Chapter 8: Guildenstern
It had been close to an hour since she parted ways with the disgusting, ichorous, writhing freak of universal design that had found itself on their side of the proverbial barricades. The passing of time did remarkably little to avail her of the swelling, throbbing feelings of palpable wrongness and sheer repulsion, which coursed reliably through her much weighted mind.
The mere amount of levels on which the whole affair felt wrong made her dizzy. Then again, she had been up and continuously stressed for a duration that could have potential to start ailing even an alicorn. Debatably fortunate was that her work would continue still - despite the purplish haze taking her vision over with every errant blink and wobble in the knees.
Too much of it to do. Even simply looking out the windows of the deeper chamber of the Canterlot Library, it was visible that by sunrise, there would be chaos of all kinds in the Equestrian capital. There already was. Luna preferred not to think much on the matter, but the amount of time it took the avian forces to answer their call was suspiciously short. It took no genius to figure out that the exchange between the local population and the brought in help would be less than amicable. She sincerely hoped it would be, but, in the end, being a realist was necessary in times of struggle.
Being a realist also meant accepting the fact that crossing the distance between the library chamber and the quickly set up data center would be a struggle in and of itself - in her condition, at least. The knowledge of how that was merely the beginning of the grip that would most assuredly come over her once the dreamwalker queue shifted itself did little to console the Princess.
Luna took in a short few deep breaths, eventually sounding out to the building in the formerly spacious library yard with a voice signature enough to be heard in its glass-vibrating volume.
“Data analysis!”
The Princess leaned against the window, blocking out her celestial body’s entry of light into the gloomy corridor. Weakly, she got her body to relax and slump into a half-sit.
“Everything must be set up by 7 AM,” she ordered loudly, directing her voice to the staff within the crystal antennae-equipped building, which bursted with sparkles of recent construction still, “Am I understood?”
Whether there was any proper reply, Luna could not know, as both the loud echo of “stood-stood-stood” and the limp state of her physical faculties prevented her from being able to perceive much in terms of clear sound. It was no big loss, as she would know that there was a distinctly fleeting possibility that her order would have been ignored. She merely ensured its completion with a possible small bit of intimidation.
The absolute last thing she needed would have been for that newly equine abomination to find its new workplace in no condition to function. It had gloated enough for her to try and give it as little ground as possible in that regard.
At the exact moment, in the very first hints of morning, hoping that her sister would be in any condition to perform her namesake duties, Luna got her body to relax as much as possible.
And then shrieked briefly, with a faint gasp, as her extended alicorn immunity had been summoned to kick in, having her suffer a fair amount of discomfort for more than a short while. No falling asleep, not for the next forty-eight hours.
Her head would kill her once that time had ran out, but common sense told Luna that she had bigger problems than that. Even if they were either learning to walk on long stairways, or gathering to pick at the crown jewel of her country like vultures. Or… whatever the thing that had started the whole disaster was doing.
On the bright side, the data centers were established to figure out exactly that. A small comforting thought in a discouraging sea of issues. It was all starting to take a very major tall. By persistent realism, things were only getting worse from then on out.
According to plan, as she winced to think.
The vision of the formerly living, newly reformed and freshly rewritten additions executing their parts was a sight of tentative peculiarity. The Undying himself stood slumped sideways, his maw gaping absently, and passively transferring spare segments of greenish essence to the gaping pit in the center of the creative workshop - his attention was elsewhere. The undead headquarters were barely silent, seeping with music and song as well as other noises, but nothing alarmed the general yet. He watched the testing groups have their first tryouts.
Simple corpses of the fallen were normally enough for realms with a mere quirk or two to their defenses. Time was needed, but little more than that. This realm, though… This realm, as he had been many times reminded of, had opportunity to write a poetic end to itself. Something that a musical mind could appreciate. Tentativity permeated the thoughts - the inspiration-borne would first have to have a performance worthy of remembrance.
It was their performance what gave him the tentative feeling. For a batch of experiments produced by a large innovation, their success rate was alarmingly high.
The Wright, as for herself, was standing, twitching, mouth clenched shut, and motioning in front of a crowd of non-equine undead, as glimmering lights sparkled in the forest. She had proven to be responsible enough to take care of most of what could come from any direction. The undead general himself was using that time to analyze the additions to the army, varied at last. None of the living had seen her yet. As sensitive as they were to the sacred Song, it seemed far from likely that her new features would be well-received.
On the many small battlefields, elongated, thinned, curved undead hurled the viscous, noxious secret that their redesigned stomachs produced for lack of vital liquids in death. It burned through all but stone, set tender tissues ablaze, and cleansed the living of their burdens, the one they were born with and all that they carried. Perhaps, not the most productive to facilitate in large quantities, as there was little use of those who fell to them, but still, not a misfire. Fire, smoke, and melting remnants of an infectious life, these ones called for panic from the quadrupeds.
The crawling, leaping particulars put their reshaped physique to appropriate use - having lost what they had for front limbs, they had gained more than enough to send the living shrieking away with almost more volume than they themselves produced. A trend of uncontrollable self-mutilation had transpired, with some showing an aversion to light and attempting to avail themselves of eyes, but that much could easily be controlled or fixed - the effectiveness was barely under question. Even despite the relative bracing strength of the equines, which would naturally be put to better use by actual fighting squads, they were more than optimal to sow terror among the equines. They seemed to be almost amusingly prone to that, the Undying had noted.
Those that gained more muscle seemed virtually unstoppable by most means. Regular selections would occasionally be controlled by either a horned individual, or taken down by either alarming convenience or errant brute force - these had suffered little to no casualties. The physique seemed imbalanced to the Undying at first, but the near-simian restructuring had given them enough muscle control to execute destruction in a manner not too dissimilar to his own. If not for the nagging difficulty in sustaining control over the hulks, it would have been all too tempting to form an entire army of those… Then, again, if there was anything this venture into creativity had told the undead general, it was that there was a peculiarly high amount of workarounds for most issues in this particular world. Even now, the mere sight of these creatures sent some of the living into freezing shock - their handiwork left few to be traumatized by the imagery.
