Lantern

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Acht

Twilight stared at the departing creature, then at her empty hoof. She hadn’t even seen the Hyu-mon take the bottle. She could still see it clearly, despite the absence. Arsenic. Poison. It was amazing that Fluttershy was even alive, right?
She dove into the pile of books again, this time looking at the page the creature had left open. Nine Hundred and Third. She searched the books. More information, more that she needed to know. More horrors. She began to wonder if she was ready for this, “Spike, take a letter.”
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Half under her own control, Pinkie Pie opened the locked chest at the bottom of her dresser. She had placed a cloth wrapped box in there years ago, after she had received it from her grandfather. Her eyes burned with dry tears as she peeled the ancient cloth off the solid oak box. Inside, pressed into soft velvet sat a device made of wood and steel. A miniature cannon. It didn’t shoot parties. It shot death. The antithesis of life. Without life, there was no parties, but if Stone was right in what he told her, and so far, he hadn’t been wrong, death would come. The only way to keep parties around was to kill the killers first. She lifted the device, began to secure it to her forehoof, and started strapping the belt with bullets to her upper arm. The brass was cold against her fur.
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Rainbow leapt into the sky, and plummeted like a rock having forgotten to correct for the weight of the suit. She recovered in a three point landing on the dirt below, one hoof cradling the burning cylinder as she started trotting towards the library. Twilight could help. Twilight would make her warm. If she didn’t, well, libraries were made of flammable things. Fire would make her warm. ‘What am I thinking, Twilight would kill me if I burned the books.’
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Applejack stared at the fence on the far end of the back 40. It had been a fifteen hoof tall stone wall covered in protective runes to keep all sorts of critters out. It was now a pile of stone debris blocking the irrigation ditch and making a pool around the roots of several trees. Standing in the middle, eyes unseeing, was a creature like the one that had come to town earlier that week. It was horrible, in all ways she could imagine. Some even that she couldn’t. She blinked, and it was a pony. It was immense still. Bigger than Macintosh, and scarier, now that it was in a familiar shape. It stood there, clad in brown, and made no sound, no movement. Nothing, save the rippling of his coat in the breeze. Applejack screamed.
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Scootaloo leapt into the air as Rainbow Dash trotted past, recognizable to her biggest fan despite the white armored suit hiding every trace of the rainbow coloring. Her stride matched so perfectly that Scootaloo couldn’t help but fall in behind her, “Rainbow Dash, I got my Cutie Mark! Look! Look!”

The mare stopped, turned her egg-shaped helmet, and looked at the orange filly. A gloved hoof stretched out and caressed the fine feathers of her wings, “Good job kiddo. What for?”

“No idea. It showed up after I did this wicked trick…”

“Cool. Hey, can you talk and trot, I need to see Twi about something.”

Scootaloo cheered and followed her hero, describing in great detail how her mark had appeared.
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Fluttershy stared at Randel. He had shouted at her. Nopony shouted at Fluttershy. She was just too cute for most to even consider it. She shrank back, trying to free her hoof, whimpering, “I can’t. Don’t you see…” She glanced back at her Cutie Mark, spattered with blood from her own lips, “My talent is helping ponies, helping animals. I can’t hurt them. It’s…”

His claw squeezed tighter around her hoof as he lifted her into the air and held her to his face, nostrils almost touching. She could feel his hot breath on her cheeks, “I killed so many…So many more than you could imagine…I did it to make them stop!”

She choked down another cough, tears dripping from her eyes, “I can’t! I hear them, telling me to feed my animals…” a salvo of coughs made her curl up, still hanging from his claw, “Poison. I can’t poison my friends…Not even Angel Bunny, all the…” more coughs. Blood splattered across Randel’s chin and collar, “He doesn’t deserve this…”

She felt the grass beneath her again, and heard a loud sigh, “None of them do. None of us do. The killing helps alleviate some of it though.” His voice caught at the end, like he was hiding something else from her.

“Randel. I know how I am going to die. I know when, too. I already set up plans with some of Cheerilee’s pupils to take over if something happens. When…” She wiped her muzzle across her hoof, leaving a streak of blood through the already dirtied fur, “I can’t let others bear this burden for me. You know why, don’t you?”

Randel stood to his full height, “Fluttershy, I have been around so much longer than you have. You are not the first of the Nine I have had this talk with. You are not the first I was forced to guide to their first kill,” his gun slid from its holster, and Fluttershy found herself staring at the barrel, “Do you want to hear how I died? How about how it happened again, and again. Or maybe you want to hear the story behind these,” he tugged his right sleeve up, showing a line of scars running up his forearm. Thirteen of them. Precisely placed. Whoever made those marks was a master with a knife.

“Who would do that to you?” She wanted to help him, to be by his side, and walk him through whatever trauma he had picked up when he had gotten those.

His lips curled into a grimace, “I did,” his left talon started sliding up the row, “Hansel, Yorick, Frederick, Franz, Adolf, Jorge, Raymond, Johns, Jeffries, Bartholemew…”

“STOP! Why would you do that!”