Revenant

by Zimprus Nalune

Callings

I was jolted awake by the sound of shattering glass.

I instantly snapped upright, focused and alert. The first thing I noticed was that Trixie was missing. The second thing I noticed was that there were a few glass shards laying in the street, shining in the moonlight. I exited the alley and looked to my left to see the front window of the magic shop broken open from the inside.

Trixie was walking stiffly and slowly into the shop, her magic flickering on and off. So far the window was the only thing she had broken, but I didn’t want to take the chance of her breaking anything else and waking up anypony. I jumped and glided through the window, taking care to avoid the shattered glass. I landed just behind Trixie and tapped her flank.

“Trixie, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to stop,” I whispered to her. “If you want, we can take whatever bits we can find, but the last thing we need is the Royal Guard on us.”

Trixie ignored me, stepping forward even more slowly, murmuring to herself. Her horn was now pulsing steadily, providing a light for us to see by. I looked around us at a variety of books, strange herbs, and a crystal here and there. I had no idea what Trixie was looking for, but that didn’t matter much.

“Trixie, let’s go,” I said firmly, giving her tail a small yank.

Without warning, Trixie’s horn flared up, casting a magical bolt back at me. I just barely managed to avoid it, jumping to the side and trying not to knock anything over. Trixie continued to walk ahead, muttering all the way. Now I was mad.

“Alright, that’s it,” I growled, jumping over Trixie and landing in front of her. “Who do you-”

I stopped as soon as I saw her face.

Small cuts dotted her face, likely from the glass breaking. Blood leaked from all of them, rolling down her face, and her wide, unblinking gaze was almost scary. I noticed that it wasn’t just her face she had hurt, but her chest and legs as well. Blood flowed slowly, but constantly, and I took a step back from her.

“Trixie, are you alright?” I asked, mildly creeped out by her injuries.

“...ak ...me ...who...” she whispered incredibly softly. “...ake ...me ...gre ...nd ...pow ...ul...”

“What?”

Trixie pushed past me, stopping at the counter at the back of the shop. She sat down and moaned softly, her pink glow of magic sparking red. I stepped up behind her and looked around, making sure we were still alone.

“What has gotten into you?” I demanded. “We’re going to get caught if you keep this up. Don’t think I won’t mind control you again if I need to.”

“Make me strong...” she murmured, loud enough for me to hear her. “I want you...”

“Okay, no.” I glared at her and shapeshifted back to my changeling form. “Last chance to come away with your body, Trixie Lulamoon.”

“I need you!” She shivered and fell to the ground, eyes closed as she whimpered and convulsed.

“What I put up with...” I rolled my eyes and touched my horn to hers.

***

There was a thick grey smoke covering the ground as far as I could see. It clung to my hooves as it flowed around them, leaving them feeling chilled, but not quite cold.

I turned around at the noise of familiar sobbing to see Trixie standing up, tears rolling down her face as the smoke wrapped around her hooves, snaking up around her legs and seizing her throat, pulling on her mane, and completely enveloping her horn.

I began to step towards towards her, but abruptly a stallion formed out of the smoke, blocking me from Trixie. Its glowing red eyes glared at me, and I glared back. Neither of us made a move.

“She... she... sheeeeeee...” The stallion boomed in a hoarse voice. “Ours, now...”

“I don’t think so.” I stepped around the stallion to get to Trixie. “She’s mine. My slave. Noling touches her but me. Get it?”

The smokey stallion made no move to stop me, only turning its head around an unnatural degree to follow my movements. We kept eye contact until I was right next to Trixie, and then I focused on trying to free her from the smoke. I tried waving it away, blowing on it, even firing a bolt or two at it, but the smoke remained where it was.

“Leave.”

I looked to my side to come face to face with the smoke being. We glared at each other once more.

"You leave." I hissed back.

"We gave you a choice to go willingly.” The stallion’s eyes narrowed. “It would have been much easier if you accepted.”

Without warning, I felt the smoke that had been flowing around my hooves suddenly surge upwards. I struggled against the unreal force it gripped me with, feeling it grab hold of my head.

“She is ours now...”

I felt a sudden force twist my head to the side, and the world went black.

***

My vision flashed, and I found myself stumbling away from Trixie. I was completely disoriented, the entire store was spinning and I felt like my legs would give out at any moment. I planted my hooves firmly on the ground and lowered my head until the dizzying feeling went away.

As soon as I felt like I wasn’t going to fall over, I looked back up at Trixie. She had broken the front counter into pieces, and had some strange necklace in her hooves. Her eyes and smile were wide with excitement. She looked at me, an insane glint in her eye.

“Thank you, Revenant,” she said loudly. “I appreciate everything.”

