Identity
Identity
“That is impossible. There is no way you could manifest in your own mind!” Luna’s immaterial body once again blurted out without checking with her mind first. It was clearly not impossible if it was happening in front of her and finding out how it was possible was crucial.
“If you say so.” The human answered without looking away from the scope in his weapon. He was squatting against the wall and poking his weapon through the hole he had tackled her through moments before. He was not even supposed to be able to see her, so to even suggest he had physically tackled her in his own mind was something that she knew to be impossible. “How did you end up here?”
“I linked my own spirit with that of a beast called Fenrir, to undo the spell that ties you to him and my realm.” Luna blurted out without thinking. She could still hear the impossible tinning in her ears and feel a bruise forming where the human’s weapon had pressed onto her body. This human had the ability to affect her spiritual self directly, so could his words circumvent her mental defences as well? Whatever the case, she couldn’t stop herself from talking.
“I did not expect there to be more than one of you, so I am not confident in my ability to help you. My mere presence might be hurting you and the other one right now and if I even attempted to help you the way I devised, I would be merging your two souls irreversibly and bringing your psyches great harm I could not undo. I am so -”
The human’s weapon suddenly barked out sharply and made Luna jump. The human followed with two more booms of his weapon, before crouching down to lean his back on the wall next to her. distant cracks of similar weapons followed and Luna could hear small projectiles embedding themselves into the wall they were leaning on.
“I don’t know about any of that, but any help in getting out of here would be nice.” The human detached a part of his weapon with a mechanical click and then slammed it back in place after glancing at some kind of brass cylinders in it. The human soldier then whipped back to lean against the edge of the hole in the wall and he fired his weapon a few times. The noise was deafening and would be painful if she were in her physical body, but as things were she could ignore the phantom pain with little difficulty.
She couldn’t move around recklessly, if this human’s ability to affect her spiritual projection also applied to the world he inhabited, then getting hurt by whatever the human was fighting would be bad for both parties, not to mention the ponies in the real world that would be subjected to the backlash of the disrupted spell.
“Can you tell me what you are fighting against? I believe there is a chance I could assist you if I were to know that much.” Luna asked as she gathered her imaginary hooves under her. The soldier gave her a quick sidelong glance, before firing his weapon a final time and crouching back down next to her. The human would be more than a head taller than her if standing on his two legs, so his crouched position didn’t make the conversation too uncomfortable.
“Werewolves, I guess. The original monster movie kind, though. None of that overgrown dog nonsense in Twilight.” The human answered without hesitation. He spoke as he ejected the same part of his weapon again and collected the few remaining brass cylinders with a few practiced motions of his hands. He then placed the empty detachable part of his weapon in one of the pouches about his person and pulled out an identical one out of another, adding the few brass cylinders he had collected from the other one, before attaching it back into his weapon and pulling some kind of lever affixed to the weapon’s side.
Just as the soldier finished maintaining his weapon, there was a sudden burst of purple light outside the building the human had tackled them into. Luna felt a surge of magic wash over them as the light faded and to her horror she recognized it. The human was bracing himself down on the ground, expecting there to be a shockwave. He was also yelling at her in that strange language, but Luna ignored him and jumped over him to the hole in the wall with a beat of her wings.
“That was no incendiary device, human! Calm yourself!” She barked at the human in frustration, as he was trying to pull her down to the ground and away from the hole in the wall. His worry for her safety was appropriate, as the projectiles his enemies threw at him were just as deadly as he thought them to be and he clearly believed they were dangerous. She was not worried about being hit now, as it was obvious the werewolves had more pressing matters to see to. “That was Twilight Sparkle!”
“YOU WILL NOT HURT MY FRIENDS!” A purple star in the guy screamed as bolts of silent purple light incinerated strange bipedal wolf-men wearing rags and carrying weapons similar to those of the human’s. Their forms shifted constantly in the bright purple light. Wolves the size of Fenrir jumped and darted around as the purple lightning incinerated the things around them, while some still leapt around awkwardly on two elongated legs, howling in anguish.
“Okay... That’s Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy unicorn?” The human soldier asked, peering at the mass of light through the scope in his weapon. He was now crouching next to Luna, still staying behind the tattered wall. “Sure, it’s purple, but that’s no pony.”
“Yes, that is indeed her, but I am afraid that will not be the case for very long, if things continue on their current path. She has forced her own consciousness into this space you and Fenrir share. She threw all of her will into the purpose of destroying Fenrir and now the spell created from that is burning away her mind to accomplish this task. I had hoped my sister could have prevented this from happening.”
“So, just let her kill Fenrir. Problem solved.” The human proposed, peering at the scurrying figures of the werewolves being incinerated by Twilight’s spell. The ball of light had waned noticeably already and there were still more werewolves coming out of hiding. Luna didn’t know how long the human had been here, fighting Fenrir on a battleground his own mind had become, but he didn’t show any signs of being disturbed by the werewolves’ grotesque appearance.
“You do not understand. What you perceive as werewolves are indeed parts of Fenrir’s influence upon your psyche, but the buildings all around them are a part of your mind. It is your memory and will that sustains this place. Twilight is indiscriminately destroying both your psyche and Fenrir’s influence upon it. I don’t know how you have learned to manifest within your own mind, but every little thing she destroys seeps life out of you. We have to stop her, before you perish!”
“Okay… So, how do we stop her?” Again, the human didn’t show any overt signs of being disturbed by his view of reality being questioned. Luna had never seen, or conversed with a human, so there might have been some physical cues she missed. The human lowered his weapon and turned his face toward Luna.
