• Published 12th Mar 2019
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Knight of Wands - Starscribe



Jacqueline Kessler has accomplished incredible things, but now she is almost finished. There is only one more mission to complete. One more pony left to find, and nothing in the waking or sleeping world can keep them apart.

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Chapter 1: The Devil

The Devil

The portal closed shut behind Jackie with a terrifying roar of finality, and she knew she would not be able to return to that otherworldly airport by any magic she knew. It hadn’t been part of the Dreamlands, but this… this felt familiar to her.

She was standing in an orchard of somewhat undersized trees, with a modest castle rising just through them. From the empty sky all around her, she guessed this was somewhere near the library, where dreams of enlightenment and enrichment dwelt. If I’m on an eternal quest for secrets unknown, this is probably where I would start. Maybe she could find the library, and dig through its archives without provoking Mercy’s wrath.

Then again, if the figment guessed she had been the one to kill Athena, she would probably end up as just another volume on the shelf.

Doesn’t matter. I’ll find some help. There are bound to be others here. Castles had residents, didn’t they? And Jackie was one of the greatest dreamers that had ever lived. Even a pale echo of her would be powerful enough to demand respect.

She passed a pond stocked with koi and other domesticated fish, and was a little surprised to see her reflection. She wasn’t transparent anymore. That was strange, given how airy and unstable she felt. She looked real, but inside she was a cloud of shifting probabilities.

Oh god. I know what I am. There was no other explanation. Jackie had become a figment, as all bats before her who had escaped to the Dreamlands to run from their mortality.

She stopped in place beside the pond, testing her wings, flexing her limbs in turn, muttering to herself. “It’s alright, Jackie… relax. Think. There’s nothing wrong with being a dream-spirit. You can… make this work. No one in the universe knows more about the Dreamlands than you do. Just review. What is life like for a figment?”

They have to represent something, her subconscious self answered. They draw power from connection to the sleeping world. Figments that represent something act it out in dreams, and they take magic back to the Dreamlands. But they get changed by the thing they represent, losing their original identity. Those that don’t… fade away.

She started walking forward—towards the center of the castle. There were no other destinations anywhere else around, no sense trying to get anywhere else. She would have to find the lord of this place, and discover if perhaps she might be of service. If not, maybe they would know where in the friendly skies she could fly next.

“What else do you know?” she asked, coaching herself as she kept walking. “Go on. There’s more.”

She did know more, though none of it was encouraging. Figments can’t die, unless they’re eaten by another spirit. Otherwise they’ll just reform somewhere else, with their power significantly reduced and their memories fragmented. They don’t die, they get decomposed with each death until there’s nothing left.

Which meant, obviously, that Jackie couldn’t die here. Even one death might permanently alter her perception of the world, or else make her forget about her quest completely. What if another spirit ate all her memories of Ezri?

So how do I cheat? There was one obvious method—one that a few had used over the years. It was the same cheat that Meliora used, since after all what was that city but a dream spirit of its own?

Magic can be fed directly into the dream world, and it grows dramatically in the conversion. If I had a mortal friend with access to Glamour, I could use the power to stay alive without altering myself into the spirit of some element.

That was the basics, and direction towards what her goal had to be. She had to make friends with a dreamer, then get them to send magic to her. She had knowledge to trade, and plenty of secrets. She could make it work!

But she would have to survive long enough for that to happen.

Maybe there was one in the castle in front of her. There were no walls, only a cluster of buildings surrounding the central keep. The doors seemed unusually large, like they’d been built for humans. But why…

“Are you gonna keep talking to yourself like that?” said a voice from behind her. A disturbingly familiar voice, except that the pitch was too high.

She turned, leaning to one side, and there was a creature creeping nearby.

At first she’d thought it was a cat, from the way it prowled along the rim of a stone wall with its tail out behind it and wings spread. But… cats didn’t have wings, and anyway the blue-gray coat was as familiar as the voice.

It was her voice, her body. The interference-pattern cutie mark was there, the same eyes, the same fang-toothed-grin.

Oh god. What if I’m already breaking apart? What if I’ve already died once and don’t remember?

“Just gonna stand there, giantess? Not sure what you have to be afraid of. At your size, even the humans would leave you alone.”

Jackie took a deep breath, forcing herself to breathe in and out. “You… are… me?” she began, speaking slowly. “A part of me?”

