Trixie: Eclipse V
“Have you satisfied yourself, Za…”
Canceros froze in midsentence as Zambet’s shadow loomed over him and the intensity of the flame that constituted her skeleton iris increased visibly. “If you even begin to speak my name, Canceros, I will destroy you before you finish,” she growled.
The leader of the atermors, with all the adornments gone, had the rather plain appearance of a sun-dried corpse: heavily wrinkled, skin stretched so tightly over bone that it looked like it might tear at any moment, empty pits where his eyes would be with glowing green spheres serving as irises, and a triple row of the tearing incisors of a predator that was clearly visible whenever he opened his mouth, which he always seemed to do as widely as he could.
“Fine,” he replied with a touch of petulance. “Have you satisfied yourself?”
“Thoroughly,” she said as she approached the Tree. “It is clear to me that setting up your puppets as sentries would have accomplished nothing.”
“Then it is as I said,” the atermor said smugly.
Zambet sighed as a black mist wafted off the blackened bones of her skeletal half and flowed towards the Tree, beginning to laboriously build itself into a semi-transparent pane to match all the rest of them. Trixie was still not sure why Canceros seemed unable to see them. After walking with them to the doorway, Zambet had stopped them with a gesture of her hoof and some of the same mist that she was using to build the pane had flowed up and solidified around the rim of the frame. It was clearly some kind of magic meant to conceal them, and Zambet had seemed able to simply will it into existence with no visible effort.
The Chamber of the Tree was perfectly round and had clearly been a beautiful setting at some point. What tiles that had survived hundreds of years in the middle of a wild forest were polished white and seemed to glow silver in the radiance of the Tree of Harmony. A raised wall around the Tree implied a pool or fountain had once surrounded it, and on the walls were the cracked and aging remains of various murals depicting events that Trixie imagined were from Equestrian history--a pony in a tall conical hat doing something to three ponies that seemed to have fish tails instead of rear legs, a bull with a pony lower half being wrapped in chains, beams of magic causing a black unicorn to turn into smoke--but nothing that she recognized.
The Tree itself looked like a weeping willow made of glowing silver with strange growths in the branches that Celestia had, in a whisper, identified as the indentations that had once held the Elements. It was clearly blindingly bright normally, but the light had been diminished to more comfortable levels by the semi-transparent magical construct that Zambet was building around and over it.
“What is she doing, Princess?” Trixie asked her.
“And I mean this with all possible respect, Your Majesty, but have you spit your bit?” Shining said, audibly struggling to keep his tone as respectful and polite as he could.
“I believe she’s building a construct around the Tree that allows Canceros to remain in its presence,” Celestia said. “See how he stands so that he’s out of the path of the light coming from the gap? I’m certain the radiance would destroy him if Zambet hadn’t done something about it.”
She turned fully to face Shining Armor, giving him a look of very slight amusement. “And no, Captain Armor, I have not gone mad. If Zambet’s proposal had been harsher, I’d have still agreed to it.”
“I don’t like how her terms were so extremely precise,” Krysa said. “I could drive a couple carts side by side through the gaps in what she required and agreed to.”
“As well as her statements about… whatever matters she requires you to simply stand by and watch,” Anori added. “Especially how she specified that the matters would do no harm to ponies or the Tree but said nothing about the effects of those matters, or what they would lead to.”
“Yes, I was there too,” Celestia said wryly. “And I heard exactly what you did… and more.”
“Like all of the things she seemed to know?” Trixie said.
Celestia frowned and gave Trixie a single nod. “Yes. What the Tree is, and what it does. Your given name, and a strangely specific detail about a confrontation you had with that Canceros creature. That dreams are Luna’s realm of power. And her comment about the ice plain that she used as the backdrop to the dreamscape, that it was a prison but only one of the prisoners was a criminal. I feel strongly that there is something very, very dangerous about it, but I can’t quite place the reference.”
“And she’s a dream predator,” Cadence said. “Who can apparently simply seize others and pull them into her dreamscape by being near them, and so smoothly that I didn’t even realize she had.”
“Nor did I,” Celestia said. “And yet, she did none of us any apparent harm. With that power, she did nothing more than bargain with me, promising vengeance against Canceros in return for all of us watching, and learning, but not interfering.”
“Which means she’s sure we won’t gain anything by it,” Shining said. “And sure that she’ll gain a great deal by us not interfering.” He looked at Celestia. “So why did you strike a bargain with her, Princess? Why promise to give her what she wanted?”