The face that she saw was nearly identical to the human she had seen, but upon further inspection she noticed small differences in the bone structure of the human’s face and the proportions of the eyes and other parts of the face. It was the eyes that convinced her it was another human, though. Where the first human had brown eyes, this one had a light echo of blue that appeared to shine in the purple light of Twilight’s spell. Luna quickly averted her eyes from the human’s steady gaze. There was frighteningly little of the person he had been left in that sharp glare.
“I think I can force the spell to stop and contain Twilight Sparkle in a way that would allow me to take her with me. She is not disciplined enough to roam freely in this place, so there is no other way.” The Princess of the Night forced herself to face the human and lock eyes with him. It would not be right to ask what she was about to ask in any other way than directly. The human’s eyes looked at her with a guarded sincerity of a guard, or a soldier, as it seemed to be in his case.
“I will need to get close to do so, but we are both out of options and short on time, so I am forced to ask you to distract Twilight long enough for me to get close enough. The spell will be quick, but she cannot interrupt me. Will you do this?” Luna kept her eyes squarely on the human’s beady blue eyes and expected there to be anger, fear, or even surprise. The human simply blinked and nodded his head as he realized she was done talking
“You need a diversion, I can do that. You should exit through the door over there and move to her right flank, I’ll redirect the werewolves to her left while you do your thing. I would recommend you stay in cover, or magic a shield around yourself. I doubt the werewolves hesitate to fire on non-combatants. Use your spell at your own discretion.” The human twisted his neck and dislodged the strap of his weapon from his neck, tying it to the part of the weapon that rested upon his shoulder. After he was done with this, the human jumped out of the window without another word and Luna could hear his running footsteps on the gravel outside. It was quiet for a few moments, before the human started shouting in his strange tongue to get the werewolves’ attention.
“Perkeleen kullinlutkuttajat, täällä mä oon! Tulkee syömää kuumaa luotia, vitun sekasikiöt!” Luna heard the aggression in the human’s shout even without the added volume and she shuddered at the elation she heard in his tone. He clearly enjoyed this, the thrill of battle gave him joy and a fiercely forgotten part of her understood the notion completely.
The building around her was more defined now that the human had given her instructions directly. It looked to be made of earthly materials, but with the clear corners and modern windows of modern architecture, futuristic by the standards of her world, to be honest. There was a door leading out of the room now, a thick metal behemoth, still blown off its hinges by something she did not dare speculate on. She jerked into action as she heard the human’s weapon rattle out in short bursts somewhere behind her. He was putting his life in danger for her convenience, it would be rude to dawdle.
It had been abundantly clear the human had not possessed wings, nor was there any indication of a magical affinity for flight, so she shouldn’t fly if she were to navigate the human’s mind. To do something impossible to the host consciousness strains the connection and she didn’t want to risk tipping the human over the edge, taking into account how Fenrir had been assaulting his mind without pause.
Running along narrow alleys in a strange city made up of the moonlit memories of a pragmatic soldier was a disorienting experience. If she ran down a dark alley for what seemed like a hundred meters, then she appeared a hundred meters closer to where she needed to be in a whole different neighbourhood and city. It was an interesting peek into the soldier’s mind and the culture of his native world, but Luna had no time for sightseeing. This disorientation was commonplace when intruding in anothers mind, but it was the echoes that gave her pause.
Some of the more darker of Equestrian philosophers theorized that killing another living being leaves a stain upon the soul, breaks it in a way that cannot be repaired. They are only half right, but she had not been there to tell them that at the time, so she let them think what they wanted. Intentionally killing another pony, or any other sentient being, is a traumatic experience, no matter how desensitized you might think you are. It is not the soul that suffers, it is the mind forced to experience it.
The first time is the worst, just for the shock-value, but you will not forget a single life you deliberately ended. Luna had called these imprints of memory “echoes” and they were a clear-cut piece of memory that crossed over between the mental barriers necessary to go into another mind without undue damage to either party. She had used this fact to condemn murderers in days past, but in modern times such breaches of privacy are seen as rude.
She ran through the mismatched city and saw dozens upon dozens of echoes frozen in the moments of their deaths. Bipedal primates wearing various garbs and carrying weapons similar to the ones the human wielded, large and small metal tools crafted to kill from afar. She leapt over a stand selling some sort of foul-smelling produce she had no image of and came upon a bazaar of sorts. Tables stood within darkened alcoves and cloths were set above them to spare potential customer from the glare of the sun. She could smell dirt, sweat and burning copper in the air. It had been a common fixture to the places she had run through and it had intensified every time the human fired his weapon.
She had reached a point in the city where she had to start going toward Twilight and stop her. She had to go along the abandoned road and find a way through the city in a way the human could have travelled. If she ended up wandering into a place the human had not been in, then she could appear somewhere hours away from her goal. Taking the way Fenrir had already destabilized the human’s mindscape, such detours could severely hurt the human soldier’s psyche. She had to try and go along the exact path the human took in the original memory.
The path split into two at the end and more earthen houses spread in front of her as the splitting paths devolved into nothingness. The house directly in front of her was in a stark focus, while those around it blurred into the background. The door was wide open and Luna could see two echoes already, holding weapons in their hands and halfway crumbled to the ground. Luna trotted in carefully, staying quiet in a misguided attempt at respect. This was a memory, the humans she saw were already dead and at least one reality over, she was only seeing the mental imprint their deaths had left on the one that had killed them.
