> Mind, Body and Soul
>  by Crazy Laughter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Smuggler's Day Out
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Smuggler's Day Out




   Twilight Sparkle stared at the alchemical concoction bubbling in the vial in her laboratory. Granted, neither of these two acts were that unheard of. Twilight stared at many things most ponies would find tedious after a cursory glance and she did conjure up potions regularly, sometimes even staring at them for extended periods. The thing that set this instance apart from all those before it was that Twilight didn’t understand why the potion was doing what it was doing.



   Now, that was both uncommon and more than a little alarming to the academically trained alchemist.



   Twilight Sparkle had to exert a frustrating amount of willpower to force her mouth to close and her mind to stop screaming about how insane what she was seeing was, instead try to explain the situation somehow.



   “First, the what; observable effect of what confuses you.” Twilight Sparkle rattled out as she started to pace in front of the impossible concoction. She had to come at this like it was another lesson given by Princess Celestia, another puzzle for her to find the pieces and make them fit into her own whole.



   “The alchemical concoction in the vial in front of me is reacting to the outside air as if a reagent had been introduced, when it was made sure no trace of such materials were anywhere near the vial, only the so-called building blocks of it. Any of these materials could not produce the desired effect on their own, or together, not without being processed in ways that could not happen in nature.”



   To noponies surprise, this monologue only confused Twilight Sparkle further. Everything that had just happened, right in front of her own eyes, spat in the face of every law of the universe and magic and all around life she knew, but she could not deny what just happened.



   “The only logical explanation for what I have seen here is…” Twilight Sparkle had to close her eyes and swallow back the bile in her throat for dismissing scientific protocols to make such an assumption so early in testing, but she had to voice out her fears/hopes, or she would just go crazy and be done with it. She did always like cats, but there was still science to be done!



   “I must conclude, with the evidence in front of me, that the formerly ridiculed form of magic consisting of the constructing of transmutation circles and changing the composition of matter through them has become far more potent and applicable to use in everyday life.” Twilight Sparkle stopped pacing and glared at the immaculate, but simple transmutation circle around the vial and the components of the complex reagent in the middle of her basement laboratory. 



   “The most likely cause for the increased potency of this nearly forgotten branch of magic are the localised magical instabilities recorded all around Equestria. Arcane storms, as they are called by the masses.” Twilight furrowed her brow in concentration as she levitated bubbling vial out of it’s holder, careful not to let a bit of her magic spill onto the still active circle around it. “As expected, the effect of the transmutation circle stays in place, even if the object is removed.” Twilight paused to smudge the transmutation circle with a hoof and could feel the magic humming in it dissipate with an in-audible hiss.



   “Disrupting the transmutation circle that produced the effect does not affect the end result in any way. No trace of magical energy can be sensed from the activated compound, so the magic in the circle only rearranges matter in the way the caster wishes, and that the theory transcribed in it is able, it does not affect the components or the produced matter after the act.” Twilight whirled the vial around in fascination. The reaction between the compound and the reagent fizzled out in a minute or so, predictably, but the test had left more questions than answers. “More tests are in order. SPIKE!”



   Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia’s prized student, dug into this new discovery about magic with a fervor only seen in academic souls seeking recognition, that is to say, complete and utter, forget to bathe and eat for days, obsession. It was not long until she had an understanding of how the transmutation circles worked and had memorized every way the limited mages before her had learnt to use this rare magic.



   She was able to resist pushing those boundaries for a commendable amount of time. Still, the arcane storms making life hard for other ponies, yet making her research that more easier, were growing less frequent and not as potent. She was about lose her chance to discover new heights of magic! She needed to be the brave pony to traverse the unknown, nopony else was going to do it, they didn’t know how!



   “Spike, I call this the Soul Transmutation Circle. The supposed effect will be to make a living soul out of the arcane energy gathered within the circle. To create something out of nothing, can you imagine it? Everypony thought it impossible, but it’s all in here, it’s all in the theory if you apply it to one of Starswirl the Bearded’s less than legal experiments during Celestia’s prohibition on hard cider.”



   “Wasn’t that the one where he tried to bring his -ahem- dutch wife to life, while under the influence of some home brewed moonshine?” Spike commented from his little desk, where he had just copied the transmutation circle almost perfectly, one line at the edge was not completed to stop the alchemical circle from activating accidentally.



   “That is nothing more than a mean-spirited piece of gossip that made its way into the public record out of a clerical error!” Twilight huffed out a breath and gave Spike a mean glare for even bringing up the exaggerated detail about Starswirl the Bearded’s experiment. The so called dutch wife was probably the only doll-like object he had access to at the time and surely had been borrowed from some less significant colleague. Now, Twilight Sparkle had transmuted a doll made out of wood, with working joints and enchantments hard-wired into the wood for it to be able to move, if there was a will. Far more suitable for the purpose, than a borrowed doll.



   “This will work, I am sure of it. This is science, after all.” Twilight Sparkle reassured herself and stepped up to the edge of the transmutation circle. Her horn sparked and she felt the circle tug at her magical reservoirs. The circle lit up brighter she thought it would and then there were these weird tentacle things and a huge eye sprouted from the centre of the circle...



   Woo, it worked! Oh, uhm… How do I explain this? All you need to know is that there was a black gate, an asshole of a deity and a blank space of your world in turmoil. Said deity let you off the hook, as I actually showed up and now you’re back in your world, as am I. The rest of what happened to you is traumatizing as shit, so I will keep it behind a wall in your noggin. But seriously though, don’t try this shit again.



   Twilight’s eyes shot open and she struggled to stand. Her head hurt and everything ached to some degree. It felt like she had been put through a woodchipper and put back together and the glue was still setting. She wondered if Luna had felt like this when the Elements were used against her in that old castle. Actually, those pieces of Nightmare Moon’s armor were still at that castle. It was weird that they were just left there, but even thinking about them brought a chill to her spine. To have all that power and knowledge and then make it something so twisted and dark, it was just wrong. The fact that they were the thing her mind wandered to just after her experiment was definitely not a good sign.



   “Twilight, you’re back!” Twilight heard the hurried scamper of clawed feet and then there was a miniature dragon hugging her neck with a grip that nearly cut off her air pipe. For Spike to even have this reaction, then she would have had to have been gone, so what the hell had just happened?



   “Spike, tell me what happened. I’m okay, so please help me understand.” Twilight reassured the little dragon with a comforting hoof and set the little guy down gently. She hated herself from being upset at him from smudging up the transmutation circle and decided to swallow back the comment about it, taking the look on the dragon’s face.



   “You disappeared, Twilight! One moment you were there and then the black tendrils dragged you into that creepy eye and… I’ve been waiting for - for ten minutes! I think, at least. Felt like a lot longer, just waiting here, not even a body to bury.” Spike’s eyes brimmed with tears at this point, as he finally let himself think these thoughts he had fought down during those long ten minutes Twilight had been gone.



   “Spike, are you saying I was gone for a whole of ten minutes?” Twilight asked, placing a reassuring hoof on the dragon’s shoulder. He needed to know she was there, not in wherever she had been spirited away to.



   “Yeah, I counted. I stayed here and counted the seconds and then the minutes! I was going to send a letter, but then the eye spat you back and…” Spike’s eyes unfocused as he looked up at Twilight, so Twilight gave him a gentle shake to snap the little dragon out of whatever stupor he was in. He was startled out of it and continued on his tale with a hand at his head, as if he had a headache.



   “So, yeah, you were sent back and I rushed to strangle you with affection, that was what happened.” Twilight couldn’t be 100% about it, but she was pretty sure she heard somepony groan closeby right at that moment.



   “I don’t remember any of it, Spike.” Twilight said, only to realize that was not quite true. She remembered things. There was a black gate sitting in a place full of energy in turmoil. There was also an absolute ruler of that space there, a god, if you will, being quite unpleasant. Her body had been dismantled into nothing for that whole time? “Also, somehow I feel like I failed a test.”



   Spike slapped her, hard. He did a jumping start to it to give it momentum and everything. Twilight stepped back and nursed her stinging cheek, horn at the ready in case her dragon assistant had gone insane.



   “Don’t you dare treat this as another test! You were gone, Twilight! This is not failing at some test in magical theory, this was your life! Never put your life in danger like this! Please…” Spike’s passionate little yelling match tapered out at that point and he simply fell into a gentle hug against Twilight’s neck.



   “Aww, the widdle guy really does wuw you. This is heartwarming, really, it is.” A male voice commented, very closeby, in the room with them.



   “Who are you? Show yourself!” Twilight spun around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice, levitating Spike on her back. She sparked up her horn, ready to defend herself against whoever had forced their way into her laboratory. After finding nothing but her disheveled laboratory, her eyes fell on the wooden doll laying abandoned outside the circle. She glanced down in surprise and suddenly became aware that she was at the centre of the circle. She had transmuted herself!



   “Did - Did I create you?” She asked the wooden doll, taking a tentative step towards it. There was no response from the inanimate doll, but she really didn’t want to get close enough for it to reach her. “Do you have a name?”



   “Twilight, that’s the doll you made earlier, don’t you remember?” Twilight hushed Spike quickly, giving him half a glance. The doll chose that exact moment to speak.



   “Yeah, Twilight, you’re not acting all that sane.” The doll spasmed to life and Twilight could hear joints creaking and wood splintering as a force she had not enchanted into the wood forced the doll’s head to twist 180 degrees. Black ichor oozed from the from the doll’s empty eye sockets and a mouth made out of rows and rows of grinding teeth had replaced the rest of the wooden pony’s face. The doll’s body kept twisting and breaking until it was nothing but a mass of splinters and black goo, rearranging and forming long and spindly legs with wickedly sharp tips that sunk into the floor as the monstrosity struggled to heave its bloated mass toward her.



   Twilight couldn’t move, the surprise and horror of the creature’s form had stunned her, but she was certain she would die if she didn’t move. She knew she had to act, she had to run and get away, to lock the basement up and set fire to the library, but she was still just standing there gawking at the impossible monster inching its way closer to her. Far too soon the creature was writhing and shifting its mass to bring its horrible mouth on level with her eyes. The dolls empty eye sockets staring at her driving an ice cold spike of fear in her. The eyes, or lack thereof, drew her attention away from the gnashing mass of teeth and a hungry darkness behind it growing larger and larger, spreading wider like a wound on everything good and sane in the world.



   Just as Twilight was sure the monster of her own making was going to start tearing at her with that impossible mouth, a flash of green fire caused it to shriek and its form to spasm wildly in pain. Finally, Twilight was able to move and she took a hurried step back as the creature flailed around blindly, spitting out parts of its mass that had caught fire and filling the basement with an incredibly foul odor.



   “Twilight, run! We need to -” Twilight turned her head to Spike just in time for her face to be splattered by scalding hot blood. The monster possessing the doll had stabbed one of its sharp legs at the little dragon and had hit its mark perfectly. She watched in horror as the creature’s claw scraped and dug its way deeper into Spike’s cranial cavity through his eye. There was one final jerk of the claw and Spike’s body went limp on her back.



   She finally started running, Spike’s dead weight sliding off of her back as she leapt up the stairs faster than she had ever ran, hearing the creature hiss and click its countless teeth in satisfaction. She sorely hoped she could believe that the crunching she heard just before she slammed the door shut was anything other than Spike being grounded up by those constantly shifting fangs.



