An Artist Among Animals

by Bandy

14: Interlude

That night Twilight dreamt about the attempt on her life.

Generals and their aides strode around the vast table, making notes and moving the little tokens across the landscapes of Equestria. Their shadows doubled and tripled under incandescent lights. Communicators lined the wall, buzzing like muted trumpets. Twilight’s hoofsteps beat an echoed rhythm up the bare rock walls. Above the table hung a series of stunning stalactites, wet and smooth with water. A few hundred meters above them, Canterlot slept easy.

Twilight walked up to the table. The crowd parted around her. The light grew brighter. The table was glowing now. The tokens marched across its surface of their own volition. Without thinking, she knew where each piece needed to go. She reached out to touch one.

Just as she grabbed it, the ceiling exploded. Stalactites fell from the ceiling and impaled the table inches from Twilight’s hoof. She dropped the piece and dodged another falling chunk of rock. The trumpets ripped out their mutes and blasted a dissonant alarm. Aides threw themselves over their generals and hustled them out of the room.

A griffon dropped from one of the holes in the ceiling, gun in each talon. It snarled and pointed at the closest general. Two bullets hit him square in the back. “The war room has been breached,” somepony cried over the speaker system. “Article five enacted.”

Twilight heard the words and immediately charged her horn. In craning her head to get a better shot at the intruder, she tripped over the crushed body of another aide. Her first bolt sailed high and wide, into the ceiling.

The griffon turned on her. It raised its guns as Twilight charged another spell.

An instant before it could fire, a purple cloud surrounded its arms, fully paralyzing them up to the elbows. Its eyes went wide. It shook its head in fear.

Twilight didn’t see it. In another moment, she had yanked the griffon’s arms clean off its body. Green blood jetted from the stumps. Fur and feathers fell away as the griffon let out an animal hiss. Changeling eyes glowed beneath the half-melted griffon facade.

Twilight charged another spell, aimed, and incinerated the intruder. Strange ash spilled across her face. She closed her eyes and her mouth, but it got in her nose. She recoiled and looked for another intruder.

The room was empty. A few bodies littered the floor. A voice on the intercom told everypony to make their way up to the main basement of the castle via the catacomb hallways. Before she left, she trotted over to the communications table and incinerated all the documents in one clean sweep of magical fire. Papers leapt from the table and danced in the air. Their wild motion transfixed her. She didn’t notice the hoofsteps behind her.

Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and whirled her around. She yelped and leaned back. Flames touched her wings. It was a general’s aide, his body pale, blood smeared across the side of his face, eyes yellow and shot, thick hooves locked on her shoulders, tearing at her fur. Twilight couldn’t fight. She never fought in this dream. He opened his mouth and like dragon fire the words came pouring out across her face-- ”We have to leave!”

Twilight woke up on her stomach. She tasted her tropical conditioner. One leg hung over the side of the bed, resting on the bottom shelf of her nightstand.

Without opening her eyes, she took stock of herself. Breathe in. Feel the bag taped to the underside of the nightstand. Breathe out. Let the pillow trap the warmth. Breathe in. The night was cool. She could feel it through the blankets. Breathe out. The pillow was warm. It felt good. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forgive yourself, forget yourself.

On a whim, she crawled out of bed and went down the hallway. “Spike?” she called softly. The tall crystal pillars trapped the sound. Breathe in. No answer. Breathe out. “Spike?”

A little purple light made the crystal around her sparkle. The night felt cool and easy. Twilight could still remember her hooves wrapped up in the sheets, the soft melancholic protest against wake.

A few rooms over, she found Spike asleep at a half-sized work table. Spread around the table were a dozen or so half-finished sketches of a tall, lean dragon swinging a fiery sword at a sneering cadre of ninjas. The lines were clean and the figures were bold. Everything on the page pointed towards the dragon’s chestplate, where a six-pointed star was embossed in shaded gold. Flipping through the pages gave her a glimpse into the world of Dragoon the Dragon, savior of ponykind and defender of Equestria. Spike snored into his arm, a silly-looking savior taking a well-deserved nap.

As she perused, she noticed a larger sheet of paper tacked to the bench, beneath the comics. The loose pages came to life and organized themselves somewhere out of the way as Twilight peered at the strange drawing. A silhouette of a mare sat at the edge of a bed. Her body was crumpled and her head bent low between her legs. Jagged shutters partially covered a window behind her. One side of her body was bathed in light, the other in an indigo shadow. Tracing the outline from head to hoof, Twilight noticed the colors ever so slightly skew from their borders. In the light of an implied moon were the distinct shapes of treetops sprouting from her fur. Moving across the strange body, the trees grew sparser. In the shade they were hardly more than sharp black stumps.

Twilight looked at Spike. He snored again and moved his hand over the corner of the drawing. No signature. No mark. Just a mare. Just art. She spread the comic pages out again and levitated Spike down the hall to his bedroom. She didn’t have to think about it too hard. She knew where he was going.

Without Spike around, Twilight found the emptiness of the castle alluring. She wandered from corridor to corridor, opening doors at random, looking for problems to solve. She polished a few scratches in the crystal in the foyer, which led to righting fallen book rows in the library, which led to the kitchen--and who could walk into a fully stocked kitchen and not at least grab a bowl of cereal?--which led to dusting the tables in the evening room. In the wee hours of the morning, this place felt like it hadn’t been touched by another living soul in years.

As the sun rose she turned on her radio and flicked through the dial, trying to find the station Rarity had been listening to earlier. Where was the dance? Where were the strings? She moved past morning talk shows and top 40 playlists, past the news, past the oldies, past the radio plays, all the way up to the top of the frequency range and then back down again.

Spike descended the stairs halfway and rubbed his eyes. “Twi?” he asked sleepily.

She stopped the dial halfway between stations. The castle echoed static isolation.