Hubris and Rainbows (Rewritten)

by ArcaneGears

The War inside and out

Age 21

There were few moments when Arcane was glad to be Teran, a fine example being right now. She ran forty miles per hour across a red sandy hellscape dotted with burnt out motorcycles and other attempts at mechanical speed. Good old horsepower would have to do where technology failed.

Others outfitted with the same fatigues and purple cross armband ran alongside of her, all Terran. The group either kept up with her or surpassed her own speed before breaking off in every direction. In no time she was alone in her own search.

Arcane’s worn and trusty satchel bounced on her hip, latches keeping the magic bag securely closed. On the edge of her left ear were seven monochrome metal rings that formed a rainbow.

A true hell was above her head. Celestials in armor swooped down on half naked dragons that were at least a head taller than the largest Equis alive. Agility and speed fought raw power over two hundred feet in the air.

A bright orange flash quickly followed a rush of heat and a wide shadow along her side. The edge of her vision caught the figure climbing back up on leather wings and banking to line up another dive. The back of her left ankle caught up with the power of shock and seethed with pain. It seemed the dragon didn’t entirely miss her.

She could hear a roar grow louder as the shadow rose above her head. She pivoted to the left in what would be a vain attempt at dodging flames. Thank the Goddesses a loud grunt replaced that roar. She spared a few seconds to gaze over her shoulder and see a Celestial mare punch through both wings with her spear. The dragon landed hard on his hip before the neon-green winged warrior sprung back into the air with one titanium horseshoe to the unconscious dragon’s face.

Arcane turned her focus ahead of her. Over the sounds of clashing metal and wing beats she heard a moan of pain. It was faint but it gave her a direction to turn into and dash. After a few moments the prone figure could be seen. She braced her legs and leaned back to skid across the flat terrain and come to a stop within three strides of a fallen soldier.

She fell to her knees and tapped on each clasp of her satchel. It reacted to her touch and popped open with ease.

“Hey there, I’m going to get your patched up.” Arcane reached into her bag and took out a wash bottle. She squeezed the bottle to make its little curved spout blast the poor soldier’s back. The stream exposed glistening raw skin, or at least what was left of it.

“Shit, you fly straight to the Nest when I’m finished, got it? Private, I am not clearing you to fight.”

The stallion had to be seventeen, no more than twenty years old. That baby face of his was pressed to the dirt, the only part of it not caked in the red sand being lines where tears ran alongside his nuzzle.

“It hurts to move and my wings won’t come out. Please, I need an evac.”

Arcane went back to her bag and traded the wash bottle for an unlabeled spray can, “Evac is on the battlefield with the other birds. Dragons are hard to corral. Okay, this is going to sting like a bitch.”

She didn’t hesitate to depress the can and shoot a line of clear liquid on the Celestial kid’s back. On contact the liquid foamed white and made the poor guy’s body tremor in pain. His scream went up to falsetto before he went limp. He began to pant and groan for a long half minute before slowly trying to get up.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore… What was that?”

Arcane tossed the can back into her bag and reached in with both hands. This time she produced what looked like an industrial staple gun and a pandora box. She pressed her index finger cap to the glass panel and waited for the reassuring ‘click’.

“You can thank the alchemists for that one, but this one belongs to my team.”

The open box had room for twenty four emulators, twelve of each kind. Arcane was down to only two Ethereals and two Celestials. Correction, two Etherials and one Celestial. She flicked the stapler’s gun-like trigger forward making a set of jaws open slightly. She slid the stud earring’s backing along two slender prongs before setting the trigger back into neutral, the jaws opening up a bit more and separating backing from the spike.

“This will hurt a little less.”

She gently pinched his right ear with one hand and slid the jaws around the base of that lobe. Arcane pulled the trigger, the jaws closing fast and firm. She slid the gun away and tossed it back into her bag.

He sat up in a jolt and stared up at her in disbelief. He was at a loss for words yet that look in his eyes told her everything she already heard more than a enough times during this war.

“This is where you ask ‘why the fuck did you just give me an earing in the middle of battle’? Then I say ‘just wait a second and you’ll see’.”

