The Awesome Factor
“Haaaaaaughkkkt—nnnghh-Nnnngh! Beloved! Belovvvvvveddddd!”
Bodies exploded left and right, ribboning outward in peeled leaves of black and white coats. Bellesmith crawled through the blood-hot filth of it all, sobbing as the world thudded around her. Pilate fell repeatedly, bursting into dark ink and nightmare song on either side of the mare's twitching ears. She clutched her head and spun skyward, only to have his body fall from the Steel Wing again, exploding atop of her, filling her gaping mouth with screams and entrails.
“Hnnghlllgh—Sppkktk-Mmmmffbeloveddddd...” She spun around and crawled pathetically over the bloodsoaked fields of black and white fur. Every time she caught a glance of the spiraling sky, more and more bodies fell, pelting her with dead and dying memories, and all of them clinging to her shivering flesh like broken glass.
All the while, a dark sihlouette stood. The visage of Madame Nightshade loomed above Belle like a monolith. Her frail coat and fine silks were utterly unblemished, untouched by the scarlet holocaust raining down all around her. She stared at the bawling unicorn with an unemotional expression. As Belle crawled closer, she flared her nostrils and spoke with the voice of a million thunders.
“No more charades. No more coaxing. You are going to tell me all you know about Austraeoh, Eljunbyro, and Innavedr, and you are going to tell me now.”
“I... I-I can't...” Belle crawled. Belle sobbed. Belle drowned in Pilate's juices, writhing and twitching all over. “I w-won't!” She reached a hoof up, floundering at the edges of Nightshade's fetlocks, entreating her. Begging. “Please... stop this... end this...” She whimpered pitifully, gargling up zebra blood. “It hurts... it hurts so m-much... please... please!”
Nightshade's voice rang like cold metal. “The only way to stop this is to give me what I want.”
“The... the machine world...?” She hissed and wheezed, trying to find space to breathe through all of the blood and organs splashing around her from the falling bodies. “I... c-can't let you have it...”
“My little pony, I already have it,” Nightshade droned. “However, I am on a quest to learn how to use it. I need you to tell me, for the sake of this Confederacy, for the sake of the world.”
“Guhhh... mmmfff... c-can't...” Belle clutched her head and sobbed. “I can't I can't I can't I can't...”
Clenching her jaw, Nightshade finally bent over and made contact with the mare, but only to snap off her horn. As she did so, a pent-up blast of air evacuated from the unicorn's skull, and it carried with it the sound of screams and torment.
Belle howled in pain, clutching her skull and curling up into a fetal position. All of the earth brown mane peeled off her skull, so that her body once more became the emaciated, starving fugitive who had struggled to gallop her way through the streets of Blue Nova. As her blood-stained features tensed and untensed, Belle realized that not all the screams sounded like her own. The last of the air and blood evacuated her skull, and she suddenly registered the agonized tones.
“Phoenix!” The mare thrashed and sputtered, wide-eyed against the mists of blood. “He's... he's...”
“Still alive? That's putting it lightly,” Nightshade muttered. She grinded up what was left of Bellesmith's horn in the crook of her immaculate hoof. “The soldier's memories told me where to find you, so his flesh won't be around for long. It'd be easy to slit his throat and end it all in the real world. But since you're not making it easy for me, then why should I make it easy for him?” She released her grip of the horn, allowing the golden dust filaments to fly like pollen over the fields of black and white fur. “I'll trounce upon the mountains of his mind with the force of ten million psionic tidal waves. I'll ravage his brain, slowly, synapse after synapse, until meat pours out his eye sockets.” She gazed down at him, her eyes strobing purple like unfiltered manastreams. “You may not care much about yourself, doctor, and you may no longer have a beloved to cherish, but I assure you... I will carve the name of your cowardice the mercenary's heart, and I'll make his last sentient thought one of intense scathing hatred for the foolish mare who brought him to such a sickening fate.”
Belle panted and panted. Hugging herself, she gazed beyond the blood soaked zebra skin.
Twelve shadows gazed back, their tiny features obscured beyond the desolation of that threnody in motion.