Several creations even more convenient in their use of existent physical parts showed yet more of the Wright’s inborn affinity with the equine body, and more evidence to prove that her creation was a step in the right direction. Those that were rebalanced to extend their fronts much taller than before, having their intestines repurposed to be effectively limb-like, had shown a high degree of ability to pick off various targets. The memories of many wars fought had given him enough of a reason to continue their particular type - while they took a fair amount of time to choke out the life out of their victims, they were what looked to be an effective counter-measure to the winged and horned individuals. The desperation panging within the survivors as they watched others choke and waste away were significant enough for the Undying to feel them from even where he stood, miles away.
It was a mere dozen battles he witnessed, and each of them was so strewn with plain panic. With the passing of ages, it had become so easy to dismiss the value of psychological damage of the living upon witnessing their former cohorts bettered. The rougher conditions of the old world had forced the general to prioritize blunt power and numbers, as the kingdoms that survived had little in ways of morale to tremble. Again and again, he had to remind himself that this was a clean slate.
Even if the many disjointed memories of those he had consumed told of many tales of terror, by his standards, it was a clean slate of a world. Some tales, even with exaggeration removed, made him wary to persist so confidently, as surely such creations of chaos and consumers of matter had to have been toppled somehow… But the thought of the new concepts nestling within the mana potential this world offered reinstated the assuredness. Where the corrupted celestial ruler fell prey to overpowering artifacts, where an agent of chaos built up his own demise, where a traitor fell to that of his own kind, where many tried to dismantle the reigning power and degraded into obscurity, he would prevail. The realm’s consumption was not merely a goal, it was art. An art he took seriously.
It was for that reason that the effects of these curious changes on the morale of the inhabitants had to be considered. The true power within the presumably dominant species was concealed still - but minds remained the same. Something to fear but death, and death pushed to extremes.
He watched the test groups pummel, rip, burn, choke, slice, gnaw, and ram through settlements of little consequence, only occasionally falling to the yet persisting local predators, and thought of ways to further the advantage.
Somewhat conveniently, and somewhat disappointingly, one appeared to have been trying to get his attention for the time that it took for the moon to appear in the sky.
The odd smell and the distant wails had been a feature of his surroundings for some time, but it took his Wright’s waking call and a grey torso’s blind ramming of his leg for him to finally arrive to the occasion.
“Silence… we have… adjourned!” the frantisyllabic voice of his sentient officer brought the Undying to a bone-cracking twist of the spine, his mind separating itself from village ravaging.
“WHAT. ARE YOU. DOING.”
The other voice was not one he recognized. It seemed as if he was woken for a reason. Little could compare to even his creations, he knew - so it was no invasion. Besides that… there was an air of eerie familiarity in even the first sound of that voice.
“By decree of… the mayoral assembly… the spring distribution of anti-weed…” the Wright hunched herself in an offensive posture, standing tall in front of the animalistic congregation, which had fallen into curiously static stances. A large, ghostly interpretation of a symbol had surrounded the square, a circle with two perpendicular lines supporting a curve right below. Faint crystal glimmers sparkled all around.
“THIS. IS. OUR. REALM.”
“The sleepless… wake,” the Undying’s own maw moved in freezing motions, his body crushing through the idleness. Before he even regained full vision, the familiarity of the presence had become apparent.
“YOU. INTRUDE. IMPOSTOR.”
It was the dead.
“Wither…” the general gargled, stretching out his arm to extend the reach, so as to feel the presence better. The ground all around had rotten even further than it was before. The presence was not perturbed.
“THIS IS OURS. ALL OURS.”
Once he had opened his eyes and mind, he saw in front of himself a curious spectacle. Again, a reminder of how difficult it was to keep track of novelties in information - even if he knew all, he could at times miscalculate. This looked to be another thing he had overlooked.
Circling around the former city plaza, the current lounge of spreading decay and towering, smoking Tombstones, were ghostly entities of vaguely equine shape. A hotness permeated in the air, and a sulfuric essence.
The restless, barely persisting spirits he had consumed in the haunted forest were far from the only local undead.
“You…” the Undying grabbed his own throat, forcing out words with purpose, “...announce… yourself.”
“YOU. DON’T. MAKE. DEMANDS. ALIEN.”
“Announce yourself,” his gargle repeated, and his blank eyes stared into the main entity that spoke.
“WE DO NOT OBEY. I DO NOT OBEY. NOT EVEN TO ONES WHO THINK TO RULE OUR SKY.”
“I… will… repeat… no more.”
“YOU WILL LEAVE.”
The voice roared in gravelly whispers, seeming distinctly equine in appearance, a jagged edge of a broken horn poking from out a poignant head. A distinct texture of crystal persisted throughout the ornamentation, even more so with the wailing strips that circled round. It wore distant remains of royal wear, albeit it felt clear enough that it was no former ruler of the realm. Former rulers the Undying knew well, being the Herald of the Dead and the destroyer of kingdoms simultaneously.
To amusing coincidence with the stream of thought he was having, this was very much a failed contender.
“Join in death. Else, clear,” the general spoke simple words to the ambassador - or escapee - of what the equine denizens referred to as Tartarus. That much he had gathered from the symbol and the sense of chase present in the spirits surrounding the one that spoke. They haunted along in rage.
No position to threaten him. No position to disrupt his observation with their hapless attempts.
