In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

Fear And Trembling, or, The Sacrifice

SBMS098

I packed my saddle-bags with the appropriate supplies for a foaling, for surgery, for fever, and for what emergencies I could imagine, while Rye Daughter fluttered about me in a cheerful fluster. She was all optimism and youthful enthusiasm, imagining no terrors or horrors, so I did not tell her of my unease. I just packed, and dressed warmly, and hurried for the gates and the Road.

The Duchesse had given me the travel-time to make it up to her palace with a day to spare, said the note I had been given. And yet, an early spring blizzard swept the southern Northlands, and though I had time to spare, I did not stop for the night in Little Ridings, and not far past the gates of Charred Horton, I let my mile-devouring trot break into a canter in the darkness.

I collapsed in exhaustion in the snow-swept morning dawning beneath the gates of the half-held castra of Menomenie, the militia letting me inside to sleep a few fitful hours on a cot in the back of their gate-house. The Spirit haunted my misty dreams, staring at me with something baleful in her two-hearted gaze. She would not tell me her mind, and only stared. I woke to her half-voiced words of regret.

"We are sorry that it will have to be."

I shot to my hooves with a heart full of alarm and adrenaline. I thanked the gate-guards as I sped past them, and galloped up the road past the town of Menomenie, and the districts between the border and the palace. Premonition and building panic powered my flight north, and twilight devoured the remains of day as I came into sight of that half-reconstructed hulk of tradition and transition the Duchesse was making her seat of power.

The gate-guards ran out to greet me in my half-blown disheveled state, and barked out the urgent need my evil genius had been warning me with each beat of my thundering heart, each yard separating me from where I should have been.

The foals had come earlier than expected, than planned. They had come hard, and lingered in life's foyer, neither safe in their rooms nor foaled out into the world. The first-foaled was long in coming, and the second breached.

She was bleeding out when I reached the foaling-room. The pedigreed hack she had hired was floundering when I found them, the two infants howling in the chamber, the maids flailing. Blood everywhere, the placental sac laying abandoned in a wide puddle of blood on the floor beside the bed. The fool had let her foal naturally, two heavy heads though her slight frame, without making a Trojan section as we had discussed.

And Bonforte was exhausted, and torn, and bleeding her heart's blood-out of her nethers. I went cold as I do when the world narrows to the scalpel and there is a life leaking out of a crack in the world.

Rinse the region, find the tears, close the arteries, triage. Save what you can, remove what you must. Leave tomorrow to tomorrow, today breathes in your nostrils with a wild look in Her eyes.

I had her stitched up, the traumatized area elevated above her heart, and showed her maids how to hydrate her, keep her air-passage clear, and give me a moment to turn my attention from the struggling Duchesse to the squalling foals. Two hale jenny-foals, with their mother's coat-hue, almost nothing of me in them. Good for the bairns. Yelling for their dam's milk, but her grace was in no position to give them the teat. I sent off a maid for a nursing mare to feed them, and as I did, I caught the doctor sidling out of the chamber. I grabbed her by the forearm, and pushed her into a corner, and started demanding answers. I yelled an awful lot.

While I was chewing out the offending physician, Bonforte's breathing started going rapid. I rushed to her side, and took her measure. She was sliding into shock, heart-rhythm stuttering, feverish. As if she were in septic shock. Impossible, it shouldn't have presented for hours even if the sites had been immediately infected. Something wrong, something wrong, something wrong. I dosed her with every nostrum I had on hoof, but they were all for later, later, she didn't have later, she was going now -

And the room went still, frozen, maids arrested in their flurry, the physician caught in the act, sidling once again towards the doorway, Bonforte's seizure caught in mid-rictus. And the Spirit, standing over us both, sadness in her great mad eyes.

"Thou art losing her. This is in thy heart. Thou knowst it. Look, she is sliding into septic shock e'en now."

"Lady! Please, I have no time for visions! I need time, I need time, I – I could fix this with time!"

"Time I cannot give thee. Time is the only gift not in any pony's profer, the only thing that cannot be made anew. I can only give you this not-time. We are not in time, as we are not truly in the world or the moment.

"What is it that thou desirest?"

"To save her! To not have killed her with a moment's foolishness, selfishness!"

The sadness washed out of the Spirit like a rushing wave, the rage simmering under even her sweetest moods erupting like a geyser of fury.

"You accept the blame, Acolyte?" she thundered. "Have you come to confess to me your infidelities? Have you put something ahead of my service? Have you been lacking in faith?" The world went dark before her black fire, and she grew to fill it from one side to the other, nothing but her great draconic eyes glaring down upon me.

