Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Twilight looked up, shaking. Another human stood before her, tall and bundled up in dirty green clothing like the defenders on the ridge, pushing something that shone of steel and copper into the top of the long crossbow tiller he held until it seated with a metal-on-metal clack! Pouches and small metal pineapples hung from his belt; the familiar windburned face under that crestless round helmet looked younger, lacking some of the lines from the last time she’d seen him.
“J-John?”
“Twilight? Is that rightly you?”
“JOHN!” she neighed, all but leaping up at him to give her friend an embrace, fear and relief pouring through her. She tried to spread her wings for the leap and – “I’m so glad to see you I – wait! What the buck?”
John gave her a quick squeeze with one olive-clad arm, keeping his weapon ready in the other. “Howair did you get here? These are my dreams, and I didn’t ever want you or any other to see what I saw. How did you get here, your magic?” Out of the corner of her eye she caught him looking at her in curiosity as she craned her neck, looking at her back.
“No no no no no!”
“Whatair’s the matter?”
“My WINGS!” She almost yelled. Twilight quickly checked her magic reserves. It made no sense. She ‘felt’ the wings, but she didn’t see them. Like her Earth pony strength and endurance and connection to life. Still there but somehow unusable “Arrgh! How did that happen?”
“What are you a-talking about?” John rubbed his forehead in confusion. “You nair did have wings.”
She froze then as she remembered Luna’s words. This is John’s dream, not mine. He never saw me with wings, and right now he’s the one who set the ground rules here. I’ll have to explain what’s happened since last we met, and then I can get my wings and alicorn magic back…
Crack-BOOM!
Another blast like but not like fireworks that she felt as much as heard. Before she knew what happened John was lying atop her, pressing her down as soil rained down on them.
“Stick it up and get it shot off, that’s what they told me and they were surely telling the truth,” John slowly got up, weapon at the ready. “Let’s find ourselves some other place and I’ll find out what you-all are doing here, and I can tell you why I’d rather you weren’t.”
# # #
Tall human and small purple unicorn picked their way down a snow-filled gully between two jumbles of rocks. At least the rocks broke the wind. Somewhat.
“John?” Twilight kept down, wincing as she heard more of those bullets ricochet off the rocks around them. “Can we move now?” They passed another dead human lying in a red patch of snow, barely recognizable chopped meat in the remnants of a heavy winter uniform like John’s. She shuddered, willing herself not to run as the smell of blood and piss and carnivore scat burned her nostrils. Please, please say yes.
“I reckon it’s as safe as it’ll ever be,” John answered her. He took a quick peek and nodded. “No one about, not the Chinese nor yet those other fellows you told tell of.” He slipped out and motioned for her to follow, holding his prodless crossbow – no, rifle, he called it – at the ready just in case. Twilight hurried to follow him. She wished for perhaps the hundredth time that she still had her wings.
She couldn’t think of how long ago that was. Time seemed odd here, the way it often did in dreams. On one level she felt that days or longer had passed, that her life in Equestria and her friends there were never anything but a false happy dream. That her world had never been anything but bone-chilling cold and a horrid reek that combined bad eggs and a smell like a griffon butcher shop. All screams and mud and snow and unseen tiny crossbow bolts hissing through the air, ‘bullets’ and ‘shrapnel’, that cut people down all around her without warning. She knew it to be false, but a part of her insisted that this was the truth. And as soon as she accepted it, the sooner she’d grow up.
But those thoughts died when she looked at John. No, if I’d never known anything else, I wouldn’t remember him and how he helped us with in Equestria, three years ago. And even if it wasn’t true, I can never believe that this is all l there is to any world.
“John, how do we get out of here?” Twilight pulled her legs from the sucking mixture of mud and snow. They were beginning to feel tired. “This is something you remember, not that I’m suggesting anything. Isn’t there a way out?”