“You!” Belle sputtered, reaching a hoof out through the bloody waterfalls as more bodies exploded around her. “You don't have to do what she says! She's only p-powerful because you let her be!” Sinewy chunks of zebra flesh splattered over her body. She writhed, swollowed down her vomit, and shouted towards the dimming horizon. “She can't hurt you if she has to use you! Can't you see! Help me, please! I beg you!”
One by one, the foalish figures bowed. They disappeared, like stars vanishing on the hazy curve of a black and white ocean.
“No! Come b-back!” She shrieked as she tried crawling after them, only to slip upon the puddles of scarlet. “She knows nothing of Austraeoh! She would only hurt her if she had her! Don't trust her! Trust me! Please!”
Nightshade's shadow rose up, solidifying into the Madame herself. “They will not listen to you,” the pony growled, looming like a black cloud over the mare. “They are a server, a database, a means to an end.” The tip of her ethereal horn glowed with violent purple light. “They learned long ago that my will is righteous, and my wrath is impenetrable.” As she spoke, a lance materialized out the end of her horn. She brought two hooves up, grabbed the spear, and hoisted it over her head. “And in this domain, that's the least I can say about your consciousness.”
With that, she thrusted the blade deep into Belle's gut. The mare's body contorted, tossing her bald, hornless head back as bolts of unbridled mana coursed through her golden body. Her belly undulated, and soon ropes of blood slithered up the staff, coalescing just inches from where Nightshade gripped it.
“I will drain you of all the truth that your life energy has to give me,” Nightshade snarled, her silken features shimmering against the blood and lightning. She leaned against the spear, applying more and more force on the penetrating weapon. “Give in, doctor. You are weak. You are alone. You cannot win this.”
“I...” Belle hissed, her eyes clenched as she shook her head left and right. “I... I am not alone... and... I will not lose...” She hissed and growled, her voice cracking, “I-I hate to lose!”
Nightshade's face contorted into a furious frown. “For Spark's sake, don't you see what you're doing to yourself?! Give up the fight! Give up this pointless chase! Don't you care for your well-being whatsoever?! You're being foolish... idiotic... asenine!”
“Wr-wrong...” Belle looked up at the unicorn. She gave a lasting hiss, and then my eyes opened, sharp and angry and red. “Wrong A-word...” A pair of blue wings burst out of my side.
Nightshade's whole body flinched. She was about to do more than that.
I gripped the spear in two hooves and shoved her off. With a single grunt, I bounced up into the air, hovering on sapphiric feathers. I yanked the pitiful weapon over my knee; it exploded into dust that then swarmed around my neck, coalescing into a golden pendant.
Nightshade stumbled backwards, her lips quivering. At last, she sputtered, “Doctor Bellesmith—”
”Raaaaaaaaaaaugh!” I plowed into her with a blue blur. Together, we bore a ravine through the black and white fields, sprouting flowers and grass and pond water on either side. Rain clouds spread overhead as I straddled her chest, tossing a prismatic mane back.
“Ding Dong isn't here, ya melon fudge,” I snarled, then shoved two of my hooves into her chest cavity. “And neither is your heart! Nnnngh!”
I ripped the mare's belly in half. As she screamed, a comet of guts roped its way towards the heavens, every square inch of it was covered with a wounded soldier's howling face. As Nightshade's screams turned into Novus' bellows, she writhed and thrashed in vain attempts to get away.
There was no getting away. I'd tried it myself.
“Yaaaaugh!” With a banshee scream, I picked her up and flung her across the muddy trenches. Bombshells and shrapnel exploded left and right as Xonan and Ledomaritan airships battled overhead.
Nightshade fell knee-deep into the mud and muck, struggling to close her chest up, but none of it could silence her brother's screams, nor mine.
I flew at her, swinging a right hoof. It connected hard, causing her to spit blood and mana-thought into the nebulous hellscape. I followed it with a left swing and a kneed to the chest. Each meaty impact caused the universe to shake and quiver. Zeppelins fell to the earth, burning in bright orange plumes. A wave of hot soot and gunpowder swarmed past us, through us, burning our skin. Nightshade whimpered. I only laughed.