“Because I do not believe I could overpower her on her own ground where she has every advantage.” Celestia gestured at the Tree. “But with the barrier around the Tree broken, the advantage would be mine, and I’ll be able to fight her. And if these ‘matters’ are not to my liking, that is what I will do.”
“She seemed to take you at your word.”
“I don’t think she seriously believes that any commitments I made while we were at her mercy are sincere.” Celestia turned her eyes back to the events taking place in the Tree chamber. “It begs the question of why she acted as if she did, but I don’t think we’ll know that until she reveals it.”
Trixie edged around the alicorn and watched as Zambet’s magic had finished the rim of the pane and was flowing towards the center, completing it. Trixie could tell the moment that the being had finished, because the light of the Tree dimmed dramatically, and then took on a very faint reddish tint. Canceros’ strange mouth gaped open in a delighted grin and he stepped forward, circling the confined Tree as if to assure himself that it was completely covered by the construct Zambet had been building.
“As exquisite as your legend claims,” he said, leaning down and reaching out to it.
A tendril of the dusty power that Zambet used shot out and wrapped around his hand. “Don’t touch,” she said. “It is perfectly balanced, physically and metaphysically, and you’ll disrupt it.”
He snorted and pulled his hand free of the confinement. “Mechanists are all the same,” he said. “Always afraid that us unlearned barbarians will somehow destroy their creations by looking at them cross-eyed.”
“If you cannot do the work, do not mock those who can.” Zambet walked around her construct once before her gaze once again fell on her companion. “What is the exact direction of the town of Ponyville?”
Canceros shrugged and gestured in the vague direction of the tunnel. “That way.”
Zambet’s eyes narrowed. “Which ‘that way’?”
“That way, that way,” he said. “What do you mean ‘which that way’?”
“I need precision you witless cretin,” she growled, the flame of her skeleton side flaring up. “Lei flow is specific not general, you blathering waste of material. You were told that this information would be required.”
“If the Tree is the center and the entrance tunnel zero, Ponyville is at eighteen point sixty-three degrees,” came a tired-sounding female voice from an area of dimmed light.
Zambet turned towards the voice and gave a brisk nod and a brief smile before magic flowed from her and the image of an extremely large compass formed in the air above the Tree, its center directly over the center of the construct around it. Numbers from one to three hundred sixty were filled in around the rim and a red line appeared. It swung to the eighteen, and the rest of the construct melted, and the segment between the eighteen and nineteen enlarged, filled with numbers one through ten, then the process was repeated before the segment shrank back to its original size and the rest of the compass structure reappeared.
Trixie glanced over at Celestia, who was looking as transfixed as Trixie felt as Zambet’s magic worked with a rapid and exactly precision that she’d only seen in Twilight Sparkle before: drawing lines between points, generating grids, materializing tools like compasses and protractors, even projecting a weight at the end of a string to ensure that one thing was directly below another.
From the various methods of determining placement, a circle was drawn (with the compass of course) and then came actual stone tablets filled with extremely neat rows of symbols which were moved back and forth like the letters on an old printing press as select ones were transferred to the circle, being placed using spidering guide lines that Zambet drew even as she was runescribing the ritual circle. Finally, all the tools disappeared, the excess lines vanished, and Zambet looked towards the shadow. “Blood.”
What Trixie initially mistook for a pony, a mildly thin unicorn mare with a light violet coat, purple mane, and a streak of light blue in both, stepped silently from the shadow and walked over to the circle. After a moment, Trixie realized that although her legs were moving, her hooves were not touching but she moved as if they were. After another moment, she realized that the pony was enclosed in some kind of construct that fit her shape perfectly but was almost a suit, moving along with her but keeping her away from the floor. It wasn’t until she stopped at the circle and was backlit by the Tree, that Trixie could see that the construct wasn’t really a construct, but some kind of creature.
The creature had a face. The face had no mouth, and two rows of four eyes that glowed red. “Does it require infusion?” the pony and the creature enclosing her asked, the voice feminine and weary just like before. Instead of its muzzle opening, however, tendrils snaked out from the mouth and quivered while the speaking was being done.
“No, ordinary blood will do, and only a single drop.”
“As you wish.” With no visible action on the part of the creature or pony, a gash appeared on her fetlock and she extended the leg over the circle and allowed a single drop of blood to fall. Like a flame to a fuse, the circle ignited and the flickering light of it spread over the entire circle as the enclosed pony watched impassively, and Canceros gave his gaping-mouth grin.
