designs traced along the skin under his pale fur, like the ritual tattoos of a warrior from some savage tribe in a far off and alien land. The floor rattled and shook, fell lights spilling into the room from beneath the boards, perforating the darkness of the room with long, thin shafts of light casting terrible shadows.
He opened his eyes.
--=--
Stellar came to first, her ears ringing, her body aching, her wings throbbing awfully. She let out a yelp when she tried to stand. At least she thought she did, for she couldn't hear properly yet. Her foreleg felt like it was broken. The night sky was visible from underneath the partial wall that was lying on top of her. She called out, hoping anypony could hear her, struggling as she wormed her way out from under the wall. She had been thrown back through the door of the room at the far end of the hall.
It was partially destroyed, the hallway gone except for the floor. The ceiling and whatever had been above it was eradicated, leaving the top floor and its remains after Thunder Strike's room was obliterated.
"—Pony!" she heard her voice break through the piercing ringing as she crawled to her three working legs. "Can anypony hear me!?" she shouted.
She wasn't answered. Small, stuttering green fires burned in parts of the ruined building's floor. Several rooms were gutted and exposed to open air. She found the city guard captain on the floor below, spying her through a hole blown through the floor. Her eyelids fluttered, and Stellar could smell spilled blood. She was wounded.
Alarmed, she looked around for the others. There were nine of them: the sergeants, her partner, the other city guard, and five royal guard unicorns. She found three of the unicorns scattered around. She had no idea where the other city guard had gone. She found one of the sergeants limping away with a bad wing on the ground below, yelling orders. Her partner was delirious and stuck halfway through a thin drywall, the pegasus utterly insensate. She couldn't find the other sergeant or the remaining unicorns.
The street outside was a warzone. The entire waterfront was cordoned off and the surrounding buildings quietly evacuated by the city watch as the Manehatten Guard took up positions at either end and around the block, supplemented by Goldcloaks. Their respective winged contingents joined the Royal Guards in the air above the building. There was no telling whether the human was truthful or not, but if he was, and it turned out he had been, the consequences could have been devastating.
The remaining unicorns cast spells, lighting up the night with multi-hued magical fury as they battled with the whirling destructive force of the earth pony warlock. Those ponies that charged and attacked with spears and halberds and hoof blades had their weapons torn asunder after glancing harmlessly off of Thunder's hide. That was right before they were thrown about like ragdolls in the earth pony's fury. Cracks of thunder split the air and eruptions of alchemical fire and smoke formed from the lines of ponies at either end of the waterfront. The shootsticks thunderous report and deadly cargo pattered harmlessly against Thunder Strike's flesh.
He reared up and struck the earth with his forehooves, magic running down his legs and into the ground, cascading out in tendrils of energy that ripped up the ground in undulating arcs of arcane destruction, crashing into the gaggles of soldiers, sending ponies flying. Some landed in the water, giving cause for their flying companions to break ranks and rescue them from the sea before their armour dragged them down. Thunder ran, the clouds moving as if pulled by sheer force of will. They followed after him and coalesced, forming a funnel reaching down to the earth, lightning flashing and cascading down its length as the delicate weather magic they held were disturbed.
Stellar descended the stairs to the bottom floor as fast as her damaged body would let her. Her lungs burned, and there was a pain in her chest that spoke of broken bones. One wing was utterly unresponsive and the other paralyzed her with pain whenever she tried to move it. This was not good. It was all falling apart and he was getting away, heading further into the city. He had to be stopped. Fortunately the more fit guards, those who weren't unconscious or wounded in the fighting that was, were already on the move, with the pegasi taking to the skies to disrupt the gathering twister and rob Thunder of the skies.
Stellar limped on, exiting through the back of the building and onto a back lane. She couldn't catch up in this condition, so she tried to cut her way through. If the city watch was half as competent as she hoped, they'd already be cutting off his exit routes and trying to herd him towards an open space. She couldn't see the fight clearly, but she could see the flashes of light above the buildings. Thunder was throwing some serious magic around, and their unicorns were already incapacitated. They had not brought any heavy battle mages, and the local garrisons had nothing on par with that level of power and finesse.
Where in Tartarus was the human?
She tripped over a pile of refuse and stumbled onto the street, screaming in pain as she erroneously placed weight on her broken leg. She fell and rolled, her armoured weight damaging her wings further before she managed to stop herself and put her hooves under her again.
"Stellar!" Her ears flicked up, her eyes still screwed shut and her jaw set to hold in the pain. She recognised the sound of Shimmer's voice.
"What are you doing here? You sh-should be at your bunk." Stellar opened her eyes to see soldiers running past her.
"I only have a sprained wing. Look at you!" Shimmer fussed, the mare helping Stellar back to her hooves. A golden-clad unicorn ran up to them from further down the road, panting.
"It’s coming this way. Everypony get in position!" he shouted. The city watch, guard and goldcloaks milled about, weapons bared as they formed a blockade to head off Thunder's rampage. Stellar could see the street junction up ahead being torn apart as an unfortunate guard contingent ran afoul of his magic. A shockwave washed down the street, causing window panes to shatter and a rain of glass to fall down upon them, pattering off their cloaks and mail. Thunder ran towards them, his face obscured by a flaming skull visage, burning white hot and incandescent with witch-fire, its grotesque visage disproportionate to his body.
"Okay, nope, you can't be here." Shimmer dragged Stellar's unwilling form over to the side towards a building.
"Wait, we can't—"
"You're hurt. You won't last a second here."
"You don't understand! We need help!"
"I'll say. I can't believe he's already torn through so many of us."
"Shimmer!" Stellar shouted to try to make her point. With the gunfire and the wash of noise rolling off of the approaching artifice of magic that was steadily approaching them, her voice was drowned out. The skin crawled and the stomach rebelled. Something about the magic was intrinsically foul, and it insulted their very being. Some of the weaker-willed city watch ponies broke down, running off out of the way of the seemingly unstoppable mass of magic. They, in their cowardice, proved to be the wiser, for when the spectral skull crashed into the line, it exploded. Pulsating waves of magical force threw ponies against walls, into the air, and tossed them across the stonework ground, leaving them in armoured heaps of pain in front of Thunder as he ran on, seeking an escape.
Stellar and Shimmer were among the more fortunate. Shimmer's insistence of dragging her friend out of the oncoming freight train of magical pain led to Stellar only receiving a minor bout of excruciating pain as she was lifted off of the ground and tossed further into a side lane, landing in a puddle beside a beaten up carriage. Shimmer, at the last moment, had made to shield Stellar from the worst of the blast and had been thrown straight into said carriage, breaking through the wooden façade and landing in the darkness inside.
Time to take stock of things. She and nearly a dozen other ponies were all but wiped out in the opening stages. Check. Many injuries, much pain. Check. Their target was now rampaging along the streets of the waterfront, barely contained by the city watch's cordon and throwing enough magic around that it should, by rights, wipe the entire waterfront flat. Check. Now her pain-addled mind was making her hear things, as she could swear that the carriage beside her was swearing. Ch—
She blinked.