Luna rushed past the still figures and poked her head into the next room. There was a corridor to her left, but there was a open door with a echo wearing armor similar to the human to the doorway to her right. It was suspended in mid-air and the front of the human was red mess of tearing fabric and flesh. The echo covered the doorway, so Luna went left. She found what looked like a kitchen and another room with bedding and a few more echoes, but no other way out.
The only way out of the house and to the next part of the human’s mindscape was through the echo blocking the doorway.
Now, echoes were just that, only echoes of strong memories and emotions left behind in a mind and they had no more substance than they did in the real world. The fact that they carried over to the invading mind was just extremely uncomfortable. You experienced what the person whose mind you are in felt at the time and sometimes you really didn’t want to know any more of a killer’s mind than absolutely necessary. At least the human soldier had seemed to be a nice person, so it might not be that bad. Luna took a steadying breath and stepped through the echo of a long since dead man.
“Clear!” She could feel the human’s strange physique moving and the unfamiliar suffocation of his many layers of clothes. She could feel the excitement in the human’s body and the sense of lightness the adrenaline in his system gave him. The weight of the weapon and his uniform was a reassuring presence, whereas Luna couldn’t have moved with such agility in such constricting garbs.
A whole eternity of time passed as the human soldier turned his head to check on his compatriot, standing in the same doorway Luna’s mental projection was. The other human soldier gave him a nod and kicked the door in front of him open. There was a barely audible click and then a wall of light and sound tore the other soldier to pieces.
Luna’s imagined hooves hit the room beyond the echo of the human’s compatriot. There were beds and a hole in the wall leading to another part of the soldier’s mindscape. Judging by the shadows Twilight’s undisciplined intrusion cast, she was not too far from where she needed to be.
Luna stopped at the hole in the wall and glanced at the echo in the doorway again. The human had felt guilty enough to blame the death on himself, but nothing in the memory suggested the soldier had been the one to cause the explosion. The human was more than an unrepentant killer, the echo’s existence proved that. She knew nothing of the world the human came from, but there had to be something more to it than all the death and pain she’d seen so far.
“ It is no matter whether they are virtuous or villainous. I have to do the right thing, I have to be better.” Luna reminded herself as she wrenched her eyes away from the gruesome details of the unknown soldier’s demise. She stepped out into what looked like a frozen plain of some sort, snow obscured the ground too thickly to know if the field was used to grow crops, or if it was a particularly level meadow. She took another step into the snowy landscape and her hooves sunk into the pristine snow. The sudden cold shocked her and she could feel the freezing air stinging her throat as she inhaled in surprise. She could feel the slight, yet bone chilling, breeze on her coat and could feel heat seeping out of her as the snow started to melt against her coat.
“I am Luna, the Princess of the Night.” Luna closed her eyes and fought to ignore the biting cold around her. It was dangerous to let the human’s mind affect her mental projection too much. If she began thinking of the mental landscape the human offered her as real, then there was the real danger of their minds and memories entangling, especially with the human’s loss of identity. The entangling itself was not dangerous, it was the strain of separating the two entwined minds that put both parties at risk. It was far more sensible to avoid becoming invested in the memories presented to her. “I am Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Moon and the Night.”
Luna opened her eyes and her hooves were touching the immaculate white snow, but she felt no cold radiating from it, nor could she feel even a whisper of a breeze. The pristine landscape still retained its beauty, but now she could make the mental distinction between reality and a memory presented to her. Parts of the landscape bled away and revealed the mismatched ruins of the human soldier’s mental landscape. Twilight’s mental projection was almost directly above the determined alicorn and seeing the diminished state of the cloud of magical energy she didn’t have time to get to a better vantage point.
Controlling magical energy was relatively simple in theory, it was the base of nearly every spell and magic, but to do it while within a mind of a foreign species, who was without a sense of identity, while you had to keep your own considerable energy from mixing with either the mind around you, or the mass of energy you wanted to contain… Well, it took a natural affinity towards the finer branches of magic, considerable magical reserves to stabilize the spell in such conditions, while keeping your sanity.
Luna started to construct the magical formula while she contemplated her sister’s protegé’s reasons in using a type of magic she had most definitely not been trained in. She had to have known about the human spirits inside Fenrir for her to even think of attacking the wolf mentally, but did she blame them, or wish to save them from the wolf? The spell that was using up the energy in her mental projection was definitely hostile, but she could not read a definite target in its design. It was either too weak to register to her at this point and in such extreme circumstance, or she would have to worry about Twilight Sparkle’s sanity.
Luna released the spell and the purple light in the sky quickly shrunk into a hoof-sized orb of light and dimmed considerably. It might not have been very dramatic, but the lack of fireworks told her she had contained the energy correctly. The orb started to slowly float toward her, as her attention was brought to her right by a strangely echoing sound.
“Perkele! Perkele! Perkele! Avita pikkasen, poni!” The human soldier was sprinting through what looked disturbingly similar to a graveyard at night and vaulted over a fence separating it from the snowy field and sunk into the snow to his knees. He was clearly not surprised or bothered by the deep snow, but his progress did slow down to a healthy jog. The bipedal werewolves following him moments later stumbled in the snow and could not find stable enough footing to shoot at the human, but the full wolves were just as unbothered by the snow as the human, but with the added benefit of having bodies large enough to not be slowed down by it. They would catch up to the human in a manner of seconds.
How is he any different from the monsters following him? He finds the same kind of elation in battle as Fenrir’s kin, but does not have the excuse of the instinct to hunt those he fights.