“Finally,” he said. “Are you certain that it will…”
“Even if I was not, I would say I was if only to enjoy your impotent rage,” Zambet informed him. “But I know this will ride the lei current to all of its concentrations, thanks mostly to Lashaal giving good service at long last.”
“So that is Lashaal,” Celestia said. “Presumably her actual form. And the pony within is my subject.” She frowned. “I recognize her, but can’t remember her name.”
“She looks familiar to me too,” Shining said. “I don’t think I was ever given her name but after growing up with Twiley, recognizing unusual magical ability is kind of inborn.”
“Part of the reason for your appointment, Captain,” Celestia gave him a momentary smile. “What do you remember?”
“Near Twiley,” Shining said. “Different… flavor, for lack of a better word. Somewhere between Trixie and Twiley’s old schoolmate Moondancer as to control, a little over three-quarters Twiley’s font. Most of the papers she was carrying were personal hoofwriting, so I pegged her as a theorist of some kind more than a scholar. Most of her study material during her week in Canterlot was on cutie marks and destiny. I think that if she could have devised a way, she’d have drawn heavily on the high-security archives but Head Librarian Index reported no indications that she’d come up with a way of accessing them.”
“Marchioness Chiti believed she accessed them to a great degree,” Anori said. “But she assessed that Captain Armor would be intelligent enough to wonder how she was so certain, so she maintained her guise.”
Shining and Celestia both turned to look at him. “Did you just say…”
Celestia sighed and forestalled him with hoof gesture. “Yet another thing to speak with Chrysalis about when we meet,” she said. “For now, focus. Did this Chiti report anything else?”
“Only that she was concerned for her,” Anori said. “Her drive was well into the territory of obsession, and Chiti’s impression was that it was driven by a mix of anger and grief. She also said it seemed odd that the mare always kept her cutie mark concealed by fur dye, and would even stop to reapply it regularly.”
“For Void’s sake, just get on with it.” Zambet growl brought their attention back to the scene in the Tree chamber, and Canceros still closely examining the runic circle.
“You don’t like me, and I don’t like you…”
“...although it’s more accurate to say that you hate me and I regard you with utter contempt, but continue…”
Canceros seemed to flush a little at that, glared, and then kept talking. “So I’m making sure that you didn’t include any… surprises.”
“The only surprise will be mine when you, as the locals put it, do your bucking job.”
“Given your naked contempt for me, I can’t imagine why you would agree to aid me in this,” he smirked as he stepped into the lit circle. “So this is meant to…?”
“Yes, yes, now give your message. Voce will confirm, you will counter-confirm, and we’ll be done with this irritant.”
Canceros eyed her. “You’re forgetting…”
“Nothing. Speak.”
He gave her a nod and faced in roughly the direction that Zambet’s compass needle had pointed when she was determining where to place the circle. “Sotto Voce, your prize is here!” He shouted. “”I do not know what it is, and I do not care! You will give me my due, for I have done my part!”
He waited for several moments, clearly expecting some kind of response, before he looked at Zambet. “And the confirmation?”
“YOU HAVE NO PATIENCE, PAPER EMPEROR.” Trixie jumped as a rumbling voice loud enough to make the stones of the chamber tremble exploded from seeming every direction at once. “FOR THIS ENTERPRISE TO SUCCEED, PATIENCE AND BALANCE IS REQUIRED. THIS IS WHY YOU ARE ENTRUSTED ONLY TO TORMENT THE KINE AND CARRY A MESSAGE.”
Canceros seemed stunned by the volume of the reply and visibly swayed on his feet. “Which I have done.”
“EVEN YOU ARE NOT SO SMALL THAT YOU CANNOT SPEAK WHEN BIDDEN AND STEP WHERE A GREATER SERVANT DIRECTS YOU.” There was a short pause, as if the voice was turning to look somewhere else. “THIS IS THE CHAMBER OF THE VAUNTED TREE OF THE ELEMENTS, IS IT?”
“As you say, Lord Voce,” Zambet said, looking entirely unaffected by the booming voice.
“YOU HAVE DONE WELL TO DIMINISH IT, ZAMBET. YOUR PRICE WAS DEAR, BUT WISELY SPENT.” There was that sense of attention being shifted again. “AND YOU HAVE DONE AS YOU AGREED, CANCEROS. IF NOT FOR YOUR IDIOCY IN COMMISSIONING VORKA TO ALTER THE SICKNESS, YOU WOULD WARRANT YOUR PAY IN FULL.”