   Twilight Sparkle stumbled out of her basement doorway at a dead sprint, the door slamming shut behind her so fast her tail was almost caught between it and the doorframe. She slammed into the reading table in the centre room of her library and the ever present carving of a horsehead toppled to the ground with a wooden “thunk!”. She flinched at the sound, but was shaken out of her horror by it enough to levitate everything heavy in front of the door to the basement.



   Was that what she had created, a twisted mass of hunger and malice? It might have been true that no scholar had been able to come to terms of the fundamental basis for the soul’s architecture, but that thing… No, there was no way something so vile could be what lay at the base of every living soul.



   Yet, a yearning for life, for fulfillment and for the betterment of self is what defines the soul. Would it be so insane to think that if you boil that to its base component, it is nothing but naked hunger? Something that is common to all living things is a hunger for one thing or other. Hunger for recognition, for fame, or a sense of belonging are all but the different faces of the same yearn for more. The face of the soul might just be that hungry, evil thing trapped in the cellar.



   “I didn’t want this, any of this… Oh, Spike, I am so sorry!” Twilight wailed as the situation and the inevitable consequences following it crashed onto her psyche. The evil thing in her cellar laboratory had been created by her and was undoubtedly a monster, but if fire could hurt it, then it could be dealt with. Even with the evil she had conceived out of the picture, Spike was still dead because she had dabbled in magic she didn’t fully understand. She would be trialed and probably sentenced to life in imprisonment in magical shackles for practicing dark magic that led to loss of life.



   “Aa-nd scene! Great work everypony, I really felt there was real emotion there. Cake and assorted spirits stage right!” The male voice from the cellar called out in a disturbingly chipper tone, in the same room with her, again. “Okay, you are oblivious, that much is clear. I bet sending the Princess a note might be an idea, hmm?”



   “What are you? Why did you kill Spike?!” Twilight screeched as her horn light back up with arcane energy. She would burn this thing to ashes if she had to, but nopony else was dying today.



   “Spike’s dead? That is horrible, whatever axed him?” Twilight heard a snapping sound and with a sudden bout of dizziness she remembered what she had just ran away from; A still doll and a freaked out baby dragon asking her what was wrong. She remembered running from nothing and Spike falling from her back, but she also remembered the hungry monster of gnashing fangs she thought to be chasing her. Now she knew that the monster had been a fabrication, but the memory still chilled her blood.



   “Dear, you didn’t think breaking taboos would come without a price? You wanted to create a soul, but you summoned me instead.” Twilight whirled around as she was finally able to place the voice and saw a strange bipedal creature wearing an immaculate white suit and a white hat with a black hash. The thing flashed a friendly smile and waved at his apparel with one of its dexterous looking hands. “It is common knowledge that the guy wearing a white suit is the bad guy, or at least a douche. I’m sure you think I’m either of the two, so I decided to dress the part.”



   “What are you? Why are you doing this?” Twilight asked as she cast layer upon layer of holding magic around the chatty creature. It said he was summoned because of her soul transmutation circle, so was it a spirit of some sort? He chuckled at Twilight with a shake of his head, before casually stepping through every layer of spells meant to keep him in. He then proceeded to do a little dance right on top of the line meant to keep him in to drive the point home.



   “My gut reaction is to answer that I am human, but I’m not sure that’s accurate anymore.” Twilight saw the man’s lips curve in a small smile before he made a sharp snapping sound with those delicate fingers.



   The first thing she noticed was a writhing motion under his suit’s fabric and then she heard the hissing and clicking again. Black ichor started to ooze out of the bipedal thing’s eyes and his mouth spread impossibly wide in an emotionless smile. She watched in horror as his teeth turned sharp and serrated as more pushed through the fabric of his suit and ground it to a bloody pulp as they gnashed against each other.



   “Right now I’m aiming to be your worst nightmare.” The thing gurgled out as the last pieces of immaculate white garment disappeared in a flurry of grinding teeth and clicking claws digging into the wood of the library’s floor. This time the thing’s mouth stopped expanding after it was large enough to fit her whole head and the rest of its mass migrated to form stronger and more stable legs than the fragile claws before. Twilight backed up to stairs to her personal living space, realizing the thing was between her and the door leading outside.



   “This is not real, it’s just a fabrication meant to manipulate me!” Twilight screamed to herself, trying to convince herself that the monster writhing towards her was not real. The thing smashed a sturdy claw in the wood between them and hoisted its squirming mass a good pony-length closer to her, falling on what could be considered its face, but never stopping in its steadfast pursuit of her.



   Deciding that it didn’t really matter if the mass of teeth inching its way toward her was real or not, Twilight screamed and started running to the only place that could be safe from the monster a few seconds longer, upstairs. This thing had trouble maneuvering on even ground, so hopefully the obstacle of stairs would slow it down enough for Twilight to figure out a way to stop it.



   Spike’s magical dragonfire seemed to hurt it earlier, so maybe magic of the same intensity could as well. Twilight stopped running at the top of the stairs and aimed her horn at the monstrosity. She didn’t bother to bring to mind any specific spell to use on the thing, she just threw all the arcane energy she could through her horn and hoped it would destroy the monster.



   The purple energy smashed into the the writhing mass of evil and to Twilight’s relief the thing was not only hurt by it, it exploded into thousands of disgusting little pieces. She was only slightly disturbed by the grin spreading on her face at the sight; it was like thing had been shot with a cannon.



   Her face fell when these thousands little pieces started moving. It was not a slow flowing motion you would expect from eviscerated remains, it was more like the hussle and bussle of a hive of ants. Thousands of small things moving against and over each other, some unknown logic guiding them toward a common goal. Unfortunately, that common goal still seemed to be eating her and the blanket of small hungry black things swarmed toward her faster than the thing had accomplished as one terrifying thing.



   She realized she was screaming in fright and throwing things at the things only when Rainbow Dash crashed through the library doors, ready to pummel anything threatening her. It was an immense relief to have one of her friends there, but Twilight wasn’t sure how much the pegasus could help against whatever she was fighting. From what she saw it was either an entity capable of resisting unicorn magic and shapeshifting, or a thing within her mind, capable of altering her perception and memory. Either way, she didn’t see the brash pegasus doing any better against it either way.



   “Twilight, what is it?! What’s wrong?” Rainbow Dash asked as she spun around in the air, eyeing every corner of the library for the thing Twilight was fighting, except the swarm of hungry black things still inching toward her. So, they really were only in her head.



   “You can’t hurt me, you are nothing but an illusion.” Twilight stated and took a resolute step towards the swarm of black things. They kept coming towards her for a moment, before stopping and the strange bipedal thing appearing in their place. She blinked and the thing was still standing there, hands in pockets that were stitched on the side of his pants. He still had that white suit and the annoying smile.



   “That is very perceptive of you, Twilight Sparkle, but it’s not like I have to.” He leisurely raised a hand and pointed toward the confused Rainbow Dash floating towards her. Twilight Sparkle turned her head toward her friend before she could doubt the thing’s reasons for pointing the pegasus out. As soon as their eyes met there was a another bout of dizziness, along with a sharp pain behind her eyes. She had to blink away the pain and rubbed her eyes with a hoof to get rid of the itchiness.



   “Watch out, Rainbow Dash. I think it’s -” She barely had time to take a panicked step back as Rainbow Dash spun in the air to buck her in the throat. She might have avoided her throat from being crushed, but the buck still landed and Twilight was thrown against the wall with her head spinning and her breath forced out of her.



   “You monster! How dare you do that to Twilight!” The look in Rainbow Dash’s eyes was a mix of revulsion and anger, so whatever the thing was making her see must have been particularly nasty. Rainbow Dash charged Twilight with a snarl and the unicorn tried to scramble back onto her hooves before the enraged pegasus could pummel her. True to her name, Rainbow Dash was on her before Twilight could even stand up and she could feel something give in her chest as Rainbow Dash gave another hearty buck to her midsection, throwing her across the room and onto her bed.



   “Rainbow Dash, wait, it’s not real!” Twilight Sparkle tried to reach her friend as she was charging her again, hooves out in front of her and an aggressive flame in her eyes. Twilight Sparkle was sure that it had indeed been the feeling of a rib breaking before, as the cyan pegasus slammed her front hooves into her again and forced the fragmented bone to grind together. The sudden pain almost buried the feeling of them crashing through the window and pieces of glass burying themselves in her skin. Sadly it could not do much for the pain crashing to the ground caused. Stars flew in and around her as the pain erupted in her body. She was pretty sure she screamed, but things were getting dark now, her consciousness fading from the shock.



   “Please, stop…” Twilight wheezed out, as breathing in enough air to properly vocalize was too painful right now and drew her hooves close to shield herself. Rainbow Dash must have been doing something, but she had hard time concentrating on anything, there were distressed voiced all around them now. Why hadn’t Rainbow Dash attacked yet?



   “Twilight… no, there was a stallion, with a sword! Where did he go? I… I couldn’t have, right? Did I do this?!” RD sounded scared and confused, not like there was an alien presence affecting her perception. If the thing was not in the spirited weather pony, then where was it now? It had been able to drive the the Element of Loyalty to attack their friend brutally, so there was no saying what else it was capable of.




   “It’s my…” Twilight struggled to get her legs to move. True to her character, RD had really spared no time in giving her a thorough beating. Whatever she had been forced to see must have been her appropriate size and dimensions, as every strike felt like they had found their mark splendidly. “fault…”



   Time didn’t pass for her, it was as if she was struggling get up on the cobbled street next to her library one moment and then she was suddenly jerking against sheets and wincing at her newly formed bruises. She could feel bandages tied around her torso, so she had been out long enough for Rainbow Dash to find a doctor, or at least someone who knew how to properly administer first aid.



   “You’re awake, thank goodness. I did what I could with the glass and cuts, but you shouldn’t try to move, an unicorn doctor is going to have to mend your ribs.” The unmistakable voice of Fluttershy called nearby and a gentle hoof tried to press Twilight down on the bed. Twilight opened her eyes and regretted it almost instantly as the bright day greeted her with headache inducing brilliance. They had carried her back up onto her bed, it seemed, as she could feel the breeze from the broken window.



   “Fluttershy, there’s no time for that. There’s something loose in Ponyville, the thing that made Rainbow Dash attack me. We have to find it and stop it, before somepony else is hurt.” She wanted to spring out of the bed and get to tracking down where and who that thing had jumped to after Rainbow Dash, but despite the urgency of the situation she couldn’t muster up the adrenaline to move past the pain of her broken ribs. “But I think have to wait for the doctor before I join the chase. Fluttershy, did you lock eyes with Rainbow Dash while you were tending to me? Did you feel dizzy and hear a voice in your head?”



   “I did feel a little dizzy after seeing Rainbow Dash attack you like that, but that could be, well, normal… Do you think that thing is in me? You don’t think it’s going to hurt me, is it? Or make me hurt anypony?” Fluttershy folded her wings and landed on the floor next to the bed. Twilight hadn’t even noticed the pegasus was hovering above it and wondered if Fluttershy made a conscious effort to make her wings quiet, or if there was something affecting her hearing.