“You thought... you th-thought you c-could actually use your own friends and family's pain against Belle?!” I smashed her through a wooden trench full of clattering weaponry and then lifted her by the neck. My wings engulfed us in a dark, dark embrace. “You're lamer than a pile of dead snakes, lady. If you don't get the point, then why have one?” Without wasting a second, I thrusted my head forward and bit over her horn. I twisted my teeth, and with a sickening crack, her skull split open, leaking the sound of her brother's wails by tenfold.
“Aaaaaaugh!” Nightshade stumbled back, hugging herself and quivering all over. Her head tossed to the side, melted, and then another protruded out her shoulders to replace it, likewise screaming. She pinwheeled through howling mouth after mouth as her body fogged over and flickered inside out like a candle in a baby's sob. “No! Spark alive! Disconnect! Disconnect—”
“Uh uh!” I reached into the faded after-image and yanked a solid, gasping mare out from the cloud. “No siree! Not that easy!” With a snarl, I swung us both around and flew us towards the edge of the trench. “This dance ain't over!”
We burst through the bloodied mud with a shatter of glass, plunging into sunlight over the streets of Blue Nova. Nightshade gasped and struggled to disentangle herself from me, but I wrestled for control of her body, ultimately swinging her like a mace from her tail.
“Fore!” I howled, chuckling like a demon. I flung her into the first thing I could see, a hulking aircraft with her name on it.
Nightshade flew through it like a missile shattering the streets below with manastones and burning lumber. When she landed on the ground, her body skipped like a stone against a pool of crystal blue water. She bounced, flailed, and landed in a patch of dry grass, surrounded by the burning woods of Foxtaur. The mare stood up, wincing all over, only to find herself devoured by my shrinking shadow.
“Haaaaaaugh!” I landed on her with a vicious drop-kick, plowing her through a fresh ravine of sundered earth and burning wood.
With a burst of mana-thought, she shoved me off of her, then materialized a pair of shiny scimitars from the plasma-spilling gash in her skull. Seething, she tried swinging the weapons at me. She tried.
All I saw was my devilish grin in the swishing metal. I juked to the left, to the right, and pirouetted until I was standing behind her. Gripping her belly, I roared and suplexed the two of us through a Searonese manaship. Metal and flame consumed us, all blurring into confused streaks of melting continents. Through the mess, I found her, repeatedly punching and pummeling her frame as I shoved the two of us towards a bright sun that was melting its way into the horizon. When I spoke, my voice was reverberating off the rocky precipices of Green Slope, then the concrete corridors of Blue Shift, and finally the wooden huts of Aridstone.
“You want pain?!” I snarled into her face, gripping her gaping skull until her jaw buckled under my hooves. “I will give you pain!” With a furious grunt, I tossed her like a rag doll onto the cave floor.
Nightshade rolled and rolled until she came to a bruised stop. She shuddered all over and tried to get up, only to have a huge and jagged dragonclaw sail down, puncturing her lower legs. “Aaaaugh!”
But Axan wasn't through. Lifting the mare's body, the dragon queen slammed her repeatedly against the walls and rockfaces of the place. Nightshade sputtered, leaking tears and blood into the dreamscape, so that they fell down on me, cold and useless, like snowflakes.
“Pain is more than a tool! It's fuel! Something you live with... something you learn from! And once you make friends, you learn to turn it into something else, something righteous! But you wouldn't know anything about righteousness, would you?!” I snarled up at her as I trotted over the mountain of Axan's gold. “How does it feel, Nightshade?! How does it feel to be nothing but pain?! You know, you could have moved on after your brother. You could have brought good to the world! But what's good about this?! What's good about any of this?!”
“You... You...” Nightshade wheezed and whimpered in the grip of Axan, flailing over me. “You are a m-monster... pl-plain and simple!” She shrieked as another claw pierced into her psionic self. “Nnnnngh—I only wanted to understand you... s-so that I could kn-know how to master your p-power for good!”
“But you were already using it!” I shouted, flying up to her on angry blue wings. “And ponies who use power without knowing a thing about it are totally uncool! You're as bad as Shell!” I kicked Axan's wrist away and caught Nightshade's ragged body before it could fall towards the Silvadelian rock below. “You want to know about monsters? Let me take you to where monsters are born.”
With a single flap of my wings, we flew into the ceiling and burst out of the burnt wasteland. Burning our way west, we scaled the desert, crossed the ravine, threaded our way through Darkstinians skyscrapers, and smashed through the looming body of Verdestone. As the gray dust and the white feathers of Whitemane cleared, we were blurring over mountains, swamps, more mountains, and forests. At last, when the color green couldn't bend anymore, it shrank, along with all the other colors, pooling into a warm and glistening navel in the center of everything.
That's where I dropped Nightshade. And that's where Nightshade stood up. And that's where she turned around just in time to get a face full of Twilight Sparkle.
With a shriek, the unicorn exploded, along with her crown. The dust of her body flew into Nightshade's space, filling her lungs and chasing out the screams. The mare stumbled up, struggling between chokes and sobs, only for Fluttershy's and Pinkie's ashes to rain on her. She fell over, rolled into a Ponyvillean lamppost, and hugged herself as Rarity's imploding screams added to the mix, bathing her.
“No... pl-please, no. Stop it. Just stop it all...”
I fell down, forming a grand crater in the middle of the tragedy. “You stop it!” I marched towards her on iron hooves. “You started this mess, so end it yourself!” I yanked her up by the neck, spun her around, and forced her to look up at the floating body of a sun-kissed farm mare. “Wake Belle up! Bring her out!”
Nightshade shivered and shook, her bright, teary eyes plastered on Applejack. “I... w-won't let her get away w-with what she knows... with wh-what she has yet to tell me—”
“Wake her!” I howled into her ear. Applejack's sobs filled the air, as did her flesh, dissolving in a dusty white ring around us, carrying the sobs of four hundred dawns, and all of them filled with wind and emptiness. “Wake her or I'll keep you here forever!”
“No... No...” Nightshade sobbed as the ashes surrounded us, closing in like a cocoon. The dizziness sprang forth from her with each cry. “This world needs me! This world needs the truth!”
“You c-can't be honest without harmony! Now wake her!” I suddenly reeled, almost losing my grip of the mare's dreamself. I panted, gazing off into the lengths of Ponyville beyond the ashes.
They stood in a line. Looking at me, their little mouths agape. All twelve of them stood speechless beyond the veil, losing their grip of the manastream just as they were losing their grip of their own fear.
“Wake her...” I snarled at them. I hissed as my eyes flickered to red on yellow. “Wake her up. Now.” Pain shot through me. I groaned and twitched as a horn burst out of one side of my head, and an antler out the other. When I spoke, it was with demonic resonance, growing as swiftly as the fur and claws did from my serpentine body. “Please. You've seen her nightmares. Snkkkt...” I growled at them through a sprouting fang. “You. Don't. Want. Mine.”
The twelve foals exchanged glances. They drew away, dissappearing beyond the whiteness. Soon, the world disappeared along with them. There was a flash of lavender, then all was gone. Nightshade and I were hugging, yet drifting away, lost in Applejack's ashes, like foals squinting into the glint of a blooming sunrise.
Then silence.
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Holy... burtality bonus of the century to you, IC. This was one heavy chapter. But the transition from Belle to RD was a bit poorly-done. It should have been more sudden.
Ah, there we go. Back to normal...
And back in Hell.
Wow, good smack down RD, it looks like Nightshade can't handle the memories of a prismatic pegasus. There may not have been my "Buck you Nightshade" line, but this chapter was amazing none the less.
In other, less important news, only 50 chapters left for the group to get together again and then embark on an adventure. Knowing what happened at the end of Eljunbyro, IC will send out the last 30 chapters of intense fighting and twists and turns all at once.
Fitting that a sequence of memory manipulation ends with a sequence of memory manipulation.
2898996 I agree, the transition seemed a little... Off. It could have been better, but it still lead to a great action filled chapter.
Jee whiz, that was intense.