"HAVE YOU NOT HELD MISTRESSES BEFORE ME? GIVEN SERVICE TO OTHERS' BEFORE MINE? HAD LADIES WHO ARE NOT I?" My head nearly split from the cracking of Her thunder in my ears, as if she had howled directly into my skull. "To that false alicorn, to this light-skirt dying before us, to that agent of my damnable sister, and? Worst of all? That thestral filly you found under those rose-bushes?"

She drew back, long enough to give me a knowing, rageful look. "Yes, I know about your little schemes for that child, your prophesy-inspired day-dreams of betraying my trust, to somehow replace me with that poor child. In your hidden heart, where you thought to keep from your Mistress your betrayal, your half-hearted false-hearted jollity. Think you I would not see your dreams solely because you dreamt them in THE DAY? Fool! Be damned, you traitor!"

I fell down on my face, and bawled, so tired, so empty, so scared. The miles and the hours, the terror, the exhaustion I had been holding back, broke over me like a wave, my bulwarks collapsing, my strength spent.

"Lady, Lady, forgive me, I confess it, I confess it all. You know me and my heart, you owe me nothing, I have conspired against you in my heart. You are mad, Lady, you are not in full possession of your senses. You are two, where you ought to be one, and your furies are unmeasured and wild. Your sensibilities come and go with terror and rage. We know it, we fear it, but we still love you, Lady. We would have seen you been made better. Our conspiracies have in your best interest, Lady. We would see you great again as you ought to be."

"Talk not of yourself in the collective sense. Say it right."

"I, then, Lady. My conspiracy, my treacheries, have been in hopes of your future health. Oh, damn me, I can't think straight, please, help me Lady, she's dying, and I can't think straight-"

"Enough, enough. What is it you promise me, Acolyte? Will I have a proper dedicat? Will you, at last, serve me with your whole heart? No reserve, no paternal efforts to 'fix' or 'correct' me?" Her great hoof prodded at my chest. "Your WHOLE heart?"

"Oh, yes, Lady, please Lady. In every way, as you direct, when you direct, without scheming."

"Not enough. Give me all of it. Your attention. Your hoof in action. A sign, an active sign."

"Anything, my Lady."

"Here, take up your scalpel. Give me your everything."

I took my bloodied scalpel from the bowl it had been soaking in. "What would you have me do, my Lady."

"Your first-born."

"Wh-what?"

"I told you, I want everything. I want your first-born. Cut its heart out."

The stillness stuttered, and the world twitched around us, the moment coming back in jerking panic. I stood there with the scalpel in my jaws, breathing heavily, wild-eyed. In the mirror across the room, I looked into my eyes, and the amulet had failed, and Her thestral pupils stared slit-eyed out of my sockets like the gates of Tartarus.

And alicorns save me, I went for the basinets while pandemonium erupted all around me.

I looked down at the squalling foal, and brushed back its birth-slick little mane, and I reached out with the scalpel, and I found the spot, and I started to cut. Blood welled around the blade, and I knew I was damned forever.

Then the world seized around me, again, and my mind went blank.

"HOLD."

The Spirit, again, in her gentler aspect.

"Sawbones, thy sacrifice redeems thee in our eyes. Cut no more. We art satisfied. Well-done, our servant, well-done."

"No, no more, Lady? You said you needed her heart."

"We needed a heart, and thou has given it to us. Thank you, dedicat. The foal's heart may continue to beat within her chest, we hath it now in our hooves. We art satisfied." The foal's eyes opened, impossibly, and its eyes were as thestral as the Spirit's, or Cherie's, or mine own in the mirror.

"We do, however, need a sacrifice for your demanded boon. A life for a life, a heart for a heart, power for power. Our presence requires a victim. There!" gestured the Spirit with a blue-furred foreleg, at the attending physician frozen in her flight from the chamber. "In yonder bush, struggles a ewe, tangled by the sacrificial altar. Take up thy scalpel, and bleed her for your dying Bonforte."

I limped, more than half-mad, over to the doorway, stumbling around the clutter of the foaling chamber, the maids frozen in their charges hither and thither as their mistress, caught in a seizure which I had feared was about to become a death-rattle, laid upon the foaling-bed. I stepped behind the physician, whose face looked almost as mad as mine own, her eyes caught in a shift from the tableau at the bed and toward the unguarded door.

I put the blade of the scalpel under her throat beside the carotids, and looked up at the Spirit. She nodded, and the world returned to its pace. I drew sideways as the physician fled, and her own momentum cut her throat from side to side, deeply and irrevocably. Her eyes rolled back as the blood-pressure in her brain dropped to zero, and her carcass collapsed bonelessly to the already-bloodied floor of the foaling chamber.

Startled screams filled the room as the maids and attendants registered the sudden presence of a corpse and a mad-stallion in the only exit to the chamber, and I breathed heavily around my scalpel while the doctor's life-blood pooled around my hooves. I spat it aside, and got control over my air.