Luna watched as the human skidded to a halt and whipped around in the snow, going down to one knee in one fluid motion to aim at the closest of the wolves with his weapon. After a few flashes and echoing blasts of sound the wolf’s right eye exploded into red mist and its gargantuan body crashed into the snow. The other wolf didn’t hesitate to use his pack mate’s body as a stepping ladder to leap at the human.
Who would know if you let this happen? All those echoes would have some justice brought to them at long last. To let an unrepentant killer die is nothing short of a good deed, while letting one live is a liability.
“Get out of my head.” Luna hissed as she slammed the leaping wolf with a hammer of energy, shattering the mental projection and saving the human from a mauling. She shot the magical energy towards the bipedal werewolves and quickly destroyed them as well. The human soldier watched her do this, before collapsing in the snow, disappearing from Luna’s sight. He was still alive, as she could see his breath puffing out in clouds of steam from where he fell, so she didn’t hurry in making her way to him, levitating Twilight’s uncontrollable mental projection next to her.
“Nice save, Princess…” The human panted between big gulps of air and spread his hands out in the snow. The sky above them came into clearer focus as the human caught his breath and looked up at the stars with his empty eyes. The stars were wrong and the moon was just as riddled with scars as in the other human’s memory.
“I’ve noticed that it’s always night here and the moon is always full. After the werewolves appeared, I kind of figured you would show up at some point.” The human turned his gaze to her, the emptiness in his eyes even more apparent in the barren landscape. His eyes followed the glowing orb slowly orbiting around her horn for a moment, before he spoke again.
“... I prayed for all of this to be a dream. I wished for the monsters to go back to their shadows and let me wake up. I prayed for whatever force that brought me here to send me back…” The human brought his arms to his side and propped his torso up in a sitting position. There was a ghost of genuine mirth in his empty blue eyes and a relaxed smile on his lips as he opened his mouth. He didn’t know, he didn’t understand who had brought him here and now he was about to thank her for helping him.
“Thank -”
“Stop! Don’t…” Luna screamed with more volume than she had intended. After the first exclamation though, her volume tapered out into a mumble. Those empty eyes stared back at her in the cold light of the moon. The shadow of warmth and real emotion that had been in his eyes had disappeared at her reaction. He might not have put it all together, but she could see the human starting to get up.
“You… The moon, the night, Fenrir’s aggression…” Luna took a step from the human. He had demonstrated the ability to affect her mental projection, so any aggression from the human could be disastrous for both of them. He was now standing in front of her, staring at her silently. She could hear his spidery fingers cracking as his hands balled into fists at his side. After another long silent and awkward moment Luna gathered the courage to look up at the human’s eyes. She had come here to meet those she had wronged and try to help them, so she should not shy away from it because of some juvenile awkwardness.
“Why? Why the hell am I here, fighting fucking werewolves and dying over and over again?! What purpose does my suffering serve, Luna?” The words were hissed through clenched teeth and it was obvious he was trying not to scream at her. Whatever insult he was keeping back, she felt like she deserved it. It was not the obvious anger in the human that made her pause and want to look away, it was the confusion and hurt in his eyes. He had trusted her, thought her to be his savior, when she had been the one to damn him.
“Are you trying to teach me something by doing this? Do you want me to learn the error of my fucking ways by making me die over and over again in the claws of monsters? Is that what I am to you, a fucking monster?!” The human took a step toward her and she took a step back. The anger was coming off the human in waves, literally, as in his mind the strong emotion caused everything around him jump into clear focus and become increasingly difficult to ignore as illusions.
“No, I -” The human took another step towards Luna and pushed her back roughly with the metal of his weapon. The push itself was not enough to topple her, but the physical contact made everything about the memory they were in rush through her defenses, so she stumbled as the snow under her hooves gave into her weight and the sudden dry and cold air made her cough. The human had started to pace in front of her, muttering curses and threats in his native tongue while giving her furious glances all the while.
“I never meant for any harm to come to you, or anyone. I was tricked into using a spell I did not know to save a life. Your suffering and what happened because of my decision is all wholly my fault, I am not denying that. You have every right to blame me.” Luna said as she ruffled her feathers and got back on her hooves. The cold and the molten snow on her coat, coupled with the near constant wind, made it impossible to detach herself from the memory without giving the human a chance to attack her again.
“Was it Discord that tricked you?” The human asked, his voice still sounding strained with repressed anger, but his movements had already slowed down from the manic need to keep moving a moment ago. The human fiddled with a strap of some kind going accross his chest as he talked.
“Yes, it was. May I inquire as to how you know of him, or anything about our world?” The human glares at Luna at this question for some reason. He just grunts something very rude sounding in his native tongue before responding.
“In my world you are part of a show for children. I know of a couple of years of the Elements of Harmony’s shenanigans, along with the associated backstory, simply from watching this show. You are not supposed to be real, this is not supposed to be happening and you are not at all what I expected.” The human snapped his beady eyes at her in the dark and cold night and scoffed at her incredulous expression. “In short; It’s magic, fuck you.”
“As… As preposterous it might sound to you right now, I am here to help you. The spell that binds you here is also giving life to Fenrir, a monster of my design. I would like your co-operation in stopping this mistake of mine from doing any more damage.”
“You mean you would like to not kill me to get what you want.” The human stopped his pacing and faced her. The aggression in his demeanour was not wholly gone, but it had become something the human had under his control, a malevolent edge to everything he said and did. His initial outburst of anger had subsided, but it had become a cold grudge separating them from amicable discourse.
