Chapter 33: Parallels
In a second floor bedroom, a mother slept in a strangely quiet house. Usually, the home was alive with the comings and goings of an active family moving about at all hours of the day or night. But this night was different. This night the children were away, the spouse was dealing with matters of his own, and so for the first time in months Foxfire was all alone in her house.
Alone, but not unadorned. As the unicorn mare scooted into her bed, there was a flash of blue at her breast. A single, very large dark blue feather hung on a silver chain around her neck. A loan from an able warrior who had fought darkness within and without as she had. A man who was in many ways a kindred spirit and had lent her his talisman so that she might stand in his place in the land of dreams.
With slow, even breaths, the unicorn drifted off to sleep, and as she did, the magic contained in the feather allowed her dreaming mind to take flight.
“Oh Goddess, this was a bad idea,” Foxfire said to herself as she walked along a moonlit path by a pond. All around her, darkened trees were alight with the faerie fire of her namesake and she paced nervously back and forth while she awaited her rendezvous with the Princess of Dreams.
“Should I apologize? Not say anything? Maybe let her bring it up?” Foxfire questioned out loud. “Maybe I should grovel? I hear groveling is good.”
“Of all the things I expected from thee in this moment,” said a cooly amused voice from behind her, “dithering was not one of them.”
“Princess!” half-shouted Foxfire in surprise. “You… I… I mean. I can explain. I mean…”
“Go on,” Luna prodded, with one eyebrow arched and only the slightest hint of amusement on her muzzle. “Say thy piece fully.”
For long moments the unicorn tried to say something, anything. Fragments of speech collided with other fragments, creating a trainwreck of thought in her head, and during it all Luna stood there patiently waiting for Foxfire to get her thoughts in order. The moments continued with the unicorn saying a word or two of something she wanted to say, before another idea or a second-guessing smashed it into flinders only to replace it with another.
“I’M SORRY!” Foxfire burst out at last, throwing herself around Luna’s lower chest in a desperate hug. “You were right, and I was wrong, and I was an idiot, and proud, and didn’t listen, and…”
“I am so very glad, that you remain you, Foxfire,” Luna said quietly, gently returning the hug.
“Even after I back-stabbed you and wrecked everything?” Foxfire asked, sniffling as tears leaked from her eyes.
“The Princess of Friendship is one of my best friends, and many are the lessons I have learned from her,” Luna replied, her eyes sparkling before they became serious again. “Thou wert under the influence of a malign creature, and though I was once without mercy, I do forgive thee thy trespass against Us.”
“Just don’t say that around Father Addison, he’ll think you’re trying to take his job,” chuckled the unicorn, hiccoughing slightly as she transitioned from melancholy to mirth. “I really am sorry though.”
“I know thou art,” Luna replied, sitting down and patting the ground beside her to indicate Foxfire should do the same. “However, our time here is limited, so we must tend to the tasks we have set this night.”
“How can I help? Or can I?” asked the white unicorn, idly noting how warm and dry the air around them was.
“Verily, for my set agenda involves thee directly. Will you permit me to look into your mind?” Luna asked, her face growing serious. “That you are here at all tells me that my soldier believes you to be the ruler of your body once more. But I would prefer to be sure.”
“Yes,” Foxfire instantly agreed. “I’m right there with you on wanting to make sure that thing is gone.”
“This will take but a moment,” said the Equestrian dreamwalker, and as the princess lit her horn and used it to delve into the mind of the mare beside her, Foxfire had the sensation of someone in a library, scanning the shelves for a desired book. A short but endless amount of time seemed to pass before the lunar princess finished her examination.
“We find no trace of the creature,” Luna began, holding up a cautionary hoof as she saw Foxfire’s eyes light up. “However, its shadow still lies deeply upon you and there is something else. Something I have not seen before.”
“What, what is it?” begged Foxfire, fear and worry plain on her face.
“I do not know how to say this, so I shall say it plainly. There is a hole in your mind,” Luna stated.
As if summoned from the ether, a man appeared on the far side of the pond. A strong, tall man dressed in a silver spacesuit, a helmet tucked under one arm, and his face bronzed from the harsh glare of suns not his own. His dark eyes were clear and bright, but haunted by an inner vision of things both seen and yet to come.
The spectre looked sadly at the two ponies for a moment, before nodding as he faded back into nothingness.
“This realm responds to the thoughts of those in it,” Luna explained. “I take it you know that man?”
“Commander Sinclair, from the last of the Babylon stations,” the unicorn explained, adding, “It’s from a television series I loved. One that you didn’t get to see when you were with us.”
