Equestria 485,000

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 8: The Blue Windigo

They did indeed move quickly, or at least as quickly as Twilight was able to. The magic of the map grew weaker and weaker as she got more distant, but it was still affecting her on some level, as was the spell she was using to keep it at bay.

The warmth and glow of the castle receded, the chill of the air began to grow more intense. It was not like it had been before, though. The storms were growing stronger, and the air that they brought with them was strange and different, as though it were charged by something ominous. Silken appeared not to notice this; it was likely that she could not; her ability to perceive the world was limited by the sensors in her head and body. Without a soul, there was no way she could have known what Twilight was feeling. The way the storm made her feel so lonely and afraid, and how she could not shake the sense that it was following them.

Twilight felt herself breathing heavily, occasionally nearly tripping over the ice and snow of the landscape. Silken drifted behind her with ease; she was not actually running, but more of fast walking- -something that would have looked ridiculous normally, but which Silken somehow managed to make appeared infuriatingly graceful- -and showed no signs of fatigue.

“It’s nice to know something familiar survived the cataclysm, isn’t it?”

“No. No it isn’t. Keep MOVING.”

Another long wail went out, echoing between the trees. Twilight felt her mane stand on end beneath her morphiplasm armor, and turned her head to look. For a moment, she nearly panicked- -it sounded so near, with the voice of with windigo seeming to come from every angle and every tree. While she looked over her shoulder, she tripped over the root of one of the many weedy trees that grew amongst the receding apple trees. She fell suddenly, striking her head against the ground.

“I recommend being more careful,” said Silken, helping Twilight up. “If you fall like that while we are being actively persued…” She trailed off. Her eyes looking toward the night.

“Silken, we have to go,” said Twilight, staring to run again. “They’re getting closer!”

Silken did not move. She stood where she was, staring into the darkness, her eyes flicking from tree to tree.

“Silken Dream!” shouted Twilight. “I am giving you a direct order! MOVE!”

“Goddess,” said. “I’m detecting lifesigns. They are almost consistent with vertebrates.”

“Then that means the windigoes- -” Twilight’s breath caught in her throat as she fell silent. The windigoes were ectoplasmic beings, their bodies made of concentrated living magic- -they were not vertebrates, nor would they have lifesigns that Silken would be able to detect. “…almost?”

The area around them suddenly grew still. The wind itself seemed to slow, although the temperature of the air was dropping lower than it had even in the depths of night. The only sound Twilight could hear was that of her own breath and the sound of perpetually recycled air entering and exiting her repeatedly.

“Silken…”

“I cannot lock onto its position,” said Silken. “The signal is not stable.”

Twilight braced herself and raised a spell of her own. She reached out into the darkness with her magic, sensing what lay beyond.

“There is nothing there,” she said. “You’re scans are wrong. There’ss nothing there! Nothing with a soul- -” Then she gasped as she felt it move. A massive thing, moving quickly amongst the trees and brush but without making a sound.

Then came the voice. It called from the darkness beyond where Twilight could see, and it never seemed to speak from the same location- -wherever it was coming from, it was moving. It was the only sound the creature made.

It was not even clear if it was a voice. The sound was badly distorted, as though it were many voices speaking at once. Some sounded as though they were poorly transcribed, as if the fidelity of their original sound had been poor and they had been repeated many times with a loss each time. There was another voice underneath, though. One that spoke with grave difficulty, but no distortion apart from a gurgling and hissing.

“Vortog…plath idena…thanthakta,” it said. Twilight did not understand the language, or even the full pronunciations of the words.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Goddess?” said Silken, looking confused. “I didn’t say anything, who are you- -”

There was a sudden sound, as though the silence surrounding them had suddenly burst open with every kind of deafening noise conceivable. There was a screaming and whir of machinery, and trees being cracked and toppled over as something enormous tore through them.

“Goddess!” cried Silken, interposing herself between Twilight and the attacking monstrosity. Her reflexes were far faster than Twilight’s, and before Twilight even knew what was going on she saw a massive rusted hand grasp Silken’s torso. With a sound of scraping metal and a blast of steam, the pneumatic cylinders in its wrist slammed closed, and the rest of the mechanisms that made up the arm shifted and engaged. Silken was thrown with enough force to send her flying fifty meters through the air, where she slammed into the trunk of a massive tree with enough force to splinter it.