“What I want is there to be no more deaths. You are part of the spell, so you will need to be part of dismantling it.” It was hard to keep her voice calm in the face of the human’s spiteful comments. The fact the human distrusted her to such a degree was hurtful, but the fact he had a very good reason for it was worse.
“No on vittu ihan päätöntä touhua…” The human brought his hands up to his helmet and massaged his forehead, before spreading his hands to his sides in an universal sign of “what the hell”
“Okay, I’ll help you. It’s not like have much of a choice. What do you need me to do?” The human asked and shouldered his weapon again. Luna suddenly realized the human soldier had avoided even touching the weapon while he was visibly enraged toward her. He had quickly moved the weapon to hang on his back by the strap when he had started pacing in front of her. Luna had not thought much about the human fiddling with this strap during their conversation, but now she realized he had been fighting back the urge to shoot her.
“I know you still harbor ill feelings toward me, but -”
“What. Do. We. Do?” The human interrupted her with a raised hand and said each word slowly. He clearly would not listen to anything Luna had to say and either of them had the time to argue about it, so Luna swallowed the heated response to the man’s rudeness.
“We need to move on from your mind and find the nexus of the spell. There should be tears and folds in this place, things that are out of place, or that you have no recollection of. If we can find one that is stable enough, I can get us to where we need to go, but given your situation, finding such a pathway might be difficult.”
“Yeah, I forgot to ask about that. You can’t just zap my memories back, then?” The human asked as he started marching through the snow. Luna caught up easily, as she could take the time to concentrate on walking on top of the snow, while the human trudged through it.
“You have not lost your memories, you only lack the way to distinguish your personal experiences from the knowledge you have. You know all that you did before you came here, but you have no way of seeing how you fit into these memories. You do not remember how to operate your weapon, your mind has the information and your body uses it.” It was relieving to talk about something she knew about.
“So that’s a no, then?” The soldier asked in a deadpan tone. He either chose to ignore what she said, or genuinely couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. She could believe either possibility, taking the human’s lack of magic and his views on violence as the go to solution to problems.
“Yes, regaining your identity is a far grander concept than it may seem. There is a chance of it returning when the spell is undone, but it is far more likely that it is what binds you to this plane… It will have to be broken to end this.”
“Perkele…” The human mutters in his strange tongue as they make it out of the snowy field and into a paved path in the cemetery he ran through before. There runs a paved path through the rows of headstones, all neatly in rows and among well kept plants. For a good while the only sound is the human’s muffled footsteps and the shuffling of his clothes.
“Where are we going? It is your mind, but do you have a destination in mind?”
“I heard some music while I was leading the werewolves along. I can remember the song and where I heard it and it has something to do with you. Seems like the natural place to start.” The human keeps his eyes on the buildings beyond the cemetery, probably looking out for an attack.
“Yes, that is unusual, but not unheard of. It is a place to start, if nothing else.” Luna admitted as they walked through the cemetery gates and stepped into a street paved with a smooth and black stone, slick and shiny because of non-existent rain. The human stayed on a raised walkway on the side of the street as they followed the cemetery wall to the end of the block. The wide road must have been reserved for carriages of some sort. There was another stretch of silence as Luna followed the human navigating the maze of his own mind.
“Do you know at which part of your world we are in?” Luna asked as they walked through another street lined with tall buildings built from stone and metal and large rectangular windows. The human stopped walking for a second and looked up to the mostly intact buildings around them. There were a few broken windows and blown out doors, but it was far more intact than any other place Luna had seen.
“Finland.”
“How do you know that?” For him to be so sure, he would have to remembered it, so the loss of identity was really only on the part of their names. The human pointed a finger to a wall behind, which sported a rather crude depiction of a male reproductive organ painted in bright orange paint with stylized letters around it.
“Because that says “Suck my cock” in Finnish” The human smirked as cold mirth entered into his small and empty eyes. The picture was crude beyond belief, there was no artistic value to it and it was obviously only a juvenile grab for attention by someone with access to orange paint…
Luna still felt her cheeks turn hot as blood rushed to her cheeks, if they had just kept walking, then she could have easily ignored the graffiti, but the human refused to keep walking in silence. He just stood there, watching her with those beady little eyes and smirking at her discomfort.
“Hey, you’re the one that asked, princess. Actually we’ve passed street signs with finnish words on them and as I know the language and it’s what I default to when upset, so I guess I’m Finnish myself.” The human nodded at her with a small smile before turning back to walking down the street. Luna took a few steps to follow him before he suddenly turned around on his heels, a move that looked wholly unnatural to a quadruped like Luna “Why can’t I fly?”
“You lack wings.” Luna’s subconscious answered without checking with the rest of her. Her inability to control her responses to sudden questions would be worrying, if the human had the mind to take advantage of it.
“Yeah, I know that, but this is a dream, I’ve flown all over the place in dreams.”
“This is not a dream; this is a projection of your mind. The places we’ve walked through are all memories of yours. Things will work the way they did in the memory this place is based on.”
“Plus werewolves, courtesy of you.” Luna could feel ears folding back at his jab at her. He was a petty one, wasn’t he? She knew getting angry at him would be just as petty, but she couldn’t help getting aggravated by it.
“... Yes, plus werewolves, for which I am responsible. Let’s keep going, we are pressed for time.” Thankfully the human nodded and turned to walk down the street again. The Princess of the Night followed behind, easily keeping up with the human’s brisk march. After another excruciatingly long while, until the human stopped and raised his hand up to level with his head in a fist, Luna assumed this meant for her to stop as well and waited for the human to say something, staying a safe distance away from him.