“We’d be out now if it were my wish,” he answered her. She remembered feeling confused at how he spoke before, but right now it reminded her of Applejack. She enjoyed hearing it. “I’ll be having some questions for you later, after we’re through this here place.”
He moved slow and careful, watching all around. It reminded her of a royal visit she’d undertaken to one of the Equestrian griffon aeries – Gregor’s Peak south of Vanhoofer, where the Everfree met the mountains. Out of respect, they’d taken her along hunting for a flock of perytons preying on their flockmates. Perytons were near-Pony in mind but cruel, loving to kill for killing’s sake. Those griffons acted the same way as John, going slow and wary because they knew something was out there hunting them while they hunted it. Of course there she’d been able to use her magic to catch the perytons and lock them away harmlessly. Here and now? She furrowed her brow and she pushed magic into her horn. A few purple sparks shot from the tip.
“I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” Twilight sighed as she followed John. A grin twitched at her muzzle. “I was hoping to come here and help you.”
“You are a help.” John reached back and gently patted her on the withers. “I didn’t want you to air see this, but a friend’s what I reckon I need right now. Whoair was that fancy-dressed fellow I saw you with, right afore I shot those fellows with him?”
“I don’t know,” Twilight said. She was about to say more when John froze and crouched behind the rocks they were moving past. By now she knew enough to do the same. She sensed them before she saw them, more of those men in the quilted coats with their prodless crossbows with the small stocks and metal drums hanging underneath. There were maybe half a dozen here.
As they passed John waited and then sighted on the last man in the line. Twilight closed her eyes but nothing could stop her from hearing six short sharp cracks. When she opened them John was pushing another “clip” into his rifle. Nearby, six still forms lay. Only when John was done did he move on past them without a backwards glance. Twilight followed, hurrying, her hooves clicking against a stray stone. She heard a crack at the sound and felt fire buzz along her back. Twilight whinnied and raced after John to the next patch of cover. She found him behind it, crouched and waiting. When she spoke she wished her voice sounded less brittle.
“John, I’m not sure, but I think one of those ‘bullets’ hit me.”
He looked at her in panic.
“What?!?” Before she could say anything, he was checking her back. She felt his hands running over her coat and winced as they touched something that gave a twinge. John just seemed to relax and showed her his hands. The slightest trace of crimson stained the olive knit gloves. “It’s no great thing, looks like a little piece of shrapnel gave you a scrape.” He exhaled and shivered. “Let’s be gone from here before its worse the next time.”
“John, before we go,” Twilight took him by the pants leg with one hoof. “I have to tell you about why I’m here.” He squatted down to listen. She lay on her belly and wondered why she shivered at cold when she knew it to literally be all in her mind. Or John’s, anyway. “I, I wanted to find you again. Princess Luna, I told you about her the last time we met?”
“The one you and the others healed back from being that Nightmare?”
“Yes,” Twilight nodded. She looked upwards. No moon or sun to see. Nothing but damp gray darkness above and death all around. Nightmare Moon would have loved it here. “She, she told me that she could feel you in your dreams as she drew closer to your world. That she felt something happening in them. Like somepony, several someponies, was after you.”
“She said the truth there,” John nodded. “I’ve been a-having this dream for weeks now, and trying to figure out whatair or whoair could be responsible for it getting the worse and worse air time I have it.”
“I know.” Twilight shuddered and went on. “Anyway, she led me here, both of us hoping to find you. We started to search and then, we, we saw humans that didn’t seem to belong.” She gulped at the memory. “They know that kind of magic Thorn used, but they used it as a herd. They, they almost turned Luna back into Nightmare Moon.” Twilight shivered at the memory, fought not to feel small and afraid. Like when she’d faced Sombra or Tirek, and stood when her equine hindbrain screamed to stampede and flee. “I don’t know if I should say this, but they didn’t feel like humans, like you or other friends I’ve made elsewhere. They felt weird. They looked weird, too.”
“Looked weird?” John looked wary, but not surprised. “Howair did they look weird to you?”