'Wait a minute.' She pushed herself to her good foreleg, wincing with the pain and shifting uncomfortably in her dented armour. Sure enough, the carriage was rocking back and forth, and she could just about make out swearing coming from inside.
Only it wasn't Shimmer's voice. The door burst open, knocking her on her helmet and jerking her head back painfully as a tall, armoured form stumbled forth.
"Hey!" Shimmer shouted, hoof outstretched from inside the carriage. Handy slammed the door on her face. "Owww…."
"What." Handy turned and looked down at Stellar for a few seconds, as if lost for words.
"Shit." Well, when you were lost for words, the ones you found weren’t always guaranteed to be winners.
"WHAT!?"
"I don't have time for this." Handy about-faced and walked off down the lane, passing Stellar.
"Wait!" Stellar lowered the blades on her boot and reached out with her good hoof. The blades tore through the cloak the human wore, catching on their folds and arresting him in his motion. "That's where you've been!? This whole time!?"
"Of course not." Handy turned to glare at the injured mare. "I've been circling your pretty little cordon. This just seemed like a convenient place to step into for a moment when I saw a lot of you gather in one place. Now if you'll be so kind, this was a rather rare cloak before you ruined it." Stellar was absolutely livid with Handy's flippant tone.
"You heartless little… Why weren't you where you said you'd be!?"
"Because I am not a fool."
"Absolutely— grragh! Look, help us! You said you were here for vengeance against Thunder, so help us!"
"Help you? I am."
"How!?"
"By critiquing your performance. I must say, very disappointing. I had hoped you'd be more of a challenge to wear him out for me, but I guess he gives even less of a damn for subtlety now than he did back at the festival. Ah well, I'll find some other means of wearing him down."
"You… arrogant, self-righteous, hateful, backbiting, lying, manipulative, conceited bastard!"
"Excuse me?"
"Good ponies are going to die out there because of you! And you don't care!?"
"I would hardly call—"
"Shut up— ahh!" Stellar cried as she rose back to her full height, gingerly lifting her broken limb to her chest. "You would sacrifice dozens of ponies in your place because you fear, what? Getting your hands dirty with the fighting?"
"You have no right to talk to me like that." Handy glared at her, the casual tone in his voice quickly disappearing.
"I have every right, you blasted shit! I wronged you, fine. You hate me and my kind for it, fine. But fuck you to Tartarus and back if you think that gives you the right to gamble with all of our lives because you're too much of a coward to show your face when you said you would."
"Go sit on a pike and spin, you whore!" Handy bellowed. "Thunder's power is raw and primal. Had I attacked him head on, I would have died as simple and as easily as anyone else. He had to be worn down and, frankly, there are more of you than there are of me."
"So you're just a coward then." Stellar’s tone had turned nasty, and Handy squared his shoulders, his visage turning dangerous.
"How. Fucking. Dare you."
"You are the only one here who knows anything about the magic he is using," she began slowly, speaking through clenched teeth. "You're the only one here with armour that can repel any kind of magic, even Discord's. You are the only one here who fought Thunder before. You are the only one who could have directed us when dealing with him and prevented dozens of injuries. You're the only one right at this moment who can help turn this around and stop him before he kills somepony." Stellar stared Handy dead in the eye. She felt a strange pressure weighing down upon her as she did so, even though his head was masked behind that damned silver helm. She ignored it, refused it. She would not look away. "How dare you stand by and still call yourself a knight?"
He didn't respond, just standing there and staring down at her defiant glare. The sounds of magical blasts and gunshots in the near distance were evidence of the emergency still at hand. Unknowingly they were being watched from the broken carriage, Shimmer's eye peeking through the door to spy on the exchange.
It was Handy who broke line of sight first, looking up and out at the abandoned streets of the waterfront. It was a tiny sliver of the city overall, with the industrial district on the far side of the bay and bordered on two sides by canals. Its streets were torn up, homes and store fronts vandalised and ruined by the wild and fell magic of Thunder as he passed. Glass shards littered the ground wherever one looked up and down streets that merely an hour before had been the peaceful homes of sleeping families. She couldn’t read what was going through his head, but she had evidently hit something to give him pause.
"Even if I fed, it would not be enough. I found that out the hard way. Attacking him straight on from where he can see you is fruitless."
"Then what?" Stellar asked. He looked down at her contemplatively for a moment before taking off his helmet, his face bearing a grim expression. His eyes looked very tired.
"…I want you to know one thing before we go on," Handy said sternly, his jaw set. "I do not want to hate you. I do not want to hate anyone or any race, but I do. I loathe you for what you have made me become. I loathe your entire kind because of it. What I do now is to the furthering of my objective and to end the threat Thunder poses. It does not mute or change that."
"What are you talking about?" Stellar’s head turned to the side as Handy knelt down, shifting up the chainmail on his left arm and revealing the grievous state of his forearm. "What… What’s wrong with it?"
"Don't worry about it." He shifted his cloak, tying its hem about his elbow. "And if you really want to save lives, do not question what I tell you to do."
--=--
Cloud Skipper was having a bad day.
"Fall back!"
A very bad day.
"Form a line! You, goldcloak! Get that shootstick over here, now!"
And it was not going to get any better. So far they had managed to contain Thunder to the waterfront, placing troops on the roads of junctions they did not want him to go down while leaving another road open. There was just one problem.
He was running out of able-bodied ponies.
He had no idea where Midnight went. He had sent a few ponies to take care of the dazed and confused ponies in the building they had found Thunder in. A couple of civilians had somehow been missed by the advanced evacuation and had to be escorted while others kept Thunder's attention away from them. Their numbers were dwindling, their weapons were having no effect, and everypony was hurting. To make things worse, Thunder had just exited a junction. The ghoulish pony seemed to be radiating an intense aura, as if he were in the clutch of somepony else's magic. The aura was wrong – it twisted, shifted, and warped, like water flowing upward and inward upon itself, allowing Thunder to be seen clearly but whatever was behind him to be blotted out. It looked at them, lifeless eyes a ghastly greenish white, a foul substance secreting from his nose, mouth, and ears. It was as if he was little more than a container and housed a wretched candle that exuded a pungent smog as it burned.
It turned and walked towards them with purpose, not left like they had expected it to, in the direction of the nearest street that would allow it to escape. It didn't want to escape anymore.
It wanted them now.
An almost imperceptible grey blur shot down from the sky and struck Thunder into the ground before disappearing off into the distance.