She clipped the necklace around her neck, and both it and her immediately lit up with a blood red light. I got a good look at the necklace, recoiling in shock when I realized it was the same one I had seen back in Parasite’s lair. How did it end up here?

Trixie started laughing, mildly at first, then slowly developing until her head was thrown back and the glow around her intensified into a magical aura. The aura itself then intensified, lighting bolts arcing off of Trixie’s body and striking random things in the store. I faintly heard the shouts of ponies outside as they began to wake up from the noise.

Trixie ceased her laughing and looked back at me.

“Goodbye, Revenant!” she smiled. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will not forget the service you have done her!”

Before I could react, I found myself surrounded in a red glow. Trixie winked at me.

Then I found myself rocketing out of the magic store, faster than I could have ever flown by myself.

I yelled in pain as I was forced through the very solid roof, shooting into the sky above Manehattan. I yelled out again as the red aura around me turned into a crimson inferno, covering me in magical fires. It was an almost unbearable agony, feeling my entire body burning away. I dimly noticed that I had stopped rising into the sky, and that I was falling back down to the ground.

I knew that there was no was no way I would survive the fall. I tried to buzz my wings in order to slow my descent, but trying to do so just fanned the flames on my body and intensified the pain. I was practically dead already. I looked down at the entire city of Manehattan, feeling my body pick up speed as I fell.

I frantically searched my memories for anything that could help me. I wasn’t going to give up, not yet. But I couldn’t think of any spell, trick, or feature that could help me right now. My wings were the only thing that could save me from hitting the ground, and trying to go that route would probably turn me to a crisp before I even hit the ground

Then it hit me.

When I had first fought Pyrite in the Everfree forest, I had willingly thrown myself at the ground. A spark of magic had turned me into a living comet, and I had hit the ground completely okay. I could do the same thing here.

Through the painful haze in my mind, I willed my magic through my horn and into the air around me. The red flames pushed back, trying to force my magic back inside me. The ground was coming closer faster and faster, and I pushed harder and harder.

Finally, the flames gave.

The red inferno turned into a bright green, and I felt the pain vanish with it. It was too late to do anything else, so I impacted the ground, hard, but thankfully painlessly. The asphalt gave way, cracking and allowing me to fall through to the dirt below. The green flames exploded the moment I hit the ground, hitting every building around the street I had crashed into and catching them on fire as well.

I laid at the bottom of the crater, groaning as I tried to move my body, which still felt like it was on fire. The dirt underneath the road was cool, and felt wonderful as I laid on top of it.

Eventually, I heard the shouts of ponies from outside the crater. I looked up to see a few guards, in dark purple and black armor, stick their heads over the edge and look down at me. I hissed weakly at them. One of them pulled away and ran off, but the rest stayed and kept their eyes on me.

Not long after that, the guard that had run away returned, this time with another. The additional guard jumped down into the crater, landing on top of me. I yelled out in pain as the guard’s metal shoes hit my side, and I felt at least two of my ribs break. I yelled again as the guard kicked me in the same spot.

“Filthy changeling!” she spat on my face. “Thou art fortunate that my princess dost not wish thee dead. But after our companions are finished, thou wilt wish thou was.”

I coughed as the guard kicked me yet again, then jumped off of me. She then grabbed my mane, yanked me up and shoved my head against the side of the crater.

“I may not kill thou,” she breathed into me ear. “Nay, I will not kill thou. But I will break thou for the pain thine kind hast caused.”

The guard, still holding me by my mane, slugged me across the face. At this point, I could barely even cry out. I felt too dizzy, too exhausted to muster up anything but a short yelp every time the guard hit me. She punched me in the gut, threw me back onto the bottom of the crater, yanked on my tail, and even bit into my left wing with sharp teeth I had never thought ponies had.

“Lieutenant Leviathe, enough,” a dull voice called down from the edge of the crater.

The guard, Leviathe, slowly bit down harder, then yanked away with her teeth still holding onto my wing, tearing a piece with her. I screamed as she did so, feeling my blood spurt out of my wing and onto my back. White-hot agony, far worse than the red flames, erupted from my destroyed wing.

I curled into a ball and continued screaming until my voice gave out. Even then, I kept trying to scream, forcing hoarse noises out of my throat. All the while, I could hear mumbles of conversation between the guard and what was probably another pony like Brass Visions.

I ignored them and instead concentrated on my wing. I looked back at it to see a large chunk from the top, blood flowing and occasionally spurting from where the guard had bit me. I closed my eyes and concentrated, remembering what I learned about healing magic. I cast the regeneration spell on my wing, gasping as I felt my magic reserves drain incredibly low.

In return, my wing glowed a dim green, and slowly but surely the missing part regrew, until my wing looked like it had never been hurt at all. I was still dizzy from the blood loss, however, and I knew I didn’t have enough magic left to heal my ribs.