   Twilight sighed and closed her eyes, letting her body relax. The thing needing eye contact to jump from pony to pony made him pointing out Rainbow Dash before she attacked her make sense. If all was needed was proximity, then he could have jumped into Rainbow Dash without having to point her out, not giving her even the slightest chance to defend herself.



   “No, if you hadn’t seen something out of place or heard a voice in your head by now, then it’s not in you. He didn’t strike me as someone who could stay quiet for this long. Did you feel another bout of dizziness after that, or see Rainbow Dash stagger while looking somepony in the eye?” Twilight took a deep breath after talking so long and immediately regretted it as her ribs shifted as a result. She still needed to catch up, to hopefully stop the thing from causing anymore harm.



   “Uhmm… yes, I think so. I felt a sudden bout of dizziness when I…” Fluttershy glanced away from Twilight as she tried to recall the situation, but suddenly froze in place in mid-sentence and a blank look came over her face. After a moment Twilight carefully extended a hoof and nudged the timid pegasus, causing her to snap back to reality.



   “Rarity, I was with Rarity! We were coming back from our weekly thing at the spa, when you came crashing down and… Oh dear, it’s in Rarity, isn’t it?” Fluttershy turned this way and that, unsure what to do with two of her friends in danger.




   “Pill’s here!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed as she dragged a disheveled looking unicorn doctor through the library’s front door. It took the energetic pegasus a few more seconds to drag the disgruntled doctor up the stairs and to where Twilight lay. “Great, she’s awake! Doc, heal her!”



   “So, I take it you fell down some stairs, hit your face on several doorknobs and cut yourself shaving?” The unicorn doctor said sarcastically as she gave a poisonous look toward Rainbow Dash. It took Twilight a second to make the connection, but when she did she blushed slightly at the doctor’s misconception.



   “Actually, Rainbow Dash attacked me while under the influence of a malicious spirit from what I assume to be a different dimension. I would appreciate it if you could set my ribs, so that we could save another one of our friends from this same spirit.” Twilight explained, waving a hoof in RD’s direction. The doctor would most likely not believe her, but she was far too tired to go with anything but the truth. “I think you should try and avoid eye contact with anyone acting irrationally for now, as well. I believe that is how the spirit jumps from pony to pony.”



   “U-huh…” The doctor’s horn was aglow and Twilight felt her bones shifting back to their supposed positions. The healing spell numbed the area it worked in, but the sensation was still far from pleasant. They all knew not to distract a healer at work, so the minutes it took for the doctor to see to her ribs were spent in uncomfortable silence. Twilight knew they had to hurry and catch onto the spirit’s trail as fast as possible, but there was no rushing a healing spell in progress.



   “To be frank, if it were anypony else saying what you are saying, I’d refer them to the psychiatric ward, but you and your friends get yourselves, along with our little town, into some weird situations. You also seem to be the ponies who solve those situations, so I’m going to just take your word for it. Watch out for eye-contact, was it?” The doctor wearily stated as the healing spell finished.



   “I believe so, yes. The one its jumping from will feel dizzy, so that might be another thing to watch out for.” Twilight explained as she got up to walk out. The doctor clearly wanted to tell her not to, but decided to simply walk next to her as she braved the stairs. The ribs were set and mended magically, but they still ached and every step sent a jolt of pain from her other injuries. Sure, it hurt, but it was not enough to hinder her in any other way than distracting her slightly. They had to get to Rarity as soon as possible.



   “I’ll spread the word the best I can, but I still have a shift to finish.” Dr. Pill said after giving his latest patient a quick once over at the bottom of the stairs. “You should still come by for a checkup once you wrap this up.”



   “Okay, she’ll do that. Twilight, we need to go!” Rainbow Dash had stayed quiet as the doctor worked, but now that Twilight was more or less healed, her brash nature was showing again. The doctor let himself out without being prompted to and supposedly went to finish his shift at Ponyville general.



   “Girls, we have to stick together. We can’t give this thing a chance to possess one of us when we’re alone and hide in us.” Twilight rushed out the door as fast as she could and heard the two pegasi flying next to her, although Rainbow Dash was obviously straining not to rush ahead.



   Just as they could see Rarity’s boutique it’s door opened and a white unicorn filly rushed out. As they closed the distance it was obvious that the filly was crying, or was very close to it. Whatever the case, Rainbow Dash had to catch Sweetie Belle, before she barrelled right into Twilight.



   “Twilight, there’s something wrong with Rarity! You’re the smartest pony ever, so you can help her, right?” the filly pleaded with a voice strained by emotion when she saw Twilight. Twilight wanted to reassure the filly, but she had to avoid eye-contact. Luckily Rainbow Dash put her hoof over the filly’s eyes as she set down on the ground.



   “Sweetie Belle, tell me what happened to Rarity. I know what is causing it and you cannot look us in the eyes because of it. You are going to have to trust me on that. Did Rarity lock eyes with you after she came back from her spa appointment?” The entity had definitely been inside Rarity, but it was still unclear if Sweetie Belle’s trauma was caused by a hallucination the spirit had caused, or if the malicious thing had stayed in Rarity and caused Sweetie Bell’s distress through her apparent insanity.



   “She… She rushed in and told me not to look at her, you know, like when Rainbow Dash ruins her mane with a gust of wind, but a lot louder and scarier. She locked herself in the bathroom and she kept screaming things that didn’t make sense. It’s like she doesn’t even hear me.” Twilight felt something twisting her insides when the filly went limp and gave one weak sob. “She stopped screaming a minute ago.”



   Fluttershy moved toward the filly to reconcile her, Rainbow Dash didn’t know what to do with the quietly weeping filly and Twilight Sparkle learned what true hatred felt like. She legitimately hated this spirit’s very existence and wished to see it snuffed out. She might hate herself for such thoughts in hindsight, but right now she wanted nothing more than to reduce this living thing tormenting her friends into nothing and spit onto whatever spot it vacates.



   “Why are you doing this, you cruel bastard!?” Twilight shouted as she slammed the door to Rarity’s home/boutique open with her magic. She stormed up the stairs and slammed the door to Rarity’s bathroom open. It might have been locked, but no normal lock can hold against an irate unicorn of Twilight’s caliber. “Come out and face us!”



   Rarity was lying in the bathtub with the shower running with her back to them. There was no blood, nor did it look like Rarity had hurt herself in any other obvious way. Her mane and fur looked disheveled and an impressive array of cleaning products lay discarded around the bathtub, but nothing sharp or poisonous. Rarity didn’t look as bad as Twilight had thought she would, but it didn’t matter if she didn’t look broken on the outside, it was obvious there was something very wrong.



   “Don’t look, please don’t, it was an accident… I didn’t mean it, Sweetie Belle, please… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, so sorry.” Rarity was muttering things in a low whisper, her voice sounding hoarse from the screaming she had been doing earlier. Her shoulder quivered now and again as she quietly cried. Twilight took tentative steps toward the unicorn, knowing the spirit could do whatever it wished with its victims perception. Rarity might not have been the most magically potent unicorn, but she could be dangerously accurate with her telekinesis. Twilight could Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy rushing up the stairs and apparently so did Rarity, as she flinched back and raised her head up suddenly, fixing on Twilight fearfully, like she had threatened to kill her brutally



   “Finally! It took you long enough!” The Spirit’s voice rang out after Rarity’s head hit the bathtub’s side. Rarity crawled as far as she could from Twilight, crying in earnest and tiredly trying to hide her face behind her hooves. “I mean, it was fun to stretch my proverbial muscles, but it’s not that amusing to keep beating a dead horse, pardon the pun, as accurate as it might be.”



   “Why would you do this?” Twilight asked, shocked from the state Rarity was in, barely registering her friends walking in. She blinked once and then the spirit was sitting on the edge of the tub in his white suit and fiddling with his hat between his long legs. Somehow it didn’t surprise her to see that his hair was slicked back and a little too long to look natural on his simian frame.



   “I am pressed for time, as you well know.” The spirit answered and twirled his hat in the air, indicating something above him. It took Twilight a moment to realize he was referring to the arcane storms that had made the transmutation circle possible. Twilight was slightly disturbed to see Fluttershy step through his projected form to try and console Rarity. For him to be concerned about the arcane storms passing meant he had every intention of returning to wherever he came from. As they didn’t know the extent of his power over their mind, or if their assumptions on its limitations were correct, it was difficult to fight him with what he’d shown himself to be capable of doing. 



   “I assume you want something, then?” The projection of the simian thing smiled and stood up from the edge of the tub and was suddenly pinching her cheeks with his hairless hands. There was no movement in between, the spirit was standing there one moment and a blink later he was kneeling in front of her, pinching her cheeks. She knew lacking an actual physical body was what made it possible, but it still felt jarring for Twilight’s overly analytical mind.



   “Who’s a clever pony? You are. Yes, you are!” The thing cooed at her in a way you would give compliments to an over-excited pet while he pinched her cheeks and ruffled her mane. His projected body disappeared when she blinked, but Twilight could hear him letting out a contented sigh. She must have looked beyond strange reacting to something her friends couldn’t see. “Yes, I do have a few demands I would like to see met. If that happens I will tell you how to reverse what I did to Rarity and the rest of you.”



   “The rest of us?” Twilight felt the bottom of her stomach fall off at that. There was a chance he was lying, but it was also possible that Rarity was only a demonstration, while what had been done to them was something they wouldn’t even notice themselves.



   “Yeah, I couldn’t take the chance of you declining my terms, so I did something similar to you and Rainbow Dash. Do as I say and you’ll never find out exactly what I did.” The spirit sounded annoyed that he even had to explain himself and Twilight really didn’t want him to demonstrate his power again on any more of her friends.




    “Girls, please listen. The spirit that did this to Rarity is inside me now. It says what happened to Rarity is reversible, but he has some demands before he tells us how.” Twilight declared, careful to keep her eyes to the ground while she spoke. There was no reason to think their assumption about the need for eye-contact was false, after all.



   “Why are we listening to this thing? Let’s just magic it into a jar or something and get Rarity to a hospital. We can’t be trusting this thing, not after all this!” Rainbow Dash suggested, followed by the sound of the pegasi supposedly looking for said jar.



   “You could do that, but you don’t stand to lose anything by going along with my terms for now. I need to see Nightmare Moon’s remains, first. You should knockout Rarity before we go, though. Without me in there she might be prone to self-harm.” The spirit said in a tone that only conveyed boredom, rather than any hint of nervousness. Was he so sure they would choose to go along with him?



   “Of course I am. Deal with Rarity and we’ll go.” Twilight could hear her teeth grinding at the impossibility of the situation. This was no great evil that she could rally her friends against, no ancient evil out to swallow up Equestria; this was a cruel spirit holding her friends sanity hostage to get what it wanted, she couldn’t fight it without risking all of their sanity in the process.



   “I don’t know how we could extract him, or if fighting him is even possible. We’ll have to listen to him and see if we can put an end to this nightmare on our own.” Twilight set her jaw and turned her attention back to the weeping Rarity. She was curled up in a tight ball, muttering apologies between tired sobs. She really did not want to know what the spirit had done for Rarity to be reduced to this.