It took Cloud a moment to register that Thunder's face was currently eating cobblestone, with his rear end pointing comically skywards. He snorted in surprise. Thunder shook himself off and let out a shout of anger, his head turning and searching. His magic flared as he summoned forth five shining points of light above him ready to—
The grey blur zoomed towards him, veered up, and stopped momentarily above him, revealing the moonlit form of a lunar guardsmare for the briefest second. And then she was gone again, moving too fast to make out exactly what she was doing. Thunder was struck, sent back into the wall of the building behind him. He was struck again, and this time the night pony was stopped by a magical shield. She paused and then shot off into the air again as Thunder retaliated with a blast of magical blades that cut through the air. She hovered in the air, before flying off down the road, leading away from Cloud and his troops, just slow enough to be seen, the furious Thunder making to follow after her, leaving them alone.
"What… What was that?" a goldcloak asked. He was a young pony, not even out of his teenage years. Cloud Skipper knew better than to admit he didn't know and took himself to task for looking surprised in front of the soldiers.
"You." The voice was heavy, laden and tired. Several gasps were elicited as they turned to find the human leaning against a doorway behind them, breathing heavily. He raised his hammer and pointed it at Cloud. "We need to… to… Come here."
"Wait." Cloud stuck his good wing out, easing some of his more jittery soldiers. "Human."
"White Boy."
"I have a name."
"Your name is Fuck You. Now get over here and listen to what I have to say if you expect to live through the night," Handy demanded, pushing himself off the doorframe. He seemed to wobble slightly before he found his footing. Several of the troops levelled their weapons at him. He waved them off. "Oh, tell your toy soldiers to piss right off. We don't have time for this."
"Why should we trust you? You led us here to this… this thing!"
"That’s right, I did. So what? Would you prefer I didn't and you'd have this lit powder keg ready to go off when you least suspected it?" Cloud didn't answer, looking over his shoulder, thinking about the mare who was moving far faster than any pony ordinarily should.
"What did you do?"
"Bought us some time." Handy ignored the levelled spears and polearms as he walked over to Cloud. The Pegasus noticed he was covering his left arm protectively in his cloak. He got down on one knee to look the pony dead in the eye. "Now you're going to do me a favour for my generosity and sit down, shut up, and do exactly what I say."
Cloud eyed his men. They were all looking at him with uncertainty. He turned back to Handy.
"Alright. I'm listening."
--=--
Thunder was done with trying to escape. Now he was mad. These foolish ponies had no idea the sheer power he had to hoof, and this mare was trying to humiliate him, leading him on a merry chase for nearly twenty whole minutes! Each time he would turn away or decide to go somewhere else, there she was, taunting him, striking at him and daring him to strike back. He would not stand for that. He would not stand for any of it! He stopped in his gallop and turned his gaze skyward. The pegasi were destroying the clouds, denying the advantage his power gave him over the weather.
"If you will not come down…" The cobblestones shook and dislodged, wispy tendrils of magic pushing their way to the surface. "Then I will strike you from the sk—!"
"Now!" Thunder turned to his right to see three unicorns, their horns aglow with the magic that was concentrated to a point on the very tips of their horns. Everything moved as if in slow motion as the ponies emerged from a ruined shopfront to his right. He turned his head; another one was coming from his left. He raised his shield instinctively…
—Only to have it shatter like sugar glass. The unicorns clashed bodily with him but did not harm him, and he prepared to lash out...
—Only to find his assailants were already running. He blinked in confusion before snorting, refocusing his magic to strike them where they stood. Before he could do so, a bolt of lightning struck the earth to his left, and he turned skyward to see a team of pegasi shepherding a lone cloud away from his line of sight. The knaves had been hoarding them together, not destroying them! Now that he knew, he would steal them from the curs and then—
—He ate sidewalk. The sigils on his hide burned brightly as he was struck with an unrelenting force, knocked to the ground and grinding against it. He was carried and knocked against the hard ground and repeatedly stomped on the face with a steel shod hoof. He briefly made out a flash of green before it was gone again. Thunder, dazed and confused, rolled back to his feet. His shield rose instinctively as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened. When he heard a piercing whistle, his ears perked up.
Handy strode out into the middle of a courtyard not far from where Thunder stood. The creature strode across the yard and the broken masonry and stone craft, his armour glittering in the moonlight. "Been a while. How have you been? I've been juuuusssst fiiiine."
"You…" Thunder breathed, the memory coming clear to him now. Yes, he remembered the name Handy. He remembered the human, the festival, his mission. He remembered what happened, why he had failed the mistress. "You're supposed to be dead."
"Details." Handy waved his hand as Thunder walked towards him from across the yard with vengeful purpose. "Unlike me however, I'm pretty sure you still need to worry about such an inconvenience. Here's a thought, Thunder: give up now and you get to die far, far away and a long, long time in the future. Normally I'd say you'd get to live, but ehhhh. A dungeon is not really living now, is it?"
Thunder lashed out, a lightning bolt of magical energy striking Handy full in the chest with enough force to knock him down. The cur pushed himself back up and… was he laughing?
"Oh man, whew. You know, if I wasn't so tired, I could've just Gandalf'd that." His torso was incandescent with energy, the light fading and the silver of his armour glowing a bright white. It was bright red in the places where his armour's integrity was diluted with other metals by repairs.
Thunder had forgotten about the armour. He adjusted for his mistake. He focused on the joints of the human's armour, on his cloak with which to focus and pull, upon the ground beneath the human to turn the very earth against him. His eyes glowed with furious, crackling energy.
And then he was thrown to the ground again, pounded again and again. He lashed out, but his assailant was gone. He raised his shield, turning around and around, again and again, searching for his attacker, for any ambushers. He finally turned to see the human was nearly on top of him. Thunder lashed out with a number of manifested bolts of magical energy, pummelling Handy and forcing him back step by step as he turned to his side, minimising the exposure of his bare forearm as his armour lit up from each impact.
Thunder was attacked again by unicorns that emerged from around corners and narrow lanes. Again his shield was broken, again their retreat was covered, and again did that damned grey blur beat him into the ground and fly off before he could react. And to add insult to injury, the hammer blow from Handy caught him completely off guard.
The sigils on his jaw sputtered, turning black and then disappearing, melting away from his fur like wet ink and dissipating into wispy smoke as it met the air. Thunder rolled his jaw and spat out a bloody tooth.
"Ah well, see? Progress!" Handy cackled.
And then he was gripped by the throat and lifted into the air, the edges of his chainmail and armour burning incandescently as the magic brushed against it to squeeze down on his neck. He was thrown hard against the ground and left there, barely moving. Thunder roared and the ground underneath him exploded outwards, erupting into spikes of hardened earth that burst from the ground, radiating outwards from the sorcerer. The unicorns that had been hiding were forced back. The pegasi abandoned their positions and clouds as bolts of magic perforated the air, making it impossible to approach. Handy was lifted up and thrown bodily by the convulsing earth, landing painfully and rolling along the ground, only stopping against the wall of a building.
All in all, it was a good plan for the minute or so it worked. Keep the ground pounders away, unicorns on ambush duty and focusing their magic on the points of their horns like he had seen Whirlwind do. Pegasi would cover their retreat, Stellar was in for hit and run, and Handy was the big, bright, magic-proof distraction. Rinse, repeat.