“Hear that? That’s the song I heard, the only music there is to hear in this place.” Luna swiveled her ears to and fro, not really expecting to hear anything, as she was concentrating on not letting the human’s mind affect her, but she did hear a muffled sound of music in the distance regardless.
“I do believe we are on the right track. The fact both you and I perceive it to any extent means it is not of your mind, as I am consciously keeping it from affecting me in such a way.” She turned her head from side to side, trying to discern where the music was coming from. After a moment of this she pointed a hoof toward a different street, this one paved with cobblestone and kept alight by street lamps painted black to give the illusion of old iron, while the bright electrical light bulbs betrayed their modern nature.
“I am Luna, the Princess of the Night.” Luna muttered as the human strode right onto the street, humming along with the music he heard. She should not have known what she did about the street lamps. She had to endeavour to make the excursion into the human’s mind as short as possible, before more and more trivial pieces of information and memory could take root any deeper. “I am Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Moon and the Night.”
As she moved to follow the human down the cobblestone street she felt something akin to a warm breeze wash over her as she stepped onto the warm stones, still bleeding out the warmth of a summer day. As she looked down at the street to try and distance herself from the sensation, she heard the song the human had been talking about.
“I am Luna, the Princess of the Night.” She tried to focus on who she was and distance herself from the sensation, but the volume of the ong wavered only for a moment, before coming back again. She knew the street could have been the domain of another mind, but why was the memory so much more powerful than the soldier’s? “I am Princess Luna, Alicorn of the Moon and the Night.”
“You okay, Princess?” The human soldier asked, as he moved to help her. If the soldier’s ability to affect her mental projection was still in effect, then he could very well push her over the edge and make her unable to distinguish reality from the human consciousness.
“Don’t touch me!” The human stopped and jerked his extended hand back. The human whose memory this cobblestone street was, she had to find him, before she succumbed. The strength of the memory also meant the nexus of the spell was close. She had to stay separate to dismantle the spell and put an end to this. “We have to go where the music is coming from and -”
And then the song playing got a lot louder and fast-paced, impossible to ignore. She had liked the fast piano playing, but the sudden change in instruments and tempo took her off-guard. Was this what music in the human world was like? If the circumstances were more favorable, she might come to appreciate the strange sounds of the instruments and the fast and heavy tempo of the song.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Luna shouted over the music as she bolted down the street. The fact she could hear her hooves hitting the cobblestone under them should worry her, but if it drowned out some of that unnervingly tempting music, then all the better.
“The song’s not that bad!” The soldier argued as he caught up to Luna. The song sounded like it was coming from around the next bend, so Luna flapped her wings to overtake the human and to take the turn in the air, rather than stumble in the cobblestone street. There was an old style brick tavern a few doors down the street, with the door to it ajar and illuminating a slice of the calm night with golden light. It was definitely the source of the music, but should she really charge in there, when just a song was almost enough to drag her down as part of the memory?
The human soldier had no such reservations, as he shouldered the door open and rushed through the door with his weapon at the ready. Luna landed just in front of the door, seeing the human soldier pointing his weapon at two other humans.
“Turn the music down, you’re upsetting royalty!” The soldier barked and made a hastening motion with his gun.
“Fine, no need to shout! I thought it would be fitting, is all...” A man wearing a fedora grumbles as he leans to touch a small device with a rectangular glowing screen, cutting the song off. He leans back and fiddles with an expensive looking tie as he glances beyond the soldier and locks eyes with Luna.
“Hi there, Luna. Come in, come in, the beer’s cold and the wine’s older than my father. I believe we have some matters to discuss.” The human Luna had seen die in a dock of an unknown city said as he beckoned her to step forward. The human soldier gave her a questioning glance over his shoulder, but Luna was not in a state of mind to answer his unspoken question.
Luna stood there, transfixed by this sudden revelation. This human had not disappeared as the scene of his death played out, he had sent her to the soldier by distancing himself from her and she had interrupted the scene of the soldier’s death by appearing in his mind.
“I knew we should have gone with the piano version, Criminal.” Another male voice said in a smooth and low voice, with the slightest hint of a Fancé accent. A hand extended from beyond her narrow view of the tavern and picked up the rectangular screen from the rest of the device.
“Well, I can’t quite remember the piano version, Pedophile.”
“We agreed on Priest, remember?” The accented voice said in a strained “Not this again” tone. Luna had a feeling she didn’t want to know what the word “pedophile” meant. It sounded slimy.
“We agreed on Smuggler, remember?” The fedora wearing Smuggler said, in a “exactly this again” kind of tone.
“Who are you two and what is going on here?!” The human soldier cut into the brewing argument with a “Enough of this shit” kind of tone.
“You tricked me!” Luna shouted in no particular tone, as she was fed up with all the tones in the room. There was also the fact that the human calling himself Smuggler had mainoulated her into doing his dirty work.
“Tis a lie! Your backside is whole and - Fuck!” Smuggler shouted and slammed a fist on the table in front of him. The still confused soldier took a quick step back and readied his weapon and the glass of wine and the pint of beer on the table both spilled on the table and onto the floor from Smuggler’s sudden outburst. “Aww man, I was drinking that! I did not trick you to do anything, Luna. I just helped you along a little, I just neglected to mention the fact… Priest, could you, you know… Do the thing with the thing?”
“Since you put it so elegantly…” The man presumed to be Priest said and Luna could see the same hand move over the table and stay there for a moment. Luna was about to wonder what was the point of such practice, as the hand withdrew without seemingly doing anything, but then she saw the pint of beer and the glass of wine back on the table, filled and upright.