The creature then turned toward Twilight, and she to it. She had no clear idea of what she was looking at. It seemed to have no defined physical form. Where a normal biological creature had a semblance of symmetry and purpose, this monstrosity was a shambling mass of rusted plates of metal, hoses, and wire. It stood at least twenty meters tall, although that was difficult to tell because of the way it moved. The lower half of it seemed to consist of many robotic legs, although Twilight could not be entirely sure. It almost seemed to be shifting as she watched. Parts of it turned with the jerky, difficult motions of a crudely built salvaged machines, but the rest were fluid in a way that made no sense for a creature made of metal, or even one of flesh.

The creature let out a horrible growl that sounded more abstract than angry, but it attacked viciously. Twilight rolled on her side, jumping back to avoid a blow of a long, thin appendage. The creature took a moment to respond, and Twilight took the chance to fire a beam of energy from her horn, striking at where a heart should have been in any sane, normal creature.

The metal plate over its chest- -or what Twilight took to be a chest- -burst into flames as it liquefied, and Twilight saw the violet beam shoot through its body. The creature shambled backward, but only for a moment. Then it seemed to fall on its side and race forward at her with a cry that once again sounded like words.

“Vortog…plath idena…thanthakta,” it said in the exact same tone it had used before. Twilight realized that this thing was quite clearly a machine of some sort, although that only barely made sense. Parts of it looked like they had been built from salvaged parts, but the rest looked like it had been bolted on without purpose, almost at random.

Whatever it was, Twilight realized that she could not strike at something when she had no idea where its vital organs were, if it even had any. Instead she tried to change her spell, only to wince in pain and drop to her knees. The effect of the map was still weakening her, and the spell to protect herself from its influence was using most of her power. As an alicorn, she had more than enough power to smite this abomination, but not without leaving herself exposed completely to the map’s power, something that she was sure would incapacitate her.

This hesitation was all the creature required. It reached out, wrapping Twilight in a thick tentacle and pulling her into the air. Twilight felt the morphiplasm on her body respond automatically, increasing density and hardness to protect her from damage. At the same time, the internal power support system engaged, and Twilight pushed against the tentacle.

It gave way slightly, but only partially. Twilight looked down in horror to see that the corroded metal surface that surrounded her was not a machine at all- -it was armor. There was flesh beneath it. Twilight saw it writhing beneath the rusted metal it held. It was gray and scabrous, and as Twilight watched she saw a mouth filled with numerous rows of bladed teeth rip open, gasping toward her. Above it, she saw several eyes, all with violet irises, all looking toward her with absolute hatred.

The creature roared, and then screamed with the sound of electrical mechanisms. The gray flesh inside morphed, pouring out from around the armor into bladed tendrils that wrapped around Twilight’s body. She began to engage the spell necessary to fight back, but before she could the creature pulled another tentacle from its body, drawing metal and robotic support units from its body.

There was no time to react. The creature struck Twilight in the face. Her morphiplasm reacted by hardening her helmet, but the blow was still substantial. There was pain, and Twilight saw a flash of light from the impact. Then came another, and Twilight saw the transparent substance of her mask beginning to crack.

The creature spoke again, and again with the same voice. “Vortog…plath idena…thanthakta.”

It then slammed Twilight’s mask one more time, and the morphiplasm began to give way as the cracks in the mask grew. Twilight finally finished preparing her spell, and she targeted the creature’s legs. She fired a wide line of energy that severed several, causing it to tip- -only to catch itself on several robotic arms and unnamable appendages.

There was no hesitation even after sustaining the injury. The club-like fist that had been pounding Twilight’s mask suddenly changed, converting into a fleshy spike that then became overgrown with bone. It rammed it through Twilight’s mask, and she screamed as she felt a sharp pain between her left eye and her nose.

At that instant, Silken slammed into the side of the creature. The combination of Twilight’s damage to its legs and Silken’s incredible mass ramming it caused the creature to tilt. It dropped Twilight, and Silken caught her.

“Goddess,” she said. “How badly are you damaged?’

Summoning words was difficult, but Twilight pushed herself away from Silken. “I’m fine,” she said, attempting to reform her mask. Air was getting in. She could smell it, and she could see stains of golden liquid on the inside of the glass-like plate. Seeing that made her feel faint.

The creature struck out at them again with the immense robotic arm that it had initially used to attack Silken. This time, Silken knew what to expect. She dodged and then bucked the mechanism that operated the hand. The force went off like an explosion, in part because of Silken’s strength and in part because she shattered a steam condenser that powered the industrial-looking robotic equipment of the limb.

The creature let out a low growl and took a step back. Its limb had been ruined, and gray, amorphous flesh poured out of the wounds, grabbing onto the bent metal and pulling it apart and back toward the creature’s main body.

“I’ve got it,” said Twilight. She lowered her head and prepared a spell. Instead of a blast of magic, though, her horn only fizzled. “What?” she said.