   “Well, that’s too bad. I want to show you.” With those far too chipper words the reality Twilight knew bled away to reveal a skeletal insectoid thing curled into a ball where her friend had been moment ago. The distressed unicorn jerked back from the monstrous thing in front of her, only to nearly stumble on something by her feet. She didn’t want to take her eyes away from the insect-monster and really didn’t want to see what she had stumbled on, but her head moved to check out of pure reflex.



   At first she had the irrational thought it was a bowling ball, just an irregularly shaped, off-white bowling ball with red paint splattered on it. All the blood on and around it should have been something that gave away what it was instantly, but Twilight simply didn’t want to believe it, even while staring at Sweetie Belle’s severed head. She really did not want to connect those dots and be forced to wonder if Sweetie Belle had been alive when it happened.



   “I would say it’s more gnawed off than severed, but that’s just me. The nightmare I was putting your friend through when you finally showed up is what you see around you. She grew out of her skin over the span of a few days, Sweetie Belle staying there to care for her sister. Rarity became hungry in her new form and Sweetie Belle just happened to be there, in claws reach. Playing on both Rarity’s high standard for herself by devolving her into what you see before you and on her main character trait by forcing her into a situation where she would take what’s never willingly given. It was a fun little experiment.”



   Reality snapped back into focus for Twilight and she staggered in place as she was reaching a hoof out toward the whimpering Rarity again. She refused to believe that the spirit was capable of bending time, so it must have been her perception of it. A detailed memory implanted in her mind playing out in a fraction of the perceived time was the most reasonable explanation she could come up with. She didn’t want to rationalize anything the spirit did, or feel any kind of awe at its capabilities, but her rational mind boggled at the amount of information the thing was able to fabricate and control.



   “You are correct, Purple Magic Unicorn. That was one of them, she’s lived in the varied hells I created for what she believes to be years. It took me a good while to blur the line between reality and what I showed her, but she really freaked out when I succeeded. I’m pretty sure she thinks you are the hallucinations now.” The spirit explained excitedly, sounding downright proud of what he’d done.



   “Now, I am sure your friends can take care of Rarity. Teleport to the old castle in the Everfree real quick and we can get this done. I’ve made the calculations and arcane matter density readings are unconsciously conducted by your horn anyway, so just will it and I will help you with the hard part. The sooner we get this done, the less likely it is that I will have to stay here. I think neither of us wants that. It would be really awkward after all this.” The spirit chuckled and Twilight felt an uncomfortable pressure building in her head as the spirit’s influence grew.



   She gasped as all the intricate calculations needed to safely teleport large distances started trickling into her consciousness. The spirit had even taken Everfree’s sporadic magic and the shifting of the earth between Ponyville and the castle into account. More variables were added and old ones were tweaked at a speed Twilight couldn’t comprehend, but the spirit was sure to make her aware of every calculation and where the information came from, no doubt in part to show off, but she still had to know all of that to safely teleport to a place she could not see. Even if she disregarded the speed of the spirit’s calculations, it was a mystery where the spirit knew all the required equations to help her do this, as some of the information she was presented with were things she would have never taken into account herself.



   “How -” Was all she was able to get out before a tiny version of the spirit’s projected form appeared on her muzzle, holding up a sign saying “MY DIMENSION = ALTERNATE EQUESTRIA”



   “You could have just said it.” Twilight sighed as she charged her horn with the magic needed for teleportation. With the spirit helping her with the calculations such a precise spell cast in such a scale needed, she might even be able to teleport back without tiring herself out completely.



   Teleportation was a culmination of the unicorns ability to control the vast energies of the world around them, but most unicorns who were capable of it avoided doing it anymore than necessary, as it was downright uncomfortable to do. Your body was cast out into a cloud of aether tethered together by your will and driven and protected by the matrix of the spell to its intended destination. This whole process only lasted a fraction of a second, but your body was disassembled, moved as pure energy and then reassembled where the spell ended. The process caused every nerve in your body suddenly reassert themselves to your mind, causing an extremely disorienting and uncomfortable feeling of hyper-awareness.



   This time, the spell felt different from any other time she had cast it. The energy gathered and fell into the matrix as usual, but her consciousness didn’t cut out as it enveloped her body and her form dissolved onto the aether. She didn’t see, feel, or hear anything, per ce, but she did become aware of things, as if she still did.



   She saw a vivid kaleidoscope of what she perceived as colors and shapes that had to be the aether she was moving through and she also saw the form of the spirit piggybacking on her mind. While the space around her was something her mind hurt to even glance at, the spirit was something that unnerved her in a whole other way.



   There was no jovial ape-thing in an immaculate suit, there was no clear form to the thing at all, but her disembodied state made her take in far too many details about the things true form. The spirit didn’t feel powerful in any particular way, nor was its perceived form threatening or imposing in any overt manner. There was just a sense of wrong about what she was seeing, like she was watching a broken piece of machinery ticking along uselessly, screeching while it ground and scraped against its distorted parts. The spirit shifted and Twilight saw countless of faces and species and expressions shift and flicker where its face was supposed to be, before the mess steadied into a amalgamation of thousands of different smiles, grimaces, grins and smirks and screams and groans and whimpers and gurgles and whispers and laughter and yelps and pain and joy and screaming…



   Twilight crashed onto a cold stone floor and collapsed onto the ground, immediately scrambling to get back on her feet, terrified that something was after her, something and everything and faces and…



   She felt her stomach clench and craned her neck to the side, as to not get sick on herself. She had a spartan breakfast that morning, but the mix of bile and fluids that shot out of her smelled that much fouler to compensate for the lack of volume. It stuck to her mouth and the taste made her gag. She crawled away from the small stain of vomit and curled up on the floor, hugging her tail as something in her tried its hardest not to break.



   “I’m sorry you had to see that. I hear my form is unsettling to the unguarded mind.” The spirit said after a few minutes of silence. Twilight was surprised to hear something that sounded like concern on the usually mocking voice, but didn’t react to the spirit talking in any other way. She should be getting up and doing something to save her friends, but it felt like her body was miles away from her.



   “What you saw was not only seen by your mind, so I cannot simply extract it. I need you to work through the shock of it the hard way. I will help you.” Twilight couldn’t find the energy to respond to the thing.



   “It will help if you try and latch onto something purely carnal and constant. Take something concrete your body can feel and start working on rebuilding your reality from there. You’ve numbed yourself to physical sensations from just sitting there and you can’t inflict the amount of pain needed to snap you out of it, so I recommend that you focus on the smell and taste of your bile. Cement its reality into your mind and don’t let go. Embrace any reaction you get from that sensory overload and force yourself to move, to keep moving and try not to even think about stopping.” It took Twilight a few minutes, but ultimately she inhaled deeply through her mouth and focused on the taste of the foul bile in her mouth.



   It was a strange thing to feel overjoyed at the act of gagging at something disgusting, but at least it brought forth a spasm of movement to her body. She tried to do as the spirit had instructed and keep moving, but she felt her legs weakening under her as soon as she had been able to force herself to stand up. With only a fraction of the the expected revulsion, she hacked up another glob of bile and then revelled in the violent dry heaving the taste and consistency of the glob caused. She was able to make it another few steps into the cold room with that anchor to reality. She didn’t feel like collapsing the next time she stopped either.



   “What in the world happened to you? You look like you’re a matrix for a spell, but… broken?” Twilight weakly croaked out, her throat dry and hoarse from all of that had happened.



   “You know, I have the memories and minds of 11 unicorns, or similar magic users, copied in here and I still can’t figure out why you call it a matrix. You never even questioned it, so you’re no help, but it’s obviously a formula, rather than any kind of matrix. Also, look up for a bit.”



   Twilight looked up and saw the ghostly images of her friends moving in the room as the spirit reviewed her memories to pinpoint where Nightmare Moon had fallen, after a moment, an oppressively red “X” appeared on the spot on the ground where the Elements of Harmony had stripped Nightmare Moon from Princess Luna. Twilight walked over to the spot and started the scrying spell the spirit had seemingly taught her. She was too tired to wonder if she should trust the spirit or not.



      “So, I’m sure you noticed that I dodged your completely valid question just now. I know how you worded it and that you genuinely feel empathy for my existence, but I’m sure the real question you wanted to ask was more along the lines of whether I am a spell given life, or a living thing twisted into a spell.” Twilight shuffled uncomfortably, knowing that it had been the first question that had popped into her head, but she obviously thought it too insensitive to ask. If the spirit was created from nothing and made to live as that wrong thing she saw, then she worried for the mind that conjured such an idea, but if the spirit had actually been the soul of a living thing, then the thought that magic capable of such a thing even existed revolted her.



   “Oh, there actually is something here. There’s a trace of a powerful spell right where Nightmare Moon fell. I want you to focus on it and I will show you why I came here.” Twilight focused her magic on the spot with the strange magical residue and she could feel and see the spirit altering her perception so she could see him reconstructing the spell from the miniscule traces still lingering there. She felt her stomach drop when she recognized the core matrix making up the spell as it was reconstructed in front of her. It was very similar to the spirit’s true form and gave her the same feeling of wrongness.



   “Yes, this means Nightmare Moon was a thing born from the same kind of magic as I am. It is called Soul Magick where I come from and I’m sure you can piece together what the hell it does from all you’ve seen by now, not to mention the name.” There was a pause as the reconstructed matrix disappeared and Twilight heard a frustrated sigh and a few muttered words she couldn’t make out. “Before you ask, I don’t know why it’s called “Magick” instead of just “Magic” either, might be because Luna invented it and you know how she’s with ye olde speech.”



   “Luna did this to you?” Twilight found it hard to believe that the socially awkward princess of the night she’d come to know would be capable of violating another sentient being in such a way. “Is she… I’m sure you mean Nightmare Moon, right?”



   “Nah, I mean the princess of the night, Luna. Of course there were circumstances that kind of made it more along the lines of “ill-advised”, rather than “monstrous”. Anyways, I’m talking about the Luna in my world, I am sure your copy is less…  happy go lucky with soul-rending.” The spirit was trying to sound carefree, but there was a definite tremor in his voice when he talked about the princess of the night.



   “Okay, I don’t think there’s anything else here. You can teleport back now, I’ll be embedded in your mind, so you won’t see me. Sorry about nearly breaking you, by the way.” The spirit had done things that were definitely evil and downright sadistic, but still he could talk to her like he was just some nice colt she met on the street. The really disturbing part was that she had to remind herself she had very valid reasons to hate him.



   “How can you do such horrible things to me and my friends and still be so casual about this?” Twilight asked as she let power buildup in her horn, the spirit giving her the formula and doing the extensive calculations needed. A part of her felt tentative about that, but the logical part of her said that it would not help the psychopathic parasite to teleport her into a wall.



   “Well, if I were abusive and made sure I was only regarded as a villain, you wouldn’t even consider going along with my demands. As things are now, you think of me as an dangerous spirit with strange powers, rather than something you have to vanquish.” The spirit answered with an audible sneer to his voice. Twilight cast the teleportation spell, choosing not to question why the spirit had to act evil in the first place, if he could have just asked or tricked them.