“WAS I NOT MADE CLEAR?!” the spirit that barely reached the Undying’s waist grew himself with magic, and rose to stare his ghostly eyes into the ones long blank, “THIS IS MY REALM TO CONQUER. OURS. AS SOON AS I FIND AN OPTION OF RETURN, THESE TREACHEROUS PRINCESSES WILL KNOW KING SOMBRA’S WRATH.”
Not even with ghostly spit failing to land on the Undying’s face was enough to provide any phasing.
“We are Death,” he said.
“WE ARE MERELY INCONVENIENCED BY THE DASTARDLY PRINCESSES AND THEIR LAP DOG. YOU ARE ALIEN TO THIS WORLD. I WILL NOT CONCEDE IT.”
“We are all Death,” the Undying repeated.
“WHAT. EVEN. ARE. YOU.”
“I am Undying.”
“AND I AM KING. NOW, GET YOUR DESPICABLE CREATURES. OFF. OUR. LAND.”
No option for the hollering spirit of a fallen king to harm the dead. Not by definition. The Undying knew that for a fact, but could not tell whether the spirit was simply foolish to believe otherwise, or was attempting a bluff.
In any case, the thought of such proximity to that which this world, according to general equine knowledge, used to store the spirits of the unwanted dead… the powerful dead… with one of them having presented himself right away… that sparked a determined inspiration.
It was never a good idea to think less of the dead that had lost their physical form. Granted, true unity of death was in flesh devoid of life - but they were familiar nonetheless. He spoke the truth, they were all Death.
Whether they wanted to be that or not.
“ARE YOU LISTENING?”
Especially when even their leftover strength, and the visage that invoked distinct realization of fear in the shreds of souls assumed, was still enough to potentially perturb the equines very much. It was less the strength and more the symbol.
King Sombra. He was still remembered. In fact… he was not so old a spirit. A recent memory.
These creatures, they were prone to panic. They had distinct panic, distrust, proper trembling instilled from birth - it was that which came on the opposite side of other personality traits the Undying was yet to fully perceive due to their insignificance. They would fall, they would fall soon to his army, even the way it was now… But how much could a morale attack influence them?
He was getting ideas. This was new, this was something newer still… All he needed was the essence.
“I AM ASKING YOU. ANSWER.”
“Fresh soul,” the Undying’s maw opened much wider than the stray bits of sinew at the sides allowed for, and thick, green beams surrounded the former center of town.
“I. AM. THE. ONE. TRUE. KING.”
He had other plans at first, but for now, they could wait. It was all too enticing. Focus was needed, yes, there were other plans, yes, and his treasured creation at the bottom of the pit needed more sustenance, and that this burst of activity could attract whatever kept the equines intact… but the urge to experiment was too strong. He had seen from the performance of the one big untested idea that statistically, it was all too possible that this would have remarkable consequences.
Not much harm in taking the rancid, belligerent soul, and giving it new form. Something that spirit said gave him a particular idea… a resemblance of a story from the old world, where the Dead God laid in wait.
Whether he would approve, the Undying could not know, and that fact disturbed him less and less as the roaring scream died down.
Dying moonlight refused to give way to the unwilling dawn. That was the way of things. It was her responsibility to have day replace night. Day into day, century into century.
This time, it did not take her the loss of a sister to feel unwilling to perform her duties.
And that alone added to the stress of the situation, which was what caused the issue in the first place. A cruel joke of a self-ensuring problem.
“Not that difficult,” the Princess spoke to herself, looking at the fires far and chaos below, “Just a few minutes. Then…”
She took a glance behind, to the dormant body in her bed. What little of an optimist kept a voice in Celestia’s troubled mind said that at the very least, the poor thing was getting better. It would only take her a day or two of highly extensive therapy and constant siphoning of ichorous refuse from the dip she took in that which should never have had to provide her safety.
“...then what?”
The audible rest fittingly pointed out that the mere fact that she was in that condition was abhorrent, that the presence of her “savior” was a disaster in and of itself, that the reason she was put in Celestia’s chamber for safekeeping was disgusting. Eventually, the Princess had decided that her growing stress had had enough of a voice, and groaned loudly, starting onto the balcony to finally do her day job.
“Then you keep to the plan, don’t you? What a great plan. Hmf.”
It was a large relief that a lack of accuracy in magical direction of the Sun reliably resulted in major discomfort. Celestia was very sloppy. As such, she had, for a full, lengthy, fifteen-minute dawn sequence, little to worry about in her mind but the persistent pain and the minor chance of ruining the Sun itself. Minor pressures, compared to that which she would imminently return to.
A country under unannounced war. A country being ripped apart by she should rightfully have vaporized if not for the damning consequences. A country - a world - she had put her all into for millennia, only for it to now be taken away piece by piece as she sat watching, her glowing orb in the sky illuminating the nooks and crannies of that which she had allowed to go wrong.
Her responsibility through and through. To think that she had it all right within reach, but no longer could the pieces together to make it work. An errant thought made her wish she could consult herself from a past year. Herself from back when the endless years of having managed Equestria were yet to catch up. Herself from back when all was well, and she could manage it all even without her sister’s help. Herself from back when all the opportunities she had and missed resulted in Equestria being where it was.
She was always doing it all wrong, Celestia had to admit in the end.
Even that day’s sunrise was many minutes off schedule.
A loud, pained cough and gurgle called for her attention, blissfully emerging only after the sun had gone up. She could at least move.
“I’m… I’m coming,” Celestia mouthed, and went to help siphon out more of the disgusting liquid contained within her student.
Whatever kept her from coming back to the dangerous curve of the blade. Something told her that not even having locked the ceremonial artifact as far away as she could from herself was enough, should things ever get any worse.
“This won’t get worse,” she said out loud, as if talking to the mostly unconscious unicorn, “I promise that.”
