Chapter 75: Offering
Lilac Empathy remembered this place.
She passed through a set of glass doors, along an indoor concourse with a large fountain filled with lilies, then up to an elevator with mirrored walls.
She thumbed the button for the third floor, then stared back at her reflection. The dirty mirrors gave her a place to adjust her blue dress, and make a few changes to her makeup. She'd been crying again, so it ran down her cheek, and threatened to stain her blouse.
The door opened a few seconds after the chime, but she was ready for that. She hopped the last few steps, then passed an old legal practice and a dentist's office to her familiar door.
The name etched into the glass was familiar too, even if she couldn't quite read it. The letters shifted and moved when she tried to look at them, making her stomach twist uncomfortably. But it wasn't locked, so she let herself in.
The waiting room was filled with various wooden puzzles, toys, and other things her patients could use to occupy their hands while they waited. Both of her large fish tanks sat where she remembered them, with little schools of zebra danios buzzing around in one. The other had two catfish circling along the bottom, occasionally meeting for a brief scuffle, before parting again.
Yin and Yang, so named for their dark and light colorations. Her patients sometimes thought she meant something by those names. She didn't, really.
“Hello?” she called, voice very small. She hadn't sounded so small the last time she was here. She was usually the one waiting to greet someone in exactly her position, a young patient with their parents, suffering from who knew what.
“In here,” called a voice. An older, male voice, yet also somehow familiar. It had been her voice, once. The doctor's office door was open, and quiet music began to play from inside. Soothing flutes, running water, Native American chants. It was a blurry amalgam of what she often played for her patients.
She stopped in the doorway, peeking slowly in. Something terrible would be waiting in that chair. Iris had warned her about looking through the Outer Gates. This was much, much worse.
A human sat in that chair, a young doctor with a face that was familiar and a name that was not. There was no desk to separate them, just one comfortable chair, and several other places for a patient to sit. A sofa by the window, another armchair across from the doctor. There were enough cushions that she could probably make a whole bed out of them if she wanted.
Some patients did, or they built a fort for themselves while speaking to the doctor about what had brought them.
Lilac climbed up onto the couch, where she would be high enough to look out the window. Outside, the leaves had turned to autumn oranges and yellows. They fluttered off the trees, covered the parking lot and roads. Her hometown was full of activity—people walked, drove, and biked all over, filling the streets and sidewalks.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She whimpered, wiping away tears. Her makeup smeared again, but she hadn't put it on very well to begin with. “I thought horror waited through the gates,” she whispered. “I can't travel back here ever again, not really.”
“You can't,” he agreed. He tossed something in Lilac's direction, and she caught it in one hand. It was a plush doll, a pegasus with a short mane and green under her wings. “You aren't. Is it as nice as you remember?”
She squeezed the doll close to her chest. She was older than most of her patients, yet just now she felt very, very small. “Do I still have snacks in the cabinet?”
He reached down, then slid the wooden cabinet out of the way. Inside was a mini fridge, humming quietly. He opened it, removed a can, then offered it to her. “This is what you want?”
She cracked it open, then sipped. The taste was everything she remembered—chemical and false, yet bubbly heaven on her tongue. She hummed contentedly as she tasted it, and drank in silence.
“We don't have much time,” he said, after a minute or so. “You have a choice to make. Do you know the one I mean?”
She started crying again. A few seconds later, she set the empty can on the sill, then took up the stuffed doll again. “It doesn't feel fair.”
He shrugged. “You went chasing magic. You found it. Whether that's fair or not is philosophical. Nothing about it should be unexpected.”
She sat down on the sofa, settling the doll beside her. She kept fiddling with her dress, fingers never quite still. She didn’t belong in clothes like this. But she had just drank caffeine again for the first time in half a lifetime.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He shrugged again. “When the ancients left Equus behind, they left a few to watch, keep their children from catastrophe, and supervise their growth. Call it a habit.”
The implications of that statement washed over her. Lilac had seen the Alicorn magic used to craft Equus—she'd seen the spells that shaped it. In doing so, maybe she could come to see into the minds of those who had crafted it.
Knowing that only deepened the shame when she asked the question she already understood the answer to, through the tears and the pain. “What if I stay?”
He extended a tissue-box towards her. Lilac took it, then wiped her face. It helped, a little. It was nice to know that someone cared how she was feeling.
“You can,” he said. “There's still enough sympathy binding you here. All the magic that brought you here will be left behind at the threshold. You've changed, since the last time. The ones you knew won't know you. But you're a smart girl, I'm sure you'll find your own way.”
