The Weary Traveler

by The Psychopath

Kill it

The newborn waddled through the tents, intrigued by all the colors it was seeing and the creatures around it. It approached a red tent held up by a few sticks and started to nibble on it, inciting the ire of the occupants. A middle-aged red pony with a white mane and short tail stomped out angrily towards the responsible party and yelled at them.

"Hey! Get out of here! Stop eating my tent, you stupid brat!" he shouted angrily. He slapped the newborn away, causing it to run away in tears. "What the..." He turned to his wife. "Did you see the side of his face?" She blinked silently in response.

That was a very unpleasant new experience, but the creature didn't mind too much. It didn't know what to expect when it came to this unknown place, so it had prepared itself somewhat. Of course, one can never truly prepare for the unknown, as it soon found out. It ran into a group of ponies, bouncing it onto its right side on the ground.

"Oh no, what's this?" one of the stallions of the group pondered. His eyes met with the wide-eyed, innocent stare of the 'foal'. "Now why were you running around like that? Were you playing?"

The creature blinked once in response.

"Where are your parents?" a mare asked. She approached what she believed to be a foal and raised him up in her magic and brought it closer to her. "What the..." The group of ponies stared in shock at the right side of the 'foal' before them. They didn't know what to make of it.

"What is this thing?" the stallion wondered with fear. He took several steps back to be as far from it as possible but still close to his friends. "I've never seen anything like it." He turned to his friends. "Are we sure it's a pony?"

The mare shrugged. Another stomped forward. She had a scowl etched on her face, but her voice was softer and more than her outward appearance suggested. Using her hoof, she roughly poked the crystalline side of the 'foal', creating tinking and plinking noises. Disconcerted, she hummed pensively and furrowed her brow even further.

"It ain't no pony," she grumbled. "Looks like one, but it ain't." She poked its muzzle multiple times, prompting the tiny creature to grab her hoof with a playful smile. "Awww...I MEAN--"

Her gaze became empty, and drool dripped from the corners of her mouth. Terrified, the first mare knocked the 'foal' out of her grip, making it skim along the dirty ground and grabbed her friend.

"Lemon Dew. Lemon Dew!" she shouted.

Her screaming brought in some of the more curious wanting to know what was happening. Lemon Dew shook her head and wiped the drool from her mouth. After recovering from the stun, the mare looked at her unicorn friend with disdain and pushed herself out of her forelegs.

"Who are you?" she asked angrily.

"Wh..." the unicorn looked to the stallion then back to Lemon. "I'm your childhood friend," she spoke in a trembling voice. She tabbed her chest several times. "Its me: Raisinberry."

Lemon eyed Raisinberry up and down and clicked her tongue. "Never heard of you in my life," she stated dismissively.

Raisinberry stared with her mouth agape then glared at the sniffling creature wiping the dirt off of its scratched foreleg. The mare angrily stomped towards the creature and raised it to her face hard enough to nearly give it whiplash.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIEND?" She started to shake it violently. "YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF TRASH! GIVE ME MY FRIEND BACK!"

The stallion grabbed her forelegs, trying to make the berserk pony let go of the creature. "Raisinberry, let it go! If you kill it we'll never know how to turn her back to normal!"

It was too late. The unicorn was trapped in a red haze, and only the death of the choking creature could let her feel better.

---

The alicorn sisters could feel their hearts beating in their chests. It was painful and stressful at the same time. They were accompanied by Ember and several other smaller dragons, each one sporting a look angrier than the last, but not came close to the Empress'.

Her claws had dug into the white wood of the round table usually used by the princesses' council, and the cramped room already felt more cramped. Opposite the dragons sat Chinch'k sporting a little grin on his face that didn't go unnoticed by the dragons.

"I want to know what REALLY happened to the dragon that was living in the mountain here!" Ember shouted.

"We told you!" Luna responded in greater volume. "She was vaporized!"

"That's impossible! Nothing can do that kind of damage to a dragon." The other dragons nodded to each other in agreement. "I thought we had decided to make a peace treaty between our kind, but now I see that ponies don't keep to their word."

"What?" Celestia spoke in a quiet tone. Her worried gaze was replaced by a calm, furious glare, and her body was emanating an increasing amount of heat. "We sent a message to you detailing what had occurred."

Ember crossed her arms, unfazed by Celestia's behavior. Luna, however, was scooting back ever slightly, concerned with her sister's well-being.

"We received no such letter," Ember stated with narrowed eyes.

The white alicorn shot a look at the metal pony who shrugged. "We're not responsible for lost mail," he explained. "I would be more than willing to help look for it, but it's a letter." He moved his foreleg in an arc through the air. "It can be grabbed by the winds, so there's no way to know where it is now."

Ember leaned against the plain white wall and heaved a sigh that let loose some smoke from her mouth. Another dragon leaned forward and stopped his clawed hands onto the table. His bulky blue frame caused the table to creak under the pressure.

"You've told us that it was that thing floating above that killed her." He straightened himself out. "And yet you work with those from it." He pointed to Chinch'k. "Like this bizarre creature. Because you never distanced yourselves from them, we can assume that you're associated by proxy."

"What?!" the sisters shouted in disbelief.

"That means that we will have to go to war with you for breaking your oaths with us."

Ember nodded in agreement even if it pained her to do so.

Chinch'k chuckled. The dragons turned to him and were off-put by his happy, bright, compound pupils and open mandibles.

"Where I come from, we were always hunted by dragons," he stated with a cheerful tone.

"As it should be," the male nodded. "We are the strongest creatures in the world."