“One that you will share with me when we meet again,” Luna firmly stated. “Some of the greatest minds in ponydom are searching for your world among the vastness of all that is.”
“So are a lot of humans,” Foxfire replied, before switching the topic back to herself. “What do you mean, I have a hole in my mind?”
“There is a gap, where I assume the Umbral was within you,” replied the lunar alicorn. “It is not a shield, it is not a presence. It is… nothingness. Like reaching out for a cup that should be on a shelf and finding nothing there other than its impression in the dust.”
“So, is it gone or not? Did it die when the magic went away or not?” queried Foxfire, her voice fearful. “Princess. It had me. I was just a meat sack that it rode, and I don’t know what’s worse. That you warned me and I ignored you, that I can remember every moment of it, or that it made me love every moment of it.”
“It is very likely gone forever, and in time your mind and spirit will cleanse themselves of the shadow of that foul creature, but it is also possible that it still lies within you, waiting for the opportune moment to seize its reins of power over you again,” Luna answered, sensing that the unicorn wanted blunt honesty.
“I’m never letting that happen again, I’m never letting it take control,” vowed the unicorn.
“You may not have that choice, young woodwitch,” Luna countered sadly. “For thou art a wife and mother both. You have hostages to fortune which could be used against thee. For would not any mother worthy of the name sacrifice themselves to see their children?”
“I… would,” Foxfire admitted, slumping in place. “Goddess help me. I’m sorry Princess, but you’re right. If it came down between being that thing’s mount again, or losing my kids I’d—”
“No need to finish that thought, young witch,” Luna interrupted, closing Foxfire’s mouth with a hoof and pulling the unicorn into a full hug with wings and forelegs both. “Thy thoughts and words do you credit, and tho it grieves me to present these truths to you, you need to know the extent of the potential danger in which you stand.”
“So what do I do? It’s not like I can stop being a pony, or having magic,” Foxfire asked, not even considering the possibility of leaving Brightly.
“You must share deeply with those you trust. Teach them the signs to watch for should the Umbral seize thy body again. Show them how to defeat you should it be necessary, and what they must watch for in others in order to determine if somepony has become your thrall,” Luna explained. “It was your domination over Medevac which caused me to realize you had become the Umbral’s plaything.”
“Captain Rios said he was ready to kill me,” Foxfire said, resisting the urge to bury herself in the warmth of Luna’s chest.
“He will do what must be done if needs must,” Luna replied, looking down at the white furred body against her. “But I know my soldier. He would prefer a different option if you can offer him one.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Foxfire answered, and Luna could tell the unicorn would indeed consider her words. The burned hoof teaches best, and Foxfire had been seared clear to the bone.
“Now then, we have but a few minutes left,” Luna said, moving to put Foxfire on her side but still keeping a comforting, dark-feathered wing around the smaller pony. “Tell me of thy family, and of thy husband, the love of whom glows within thee like a star of the morning.”
“The name’s Morningstar, thank you very much,” said a darkly handsome man who suddenly appeared on the far side of the pond. For a brief moment his eyes glowed like a pair of fiery coals and as this latest vision evaporated the last thing to slip from view were those intense, hungry eyes.
“Who?” Luna asked, tilting her head in curiosity.
“I’ll explain when we have more time,” Foxfire replied, making a mental note to try to control her thoughts a bit better if she was ever in the dream realm again.
Despite the comings and goings of various shards of musing and memory, the next few minutes were spent in pleasant conversation as Foxfire told Luna of the recent events in Brightly and the world beyond. Luna was particularly interested in how the fruit of the Brightly tree seemed be able to become magic generating trees of their own.
“Most interesting,” Luna began, stopping and frowning as a new pony arrived. A lavender alicorn with a two-tone purple and raspberry mane and tail appeared.
“Princess, it’s time to go,” stated the newcomer.
“Who are you? Foxfire asked, sensing a sudden tension in the large mare beside her.
“Foxfire, Witch of Brightly, may I present Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and Bearer of the Element of Magic,” Luna said formally, by way of answer.
“Element of Ma—” Foxfire began, eyes growing wide in wonder at the winged pony standing in the place where the many phantoms of her memory had appeared.
“Luna, I know you want to stay, but you’re about a minute away from Celestia dropping a blocker on your horn again,” Twilight said, her words blocking Foxfire’s statement of incredulity.
“Oh fiddlesticks. Big sister is a big worrywart. You know I’m getting better at this. I can keep going for at least another five minutes,,” Luna responded, making a very unprincess like face of protest.