His vision came to him in fits and spurts, slipping in and out of oblivion. He was hurting pretty badly. The whitewash sound created by Thunder's magical fit drowned out nearly everything else as eldritch light lit up the entire courtyard. He had to be running low, he simply had to. Everything Handy had seen about magic implied it cost effort and exertion. Old magic didn't seem to follow the same rules from what he could tell, but Thunder had to be wearing himself out. Handy had even managed to strike a physical blow after all this time. It was probably the only one he was going to get. He had given up a bit of blood and was feeling the consequences. He nearly had his windpipe collapsed on him, and every breath felt like a small, brisk miracle. And he had just been flung around like a doll while in such a state. This he could not just shrug off, and every movement felt like a titanic effort of will. Arcs of magical lightning struck the walls and ground around him. An unfortunate pegasus was struck in the wing and collided with the ground ten feet in front of him.
The plan was the same – he still needed an out even though everything had gone pear-shaped on him. He pulled himself up, using the nearby wall for leverage and surveyed his options. Thunder was running low; that was good. In order for that to occur, he had to supercharge a thestral; that was bad. She was going to be an extreme liability to the plan. Several of the exits out of this very courtyard were blocked off; that was bad. On the flipside, many of the weekend warrior ponies were incapacitated in some manner, or backing off as he had told Cloud Skipper to do; that was good. He was trapped on the waterfront, which was bad. He still didn't know where and what kind of artefact he was even trying to recover for the changelings, which was bad. If things kept going as they were going, either Thunder would escape, several somebodies died, possibly even Handy himself, or he would be incapacitated and captured by the Equestrians, which was bad. And on top of all that, Handy was beaten and would really really like to lie down and go the fuck to sleep. That was very bad.
He'd had worse odds.
He spied a cowering Goldcloak through the broken doorframe of a nearby ruined house, quivering beneath a window sill between a rickety-looking sofa and a cabinet full of broken crockery. A discharged shootstick was cradled in her forelegs as she rocked back and forth, the green-tinged alchemical smoke wafting from its muzzle.
It was a dickish thing to do, it really was, but he had no other option that gave him as much flexibility. He had a mission to fulfil and a geas to cancel out. Also, he liked the idea of not being in Equestrian captivity, answering God knew how many questions he'd rather not and then be sent to Griffonia on the ponies' terms. That was even if they would do so at all after this debacle.
But still he hesitated. Was he really going to go from necessary feeding to simply biting a conveniently placed meat bag, an erstwhile ally of circumstance though they may be, for simple battlefield practicality?
He was jolted from his moral musings when several bolts of magical energy struck the wall above him. Thunder was still running wild and lashing out at everything around him. That made the decision for him. He crawled to his knees. Every ache and joint of his body protested, and his heart beat faster to make up for the lost blood. He felt light-headed with the exertion as he first crawled to his fallen hammer. Then a bolt of eldritch fury struck it, and an explosion of brightness nearly blinded him. He lowered his arm, fearful that his weapon had been destroyed.
It had not. It lay there, same as it had been just before it was struck. It did not glow like his armour, for it was not of the same construction, nor did it burn or melt from the fury of the magical blast. Indeed, nothing more than a faint blue arc of electricity danced across its surface before it faded from sight.
Though he did not know it, a witch smiled.
Handy did not dwell on it, deciding not to question the good fortune and grabbing it. He ran, stumbling, towards the ruined home.
"Ahh!" The mare jumped up, only to fall back on her rear, levelling the spiked shootstick at the tall human as he stumbled through the doorway into her hiding spot beneath a destroyed window. "Wh-What do you want!? Go away!"
"Calm! Calm down! I'm just trying to get some cover!" As if to emphasize his point, the air outside the window cracked as another bolt of energy struck the wall. Handy crouched down. "Look, what's your name?"
"What? Who cares!? Ju-Just get out there and fight that thing. It’s what the sergeant said you were here for, right!?"
"Just tell me your name," Handy calmly demanded, staring her dead in the eyes.
"M-Maple… Maple Leaf."
"Okay, Maple. Why'd you take the gold?"
"What?" He gestured to her cloak.
"Why did you become a soldier?"
"I… I wanted to do my duty. To protect Equestria."
"Including the citizens of Manehatten?" Handy asked, noting her horn as he slowly got closer under the smashed window. Maple seemed to calm down, so long as he kept staring straight into her eyes. 'A unicorn? Damn it, of all the useless… Wait. Wait, no, this could be useful actually.'
"Of course!"
"So you'd be willing to bleed for the safety of everyone you know?"
"I… Yes, that’s… What are you—" He placed his hand on her withers and smiled sadly.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
--=--
It was beautiful, in a way. It felt wrong, made the skin crawl, caused bile to rise to the throat for an indefinable reason. Flying as she was, though, everything seemed to be moving so slowly in comparison, the lights and the shadows they cast possessing a terrible, destructive allure.
She was done playing around. She had warned her superiors to move everypony back, telling the pegasi still in the air to spread the word. Enough good ponies had suffered tonight.
She dived, ducking under an arc of energy, and slashed her claws across his side with enough force to break the blades off of her hooves and to cause the sigils protecting his flesh to finally give out under abuse. The force of the blow was followed up by a powerful buck as she arched her back in the air with a speed and grace that would ordinarily have been impossible. Thunder was thrown into the air, his attacks interrupted and silenced.
She wasted no time, lest he come to his senses before he hit the ground. Another powerful flap of her wings, which until only recently had been broken and aching, and she was upon him. She threw him to the ground and wailed into him, feeling the magical shielding burst into life and repel her blows as if she were hitting rubber. Just as equally, she felt the bare fur and broken bones as she attacked where the sigils had given way at long last.
His eyes flashed, his mouth opening, and Stellar got a face full of concentrated magic. She jumped off, shrieking and blinded. For a brief eternity her entire existence was subsumed by maddening pain. She leapt off his form, something falling from her head as she did so. She landed hard on the ground, thrashing and screaming. Slowly she calmed down, the pain subsiding and a faint coolness creeping along the contours of her cheeks and over her eyes. She felt wetness first, then cold, then the bite of the air as it brushed against her flesh. The pain was replaced by a curious trickling feeling, like a thousand tiny droplets of water slowly closing over her face. At long last, she felt her eyes strain as her vision returned to her.
Shaking her head and rubbing her eyes as she blinked away the stinging pain, she searched for the warlock’s whereabouts, and upon seeing her blood and clots of burning flesh on the ground where she had stumbled, she halted. Fear shot through her, and she reached for the nearest broken window, patting down her face with a hoof. She was fine, not a scratch on her. She didn't have long to contemplate the fact before a furious Thunder rose to his hooves, bleeding and coughing. He didn't talk, he didn't shout – he just attacked.
And so it went. She would exhaust herself running and fleeing from the devastating assaults of the warlock, and in turn he would try in futility to drop his attacks and raise his shield in time to prevent her flanking rejoinders.