“Well, they looked like humans, to me anyway, but not exactly. Like a donkey or zebra to an Earth Pony, or a Changeling who couldn’t manage a perfect shapeshift.” Twilight tried using magic to make an image of them. What resulted was so wavy and distorted she dispelled it with a snort of disgust. “They wore clothes like the one you saw after me, and all of them with long black manes and eyes like a dragon’s.”
“Like Spike’s, you mean?” John drew a circle in the snow and traced a line from top to bottom. A rising sense of recognition seemed to be in his voice. “A slit running up and down the middle?”
“Yes! And their hands were odd. They have claws like a cat, and…”
“And the third finger is just that much longer than the others?”
“That’s right!” Twilight felt her heart sink at the look of fear in his face. “You know them?”
John didn’t answer at first. He just looked out from their little hiding spot again, like he expected something to pounce.
“I reckon I rightly do,” he said, his voice cold. “Yes, I surely do believe I know the Shonokin, and wish to all that’s good I didn’t air hear the name.”
# # #
“Tall and lean and with slit-pupil eyes and claws like a cat’s, and they use the baddest bad magic.”
That’s what Twilight Sparkle told me there in those dream-rocks in dream-Korea, and asked me if I knew them. I do, and I wish I didn’t, and I’ll tell you the reason why.
A few years ago I went to sing at this show a group of people, these Shonokin though I didn’t know that right then, were a-doing. The leader of those Shonokin, a fine-talking fellow named Brooke Altic, liked how I played and how I knew the old songs I’ve loved and learned air since I was a wee tad. He offered me to go and speak to powerful men like Congress and the President, to get what he called to be justice for his folk, for them to get back air thing that they say they lost to us, to human men and women. Might could be it is justice for the Shonokin. The problem is, it’d be injustice for airy other person in the world. They see air thing as being theirs and still being theirs, and meant to take it all for their own selves. When I said them no, Brooke Altic a-tried to use force on me and the folks I was helping, some fellow from up North named Jackson Warren who’d faced them aforetimes with that other John, John Thunstone from New York. And Mister Grey and his daughter Callie. She shone on Warren and him to her. The Shonokin wouldn’t let up the once, and turned from asking to a-trying to bribe to trying their best to kill us all. And not just Shonokin either, but lowflung human men and women who’d taken money to do their dirty work for them. The Shonokin don’t like humans the least bitty bit, but they need us to a-do their dirty work for them.
Firstly, because there’s nair such a thing as a female Shonokin. Or if there are, they hide themselves somewhere.
And second, they pure down fear the sight of their own dead more than air other thing. When I saw a Shonokin that tried to shoot Mister Grey get shot dead his own self, his own folk flung him away rather than even try to help. Wouldn’t even go near the grave where I a-tried burying him. And when later they tried first a-burning and then a-blowing down Mister Grey’s house where we holed up against them, and failed, when we killed Brooke Altic they all ran away from that place and from that abandoned town they’d taken for their own. And I’d nair seen nor heard of them since.
Until now.
Air way, that’s how I told it to Twilight Sparkle right there hidden among those rocks where neither bullet nor bomb could reach us. I did it right quick, too. I didn’t know if we’d be found by any Chinese soldiers a-using around, or if they could even rightly hurt us, were rightly even alive the way Twilight and I were, but I didn’t want to go taking that risk. So I told it and Twilight listened and asked smart questions, the way I’d thought she would.
“If the Shonokin fear their own dead, why are they here, in this?” She pointed her horn up. We heard the thunder-rumble of explosions and the chatter-chatter of those burp guns the Chinese carried. She flinched less than before, and said, “Can’t this awful place kill them the same way it can us?”
“I don’t rightly know, but I doubt it,” I told her. “They’d not risk their own selves that way. The Shonokin aren’t rightly cowards but they won’t take chances that they can help. If they’re here, then they’re safe from airy other things here. Aside from the two of us.”
