Chapter 15 - The Eater of Light
Normally, a free fall of any distance presented as much threat to a pegasus as a dull spoon. They could twist in the air like cats and come to a standstill from terminal velocity with a little practice and a lot of hard work. All around Light Breeze flowed her element, however sluggish and alien it felt, but though her wings and their magic caught the air she couldn't arrest her descent.
The cord kept her moving, its force inexorable. She hardly dared fight it for fear it might snap her neck, but its force distributed throughout her body like every joint had been hooked to wires. Twisting in midair, Light Breeze tried to bite it and cut herself free with her teeth, but a painful, tingling numbing sensation stole throughout her entire form.
Just as pressingly, the darkness gave way to substance. Terror had stretched seconds into an eternity as strange, tree-like shapes twisted in thorns whipped past her, each one tangled around pieces of broken masonry, ruined streets that seemed to wind into nowhere like nautilus shells twisting back into themselves.
Flaring out her wings, Light Breeze fought back against the pull with as much magic as she could muster and was rewarded with a sudden tightening of the cord. Her body ached, but she kept fighting, twisting and turning like a fish battling a hook as she tried to reach out with her hooves and grab one of the protrusions.
Pulling hard right, she scrambled at the surface of a sidewalk that could have emerged from any corner of Philadelphia. It pulled her down with its own gravity, the distant roar of traffic and car horns turning her ears, but she found no purchase and sailed off, smacking into a billboard hard enough to hurt. Ponies were tougher than humans—at least the nonmagical kind—and Light Breeze had taken more bad falls than she could count in her energetic life, but it still struck hard enough to glaze her vision with stars.
The urgency of the line and the tension when she fought it suggested she was close to her attacker. Raw determination kept her fighting even as a sense of hopelessness crept in, and Light Breeze roared with frustration and beat her wings for a bank of dark, rumbling clouds that loomed below as the surroundings progressively darkened, the thorns longer and crueler, the vistas bleaker than those than had come before with decaying, abandoned buildings and filthy sewers. As she flapped her wings, she wished for a tail wind, and as she pictured it powerfully in her mind her wings suddenly filled with air and propelled her into the stormcloud. She landed hard enough to kick off a burst of lightning, and this time her hooves were able to gather up her native element and extend her magic all the way through it.
The cord of darkness pulled at her, hard, but she fought back and snarled. "You're not, fucking, taking me!" Raising a hoof, she brought it down hard on the surface of the cloud, her thoughts and hatred aligned with action, and her vision split with a stroke of lightning that connected the cord to the cloud. Like a loose power line in a storm, the trailing line of darkness erupted in vibrant fire, blooming in a hot flash that heated her skin beneath the coat.
In the ringing aftermath, Light Breeze braced for the follow-up attack and found none. No pressure, no yanking. When she blinked away her dazzled vision, a cracked line still visible, she searched for and found the cord dangling from her head. It had been crudely severed, but it still twitched and flailed like a live wire, searching for the other end. The sight left her stunned, and Light Breeze remembered what Princess Luna had said about her. With a hoof to her chest, in this strange world, she could feel the pulse of a strange light from within her. It shone through her skin as the cord's influence slackened, and she drew in a breath free from pain for the first time in a while.
No matter what the princess had said, Light Breeze hadn't quite believed that she was anything remarkable, but if nothing else the demon was making a good case for why she might be.
Somewhere in the distance, in the direction the dark cord so desperately desired to reconnect, a wave of fury rippled across the eerie landscape. Among the blacked stalks, the thorns grew longer and sharper, and the fragmented landscapes warped more tightly. Streets and buildings spiraled in on one another at crazed angles, and glass and cement cracked and darkened with age and rot. The cord grew more agitated in its twitching, and Light Breeze sensed the approach of its owner.
Clambering to all fours, she spread her wings and took off in the opposite direction. She didn't have the faintest notion of where she'd come from, how to escape, or whether or not she could get away from this thing at all, but she wasn't about to wait around to meet it.