He'd unleash his magic; she'd fly off. She'd break another one of his sigils; he'd lash out and cut her flesh, only for it to heal with infuriating quickness. He'd destroy a building just to bring her down, and she'd waste his time by not politely sitting still and being crushed. She'd break his jaw; he'd break her wing just to see it snap back into place. She was exhausted, slowing down. He rarely managed to strike her, but when he did, it was devastating. No matter how many times she rolled with the hits, she was running out of steam. She couldn't keep this pace up.
Fortunately, neither could he.
It felt like the underside of his skin had been rubbed raw with iron wool and had vinegar poured over it. With a sucking noise and a snapping sound that echoed in the vast empty space the waterfront had become, Thunder collapsed on the ground, crawling his way down a flight of steps on the side of a building to a lower street level. His body writhed in pain and his mouth contorted in formless words of agony he could not give voice to. Stellar alighted on the ground and coolly followed, sensing the fight was over.
"Stay away!" Thunder demanded, collapsing and falling down the last several steps and landing in the cold and mossy brickwork of the lower street. He hurriedly scrambled away. His eyes were wild and he had to hold his jaw to speak properly. "Keep away from me!"
"It's over," Stellar said between breaths. It had taken nearly everything the human's blood had given her but he was finally down. She felt dead on her feet. "Just give up."
"No, you y-y-you wretch! You'll never take my memories from me! They're mine! Mine, you hear!?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about, and I don't care." She passed beneath an overpassing street, her eyes still clearly visible in the shadow. Thunder gasped and hurriedly tried to write a rune into the ground, only to blink stupidly as the symbol he had carved out of the muck and packed in dirt was unintelligible. He scratched it out and tried again. That one didn't even look finished.
"Oh no…" He inhaled sharply as realization crept up on him. Stellar hooked the broken blades of one of her hooves up under the lapel of Thunder Strike's jacket, bringing him to her eye level.
"You have a lot of explaining to do. And you’re coming with me.”
"Yeahhh, about that…" Stellar's ears flicked towards the source of the sound, and she turned to gawp in surprise as Handy emerged from the shadows of an alcove. He snuck up on her? How!? She didn't even hear him move! She couldn't—
There was a thunderous crack that resonated through the night and a brief burst of light as Handy's hammer collided with her helmet. The force threw her against the wall, and Handy stumbled backwards in shock. He looked down at his crackling hammer with something approaching shock and wonderment.
"I don't know what you did," he said, turning his baleful gaze toward Thunder as he silently moved towards him. His heavy boot splashed down on a puddle of water, but not an octave of sound could be heard. " I'll thank you later."
"W-Wait, please wait!" Handy threw a punch that knocked the pony insensate, but conscious. He bent over, threw him up over his shoulder, and walked off into the darkness. That was the last thing Stellar saw before passing out as the eldritch lightning ran through her body, paralyzing her.
Handy shifted the groaning weight of the pony over his shoulder, his moans the only noise that could be heard in his passing as he disappeared into the darkness beneath the streets. He was heavy on his shoulder, but he put up with it to get away from Stellar. He lifted his hammer and studied it, contemplating the faint shimmer upon its scarred and pitted silver surface that once shone so brightly and brilliantly. A thousand thoughts and questions went through his mind, fruitlessly searching for answers he did not have.
Like so many other things, if nowhere near as odious, he put such thoughts at the back of his mind. He had business to take care of first.
--=--
It laughed.
It laughed long, low, and quietly. It was a sibilant sound, yet harsh, like a snake that had contracted black lung. It echoed and carried along the halls and the crypts beneath the castles of long dead kings. It was the sound that haunted the ghosts of empires.
It was the voice of a dealer to the desperate, the greedy, and the foolish. It was a loan shark who was generous in its terms and exacting in its debts, uncaring of who sought its succour nor why. None could truly pay back what was owed, so they would take more to stave off the inevitable, only succeeding in delving themselves more completely into its control when it exacted what was owed.
And upon this night, a debtor had finally come to term and would pay what was owed, a price no sane person would ever consider if they knew what it truly was. And why should they care about the real price, the hidden costs of the power with which they have been given? The laughing voice had found many who didn’t and revelled in giving them what they sought, for it was generous and giving. Oh, many had thought it a fool for that, but it was old, sooo very old, so very wise and twisted and clever. It could wait, for they were none of those things. They would fall, as all mortals do, their greed consuming them as they died.Their arrogance would overcome them; they would waste their might until naught was left. Then it would exact his price.
Their fear and anger would blind them into not questioning the sudden largesse of their betters, not even when the very object that was the centre of their master’s ire made itself known. In their blindness, they would lay waste to themselves. Then, and only then, it would exact its price.
It could wait. It could give them as long as they needed to find some way out of their bargain, their pact, their accord. For their was none save death. It had been here before them; it would be here long after them. It could wait as long as they needed. It could grant them as many favourable terms as they desired. It was patient. It was generous. It would have its due in time.
“Sssssssoooo vvvveeerrrrryyyyy geeeennneeeerrrroooouuuussssss…”
Stats
Page generated in 0.034 seconds
Total duration
780 users online
1,096,682 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
What great timing.
Ominous.
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
~Friedrich Nietzsche
Dear
peasantsreaders, if you spot any errors in there, blame Handyman. He apparently couldn't wait until I got home to give it another run through.Also, tune in next two weeks for when the universe takes note of Handy's jaunty behaviour and takes... corrective action.
So Handy is Thor now?
so Handy's hammer is immune to magic as well now?
It was time someone called Handy out of his jerkiness. A pity he still doesn't give a fuck.
6096286 Death to tyrannical typos!
He's casting spells with... lisped insults? Sorry, just thought it was funny. Slurred speech is a thing and slurs are a thing, but those two words don't have quite the same meaning. One means indistinct diction, the other derogatory remarks about someone's background or lifestyle. I don't think you meant to refer to either. I do wonder what kind of magic you'd get out of that, though.
6096286
So he's finally going to be given the fuckin' beat down (hopefully literally, but i'll settle for metaphorical if need be) that i've been dying to give him for his extremely arrogant, spiteful assholeishness that he just keeps spewing? I mean I love the story and I don't hate how Handy is being written, I just hate who he is as a person, if I could meet him personally, I would lay into him a smack-down for how callous and cruel he is being.
On another note, i'm really enjoying the story as a whole, just about everything about the story is fantastic. Compelling characters, compelling storylines, anything that is a cliché is very well written so it doesn't feel like its been done over and over to death. All in all, keep up the good work.
FINALLY! That son of a bitch gets his comeuppance. You know that ‘smile’ Doomguy makes when he picks up a BFG? Yeah, that was my face at the end of this chapter.
A +1 item? Now he just needs to multiclass into a spellcasting class.
Handy should get a crossbow.
6096464
Multiclassing into a spellcasting class is for scrubs. You take one level of Fighter for the free feats, not the other way around.
