Chapter 17: A New Day
Note: there is significant swearing in this chapter.
Night came, and with it the moon shone, unoccluded for the first time in months by one or more of Father Addison’s bat-winged flock who had revelled in the joys of night flight. Far below the argent crescent in the skies, five shards of magic continued to wait for the hands or hooves they had been crafted to receive.
They had been forged with power and love, their true Purpose changed in the moment of their creation by a capricious god who loved to play dice with the universe, and had smiled at the efforts of a smith who, like himself, hadn’t cared about words like, “impossible.” Still glowing with power and warmth the five blades bided their time. But they would not wait forever…
The night wore on while peoples and ponies dreamed. For the vast majority of those sleeping their way through the darkness, their dreams were either fond or trivial and of no great particular note. Some people, sleeping particularly deeply or subject to certain medications, did not dream at all. Others however did dream nightmares, of horrors both gross and sublime, and filled with terrors both subtle and extreme.
For some of those held in the grip of Melas Oneiros, their fearful night was crafted purely from their own imagination as their dreaming mind sought out possible worst-case scenarios to come, however fanciful, and tried to find ways to overcome them. For others though, their black dreams were the replaying of nightmares they had experienced while waking, and of all the things they could have done differently.
“Abort airstrike!” Rios yelled into the radio from behind the firing line. “Civilians in the area. Abort! Abort! Abort!”
“Too late!” yelled the corporal beside him, grabbing Rios’ shoulder and pointing to the incoming fighter-bombers, their wings glinting in the Afghan sun as they released payloads of fiery death on the insurgents attacking his unit.
“Not again,” cried Captain Rios, watching in remembered horror as he again relived the moment a family, whose only crime had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, died from orders he had given. “Not a-fucking-gain.”
“I’m sorry,” whispered a gentle female voice, one that Rios thought he knew. “I am sorry I cannot be there for you, my soldier.”
“Who? What?” Rios asked, confused. It took him more than a few moments for his dreaming mind to finish making the necessary shifts to both remember he was dreaming and to summon enough mental ability to remember whose voice that was. “Luna? Is that you?”
“Yes, Captain Rios. It is I,” confirmed the Princess of the Night, as the rest of Rios’ dream froze in place around him. “I am so very glad I was able to reach you.”
“I’d heard something went wrong,” Rios said, turning up the volume on the radio with no success. “You and your sister okay? I can barely hear you.”
“Only the connection to you through my token is allowing my thoughts to reach you at all,” Luna informed, adding, “the strain upon my magic is… considerable. This is not an effort I will soon be able to repeat.”
“Then sign off and try again when you’re stronger, because I noticed you didn’t mention your status,” Rios fired back, protective instincts flaring.
“Not yet, there is a request I have of you, and information you need to have,” Luna stated bluntly, and Rios felt his spine reflexively stiffening as he heard the tones of command in the voice of the Equestrian princess. “But I shall indeed make this brief as my strength is waning as we speak.”
“Fine, get on with it, you stubborn oat-burner,” muttered Rios.
“My sister and I are well,” began Luna, her voice showing no sign she had heard Rios’ jibe. “As is Miss Velasquez, who is adapting to finding herself as an earth pony in our world. Please let her family know that she is safe. We are still piecing together what caused the portal to explode, and it will be weeks before we can make a new one. However, while we can make a portal, we have no idea how to use it to find your world out of an infinity of others in the cosmos.”
“What about your feather?” Rios asked, curious. “You said it enabled us to connect here, why not use it as some sort of beacon?”
“Because the dream realm is separate and discrete from the waking world, and must remain so, lest the waking world become a realm of mortals suffering under the endless horrors of Nightmare,” Luna’s voice crackled back. “May I continue, my soldier?”
“Yeah, sorry,” replied the soldier, a bit of a growl in his voice at the disliked possessive.
“For some reason I do not fully understand, when the three of us were thrown back to Equestria, three of our ponies were pulled in from our side of the portal and flung to Earth. We hope,” continued the princess, some strain in her words. “We are asking that you, Captain Rios of the United States Army, travel to Brightly in order to determine if the ponies Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle are alive and well. We are asking you to pass this request to your superiors and to the Canadian government as a personal favor to the Equestrian Diarchy. Do you understand what we are asking of you?”