The bat laughed, lifting into the air in front of her and landing on the ground. She looked up with surprisingly little fear, despite her size. Because it’s the Dreamlands. Size doesn’t matter. She could be any size she wanted. Except the small one didn’t seem to think so. “If I was any part of you, you think I’d be this size? Equestria’s small enough to wrap up tight in somebody’s truck or something. Not so much where you come from, I bet.”

Jackie scooped the bat out of the air with her wings, moving so quickly that the creature was powerless to resist. Maybe it was being part of her, or maybe it was just a little slow to move, because it didn’t get away in time.

She sat the creature down on a stump with a purposeful thump, leaning in close and baring her teeth. “Listen to me, whatever you are. I don’t fuckin’ care that I’m dead, I’m still the most dangerous thing in this place. I’m here to find my wife, and anyone who steps in front of me is fucked. Got it?”

She waited for the creature to show her acknowledgement, in the form of a terrified nod. “H-hey there… big girl… why don’t you take a deep breath… maybe a few cubes of sugar… think this over. You wouldn’t murder your own flesh and blood, would you? Also… congratulations on getting married? I’m not sure I have it in me for the commitment.”

Even with Jackie threatening her life, she was making stupid comments. She’s definitely part of me. How many times have I been decomposing? That would explain why she didn’t remember, too—other versions of herself had those memories.

But I still remember Ezri. That’s what’s important. I can still find her. I’m coming for you, sweetheart.

“I wouldn’t murder you,” she said, finally letting go. She remained close, teeth bared in case the bat tried to fly away. At her size her chances of escape seemed near zero, but that didn’t matter. Jackie stayed within reach anyway, just in case. “Not if you answer my questions.”

“Then I’ll answer your questions,” the smaller bat said, spreading her wings with a weak squeak of submission. “Go on, shoot. But I don’t know everything. It’s no fair if you hurt me over shit that’s from your world and not mine.”

“It’s not fair that I’m here in the first place,” Jackie said. “I should’ve come with my wife when she died. But I let her die for me, and now we’re both suffering. Tough shit.”

She rose to her hooves, circling around the stump. “What dreamer owns this castle?”

“Uh…” The bat winced. “We’re having trouble right away. I have no idea what the shit that means. I think this is… the Underworld maybe? Or maybe it is my dream, and this is a nightmare. See, this is called Unity. This castle was a school, like Hogwarts but for internet people. My sister got her owl and I never did, but I tagged along because I’m needy and maybe a little insecure.”

She made like she was about to hop down from the stump, adjusting herself on the wood in an effort to get her balance.

Do I really shake my butt that much when I’m about to jump? Jackie cleared her throat, and the pony hastily sat down again, shivering in fear.

“If it’s a dream, I don’t know whose it would be. Guess mine?”

“No.” Jackie spread one wing, pointing. “You said… Underworld. There’s no such place.” Wasn’t there? None she remembered. But maybe this part of her knew other things. Or maybe there was only a fragment of memory in that tiny bat head, and she was interpreting it as best she could with limited information. That made some kind of sense. “What made you think we were there?”

“Because this whole place got fuckin’ nuked,” the tiny bat said, as casually as if she’d been ordering lunch. “I mean, not literally. I think they shot it until the magic ran out and it fell out of the sky, but you get the idea.”

She didn’t even remotely get the idea. So far as Jackie could tell, this was still the Dreamlands. She closed her eyes, trying to change into the human form she’d occasionally used.

Nothing happened. That’s not proof. I couldn’t change after Voeskender cursed me, either. I could still be somewhere familiar. Misty had been able to change some parts of her form easily, so long as they didn’t compromise her basic nature. But she couldn’t make more significant changes without a dreamer to help her.

Human is too different. I have to try something subtler.

Jackie imagined she was the same size as this tiny bat—and the ground rose up to meet her. They were suddenly at eye-level. The bat actually grinned at her, squeaking in pleasure. “There we go! No more giants throwing their weight around. Guess the castle finally got you.”

“No.” Jackie glared at her duplicate—or at least she looked like one. To Jackie’s dream-senses, she was something else. Not a dream-spirit, just as Jackie couldn’t see herself as transparent. But not quite as real as a person, either. “I made myself smaller. I’m guessing that any dreamers who live in this place are probably going to expect ponies to look like you. If anypony asks, we’re twins.”

Anypony,” the bat repeated, her voice bitter. “You don’t have to say it like that, you know. Anybody exists for a reason. It’s not like ponies don’t have bodies.”