Whoops....
So Thunder made deals with the thing handy released for power, and he paid with his memories. Now his payments have come back to haunt him.
Actual picture of Handy IRL:
cinemablend.com/images/news_img/39974/Thor_The_Dark_World_39974.jpg
(Except, y'know... he's a total asshole and not a superhero.)
Hammer of the Changeling Champion upgrade acquired. +1 shocking enchantment added.
6096696 Or perhaps +1 to Handy's radiant faggotry?
I've got to say: Handy's impulse vision, (if we're going to call it that) becomes more terrifying the more I think about it. It isn't a visibly physical change but God damn does it make him seem truly inhuman.
Imagine being able to potentially subdue another person's willpower by desire, as if willpower were something measurable and other people were intrinsically lesser or more vulnerable than you. Eye-contact and desire. Imagine the change to your daily life; you couldn't not abuse that somehow. How would you avoid other people feeling simply... lesser?
Imagine someone else having that ability and using it on or around you without your knowledge. Shit's horrifying. Maybe this is being generous but I'd give that person a couple years tops before they were drowning in whatever pleasures and titles they strove for.
An asshole he may be but Handy was right about one thing- everything he is, is what the ponies created. If the ponies wan't Handy to stop being an asshole they could always stop trying to back him into a corner all the time.
6096286 6096445
I'm honestly a little surprised at how every one is calling for him to receive 'retribution' for his 'jaunty behavior'. Most of this story is nothing but him being made a but monkey for infuriatingly arrogant powers far grater then him, let alone Murphy's crusade to make Handy his personal but monkey. I say its about fucking time the sod got to push back a little.
6097014 I imagine the character as a wonderful conversation partner. He doesn't seem inherently dickish. Just pissed off far past where he was meant to be pushed.
6096286 Guys lay off the dislike button.
To be fair man, you were running through it hours ago. Then it was nine o' clock and there was no sight of you, I figured you had gone over what you wanted so I posted the chapter before heading to bed for work.
What a fucking cool chapter. Was waiting for Thunder facade to drop and for him to just start throwing shit around, it was done really well too. Also the scene with Stellar and Handy is really good, at first I kind of hated Stellar (in a good way, in a plot related way) but with more and more from her I like her more and more.
Handy's gonna be pissed when Thunder wakes up...
I guess you could say Handy's hammer has been "Thunder Struck"
6097633 This guy knows what's up.
6097288
Handy Hammer +1
Enhancement: Attack and Damage rolls
Critical: 1d6 per plus
Property: Silvered - deal additional 1d4 damage to susceptible creatures; +3 attack per plus against susceptible creatures.
Thunder Bolt (Power * Encounter): versus Fortitude. Chance to inflict half damage to enemies adjacent to target creature. Inflicts ongoing Shock damage, save ends. 1d10 damage per plus.
Tada.
6096445 His life is shit. He deserves to be as much of an asshole as he wants.
I hope his winning streak continues indefinately.
I had to read this 15 minutes to midnight, damn you Handy and your publishing.
But good chapter btw, although it is a tiny bit smaller than your standards.
6097710 Shock damage? Deal half of total damage done to health to maga/magicka?
Also, where is the resistance bonus?
6096228 I aim to please.
6096274 =]
6091615 I... I cringe at you.
6090073 =]
6094493 Hehehe, man, not knowing why you can't see your genitalia is almost as bad as not remembering you have any.
Almost.
6094616 There've been worse comparisons, though I've never played OFF.
6096341 He wishes.
6096342 Quite the opposite.
6096362 Assholes tend not to care. Kinda what makes them assholes.
6096405 Let them eat ~
6096408 Actually its kinda worse than that. Because not only are the hissing noises being made sibilant and snake like, but the the slurs themselves are as well.
6096445 I do enjoy how many people actually like to see Handy suffer some humiliation because they hate him as a person, yet seem to like him as a character anyway.
6096458 I'm happy you enjoyed it so much.
6096466 Eh, they take too long to reload.
6096464
6096488
6097710
6098444
6096696
6096989 This isn't the first chapter I've noticed this but it always makes me laugh how people interpret this as if this story were an RPG. Its really amusing.
6096566 Fixed, thanks for pointing that out.
6096619 Very close to the mark, but not quite. Thunder got his power and knowledge from the Mistress, he has no idea what the voice is. Now, had you said that about the Mistress on the other hand you'd be entirely correct, but the nature of Old Magic is the deal applies no matter who learns it or how.
6096666 Pretty sure Handy is not that naturally handsome. Or blonde.
6097006 Congratulations on correctly making note of Handy's next major moral freakout in the future. Right now he doesn't fully comprehend what he's doing when he does that, when he realizes it'll be fun times.
Handy already has to deal with this, constantly, as a background noise in his brain whenever he has to suppress his near constant noting and thinking of blood, feeding and the availability and ease with which he can satiate that hunger. If only he had no consideration for all the walking talking wineskins around him. Recall his breakdown in the forest back in the deer arc, its primary cause was the darker thoughts, musings and impulses rising to the surface of his mind and nearly overtaking him completely as he slowly gave in to despair. He already has to struggle not to constantly think of everyone as potential food on an instinctual level, which gets harder the hungrier he becomes. The realization of his vampiric ability to bend people to his will (to an extent) will almost certainly exacerbate this concern, but unlike the hunger it isn't something he can take a shot of blood and pretend isn't a problem for a week. However it is not immutable, note in this same chapter where he uses it to calm and lull the unsuspecting unicorn before feeding on her, he was using it unconsciously against Stellar to intimidate her and she stood firm. Also note this isn't an inherent ability he had as a vampire, but something that became permanently a part of him as a power from consuming enough changeling blood.
As to making him inhuman well... Yeah. I guess it would put him farther from baseline humanity in that respect. The ability to persuade and compel people to bend to your desires? Of course he's going to abuse that. He'd have to actively try to not do so.
6097014 Awwww, is that some sympathy for the main character I see?
6097269 The funny thing is, we haven't actually seen Handy's true breaking point yet, the point where he literally says 'fuck it', kills who he wants, does what he wants and gives into his passions, especially rage, whenever he wishes. Note it has been a very, very long time since we had Handy go into a berserker rage where he literally sees red cloud his vision like he did in early chapters.
The man is highly strung and is trying, very desperately to control himself on every level. Even despite his excesses and failures. He hasn't been pushed far enough yet because, frankly, a lot more people would be dead otherwise.
As to how he is in polite conversation without pressure or subterfuge well, believe it or not we will actually get to see a scene were that is demonstrated in the near future.
6097298 Tends to happen with antagonists the more character you give them.
6097328 Why? He's got him right where he wants him.
6098007 Yes that does certainly sound like an excuse.
6098297 Yes. This pleases me.
6098440 Its a split chapter, hence its shortness.
I just must to ask this. What the hell is wrong with his arm? Is this reaction from his first contact with fire as a vampire? Is this because of this fucking potion that got him adicted? Or is this some kind side effect of being a vampire?