It was always about sympathy. That same insidious force was what the Lightless Star needed to reach through the Outer Gates. They thought they were summoning the True Gods back into reality, didn't they?
Lilac picked up the doll again, brushing its mane from her eyes. “What about her?”
He chuckled. “Made her choice a long time ago. Maybe you did too, except.”
Except for this room. Her practice, her patients, her old life. These were the pieces she couldn't forget. She gave the doll one last hug, tighter than ever. “I can't have both?”
“I'm afraid not. No matter the choice you make, there will be ripples. Some live, and some die. But you shouldn't choose for others, no matter how much you love them. The damage may be great, or it may be small. But Equus will recover in time. Those you left behind will heal the missing piece you take with you.”
This was her only chance. This creature would not lie to her. If she decided to stay, she could stay. If she left, she would leave the part of herself that lived here behind. Lilac Empathy would never see Earth again.
“Why did you leave? I know Celestia didn't betray you.”
He reached across the room, then patted her gently on the shoulder. “Think back to your basic physics, sweetheart. Magic can't be destroyed, and it can't be created. If we stayed behind when we finished building, there would be only scraps of magic for our children. One of us could be a thousand of them. Besides—the work was finished. It was time to move on, and keep building. When they were ready, they would join us.”
Lilac was in a losing battle with her tears. Her face was perpetually hot, and she must've got some makeup in her eyes, because her vision remained blurry.
He had answered. His response didn't exactly make sense to her yet, but maybe it would with time.
She wiped at her eyes one last time, then stood up. Without knowing exactly how she knew it, Lilac knew she was out of time. Something was tugging her in both directions. It would rip her apart, unless she could decide which direction to go.
“Could you... send a message for me?” she finally asked. “Since I won't be back?”
He smiled back at her, but said nothing. Outside, Lilac's view of the city became suddenly hazy. The familiar oaks blurred at the edges, becoming the mere suggestion of trees. There was a road, but she couldn't see the cars snaking along it anymore. Only the office remained.
“I'd like everyone to know we aren't dead,” she finally said. “Charlie too. We didn't drown. We're out there, with people we care about, in an amazing new world. We're happy, and I hope they'll be happy too.”
He took her hand, squeezing it in both of his. He said nothing, but he didn't have to. She could see in his eyes that he would honor her request, in some form or another.
With her other hand, Lilac reached through her dress, then her flesh. She reached all the way down into herself, and emerged with the piece that belonged here. The human psychiatrist, who had obsessed about returning for a decade. This was the one who had spent half that time consumed with guilt, blaming himself for what he'd taken from Firefly.
The part so fixated on getting them home, that she hadn't even noticed as Firefly found herself a new one.
It hurt, tearing it out. But this wasn't as brutal and unnatural as when the unmade stole a piece of her. In a way, this sacrifice was healing that injury, leaving behind the flayed ends that tied her to a place that was no place, and beings that had never been.
There was no blood, only regrets. She offered it to the stranger, and he took it.
“This is not goodbye, Lilac Empathy. So long. Until we meet again.”
Light suffused her, shining into her eyes, searing her body with sudden intensity. It was so bright she started to cough.
Then she realized she was submerged. Slime surrounded her on all sides, filling her mouth, eyes, and nose. She hacked and coughed, suddenly realizing just how much pain she was in. Lilac was dying!
Something gripped her by the foreleg, a faint magical glow she could feel even though her eyes were entirely blinded by slime and pain. She focused on it, relaxing her body despite the burning in her lungs. She let it drag her until she felt it break the surface of a liquid.
She fought with the rest of her body, kicking with all four legs, clawing her way out!
Something on her head broke the surface a little sooner than the rest of her, piercing the surface tension and finally letting her free.
Suddenly, Lilac could see where she was again. This was the Low Place, deep beneath Cyan Mines. A thick black ichor covered every surface, several inches deep along the cavern floor. But it was thickest in the center of the diagram, where she had been standing.
The cultists were gone, their ritual circle was broken—instead, there was only the pony pulling her along in her magic, the same one who had fought her way across the Low Place.
Her mother looked much worse than Lilac had ever seen her. Her whole body was covered in black ichor, along with several magical burns seared into her coat. Even so, her horn kept glowing. When she saw Lilac struggle, she reached out with her foreleg, yanking her from the slimy surface holding her with raw strength. “I've got you, Lilac! Hold on!”
She did, clinging to the unicorn with all her might. Together, they managed to cross the room, back to the open entrance doors. Black slime spilled out here too, though it didn't extend more than a few feet along the tunnel.