Canceros looked surprised by this, and then flushed again. “I have done as I agreed! The sun princess is incoherent, Ponyville drowns in waves of constructs, and we bleed the freaks for no particular cost! And you have the location of your prize.”
“I CANNOT DECIDE WHETHER YOU ARE IN EARNEST, A LIAR SO CONVINCED OF HIS WORDS THAT HE DOES NOT KNOW THEM AS LIES, OR AN IMCIBILE OF THE HIGHEST ORDER.” Someone taking in a breath, holding it for a few seconds, and then letting it out again came through whatever magic was being used. “AND YET THE ONLY THING YOU WERE REQUIRED TO DO IS BE MY CANARY IN A COAL MINE. YOU HAVE SHOWN ME THE DANGER, AND MY EYES BEHOLD THEIR PRIZE.”
“Then you see where I have shown you your prize?”
“YES, I SEE WHERE MY PRIZE IS AND WHERE IT MIGHT BE COLLECTED.”
“Good, now do as you vowed. Give me these colorful herd animals for my pleasure and amusement, and the pleasure and amusement of my own.”
“IT IS DONE. WHEN MY PURPOSE IS ACCOMPLISHED, THEY ARE MEAT AND DRINK, TO BE TRIFLED WITH AS YOUR KIND DESIRE AND WISH. THIS I WILL PERMIT, SO LONG AS THERE IS A PRIZE TO BE CLAIMED AND ONE TO CLAIM IT.”
Canceros’ expression soured. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“IT MEANS THAT I HAVE FULFILLED MY WORD TO THE LAST JOT AND TITTLE. THESE KINE ARE AVAILABLE TO YOU, TO BE USED AS YOU DESIRE. BUT THIS IS ONLY TRUE SO LONG AS YOU ARE ABLE TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE, A THING WHICH IS AND ALWAYS SHALL BE TRUE. IF YOU LACK THE POWER TO TAKE YOUR MORSEL, THIS IS NO FAULT OF MINE, NOR INVALIDATION OF ANYTHING WHICH I HAVE SWORN. I WILL NOT FEED YOU, SELF-NAMED EMPEROR, AS IF YOU WERE A MEWLING CHILD UNABLE TO TAKE HIS BREAD OF HIS OWN WILL.”
Canceros continued to stare at apparently nothing. “You… betray me?”
“I HAVE DONE NO SUCH THING!” Trixie could feel the ground buck beneath her hooves and she was only saved from falling by Celestia using a touch of telekinesis to right her. “HOW DARE YOU SPEAK SUCH BLASPHEMY, CANCEROS! ALL THAT I VOW IS AND MUST BE, AND THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN! ALL PROMISES THAT PASS MY LIPS, ALL THAT I SPEAK IN BARGAIN, IS AS IF WRITTEN A DEEP AS A SPEAR’S LENGTH IN THE VERY NOTHINGNESS OF THE VOID! YOU DOUBT ME? YOU BLASPHEME BY PRESUMING THAT I FULFILL NOT WHICH I HAVE VOWED?”
Canceros appeared completely unfazed. “Have you not? Your vow was to deliver these to me! Now you say that you simply permit me to take them of my own hand, as if this was ever a thing that was not true?”
“The precise words that were spoken to your ears were ‘show to me my prize, and when the matter is done, you will receive the kine’.” Zambet’s pony half grinned widely. “To deliver them was never vowed.”
“IT IS AS ZAMBET SPEAKS.” There was something amused and even a little smug in the voice now. “BUT I SHALL GIVE YOU ANOTHER GIFT, CANCEROS, TO COMPENSATE YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT THAT YOU WERE NEVER PROMISED PLAYTHINGS HELPLESS TO BE PLUCKED RIPE AT WILL.”
“A gift?”
“YES, A GIFT.”
Canceros looked mildly placated. “Your unexpected generosity is… appreciated.”
“I AM SURE. ZAMBET TELL HIM WHAT HE SHALL BE GIVEN, AS A TOKEN OF MY UNDYING GRATITUDE.”
“As you will, Lord Voce.” Zambet turned her rictus grin on the suddenly confused-looking Canceros. “The gift will be an opportunity.”
“An.. opportunity.”
“It has long been the conceit of those atermors which bear the name Canceros that they are among the Named, equals to myself, to Vorka, and Voce, and Miri. But you may yet make your claim true.”
“By?”
“By slaying a demigoddess. By overcoming the greatest terror of the atermors. By grasping your payment in an iron fist and claiming it for your own.”
“YOU LIE TO YOURSELF AND YOUR OWN, CANCEROS,” the voice of Sotto Voce told the atermor. “FOR EVEN NOW THE KINE GRIND YOUR LEGIONS TO DUST AT PONYVILLE… AND THE SUN PRINCESS WALKS AGAIN. LAY LOW HER PRIDE, SLAY HER, AND YOU WILL RECEIVE THE REGARD YOU HAVE ALWAYS LUSTED FOR.”
Canceros looked blankly ahead. “Not… incoherent…”
“INDEED.” There was something immensely satisfied in Voce’s voice. “YOU ARE A FOOL, CANCEROS, BUT EVEN YOU MUST HAVE REALIZED THAT IF I DID NOT SLAY YOU IN THIS PLACE, CELESTIA WOULD. GOOD-BYE, CANCEROS.”
The circle began to flicker out the way it had come in, as if individual candle flames were being doused one by one. Just before it went completely, even as Trixie could see Zambet’s concealing magic begin to dissolve away from the door frame, another voice brought all of their attention back towards it.
“Bye-bye Mister Canceros!” And then the circle was entirely doused, Celestia’s horn blazed, and a visibly and suddenly enraged Canceros came flying at them as if thrown.
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space instead of a period.
Interesting...
8926488
Thankes. :)
And I'm glad this is all interesting to you. ;)
8927421
Normally, I don't post this much, hence the bare bones post, but you asked for comments, so I thought I'd oblige.
8927528
Hope you, and everyone else, does more of it. I'm in a perpetual state of comment starvation, seeing little 1000-word stories get 100 comments for a chapter and I get like 4.
Clearly not, you simply give him a stern warning.
Starswirl banishing the sirens, Tirek being bound in Tartarus, and the Royal Sisters killed Sombra. Well, kill is a relative term with lords of dark magic.
I don't know if it's cause of her bringing more attention to it, or because he came up earlier this scene, but I bet Sombra was the 'criminal ' in question. I was thinking of it as an outsider thing last chapter, but it was the Frozen North.
Well, that's super creepy. If I have nightmares about that thing, I'm blaming you. Also, it feels... spidery, for some reason. Can't say why.
Ah, it's Lashaal. Well, that fits my spider sense.
I wonder if she a) is keeping him from saying anything she doesn't want our friends to know about, b) needs this to go quickly for some as-of-yet unknown reason, or c) is garden variety impatient. Could be any of them, really.
Mister quiet voice speaks in ALL CAPS. Does he like irony?
I kind of like Whisper.
(Robot voice.) Constructive criticism levels at 40%. Hateful criticism levels at 0%. Projected outcome: Positive feelings and an improvement of the material.
Try exact, though exacting could also work here, if you wish to emphasize the Zambet’s attention paid to detail, rather than letting the spell run on auto. Probably exact though.
ARE AS IF WRITTEN AS DEEP, perhaps?
Yeah, this is one of the minor limitations of trying to distinguish between something that is merely loud and something that is deeply resonant and pervasive using only text. The method I used was to allcaps + bold actual shouting, and use allcaps for pervasive resonance. Sotto Voce's voice is meant to be the kind of baritone that makes the air feel like it's vibrating without actually being deafening whereas something like the Royal Canterlot Voice leaves your ears ringing. If you have a suggestion for how to show the distinction, I'd appreciate it.
The word was intended to be "exacting." Thanks for pointing it out. :)
Yeah, I need to rewrite this line entirely. I tried to be really cool and imitate a bit of C.S. Lewis but when I examine it, it just reads awkwardly and try-hard. On the other hand, there's a reveal about this entire conversation later that makes it clear that sounding overly hammy and edgy is actually appropriate, so I'm not sure which direction to take.
11732089
Oh, I liked the way he spoke, it sounded like an elder dragon straight outa Tolkien. I just thought that 'all promises that pass my lips is as if written a deep' was a minor typo. Especially a deep.
11732190
Yes, there was a minor typo. And when Sotto Voce chooses to express a physical presence, he appears draconic although the coinciding between Tolkienesque dragon speaking and Sotto Voce is a happy coincidence. :)