Besides this what exactly is happening to his arm 'cause I know that he had a rash but now? No clue whatsever.
6098552 His first contact with fire was on his right hand not his left, but details details.
Sadly it is due to his addiction to the salamander salve, or rather, it is a reaction to having gone off it for so long now. He had been developing a rash that wouldn't go away back during the tournament arc, no matter how much salve he put on it, and his left forearm is where he habitually rubbed salve on for recreational purposes. (Most other times he applied it to wounds or areas with fractured bones where it worked its healing properties), not even blood healing seemed to get rid of it.
As time wore on after the tournament and his addiction went more and more unattended, the worse and worse the 'rash' had gotten. Until finally his arm started having muscle spasms and aches. Right now his arm is discoloured, a sickening purplish, yellow, blue and black of bruised flesh and the skin is hard and flaking, the worse it gets the greater his desire for more salve. Part of the reason why Handy gave that arm in particular to Stellar to feed on, apart from rather obviously not wanting to give her his neck was because he wanted to see if there was anything 'wrong' with it, like an infection that would get into his blood and carry to other parts of his body.
If there was, then perhaps he could give Stellar whatever it was he had. If it wasn't, good times all around.
This should perhaps give you a clue as to why Salamander Salve was illegal in Equestrian way back in the beginning arc, despite its healing and relaxing properties. The thing its doing to Handy? Its worse for ponies and affects them harder and faster even if they were exposed to less of the salve than Handy was.
Fair's fair however, Handy is being weened off the addiction through sheer inaccessibility alone, and he isn't in danger of losing his arm any time soon. Eventually it will stop degenerating and stop aching. As to whether it will stay disfigured long after he's kicked the habit remains to be seen.
6098573 thx it's all the info I needed.
6097014 Imagine the kind of political bullshit Equestria would have to go through to fully extend the hand of friendship to Handy. First they'd have to admit to afflicting him with mutated thestralism from the train disaster. All that civil paranoia over the topic; Stellar would be made an example of. There's also much more things they'd have to do, and Handy hasn't exactly been clean of blame since early days.
It would be much easier to capture him, get info, and hold him accountable for the shitheap of faults he's caused than self-inflict trouble from the shitheap of problems they've caused. They only have to capture one guy, after all. The amount of problems barely compares. At least that's the theory...
It's still apparent Handy is an asshole. However, you can sure as hell bet that Equestria isn't going to atone from all the bullshit they've caused, (they're really not in a position to.) He's not completely at fault for it all. So yeah, it would be in poor taste to see him punished too much for everything happening.
6098508 I'm trying to imagine an endgame Handy and I keep coming up with crazy maxed out RPG characters. Something on par with the serious heavy hitters.
Except for his armour. That's mostly getting progressively shittier.
6098635 *waves his hand dismissively*
Armour can be bought and sold.
What I find amusing is people, understandably, think Handy's hammer is enchanted. It is not, it is bewitched, there is a huge difference. So too his armour is not enchanted, merely forged with rare magical materials.
Actual enchantments, such as Jacques sword are rare for a very good reason which will become apparent. Buuut I suppose I can see why people would see RPG like aspects in this story and Handy in particular, although that is certainly not my intention. Although I would definitely play a game of Bad Mondays if something like it existed.
6098663
Not one you ever actually explained in-story, though, at least not as far as I'm aware. It's unsurprising that people would be confused by the difference if they don't actually know there was even supposed to be one. Maybe you wanted to and it slipped your mind?
Say, this has been bugging me for a while about Handy's little "blood powerup," but I couldn't find the time to ask: is it additive or one time only? That is to say, if Handy keeps over-snacking on Changelings, will the power it gives him eventually grow stronger? Because while I doubt you'd make him exploit that for this story even if it was, that sounds like it would be a bit overpowered, both for the character and the setting.
Honestly, you only have yourself to blame for that. You're the one who basically made Old Magic into a Vancian casting system. You really can't expect anyone who has played a major RPG in the last 15 years or so to not pick up on that.
6098748 No no, I said it was understandable they're confused. Precisely because I hadn't explained it in story yet. I was just mentioning it there ahead of time so that when I actually do explain enchantment, people won't wonder why the witch could do the, seemingly, same thing in literally a second like she did at the tournament.
Blood is very addictive. Also, you know, neccessary for a growing vampire. But as for the power he gets there is an upper limit. There's a point were if say he snacks on changelings exclusively, his changeling granted powers do not get any stronger than they are. The only difference is wether or not he is running on a blood high at that particular moment.
To elucidate, Handy has the powers granted to him by changeling blood as a permenant addition to his powers right now and if he snacks on say a couple more, then they'll have reached their upper limit and they won't get any stronger. But when he is 'normal' (IE not currently on a blood high or hasn't recently fed.) they are not as powerful as they would be when he is on a blood high, which applies no matter what blood he gets in this case. Take the pyschic radar thing (I need a better name for that damned ability), sure he could make it extend farther in range if, say, he exercised and practiced with it. But even if he snacked on changelings for the next thousand years it would never become more awesome to the point of professor Xavier or something ridiculous like that.
Powers are cumulative but only to a point. He won't become strong enough to, say, break the moon if he snacked on earth ponies exclusively forevermore. But if he snacked on two different blood types that increased his physical strength (say thestrals and earth ponies), then the power would be cumulative, but again only to a point. It doesn't keep getting stronger forever.
This was why I was reluctant to give him this ability to keep powers permanently in the first place without giving him, yet another, crippling debuff, but I got talked out of it. Handy needed something unique to himself considering the power scales he deals with.
6098771
But yeah, that answered the question comprehensively, thanks.
Additive, not addictive. That it's addictive has become plenty clear on its own by now.
Personally, though, I'll admit I'm still not really terribly fond of the idea. It just feels too much like a cheesy video game mechanic. While I understand your point, I'd have preferred it if you had dealt with that problem by just keeping the power creep a bit flatter, as a general thing. It just doesn't really seem like the character's thing to deal with stronger enemies by getting more powerful himself - when he had to deal with an undead dragon, he dropped a really big rock on it, he didn't develop a sudden bonus to slaying dracoliches or whatever, if you get what I mean. I'd rather have seen him solve those problems by thinking outside the box more, instead of starting to do things on their terms.
Auspex.
6098580 Oh dear, righting their wrongs would be hard? Oh those poor little ponies.... if that's the stance they take then my stance will be leaning a lot closer to Handys current opinions- I.e fuck the ponies with a cactus. and I'd welcome watching him literally hammer the hypocrisy out of them even more then I do now.
6098508 Its more a matter of principle. I like the insufferable pricks with demigod status a lot less than the one human shaped one they are aiming their arrogance at. So, yea, Handy wins by default. If his attitude doesn't wind up altering in direct proportion to his status as an underdog then I'll probably revise that sympathy a bit. Though, I do have to say, he's far less of an asshole then I would be in his situation.