Also of note, the deeply buried part of Belle that is now inhabited, seemingly literally, by a echo of Rainbow Dash. There are no hints (yet, I suppose) of telepathy. Belle's mind constructed a Rainbow Dash persona out of the imprinted memories, using said memories almost as a defense mechanism in this case. That is, it's all Belle here, but it is Belle using Rainbow's memories for strength. Since this is all taking place in a dreamscape, the Rainbow construct has a lot more power where otherwise it would simply manifest as personality traits bubbling to the surface now and again.
Nighthade can suck it!
gifsforum.com/images/gif/omg/grand/48569325_omg_reaction_gif.gif
YES! HA! Take THAT! You wanted Rainbow Dash, well you GOT her you sick twisted BITCH! I hope you enjoyed it because I know I sure as hell did!
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
So Belle has a super crazy inner Rainbow deal going on.
That's just insane.
whoa... intense battle! darn it! how i missed those! :D
Holy fuck.
It's as if Q grew a pair of angry tits... wait...
Holy updates, Batman.
And what an epic chapter this was. Criminy! Intense action, rampant symbolism, nice touches of stream of consciousness, and Nightshade getting the whoop-down she's been asking for. I'm really excited to see what happens when they wake up.
Also, happy 3/4's. Interesting to note that Innavedr is now almost exactly as long as Austraeoh, and there are still 50 more chapters to go. If there's a betting pool, my money's on 280K for the final length.
I'd put more of a comment but I'm a bit busy recovering my jaw from somewhere near the outer core of the Earth, because of how hard it dropped at this chapter. Belle's inner Awesome just sorted Nightshade out in the most
amazingawesome way possible. Bitch got what she deserved- and I get the feeling that there is still more to come.So that happened.
I have to say, now that I've caught up again, I'm so glad for the turn of events. Rainbow Dash's entry into the fray was so well written, I found myself whooping and shouting with triumph at the absolute beating that was to endure.
AND WHAT A BEATING IT WAS, FOLKS!!!
With each passing sentence, with each blow exchanged, with each new area, I found my grin growing wider and wider, until I could have sworn the corners of my mouth had met in the back of my head. I felt like I looked like the dude from Nightmare Before Christmas, the one with the mouth that wraps around his head.
Jesus, these past five chapters, and the Inception ones before, had me on the edge of my seat like a house-wife in the midst of a particularly good soap-opera (though, this is a million and a half times better than that).
2899444
Calm yo tits, Q, calm yo tits.
geezus. nightshade got the ONLY ass woopin.
Nightshade's getting all the Austraeoh she could have asked for and then some. But with such brutality... I wonder how much Chaos is in that display of Loyalty. Then again, she did refer to herself as Rainbow in the end, not Discord.
2899090 And with a duel, mind you! Nightshade was assaulting Belle with willpower and suffering - but when Rainbow started fighting back, who could overpower her in either?
2899164 My earlier point exactly. That's the main reason why I am so enthralled by Discord's part in all this. Rainbow's psyche is a bottomlessly complicated construct of herself, Harmony and Chaos. With Rainbow bleeding into Belle's mind, she has obviously taken Discord with her. But Discord is more than just some character trait of Dash, he's an originally independent creature completely separate from her. If he too now shows a presence in Belle's mind, I wonder if he is just another echo or if the possession has spread.
2899191 This has to be the most accurate possible summarization of this chapter. Congratulations.
If you look in the dictionary, under "owned", its got a picture of Nightshade.
And, to finalize the inception jokes, I believe that was one hell of a 'kick'!
I really enjoyed this chapter.
Whew
Dj-BlankFlank
"Holy... burtality bonus of the century to you, IC. This was one heavy chapter. But the transition from Belle to RD was a bit poorly-done. It should have been more sudden."
Consider that you're trying to improve the pacing of a single chapter of an authors writing who is in the midst of telling a ridiculously long, developed story which, if you pick apart piece by piece, leaves behind an excellent example of how to do pacing right. I may have nitpicks with some aspects of his writing, but in terms of delivery and pacing, I can't really find a fault large enough to be worth mentioning.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw605_130324976317.jpg
But then again, perhaps you only say that because that transition wasn't meeting your idea of it.