I let my head fall back down to the ground, deciding it was a good time to take a nap.

***

The first thing I noticed was how hungry I was.

The second thing I noticed was that my legs were restrained, and I could hardly move.

The third thing I noticed was that I was in a hospital room.

I slowly looked around myself. I was tightly tied to a hospital bed, ropes snaking in and out of the holes in my legs in order to hold me down. Every time I shifted, the ropes rubbed extremely uncomfortably on the sensitive carapace. There was a bag of boiling red blood hanging from the ceiling, a tube snaking its way down and connecting to a needle that was stabbed right into my neck.

I hissed as the ache of hunger struck me again, leaving me weak and helpless. I tried to feel for any love or even positive emotion in the air, but this hospital obviously wasn’t anything like Ponyville’s, because there was none to be found.

I heard the loud clopping of hooves from out in the hallway, followed by an mare in a nurse’s outfit coming into my room. She was smiling, but it was obviously forced.

“Hello, Mr. Changeling,” she said. “Do you know where you are?”

“Get lost,” I said weakly.

The nurse’s smile dropped.

“I see your mental faculties are fully intact,” she said dully. “I sometimes wonder why Celestia even accepts your kind as intelligent. You’re monsters, all of you.”

“You’re no better,” I hissed. “Everything I’ve ever done is because of one of you.”

“I don’t need to hear your trickery, insect.” The nurse turned and left the room. “He’s awake, Ms. May.”

As soon as the nurse was gone, another pony entered. It was another mare, dressed in a longcoat and fedora. Her coat was a dull grey, and her extremely long mane had hints of what might have been a silver shine. Her eyes were an almost lifeless orange, her lips tight with displeasure.

The mare came up to my bed and stood next to me, looking at me with an unreadable expression.

“Three, two, one...” she counted off.

Suddenly, the bag of blood that hung from the ceiling exploded, showing the entire room with pony blood. A few large drops landed on my face, and I licked them off while glaring at the mare.

“Savage,” she said simply.

“Weakling,” I shot back.

“A savage would think in terms of strength. You have justified me.”

The mare took off her fedora and placed it gently on my bed.

“I am under orders to obtain information from you,” she stated. “I am free to do so by any means necessary. However, I am well aware that you could desert your shell of a body in a moment, so I have created a method which will maximize prospective gain for me.”

The nurse from before re-entered the room with a chair, placed it for the mare to sit, then left again. The mare drew a blank piece of paper and a quill from her longcoat, and threw them into the air, where they remained hovering in place.

“We shall start with names,” the mare said, placing a hood on her chest. “My name is May.”

The quill started to write on the paper. I looked at it, then at May.

“I’m not telling you anything.”

The quill wrote down my words.

“I could make this very painful for you. While I may not kill you, and as Lieutenant Leviathe was so kind to demonstrate, I am free to injure you however I wish. Now, please, cooperate, and I will instruct the prison guards to bring you an extra whorse every week for your nourishment.”

I blinked. “What?”

Fast as I could blink, May punched me across the face, and returned to sitting in her chair as if she had never moved.

“Revenant...” I hissed.

“Good. Now, how old are you?”

I blinked again. I honestly didn’t know the answer to that question, and I was suddenly feeling very off-put.

“I... don’t know.”

May’s gaze narrowed almost unnoticeably.

“I will assume for the sake of conversation that you do not. However, since you did not answer my question with an appropriate answer, I will not grant you a question for me to answer. Now, do you have a favorite color?”

“...green?” I shrugged.

“That is logical.” May leaned back in her chair. “Now, you may ask a question of me.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I do not want anything from you. Where do you live?”

“In an alley. And if you don’t want anything from me, then who does?”

“My superiors. Do you have a favorite food?”

“Love, of course. What do your superiors want from me?”

“Information. Who are your accomplices?”

Without a second thought, I told her.

“Trixie Lulamoon.” I grinned.

May got up and drove a hoof into my gut, forcing the breath out of my lungs.

“Do not lie to me. Trixie was the one to expose you and stop you theft. Now tell me, who are your accomplices?”

“Don’t... have... any...” I wheezed.

May observed me for a moment, then reached into her coat and pulled out a small golden knife with small scrawlings on it, too small to see. She observed it for a moment, then whispered something too low for me to hear. Immediately, the blade lit up with white and orange flames.

“Corona Blades,” May said aloud. “It is said they are forged in the heart of Celestia’s sun, using the same metal she used to create her own armor. Nopony save the Princesses and Discord know the name of this metal, but we Watchers are well aware of its mystical properties. The blade cannot be reforged by any mortal forge, but neither will the blade dull or rust. And while it has been ages since ponykind used enchantments, I can personally attest to the ease with which these blades will take to enchanting. They are truly wondrous, god-like artifacts, to which we are blessed to hold.”