“Never did give up on trying to lay a claim to me, did you?” Rios shot back, angrily.
“You have courage, integrity, and a care for the lives of others. We treasure warriors like yourself, but please, my strength is fading swiftly and I must finish this while I can,” Luna explained, and Rios could hear the princess panting for breath before she continued. “The following is for your ears only. Beware the pony known as Foxfire. It is she who flung my sister and I through the portal by way of magical ambush. She has either fallen to corruption from a dark spirit of magic inside of her, or has willingly joined forces with it. I need you to—”
“Need me to what?” demanded Rios, shouting at the radio as Luna’s voice cut off suddenly and the device went silent and still. “What do you need me to do? Oh fuck me gently with a chainsaw. That’s just God. Damned. PERFECT!”
Rios spent the rest of his dream finding ever more creative ways of threatening and then destroying the radio that refused to utter so much as another peep from a certain Princess of the Night.
The Earth meanwhile, kept rolling along in its unceasing orbit around the fiery life-giving parent to the solar system that is Sol, our sun. For roughly four billion years our planet had travelled its endless arc, rotating in the cosmic dance of orbital mechanics until roughly four billion years from now when all things will return to whence they came in a ball of celestial fire.
That fate was long eons away however, as a husband and wife sat at their kitchen table sharing a very early cup of morning tea, the coming dawn changing the sky from star-speckled black velvet to a progressively bluer shade of night.
“Missed you in bed,” commented the wife, sipping the hot energizing blends of tea and herbs their neighbor had created just for them.
“Couldn’t sleep,” responded the husband, his large eyes speaking volumes to his wife. “You know me. Once I get into something I can’t let it go.”
“You aren’t going to be very useful at the farm today without any sleep,” noted Windweaver, sliding over a plate of toast and jam with a silver wing.
“I was going to let Wayab and Maysan handle things today,” Thunder replied with a nod of thanks. “I need to get some things together if those…” His voice trailed off as he tried to remember the term.
“Cutie Mark Crusaders,” supplied his wife with a smile.
“Cutie Mark Crusaders,” continued Thunder, “are going to be staying with us long term.”
“Anyone have any idea how long ‘long term’ is going to be?” Windweaver asked, crunching down on her own slice of toast.
“Unless the Equestrians manage something from their side of things… “ Thunder paused to think, chewing on thoughts and breakfast at the same time. “It could be a real long time, possibly forever.”
“Oh,” replied Windweaver, before adding, “they seem like good girls. A little energetic, but it’s not like we haven’t dealt with that before.”
“Zack could use some sisters that bounce around more than he does,” Thunder commented, catching his wife’s eye.
“Are you sure, Ernie?” queried Windweaver, knowing the answer before she asked the question. She knew the heart of her husband, what sort of man he was, and what he had gone through to become the man she had married.
“I’m sure,” stated the husband of Lynn Harding. “We’ve got the room, and those girls are going to need a home. Not some government managed ‘facility’, or a life in and out of hotel rooms, getting poked and prodded, or used for influence by Trudeau or some other back East big shot. A home.”
“We aren’t even the same species,” Lynn responded, before snorting at her husband’s amused and pointed stare at his wife’s silver wings. “Okay, okay. At the moment we are the same species, but that’s going to change as soon as the sun comes up.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Ernie cryptically commented, trying not to laugh as Windweaver’s eyebrows climbed to comical heights.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Windweaver asked, taking a moment to unfold and refold a wing. “All of us turn back into people at sunrise, unless we haven’t gotten any sun the previous day. You worked that out, so what do you mean by, ‘maybe’, Mr. Smug Look?”
“I mean that there may not be enough magic left to turn us back. We might be like this forever,” Thunder told his wife.
“What?!” demanded Windweaver, keeping her voice down only through a herculean effort of will.
“I called Father Addison last night, right around when Apple Bloom, I think that’s her name, was complaining about the lack of farms in Monopoly,” explained Thunder, sharing a smile with his wife at the memory of the red maned pony’s cry of exasperation. “He told me that not a single person changed into a bat pony tonight. Not one.”
“And you think… “ Windweaver began, leading her husband into speaking his thoughts.