Hah!
I totally called it.
Pleasantville Blue Nova.
Pilate used as a tool to wheedle nuggets of info from Ding-Dong.
Totally called those things.
And now I get to read about Madame Nightshame getting her dock paddled.
It's a good night
2899164
I would call it a Rainbow Dash thoughtform.
Teehee. The good doctor has a Dashie tulpa.
I'm curious, did Nightshade capture Belle (and Kera) while she was sleeping and hook her up to a machine, or was she somehow able to pull her into sequencing from a distance?
2900002
It may just be that the Dash-memory knows/realizes it's a dream, so she can be as nasty as she wants to prove her point. In the real world, I doubt even a somewhat chaos controlled Dash (with horns!) would go that far.
About time.
Awesome.
You know you're awesome when you can save your friends from mind-controlled torture without even being there.
2899657
Oh COME now, you can hardly blame them for being excited. It was probably all that talk about viscera. My tits are insectivores, and all good insectivores know that spilled organs usually mean a bug buffet!
Besides which, they're very excitable birds.
On a side note, I learned an interesting lesson about referring to my Humes' ground tits as 'Humies' within earshot of Miss Heartstrings.
Egads!
I keep my tits in a gilded cage. Their names are Celly and Lulu.
2900150 Remember Aridstone? Because they won't be remembering anything anytime soon.
That about sums up everything I could have said.
Nothing better for a case of fearful service than seeing your master get the living shit beaten out of them by a messianic figure -- one that mutates into a horrific entity at that. Yeah . . . those twelve little foals ain't gonna be quite so fearful any more
Also, in light of what we've seen:
"Screw your dictionary, I'm Rainbow Dash"
Goddamn, that was awesome. Like reading Cannibal Corpse.
No push-ups this chapter, ):(. You've earned a break.
EPIC.
ASS KICKIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!!!!!!
[youtube=HHhVSJUvGwo]
I knew it was fake.
But I didn't expect Rainbowsona to flare up and rip Nightshade into shreds.
Well played.
Now, what kind of trauma will Nightshade be in now that she's uncovered the single most powerful unicorn in existence?
So about 14 chapters ago I decided to wait for a few chapters to accumulate before going through them all... I AM SO GLAD I DID. I don't know if I could have withstood the suspense.
so i was wrong about it being a dream, but eh... what can ya do....
now that Night Shade is taken care of, they need to kick shell's ass, and find out who innaveder is!
2900950 Kera, most likely.
Shit just got real didn't it.
2900209
WOW. It took me several read-through's of your comment to get that you're talking about birds.
You... are talking about birds.... right?
2899009First off, I am extremely touched that you managed to not only catch up to me, but also that you want to keep reading my evaluations.
sniff...
As a token of my appreciation, I will watch you.
poptropicalthunder.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/rainbow-dash-american-salute-486-1.png
Also, I always post daily. If I can't, I'll usually specify why. So a chapter a day keeps the Confederates away, I suppose.
(Wow, that was bad.)
Hot Diggity. So much Schadenfreude right there. Every second of it was delicious. So Dream!Rd also has the ability to summon random creatures to do more beatdowns for purposes, eh (Axan)? mm. I like that.
I wonder if this has any relationship with RD feeling sick a while back.
Good lord...now THAT was one hell of a turnaround.
2900023
Uh, I dunno about you, but this Ledo arc's been going on for 300k words. I'm not sure if I'd call that "good pacing"
2901359
I've become quite the ornithophile!
I also have a flock of six blue-footed boobies I've named after another certain six ponies.
2902807
Heh. Inception ain't got shit on this.
i.imgur.com/3oIWEqr.gif
Oh,how I love these fight scenes. Also seems like Discord is getting abut more pull in Rainbow's and Belle's minds.
2901577 ... I think it just might. RD dizzifies, Belle gets her RD on, in full on chaotic beatdown mode.
in fact, I think the apparent coincidence of dizziness with beatdown is a solid peice of evidence for old mr. Dizzy himself being present within both Belle and RD, just as 2900002 was suspecting
Ouch. Rainbow beat her up preeeety badly.