   “Oh come on, how in the blue hell?!” The spirit suddenly shouted as the aether appeared around them again. Startled, Twilight moved her non-corporeal eyes to their destination and saw something jagged, bleeding and full of anger clouding their destination. Seeing it didn’t cause her sanity to run away from her, but she knew instantly that whatever possessed that kind of spirit was dangerous. Not only was this spirit different, it was far larger and oppressing than the one that had terrorized her friends. She really hoped this seeing spirits thing wasn’t something she would have to do again. The time she spent in the aether was nothing more than a split-second, but she could see the sharp thing moving to greet her, enveloping her and pressing into her with jagged malice...



   And then that feeling vanished when her body was reconstructed. She looked up and was kind of startled to find herself in the main room of her library. The spell was supposed to take her back where she had teleported from. Did the other spirit pull her here instead? How was that possible?



   “Welcome back, Twilight Sparkle.” Spike calmly said, turning to face her and giving a nonchalant wave. Twilight glanced around the room and saw her friends sitting down around her, strangely relaxed and unresponsive, but clearly conscious. Rarity was lying on her side next to Spike, seemingly asleep. Something was very wrong here, but she couldn’t put her hoof on it. She heard someone swearing like a sailor in the distance, but it was not something that she should be focusing on right now. It wasn’t important.



   “Spike will come to no permanent harm from my presence within him, but I did need a body to retrieve Smuggler.” Spike calmly stated as he started walking over to Twilight. His sharp blue eyes looking at her with poorly veiled fury boiling underneath. Spike’s eyes are supposed to be green and he’s not that tall. SNAP OUT OF IT!



   “No!” Twilight screamed and charged up her horn to teleport away. She wanted to teleport out of the library and hopefully away from whatever this other spirit had done to her friends to make them so compliant, but instead she found herself at the top of the stairs. She was trapped in the room by this thing’s magic and it was possessing Spike. “Release Spike this instant!”



   Spike clenched his fists and turned to look at her again. Now that Twilight wasn’t clouded by whatever was affecting her friends she could see that Spike’s body had grown to be very similar to the spirit’s projected form, a human. Other than the obvious transformation of his body, his eyes were  now a piercing blue, rather than the emerald green she’d come to know. His snout was longer than the last time he’d had a growth spurt and his overall physique looked more intimidating. Actually, it looked like Spike as growing larger and sharper at the edges as the spirit controlling him seethed.



   “I am in no mood for this!” Spike hissed out in a very dragon-like baritone, before hunching down and lunging for Twilight. Twilight could only teleport away in time because the spirit, who was called a smuggler, shoved the formula to the forefront of her mind.



   “Fuck, I didn’t think it would be him coming after me. I don’t like dealing with him at…”



   “Of course it would be me, you arrogant asshole! Priest had to stay behind to keep Luna alive. Anyone native to that side is unable to come here at all.” Spike’s body did another lunge for her, but Twilight was able to step away from it, according to the spirit’s instructions.



   “Damn, he can hear me. Oh, she’ll survive, as if you care! I have every intention of going back, I just need something from over here before I do.” Spike’s body tried to sweep her off her feet with his tail, but the smuggler spirit told her the timing needed to jump away from it.



   “You needed to brain-bleach Rarity to get it? I doubt that.” Spike’s body continued the spin from his attempt at trying to sweep her legs from under her and tried to backhand her using the momentum, but Twilight ducked and backed away from him. “Stay still, asshole!”



   “Yeah, that’s rich coming from the guy who Jedi-mind-tricked the rest of the equines!” Twilight jerked as her hindquarters hit a wall. The round design of the room really wasn’t idea for fighting an opponent with such a leg up on reach and stamina. She felt her sides burning from both exertion and her barely mended ribs and knew this fight was going to end when she tired out. Luckily the spirit controlling Spike had halted his attack to argue with the smuggler in her head.



   “This is not a competition, you douchebag!”



   “Easy for you to say, you’re the one winning!”



   “Fuck you!” Spike’s body jutted a finger towards a spot above Twilight’s head. Could he somehow see the spirit? Could they both see each other, despite the bodies they were in?



   “Eat a dick!” The spirit inside Twilight laughed as Spike lunged again to grab her with his claws. Twilight could smell how the wood Spike touched smoked and sizzled, meaning the spirit inside his body could access Spike’s draconic magic and use it. 



   “I am not in the mood for this, Smuggler!” Spike tried to pull his hand out of the wall, but the living sap of the tree had boiled and hardened because of the special characteristics of Spike’s magical fire. Spike’s free hand came up to his face and Twilight could both hear and see Spike’s body sighing out a tuft of green flame. “There is not a word for how much I hate you right now.”



   “So, are we going to wear our big boy pants and actually talk before you try and ineffectually strangle me again, hmm?” The first spirit cooed out in an absolutely obnoxious tone. The glare Spike gave the spot above her head after that made Twilight sure the spirit had half the mind to force Spike’s hand out of the wall regardless of the possible damage, but decided otherwise.



   “Talk.” Spike’s body sighed as he started to scrape at the hardened resin with his free claw. 




   “My plan was to trick these ponies into calling Luna here by posing as the Nightmare that was purged from her by the elements. I’m sure the rest of the elements would have sent a letter to Luna already, if you hadn’t taken over Spike’s body and mucked that up. I intend to rob the Luna of this world of all she knows of Soul Magick, but actually use it to free both Priest and I from our Luna.” Twilight’s jaw dropped as the spirit confessed what had most likely been its goal the whole time. She knew feeling stupid about falling for a ruse set up by something that had free reign on your perception was a moot point, but she still did feel dumb for falling for it. Who the hell was this Priest character, then? The way the spirit was talking about him or her it was unlikely that they were the one possessing Spike.



   “You do know that you could have just asked them, right? You’re smart enough to play the victim convincingly enough.” Spike’s body spoke in a harsh tone that she had not heard from the dragon, ever, she didn’t think there was enough hate in the small dragon for it. Twilight wanted to hide and hope whatever holding Spike’s body captive would just go away, but knew she couldn’t do that.



   “Where would be the fun in that? This is my first chance to see what I can do while not shackled to our least favorite magical horse, so excuse me if I want to make it count. There are other reasons, but I’m sure I don’t have to get into them right now.”



   “Wh- what have you done to my friends?” Twilight stammered out, feeling like she was interrupting Celestia during one of their lessons. The spirit within Spike had an incredible aura of intimidation about it and some part of her confused it as respect.



   “He probably just told them to sit down and shut up. He has a way with making people listen.” Twilight watched as Spike’s hand was yanked out of the tree, with a good chunk of the wall with it. The spirit in Spike gave the spot above Twilight’s head a mean look. “He hasn’t tried it on you again, because I can stop it from affecting you.”



    “Why the fuck would I let you get even more powerful, when this is what you do the little power you have now?” The spirit said while Spike’s body smashed the last of the splintered tree and sap from his claws. Spike’s body crossed his hands over his broad chest and leaned onto the wall, waiting for the first spirit’s answer.



   “I’ve done nothing that wasn’t paramount to ensuring the success of my mission here. I’m sure you can understand the notion of the end justifying the means. Rarity’s dilemma couldn’t have been a hallucination I induced on anyone else, because I couldn’t risk not having proper leverage, given our limited window in time. I spent the first hour of the time I had with her coming up with a way to make what I did reversible. The rest was only me trying to cement the idea of me being “the Nightmare” to get Luna here. We both know her guilt would have gotten her here alone.”



   “Giving you the power to flay souls is one of those things that will never happen, Smuggler.”



   “That’s the thing I’m trying to get across to you! I can’t do what Luna did, I can only learn how to better use the Magick I was given, enough to figure out a way to detach myself from Luna permanently. You need a complete and healthy soul to cast Soul Magick to the extent Luna did to create us! I have neither of those things!”



   “That is true. This world’s Luna is the only one that knows Soul Magick, I assume?”



   “Yes, if we take it away from her, there’s no chance anything like us will ever exist in this world. Everything we screwed up there will be impossible here. If we leave now, it’s more than likely that these ponies will try to come after us. Leaving with what I came here for is the only sure way of stopping them from doing that.” Spike’s body growled low and he pushed off the wall.



   “Not to mention giving you a reason not to try shit like this again.” Twilight saw Spike’s eyes start to glow even brighter as he turned to face her fully. “Tell me how I can send a letter to Luna, so we can bring this little misadventure to a close.”



   “My studies show that Spike’s ability of breaking down and reconstructing matter with his own fire stems from the circumstances surrounding his hatching, but is still something based on draconic magic. If you are commanding both Spike’s body and magic, as I believe you are, then it should come as naturally to you as it comes to him.” Twilight blinked and took an involuntary step back from Spike’s possessed body.



 Why was she telling them this? Why would she give these violent entities access to either of the princesses, or willingly put Spike through more wrongs while he was under their control?



    “You’ll put two and two together eventually, Purple Magic Horse.” The first spirit’s projected form appeared next to her and Spike’s head moved to stare at it, rather than the spot above her head. “Hey, Soldier, I suggest you send the letter to Celestia. She’ll be an unknown variable while I extract what we came for from Luna, if she is left alone. She could very well stop us and strand us here if she comes to her sister’s rescue before I’m done.”



   “I will not harm Celestia, but I agree she should be preoccupied while you tear what we need from Luna. That said, we are on a tight schedule and she would need incentive to come here without her guard for us to take her out of play.” Spike’s head cocked to the side in a very lizard-like manner as the spirit paused to ponder something. The piercing blue eyes slowly sized Twilight’s body, making her feel extremely vulnerable. “Is the Celestia of this world as capable of a healer as ours is?”



   “Far as I can tell from Twilight Sparkle’s memories, yes.” The projection of the spirit inside Twilight crossed his arms and turned to stare at Twilight as well. “If you are going to do what I think you’re going to do, then I suggest an ear, rather than an appendage. Also, you should still write a letter. She might might think it a freak accident on Spike’s part otherwise.”



   “Erase her memory of this, do the same for Spike later, if possible.” Spike’s body growled out as the spirit took a step toward her. The harsh light radiating from the eyes of one of her oldest and dearest friends blew away any will to fight she might have had. That light pierced straight through her, skewering her in place with a mixture of pure fear, confused respect and a profound sense of wrong. She wanted to fight this, to run and call for help, or even plead for them to reconsider, but that jagged blue light stripped her of the will to do any of those things.



   “Okay, you know what he’s going to do to you and you know that you will be in pain when you regain your short term memory. Now that we’re on the same page, I have to say that he’s only doing this to get us out of your hair faster. I’ll put this traumatic experience behind a wall in your mind. You will have nightmares about it, as you have to deal with the trauma, whether you remember it or not, but it should not affect your waking life to any great degree, assuming Celestia reattaches your ear after all this.”



   Twilight turned her head to and fro and noted with some shock that she was sitting at the dining table in her home in Canterlot. Her mother was humming a tune to her right in the kitchen and judging by the smell she was making pancakes.



   “You remember this, don’t you? Not the morning of your first day in Celestia’s school, nor is it the day you first brought home a glowing report card, but the morning after the announcement that you would be skipping a grade, for the first time.” Smuggler wasn’t sitting at the table, nor was his projected form anywhere to be seen, but his presence in one of her happiest memories made her feel violated to such an extent she would most likely be sick if she had control of her physical body.



   “I find it fascinating that the memory that brings you most comfort is not the most happy one, as I can catalogue dozens of other little moments that have brought you more mirth than this. You were both proud of your achievement and afraid of your parents treating you differently after seeing you were different from your peers.”