She would most certainly see, especially with those eyes of hers. The opal began to shift in every color of the rainbow before stopping at Cyan, the kid’s aura. A faint light extended from the earring’s embedded spike through the delicate pathways of that young stallion’s nervous system. It followed thin branching pathways to the base of his spine and up into his thalamus and cerebellum. Little sparks of arcane energy danced in his skull before the light shot down his spine and spread out like an upside down tree along both shoulder blades. She moved her attention to his back to assess the damage. Thanks to those deep burns across his back his wings were reduced to flickering skeletal shapes. The faint remnant of wings began to reform as if they were being erased in reverse. Finally came the part anyone could see, talented sight or not. A pale blue mist came out of nothing and became feathers that stretched out before hugging around the soldier’s chest.

“How.. I couldn’t even feel them before.”

She reached out and touched his shoulder. “Tap on the stud again to turn your wings off. Just use them every day and you’ll eventually regenerate the ability to summon wings on your own. Just remember to return it to your commander once you’re healed. Now get back to base asap. That spray is only a patch and I don’t want you dying of some damned infection after running my butt off to save you.”

He looked on the verge of crying again as he rose up onto his hooves and shot into the air with a single downward thrust of those restored wings.

A static-filled noise blared from her right hip. Nestled in her fatigue’s holster was a red box with bronze accents and a wide grill.

“Nest Delta to any Delta Patches, if you have a head-band return to base. One of our towers is down. Repeat. Nest Delta to any Delta Patches, if you have a head-band return to base. One of our towers is down.”

The panicked female voice shouted over Arcane’s radio before gritting her teeth and taking off again. There was absolutely nothing she could do to help with that situation. Not all the way to Delta.

The battle field was divided into four quadrants surrounding the Dragon Nation Capital city. The idea was to drive the soldiers into their city’s walls and seal them in a force field until the people turned on their usurper king and gave up their rumored mirror portal. Sixteen of the most learned (and oldest) Ethereals were positioned in groups of four on every corner. Once the majority of dragons were driven into their walls a powerful shield spell would enclose the city. In the meantime that same spell would be warming up and shielding the four bases of operation. As for Arcane, her quadrant was Alpha, polar opposite of Delta.

She grew increasingly distracted by the radio traffic. The same message repeated several times before all professionalism broke down. The one speaking spouted several select curses and demanded their own runners sound off. Forty soldiers responded in numerical order of their call signs. DM-1 reported ‘no headbands’, which translated to ‘no Ethereal Emulators left’. The occasional pregnant pause came over the static suggesting a few of their crew was down, hopefully not dead. Ultimately, no one had what they needed.

Arcane skidded to a stop when a new voice took over.

“Nest Delta to any Patches in Beta and Gamma, Our tower is down and the walls are collapsing. The Commanding officer is acting as Tower but I have no idea how long she can last. Celestia, Cadence, if you can hear this message we need you. Oh God-…”

Her chest went cold as she looked at the tall towers of the Capital. On the other side of that city was Iron Heart, screaming into her radio and praying that one of the two Alicorns in their world came to the rescue. Goodness knows what those two titans were fighting to keep them out of this war, but it was probably something Arcane didn’t want to go up against.

“Okay… okay… think.” Arcane muttered to herself as she contemplated running half way around a massive expanse to save the day. Then what? Everyone would be dead or captured by then and the entire operation would be for nothing. Iron Heart would be…

Her mind flashed to a night in Canterlot Academy’s lab. They were alone working on a solution to the Emulator’s duration period. Iron Heart was writing down some figures when Arcane walked in to offer the green mare a mug of cider. The drink had just come into season and she wanted to toast the occasion, perhaps drag her partner out of the lab for just one day.

Iron Heart turned just at the wrong time and her shoulder knocked the mug in Arcane’s left hand. It went tumbling and drenched the loose white skirt Heart was wearing at the time. She tried to turn away quickly, but Arcane saw the bulge. Arcane tapped on her shoulder and by the time Heart turned her head Arcane had splashed herself with the other mug. Her grey trousers hung to her thighs showing off her own.

“Both my parents are duo-gender.” Arcane assured her. Iron Heart looked as if a lead weight were taken off her shoulders. They became closer after that night. It was always hard to pin down what they were to each other, then again maybe it didn’t really need a name like ‘girlfriends’ or ‘lovers’.

She felt a panic unlike any other before it. Arcane didn’t want to be alone again. She didn’t want to lose her friend, even if that meant being thrown into a dungeon or becoming the next monster for the Alicorns to defeat.