The creature did not hesitate in its response. Its tentacles and remaining robotic limbs dug into the ground, and the mechanisms in its chest opened up. Twilight saw a whirring vortex of screaming circular blades, and beyond that a mouth surrounded by numerous violet eyes. From within that hole, something began to rev and revolve- -and then a set of infrared lights.

Twilight barely managed to dodge the laser as it went off. The rocks near her liquefied, and the beam proceeded onward toward the darkness behind her, lighting it and with a blinding glow of both the beam and of the trees and brush incinerating. There was a smell of something cooking, although Twilight was sure that it was from the creature itself.

As much as she had wanted to avoid it, the time had come for Twilight to do one of the exact things she had wanted to avoid. Her suit slipped from her back, and she spread her wings. The frigid air felt horrible against them, but the memory of how to fly came back to her quickly. Twilight flapped the appendages and took to the air.

“Silken!” she cried, “I can’t use magic!”

“I assumed that. You’re injury is actually really severe. Be glad you can’t see your own face!”

“Not helping! Do you have- -” The creature redoubled its effort and started to reach for Twilight, and she was knocked to the ground.

“Weapons systems? No, of course not,” said Silken, taking her place at Twilight’s side. “But if this form must be destroyed for my mission objective, so be it.”

The creature took a step forward. Its body had begun to change. The broken arm had been redistributed, and the flesh beneath had reassembled the broken pieces into armor and those that still functioned into a set of three smaller arms. Because it had, its eyes were now visible, either hiding beneath the folds of broken, rusted metal or peering through portholes that looked like they had almost been machined especially for the purpose. All of them were staring at Twilight, their narrow pupils heaving angrily as they formed and re-formed while the flesh beneath the steel and iron heaved and writhed.

A thin, somber call echoed through the forest. The creature suddenly stopped, and Twilight saw the electronics near where a head should have been bristle. Instead of advancing, it took a step backward.

Around them, a mist appeared, pouring in from the trees. The air grew colder than Twilight had ever felt it, and she suddenly felt sick again. Not because of the map, but something else. She felt so alone, and so very hungry.

They appeared silently, appearing to come from nowhere at all. Suddenly they were everywhere, standing on every high branch of the ancient trees or coming across the ground, their silent hooves never truly touching anything except mists. Evolution had not changed them in the same way it had their pony equivalents; the windigoes were pale, ghostly creatures that stared forward from luminescent eyes. They looked as Twilight remembered them, save for the complex spiral markings that some of them bore over their bodies.

“Vortog…plath idena…thanthakta,” repeated the machine as it turned to them. No response came, except for a long and sad whinny that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

This only seemed to enrage the creature- -if it was even capable of rage as opposed to mindless, instinctive violence. It charged them, but its form was massive and lumbering. The massless bodies of the wraiths easily outmaneuvered it. As it reached toward them, one of the marked windigoes paused in the air. A circle of icy air appeared before it, and for a moment Twilight could have sworn that she saw a complex array of spirals and lines form before a surge of cold air shot forward.

The robotic limb froze as the hydraulic fluid within it froze, and the metal creaked and squealed as it became covered in frost. Another windigo appeared, and produced another circle. Even at a distance, Twilight felt herself knocked back by the concussive blast. The robotic limb of the creature shattered, and it let out a long digital moan.

The others began to swarm it, galloping through the air in a circle above the creature. Twilight registered the temperature dropping precipitously as a storm appeared out of nowhere, summoned by the motion of the windigoes.

“We have to get out of here!” said Silken.

Twilight did not listen to her. There was no way she could. She was transfixed by the view of the storm. She watched as the creature writhed, striking out at the windigoes with mechanical, repetitive motions- -as though it did not have the capacity to think, only to behave with preprogrammed responses. She had not realized it in her panic, but now Twilight saw that this thing, despite its flesh, might very well truly be a machine after all.

The storm grew tighter, and Twilight watched as the windigoes struck out, their storm cutting through the creature’s various tubes. Black fluid spurted out, freezing on contact with the cold air. The creature made no sound, but shook with something that might have been pain. Those tubes were part of what linked the machinery that covered it to the living, writhing material beneath. Cutting them seemed to be injuring it greatly.

The windigoes seemed to be more than a minor inconvenience to the creature, but not to the extent that it was receiving any real damage. Its armored became tighter, bulled closer from beneath. Then it hummed from within, a deep sound that rapidly grew into a ring.

“Silken, down, now!” cried Twilight.

Silken did not drop, but Twilight did, just in time to avoid a sudden blast of concussive magical force. The blast threw back the windigoes, and even forced Silken to take a step back. Twilight felt the blast pour against her horn, feeding directly into her brain. Her mind darkened from the blow, and she was distantly aware that she was beginning to convulse.