   “Please… Please don’t do this. Stop, I beg of you.” Twilight forced out, feeling a tightness in her chest that usually preceded tears, but the memory playing out around her didn’t allow her to cry. She wanted to thrash and wail and make sure Smuggler couldn’t take the comfort of this memory away from her, but the memory playing out around her only allowed her to nervously fidget and listen to her mother’s soothing humming.



   “You are perplexing and annoying, yet you are the only source of what little amusement I can gleam from this existence.” Her mother’s humming paused and Twilight could hear her mother washing the pan she had fried the pancakes with. Twilight flinched at the sound of the water sizzling into steam in the memory, as at that age she had been convinced that the sudden expansion of water into steam should have resulted in an explosion. Her mother had stopped her from having a panic attack every time they had pancakes or such by lying about using a spell she knew to stop it from happening.



   “Blueberry pancakes, for my little smarty-pants.” Her mother affectionately nuzzled her mane as she levitated the plate of blueberry pancakes. Twilight giggled and squirmed away from the tickling show of affection. “Try and leave some for me, sweetie”



   Her mother turned her attention to the morning paper and Twilight went to work levitating as many pancakes onto her plate in one casting as she could. It was a playful little way her parents had encouraged both her and her brother to keep practicing their basics, even when their studies moved on. Her brother was excused from the little game after he started tilting the table to slide the plate over to him instead, as moving the plate itself broke the rules.



   “I find it interesting that you find solace in normalcy, but it’s understandable, given the unusual mess your life has become. Extra-dimensional spirits freaking you out and all that. There’s a definite appeal in the thought to just be a child again and not be burdened by all of… whatever we’re in the middle of.” The spirit was still nowhere to be seen and Twilight was still stuck playing out her most treasured memory, just waiting for whatever horrible thing Smuggler had planned. Despite all that, she found herself able to communicate with the spirit, through magic she didn’t want to understand.



   “Why do this? Why this memory? What could you possibly gain from sullying one of my fondest memories?!” To say Twilight was angry would be an understatement. This entity was something she could never forgive. Toying with the sanity of both her and her friends was something she couldn’t simply let go. The fact the spirit seemed unable to physically hurt them was not something that helped them, as the scope of its mental abilities compensated for that. Even if they could fight the first one, the other spirit was powerful enough to take over the will of a dragon and somehow manipulate her friends into submission.



   “We can’t fight you, so why are you doing this? My friends and I are not a threat to you, you’ve proven that. There is no reason to torture us like this!” Twilight shouted at the spirit and felt the memory playing out around her unravel. The reality around her swirled and twisted into a new form and Twilight caught glimpses of Smuggler’s true form all around her. She had actually broken his illusion!



   “You do have a point. You may call me Smuggler.” Smuggler’s projected form stepped through a door and sat down across from her on the table. He glanced at the watch strapped onto one of his hands and blew out a breath, before loosening his tie and setting his hat on the table. “Well, I need to distract you for a while longer and you are aching for answers. So, tell me what are we, I know you have ideas.”



   The turmoil around them slowed and eventually settled into an image of a dimly lit mainroom of a log cabin. She noted that everything was built for something of Smuggler’s size and that she could only name about half of the items strewn about the room. This had to be a place in the spirit’s original world. It looked far too comfortable and normal to be a place where something like Smuggler could have crawled out of, though.



   “I did try to distract you with a pleasant memory of yours, but you took exception to that. So, I hope living through a memory from my side will do, while we take your mind off of whatever is happening to you right now.” Twilight flinched as the door of the small cabin opened and another projection of Smuggler backed up into the room, dragging another creature similar to him inside. The other human was limp and had what looked like a gardening tool lodged in their abdomen. The other Smuggler hurried out of the cabin and Twilight Sparkle decided not to give the first version of Smuggler the satisfaction of seeing her react to this new trick.


   “Well, I know that your abilities stem from a variation of the magical formula you showed me. I saw your true form and heard the argument you had with the other one, so I’ll have to assume you are souls given that magic, rather than sentient magical formulas.” She could hear the other Smuggler mutter what she assumed to be curses as he was looking for something in an adjacent room. There was a crash and a particularly loud curse from the other Smuggler before the first one decided to speak.



   “Well, all of what you said is true, but your terminology is wrong. We were not given the magic…” Smuggler waved a hand in the air vaguely, before slowly extending it towards her. Twilight heard the other Smuggler kicking his way out of whatever mess he’d made in the other room and saw him enter the cabin a second later with a large red canister. “Hint, Smuggler is not a valid name where I come from.”



   “Ah, now it makes sense! The removal of personal identity is what allowed the foreign form and consistency of the spell matrix to exist within the confines of the soul’s own architecture. The removal of  the constricting ideas of self was also most likely what allowed your abilities to vary so much.” Twilight felt the pieces locking into place in her mind and the familiar excitement of learning something new sprung out from beneath all the anger and hurt Smuggler had put her through. It lasted but a few seconds, right until her rational mind caught up and she realized she was learning about magic that effectively butchered a soul to use it as fuel. Also, the other version of Smuggler was splashing the contents of the red canister everywhere and the strange smell from the liquid within almost made her gag.



   “Relax, you don’t know enough to even tickle your own soul, let alone someone else’s. If the understanding of the mechanics was enough, then I wouldn’t have been forced to do all of this. Luna’s the only one I know to have what I want and Soldier is more than willing to help strip that power from her again.” Smuggler watched the other Smuggler throw the red canister into the room and dig out a small metal box from the limp human’s pocket. The other projection flicked the metal box open with a practiced flick of the wrist and activated a mechanism to produce sparks a few times before any flame came upon the thing. The other Smuggler backed out of the cabin and casually flicked the burning metal box into the room.



   “Smuggler.” A painfully forceful voice shredded the illusion around her and she suddenly became aware of all of the kinds of pain she was in. Twilight’s consciousness cut back into reality just as she saw the small metal box bounce from the floor and the flames spread out across the room. The searing pain on the side of her head and the almost overwhelming fatigue she was feeling hinted that she had struggled against Soldier in the real world and lost too much blood in the process. She definitely felt like she had been on the losing side of quite a fight.



   “It’s really jarring when you do that, you know. If you’d just waited for a second, I could have seamlessly joined her reality into the fabricated experience I created. Now she’s going to have flashbacks in her waking hours and she’ll most likely flinch every time she sees Spike.” Smuggler explained, not sounding disturbed in the slightest about the damage they had caused her psyche, just annoyed at Soldier for interrupting him.



   “We are pressed for time.” Spike’s body answered and threw something purple drenched in blood on the table. Soldier walked over to Spike’s little desk and picked up a quill and parchment, before walking back to her and dipping the quill in the small pool of blood around her head. “What should I write?”



   “You know her better than I do, you’re more likely to know a personal trigger that will cause her to forego rational thinking.” Soldier nodded once and walked back over to her bloodied ear, wrote a short message and rolled the parchment around her mangled ear.



   “Concentrate on the destination and incinerate, right?”



   “The one you’re sending it to, actually. It doesn’t work on destinations that aren’t fixed either by someone’s life-force, or an arcane anchor.” Soldier nodded again and blew out a green tuft of flame that incinerated the parchment and her cut off ear and sent it to the princess.



   “Seven… Six… Five… Four… Three… Two… And go time!” She could hear the smirk in the spirit’s voice. They were both enjoying this in some way, callously disregarding the harm they were causing everypony around them.



   Celestia didn’t just appear in a blinding flash of light, the space that used to house her table was incinerated as she burned a hole in reality and appeared with her mane wreathed in flame and eyes radiating murder. She paused for a second at seeing Spike with blood on his claws and Soldier didn’t waste the opportunity her hesitation presented. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t surprised that the cruel spirit inside Spike didn’t miss the chance, but she was surprised that he turned towards her, instead of Celestia.



   “NO!” Twilight had to squeeze her eyes shut as a mass of blinding light and intense heat seared through everything between Celestia and Spike’s body. She heard the gargantuan mass of energy slam into Spike’s body, along with the spirit inside him and then Spike’s body crashing either through her poor library’s wall, or at least onto it really hard. She hoped it was the former, as she definitely heard something breaking.



   “A bit overkill, don’t you think? Well, she’s really not going to like the next part.” Smuggler’s relaxed reaction to having his partner beaten was the only hint she needed to decide on just staying down. Obviously the two spirits had something planned and she was definitely not in any position to stop them.



   “Twilight! Stay awake, no matter -” Celestia could only take a single step toward her protegé, before a tendril of blue smoke shot out from somewhere behind the broken unicorn and attached itself to Celestia’s horn. Celestia’s head jerked from the impact, but she immediately flared her horn again to dislodge the tendril of smoke. As soon as the first tendril broke free, Twilight counted three more snaking their way to her mentor, wrapping around the first and not only latching onto Celestia’s horn, but around her neck and around her muzzle. Twilight could see more and more tendrils and masses of iridescent blue making their way through the path of the first and overwhelming the most powerful magic-user she had ever known in a matter of seconds.



   The masses of blue light kept piling on Celestia, ultimately covering her whole form, yet there was still more barreling through the space between Spike and Celestia. The metaphysical weight of the blue energy was overpowering, yet she sensed no malice among all that power. It felt like watching a stormy sea, or one of the pegasi storms gone out of control; gargantuan force without direction or sense, simply moving and raging, as that was its sole purpose. There was a final flash of golden light within the amorphous mass of power before the iridescent blue light imploded into Celestia’s body.



   “Wow, she actually kept you out for a moment there. How long do you think we have, considering I haven’t seen that happen before?” Smuggler’s projection made an appearance, this time straddling Celestia, like in the images Smuggler was feeding her subconscious mind about horseback riding.



   “She’s still fighting me, Smuggler. One hour, at most.” Celestia ruffled her wings aggressively and disrupted Smuggler’s projection, making him reappear leaning on Rainbow Dash’s prone form.



   “Can you still keep these guys sedated, if that’s the case? I mean, dealing with all…” Smuggler made a point of pointing at each of her friends in turn, muttering to himself at each of them. “Well, 3 and a half of them, to be honest, but it would still be an unnecessary pain.”



   “Compared to Celestia’s will and magic, they are nothing. To keep them as they are only shaves a few minutes from our timetable.” It hurt Twilight to hear Celestia’s voice be so cold, not to mention the unnaturally blue eyes radiating another person’s mind.



   “Assuming that using her power shaves more of that time, then you should blow up Luna’s tower, or force her here some other immediate way. I hear Celestia can do long-range forced teleportation, well, ours could, at least.” Smuggler’s projection glanced at Twilight briefly, furrowing his brow slightly at the sight of her. “Okay, you should allocate a few seconds into healing Twilight. Alternate reality or no, I think we don’t want to actually kill any of these guys, right?”



   “True.” Soldier slowly turned Celestia’s body towards Twilight and started to carefully walk over to her. “I can’t heal her, but I do not have to. Celestia can heal her student herself, knowing that I can and will suppress her again if she tries to do anything else. She knows what will happen if we let Twilight lose consciousness in her current state, after all.”