In a better world - a week ago, perhaps, - she would have believed that. In the current world, she had reports of fallen cities and reality of refugee overflow to deal with. At least it felt as if little more could get worse.
Something was wrong, Rarity felt, when they were called away from the large line of incoming refugees addled with whatever they had managed to carry to the capital on such short notice. Most were simply accounted for and then let into the quarters that had evidently been reformed to house refugees, as opposed to the many vanity shops and luxury stores that, as the unicorn knew, this part of town used to mostly consist of. They were the first to be specifically called away, and virtually dragged to a building that once used to be Sparkler’s Seasonal Suits - now it bore the Griffon flag, and had walkways to the city walls set up. Prior, this would have felt like an annoyance that she would scoff at. After the time spent trying to get to Canterlot alive, it sparked up angst and paranoia.
Something was very much wrong at the very core, and she could not begin to list all the strain she had undergone while helping Applejack take care of their less functional friends. It would have felt terrifying to think that they were dealing with Rainbow Dash having evidently died, Fluttershy suffering from extreme nausea and barely eeping a sound, Twilight sick with what had taken a course through them all, and Pinkie having turned into a near vegetable - but the time spent fighting to get them alive to the one safe place made it all too much of a reality.
At the exact moment of being pushed into the dimly lit office, where multiple armed avians stood, Rarity could not spare much in terms of terror or distress. She was merely tired, tired beyond belief, tired of pushing off the many thoughts that rushed to get into her head, tired of walking, tired of blinking, and tired of standing upright. She had no strength left to complain. The things she had to complain about had all mixed into one continuous image of pain, struggle, loss, and rapidly dying hope.
Applejack, being more resilient, was more prone to speaking up, which she had been doing all the way while being directed to the office. Rarity tried to listen to her, but, perhaps humorously, not even in her current condition did she consider it pleasant to listen to exemplary cursing of the farmworker variety. AJ needed to vent. They all did. She herself knew for a fact that once they had settled down, there was a distinctly high possibility that she could spend up to a full day crying in depression. It was very much natural, and at that point, broad concepts and basic ideas like that were the most of her conscious.
Which was why the earth pony having silenced her rant so abruptly forced Rarity into a pained, defensive posture.
“So, here you fuckers are,” spoke a rough, distinctly female voice of the griffon that must have been the officer, judging by the armaments and clothing. She had her back turned to them, leaning against the map-filled table, and seemingly looking out the window at the inner line of refugees.
The assumption that something was wrong was, indeed, proven right, as the officer clicked her talons, and the other griffon soldiers gathered next to each of them. Before Rarity could offer herself a guess at what they had in mind, each of them was pushed down, held from then on in place by a pair of far stronger limbs than theirs. AJ’s hat flew off, Rarity winced at the impact of the cold floor of the former clothing store, and the other two barely made a sound.
“How the hell you made it here, I don’t know. Not like I care, though,” the officer spoke with barely suppressed strain in her voice. Her head twitched neurotically, and her talons scraped at the table.
“Hey, wha—” AJ attempted to speak up, but was quickly discouraged with a push against the floor. The soldiers holding them down each had helmets cover their heads whole, only an elongated respirator and two darkened lenses to show for facial features. They acted quietly and firmly, visibly trained to obey their commander. Something told Rarity that this was not a spontaneous outburst of a military official that should not have even been in the city to the best of her knowledge.
“I. Am. Fucking. Talking. You country hick piece of shit,” the officer growled, and turned around.
Rarity’s addled mind took some time to put the pieces together. She felt as if she had seen this particular griffon before, and the voice was familiar. Some things were off - the shorter upper plumage, the few scars around the auriculars and bill, and the visible dents on the beak, they all stood out as new, but it took her time to realize whose visage they were new to. In the end, it was Fluttershy who recognized her first. Her recognition was a frightened bout of hyperventilation, and a single whispered word that even the nearby unicorn barely heard.
Gilda.
“Okay… You morons clearly don’t understand your own language, do you? Do you?” The griffon stomped her feline back legs, heading towards the yellow pegasus. “I am talking here. You talk when I tell you to.”
“What the hell are you doing, you crazy—” another loud thump signified the earth pony having been silenced once more.
“DOES ANYONE UNDERSTAND EQUESTRIAN HERE?” the now-familiar griffon screeched at the top of her lungs, pushing the soldier holding Fluttershy off the pony, and grabbing her by the throat, lifting the limp girl up, “EQUESTRIAN,” she squawked right in the pegasus’ face, covering it in spit, “DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND. IT?”
“Mmmmhhhh…” Fluttershy winced in evident pain. Rarity was about to try to explain that the poor thing had become extremely sensitive to sound… but the course the conversation was taking made it seem like any action would be for the worse. Cowardly, she knew. But there was no helping it.
“Oh, you stupid cunt, you don’t even speak it anymore, do you?” Gilda - what little Rarity could muster of memory had indeed identified her as Dash’s… “friend” - nearly stabbed her beak into Fluttershy’s muzzle and roared, “Huh? Dumb yellow bitch.”
The griffon was choking the pony by that point, but that seemed to trouble her little. Rarity tried to utter something for the madness to stop, but somehow, the soldier holding her down had decided to give her a preventive budge before she even tried. Gilda dragged Fluttershy into the middle of the room, where the lighting was better in the sordid morning hours.
“Well, I shouldn’t be pretending like I don’t know you little shits. You’re tired, are you? Lost? Confused? Can’t fucking go anywhere you like, huh?” she spoke with raspy gusto, dragging the pegasus along the floor as she stepped side to side, “And look who’s here to save you.”
“What on earth is wrong with you?!” Applejack, having refused to learn the lesson of silence, yelled out at the officer. It was followed by a thump hard enough to leave the earth pony with a tiny stream of blood coming from her mouth.