"Leave us. Now."

I stepped aside, and the stampede began. They forgot the foals in their panic, and I had to pause until the last of them cleared my path to the foaling-bed. I did not pause beside the basinet of the first-born, but in passing I noted that the cut upon her chest, which had seem so deep when I had been making it, was barely a scratch, already closing. Unnatural.

Bonforte was still seizing upon her bed, and I had to reach forward with both hooves to still her shudders.

Oh, it couldn't all be for nothing.

As soon as I touched her, she froze, heaved up on the points of her spine.

Her eyes shot open, and that familiar slit-eyed glowing stare lit up the ceiling above her bloodied bed.

She takes everything in her time, everything and everyone.

Bonforte glowed with Her miracle, the fire burning through her veins, the flashing flare flowing from one end to the other, via heart-chamber, artery, and every capillary, burning out the unnatural infection which had been killing her.

The Spirit whispered in my inner ear, explaining the poisoning, the sneaking early induction of labour, the physician's paid betrayal. A clever plot, a plan to clear the ducal throne for the heir, the rightful heir, brought north from her Rimean relatives and being raised by her distant cousin, in hopes of repairing the breach. The treacherous little cur, whose betrayal of her cousin's hospitality had fueled the plot, had paid for it. The Spirit continued to whisper in my ear as I checked Bonforte's condition, reassured myself that as the fire flickered out, that her natural breathing had resumed, her vitals once again that of a mother just given birth to two healthy foals. Her eyes, once more those of a beautiful, healthy jenny of a certain age, opened.

"Sawbones, you made it," she breathed. "How are the foals?"

"They're beautiful. They're healthy. And you're better than you were. I can't explain what happened, but you're going to be dealing with the fall-out for a long time. I'm being told that I'm not done with my intervention. But the three of you should be fine until your cowardly attendants get over their fright and return. I apologize for the mess I've made of your home. But I'm not quite done making a mess yet."

She drifted off to sleep with a puzzled, confused expression. She could not see the corpse by the door from her bed. I brushed the heads of my children in passing as I headed out into the hall. I didn't even know their names.

I found an axe mounted on a wall-display in a gallery on the way to the cur's chambers, the cur and her attendants. I found them panicked, half-packed. Someone had warned them. It wasn't enough, wasn't fast enough. I barred the doors against their escape, and I killed them.

Every last one of them. Including Bonforte's vicious little cousin.

Nopony stopped me.

Nopony stood in my way when I left the palace.

I slept in the open on the way back home, the Spirit whispering in my ears, and keeping me warm in the cold.

I'm afraid I gave Rye quite a fright when I returned to the Palisades. But at least my drugged sleep under the eaves of the Palisades was blessedly dreamless.

Author's Note:

God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man you must be puttin' me on"
God says, "No", Abe say "What?"
God say "You can do what you want Abe but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"

Comments

[The_Skraeling]

That was intense.

[Minalkra]

To be oathbound to such madness ... and to be made to give such of yourself to that mad thing. Are you sure this should be marked as horror?

[Mitch H]

7737931 Thank you.

7737973 I kinda feel like Horror is redundant to the Dark and Gore tags.

[ponygrad]

This is a super interesting chapter. My initial guess from Luna's "baleful gaze" was that she was the one that poisoned the duchess. And although it's plausible given Luna's semi omnipotence that her exposure of the conspiracy was genuine, I am leaning towards the side of madness. There are two tells. One is that Sawbones admits to trying to replace luna with the thestral, when we're pretty sure they just like her as a morale boosting mascot. It's always possible that the annals we read do not show his daydreams and true intentions, but it doesn't make much sense to replace a spirit with a batpony filly. That Sawbones never for a second refutes this shows that his mind is very pliable and beyond reason. The second tell is the whole blood sacrifice thing. Just after the spirit sates her blood lust for the first time from our perspective, she tells him to kill the rest of the servants (or family? it's a bit unclear from the text). They could all be in on the conspiracy, but there's no real reason for them to be. I think this is another hint that the spirit is making him go overboard.

[Mitch H]

8064689 The Spirit could be at the same time an expression of madness, and absolutely correct about the conspiracy. Sawbones was in a position to observe the conspirators, and to comprehend the plot in an instinctual manner. To paraphrase Fight Club, he knows this, because the Spirit knows this.

[CaptainPipsqueak]

Let's be honest: Sawbones was going to kill them anyway; this was just being given permission by God.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Well, this got twistedly Abrahamic. Highway 61's a dark road to travel...

[Skulljack17]

Many transitions of power happen around the spilling of blood. Not so many happen in this manner such as father to just born child, nor such literal transfers of 'power' as it were. Rage and hate and sacrifice, pushing and driving one to do whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes.