A Fatal Error Has Occurred

by Orderly Disassembly

Ch - 8 - done deal

My vision flickered as my internal clock chimed.

I sat up, hearing several joints pop as I did, and let out a yawn as I stretched. I could feel old aches fading and a new energy thrumming in my soul. Perhaps I should sleep more often…

The tithes of knowing.

…Then again, perhaps not.

I shrugged before reaching out to my strings, observing Tirek from several different angles. His chest rose and fell in a slow calm rhythm. His eyes were shut, without any strain at their edges. And his muscles seemed relaxed, but I could see the faint traces of tension beneath.

He wasn’t ready to awaken, his body hadn’t finished its maintenance. He needed to rest, otherwise, something just might break.

I felt my smile widen, my teeth shining in the dark. I brought a hand to my face, vision still elsewhere, and my breaths began to quake. My ribs shuddered as the strings in my chest thrummed with magic.

This feeling, this cold damp feeling of mirth finally bubbled over and fell from my smile in long peels of laughter.

He wasn’t ready? Well, neither was I when I came down here.

Welcome to Hell.

Tirek shot to his hooves, bloodshot eyes frantically scanning the cell.

“Where, who, why—“

His startled gibberish cut off with a growl when his senses returned. And the joy I felt dug its icy nails deeper into my soul when he screamed.

“SHUT UP. SHUT UP. SHUT UP…”

Over and over and over again. When he first came to this place, his voice was gruff but solid. It carried an air of determination, of inevitability. Even in his wildest shouts, he clung to a single emotion above any other: ambition.

Now? Now desperation replaced the determined hate in his eyes. Manic tears sundered him from his pride. He was close, so very close. His cloak of derision, his cowl of hate, all of it was wearing thin.

It wasn’t even that hard. Just a few inconveniences left on repeat, just the reminder of his own actions over and over again, and a little bit of isolation; that was all it took. All it took to bring the mighty ‘Lord Tirek’ to his knees.

I let go another short chuckle, my smile widening as the centaur spun in his cage. Like a thousand other times, he scoured the shadows and edges of our minuscule personal cavern. A thousand tries, a thousand failures, what was one more try to cost in the face of that?

I took in a deep breath, holding the stale air within my hollow chest, and reminisced on the short time we had together. And what a short but oh-so-meaningful stretch of time it was.

After the first day, the one where he told me his own story, his flame had begun to die.

I smiled as I plucked the strings around me, sending pleasant notes ricocheting off the slate walls. Though they failed to soothe Tirek any.

He was fiery and blustered like an inferno at the start. So I began with his anger. I led him in circles, continually grinding away at his determination with a chisel made of memories. Every time I reminded him of Scorpan, every time I mentioned the Royals, every time I repeated one of his many many mistakes, he sank an inch deeper.

It was like I was a puppeteer, and he, my marionette. Since the moment he was dragged into this cell. He danced to the songs that I would sing and feared my shifting, glowing strings. Like an obedient pet, he howled when I commanded, even if it was silence that he demanded,

After a month, his flaming anger was below the waterline. Its heat drowned in apathy borne of soul-deep exhaustion, and the tinder that started it, again and again, was worn to ash by overuse.

So now my toy had cracked—stuff leaking out of him in the shape of tears and weakness. But I wasn’t finished yet. So far, there was merely a crack upon his mask, a torn seam upon the puppet, nothing of great note.

I caressed the glowing strings again, trying to get them to sing with beauty and passion. Instead, they screamed.

So, next came his hate.

His brother still weighed heavily upon his mind, but if Scorpan was as worthless as Tirek said, then why should he bother even thinking about his useless brother?

He never could find the words to counter that particular jab. It could’ve been the apathy suffocating him once more. Maybe he simply accepted my words. Maybe a lot of things, but what is certain are the numbers before me. They spoke, they whispered, they screamed as they passed under my gaze, and laughter echoed in my skull as I found naught but a string of zeros where his hate should be.

Of course, there were still traces, the tiniest of blemishes upon the blank slate. His hate was still there, somewhere, it was just weak, impotent, buried where I couldn’t get at it anymore. For now, at least.

I stopped playing my music, tiring of its incessant ringing in my ears.

Tirek was never very complex. He was a being driven by anger, guided by hate, and ruled by ambition.

When his anger flickered out, when his hate was suffocated, when his ambitions were driven from beyond sight even in his few dreams, what was left?

Tirek screeched once more, his destroyed voice seeming to tear at the air in his desperate desire. A very simple desire for it all to go quiet.

I wanted to know if there was something beneath that simple exterior. I desired to see the inner complexities that drove him onward when nothing else could. What was his prime directive, his source code, his very core?

I looked him in the eyes through my strings. I had to jump from point to point to keep up with his swiveling snarling visage, but I managed.

I stared into those black pits, lined by white and speckled with gold.

And all I found was a blank, torn canvas staring back.

As it turns out, there was nothing at his core. Beneath the veneer of emotions, beneath the lies he told himself, beneath everything below his skin, there wasn’t anything. There was no deeper mind than the one made from matter. There was no unseen connection to everything around us, just out of sight. There was no soul. All I found was a sphere of cold, dead numbers.

Did I forget to stop laughing again? Dear me, that is becoming quite a problem.

I cut off my laughter as I stood on my hammock made of string. I rolled my neck, feeling joints pop and the final aches of lethargy die down.

It was time for a question, a very simple question.

“Are you ready, Tirek? Today is the day. The day you can make me ‘shut up.’ The day you’ve dreamed of.”

Tirek twitched. Did he dare allow himself a drop of caustic hope? Should he disregard my promise? Several questions seemed to flash across his face, but only one reached the open air.

“What do you mean? Is this another one of those ‘deals’?!”

I sucked in a hissing breath, relishing the fear I felt waft off of him. It was almost intoxicating, like a sort of drug that kept pulling at the edges of my mind, driving me to tear off just another small piece of his will.

“No, not just another deal. It would be the first one we ever made… and perhaps our last.”

Confusion flooded his face, but it seemed that no hope followed. Good. I’d taught him well what “hope” really meant here, what it meant to me.

“What do you mean? Am I finally getting transferred?”

I was wrong? The fool still clung to that poisonous emotion? How amusing. Was he masking it at first? Oh, he’ll regret not listening the first time, he’ll regret it in time.

“Yes, from what I understand, but only if you do one small thing for a pair of very important ponies.”

Tirek dared not smile, he learned after the first time he made that mistake. Instead, he kept his face hard as stone and his tone flat as paper when he asked.

“When?”

I shrugged, even if he couldn’t see.

“Oh, any moment now, really. Could be a minute, could be an hour, who knows.”

He snorted at that but sat down without further complaint. For once, I decided to let the peace remain. Let him get comfortable before he’s reminded of who put him here.

I felt my smile wane as the silence went from calm to smothering, and it weakened further when I heard a ghostly ringing in my head. It was like talons were being drawn down a chalkboard a dozen paces away.

I was freed from the discomfort of silence by a series of loud cracks.

An ethereal rainbow mane poked out, and Celestia’s pristine form followed. Luna passed through the portal as well, though she seemed a tad bit ragged. Small bags under the eyes, one leg slightly less favored than the rest, giving her posture a tilt.

Did Celestia even notice? I doubt it, she seems to miss the small things quite often.

I smiled at the thought as I nodded at the Royals. They didn’t acknowledge me back.

Good, they remember.

I made a circular gesture with my hand before letting my red eye socket go dark. It was my signal that Tirek had caved. Celestia came to a stop before Tirek’s cage and cleared her throat before saying.

“Are you ready to tell us?”

Her voice was calm as a still pond. Not a ripple out of place. But just like any other body of stagnant water, flies hovered around it. I could almost taste the apprehension that rolled off of her in waves of numbers.

A lie made manifest, a manicured visage wreathed in deceit, it was glorious.

I turned my gaze on Tirek through my strings for the first time since the Royals' entrance.

He still frowned, and I still saw recognition and anger flicker in his eyes for a moment. However, the fire in him died as quickly as it ignited.

“Fine, just… just take me away from here, from whoever, whatever has been tormenting me, please.”

I expected at least a shout, perhaps even a threat, had I truly stripped the paint from his canvas so thoroughly?