“Me? Oh, I’m just watching how you dumb fucks get left to rot by your own Princess while we clean up for her. But... that’s beside the point I have with you four fucknuts,” Gilda spoke, fixing up the tri-goggled officer’s helmet hung off her head in a decidedly casual manner as the pony in her hand gasped for air, grimacing in pain, “See, my problem with you is that you dweebs are FOUR.”
She lifted Fluttershy up with little difficulty, and nonchalantly swiped her talons across the distressed face.
“I am giving you ten fucking seconds to tell me that Rainbow Dash just ran off from you idiots and is in a different camp. Cause then I’d be happy, and you’ll be free to rot in my quarantine.”
Things had been going badly, but it was that part which made Rarity realize that the depth of trouble they were in was far beyond her groggy comprehension. It was bad.
“One.”
“She’s—” AJ began to speak, and immediately braced for impact, but none followed.
“Yes?” Gilda said tensely, even loosening the grip on the pegasus’ throat. The soldier holding AJ down let her continue.
“She’s… ugh…” the earth pony winced with pain both physical and mental, “...she’s dead.”
At least, to her own credit, Rarity did not feel as if AJ was to blame for simply having done this to all of them. Somehow, it felt like making a lie would only have diverted the encounter.
“She’s dead,” the griffon repeated plainly.
“We… we barely got out. It was an accident. What do you want from us? The hell is going on? Why can’t we—”
“YOU are dead,” the same plainness of voice coursed through this statement as well, “Do you hear me? You’re dead. All four of you. And the fifth one, when your stupid Princess steps down. I am going to gut you. You are all fucking dead.”
That was better than she had expected. Fluttershy, for one, did not add in facial scarring. At least for the moment.
“Look—”
The griffon’s eyes twitched, having shrunk far. Her free hand jerked in place as she breathed, staring with pure despair and lurid hatred combined at the ponies laid on the floor in front of her. The soldiers keeping them in place made not a sound, as if inanimate in the unpleasant scene. For close to a minute, the heavy silence was interrupted by only the officer’s attempts at deep breath, and Fluttershy’s at breath period.
“No, actually… No. You’re not fucking dead. Scratch that.” Gilda finally went to remedy the small relief Rarity had felt, and slashed across the pegasus’ face once more.“That’s too good for you.”
“Wait, wh—” Applejack’s protests were silenced by the floor this time around.
“No, no. You fuckers are going to live. Here. I’m gonna keep an eye on you, that’s what I’m going to do. I mean, shit, that’s my job. I’m in charge of this quarter. And besides, we’re all friends, right?” she spoke in a voice that made the unicorn feel, in delirious remembrance, as if she was back a teenager in a dark alley, and the shady, bulky thugs surrounded her from all sides on her first night in the capital city all over again.
“I still remember all of you. You’re the white dumbshit, you’re the orange dumbshit, you’re the yellow dumbfuck that WON’T MOVE OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY,” the rampaging officer made a sudden start and rammed the pony’s body right against a wall, a crack of bone plainly audible, “And you’re the pink degenerate that I’m gonna talk to right now.”
Rarity talked her way out of that one. In the end, none were beyond approach. There was never a situation where you could only sit, watch, and suffer. She used to think so.
The nightmare of the past few days was making her reconsider that point of view.
Fluttershy was unceremoniously launched to the griffon that held her, and within a few seconds, she was being pushed down hard against the floor. The cold tiles in her section went more and more red as the pegasus failed to keep her head upwards, slumping it down, no longer bearing the strength to watch. Rarity looked at her, and her eyes simply stared in the distance.
There was little eye contact to speak of, but even that was broken when the other earth pony was ordered to be passed to the quarantine officer. The bulky griffon barely waited until her own soldier let his gloved talons off the limp pink pony, and wasted little time in dragging her into the light by the mess of a mane that Rarity remembered having given up on trying to straighten properly… it had begun to do that on its own, in any case.
“Now, you’re Pinkie fucking Pie. I know you. Oh, I know you,” Gilda growled, lifting the pony up by her mane. She wouldn’t even hold her. Instead of holding the pale, distant Pinkie properly, the griffon wrapped the long pink hairs around her wrist in several knots. That treatment threatened to scalp the pony she intended to “talk” to, but it seemed unlikely that Gilda viewed that as a bad thing.
“You’re awful quiet right now. Last I saw you, you weren’t like that. You wouldn’t shut up, actually. What happened, Pinkie?” she asked in mock concern, tilting her head at the pony who looked at her with a frightened stare, eyes darting back and forth, lips quivering. “Did someone give you a boo-boo? Did someone come and take all you ever FUCKING CARED ABOUT away? Oh, is that so? Your town’s got destroyed? All your friends had their guts ripped out? You had to cross fuck knows what to get here only to get STABBED IN YOUR BACK right as you arrived, huh? Well, what a fucking story.”
Either Gilda was shortening the details, or the exact means by which they had escaped the massacre were not yet common knowledge. Rarity had to suppress a desire to vomit and pass out simultaneously upon having thought back to that exact process.
“Such a shame. Yeah, you know, I think I’m gonna treat you fairly. I mean, all you morons did was let the only one of you who ever mattered SHIT get killed. All you did was make her stay with YOU when she could have been SAFE with me. Just, you know, borrowed the only pony that was ever worth twiddle-fuck, and then got her killed. It’s nothing! No big issue! We’re all very understanding, isn’t that right, guys? Habe ich recht, ech?”
The griffons holding them down did not change a motion. Whether that meant that they knew from experience not to get in their comander’s way when she had something to say, or that they didn’t much care for what was happening, Rarity could not tell. What she could tell was that everything was going to get significantly worse.
“I am going to be fair with you four! Deliver justice your way, eh? I am going—”
“Mmmmnnnhhh…”
“Oh sweet heavens…” Rarity could not stay silent, and whispered out the most coherent thing that came to her mind as tears refused to stay within.