May turned her gaze back to me, lifted my head up gently, and placed her Corona Blade between my neck and the bed.

“It is known that the severing the spine of a changeling will kill them,” May told me. “Permanently. It is also known that Corona Blades burn hotter the more wicked the creature they are killing. You changelings are the most vile, unrepentant, villainous scum ponykind has ever come across. If you do not tell me what I wish to know, you will feel the burn of my blade.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t kill me,” I said calmly, trying to hide my nervousness.

“It is not unheard of for interrogation subjects to commit suicide,” May responded, tilting her head slightly. “I wonder how easy it would be to make it seem as though that were the case.”

I couldn’t help but gulp at what she was implying. She leaned in closer to me, her gaze unblinking.

“This game has gone on long enough. Tell me where the rest of your kind are hiding.”

I stared back at May, wide-eyed. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she obviously thought otherwise. I blinked and gulped again.

"I swear I don't know anything," I said shakily.

"You lie. Very well. We are-"

Suddenly, one of the pony nurses burst into the room. She was out of breath and apparently extremely panicked.

"Madam May!" she said frantically. "Word from Captain Air Scrawl! The changelings are here, they're attacking the monument shipment!"

May froze and drew her knife away from me, putting it back in her coat and then placing her hat back on her head.

"Odd, they are usually much more subtle than this. No matter, thank you, nurse, you may go," she said aloud. "I'll be back shortly."

With that, May stood up and walked towards the door, vanishing into thin air. The nurse left as well, closing the door behind her. Silence filled the room.

I sighed and closed my eyes. I needed to get out of here. But I felt too weak to try. And with Trixie having suddenly turned on me, I had noling to help me.

"Ugh, I hate those morons."

I opened my eyes. There was someling else here.

"Oh, sorry. No manners for me, nope."

The voice definitely wasn't that of a pony. I looked around for the speaker, but there seemed to be noling else in the room.

Suddenly, a green outline formed on the ceiling. The air inside the outline shimmered, then slowly changed colors. Before I knew it, I could see a changeling, an ordinary changeling, standing on the ceiling.

The changeling silently dropped to the floor, then walked over to the side of my bed. It smiled and sat down on the floor next to me.

"Hello brother. We have some time to talk. That Watcher will be busy for a while. You know how Behemoths hate to lose to something smaller than they are."

I hissed at the changeling, who recoiled in surprise.

"Get lost. One of you already tried to kill me."

The changeling looked puzzled, then relaxed and smiled again.

"Oh, I see. You're Disconnected. That explains everything."

"Disconnected?" I asked.

"One of the king's experiments," the changeling explained. "A dozen changelings, disconnected from the Hive Mind from birth. One Elite, one Behemoth, three Skywings, two lahkendovs, and five drones."

"What?"

"Oh, right. I forgot." The changeling grinned. "My name's Nebula. What's yours?"

"Revenant."

The changeling's grin dropped. It looked down at the ground for a moment.

"I see." Nebula said softly. "Um... Where were we?"

"What do you want with me?" I asked.

"Standing orders are to integrate all disconnected changelings as soon as they complete their mission," Nebula sighed. "Do you know what your mission is?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Then you're not ready to be integrated. But that doesn't mean we're going to let you stay here."

Nebula's horn lit up a bright green, and it set about undoing all the ropes that held me down.

"And they call us savages..." Nebula muttered. "Just because I ate a mare's eyeballs doesn't mean I'm not civilized."

I chose not to comment on that.

“Relax,” Nebula laughed. “I had the decency to cook them first. Raw just gives me gas.”

Nebula finished untying me from the bed and threw the ropes away. It smiled.

"So now I'm giving you a choice. We can go our separate ways, and meet again in the future. Or, if you want, you can come with me to the Manehattan Hive. Either way, you can still leave here."

I stared at the changeling, who grinned widely back at me. It was just going to let me go? I was slightly surprising, considering how I had interacted with Parasite. But then, changelings were despised by just about every pony had ever met. Only Trixie had accepted me to any degree, but I hadn’t given her much choice in the matter.

“I want to-” I began, but Nebula cut me off with a raised hoof.

“Actually, Commander Exusia has a better idea,” it said with a smile, but it looked forced. “You’re staying a prisoner.”

I gaped at Nebula, who just shrugged.

“Look, I’d rather not, but he’s the Commander. We’re just a couple of grunts. Well, you’re not a grunt exactly, but the point is he outranks both of us.”

“And how are you going to keep me a prisoner?” I asked, glaring at the changeling.

“Like this.”

Nebula’s horn lit up, and before I could react, a green bolt shot out and struck me in the head. Before I knew it, the world spun and faded to black.

Comments

[Dainn]

Will this guy ever catch a break?