“You know that, and I know that, but Celestia doesn’t want you burning yourself out again,” said Twilight, in a reasonable tone.
“Tell my sister—” Luna began huffily, before blinking out of existence.
“I warned her,” Twilight commented with a chuckle.
“Is she going to be okay?” Foxfire asked, once she had recovered her balance. “And how come we’re still in the dream?”
“I may not be as good as Luna when it comes to dream magic, but I can hold us here for a little bit,” Twilight said, levitating over three cream coloured envelopes with wax seals on them.
“What are these?” Foxfire asked, taking the envelopes into her own magical grip.
“Letters from home, for the Crusaders,” Twilight explained, a happy smile on her face. “You’ve got lots of magic in you, so as long as you concentrate on them and make them real in your mind, they’ll become real for you.”
“How?” Foxfire asked in wonder, eyes drinking in every detail of the envelopes. Every imperfection, every wrinkle of wax, and every swoop and swirl of the seal imprinted there.
“Starswirl’s Secondary Mnemonic Midnight Transference,” Twilight explained, and though the explanation meant absolutely nothing to Foxfire, her eyes grew wide as she recognized the vastness of the talent within the alicorn across from her.
“Teach me,” Foxfire all but begged, in an unconscious echo of the three women who had begged her the same thing less than a day ago. “I’ve been relying on scraps of folklore and instinct since I became a unicorn, but you’re trained aren’t you? Luna even said you carried the Element of Magic. Please, by all that’s holy, teach me!”
“When the pupil is ready, the master will appear,” commented an old man, dressed in black trousers and a half open, flowing white shirt. A silver rapier was at his side and in his hand he held a crystal goblet of red wine which he used to salute the two mares, before taking a sip.
“Oh shut up, De La Vega,” Foxfire snapped, annoyed at the fragment of memory, and her lack of control.
“When the portal is back up, come see me in Ponyville,” Twilight said, stifling a giggle. “I’d love to have another student, but that’s all the time we have. I can’t hold this dream together any longer. Focus on the envelopes, Foxfire. Focus on them.”
With that, the lavender alicorn began to fade into nothingness, and a moment later the dreamscape around the unicorn began to fade as well. Heeding the advice she had been given, Foxfire concentrated on the three envelopes again, feeling every millimeter of their being through her magic field, and making them as real to her as they had been to Luna and Twilight.
Had there been an observer in Foxfire’s bedroom, they might have noticed a sigh from the sleeping unicorn as she settled into a deep and restful sleep, with three cream coloured envelopes beside her.
It would be another week before the sun set on the arctic seashore where the two beings happened to be standing. Even so, there was a faint chill in the air that warned that winter would be coming, and when it did it would come with all the fury it was known for in this harsh land.
“Are we finally there?” asked the pony to the translucent creature of selfish despair that hovered beside him. “We’ve been up and down this coast for over a week now.”
“Calm yourself, Ash Heart,” the windigo advised its companion. “We are here. At long last we are here.”
“Which is?” demanded the former American military officer turned pony. “You’ve been rambling about some sort of Canadian legend. Something that would give me the power to show the world what it means to throw Ebon Donavich out into the cold.”
“A little less than two hundred years ago, a man named Franklin attempted to sail through these waters,” explained the windigo. “He failed, and his crew died in the cold and dark, trying to reach an impossible goal. They fell to hunger, to despair and most deliciously of all, cannibalism.”
“And that helps us, how?” Ash Heart demanded in a terse voice.
“Just offshore is the wreck of HMS Terror, and in that sunken tomb lies the remains of John Franklin, the expedition’s leader. His hand still reaches out with a desperate hunger that can never be satisfied,” the windigo summed up.
Ash Heart had made a habit of appearing as if he knew everything, and that any explanation anyone had for him about something was nothing more than the most boring of trivia. In reality however, the pony had a keen eye for detail and a shrewd mind capable of putting disparate clues together. When it suited his plans.
“A hunger like the one inside of you. So all this travel has just been to give you a power boost,” Ash Heart noted, with a dramatic sigh.
“No, Ash Heart,” corrected the windigo, its icy breath fogging the world around it. “The Hand will do nothing for me, but for you? It will give you power like mine, and allow me to stop feeding you my strength in order to keep you alive.”
“More power? I like the idea of that. Let’s go,” urged Ash Heart, a slight smile gracing his muzzle.
Down into the cold dark water plunged the pair, descending through the stygian darkness and into a cold as deep as the grave to find the object of their quest. Hours went by as the duo shifted ancient timbers, sorted through countless bits of debris, and dug through nearly two hundred years of silt.