“Yes.” Twilight looked at my gun. “That makes sense.” She shook her head and snorted like any angry old horse. “I wish Princess Luna was still here! She knows more about dreams and warfare than I do. But these – Shonokin – almost turned her back into Nightmare Moon. And after fleeing like that, it’ll take her time to relocate this dream.”
“And if she can rightly get in,” I tapped my head. “I’ve got ways of protecting against nasty spells and sendings. Leastways I thought so afore the Shonokin started their tricks.”
“I saw about a dozen of them. All working together, as a herd.” Twilight said like some teacher lady. Her horn glowed and she drew with it like chalk against the flat brown side of one of the rocks. A frown went over her face. “Like what my friends and I did when we used the Elements all those times. They are strong; they had the strength to overcome Luna.”
“They might just have made her see something she was afeared to see,” I responded her. Lacking anything else to do, I bespoke her while I stripped and checked my rifle to make sure it was ready to be used. I remember once wondering if I’d done that with my gun so often I could do it in my sleep. I reckon I got my answer there, for I did it. “They might not be so strong as you say she is, just the quicker to shoot and the nastier.”
I slammed a new clip into my rifle, just to be ready. More bullets whipped around overhead. Neither of us ducked now. I felt the least bit sad to see how used Twilight was getting to all this. Some folks argue about if ladies should be a-going to war or not. I heard both sides tell their whys and why nots, and all I can say is if I had my choice wouldn’t nobody air go to any war air again, man or woman; and sometimes it don’t matter much if you plan to go and fight at all. Sometimes the fight comes and finds you.
“I hope so,” Twilight said. She and I looked out and saw no one near. We a-started to head out and then froze. For a voice spoke, cutting through all the noise about us, and we both knew it for no friendly voice.
“Silver John,” it said, with that funny whispery sound I remember Shonokin voices having. Like the words we use don’t fit their mouths right.
“Silver John,” that soft whispery thing came over us again, like a snake crawling over a blanket you slept under. “Do you know who we are, and what we will do to you?”
“I reckon I rightly do,” I answered it back. It might have been foolishness other times to let a fellow planning to be killing you know right where you were, but I figured them Shonokin for a-finding me whatair I did to hide. “You’re Brooke Altic’s people. You’re a-coming after me for revenge, for what I did to stop him and those others at Immer from doing to Mister Grey and Callie and Jackson.”
“You admit your guilt,” that voice hissed at me.
“I reckon I rightly admit to stopping him, but it was another person that shot him dead,” I called back. I slipped out, saw nobody about, motioned for Twilight to follow. She did. I heard her little hooves clipping against the stones. “I didn’t kill him, but I can say I don’t rightly feel much sorrow that it happened.”
“You admit your guilt, in killing one set high among us,” they answered me back. I wondered me how close they were. They sounded close, and with how Shonokin felt like men were just stray dogs to them, I figured they’d want to be close to be a-watching me in case I ran. Not that I meant to. “You did not kill yourself, but his blood is still on your hands. We must avenge the deaths of our own kind, if we wish to be proud before --" He hesitated like he wondered what to say. "Before those we serve.”
I wondered myself about that. I remember Brooke Altic telling me that nair Shonokin born believed in souls, or Heaven or Hell either. Did they have something or Someone they made prayers to?
“You shall die for that,” the Shonokin said. He didn’t sound angry or sad or happy. He said it like he was a-talking about the weather. “You shall die, and one more obstacle will be gone. We will kill you.”
“No you won’t!” Twilight yelled those words. I wanted to tell her to be quiet but she said more. “You chased Princess Luna away, but I’m still here!”
“It is the beast,” another Shonokin voice said, I think. It sounded maybe the least but younger than the first one. “We shall kill it if it interferes.”
“You just try,” I answered them back as I slipped over the rocks, headed for where I figured the edge of the battlefield might be. I was a-leading Twilight and myself to safety, I hoped. “Try it, and you’ll have a lavish of trouble, more than you might could care for.”
“Beast, leave,” that first voice said again. “We have better things to do than slaughter a stupid, stinking animal.”
Snort!
I tell you all, you should have been there to see how Twilight pinned her ears back. What looked like purple lightning played along her horn, but she sounded calm, mostly, when she answered them back.
“Creatures,” she said, and we both grinned to hear the sudden angry splutter from the Shonokin we still couldn’t see. “I will have you know this. I am a Princess of Equestria; student of Celestia Solaria Invicta, Princess of the Sun; friend and ally of Luna Selena Nocturne, Princess of the Moon; sister-by-marriage to Mi Amore Cadenza, Princess of the Crystal Empire; and Bearer of one of the Elements of Harmony.” Twilight set her legs wide like she stood against something. “I am the one who defeated Nightmare Moon! Who rebound Discord, Lord of Chaos! Who found the Crystal Heart and dispelled the ghost of King Sombra after a thousand years of exile! Who cast down Tirek the Destroyer after he defeated Celestia and Luna and Cadence!” She took a deep breath, and I wondered myself that she’d nair told me any of this afore. “I declare here and now by Sun and Moon that this man, John the Balladeer of Earth, is under my protection! And I will NOT allow him to be slain or hurt! IS! THAT! CLEAR!”
I reckon I gopped to hear all that. She just stood her ground and waited for the echoes of what she’d said to fade away. I wondered myself what the Shonokin were a-thinking on what she said.
We learned right the next moment.
“A beast is still a beast,” that voice said, a-sounding bored. “No matter what airs it gives itself. And we fear not you or your princesses; bring them all, and we will destroy or defeat them as we did the one with you.” It turned hard and mean then as it said, “All those who stand with the enemies of the Shonokin will die with them. Like this.”
A mighty roar rose like what I reckon Joshua’s folks must have heard when the walls came tumbling down.
I looked. Twilight looked.
We saw, well, I can’t rightly call it a charge. More like an ocean’s worth of Chinese a-rushing at us like what they call a tidal wave, ready to wash over us and sweep us away like nothing. What few fellows I saw in American colors either ran or tried to fight until that wave went over them and crushed them down beneath it.
Right the same moment the sun came down on our faces.
I looked up and froze when I saw the clouds parting overhead, and I knew what was a-going to happen.
I grabbed Twilight and pulled her after me best I could as I ran. I figure she must have been either the lighter in that dream or I was the stronger, for she came along easy enough.
“John! What the hay?”
“Not supposed to happen,” I tried explaining and running both at the once. “Not yet. Not for another couple of days. The storm didn’t die down and Navy Air come to help us out until we were all a-running for the south.”
“What?” She yelled at me and squirmed, trying to pull away. I saw how she looked at the battlefield, all spread out around us, dead and living men, snow and rock and ice, and as high overhead as hope of Heaven those navy-blue wings with silver napalm bombs a-dropping from them –
“I want to know what’s going on!”
“No you don’t!” I yelled at her. “Now run like you nair ran aforetimes, else you nair will again!”
She gave me a confused look but what she saw must have convinced her, for she set her head down and ran.
# # #
Twilight wondered if John had lost his mind. First those nasty voices, threatening her, threatening him, mocking the Princesses, and now this? Running from those weird birds?
No, not birds. Tiny winged airships shooting overhead roaring like attacking dragons, dark as Princess Luna and fast as Rainbow Dash. Something, many somethings dropping from them, two per airship. Somethings like silver eggs with pointed ends, tumbling from those straight blue wings, right for that wall of soldiers charging them.
Twilight caught the sparkle of the sunlight on them coming through the thinning storm clouds and thought them oddly pretty.
They landed around and among those onrushing soldiers.
“Don’t you look, Twilight! You don’t want to see this!”
“Why?” She asked just as the tumbling silver eggs hit and a wave of heat like dragon’s breath slammed against her and the herd of charging men just – vanished – in a storm of dragonfire.