Another ripple passed through the strange, starless void, and the world changed in its wake. Gravity suddenly yanked her up and to the side, and she had to tuck, roll, and flare her wings once she had a good sense of "down" to keep from plowing into a new landscape that spread before her. So suddenly had it appeared that she had trouble taking it in at first, but the more she saw the more a sense of creeping horror descended on her.
The landscape spoke of Equestria in its gently rolling hills, in the unbroken line of sight of a flat world devoid of a horizon until distant mountains or the haze of atmosphere cut off vision, but its quaint villages lay in blackened, smoking ruins amid a dry, burned-out wasteland. Canterlot, normally visible from almost every part of Equestria, had slid down the mountain in smoldering piles. Fillydelphia sprawled like an impressionistic painting in ash below the river, and her heart sank no matter how she told herself the shockingly realistic vision with its soot-scented skies couldn't be real.
Worst of all, she could feel the way magic had drained from the world, making her motions sluggish as her wings fought to keep her up. In places the land had cracked and split among massive fault lines that led to a churning void, as though the realm were a plate that had fallen and shattered. Smoky clouds blotted out the sun, moon, and stars, and she couldn't have said if it were night or day or like the time Twilight had raised both by mistake.
"You cannot run from me forever, child." A terrible voice reverberated from all directions. "Like the coming doom of your two worlds, the inevitability of your end cannot be denied. All the light of Creation will be supped upon by my kind, and all your struggles will only bring you greater unhappiness. Surrender in peace or suffer in struggle."
Neither male nor female, it oozed through Light Breeze's skin with a sick, familiar sting, and the vague memory of that voice returned to her. The moments between falling asleep and waking had always seemed to her a painless and instantaneous gap, but now it filled in with hazy recollections of being stretched out, of fangs sinking into her astral flesh and pulling out a little of her light at a time before the wound was stitched shut with black thread.
"Little light, little light, don't give flight. All I want is a little bite. Little light, little light, share with an old demon your shine so bright."
The hostile clouds above her heads extruded the eight, pointed legs of a spider to catch her, and repressed terror shot through Light Breeze like a knife. Night after night of being clutched by those limbs came back to her in stark, agonizing fear, and her wings went stiff.
It was Aisha's fierce, uncompromising face that snapped her out of it, a memory that snapped to the fore like a slap to the face as though her friend could sense her giving up and wouldn't let her hear the end of it. Taking a deep breath to center herself, Light Breeze drew on that well of light inside her and pushed out. The gelid air flowed more readily, and she banked hard and dove for the ground as the legs snapped shut above her.
"Fuck off!" she shouted back, her tail streaming in the air above. "This is my power, and you've had enough!"
"You cannot escape!" The clouds coalesced, coagulating into the vague shape of an arachnid, as they descended. Vast as it was, it approached with horrifying speed, dropping faster and faster towards her. "Why run? You know I will only hurt you more for every mile. I will carve out your every nerve and scrape them raw as I pull the fire from your chest."
"Everyone wants to eat me, and I'm getting really sick of it!" Thinking fast, Light Breeze knew that the princess wouldn't have hesitated to follow, and that the longer she stayed free, the more likely she was to be found. The ground hurtled up at her with the haste she dove, and the city with it.
As she pulled up alongside the river, wings fighting for every spare ounce of thrust and legs outstretched, Light Breeze looked up to find the spider swirling down to meet her with a growing twister of dark ash. With mounting despair, she cast about for options, and then looked down at her rippling reflection in the dark waters. A grin split her face. Maybe she was fast in the air, but even the fastest cloud-born pegasus in the world couldn't keep up with her in the water.
Tucking her wings, she narrowed her profile, sucked in a deep breath, and dove through the water's surface with barely a splash. Light didn't have a patch on her mother, but she could hold her breath for a quarter of an hour at least and extend her magic from her wings through the river water as easily as she could the air. When she beat them, it parted for her, propelling her with a column of rushing bubbles in her wake.
She didn't know for sure if the spider would be similarly inconvenienced, but she believed it, and maybe that mattered right then. Magic cared about what a person thought and felt, and Light Breeze's magic responded in kind as she rocketed between the river banks towards the sea.