At long last, the remains of a simple, iron bound casket were revealed and in them were the bony remains of a long dead man. Even over a century dead there was something mournful and desperate about the body, with one arm stretched out, its skeletal hand seemingly reaching out for something that it could never grasp.
Reaching out, Ash Heart grabbed the hand, easily tearing it free from the rest of the remains, and as he did so, he felt a rush of cold power surge through his body, along with a hunger that he instinctively knew would never be sated. The man turned pony took a moment to probe the new hole in his soul, and vowed to plug it with the pleas for mercy from those who had wronged him, and those who he would bend to his will.
Together, the pair rose back up toward the surface, the temperature of their hearts colder than the ice that floated further out to sea, but when they stepped back out onto the shore, they were no longer alone.
“Don’t move, Canadian Coast—” whatever else the man leading the party of five men was about to say died on his lips as he saw just what it was they were holding their weapons on.
“All of this is mine,” hissed the windigo. “All that ends of cold and hunger belongs to me.”
“Th-this is a Parks Canada historical site and archaeological dig,” stuttered the man, trying to recover his mental footing, even as the temperature around them began to plummet. “Leave immediately.”
“I think I would like a snack for the trip!” declared the windigo, rearing up and causing every weapon in range to aim towards it.
“Wait!” cried Ash Heart, holding up a hoof. “Let me try something.”
“S-s-sir, you need t-to leave,” stuttered the man again, only with cold this time.
“Obey. You will obey me. I am your king,” Ash Heart stated, drawing himself up before the archeological protective detail.
“Y-you…” began the man, trying to resist the icy fingers slipping into his mind, slipping into the minds of his team.
“Kneel,” Ash Heart ordered, smiling as he felt his new power sink into the weak minds of the sailors before him. It was almost no effort at all seize their wills and freeze them cold.
“Yes, my Lord,” said the sailor, sinking to his knees. His act mirrored by the other four members of the shore party.
“Why are you here?” Ash Heart asked, mildly. His smile was broad and cruel as he reveled in his newfound abilities.
“Keeping polar bears away from the dig, Sir,” answered the man, his voice wooden. “Lookout saw you go into the water and so we waited for you to come out.”
“And where is this lookout?” Ash Heart demanded, looking around for spying eyes.
“On the ridge, Sir,” answered the sailor, in the same frozen voice.
“Windigo?” asked Ash Heart.
The creature of ice and wind needed no further urging, blasting its way over the rocky shore toward the stone ridge half a kilometer away, where a lone man with a spotting scope and a radio watched in horror as something out of legend charged toward him.
“Calling the Terry Fox! Calling CCGS Terry Fox!” yelled the man frantically into his radio. “We need back—”
When a member of the Canadian Rangers came by two days later for a scheduled supply pickup, all that could be found of the shore party was a radio frozen into a block of ice. No sign of the five man shore party could be found
Parallels of things past and possibly, things to come. And yes, neither the windigo, nor Ash Heart have forgotten or forgiven their humbling at the hooves of the ponies of Brightly.
As for the Hand of Franklin, that is an artifact of both song and story that lies deep in Canadian folklore. The story of the doomed Franklin expedition and the nearly 200 year long search for the remains of HMS Erebus, HMS Terror and their crews is a very unique story wreathed in heroism and tragedy.
For Canadians, the Hand of Franklin is a symbol. A symbol of defying all who stand against you as you try to take hold of a dream, and even if you fail, even if you perish in the attempt, the dream will still be there, waiting for the dreamers that follow in your wake.
Every month my patrons get to vote on which story they would like to see me work on following, my commissioned story. This month, my patrons have decided to give me carte blanche and write whatever I want. So, watch for "Apple Bound" later this month.
If you want a vote on what I write, join my Patreon and for as little as a dollar a month and cast your ballot for whichever story you would like to have me update.
Stats
Page generated in 0.017 seconds
Total duration
1,007 users online
1,949,488 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
the place.
Is Babylon 5
When the name 'HMS Terror' came up, I was expecting a monstrous polar bear-like entity to show up (the Tuunbaq)
Wendigo... and I have played too many games including them
I always thought that Sir John Franklin died after the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were abandoned, during the attempted trek to reach the mainland and buried under “a lonely cairn of stones”.
11480236
Oh you are right about that. I used some creative license. Good eye for detail!
This is both figuratively and literally chilling. Like really something out of a horror novel.
That Windigo and the former soldier are real maniacs. I hope they go down before they take others with them.