She rummaged through her satchel for The pandora box and opened it, plucking out one of the Celestial Emulators. She froze for a second and felt a temptation wash over her. Curiosity, obsession, maybe just blind panic. Whatever it was, she knew in her heart that one wasn’t going to be enough. She plucked out an Ethereal and exchanged the box for her piercing gun.

“Clear head, Arcane. Regulator first.”

She loaded the piercing gun before raising up her right hand to her ear. Three taps to the red ring, three taps to the orange ring, yellow, green, cyan, indigo, finally the violet. As each ring came to life she felt a sort of hollowing sensation climb up her spine. The mysterious source of magic itself entered the body through the head as life itself rose up through the base of the spine. Along that spinal passage were flood gates some would call ‘chakras’.

The theory was relatively simple. Everyone who ever went corrupt was overwhelmed by magic. Their souls were condensed down to their very essence. In fact, the word ‘Corruption’ was misleading. Being overwhelmed simply shows you who you are under all that pretense. Magic can’t be blamed if that true self was an asshole.

Arcane felt an urge to collapse by the time the Violet ring opened a spiritual tunnel through her body. The free flow meant whatever essence her body required to live was draining away. She couldn’t afford to delay the moment of truth any longer.

She brought the gun up to the base of her left ear and pulled the trigger. It felt like the worst bee sting she ever had, but she already went through this seven times before. She loaded the silver stud and pierced the same ear less than an inch higher.

She let the gun drop from her hand and tumble back into her bag. The core of her body felt cold while the desert heat assaulted her skin. It reminded her of every 3am convenience store microwave burrito she ever had. Then it finally began. A tingle traveled through her ear and up her neck. When it entered her skull everything about her felt ‘closer’ somehow. Burning wrecks of motorcycles and discarded broken spears littered the flat plain of this desert. It was amazing how she didn’t notice half of them until now.

She looked up and saw every swooping figure with Celestial or Dragon wing carrying on their battles. She could feel their minds, read their faces. She anticipated their motions and began to see patterns. It was as if she could clearly predict their motions before they did.

This incredible clarity came with a flood of “what-if”. What if that dragon over there tossed his sword and it spun down on her? What if that Celestial over there miscalculated his thrust? The winds were perfect to send his spear falling towards her. To make it worse she knew she always favored her right hip when dodging, a sudden motion to the left could inadvertently send her head-on into the tip’s path.

The fear grew worse and mutated into pure paranoia. She was taking in too much information. Her fight or flight was responding too eagerly. Her mind was flinging out scenarios faster than she could rationalize them away.

The chill in her spine was fading yet she couldn’t appreciate that change. Her eyes darted for any form of danger and it took no effort to find it. Her spine was growing hotter. Hel, her heart was beating faster. She could feel it slamming inside her chest.

I deserve power.

I never asked to be born like this.

I know more magic than those who can cast it.

They walk around looking down on me. It could have been me looking down on them. Cocky bastards, all you did to earn that was falling out of your mother.

She didn’t say that, she didn’t think those words and yet she heard them as clearly as any thought. The tone of those words changed randomly from confident to deeply upset. The paranoia was starting to refine itself. Her mind dived inwards and focused on memories. Every time she yearned for another foal’s power. Every time she silently corrected a badly cast spell or critiqued a Stallion’s flying abilities.

A brief moment of sanity came over her when she realized her regulator was failing. This was corruption in slow motion, but corruption all the same. Her hand flew up to tap the Ethereal Emulator when the shifting colors of both opals went solid. The upper one fell on Lavender, the lower became rose.

Every muscle in her body tightened into steel cables as she froze in place. Her finger cap hovered millimeters away from the lavender stone and remained motionless despite Arcane’s desperation to turn the damn thing off. Her left shoulder lifted slowly as the muscles suffered spasms.

An aura of swirling rose and lavender light burst from her left shoulder blade and stretched into five tendrils. The tendrils coiled around each other and thickened into an arm, the tips merching into a massive hand. An elbow cracked upward into form and a wrist cracked downward. Fingers speared into the dry soil. Another violent quiver arched up her right shoulder before the same process began.

