Lantern

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Sieben

Randel stared at Fluttershy, cradled in his arm. He knew the symptoms, he knew the side effects. He also knew that she couldn’t actually die, not really. Not easily. The other Invisible Nine he had met, had watched die, he had witnessed with his own eyes, performed with his own hands.
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Wolf, he had pressed his Doorknocker to the broken man’s head, removed it from his shoulders with a thunderous retort that was only slightly muffled by the tattered, mud soaked jacket he had wrapped it in. Hans, after the rifles stopped firing, he tore across the sewer and gripped the peeling face skin. He didn’t try to put it back on, no, that would have been silly. He smashed the skull into the brick hard enough to splinter the back of the helmet, padding and all. Bat, Bartholemew Longstrider, his own brother, he had taken under his arm, a headlock. He remembered as brightly as the day it had happened.

Bat had driven his teeth into Randel’s ribcage. Randel tore his teeth out. Bat had lost himself in the lantern, his death would be no great loss. A blue glow had surrounded them, from Bat’s lantern, not his own. His mind had been clear as he had wrenched the giant’s head around and tore it from its neck. He crushed the skull beneath his boot, still bleeding, still screaming without air.
Johns, of the 902nd, Ballistic Tactics Troopers, living cannonballs. He had stood there, in front of the porcine once-man, had stood, pale eyes closed, but clear as he was showered by the gore. The thick wire mesh made short work of the creature.
Peterson, ‘Bear’, one of the last of the 906th Falling Tactics Troopers, he remembered how Bear’s heart tasted as he tore it out of the still animated corpse’s chest with his teeth. He remember the feeling of his own forearm shattering under the reflexive action of Bear chomping down on it.

He didn’t know the name of the first of the 909th Incindiary Tactics Troopers, just that the charred, somehow still alive body had burned him far more than Hans ever could. Not physically, but mentally. He never learned the man’s name, because he would never have used it. Nor did the man know his name. They knew each-other only by their numbers, only by their rank. It had been a painful moment when he ripped the man’s arm off and beat him half to death with it, but less than when he had crunched yet another skull beneath his feet, crimson tears leaking from his clear eyes.
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Now, as he watched the young creature in his arms, he knew he couldn’t save her, that if she stopped, she could possibly live, but it would be as a coma patient in some hospital somewhere. Her body needed it as much as he needed…He flinched involuntarily as memories of Bat pushed to the forefront, what the Lantern had done to him and his brothers. What had happened to all of the Ubermensch. He glowered at Twilight, then stepped from the library. He removed his hand from her muzzle, shaking the blood into a bush that immediately began to bubble and hiss. His glove joined the bush quickly, and he kept walking, out to the river.
He set Fluttershy on the edge of the water, muzzle close enough that she could easily get a drink if she needed one, from water flowing quickly enough to remove and dilute vomit, should it happen. He sat on the ground, hands crossed over his knees, “Nine Oh Three. Do you understand what that means?”

She coughed up more blood into the water, didn’t even try to wipe it off, but looked up at him with blood leaking from either side of her mouth, “My grandfather told me. He told me my mother was immune to the pull, that I should have been, that it was linked to the Y-chromosome. My mother died of an overdose when I was seven. I had just started out.”

Randel stared at her, deep eyes reflecting nothing but her own.

“I had to. It was this burning feeling in my gut, one I never could get rid of! I had to drown it, but water didn’t work,” sobs began to rip from her throat, along with more blood, and bits of flesh, “I tried washing it away with sweet things, but it never did anything! I couldn’t take it anymore!”

Randel understood, if from an outside perspective. He was first generation, but he had seen the 903rd drinking alcohol to drown their pain, until that became no longer enough. One had tried pure bleach, another drank gasoline. It seemed to dull the fire burning inside, like the lantern did. Exactly like the lantern did.

“The pills, they help, a little. I can function, but…”

“It’s not enough. It never will be. I know how the curse affects the Plague Hunters. They share their suffering, but you…You never could, could you. The urge to cause pain was never great en…” He was cut off by more hacking sounds, and Fluttershy forcing herself to her hooves, blood flowing from her muzzle now, mixed with tears.

“I can’t hurt other ponies! I CAN’T DO IT!” Her hoof lashed out, crashing into Randel with surprising force, but not knocking the giant over. He grabbed her hoof reflexively, and began to squeeze. Hard enough to make the stiff hoof begin to compress, soft enough to not break it, yet. He leaned in close to her buttery muzzle, splattered with crimson.

He screamed, a deep, primal scream that transcended language, distance, and time, “YOU HAVE TO!”
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Alice stared at the grey lantern sitting on her bed. It had woken her up. Not with the mutterings of Kill Them, not with the horrid moaning. No, she had grown used to those. Well, mostly. She understood why Randel had such dark eyes all the time. The primal scream had torn her from her bed, and her dagger was drawn at the lantern. The words it had screamed made no sense, and the lack of sound from the rest of the house told her that no-one else had heard it. No other person could hear it. She had checked. Oreldo, leech that he was, had even pressed his ear to the barrel of the lantern, but handed it off to Martis, who likewise heard nothing. They patiently waited for their commander’s craziness to recede back to normal levels, but the days passed, and it only grew worse.

She lifted the lantern, and looked into the closed shutters, flicking them open, “Please, whatever you are, leave me alone,” tears dripped from her eyes to the floor.