She was still conscious enough to see the metal creature stand tall- -far taller than it should have been able to, as if its body had extended and grown substantially larger- -and to see a set of four gray, mutated wings burst from its back. The wings spread, reaching out, and as they stretched thousands of small blue feathers burst from their surface. The mechanical creature then flapped the great wings and took to the air. Despite the size and bird-like nature of the wings, it flew more like an insect; it seemed to have no ability to control its course, and simply moved upward, bouncing between trees until it was a good distance from the windigoes. When it reached that tree, its body had already changed again. It was flat and rounded, with legs and tentacles and appendages going outward at every angle like some kind of perverse and asymmetrical beetle. A combination of both electronic lenses and violet-irised eyes stared down at the landscape below, although not at the windigoes. Instead, they were focused purely on Twilight Sparkle.

Then it retreated, jumping with extreme speed and dexterity through the trees before vanishing completely.

Twilight attempted to stand, but fell back to her knees. Her helmet contained a great deal more golden fluid than before. In the heat of the encounter, she had not noticed just how badly it had injured her.

“We appear to be surrounded,” noted Silken.

Twilight looked up through her blurred vision. Indeed, she was correct. The windigoes had not left with the creature- -and they were now closing in on Twilight and Silken from all sides, drifting closer as the mist drew nearer.

“The temperature is getting dangerously cold,” said Silken. “My body can function, but your morphiplasm was not intended to function in air temperatures below a certain point.”

“I’m hurt,” said Twilight. “I’m hurt bad.”

“I can see that. But unless you can use magic, I have no defense against ectoplasmic beings.” She looked up at them. “Although, being an artificial being, I am not sure if they can actually see me.”

Twilight struggled to her feet, because she knew that Silken was right. Windigoes were a profoundly dangerous type of creature. They had nearly been extinct in her own time, but had been a plague on the land as the final ice-age had set in during Equestria’s final years. They fed on hatred and disagreement, and they had found more than enough food on Equestria in that era. Now, though, they must have been starving.

Except that they stopped. Twilight had braced for an attack, but none came. She instead found herself standing in the center of a misty circle, the cold glow of windigo eyes staring at her from every angle. As she watched, a pair stepped forward. They were taller than the others, and their bodies not only contained the complex markings that some of the others did, but they appeared to be ornamented as well. By what, Twilight did not know, as the material was as ghostly and translucent as their bodies.

A pair of circles appeared next to each of them, and Silken braced for an attack. They were the same distortions of air that had been used to attack the creature before. Instead of an attack, though, the circles were filled with symbols of ice. They shifted, forming and breaking apart only to fall to the ground as sparkling dust. Twilight watched the symbols passing, feeling like she was supposed to understand something. Had she been healthy and uninjured, she might have.

“Silken…”

Then all at once it stopped. The air grew quiet, and the windigoes seemed to become alert to something. Twilight winced and cried out as she felt a new force in her mind, an oppressive presence. The windigoes seemed to sense it too, and they retreated, returning to the mist where they had come and vanishing into it. Only the two largest of them stayed, and even they stepped to the side, forming a gap between them.

That was when it stepped through. Twilight’s vision blurred and strained trying to look at it, but she saw it closely enough to see its general shape and nature. It was tall, twice the size of the windigoes and probably twice as tall as Silken- -although its height was not consistent. It moved like a quadruped, but it had no physical form. Instead, it seemed to consist of a number of independent luminescent pieces. These were in continual flux, flowing and pouring over each other, building and reassembling as the whole that they produced moved closer.

From the way it walked, it seemed as though it was a quadruped- -but at the same time, it often pulled together enough of a form to look something like a windigo. Twilight saw a head, and appendages like legs- -and sometimes eyes.

It stopped in front of Twilight, and the pattern slowed. It had a body, but at the same time it did not. Instead there was energy, and energy that quite clearly was trying to mimic something.

“What are you?” whispered Twilight.

She received no answer. Whatever this thing was- -a type of windigo, or even a phenomenon without life or name- -only continued to exist, separated from Twilight and Silken by ten intervening meters. Twilight could feel the magic emanating from something, and once again she had the feeling that she was meant to understand but somehow could not remember. It had been too long.

Then it started to move forward. The force on Twilight’s mind became even greater. She could hear things in her thoughts, and her vision began to fade. There were sounds she could not understand, and she did not know why.

The world faded, and then vanished entirely. The last thing Twilight felt was her body beginning to fall- -and a long, thin leg wrapping around her body.

Comments

[AppleTank]

.... Evangelion?