“Impossible! How could you possibly know how to… to…” Luna looked down and saw her hooves on the inside of the tavern. The impossible act of one of the humans consciously changing things in their mindscape made her unconsciously step forward to see the human in question and she was now standing inside the tavern. She could feel some kind of energy surge around her as she stood there and it was making her head spin.
“I can’t - What are you doing to - doing to me?” Luna slurred out as she felt the individual hairs on her coat stand on end in waves and a cold discomfort build in her head. Why was she here, getting tricked and assaulted by weird ape-things with impossible mental faculties. She should have just incinerated Fenrir
“Is this you? Are you hurting her?” The human soldier placed himself between Luna and the two men.
“Soldier, calm down. We hold you no ill will.” Which one was that, the fedora or the Fancé guy? Luna chuckled weakly at their obvious alias for the human soldier. It was so much easier than thinking him as an nameless human, yet gave no other identity from the obvious.
“Is this you?! Stop it!” Luna wondered why the Soldier even asked, there were no other beings in the whole realm, of course it was them. Her fingers felt cold and numb, but that doesn’t make any sense, it’s so warm here that… Wait, no. What are they talking about?
“I have nothing to do with this, it’s all on Priest. Go ahead, Soldier, shoot him, shoot him in the eye.” That annoying fedora guy, Smuggler, said with a little too much cheer for the grim subject matter. Luna had never wanted to punch someone in the throat so much, as she did at that moment.
“I am the cause for Princess Luna’s ailment, but I hold no power to alleviate her discomfort.” Luna stood up shakily and had to grab onto the doorframe to stay upright. Her head swam in every direction and her legs and arms tingled painfully. It felt like she had slept on every inch of her body at once. It was intensely uncomfortable and the room spinning every which way every time she moved her head was beyond disorienting.
Luna brushed a hand through her hair and put her forehead on the cool glass of the mirror next to the door. Something wasn’t right here, she knew it. Drinking dragon spirits that one time hadn’t been this nauseating and those would have killed a normal pony…
“I am Luna, the Princess of the Night.” Luna reassured herself of her identity. She was her, she still knew who she was and what she came to do, so why did everything feel so wrong? “I am Princess Luna, Avatar of the Moon and the Night.”
“What the hell? Did you do that?” Soldier asked, his weapon hanging loosely by it’s shoulder strap. Yes, it was a valid question. What did just happen? Did the two other humans attack them somehow? There didn’t seem to be any wounds on either of them. Her light brown skin was unblemished still, her nose wasn’t bleeding or crooked from any kind of impact, not even a scratch on the rest of her body, despite a few old scars from long-forgotten battles near her collarbone. Luna paused for a second and blinked as she stared at her body. She might not be hurt, but there was definitely something wrong with this picture.
“Why would you magick away my clothes and nothing else? If you think such a petty hindrance will incapacitate me in battle, you are surely mistaken!” Luna scoffed as she turned to the men, hands on her hips and eyes challenging them to attack. There was a tense silence as Priest carefully took his jacket from the back of his chair and made his way to offer it to her. As Luna took the jacket with a nod of thanks she saw Smuggler pick up his pint of beer and take a few hearty gulps before raising it up toward her, as if to make a toast.
“Well, it was worth it for the view alone, Princess! Am I right, or am I right?“ The boisterous man glanced between his comrades and got a absent-minded grunt from Soldier and a small nod from Priest. Really, men were the same wherever you went...
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Yay new chapter! Must commence reading!
3681778
Go, my son.
Is Luna losing her mind?
Oh dear, that's not good...
3681936
It is not, but the reason for her confusion is Priest, actually.
Awesome chapter. Keep up the good work and merry Christmas!
3682017
And one chapter later...
"A brony is transported into Equestria, but he finds himself in-" NO! There's too many of these stories!
Hmm, looks like Fenrir has 3 distinct human personalities implanted in him. Also explains how you can see the person's death which seemed to occur much earlier than the time the soldier would have existed.
3682117 These stories are awesome and cool.
Not that Nightmare night is a bad song, but wouldn't this http://youtu.be/fazOk2DrO8Y be more fitting?
3682382 Depends on the story.
3682905 I'd say Smuggler thought it to be a little too on the nose, so to say.
3684347
Hm... I though the whole idea was to... destabilize Luna a little. But well, okay.
3682117 Some of us actually like these stories, if you don't like it skip then.
3682117
Not nearly as many as "Brony finds himself in Equestria and fucks everybody"
3682188
Let's say the magical huge wolf with a brony in it isn't, hmm?
But yes, I did not know that. An interesting piece of information if it is true.
...Google Translate for Finnish-Moonspeak says something a bit different.
3684971
My Finnish moonspeaking ways say otherwise. "Perkele" doesn't literally mean "fuck", sure, but we don't have a literal translation for our curseword, or yours, so usually "Fuck!" takes the places of both "Perkele!" and "Vittu!" and maybe "Saatana!".
Both "Perkele" and "Saatana" refer to the devil, but are used as a general epletive in the same way "God damn it!" and the like is used in english when we stub our hypothetical toes. "Vittu" would be closest to "Cunt" if we are to go the way of literal translations, but it is used almost eactly like "Fuck" is used in English, with the exception of a discussion about the finer points of vaginas.
And if you are referring to the "No on ihan päätöntä touhua" line, then I will again say that it doesn't translate very well if we are to translate it literally, but I don't know what google decided for it. "Things are like we are without heads" really doesn't sound very good, does it?