The transparent arms bent to tilt Arcane’s paralyzed from back as a blister of transparent flame swelled from her forehead. It burst into two thin vines that twirled around themselves and hardened into a unicorn’s horn. Arcane could only watch helplessly as the tip of that horn generated a tiny glimmering star that faded in and out of existence. Every time it returned from nothingness it grew brighter. It flickered faster until it seemed to burst like a lightbulb and fade away. Five seconds later it bloomed back into existence like a supernova. Six new stars grew from the void to encircle the blooming light and shaped it into a beam. It’s color randomly shifted to every hue she could name while her unique eyes read elemental symbols and spells that flickered by faster than she could read them. It was just chaos, pure unadulterated chaos.

Her ears were assaulted with the rapid base thrum of the blast. In years to come she would debate if it sounded like a Dubstep D.J. On cocaine or a poorly maintained electrical substation during a flood. In the meantime all her focus was on doing something so miniscule as curl an index finger. Black spots began to grow across her right ear as Arcane finally touched the lavender stud.

Her horn flickered out of existence along with the beam. Once the overwhelming surge of power was cut off her muscles relaxed. She fell like a marionette with cut strings and landed on her knees, slumping forward in a daze.

Her demonic second set of arms was consumed in a flash of rose light. The thick fingers dislodged as the mammalian form of an arm was warped into avian proportions. When the flash finally dimmed her true wings took shape. Fluffy dove-like feathers covered the ghostly extensions of her body. Thankfully, In the absence of her ‘unicorn’ aspect her paranoia settled into a relatively manageable anxiety.

The dusky haze before her was split for several moments. In the distance she saw several dragons fly off to cower from whatever lit up the sky. Those that ran were attacked and thrown to the ground by their own people.

Along the center of that Dragon city was a crumbling gothic castle spire now reduced into little more than two walls and roof. Gravity seemed to remember the distant structure as it collapsed into a plume of dust.

“Oh Hel…”

Something big fell from the sky roughly four meters away from her. The sound of it was wet and kicked up a plume of red dust in its wake. Four more followed, one after another making the sound of a giant playing in a mud puddle. A short trail of unconscious or worse-off dragons lay before her. Each was a manic jigsaw of burns, frostbite, petrification, and electrical scars.

She stared wide eyed with a blank expression as shock mildly numbed the anxiety eating away at her. She knew she should be horrified yet everything that happened in the last minute left her without any words, verbal or thought. Her brain was just… kinda humming.

A thump to her left made her head flinch towards the source. Out of some defensive urge her wings closed around her like a cloak, leaving only her head visible. A Celestial caked in red dust and splatters of blood gracefully landed from a straight hoof-first descent with just one firm flap of her wings to slow her fall. At least a hundred more did the very same and soon she was surrounded by weary soldiers pulling off helmets. It grew uncomfortably strange when the majority knelt down on one knee and lowered their head.

“What are you doing…” she tried to say yet found her voice was barely a weak croaking.

Then it became stranger still. Three unblemished Celestials made their way past their dirty allies and stopped roughly a meter from her. One wore armor far too large for their sixteen year old frame. Another’s armor was flat and too narrow along the hips for the mare’s frame. The third dangled an eyepatch in his hand that he obviously didn’t need.

It was the teen foal that spoke first.

“Thank you for your intervention, your majesty. However, my colleagues and I were caught in the blast. Is there any way you reverse the effects?”

The one holding the eyepatch turned to the child as if waiting for permission to speak. The child nodded with an intimidating glare.

“I’m fine, actually I just wanted to thank you, your Majesty.”

“Same. Your majesty.” The mare said simply, earning a confused stare from eyepatch, “Don’t look surprised, Eagle Eye. I told you that when we were-“

The young foal cleared his throat. The other two stood to attention and didn’t say a word.

The shock never fully left Arcane’s face. At least she was thinking in words again.

HEL’S TITS, THEY THINK I’M AN ALICORN.

Static blasted from every hip around Arcane including her own.

“Mayday! Mayday! Towers down! Dragons are attacking Delta Nest! For fucks sake help us!”

“I’m Coming Iron H-“

Arcane began to shout those words as her back flexed. In one moment she gained a realization her wings pointed up to the sky. There was a burst of air and pink light. The next second she was fully aware, her body rushed upwards on wings folded to her sides like a gliding falcon. She looked back to see the crowd she left behind sailing backwards with wings flapping in an effort to stabilize themselves. The whole scene looked like a flock of startled pigeons.