“I think we’re still ponies because Earth has some magic. Not much, but some,” stated the stallion, interweaving his primaries with those of his wife in an intimate gesture they’d created for themselves. “The fact that the windigo existed at all to join forces with Godwinson is proof of that.”
“And you think Earth’s native magic isn’t enough to trigger a transformation back on its own,” Windweaver said, getting a nod from her husband as she followed his reasoning. “That we all might be stuck in our current forms, no matter what those might be.”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Thunder agreed, taking another sip of tea as the kitchen continued to lighten with the coming dawn. “Not only that, but Equestrians are pretty much magical creatures. They do a lot that just isn’t possible without magic. Right now, all that’s keeping us alive and sentient is what little magic is naturally here.”
“Which explains why our pony abilities are barely usable,” Windweaver noted, moving over to the stove to relight a burner and heat more tea.
“Pretty much,” sighed Thunder, rubbing his eyes.
“Good morning!” chirped a cheery voice, startling both adults in the room.
“Good morning, Apple Bloom,” Thunder said, greeting the yellow pony with a large bow fixed in her mane. “What gets you up so early.”
“Ah’m a farm pony,” declared the filly, smiling. “We’re up with the sun. Would y’all like some help getting breakfast ready?”
“Up with the…” Windweaver began, shooting a glance out the window, where the leading sliver of the sun had just crested over the nearby foothills to cast reddish-gold light into the kitchen. Husband and wife both looked at the sun striking their bodies, then at each other, their silver coloured wings taking on a rosy glow in the dawn’s early light. Two pairs of equine eyes met, and Windweaver simply gave her husband a nod of acknowledgement, who responded with a small smile and a tilt of his head.
“Um, y’all okay, or is this some kinda Earth thing?” Apple Bloom asked, confused by what she could tell were meaningful looks but utterly oblivious as to their content. “Ah ain’t done somethin’ wrong, have I?”
“Not a bit, my little pony,” Windweaver said, giving the filly a hug with a wing. “How do pancakes sound?”
“Ah love pancakes!” Apple Bloom declared. “Except when Sweetie Belle makes ‘em.”
As had been remarked before by many a wise person in the past, dawn is a time of renewal. The moment when the world declares that a new day has begun and that everything is new again. It is a time of endings and beginnings, the time when life rouses from the restful slumber of the night to face the challenges of a new day.
Foxfire opened her eyes for the first time in eighteen hours to see her beloved Iron Heart fast asleep on a recliner chair that someone had moved up near to her bed. Looking around, it was the work of moments for her to realize where she was, with a large clock on the wall giving the time.
“How did I wind up here?” Foxfire murmured to herself, then wincing as the thought unleashed a tidal wave of memories.
Memories of her lashing out with magic as the Umbral cried its warning. Of the horror she felt as she realized her blast had struck the princesses, a horror compounded by the inability to tell if the satisfaction afterwards had been hers, or that of the creature inside her. Hazy memories, as if seen through smoke, of the Umbral using her voice and body, using it to command, control and mentally dominate one of her best friends.
Remembrances of how whenever she had begun to worry if she was going too far in the exercise of her power, that the Umbral had been there to reassure her. To remind her that it was bound to obey her, and that its only concern was for her safety. That it was right for her to feel a sense of possession, of ownership, of those around her, and how she had come to believe it.
Most of all, the mare that had been Jean Pedersen remembered how she had vowed to take her own life before she would allow the Umbral to corrupt her, and how the creature of dark sorcery had managed to fail in doing so only through the intervention of Fate itself.
“It beat me,” Foxfire whispered to herself. “Goddess help me, but it was playing with me from the very beginning. Using me. But how?”
“Mmrr?” Iron Heart muzzily asked, stirring. A dark eye cracked open, and the sight it beheld jumped started the stallion into full alertness within a few seconds. “Jean!”
For long moments Foxfire tried to speak, but was unable due to being crushed by the loving embrace of the man she had chosen to be hers, and hers alone. It wasn’t until she managed to gasp out, “Air!” that Iron Heart’s rich black limbs released their death grip on the white mare.