When the river spread steadily into a brackish delta, she flowed to the surface and took a gasp of air and a quick observation. The spider's tendrils had fallen behind, but the landscape was already starting to bend and warp.
As she dove again, Light Breeze refused to accept the change. She fought back, picturing the ocean as she'd oft remembered it visiting her grandparents on the coast. The sunlight slanted green and white on a late autumn day, and fish swam in cautious schools like fields of colorful flowers. She remembered the tang of salt and the cooling depths, and forced them into the world in defiance of the spider demon's will.
Yet, even as she held fast, she could see imperfections, cracks to a ruined world, to polluted seas draining away into nothingness. She knew the demon was right, that perhaps she could fight for a while, but she wasn't powerful or slippery enough to get away, not when it knew her and where to find her at all times. Eventually, she'd slip up, and then the demon would hollow out the inside of her soul and drain it of everything that made it special and beautiful.
Light Breeze had to have faith that Princess Luna would find her before the devourer did, and so she fought on, refusing to give up and cut short the chase. The faces of her friends, human or otherwise, flashed through her vision as her lungs burned for air, and she churned the water with her wings with greater precision than ever for their sake. Riding the currents was a lot different than flying in some ways, even for her; even with magic, the ocean had a way it liked to do things, a powerful flow that circulated through all the seas, and one had to surrender to it and be guided by it as often as one fought.
In a way, she was fighting a creature of anti-creation with the very forces it sought to unravel, however strange and dreamlike the experience was. All she needed to do was hope that her stalling would be enough, and that Princess Luna's rescue would not be for naught.
Quick as she tried, Light Breeze slipped from Selene's grasp. She leapt after her, terror seizing her heart as Light slammed into the television. The empty frame crashed into the wall, but she was late again on reaching her even as she bounded over the flimsy coffee table to the gaping wound in the world.
"Damnation!" she hissed, the words lost in the sucking air. All the work she'd done to seal the windows and doors and she'd failed to consider that one window, at least, had a direct line to the outside world she hadn't given any thought to. Her carelessness may well have cost Light Breeze her soul.
"We need to go in after her." She turned to the others, who had barely reacted for shock, their hair and loose papers stirred in the alien wind. "Hurry! Or this has all been for naught."
Artemis leapt to her feet at once, and Moira shakily joined her. Despite her obvious, overwhelming terror, she took Selene's side at the howling abyss. "What can we do?"
"Artemis, I need you to remain here and meditate. You will be our guide back."
"Lady Selene? Are you sure? Moira hasn't…" Her hands clenched, long black hair whipping towards the TV. The force of it faded somewhat, and Selene reached out with body and mind to seal it open where it lay before it could shut on them. It fought back, nature abhorring the alien wound in its substance.
"Moira is going to learn to fly the hard way, and you've already proven your ability to be a beacon to me." Shaking her head vigorously, Selene strengthened her will and wrested the portal under her control, the edges blazing with blue light as her hands tightened. The terrible wind faded, but the portal remained open. "If you fail, it's like that we may never find our way back to this place."
Swallowing, Artemis nodded and returned to the couch, curling up on her belly as though she had changed into a mare already. "I will not fail you, my princess."
"Let's go, then, Moira." Taking the edges in hand, Selene clambered into the opening and launched herself forward.
Moira hesitated at the entrance behind her, squinting in a vain attempt to spot something other than endless darkness. "Fuck me. If I don't come back, tell my family I died a hero." Pushing herself up, Moira fell face first into the darkness with a horrified "Fuck!" trailing after her.
As they fell, Selene's senses expanded with her deep affinity for the astral realm. They had been taken into a portion of the Earth's collective unconscious that she'd been unable to explore given the requirements of her mission, but which had many similarities to part of the Gaian side. Direction in astral space was tricky, because directions like up, down, left, right, forward, and back were illusory, subject to being twisted into dimensions of space and thought not fully comprehensible to an embodied mind. Grabbing hold of the screaming Moira, she pulled her down in a direction that made the dark, thorny threads that embraced the gems of sleeping humans seem to swell into immensity, as if they had become very small. Yet, the bigger they became, the more it was revealed that they were composed of tinier, finer threads, a fractal infinity that looked as though it might extend forever.