The princesses raised a brow at the empty claim. They knew better but chose to say nothing to avoid aggravating the situation, something Chinch'k was more than happy to do.

"Yes. They said that too. One day, we grew tired of being hunted for food and sport. Never being able to fend for ourselves, so we started training, and the bravest of my ancestors would hide in nature to see how you fought, what you ate, and so forth." He raised his right foreleg and pushed out a long, black beam of flattened metal to rest on his sharp hooves. He used it to sharpen the two blades on his other leg that served as 'nails'. Every few words he said would be emphasized by a hard scrape that brought up yellow sparks and a flickering, illuminating light. "Decades later, I was born into the Pony-Dragon war." The dragons repeated 'pony' questioningly. "While we learned and became harder and harder to find, and our villages became more and more scarce, your kind never changed." His smirk turned into a smile that reached ear-to-ear. "We killed so many of you," he cackled. "Slit your throats, tore off your wings, pulled out your bones, used your own tails to impale you. So many joyful things we did to the dragons of my world."

His smile and attitude rendered the dragons extremely uncomfortable. The 'pony''s eyes proved that what he said was no lie, and dragon kind knew of the truths eyes could tell. Ember didn't let herself be intimidated, however.

"So you would kill us all?" she asked with intrigue.

Chinch'k's murderous expression vanished, and he shrugged in return. "Your dragons never did anything to my people, so I have no qualms with you." He pushed another black blade from his left foreleg this time. "I only carry hatred for those responsible."

"And yet you claim to have killed all of my kind in your small area."

The metal pony shook his head. "No. I killed all those responsible for harming my people. The others killed all of you themselves."

The blue dragon's rage was extreme. "Then why don't I kill you, braggart?!"

He flew towards Chinch'k, ready to crush his throat or just his body. Instead, he found the wind knocked out of him, his left wing sending a sharp pain through his body, and he was now pinned to the floor fro his neck. The metal pony was looking over him with hungry eyes and a twitching mandible.

"It would be so easy to just kill you then eat you," the metal pony pondered quietly. "To kill all of you, really." He chuckled. "Keep in mind that we offered our services to the ponies of Equestria." He let go of the dragon and backed away. "We have done this little game so many times it has become tiresome." His face became weathered, tired, and unhappy. "We don't want to have anymore fights, but we will defend ourselves and our assets if needed." He walked towards the door. "I'm going home."

Chinch'k didn't close the door correctly, leaving it ajar for everyone to hear the tinking of his strange hooves upon the stone floor. Taking a few seconds to gather their wits, the dragons turned to face the princesses. They were now slacked against the wall, their whole backs almost completely on the floor. They were frowning, but they looked saddened and tired rather than angry. The dragons were now at a loss. Even Ember couldn't figure out what to say.

---

"What's going on here?" Shining bellowed after tackling Raisinberry and having his guards pry the 'foal' from her grasp. "Why are you strangling this foal?!" he asked her with the creature coughing in the hold of his foreleg.

The mare struggled, trying to free herself from the guards. "That thing isn't a foal! It did something to my friend, and now she can't remember! Look at the right side of its face!"

Shining mumbled under his breath, complaining about doing something so stupids, but if he wanted her to calm down,he might as well check that side.

"Alright then little guy. Let's see what's going on with this crazed...What."

The captain was shocked at the traits the infant was demonstrating. His eyes were wide with a myriad of questions.

"What happened to you?" Shining looked at the crystals and saw the muted images of several crystal ponies playing out within the crystals before fading out.

Cadance rushed over, accompanied by a guard that had called her attention. "Shining, what's going on? I heard a commotion." The stallion silently turned around and showed the 'foal' to her. It looked at her with a sparkling eye, but her attention was dragged to its right side. Her attention also lead to the smokey mane and tail. To the others, it was simply a very dirty foal, which it was. Paying attention to such matters was trivial, but a large oversight nonetheless.

"What is that thing?"

Shining shrugged. "I have no idea. I've never seen its kind before. Almost makes me think of Sombra," Shining said absentmindedly.

Cadance cringed mentally, expecting the populace to go up in arms and try and kill it. "Well, it seems innocent enough," she pondered. She reached out to Shining to hold the creature, something he reluctantly agreed to after much internal debate. "Let's see if there's any ill will within you," Cadance mused when she booped its muzzle. It let out a little chuckle, having seemingly already forgotten what happened to it just minutes prior. "Hmmm...I feel...nothing from it," Cadance said. She looked back down at the creature, saddened. "It feels completely empty."

"What does that mean?" a guard asked.

"I'm not sure."

Cadance's brows furrowed while she thought of many different reasons for it, but her thoughts were interrupted by loud buzzing sounds reminiscent of insects. Chinch'k Kuchuk had come back from Canterlot castle and was sporting a satisfied smile.

"Hello, Prince and Princess of the Crystal Kingdom," he greeted them. "How are you people?"

"They're doing fine, but do you know what this thing is?" Cadance rushed.

"What is what?"

Cadance moved her mane away, showing the creature in her foreleg. Immediately Chinch'k's pupils brightened to a blinding white and his wings chittered rapidly. He rushed towards the foal in Cadance's foreleg, ready to impale it on his hooves, but he was blocked by the princess' shield. She grunted from the impact but held strong.

"What are you doing?!" Shining shouted in surprise.

Chinch'k leaned the side of his face against the shield and continued to glare at the unaware child. "Kill it. Now," he ordered her.

Comments

[keroko]

I keep seeing the results the Traveler's actions, and things just keep getting worse. Is he... is he the baddy?

[The Psychopath]

9271943
That's for you to decide. (He's working on a blue-orange morality system)