“We thought we’d lost you,” Iron Heart said, eyes bright. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“You did,” Foxfire responded, looking away from her husband-to-be. “Quite a while ago.”
“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Iron Heart declared, Foxfire’s words not really penetrating as he embraced her again. “Wait, what?”
“The Umbral,” Foxfire started to explain. “It tri—”
“Foxfire!” Medevac called from the doorway, the light of the dawning sun streaming in behind her. “My Queen!”
Foxfire visibly cringed as the medical pony swept forward into the graceful bow of pegasi subservience, saying, “Oh goddess. Get up. Never ever do that again.”
“What?” Medevac asked, face showing shocked surprise as she broke position. “What did I do wrong?”
“Medevac, Iron Heart,” Foxfire began, taking a deep breath and steeling herself for what was about to come. “Come up here, both of you. I need to tell you a few things.”
For the next half hour Foxfire told the two ponies on the bed with her absolutely everything she could remember. Of how the Umbral had slowly seduced her with praise and support. Of how it had wormed its way into her confidence, all the while slowly and subtly influencing her moods and her perceptions.
And most of all, of how it had begun to make Medevac into a subservient minion, whose greatest wish was to obey her beloved queen.
“Assuming I believe any of this, because I certainly don’t feel like I’m mind controlled,” Medevac responded, when Foxfire had finished her self-expose, “How do you know all of it? If all of this is stuff the umbral kept from you, there’s no way you should know any of it.”
“I think it’s another side effect of all the magic going away,” Foxfire answered, after a moment’s thought. “I can see everything it did, planned and said, but it’s like I’m watching it through a camera lens. Detached, like it’s not really me saying or doing any of it, but I DO remember it, because it was using my mind and body.”
“Oh bullshit,” Medevac shot back, with a roll of her eyes. “This is just something you dreamed while you were in that coma.”
“Who am I?” Foxfire demanded, using the tones and timbres of command she remembered the umbral using.
“Foxfire, Queen of Brightly and the—” Medevac’s reflexive recitation and flowing motion into her bow was stopped by Foxfire’s hoof touching her snout.
“Now ask yourself,” Foxfire said with a soft, sad voice. “Did you plan to say and do that, or was it the automatic reflex of a pony conditioned to serve their mistress?”
For the space of a few heartbeats the two mares remained frozen in place. Foxfire’s forehoof gently on Medevac’s nose, while the pegasi’s wings trembled halfway to completing their sweeping forward arc, while Iron Heart looked on in dawning horror.
“I’m sorry, Medevac,” Foxfire whispered, tears beginning to appear at the corners of her eyes. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
“Son of a bitch,” Medevac finally replied, slowly sitting back up as it sunk into her how automatic her instant obedience had been. “Son of a BITCH! You fucked with my mind!”
“I’m sorry,” Foxfire said in apology. “I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I had it under control.”
“YOU thought!” Medevac roared back. “YOU were warned what could happen. Multiple times! By a pony with over a thousand years of experience dealing with dark forces. How many times did Princess Luna tell you to be careful, or that things were going sideways? And how many times did you ignore her?”
“But a Fae shouldn’t have been able to get around the rules I laid out for it!” Foxfire responded, trying to explain, to justify why she hadn’t listened to Luna’s cautions. “It lied, and fairies aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”
“What the hell made you think it was a fairy in the first place?” growled Medevac, and Foxfire’s tearfilled eyes went as wide as saucers as the logical lance struck home. “I’ll tell you what made you think that. Arrogance. You’re a witch, so of course you know better than anyone else. You’re from Earth, so of course you know better than some stupid alien from another world.”
“I—I,” babbled Foxfire.
“That’s what I thought!” Medevac declared, tail lashing back and forth like a whip. “Arrogance. And now I may as well be your goddamn slave. Might as well slap a collar and leash on me and parade me down Main street like some kind of pet.”
“Don’t think too many slaves chew out their masters like this,” quipped Iron Heart, words slipping out before his common sense could throttle them.
Medevac’s head slowly rotated 45 degrees with the slow and steady sureness of a galaxy, her eyes glowing with the fury of a thousand suns.
“You, shut the hell up and get the fuck out of here,” the medical pony commanded, every ounce of her promising utter destruction to Iron Heart should he disobey her. “You’re discharged. Come back tomorrow for a check-up.”