Only when she was out were her eyes clear enough to look back and see what was behind her. A black outline made from flesh and slime stood in the center of the room, with a filly-sized hole in its chest. There was no trace of the ritual ponies who had cast the spell, though Watcher's pavilion of lace was missing.
The unicorn lifted her to her chest, squeezing her tight. “How did you escape?” she asked, tearful. “The ritual was almost complete. I didn't think you would ever make it out.”
They were both covered in foul-smelling flesh-ooze, but Lilac didn't care. “I don't know... what's going on,” she finally said. “What happened?”
The antechamber was almost entirely empty now, except for... Risk! He cowered in a dark corner, as far away from the entrance to the Low Place as possible. His horn glowed, and a little dagger hovered in front of him.
Lilac wanted to run to him, but she resisted.
“The Inquisitors... sacrificed themselves, one by one,” she said. “Something started coming through... wrapping around you, changing you. Then a voice... but it wasn't you.”
A distant rumbling drew Lilac's eyes away from her mother. In the room beyond. It was a voice, rumbling so loud in the cavern that the stone shook, dislodging little trails of dust from overhead, and rattling the ceiling against its supports. “Y'AI'NG'NGAH,” it said. “YOG-SOTHOTH.”
The fleshy mass in the room obeyed, crawling together towards the outline of a pony in its center. That shape was quickly lost in the amalgamation, which began to pulse and glow, rising taller and taller. A mouth formed of stolen flesh, ringed with pony skulls instead of teeth. “H'EE-L'GEB. F'AI THRODOG. UAAAH!”
Lilac and Iris scrambled backward from the open door, retreating towards Risk, and the doorway leading back to the mines. “I told him!” Lilac whispered, her voice a terrified whimper. “The True Gods weren't there! He was only opening the door for something else!”
Something that came lumbering through the open door seconds later.
It no longer looked like a pony. Instead, the Derek Ashsen towered on two legs, in a form an older version of herself had known long ago. Now that was a distant memory, something that belonged to somepony else more than herself.
It turned its face on Lilac. She felt its rage, a fire confined by that small space. “Did you think I would forget you, writhing larva? I have been waiting for you.”
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Dammit. It's too good and now I gotta wait another week. 😩
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As the creator intended, no doubt.
As a friend of mine likes to say, Jesus Christmas.
unnnng! the chapters are too short!
That was a good chapter.
Lilac separated herself from Earth. "Derek" is no longer bound to her. Time to kill it.
Guess every world they build has their own guardian alicorn.
It would have broken cult dogma. Why stay in this world when you are invited by the gods to help them in their work?
At this point, I'm confident he got what he wanted.
Lilac already burnt her bridges. This thing is only one last obstacle to break down. Then Lilac will find her future in Equestria.
Lilac is an alicorn now.
Hype! let's kill some demons and get a happy ending for next chapter.
They need to destroy Derek Ashen but at least when they do so the cult will be gone as well. Let's hope it doesn't destroy the town first with everypony in it.
Did we skip a chapter before this one?
Yog-Sothoth? So we're just straight up in Lovecraft's mythos now?
Pretty on point. This is something that I've been thinking about Lilac's situation from pretty early on.
Can we destroy that vial of Septum's blood so Firefly doesn't lose her adoptive father?
So, she's now an alicorn! Awesome. Now just to kill Derek.
I wonder if he IS Yog Sothoth, or just going through her memories... If he is, that could make the Lovecraftian stories canon in this universe, which -- oh boy. Now to spend the next half hour translating R'lyehian lol.
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Or a earth pony/unicorn. I didn't see any hints of wings being mentioned.
I knew the ritual would go through- this is not the kind of story that wants a daring rescue. And while I may have known it, it's really, really good. Tasty. Delicious even. Succulent if you will.
Now to duke it out with an eldritch abomination, I suppose. Will it be just Lilac, or will others show up for the scrap? Twilght and her friends, maybe, but probably not Celestia, though it is in her job description. Then again, things have escalated pretty far and she might feel the need to step in... we'll see. Firefly is definitely coming to back up her buddy. Unless I'm forgetting something, which wouldn't surprise me.
I think that went pretty well, all things considered. Yes, there's a Lovecraftian nightmare with a body of amalgamated pony flesh and a chunk of Lilac's soul, but the sympathetic ties are broken and Lilac appears to have gotten a few new bodily accessories in the process. Plus, the cavalry is still en route. Now they just need to deal with the demon.
Okay, that "just" is doing a lot of work, but still, a lot of problems have been resolved. Now it's a matter of making sure the rest don't make more.
Final stage, let's go,