To Cure Deception

by LegionPothIX

Act 3 | Laughing Lake

Author's Note:

What is identity?

The stillness of the empty cave, which featured a magical pool, was ocasionally broken by the hunting echo of a rhythmic cant. Then by the voice of Madness, who suggested: "Lets say, for the sake of argument, that you were to turn your back on the changelings forever."

These types of hypothetical games were common for the mare-allion, but this one went a little too far, even for it, and offended Latere's sensibilities. "I would never!" the model changeling proclaimed with a stamp of her forehoof that so perfectly encapsulated the rigidity her earth pony form was representative of. However whimsical her mentor Tantric Tempest was, it had a special quality, some force to be reckoned with, such that she just couldn't dismiss its more outlandish ideas out of hoof.

"That is a choice you would never make? Under any circumstance? How can you be so sure?" the stormy pegasus asked with a slight upturn of its primaries. "Fate perhaps?"

Latere peered into the reflection she cast that was not her. She hesitantly reached out to touch it when a haunting echo of Laughter slipped through time shrieking: "Doublely mared!" and she pulled her hoof away.

"Fine, I'll play this game," Deception said to Madness, "It is because I know myself too well."

Though it remained far from the reflective pool, as if scared of what might escape should it get too close, Madness indicated it was more than able to see the disjunction between the mare and her reflected stallion. The nongendered changeling frowned in quiet preponderance, "I thought I had taught you better by now. Perhaps I don't know me as well as I think, either."

Latere's face turned to a disappointed scowl as she turned to her master and student, "Deception is a funny thing, to fall prey to vanity and pride... are you suggesting I've done so?"

Tantric Tempest's voice filled with a wisp of discordant laughter the locale was known for. "No my dear La'Te-air," he said, "That suggestion comes from within. From doubt." It took a more masculine appearance, while his puzzled faced reflected the severity of the last word, before going further. "Would you not say that doubt is also a form of deception, some half-truth?" He nodded slowly, obviously trying to show what he had learned from his master, while his words encouraged her to consider what had been learned as his student, "That there may be some kernel of truth that prompts us to worry?"

She gave careful consideration to his words as he went on to point to the mirror-still pool, and his ever present Prench accent was all the more prevalent in his excitation of the improbable. "Why not pretend for a moment that the future could be seen as clearly as the past or present. What might it look like?"

Latere huffed, "Because that's crazy; even for you. It undermines the nature of free choice that we both just agreed is a trait of our existence."

"Come now," Tantric Tempest pouted and his feathers ruffled, "You think I've not considered that?"

The earth pony sighed and conceded to the whim of the pegasus. "I suppose if the future was set in stone then free choice would be a lie, but I just can't see how that could be." When they played these games it was often Madness who interjected with some impossible yet undeniable thing that would connect the two ideas.

"Earlier, you said 'never' what does that mean?" Tantric Tempest asked with a flick of his tail, "Does that mean you can imagine no circumstances where you would choose to break your oaths to Mother?"

The key word did not go amiss with Deception. She felt like she was being led somewhere, but by now had learned this was just how Madness worked, and she allowed it to continue for sake of seeing where.

"So that would mean you're choices are predetermined by your nature, and the circumstances you find yourself in," Madness slowly added as if the very idea had been preened and waiting for this exact moment. For this opportunity to be expressed.

Deception wanted to object but couldn't find the grounds to. She stopped herself and slowly worked though the logic of it, to see where she went awry. Her first thought was that her choices were such that they furthered her goals, and objectives, but those goals in turn came down to her nature as well. Eventually she nodded and Madness continued after waiting so patiently for her to be ready.

"No matter how small, the act of choosing has consequences, does it not?" Madness took a carefree step forward, his wings in full splay as he balanced on diagonally opposite hooves. Yes was the obvious and inevitable answer, and it did not matter who spoke it, so Madness continued. "Those consequences shape new circumstances too then?"

Yes, again was the obvious answer, and the more Madness led, the deeper pit became in Deception's stomach.

The pegasus continued to teeter its way to the pool, as it spoke an underlining glee took root in its voice, and its physical form shifted to a lighter, airier female persona. "So every choice, everything learned and implemented is a matter of consequence," Madness lisped as she placed her wing on Deception's flank.

Never before had the teeth of those interconnected gears feel so gridlocked, as though time itself had stopped.

"Your whole being," Madness said and a mirthful sigh followed, "Everything in you that drives your choices, was determined as a consequence..." a haughty pause punctuated the inevitable "of the choices made by those before you." With each word a new curve was cut into the blocky-seriousness that was represented in the near-stallion form of Madness, until a petite, carefree mare was left to add as an afterthought: "And they the choices before them, and so on."

Madness less-than-gracefully balanced on the lip of the pool whilst avoiding gazing directly at her own reflection, occasionally glancing over to her student, Deception, who had desperately fumbled through the logic while never averting her eyes from her own reflection of this mysterious stallion.

"It didn't change," Latere noted after silence had long since overrun the cavern.

"Hmm? Why would it?" Tantric Tempest asked.

Latere Vesco's eye twitched at how seemingly obliviousness her mentor and student was to the magnitude of what she had just explained. Even trying to rationalize it for herself took a toll such that her mane greyed a little. A few locks of hair broke from their tightly controlled places beneath the band of gold that arrested them, and she could feel her mental sprockets bending under the strain of the idea.

"If what you say is true," Latere prefaced the statement with what little doubt she had left, "then how I understand the nature of choice will forever be changed. The manner in which I decide things will have changed. Would my fate not also change?"

The pegasus's knee buckled under the stress of Deceptions inquiry, and she flapped up above the weight of it. "You ask that," she said in a trifling tone befitting her Prench demeanor, "as if I had some choice in keeping this knowledge from you. That is not what I am." She flexed her wrist and gently landed at the lip of the pool while gazing in. "That is not what dissonance of loyalty is."

After but a moment of matching her gaze Decpetion immediately wished she hadn't. A murky nightmarish energy brimmed from every fiber of being in Madness's reflection. Immutable, daunting, and absolutely terrifying.

"You say that the only cure for deception is grief. You've been deceived but are not yet grieving," Madness said with such a note of seriousness that her form swiftly shifted back to its masculine nature before turning a sharp eye to his student. "I say, that the only consequence of loyalty is pain. And, you have only just begun to learn of loyalty."