“But...,” began the stallion, realising how badly his tongue had betrayed him.
“Get. Out,” again ordered Medevac, an outstretched wing indicating the direction Iron Heart should go. “You can come visit your fiance later. Visiting hours are 4pm to 6pm.”
“I…” Iron Heart responded, unsure of what to do. On the one hoof he desperately wanted to stay at the side of his lady, but on the other he realized just how badly he had stepped in it and that the two mares needed time to talk.
“It’ll be okay, Arn,” Foxfire said, addressing the stallion by his human nickname. “I’ll be here for awhile, at least.”
Both mares on the bed watched the stallion slowly turn and walk out of the room, tail and head hanging low. They both listened in silence as the slow clopping of hooves faded away.
“I’ll make this up to you, I promise,” Foxfire began, desperation in her voice. “I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way.”
“My Qu— dammit!” snarled Medevac, causing the white unicorn to cringe anew. “You just shut and sit down for a minute while I think.”
“Okay,” responded Foxfire, earning a glare as she did so.
“Right,” Medevac began, after several moments of thought. “First off, I remember you repeatedly swearing that you would kill yourself before you let the umbral take over or do bad things.”
“I did,” Foxfire confirmed, sitting up straight. “And if that’s what it takes to make—”
“Shut up, My— Dammit!” Medevac snarled, causing Foxfire to again flinch, but nothing more this time. “You might have betrayed your oaths to do no harm, but I take mine a little more seriously. Until I release you from my care, you are my patient, and as such I forbid you of even thinking about harming yourself. Is that understood?”
“Y-yes,” Foxfire stuttered, with some relief. “I understand.”
“You want to make it up to me? Fine,” Medevac stated, moving nose to nose with the unicorn. “You make it up to me by living. By being the best mother possible for your girls, for Iron Hoof, and for that foal inside of you. Am I understood, My… ma’am?”
“Understood,” Foxfire answered, knowing there was more to come.
“Good, because on top of that, you are going to do your level best to get this conditioning, mind control, whatever you want to call it, out of me,” Medevac continued, gathering a nod of agreement from the other pony.
“Anything and everything I can think of,” Foxfire added.
“And that’s the other thing,” said the pegasus, a bit of the growl creeping back into her voice. “That ‘I’ of yours. There is no more ‘I’ in this anymore, got it? You so much as even think that thing is coming back, you let us know. You tell me, you tell Iron Heart, you tell Father Addison. You do not keep it to yourself or think that you alone know best about what to do with magic or magic things. Got it?”
“Got it,” Foxfire responded, nodding as she did so, grateful that Medevac was at least talking to her, never mind having what sounded like a reasonable way to move forward. “What now?”
“Now, you sit on that bed and obey your doctor while I check your vitals and those of the little one inside of you,” Medevac answered, one wing licking out to grab a stethoscope. “There’s been some changes since you went down, and I need to see how both of you are adapting to them.”
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Impressive speeds this time around.
Ah, you too were felled by the COVID vaccine? I've heard plenty of such tales. I hope yours was not as harrowing as some of them. As someone who has a date set for their first vaccine, some of that hope is selfish...
Damn. Well, everybody, especially the powerful, needs someone to tell them that they
ed up. I think that a long heart-to-heart with Father Addison would do Jean a world of good. Especially with the batpony connection.
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Yeah. The needle itself I barely felt. 12 hours later the shoulder got sore, then stiff, then hot. 72 hours later came the tiredness and a short bout of hot, then cold sweats. I'm not exhausted, but I'm definitely a couple of steps down in the energy department, and my job generally has me walking 10-12km per shift so any energy drop is significant.
You should be glad it wasn't a fae woman, or you'd be stuck in a worse bargain right now. The deal was for it to do no harm, and by its lights the circumstances of you and yours were only improved by its machinations.
About time Foxfire got chewed out. Playing with fire for too long and bucked it all up. Wonder what other effects the lack of magic will have on them. My suspicion is that their tree of harmony with the blades might do something to restore it all...
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Absolutely agreed as she has massively F***ed up and the only reason she isn't totally corrupted is because its actions accidentally led to its own dissapation.