   Celestia’s hooves stopped right in front of Twilight, but she couldn’t muster the energy  to move her head. She felt the warm tingle of magic wash away the pain in her head and an intense itching where her right ear used to be, Celestia must have been regenerating it. Her headache dissipated and the ever-present nausea from seeing and retaining the memory of Smuggler’s true form went with it. The aches and soreness from all of what had happened since Smuggler first appeared were blown away by Celestia’s soothing light and if it weren’t for the intense smell of blood and the leftover bile at the back of her throat she just might have fallen asleep and convinced herself it had all been a bad dream.



   “Twilight, this is not your…” Twilight heard Celestia, the real Celestia, say before she saw a flash of blue reflect from the small pool of her own blood in front of her. She moved her head to look up into the cold blue eyes of the spirit torturing her mentor. “Fight, fault, maybe responsiblity? You can debate that later. Tell me the best way to get Luna here, alone.”



   “Luna is the sole authority in magic focusing on psychological healing. You could just tell her about what Smuggler has already done and she’d be the only one qualified to help.” Twilight explained before her mind could catch up and stop her. She couldn’t be sure if the spirit called Soldier had even forced her to telling him, or if she was just too tired to fight either of them. She didn’t know why Soldier was even asking her if Smuggler really had access to her mind already.



   “Yeah, that could work. Our Luna crossed paths with a sentient magical contagion that causes severe psychotic breaks, with homicidal to suicidal tendencies, kind of like what I did here, actually. She called it Delirius, if her memory serves. Drop that name and this one should hurry over, if this version of Equestria is as similar to ours as I think.”



   “Okay, one instant message should do.” Celestia’s horn lit up and an orb of scorching light blasted into existence. For an academically trained unicorn like Twilight it was terrifying to see Celestia’s magic used so crudely, as just a fraction of the power she felt in that orb could incinerate her library, maybe even a good chunk of Ponyville.



   “Madness. Ponyville. I cannot fight it much longer. Delirius.” The orb of light imploded and disappeared just as Soldier finished speaking. Twilight begrudgingly admitted that Celestia sounding nothing like her caring self actually played into the lie about a magical contagion being loose and affecting Celestia. Luna would probably assume the detached and short way of speech was from Celestia attempting to fight the infection, rather than because of a possession.



   “Sister! Art thou…” Luna appeared in a flash of light not unlike her sister had, but stopped short after seeing the scene in front of her. Celestia standing over a bloodied Twilight Sparkle with radiant blue eyes and the other elements lounging around the room with vacant expressions on their faces. It was a stark enough of a picture to warrant an immediate and brutal reaction, but Twilight saw hesitation and hurt in the moon diarch’s eyes instead. “Sister?”



   “A sentimental fool, no matter the reality. Smuggler, go.” Just as Soldier forced Celestia’s body to spit out those words Twilight felt Smuggler’s presence in the back of her head suddenly lift and rip at her mind as it detached whatever revolting anchors it had forced into her. It was an immense relief to feel Smuggler’s absence from her mind, but there was also an overbearing feeling of guilt knowing that the sadistic asshole was forcing himself on Luna instead.



    “Oh wow, she really wasn’t looking out for me!” Luna suddenly blurted out in a strange dialect of Equestrian, as Twilight’s world swam and her stomach clung as close to her spine as possible to combat the severe nausea she was experiencing. “I kinda came at her with everything I’ve got and now she’s slightly catatonic without me… Well, our Luna knew how to block me, so it’s her fault, if you really think about it.”



   “Do you have what you came for?” Soldier dryly asked in response to Smuggler’s jovial attitude.



   “Yeah, downloading right now, for the lack of a better term. You think we could stop by at Sweet Apple acres? Sex as a mare might be an interesting experience, especially with someone coined Big Mac.” Smuggler made Luna’s body jump up and down excitedly, somehow missing the awkwardness Soldier obviously had in controlling a quadruped.



   “The less ponies know about us the better. We should move closer to our point of extraction.” Celestia’s body droned out in a cold monotone, the blue of her eyes hurting Twilight’s aching head.



   “Dude, I feel a lot more meaty than I have for god knows how long, so maybe I could get a minute to see if I like it? I like being a nigh invulnerable spirit and all, but there might be something I miss about this whole meatbag thing, ya know?” A minute of silence followed, as Twilight tried to focus her eyes on any one place and force down the urge to retch. Smuggler’s detachment had made her feel horribly disoriented and drained, not to mention the exhaustion that came with all higher level healing magic.



   “Well?” Celestia droned out, startling Twilight into looking up. A white blob and a dark indigo blob were standing in front of her, moving slightly from side to side. Keeping her head up was starting to feel like an impossibility and her eyes were painfully heavy, but leaving the two spirits to their own devices was not something Twilight could allow. Her spirits tried its hardest to try and stop the two spirits, but her body was having any of it.



   “I feel way too squishy and I am aware of far too many things touching other things for my liking. I’m sure this whole physical discomfort thing is something I might have missed or worked past with time, but right now I don’t see the appeal. Download is about complete, so let’s go. To the batcave!”



   “You do know how to activate the circle to get us back?” Twilight could hear hooves hitting the floor of her library and the two blobs moved out of her shrinking cone of vision and the sound of her heartbeat started to drone out the voices, ever so slowly.



   “I do and Twilight Sparkle doesn’t, literally the first thing I did after crossing over.”



   “What about the cure for what you did for Rarity and the others?”



   “Oh, that! Luna’s going to be catatonic, now that you mention it, so somepony else up there should know that, right? Just a second.” Twilight heard hooves rushing up the stairs and then saw the dark indigo blob grow to block her view of the world.



   “The key to knowing what exactly Luna, or somepony else, should repress or extract is the theme of Ducktales. Twilight, I need you to remember this; Ducktales, woo-hoo! It appears in every false memory in some form or another, so as long as you know that, healing her is easy. Messing with yours or RD’s mind in the same way was really a bluff, so don’t worry.” Twilight felt a hoof tap her head reassuringly a few times before she heard hoofsteps going away from her again.



   “What do you think that guy at the gate will take from Luna as his payment?” Luna’s voice asked, as she descended the stairs to Twilight’s basement lab.



   “Why should we care?” Celestia’s voice answered in a hostile tone.



   “I’m not saying we should, nor that I do. I’m just wondering, as he was trying to take Twilight’s horn before I stepped in.” There was a pause as Twilight heard the shift in the material of the stairs and the basement floor in Luna’s hoofsteps. “Actually, want to make a bet out of it? I’m pretty sure we can linger long enough to see it.”



   “Heart.” Celestia’s voice answered, with an uncomfortable excitement in her voice.



   “You’re so predictable. I think it’s going to be her wings. Allons-y!” Twilight heard the sound of energy gathering and the ominous sound of the unintentional dimensional portal she had created opening and closing.



   “Ducktales, woo-hoo…” Twilight muttered as she finally gave up on trying to stay conscious. She did hear her friends stirring from their spirit-induced catatonia just before a dreamless sleep swallowed her consciousness, so at least the spirit’s were gone.

> Priest's Conviction, Part 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Priest’s Conviction, part 1




   She ran down the overgrown path, finding footholds and avoiding protruding roots out of pure muscle memory. She could barely see the shadowy forest around her as her lungs burned and stung to provide her aching body the oxygen to keep running. She didn’t dare looking behind her, nor did she need to, as she knew exactly what chased her. She knew exactly what would happen if it were to catch her and that certainty brought her no comfort. Being forced to see and feel your body being torn apart was not something that lost its shock value after a few times.



   Stumbling on a root stretching across the path she had not encountered before, Luna felt jaws snap above her, as her clumsiness saved her from another painful faux death. The beast pursuing her barreled past her and tackled her body out of the safety of the path, sending her tumbling through the old decaying trees around her. Dead plant matter showered down all around her, the floating particles disturbed menacingly by the great beast chasing her snapping blindly at the air in search of her.



   Struggling to stand and stay as quiet as possible, Luna got back to her hooves and started to trot away from the insane beast. The beast was far too busy attacking the forest around it to hear her stumble away and toward a speck of light peeking through the trees. She had seen this speck of light before, but had not been able to reach it before the beast caught her.



   Luna could see that the light beyond the trees was the porchlight of a small hunting cabin and with a breath of relief she saw a shadow of someone moving inside. She was about to step into the small clearing the cabin had been built on, when she realized the forest had fallen deathly silent yet again. The beast was searching for her again, stalking her from some unseen shadow.



   Rushing through the exposing clearing, she hurriedly knocked on the door of the cabin, as hard as she dared, knowing how acute the beast’s hearing was. “Please, help us! We are chased by a terrible beast!” Luna pleaded in a desperate whisper through the oaken door. To her immense relief she could hear the occupant of the small cabin move toward the door in response.



   “Password.” A voice stated through the door, sounding almost bored, despite her distress.



   “Wh- what? We are in mortal peril! You are to allow us both aid and shelter, if ye dare call yourself a -”



   “Still waiting on that password, your rudeness.” The voice cut her off, a smidgen of mirth tinting the voice.



   “Ye can’t be serious!” Luna hissed and slammed a hoof on the door. She regretted making so much noise in her current situation immediately, but simply decided to huddle closer to the door nonetheless, as it was her only hope. “Why do you refuse me entry?”



   “Well, I find myself lacking one itty-bitty password. That fearsome thing is still out there, it would be a shame to see you die such a meaningless death, again.” The voice beyond the door chuckled darkly and Luna could see the shadow move away from the door. “Well, I guess there’s no helping it.”



   “We know why you desire this word and we are -” Luna was interrupted by a low growl cutting through the still night like a well-sharpened blade through unwilling meat. She knew exactly what she would see if she dared a glance behind herself, she knew exactly what would happen and how long it would take her mind to be overcome by the trauma and the scenario would start all over again.



   She didn’t know what would happen if she uttered that itty-bitty password, before the beast lunged at her. This uncertainty was the only glimmer of hope she could see and despite her better judgment, she clung to that light.



   “Aliquam Molestus Mendax!” Luna rattled out the three words she had bound the human spirit with. She could hear the lock on the hunting cabin open and the door open slightly. She saw a hand nudge the door open, before a black barrel of a an old and heavy revolver poked out. She could hear the mechanisms in the finely crafted thing shift and tense as the the hand holding it tightened their grip. She heard one final metallic click and saw a distorted flicker of light racing out from the barrel.



   Luna’s eyes shot open as the phantom pain erupted in a spot right above her right eye. She flailed wildly under her covers and both tore her bedsheets and tangled her wings in them further. She paused as soon as she realized Smuggler had only jettisoned her to the waking world, he had not actually shot her in the head.



   “Annoying Orange Liar? I understand that you were under a bit of stress, but you could have done more than assign a random color to what you felt about me.” Luna could feel a weight settle on her bed, as Smuggler talked. She untangled herself from the bedsheets with an aggressive burst of magic and turned to face the mental projection.



   “How did you do it? How did you trap me in my own dream?” Luna asked harshly, leaning towards the human wearing a bright red suit and a sunhat made out of thick leather. The outfit was both improbable and eye-catching, a trait that almost all of the human’s projections shared, as making her stare incredulously at something nopony else could see made her seem insane and Smuggler took great pleasure in making her at least seem insane.



