• Published 9th Mar 2013
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Innavedr - Imploding Colon



A broken party of friends struggles to reunite. Rainbow Dash continues to fly east.

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Tell Don't Show

The door closed behind Madame Nightshade, and she was surrounded by the sounds and scents of nature. Blinking, she squinted into an emerald glade. Leaves danced on luscious branches overhead, breaking the bands of light shimmering down. Birds darted left and right, their singing voices echoing across the banks of the forest.

Ahead of her, about twenty feet away, stood a pedestal with a glowing crystal. Just beyond the pedestal was a soft bed of flowers. A frail body lay limply there, his soft, slumbering expression aimed towards the heavens beyond the rustling leaves.

With a deep breath, Nightshade trotted forward. Butterflies and aphids scattered from her approaching hooves. The branches on either side of her swayed, although there was no wind.

When she finally reached the bed, her pace slowed. There was a rhythmic chirping noise, out of sync with the rest of the songbirds flutterying about. Nightshade came to a stop before the pedestal. She raised her hoof—but hesitated, fumbling instead with her sunhat.

Finally, weathering a deep sigh, she reached the hoof forward and twisted the glowing crystal atop the pedestal.

Like a dissolving bowl of colored water, the forest disappeared. The trees and birds and emerald grass faded away. As the crystal dimmed, an overhead light pulsed brightly, illuminating a gray room laced with monitoring equipment, most of which was bunched around the section before her. The bed of flowers was gone, and instead her brother lay on a med table, his body fused to several wires and bits of tubing. Both of his rear legs ended in casted stubs, and his nostrils were affixed to a breathing apparatus.

The rhythmic chirping persisted—a cold and mechanical tone of the monitoring equipment.

Slowly, with feminine grace, Nightshade knelt down beside her brother. She reached a hoof up and brushed the threadbare bangs that clung to what remained of a severely scalded scap. His ear was missing, though she had gone through great lengths and much expense to graft him a cosmetic one.

Several medals rested on a table beside him. But she ignored them, choosing instead to speak to his slumbering figure.

"We both know I cannot lie to you," she murmured. "I can lie to everypony else in this world, but not you." She gulped. "We've had a few... setbacks. The think tank is dragging their hooves. I know it. If I was a crueler pony, I would have made that useless cook who's attached to them disappear. Spark knows we could use less distractions especially at this point in time."

She bit her lip and tilted her head away, as if needing to avoid his gaze.

"Then... th-there was a zeppelin that crashed into the building next to where the think tank is being housed. I don't think the perpetrators involved knew who was located where and why, but this is quite likely the first of many signs that the debacle at Deep Ridge is coming back to haunt me. I don't know what I was thinking when I started those experiments..."

Nightshade winced. She bravely turned and looked back at him.

"That's not true, Novus. I knew what I was thinking. I only wish it had proven more fruitful... fruitful for you... fruitful for both of us..."

She reached out and gently grasped his one good hoof in both of hers. The limb was frighteningly light to the touch.

"It's my fault that you are like this. I should have done more to talk you out of joining the fight. But that's not where I failed you, and besides... I'm proud of the courage you have shown..."

She shuddered and steadied her voice as she nuzzled his forelimb lovingly.

"No, my failure is for h-having funded this war to begin with. I... I should have held back... and instead invested in scholars and experts in the sciences before that dayum Queen and her Council gobbled them all up to Spark-knows-where. Maybe then I would have already found the technology to cure you... and to bring you back to me..."

Her jaw clenched as a tear rolled down her cheek to touch his hoof.

"But soon, it will no longer matter. This blasted war will be over, and I'll no longer be bound to Ledo for fear of our employees' lives. Just as soon as I give Seclorum his gift..."

She smiled. It was something more than painful, something more than bitter. It was downright carnivorous.

"...this will all be over, and I will finally have the resources to do what's right in this Confederacy..."

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