The cry of the bugles turned to screams like all of Canterlot or Manehattan slain at once. Another roar overhead; more dragonfire, like an entire dragon migration breathing down on Canterlot. Then another roar and still more dragonfire, filling the valley. Those screams choked off except for one right in her ear, and she realized it was her own scream.
And over it all a reek of sulfur and burning meat. A burning so great the entire world became ashes.
The heat turned the snow and stone beneath her hooves to slush, no, water, heating them so they felt like the floorboard of a house, but wet. No, not a house, but a boat. In warm water, uncomfortably so, with a sour organic smell.
“Twilight?” She blinked at the sound of that voice. Like John, but – young? “Twilight?” It spoke again. She felt someone grip her around the neck in a hug. “Thank all there is that you’re still here!”
“John?” She blinked to see a human, like John but so young, younger even than the human fillies and colts she’d seen at Canterlot High. His clothes looked raggedy and he looked scrawny. They were in a flatboat, somewhere at night. Four torches glowed at the corners, issuing forth a smoky light that showed a half-drowned Everfree Forest rising around them, branches grasping for them like ghostly griffon talons. Somepony else was in the boat with them, a large pig-like human with something like a pitchfork in their hands, but with only two tines. “John? Where the hay are we?”
Before he could speak the figure with that fork raised the butt of it and smacked her over the head with it. She whinnied at the pain and glared.
“Yore in mah boat, that’s wheres!” The fork was reversed and she gulped to find those wickedly sharp tines hovering uncomfortably close to her eyes. Behind them, a large and hefty human glared at her, beady eyes blazing like the torches. “And if’n y’all don’t like it, then you an’ Johnny both can git out right now!” The fork – she recognized it as a fish gig like the Grovers’ Peak griffons used – thrust closer.
“Or I can have you for dinner tonight ‘stead!”
# # #
A well-muscled purple dragon sat back and smiled as a marshmallow unicorn cuddled him atop a pile of gems and gold. Nearby lay a golden-maned and loutish-looking unicorn, along with several Diamond Dogs and assorted other monsters. Their eyes rolled in different directions as they laid senseless.
“Oh my precious little Spikey-Wikey,” Rarity husked out, “It was so brave of you to defeat all those dreadful monsters that wanted to do awful, vile things to me!” She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a Fire Heart Ruby, letting it dangle before his eyes. “And here’s a little something to show my appreciation.” Spike licked his scaly lips and reached out, but stopped when Rarity set a hoof on his chest.
“But first,” she said, a lovely smile on her lips, “First, I want a kiss from the bravest and most heroic dragon in all Equestria!”
She leaned in close and Spike followed suit, her lovely flowery scent caressing him as she pressed close – and yelled into his ear in Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice.
“SPIKE THE DRAGON! AWAKE IMMEDIATELY!”
“GAHHHHH!”
Spike almost leaped out of his small bed, belching dragonfire. Green fire that materialized into a scroll bound with a blazing crimson ribbon.
He groaned as the dream faded into mists in the early morning light coming in through the windows of Twilight’s crystalline castle, his belly reminding him that breakfast was still on the to-do list. Then his eyes focused on the scroll, recognized the Emergency Ribbon. Slit pupils went wide. “Woah, what’s this?”
He tore the scroll open and read it; a moment later a scaly purple missile shot out the front door of the castle and across the West Pasture, racing for Ponyville.
Sweet Apple Acres is closest, but it’s not applebuck season so Applejack will probably be in town eating breakfast at Sugarcube Corner, it’s Spa Day so Fluttershy will be there with Rarity – Celestia knows where Dash is! He thought who to go for first and decided.
AJ first, I know where she is and she’s best at this kind of thing, she can help get everypony else together. If she’s not with Pinkie, hit the South Road for Sweet Apple Acres, and the Spa’s right on the way….
He glanced north as he ran for Ponyville; on the horizon, Canterlot gleamed in the morning light astride Mount Epona.