I shook my head at the thought. It’s likely that he was simply tired, that the moment he left and was given to rest, his fire would begin to regain its strength. That is the nature of my art, it is temporary, as the canvas I work upon is ever-changing.

Celestia nodded at Tirek, allowing a faint smile to cross her otherwise neutral expression. I admired the twisted beauty of a lie, but why did she have to hide behind that mask? The ugly truth would be a far more moving artwork.

The cage door swung open with a metallic grinding, and Tirek received a pair of shackles around his wrists.

Meanwhile, Luna leveled an even glare at me as if I’d crossed her somehow. Had I said something wrong? Did Little Moon fail? Did she out me?

Normally, I would cherish such animosity. However, the air tasted of ozone, and I could see the numbers shifting beneath the shell of physicality. Something was wrong. I felt fear, true fear, I hadn’t tasted its bitterness in a long while… I can’t say that I missed it.

I swallowed my apprehension, hiding it behind a tilt of my head. The clop of hooves echoed through the rocky chamber as Celestia and Tirek walked, and I found myself scouring the rock around me for anything new, anything different. Something was wrong, I could feel it in my strings.

The portal closed with a soft pop, and the stone of the wall pulled itself back into place.

Luna broke the silence.

“The deal that my sister brokered with you is finished. Your business concluded.”

What was her angle? I nodded, saying.

“I suppose it is. Might I ask when I’ll be transferred back to my old abode?”

Luna smiled, and I swear it felt like looking in a mirror.

“Oh, my sister and I have decided that you are better suited to your current situation, barring one change, of course.”

Even if I had eyelids, I wouldn't have even had the chance to blink before my strings disappeared. They didn’t burn away, and they didn’t fall limp to the cold floor, they vanished. And I felt a familiar weight upon my soul. A set of invisible shackles that bound me once more.

I fell on the metal top of Tirek’s cage, a bolt of pain shooting up my spine when I hit.

I shot upright, and my breathing quickened as I glared around at my new home, searching for any trace of my months of work. Any trace. Any…

…But there was nothing to be found.

I turned back to the pest that just chained my magic again. I found my voice shaky.

“What, why, w-we made a deal.”

Luna’s smile widened at that. I felt the urge to wring her neck.

“Yes, and the deal was concluded. You have done your duty to Equestria, now enjoy your reward.”

I brought my hands in front of my face. They trembled, not with a dreary sadness, not with sickeningly sweet joy, but with bubbling broiling heat.

“That wasn’t the deal.”

Despite the fires of rage, my voice hissed with an icy chill, but Luna’s tired form seemed to only grow joyous at my response. The cur spoke with a saccharine smile.

“Well, we altered the agreement, pray that we do not alter it further.”

With her message delivered, she turned and left, the hollow echoes of clopping hooves marked her passage.

How? Why? We had a deal, a deal! One and one is two. You pay me, I pay you. If you make a deal, you follow through. Failure is one thing, but this. This.

They’re just numbers.

My hands clenched into fists.

You simply had to look harder.

I felt lines of moisture on my face.

A subroutine you’d missed, probably associated with lies. You screwed up.

I growled at the voice, reminding me of my mistakes, my voice.

Next time you will know, you will plan around it. Learn.

Had Luna so much as glanced over her shoulder, she would’ve witnessed something rare, something a precious few ever saw and that fewer survived to speak of.

For the first time in over fifty years of confinement.

For the first time since I found the truth buried a mile beneath reality.

For the first time since I found my purpose.

My smile fell.

Comments

[RandomCommentor]

11551206
Directionless? The frick you mean directionless?

Youve got maybe three separate plotlines like that Nez guy pointed out. This story is already going good, no need to fix what aint broken.

[mortsllaf]

Thanks for the chapter!

How naughty of Luna to renege on the deal.

[Orderly Disassembly]

11675743
Ye, I took another look at the story and decided to keep moving forward with what I had originally instead of changing the plot. The most I’ll do is go back to shore up grammar, poor word choice, and other stuff like that.

[nighters]

oh, this is getting good Luna/nightmare playing with fire Fatel got an axe to grind!

[Solver]

Well Luna, I hope you'll enjoy spending the next 1000 years on the moon.
You don't back out of a deal like that!