3684971
Also, as I am a native speaker, the Soldier was speaking the language in a dialect, so that might be butchering any text-based translations.
3685103 I understand. You have a very good story on your hands by the way. It's a little better than some published stories I've read, and if you keep working on it, I'm sure you can eventually publish your own work, and not just give the brony community fanfiction. Good Luck to you.
3685117
Thank you for the compliment. I will be sticking with fanfiction for the forseeable future, though. I like the process and I already have plans for this story's sequel, if I get to writing it.
3685825
Oon niin helvetin suomalainen, että et uskokaan. En kyllä tiiä ollaanko ihan vielä ystäviä, mutta ei mulla ainakaan vielä ole mittään sitä vastaan. Jos et ole näistä parista lauseesta vielä asiaa ihan sisäistäny, nii mä oon aika lailla savolainen, eli Kuopion suunnilta peräsin.
Then again, I've read and written fanfiction and stuff in english for so long that it feels kind of strange to be typing in Finnish after so long. I wrote finnish moonspeak in this chapter and in the ones after that and had a friend help me with the Romanian (they're a native speaker) and French ( a way more attentive student in the language than I).
3685935
There are bronies of almost every nationality out there, but for you to be a brony in the internet kind of sense, you have to know english well enough to appreciate the voice acting. There's a FInnish, Romanian and a French brony in Fenrir. If you are Finnish and a magical pony appears suddenly in a warzone and you glomp her, there is a chance you just don't default to english, your second or third language.
The point being, none of them are native speakers, but as the "brony" identity goes, english is the language they all share with each other and the ponies, so that's what they use to communicate amongst each other and with the ponies.
3682117 Personally,This is the first i saw with that as the setup line that had the person be the second person to be in the body,And also have the original occupant still there.Sure the brony in another species's body thing is done to death (Chess game of the gods can be blamed for that),But this DOES actually go and try to be somewhat more original,and doesnt try to beat a dead horse (Hunh.......Well,THAT saying just became much more apropriate given the context of the site)
3684345 This story is good so far.
3690484
Thank you.
are theese other minds stuck in that body? Or more likely his real mind divided itself to protect from much more powerful mind of such old and great wolf. It would make much more sense, as human mind tends to things like that. but these are just speculations, and we have to wait for next chapter.
3706464
The Priest, Smuggler and Soldier were all bronies, which brought forth the identity of the "brony" that the ponies came to know. It was all the three of them shared, the soldier's practical mindset, the Smuggler's eye for deceit and the Priest's way for convincing others of their opinion. No single personality could actually shine above the rest without an identity, but Fenrir still knew he needed parts out of all three to survive, so what happened until now, happened.
Now the three humans are aware that they are separate and not at all pleased by the way Luna had treated them. If they are going down, then they feel that they need to let Luna know just how much damage a wroinged human can do on their way down. Either that, or it is a desperate final play to survive through the clusterfuck that is Fenrir and Luna's relationship. Whichever works, I guess.
3685103 According to a friend of mine, Finnish and English are horrible in terms of translations to each other. But then again, most languages do not do well for literal translations to each other (especially considering that many have various forms of slang that are in such common use that you don't notice until you look at it from the perspective of another language).
For some reason, the end makes me super upset. Don't know what for, it just does. And it's weird because I don't mind humanized/anthro... I guess it's just because she's not supposed to be like that and they're trying to kill her, so I'm just like:
fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCbV-BR8u4XDRnR&url=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FNgmN5VMCcHM%2Fhqdefault.jpg%3Ffeature%3Dog&jq=100
3760624
All according to keikaku, then. It's good that the twist made you feel something and all, but...
None of the humans have actually said that they want to kill Luna, that is not to say that they would be that broken up about her dying. She forced them to share brainspace with Fenrir, so they're pretty pissed off about that, at least.
3760909 They may not intend to kill her, but true actions have made that a very real possibility. Her mind has been altered, which will have an extremely negative affect if she leaves when all of that hullabaloo in the mindscape is dealt with. If she tries to separate as she is now, she won't be able to completely distinguish herself from the others, and what then?
She's SOL, and they will have killed best princess.
3760939
I'm glad to see someone understood the whole mindfuck aspect I introduced suddenly, although it has been happening to Fenrir and the Brony throughout the story. Yes, that is a real danger, now that Luna's mental projection has been tainted she will not be able to seperate herself from the human souls completely, but the human souls' surprising talent in the kind of mindfuckery they are doing could very well be used to defuse the situation, if they were to co-operate with the architect to their torment.
The question here is; are the humans working against Luna, or just for their own goals, which might just be revenge at this point? They do not share Fenrir's all encompassing hatred for the Princess of the Night, but they have enough reasons to wish her harm. It is abundantly clear that they will work with Luna to at least stop Fenrir, but are they willing to spare her the immense backlash of the spell she specifically engineered to save them? Time will tell, time will tell...
3761117 I just hope they'll eventually realize that staining her projection does harm for everyone, and not just her. Without her, they're pretty screwed. She's the only one that can free them from Fenrir, after all.
What
I stopped reading at this point, so I don't know anything. Did Luna get fixed yet, or will I have to wait longer?
3770476 they could just play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun.
Of course.
God forbid any half way decent fic NOT have an obligatory nude scene. Oh no we can't have that.
Media today just can't help themselves can they?
Finnish is my favourite language just because all their cuss words sound so adorable.
Seeing my mother language both makes love this fic as it makes me laugh as well since it's just funny to me....