Damn. Is this me in the past by several thousand years? Jackie had once agreed with her, in the same way she’d stubbornly refused to answer to the name “Dreamknife.” But those years were over, just like so much of her life.

“Anybody, then,” she said. “But no, actually I mean anypony. Humans are almost never very good at dreamwalking. Our chances of finding one in here are near zero.” And if we do, they’ve been here so long that they’re not human anymore. They’re what I will be in a few thousand years.

Unless she could find the knowledge she wanted. It wouldn’t be so hard, would it? Just… discover proof of something that not even Archive knew. Find someone who had returned from the other side of the iridescent veil. How hard was that?

“No one is here,” smaller-Jackie said. Well, identically-Jackie currently. “No humans or ponies or anything else. Not that there’s a difference. It’s just been me for days now. I dunno… why, or how. I haven’t been to Unity in ages. I guess maybe there was some reason. Maybe Sunset Shimmer’s involved somehow. Gotta rise up from that cave eventually.”

That gave her pause—a name Jackie recognized. But before she could ask about it, she heard something else. A sound that seemed so strange to her that she almost couldn’t identify it. It was from the distant recesses of her memory, a past as ancient as human ruins like this.

It sounded like jet engines. Her sensitive ears directed sharp eyes to a patch of distant sky, where a tight formation of aircrafts seemed to be narrowing in for an approach. They were coming closer so fast that she almost couldn’t think—supersonic speeds. A few blinks of time, and they’d be passing.

But this was the Dreamlands, or something like it. Jackie had been in the sun long enough that she could recover. Her wife was a mission, something to give her purpose. Purpose was critical for a figment. So long as she was moving towards her purpose, that was a few more precious drops of magic.

Enough that the aircraft blasting towards them slowed down. They were still coming closer with terrifying speed, but now it was more like watching a record-breaking run than aircraft.

“Oh shit.” Other Jackie stared up in horror. “I think this is it. The moment this whole fucking thing exploded. We’re, like… some kind of back in time.”

Jackie lifted up into the air, her wings flapping. “So what, off the side you think? Into the air around here? Got to be safer than a castle about to explode.”

“Off the… fuck no.” Other Jackie shook her head, pointing inside. “There’s a door in there. Goes to Equestria. How about we don’t get shot to hell by the air force? So long as you can…” She moved one of her legs, awed. “What the hell are you doing, anyway? You aren’t a unicorn.”

Equestria, huh? Might be all kinds of lost knowledge on their half of the Dreamlands. “I’m a bat, that’s better. This is our world. Unicorns can suck it in here.”

They galloped for the largest building. Jackie gave up on keeping the same size as this fragment of herself after about ten seconds of running, returning to her previous height and scooping her onto her back with a single bit of effort from her wings.

“I don’t know if being big is the right call!” Tiny Jackie squeaked into her ear. Maybe that was what she could call her: “Squeak”. Better than just thinking of her by what she wasn’t. “Ponies are my size! Equestria’s gonna be terrified of you! Left, left! That way!”

Jackie didn’t so much as respond to suggestions about what Equestria might think of her. There were few things Jackie cared less about than what Equestria thought. The world’s broken state was their fault in the first place. If only they’d not scattered people through time, Jackie would never have lost a wife.

I wouldn’t have found her either, technically. Alex wouldn’t have been ruling, Riley probably wouldn’t have made Ezri… my whole life would be different. I’d probably still be living in my hometown.

But death wasn’t the time to be rational, it was the time to get angry. Anger—and every other emotion, for that matter—was power she could use.

She could feel the ground shaking under her as slow-motion explosions shook the castle, probably toppling whole towers from above them. But Jackie could see none of it, and barely feel it.

She’d opened into a room like something that might’ve housed the Stargate. Except—from the look of things, it almost did. There was a device in the center of the room, with all kinds of machinery running into it, and a surface of utter blackness. It was one of the ways a portal spell could be made.

A whole section of the floor gave way, breaking the path into the portal. As more rock showered down around her, Jackie took to the air, flapping desperately towards the opening as it tumbled. There could be no magicking it back—she had no emergency escapes, no clever backup plan. It was into that portal, or else be broken into even more pieces.

She was just another figment now.

I won’t. I’ll see you again, Ezri! Maybe on the other side. She reached the event-horizon, and exhaled, closing her eyes tight. If it was anything like a unicorn’s teleport, that was probably a good idea. She jumped through, carrying Squeak along with her into the abyss.