Her mind was a wordless mess of joy and panic. She was flying. She imagined being up here wing to wing with her dad, finally being the daughter Ivar deserved. She imagined learning spells with her mom, perfecting her technique and growing closer to her as equals. She imagined bringing Iron Heart home so she could meet-“

Arcane opened her wings and righted her frame to slow her acceleration. When a cluster of tents were below her hooves she folded her wings and shot down like a spear towards the earth.

Iron Heart stood on the south corner of her base, her teeth clenched in pain as her emerald horn bathed everything in green light. All her focus remained on keeping a Violet wall of light solid around Nest Delta. Her commanding officer lay unconscious by her hooves. Looking over the fallen captain was an elderly stallion with his head wrapped in crimson bandages.

Behind Iron Heart was a continuous struggle between a handful of medical staff and the few dragons which managed to pierce the base’s defenses. A pink colored Teran was doing most of the fighting by throwing medical supplies at their heads and running off at speeds the dragons couldn’t keep up with. Thankfully, dragon soldiers had more muscles than brains. Otherwise, they would have struck down Iron Heart minutes ago.

A bed pan flew into the jaw of a green dragon armed with a rusty mace. The pink mare that flung it dashed across the dusty ground past Iron Heart seconds before she realized her mistake. The dragon’s bloodshot eyes locked onto the mare keeping his mates from entering this base and ending things once and for all. With a sinister smirk he walked over to Iron Heart, his fist squeezing the handle of his mace tightly.

It was a perfect though painful landing. Arcane forgot the vital step to a zero-point landing. She forgot to flap her wings before meeting the ground. Her hooves were together and arms up. Her wings were high to catch the wind and slow her descent by some degree, yet she came down like a raindrop the weight of a full grown mare onto the… ground?

A quivering green form lay on his stomach under her hooves, his arm still poised to thrust his mace down, yet now quivering. She stepped off the dragon who wasn’t dead, but stared out at nothing as if his mind was somewhere far away from the pain of a broken spine.

“I’m here.” Arcane stumbled forward and fell onto her knees close to the injured old stallion. “W…e’ll get you patched up in a second.”

The pink Teran ran up and took Arcane’s bag for her.

“You just rest up, you look like shit.”, the pink mare said in an oddly cheery tone. Arcane looked down to the short shorts this one was wearing and saw party balloons on her hip.

“Hey, I remember you from elementary school…”

Arcane muttered as the pink mare took Arcane’s hand and touched her finger to her Pandora Box.

“And I remember you, miss cold-shoulder foal.”, Pinkie Pie wasted no time stapling the remaining Ethereal Emulator to the old stallion’s ear. When the stone turned bright blue his ghostly horn manifested. He slowly hoisted himself onto his old knobby knees and touched Iron Heart’s shoulder. Bright blue light replaced Iron’s green magic as the protective barrier expanded, pushing back the dragons fifteen meters in every direction.

Iron Heart fell to her knees with an exasperated sigh, her horn just flickering out. She looked up at Arcane and smiled a weak smile.

“You crazy bitch.”

The Violet dome protecting their base fell away. All three turned their heads to the sage in shock. That panic faded once each realized the Dragons were flying towards their city and abandoning the war. The heavy thud of two clawed feet made all but Pinkie turn around once again. A bronze dragon lifted his injured partner over his shoulder and prepared to take off.

“Wait, what’s going on?”

The dragon looked over to Iron Heart with a casual gaze before giving a quiet huff.

“The King is dead and with him, his orders.” Was all he said before a hard flap of his wings kicked dust everywhere and sent both up into the air.

“Probably the chaos spell that blew up the castle, I imagine. It’s just so strange. Only an Alicorn could have done that and none alive would be so reckless. Perhaps we have a corrupted being to thank, which would mean things have only gotten worse.”

The old sage finally spoke in his wavering voice.

Iron Heart gave Arcane a weary look, one that silently communicated the four words no one wanted to hear from a loved one.

‘We have to talk.’

She felt a hand on her back and looked to the side. Pinkie Pie looked into Arcane’s eyes with a sympathetic stare. Somehow that Tarren always knew more than she should. Arcane knew her reputation since her first summer with Grandpa Quill well over a decade ago. If she was worried, it stood to reason she should be too.

She looked down at her knees and reached to turn off her pink stud followed by the seven rings that had kept her from going fully corrupt. Once the magic was gone from her body all the damage and stress of her experiment caught up. Arcane’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and blood ran from her nose as she collapsed. The last thing she heard was IronHeart screaming her name.