She was twistedly grateful that Pinkie had been barely functional, as otherwise, she would definitely have screamed. The earth pony's whole left ear came off in one tear of Gilda’s metal-gloved talons.
“—to STAB—”
“Nnnh…”
“You fucking bitch,” AJ spoke out, eyes opened wide, the soldier above her choosing not to punish her. Gilda was far too occupied to notice. Her sharp talons entered right into Pinkie’s abdomen, and emerged reddened.
“—SLAP—”
“Mmmmnnnn…”
Fluttershy got it light. It turned out that Gilda could leave inch-long scars with just a single sweep.
“—PUNCH—”
“Kkkhhhh…”
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” AJ yelled as loud as she could, her muzzle contorted in a mixture of despair and rage not unlike that which Gilda bore when they confirmed to her Dash’s fate.
It seemed that what she was doing mattered to her a bit more than show-off sadistic “discipline”, as the griffon ignored the orange pony, instead dealing blow after blow after blow to Pinkie’s snout. Each came with cracking sounds and fleshy throbs. At least four dull thumps on the floor were the teeth that found their way out of the decimated muzzle.
“—BLIND—”
“Nnnneeeeehhhhh!..”
“STOP, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, JUST STOP, YOU CRAZY BITCH, WHAT DID WE DO TO YOU?!” AJ had begun to try and wrestle away from the grip, tears swelling up in her own face.
Rarity could not quite see if there was any fruit to those labors. She had seen enough. She closed her eyes, and fought to restrain herself from vomiting. Pinkie’s eye… Gilda must have made it messy on purpose. Just the sounds signified that it took her a few more strikes to tear it out in full. Rarity stopped watching before the first beak strike even hit.
If only she was only a little bit stronger. The least she could do would have been get Gilda’s attention with magic. Even if she would have started mutilating her instead… it would have been worth never seeing her friend get torn apart, segment by segment. Like her sister must have been.
“—AND BURN.”
The unicorn winced at the memory of there being a quickly installed fireplace in the store. She doubted that Pinkie, if still conscious, or alive, would remain silent. She also doubted that Gilda would be as merciful as to simply feed the pony to the flames so as to watch her crisp - from what they were shown, she would at least go limb by limb.
Escapism, an art Rarity had been particularly good at, was offered in the idea that perhaps, this was all just the continuation of the nightmare that begun when that… thing appeared outside the library. It definitely fit together. All that had happened was too brutal, too drastic, to ever be real.
She could not just have lost Ponyville, she could not just have lost her little sister, she could not just have lost her unkempt pegasus friend, she could not have spent days struggling to stay awake in order to get everyone who survived safely to Canterlot, and she could not have succeeded so as to only end up in the claws of a sadist with a badge and a grudge.
The blissful reality in which their main problem was a hypnotic, ghastly mist and a nightmarish creature outside the window did not hold for long. A loud clang and a grunt from quite nearby signified a change in the events. A muffled, distorted, Low Griffon curse was spat out as rampant clopping distanced away from Rarity and several meters ahead.
“GILDA!!!” Applejack confirmed Rarity’s suspicion of having successfully wrestled away, roaring the officer’s name madly.
“Wait—” the unicorn tried to stop her, but, perhaps, it could have been more productive if the pony was not ramming herself into the officer.
This was only ever going downhill. The thud of a sideways dropping body and the disgusting sound of nearby ripping flesh confirmed that much. Rarity held on to the nightmare theory as hard as she equinely could.
“You stupid, inbred shit,” came the sound of the griffon’s voice, intercepted with yet more choking gurgles. These were AJ’s, expectedly.
“Whhkkhhh—”
“You don’t seem to get it. I was kind of showing it to you, but I guess you’re too dumb to understand.” Gilda must have strengthened her grip, as Applejack started to whine quietly. “I do whatever the fuck I want with you. You’re in Hell now, you got that? Or what do you have… Tartarus, right, you idiots have Tartarus. This is your Tartarus. And I am Sergeant Guildenstern. Also known as “your lord and fucking master from here on out”. Verstehst du?”
Rarity just looked as hard as she could into the darkness behind her eyelids, and tried to think of anything else. Eventually, it would all end.
“The Princesses don’t give a fuck about you anymore. I was specifically told that Twilight gets Celestia’s chambers, and you get whatever. It’s just that. None of your “friends” in high places give a fuck about you. Makes sense now. You idiots got the only one who was worth shit killed. Now whatever your jinglies were called, they don’t work anymore, so you’re not the savior of Equestria anymore. No, you’re just a dumb…” Applejack had begun to wheeze, much like Fluttershy did. “Inbred. Country. Hick. And I am?..”
Evidently, Gilda expected an answer from the pony she was choking.
“Who am I?”
“A.. fffuuuhhkhkhh…”
“Again?”
“A fuhkhingh bittsh. Ghilda.”
AJ had somehow managed to speak. Resilience, honesty. Her biggest mistake.
Rarity knew where it was headed, and could no longer act rationally. She opened her eyes, and tried to look at the power-mad quarantine control officer, to say anything to divert her attention…
...but instead, all she ended up accomplishing was gaining herself yet more trauma.
AJ was always strong. Even half choked, she tried to buck. And even half choked, she had managed to scream. She screamed loudly, she screamed worse than the things Rarity saw in the corner of her eye ever since leaving Ponyville under the faint purple pall. She screamed exactly like someone whose eye was being beaked out would.
The unicorn’s psyche and mind had decided to, at long last, exchange the nightmare of reality for a proper one, and her consciousness departed the body. The last thing she heard was Gilda ordering them to be taken away in Low Griffon.