As human dreams shrank into nothing, fragments of street corners and signs and beached ships grew among the branching threads. Buildings unfolded from points to shocking reality, and they had to dodge a building with a great bronze bell that felt particularly weighty in Selene's view.
"What the flying hell is all this?" Moira demanded as she clung to Selene.
"The dreams of the land and all that rests upon it." Selene kept her cool as they descended, following the hints of Light Breeze's passage, the sweat and fear of a terrified young mare catching on her sensitive tongue. "The demon's lair is somewhere in this direction. What you're seeing are the deep thoughts of the buildings and other objects of your world, in part reflecting the thoughts and wills of those who live among them.
"What am I supposed to do? I couldn't not go after that foal, but… Selene, I'm out of my depth!"
Turning towards her, Selene gripped Moira's arm and met her eyes. "My beloved student, this is everything you've hoped for. Your imagination, your knowledge, all of it is more real than ever here, and you can use it."
Concentrating on herself, Selene exhaled and breathed shimmering, ebony smoke over Adam's borrowed body. From within the starry depths, she spread wings and stretched her hands into hooves. On Gaia, she could change shape at a moment's notice, and even Earth's drought couldn't stop her from doing it in the world of dreams. When it swallowed itself back up again, she stretched out her whole body, from dark horn to her patchy hind, and exulted in the remembered sense of power and grace she'd normally been forced to leave behind.
"Here, Moira," she continued, "you are more powerful than you ever dared believe, should you have the imagination and will for it. Consider it a taste of what will come when we free magic in the world."
With growing determination, Moira nodded. "Okay, my princess," she said fervently. "Let's kick that demon's ass back to fucking hell."
"I will permit that vulgarity this one time." Selene gathered her power and snapped her wings, launching the both of them forward. "Let us go kick ass."
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Well I'm glad this isn't dead and I hope Selene manages to save her light as I imagine this will eventually somehow lead into Selene fixing the human realm's unconciousness as well, weeding it of the dark thorns strangling it.
Lots of excellent imagery here. It's hard to describe unreality well enough that you can picture it, but not in a way that's too simple. Meanwhile, the demon itself is slightly less exceptional. Basically just your generic soul-eating nightmare in the guise of that one monster from Stranger Things.
10791553
I hope the following chapter will help rectify that! Shit is going to get weird there.
Wow! Things really got intense! Eagerly looking forward to more; it was worth the wait, definitely!
I hope Light Breeze and everyone will be alright. That's a really awesome concept, having what sounds like a wide scale dreamscape / metaverse that everyone is connected to and can control, whether they know it or not. =)
Hope you have a great day / night, and thank you for the update!
Great chapter
10791620
Wish I could say the concept is 100% original, at least the aesthetic is, more or less
10791553
In my defense that is A) not what it looks like, and B) I came up with my version first, at least if you consider a childhood bogeyman 'coming up with it'.
I can't help it if arachnophobia isn't exactly a rare phobia.
Hey an update from one of my favorite authors :-)
Things are really picking up this chapter..
Yea I've tried to describe nothingness before too... not really easy.
I got some odd 'them' vibes from this story...not sure why.
10791696
There is secret - date I say, occult - thread of occultism in all of my fiction which tends to crop up with similar ideas even when the stories are very different settings.
10791699
Makes sense I didnt know if it was on purpose or not. really enjoyed 'them' back when I read it... I've been meaning to read it again some time.
10791713
Did you see that I announced a print run for it?
10791716
I just saw that after I commented and scrolled down the feed... talk about coincidences :-) I am going to get one for sure.
10791681
Being 'unoriginal' actually isn't a bad thing, really. If you boil them down enough, every character fits one or more of the 12 literary archetypes. I'm just sharing my thoughts, here.
"the vistas bleaker than those that had before with decaying"
Those that had what before?