“I’ll get everypony, Twilight,” he gasped out in promise to his sister, “And then we’re all gonna save you!”
“Somehow!”
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I like that there's some humor to keep the story from getting too grimdark.
... argh, I know you told me once upon a time, but I wish I'd listened when you told me where I could find these books. They sound like they'd be right up my alley.
8789052
Which books? If you mean the John the Balladeer ones then I'm afraid they went back out of print; interlibrary loan will be your best bet unless you want to spend a few hundred bucks for used copies of Who Fears The Devil?
Though if you have Kindle the last I looked you can get the collection there for about $5.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
8788907
Yeah, you need to put a few laughs in with even the darkest stories. People need to breathe in relief once in a while.
That and it makes the next scare have even more impact.
I kinda have been imagining this guy speaking in Stevie Ray Vaughn's voice.
I looked up Long Lost Friend, and wonder if anyone really did brew the beer recipe mentioned in it...
8793053
I'm not very familiar with Mr. Vaughn; and have to admit I really didn't think of any particular voice he'd be speaking in other than a soft, cultured, and creepy one.
Chapter 4:
Twilight being regressed to a Unicorn due to John's control over the dream and having never seen her as an Alicorn ... Clever and logical development, a drawback of being even in a friend's dream-realm if he's not aware of all your capabilities.
The "carnivore scat" of course is human. Possibly due to torn intestines, as well as the other possible way.
In a way, this is just a dream-accelerated version of the way that frontline infantry really tend to feel after a while in combat, even a fairly short time by the standards of civilian life. Though it's probably hitting her faster because this is John's nightmare, and she's absorbing his feelings about it.
I like the idea of there being perytons in the MLP world -- all the more so because they were in the old AD&D Monster Manual as well. Both G1 and G4 MLP have been strongly influenced by D&D, in addition to Classical and Medieval mythology.
The Shonokin tendency to use despised human minions as cannon fodder would of course work well for a horror story or scenario, since it would provide "mooks" for the initial encounters and to avoid leaving too much evidence of High Weirdness for the authorities to discover -- an outer layer for the protagonists to have to penetrate to get at the Big Bad. I bet Wellman used it that that way in his story as well.
I like the hysterical refusal to admit to the deaths of their own kind, because it works well with their sin of Pride. It also makes them more emotionaly real and yet psychologically a bit unhuman. I'm sure from the way you referenced it that this too was part of Wellman's original story.
I love this declaration. It is totally badass and made of awesome. And also completely true.
A shame the Shonokin blindness to the possibility of having equals among mortal beings keep them from really understanding it.
The airstrike is the perfect climax to the scene.
And then they're in the next nightmare ...
Perfect Spike-dream.
8899882
The Shonokin tendency to use despised human minions as cannon fodder would of course work well for a horror story or scenario, since it would provide "mooks" for the initial encounters and to avoid leaving too much evidence of High Weirdness for the authorities to discover -- an outer layer for the protagonists to have to penetrate to get at the Big Bad. I bet Wellman used it that that way in his story as well.
Yes. Wellman mentioned it in some stories and showed it in at least one full-length novel, After Dark, which is where John met the Shonokin.
I like the hysterical refusal to admit to the deaths of their own kind, because it works well with their sin of Pride. It also makes them more emotionaly real and yet psychologically a bit unhuman. I'm sure from the way you referenced it that this too was part of Wellman's original story.
Yes again. The Shonokin have a overwhelming fear of death -- the deaths of their own people, that is, they have no problem with killing others. In Wellman's stories they refused to even admit that they could die, and would simply flee from the bodies of their own people and leave them to rot.
The airstrike happened in the original battle; it happened sooner here probably because the Shonokin hoped it would kill John and Twilight.
And thanks for the comment!
I wonder who the other human in the boat is and what role he will play. I also wonder if at one point Twilight will get her wings back and John's control over the dream also explains why at the end of the previous chapter he didn't mention them. Now that John knows who's after him he might be more capable of fighting back.