“Hieraus,” the audibly delighted griffon said, having ascended from a friend’s old time mislead acquaintance into something Rarity preferred nightmarish abominations to.
There was a twisted sense of respect within Atropos’ mind as he realized that the Princess was using all her opportunities to put him in his place while she had control. Stairs. These endless, high, jagged stairs.
After a near eternity of effectively trouble-less existence, it was refreshing to have something to solidly hate. Atropos had announced his infinite hatred of the very concept many, many times during his long ascension. Efficiently so, it also allowed him to practice speech synchronization. Most mental actions came from his incorporeal body hidden within the thestral, but having to move the mouth was an important part of pony speech. Whenever his mouth healed back from the injuries it took from hard stone steps, he practiced, although primarily with expletives.
To little surprise, it took him an approximation of five hours to get into the library chamber proper. The regenerative factor took care of the many cuts and hits he took, so, for all intents and purposes, he was just another nightkin off-duty. He had a bit of a suspicious limp, but it was far better than no walking at all. The long ascension had definitely helped him flesh out the backstory for when he would reach his workplace.
Less so it helped with coming to terms with what exactly he was doing.
Somehow, it was not even the fact that his arrangement of powers would be concealed by supposed data analysis of all that was coming in about the invasion. Neither was it the fact that instead of feasting on the stressed rulers, he would instead be part of the solution to the impending problem. It was much more so the fact that he had drafted himself into the affair specifically to interact with the population.
Even the pony Princesses, when faced with that proposition from his side, took some time to fully process that. So did he. It was close to being the most awkward moment of their “talk” after his having encountered Celestia. Some other runner-ups were embarrassing enough for him not to wish to think of.
“Geeaahhh…” Atropos stifled a yelp when his mostly limp wing got caught in a brazier’s metal wiring, “...oh, if I could see myself right now, I’d feed me.”
The matter of fact was that the denizens of the land he had marked as his hunting and feasting grounds were much too fragile for him to treat them like any others.
Painful as it was, accepting mistakes was necessary. He was presumptuous to think that all previous knowledge instantly applied to a life form from a dimension parallel to the one he was altogether glad to depart. That they had no means of affecting his control over their subconscious, or that they would not just burn out after a few visits. More importantly, the fact that each was so delightfully… unique, that it would have been a crime to the still undoubted master of all nightmares to offer them simple frights.
The ability to control, manipulate, and eat at the minds of living beings was inborn, but back in the old world, it was a simple process. Almost mechanical. Most species were relatively similar, and hardened enough by the many curiosities they had encountered to not be particularly susceptible to different techniques. Show one torture, show the other daemons, offer the next their dead family, and play on a prideful fault here and there. If especially unoriginal at any point, just drag them to all the nightmares that their deity can think of musters, and it is very much a healthy meal.
These new ones… These had to be studied. Especially now, when war was at the gates, and soon, their psyches would be far too moved to be as pure as they once were. Waiting was not a pleasant option.
So he would thrust himself into their society. Become a functional - as much as he could - part. Interact, work, and learn. As mind-numbingly counter-intuitive as it sounded, it was the most optimal configuration for the situation he had found himself in. The Princesses wanted him to find a way to somehow devoid the world of the disaster he formerly worked with - he wanted a way to be a nightmare god that the world truly deserved. Two birds, one stone, and one very, very unpleasant night for Princess Luna when it was his turn of the bargain.
The funniest part of it was that haunting Luna to sustain himself, as opposed to feeding on those he now neighbored, was suggested by the Princess herself. Protective rulers. Sometimes they did the most entertaining things.
Him, he knew he would come up with a way to play around that when it was time. At the given moment, he limped to the antennaed building in the center of the library plaza, having stumbled, waved, wobbled, and cursed his way through the few rooms and floors of the forbidden wing.
Before he had even raised a hoof to motion, a sparkling field enveloped him, and an equine shadow sprung up at one of the windows. Unpleasantly, that left him with sun shining right in his eyes.
“Halt! Identify yourself,” said someone distinctly male, nearing his middle ages from the sound of the voice.
“Why’d I have to?” Atropos made honest effort in his attempt to sound casual.
“We will repeat only once. Identify yourself. This area is off-limits to non-staff.”
“I’m staff,” he answered, barely evading the tongue with his teeth.
“I don’t see a badge.”
If that was Luna’s idea of further tormenting him while he was like that, it was becoming very inefficient to their actual efforts. If so, he was starting to become a bit disappointed.
Another shadow came up close to the first, and spoke as well.
“Calm down, Sent. Could you move your wings? They’re blocking your mark, we have to check...” a female voice spoke.
Atropos tilted his head. He could not quite control his wings yet. That was embarrassing.
“How hard is it to go to the other window?” he answered back.
Thankfully, his motion revealed that Luna must have told them about him in detail. His cheeks were still crossed with the very first injury he got upon having been so roughly installed into the body. The large, grin-like scar refused to fade.
“...okay, that’s him. Field off, field off!”
“I must be handsome,” he spoke quietly to himself in a practice of verbal sarcasm, the closest to a personality he felt the ponies would readily accept.
“You must be Atropos,” the male pony said, removing himself from the window, and likely being the one to cause the sturdy crystalline door to open.
“Welcome to the team!” the female voice sounded out from further than before, as she was evidently crying out her farewell while moving deeper into the mildly sized two-story building.
Atropos stood in place as the sparkles faded, technically allowing him to pass through, and realized that already he had a dilemma.
He only hoped that experience would come quick, because the formerly dead body turned out to be capable of flushing with embarrassment. Very inconveniently. He did not know whose comment to be sarcastic to.
He did know, though, that he would get his own back when the tables had turned.
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My my my, you paint just the loveliest pictures.