"Among the blacked stalks, the thorns grow longer and sharper, and the"
"Among the blackened stalks, the thorns grew longer and sharper, and the"?
"as she rocketed between the river beds towards the sea"
"as she rocketed between the river banks towards the sea"?
"If you fail, it's like that we may"
"If you fail, it's likely that we may"?
...Hm. And, well, sorry, but while I know you like more detailed commentary, I've been wracking my brain for some for a bit and failing to come up with much. Might be tiredness or being short on time, but I don't see to have more for you. Hm. Oh, though I do recall enjoying the detail on the perceived effects of Gaia being a flatworld.
And I enjoyed the chapter overall, I think, even if I'm not thinking of something more detailed to say; thank you for writing. :)
Oh, save it for your pets.
Loving the malleable surreality of the dreamscape. Eagerly looking forward to more. This will be one heck of chase for everyone involved.
10792041
Hahaha that's cute. Adorable little familiar.
10792006
You shouldn't stress yourself out about it. Not everyone needs to leave a detailed comment. I'm just glad you're enjoying it.
10791974
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." And all that.
Durant make it feel any less irritating when someone completely misjudges what you're imitating and compares it to the worst season of a pretty non-ambitious show when it's actually like, imitating a personal experience years before that, which if anything was probably inspired by things like ungoliant, given I was reading Silmarillion before that.
I'm not trying to give you grief because that's where your mind went, but I also don't think the idea that "well there are only twelve archetypes anyway." Is actually all that helpful, specifically because in my experience it tends to lead to situations like these, which functionally amount to: "Heeeeey it's that thing!"
"Actually it's supposed to be this other thing."
"Well really there are a finite number of things, so my take was close enough."
I am also just sharing my thoughts.
10792041
Oh man it's been ages since I played magic the gathering, that's super cute.
10792114
Oh, thanks. :)
I went through all that you've written in a day, I really enjoyed the story so far and can't wait to see what's next.
Even if it bugged me a bit to see a bunch of 12 y-o kid spoke a bit too much like adults and some evolution that went too fast for my taste (especially Tim), I absolutely loved where you are going with the dream world and everything about Luna / Moira / Artemis, they're a great trio.
10985596
This is how I spoke at their age, and I've always run with kids who were similar to me, so it's what my experience was like.
Tim wouldn't have been friends with them if he didn't have some level of empathy - he just needed something to believe in
I am definitely going to finish this, just been a rough few months for me.
Finally caught up, definitely one of the best stories I’ve read here in a long time.
11009879
Thanks for the praise!
This story is absolutely brilliant! I love everything about it-- the way you illustrate magic, the skill with which you characterize everyone, your descriptions of the world, the emotional weight it all carries. I have a hard time reading stories that involve child abuse personally, and this was no exception, but you spun it into such an amazing story it carried me through!
I can't wait to see where it goes next! Thank you for writing it!
this is absolutely fantasic!! I really hope the next chapter comes out soon!!!!!!
I binge read this in one sitting and just... Its so good????
Please update soon!!!
Thank you for another excellent fic! All of the characters in this are wonderful, and it's been a joy to read.
11219250
Okay that makes more sense. I just saw the word "correct" and thought of some of the horror stories in recent years about "fixing" issues. If you were to rewrite this at any point or do a similar story, perhaps a different word than correct, like maybe assist or something. I'm going completely off the cuff here and it's your story so take my cisgender opinion with a few licks of salt.
Happened across this recently. This has so far been a really fun read. Nicely done
i normally get too nervous to leave comments, but i NEED to here, this story has been so moving and so deeply relatable in so many ways. you've done an amazing job with the story, characters, and themes here that it honestly blew me away, and even with it unfinished i'm still so happy to have read it. if you still check fimfic, i'd really like to know where else i can find your work if you post it!! and um if you ever came back to this story i would sob and cry it's so good aaa
i hope you're doing well!!
11676112
I'm working on self-publishing an original novel soon.
I'd like to finish Two Moons sometime.
11676390
that's super exciting!! thank you for the reply