On the other hand, A few choice griffins do have my sympathy, (and I say this at the risk of you going all George R. R. Martin on them)... so, lets see if that favor survives the (griffin prince does something to strain their friendship) chapter that's coming up next.
6098787 You mean by doing exactly what he did right now in this chapter and made Thunder someone else's problem and then swoop in and steal the prize? Handy learned the hard way just becoming more powerful and whacking the bad guy doesn't always work, that was the entire point of the first fight with Thunder after all, more powerful does not always equate with victory. It was even more pointed given that was exactly how he defeated the young dragon just before that point.
I understand perfectly what you're saying and I agree, its one of the main reasons I make Handy have such huge moral problems with his vampirism, (also because its more believable that way), even if it can be a tad annoying. He firmly believes that what he does is wrong, but its still a part of him, and part of the massive temptation, beyond the obvious, is precisely because its a means to power. That's on top of sating hunger and the pleasure received from drawing blood. There's no sense giving a moral quandary like this without making the possibility of giving in wholesale really fucking appealing. But honestly, do you really expect me not to make this have a downside at some point in the future? I already have a means of limiting this power creep lined up, (in a useful way), and its all a matter of Handy discovering something in the future, although how he works around this I have yet to devise but it'll come in due time.
If you're worried I am going to stop having Handy think around problems, you really needn't worry. The next chapter, (due in two weeks, its finished it just needs editing) was actually really challenging for me to write because I had placed Handy in a very precarious situation as a result of this chapter and I couldn't have him vampire his way out of it without willingly attacking someone innocent while not hungry, which he hasn't done yet. His vampiring out of this situation was mostly down to "Oh God my everything is broken, I really don't want to be captured, fffffuuuuucck" after not one but two of his plans had failed (Plan 'Have the guards whittle him down first' and plan 'rinse and repeat' respectively), he hasn't reach the point where he will willingly just bite anyone to get by. Even if he has reached the point of doing so when desperate and/or hungry with no convenient source of animal blood.
6098793 Wwwweeeelllll, Jude has been pestering me to kill off more characters soooo....
6098845
No, I wasn't expecting that. I just meant I'm not fond of it conceptually, speaking in general terms. So far, I haven't found much to criticize about the execution, or I would be complaining a lot more than I am.
You do have to admit, though, that getting someone else to do your beatdowns for you still comes down to administering beatdowns. The actual sequence of events stays the same, it's just the agent that changes.
While it isn't that big of a deal, I do think there has been a bit too much of a focus on fighting and outright conflict ever since the whole tournament arc, instead of just... Handy interacting with the world, as it were. There used to be a lot more of that, but recently, the story has been very strongly directed towards swiftly progressing the current plotline. I do understand that the pace of events has started to pick up and things are starting to come to a head, and there's really nothing wrong with that, but that kind of thing is always my least favourite part of any story.
6098876 >Things coming to a head.
>Winter of Handy's first year in story
>Prologue's beginning kicks off somewhere around the winter of his second
>Kek
Don't you worry none, there will be plenty of Handy just interacting with the world and soon, (relatively) this is less a run to the endgame and more a gauntlet Handy has to run, (I wouldn't throw Handy into the endgame like this, he'd be absolutely crushed, the guy is mentally and physically exhausted and a bit of a wreck), its more of a stress test than anything. Although hilariously, Handy himself hasn't been doing that much actual fighting since the tournament arc.
Admittedly this was definitely down to my own failings as a writer. I should have had the whole Thunder/Chrysalis/Macguffin thing happen immediately after the tourney arc and have the Greenwoods as a seperate arc (as well as Blackport and Thorax's and Jacque's storyline.) God knows I wanted to explore more of what goes on in there, even if Handy had literally all of the reasons for wanting to get out as soon as humanly possible. I mistakenly had the story go immediately to the Greenwoods and my experiment in the 'Hero of another story' trope and tie that in to the larger arc, making it way longer than it should be, which is why it feels like its picking up to progress the story. And to an extent it is progressing the storyline (its now over half a million words, I have to do SOMETHING). Something I will know for again when he finally does have a break.
Oh! In good news, Handy eventually gets a break... at... some point... in the future.
6098890
lolwhat. How fucking long are you planning to make this story? You are already at over half a million words. That's a good 100k words more than the length of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. If that's just the prologue, you will literally never be done writing this.
That said, I honestly enjoyed the Greenwoods arc. It was a very interesting sequence of events in a completely original setting. I just really didn't like the characters involved all that much. The deer guy annoyed me and Jacques is just too smug and in control all the time. I definitely understand why Handy hates these guys so much, which I suppose you can read a as a compliment to your writing skills. :-P
I'm not terribly sad that he's currently stuck in the arse end of nowhere without them, that's for sure.
6098905
Edit: you misunderstand, the entire story is NOT just the prologue, the prologue was Handy waking up in the Everfree and going through a bunch of bullshit, I was referring to the future scene at the start of the prologue where Handy is arrested in Canterlot and is brought face to face with a... disgruntled Luna. That takes palce at the end of year two, and that very much is at the endgame of BM.
So you can see why I wanted to push things along a bit plot wise. Honestly though at this rate I have a couple of chapters written out and can easily churn out more over the next few weeks, the problem is not me writing this its the update schedule. But I am far from the only writer with a story reaching north of 500k on this site. But considering I have another story I want to do after BM, its a bit of a concern. I might actually be forced to do more timeskips as things go along, which I absolutely fucking loathe to do. In fact I am writing out two chapters now (this arc is done, all thats left is the next chapter and the interlude which is also completed at arond 7k words) which take place in my first timeskip back before the tournament arc which details Handy's daily life in Gethrenia and what he actually does as a Baron, a Knight and the Sword of the King and his training with Shortbeak over that period.
I timeskipped that during the tourney arc, precisely because I felt I needed to save words and time and just ended up confusing people. ''How did Handy get so gud with the glaive lul?"
So you know, fuck Timeskips. Except for travel times. Because fuck travel times more.
As for the Greenwoods, in hindsight (no pun intended) I actually really love it even if I didn't get to write anywhere near what I wanted to. As for Jacques and Whirlwind, some people loved them and, like yourself and JBL, some people hated them. Which I am entirely okay with, so long as no one was bored with them.
6098913
Ah, alright, that clears things up, then. Yeah, I can definitely understand why you'd want to push things along, with that in mind. I certainly get your dislike of timeskips, too. I don't really like them all that much, myself; they always seem like a band-aid for bad planning - if you have large empty stretches of time in your plot where nothing happens, you didn't plot it out well enough.
6098913
Speaking of the whole Greenwoods thing: Anyone ever point out to you how silly "Hartsight" is as a name? Just imagine if you applied that to people: "The mysterious human ability to control the technology around them, given to them through ancient magical pacts, it is the mystical power of... the Dudesight."
Ooooh, ominous. It really only gets funnier the more I think about it.