5748062 I put all the effort I can into making my stories be the effective equivalent of kitty videos on YouTube. It does take some effort to get to the gut of things when you want to create something heartwarming. I've practiced long and hard, on actual kitties. You may have noticed, I do speak from experience in one certain section.
5748073 I do not doubt it, kittens usually make an effective solution to most everything. Your work tends to come out like a good cookie, crunchy on the outside with just enough give and then soft on the inside with just a touch of warmth.
Oh god, how does Ponyville's tendency to break into musicals cross over into undeath?
What living?
lives/life
Wait, they're fighting?
Hmm? Who's that?
I feel kinda bad for him. He never had a chance against the Death God. He could have been the next Mozart, or DaVinci.
Where are they? What's going on? I am COMPLETELY lost.
Oh, him. If only he were still alive, Undying wouldn't fair well. I mean, did you see the size of Sombra's cloud? Holy shit.
No. No way. He's not going to...
The Lich King?
You weren't lying when you said things are gonna get worse than a zombie with a sol-fa degree.
Oh.
Yeah, that's likely.
Well, Gilda's certainly changed for the worse.
Aaaand court marshal. She's attacking civilians for personal reasons and has been emotionally compromised. There is no way that, even asking for help from the griffons, Celestia would for a moment tolerate this. Once she figures out, Gilda's goose is cooked. Better yet, give her to Atropos to play with.
Hmm... I wonder. Atropos seems to usually get his fear by amplifying what's there and harvesting the excess, but what if he just takes what's there without generating more? Lose some now to get more later?
5749110
Whoever was unlucky enough to live near by the town. A few villages aren't that unlikely to have been erected - bigger cities... well, they're to the West and East, they'll get there, eventually.
I IS SMART WRITR
Yeah, while I do think that technically, I COULD have made it a bit less obscure for the first part of it, but Sombra... Not very easy to write as an easily identifiable entity. He doesn't give much canon to work with. So... yeah, maybe flawed at the core, that segment, but I felt like it was the right thing to do. And hey, his speech will be more identifiable from now on. Not that he wants it to.
Okay, now this part I may actually have to change according to your feedback. It's not going away, but... I forgot to give the reason why she gets to actually do that in full. There's more to it than even that, but, for now, as I ponder where to put the explanation, here's the way things are:
Gilda has a very good reason to believe she'll get away with everything. First off, her own insistence that the Princesses don't give a damn about the four anymore, while ultimately less than true to life, does have some echoes in reality... but let's shush about that. Then, for all she assumes, she won't be pursued at all - none of the complaints will reach anyone who will do anything about it. Plain old bureaucracy, corruption, and favoritism - this time around, they don't work in the ponies' favor. And even then, in the worst case scenario, wartime atrocities will only be investigated after the invasion ends - not only does Gilda believe that by then, the Princesses will be done with, but... she will, by law, be handed to her own commanders to be prosecuted. And boy oh boy, you haven't met them yet. So, yes, whoever is under Sgt. Guildenstern in the quarantine is in a very, very bad spot, with very little in ways of legally pursuing justice for what she allows herself. The most they can hope for is that the invasion ends and the brought in "ally help" will be dealt with, too.
That all assumes that Celly doesn't go bonkers and start setting things right the only way that remains, in which case personal bias towards four badly mishandled ponies may very well come into play, but hey, we're not there yet, are we? In fact, we don't even know if Celly is as apalled at this exact state of affairs as we think she is... All in all, this most absolute instance of war crime does have its reasoning, and will not be glanced over. I just forgot to point that particular part out, which, I admit, is my fault. Originally, I thought that Rarity could point that out, but then I decided that maybe someone should have most of their body still operational by the end of the day. So... I'll definitely think about that.
For now, here's a better thought - there are other griffons than Gilda. An even better thought - why exactly is she pushed to commander of quarantine in ally/enemy territory when she doesn't even have native grasp of one of their two languages? She'd certainly have you believe that she rose through the ranks, which may ring true in some way... but some other details about her disagree.
That I could have mentioned before, too, yes, but it's more minor. The issue with why this is less optimal is that the process of consuming the emotional excess is... less than pleasant. As is Bane's mere presence in your head. It's better than being fully taken over, but, well, we're comparing an iron maiden to a scalding hot nail-laden 1.5x1.5 iron cage that takes dips into lava every five minutes and you can't die. You might want to stand instead. In any case, there's a bit of a more curious resolution to that.
Besides, if you want to see what this does to ponies, I advise you to keep an eye out on someone who won't stop being very unhygienic in such an expensively furnitured place.
Dude your writing is amazing I get so excited every time I see this story update
I'm sorry, why is Gilda suddenly sadistic mccrazypants? Last time we saw her, she was pranked a couple times abd told off - rightfully - for being a bitch. Sure, rainbow dash is dead, but it's not like the other five killed her. And when did Gilda even offer to take dash in with her? And again, Is that really worth fucking torturing the nine time saviors of the country?
5773182 First of all, I personally highly disagree about rightfully. Someone comes to territory out of their control and gets abused for it. With minor details... Gilda does have a point when she mentions how similar they are to her back then. Kind of sort of. I might just be sadistic and using her for wish fulfillment. But hey, at least I'm doing it with an antagonist. She is one, so far.
Second, she wasn't too fond of them before, and since then had a fair amount o time to harbor enough of a grudge to become speciest. And to those five, she is already extremely opposed. Add to it the fact that she can, quite literally, do whatever she wants, and knows for a fact that the supposed saviors aren't worth diddly-dick anymore. They're left to deal with someone who is far above them, and is seemingly on the same side with them... officially, anyway. So, yeah, not a good time to be them.
5775434 I'd complain about that being unfair to the Mane 6... er, 5, er, 4, but let's face it, Nazi-Gilda is the least of their concerns. With Zombie-DaVinci running around, nothing's fair.