   “What makes you think I did? It was your dream, your fear and insecurities manifesting in whatever was chasing you and we both know you don’t like forests that much.” The man smiled as he leaned back on the bed, his sunhat flopping down on her sheets with a wet slap. The annoying projection crossed his legs and stretched his arms around in her tousled sheets.



   “Dreams do not reset when you die in them!” Luna slammed a hand on her bed in frustration, an unintended burst of magic making the whole bed creak from the force. She could hear a spring snap with a loud metallic note that clung in the air. The man laying on her bed only gave her a level look and raised one finger carefully.



   “Well, if you say so.” Smuggler quipped and his projection disappeared with a pop.



   “Come back here!”



   “I am under no obligation to answer your inane questions. I think you have to hold court in a few hours, so decide if you can still sleep on that broken bed.” Luna could hear her teeth grind against each other in frustration. From the position of her sister’s sun, she’d only been able to get a scant two hours of sleep. Dealing with the contagious hyper-activity of Smuggler’s mind and the dull pressure of Priest’s power had made it nearly impossible for her to get tired. This had been the first time in two weeks that she’d felt the compulsion to sleep and even that was ruined by Smuggler’s tricks.



   Deciding not to bother with trying to sleep in her current state of mind, Luna rolled off her bed and walked over to her dresser, stumbling only slightly. She didn’t feel groggy, nor did she show any outward signs of the lethargy you would associate with chronic insomnia. She was not denied sleep from a chemical imbalance in her reworked brain, but by the continued balance that refused to change.



   Priest’s power had returned Fenrir to his prime and made him marginally stronger, not to mention the heightened regenerative rate the wolf had demonstrated after the altercation with the dragon. In contrast; Priest’s power had not only turned Luna into a hybrid of her human form in Fenrir’s mindscape, but had also locked her into that exact form.



   Priest kept her fit, burning away all excess calories she ingested in a rather literal way. The castle chef’s had actually started changing up her desserts to see if they could get different colors out of the volatile display her hair performed whenever she decided to indulge herself. She had actually come close to starting a fire when she chugged a pint of frosting as a dare issued by one of her guards.



   Priest also kept her infuriatingly calm, as he quickly sprang to smooth over all chemical and hormonal imbalances that she incurred in her life. Unsurprisingly, everything Smuggler did was exempt from this, for a time. If she stubbed her toe on something, she only felt a slight twinge of pain, rather than the howling swearing marathons Smuggler had shown her. If someone other than Smuggler infuriated her, she could only feel tired pity for their efforts at aggravating her, rather than the absolute hatred she felt for Smuggler at times.



   She had actually tried cutting off her hand with a cleaver to prove Smuggler wrong, after he’d jeered at her about how Priest was affecting her body. She remembered the cleaver coming down, but the instant the blade touched her skin, all of her senses cut out. After an undetermined amount of time she woke up to see the cleaver embedded into a marble pillar next to her balcony door and her hand still attached. Every time she tried to pull the cleaver out of the pillar, either her magic fizzled out, or her grip loosened.



   “I don’t know how long I can take this…” Luna muttered as she picked out clothes she’d be comfortable wearing. Smuggler’s projection appeared in the full-body mirror placed on the door.



   “I bet I could wear you down in about 2 months, if I’d be aiming to make you catatonic. It’d take a week or so more, if I wanted to make you an aggressor.” Luna touched a purple gown in the dresser and Smuggler changed his projection to resemble what she would look like wearing it. Smuggler had started doing this after Luna had taken more and more time to pick out what she should wear on each night. Not only did her human body bring with it the taboo of nudity, the clothes brought a whole mess of things she could be insecure over.



   “There are times you should just lie to my face, Smuggler.” Luna moved her hand to a black coat. Smuggler shifted his projection accordingly, adding accessories he knew she owned and had worn with it before. She thought it was a little too intimidating of a look to wear to court, so she moved on, hovering her hand over her collection of clothes.



   “What would that achieve? It’s not like you’re going to start trusting me all of a sudden.” A dark green cardigan and a blue flowing dress, maybe. A bit too colorful for the night court, she decided.



   “You jumped through the Veil, while I was fixing it! You put our whole reality in danger!” Luna snapped and pointed at her animated reflection. Smuggler waved a hand dismissively and snorted using her voice.



   “I was only gone for an hour or something, let it go already.”



   “It was three hours on this side, not counting how long it was on the other side! Celestia had to send Soldier after you!” Luna huffed and pulled out a midnight blue dress out. She’d worn it several times and it was well on its way on becoming her favorite piece of clothing.



   “He caused more damage than I ever could have, so good job on that. Did you know he actually burned down the whole of Ponyville and helped Changelings take over their Equestria? cuz he totally did!” Smuggler appeared next to her and showed her pictures detailing Soldier doing just that. His projection looked singed and green blood spattered his arms and face, like he had just come back from battling changelings in Ponyville’s charred remains.



   “Oh, shut up! You know, just because Soldier can’t give his side of the story doesn’t mean you can keep changing yours.” Luna shot back, as she pulled her dress on. She needed to grab some breakfast and try and ignore whatever Smuggler would do to try and unnerve her. Kamos had been forced to let her back into political matters, despite Smuggler and Priest “compromising” her judgment. Celestia and Kamos had agreed to keep the existence of the three human spirits a secret for the time being.



   “You know that will never happen.” Smuggler kept his projection out, calmly walking on the wall as Luna walked down the spiraling stairs of her tower. “Celestia shouldn’t have sent him after me if it took that much out of her.”



   “Wait, you actually admit to caring about someone else but yourself? You big softie, you!” Luna sneered in a hushed voice as she sat down on table in the small dining area at the foot of her tower. The setting sun cast long shadows through the open balcony doors and Smuggler adjusted his projection to actually have a shadow after Luna noticed the lack of it.



   “Do not confuse my wonder at the lack of self-preservation you ponies continuously demonstrate as actual care for your wellbeing. I’ll admit that Soldier appearing over there was an exciting surprise, though.” Smuggler stayed quiet as the servants set her breakfast in front of her. She grabbed the glass of orange juice, knowing that Smuggler was waiting for something.



   “The angry sex that followed was amazing!” Smuggler whispered in her ear in a conspiratorial tone. She had known he would try to make her do a spit-take, she’d known it and had steeled herself for whatever disturbing thing he’d say, or so she had thought. She was caught off-guard by the sudden lewd lie and choked on the little sip of orange juice she’d taken. Smuggler talked directly into her mind to be heard over her coughing. “You made the mistake of bracing for one thing, all I had to do was any other thing.”



   “I hate you!” Luna wheezed out, in the middle of her coughing and a blushing case of the giggles. Priest’s presence made it hard for her to feel surprised in a way that would actually make a normal pony laugh, so seeing as Smuggler’s attempts at comedy were exempt from that, her reactions tended to be exaggerated.



   “Shut up and eat your cereal.” Smuggler sighed and his projection disappeared with a high-pitched beep. At least he wasn’t making the air flash a brilliant green every time he did it anymore, but him not being consistent with it was more annoying in a way. Luna looked down at the bowl of cereal in front of her. There were fresh berries mixed with the slightly roasted corn flakes. It smelled and looked heavenly...



   She started humming to herself and her oatmeal was delicious. No, she wasn’t being petty, she just didn’t want Smuggler to be right.



   “Will you really be alright to hold court tonight, Luna?” Luna looked up from finishing her oatmeal and saw one of her night guard taking off their helmet, revealing Kamos’ striped face. His eyes bored into her, most likely to determine if she was the one in control of her actions. Smuggler had been able circumvent her control during the first few days he’d been in her, but Luna had learnt how to stop him from doing it soon after that. She didn’t fault Kamos for being cautious, but having just a little faith wasn’t too much to ask.



   “He is a pain, but we have come to an understanding about this, Kamos. Tampering with my royal duties will make you that much more adamant in forcefully extracting him, so he has agreed to not hinder me.” She could see how Kamos clenched his jaw as his eyes darted down to her body for a moment. She could hear Smuggler snickering in the back of her mind at something.



   “Yes, I will have to hold court in this form. We’ve concluded that Priest has little control over his power and the effects it has on me. Until a safe way of extracting him is devised, any attempt at transforming into a pony would just be undone almost instantly. The process is not pretty, but it is consistent.” Luna shuddered as she remembered the time she had actually used magic to transform back into an alicorn. The experience cemented the fact that Priest really did have total control over her body, which fortunately also applied to her pain receptors. Imagining what it would have actually felt like to have her skin melt and her bones liquify as Priest reassembled her body into the form he’d chosen chilled her to the bone.



   “I have read the report.” Kamos glided his eyes over the room, before settling on the general area where Smuggler’s projection was floating in the air and reading a book Luna remembered reading a month ago. His access to her memories and the information in them was something Luna had hesitated on admitting to Kamos, but the zebra had ultimately taken her out of quarantine as Smuggler had no access to her magic, nor had he been able to affect her actions for weeks after their interview with him. Smuggler found the zebra’s ability to sense his projection interesting, but the novelty of trying to get a reaction out of the stoic zebra had run thin within a few days.



   “The story we fed to the public is that you are in the form you are in because of your involvement in the research of exobiology at Canterlot university. You’re making a point of presenting a viable alien body by living in that form.” Kamos nodded to a guard and Luna was presented with a folder detailing the phony research team and their goals. Smuggler floated over to her and glanced at the information with interest. Luna could see his projection freeze and flicker as the numbers were processed and the needed connections were made.



   “Eh, it should fool most of them. It does make you look like you don’t understand the scientific method, but I doubt most of the faculty in that place are any wiser to the idea.” Smuggler floated over the table, where he proceeded to draw iridescent dicks in the space between her and Kamos, glancing at both of them for any reaction. Luna could feel her face heating up slightly, but Kamos stayed stoic as ever.



   “This should work.” Is all Luna said as she set the documents down. The guard that had procured them picked the folder up again and left the room after a nod to Kamos. Smuggler continued to tiredly float around the room, legs crossed and reading a week-old newspaper.



   “You are scheduled to hold court 2 hours from now. I sincerely hope it goes well, Luna.” Kamos stated in his reassuring monotone and bowed to her before leaving the room, melding into the mold of her other guards as he donned the borrowed helmet.



   “Two whole hours, huh… Wanna watch a movie? Most fall into the 90 minute margin, so we have the time.” Smuggler flipped in the air to land on the spine of the chair next to her, resting his incorporeal legs on the table as he juggled what he’d called his “universal remote” from hand to hand.



   “What did you have in mind?” Luna wearily asked, knowing that the alternative would be going over every embarrassing thought and memory of hers Smuggler could find.



   “Don’t worry, it’s a kids film, a classic actually. Real heartwarming and all.” A rectangle of static appeared above the table as Smuggler pressed a button on his device. “I present unto you, The Lion King.”



   90 minutes later and Luna was walking toward the balcony where she and Celestia did their thing with their respective celestial bodies. She wasn’t sure if she should be angry at Smuggler for forcing her through such a heart wrenchingly tragic death scene, or simply enjoy the movie as a whole.



   It was miles from the other “family movie” Smuggler had shown her, The Land Before Time. It was strange how many of the entertainment Smuggler claimed to be directed at families actually axed off one or more of the parents in tragic ways.



   “I find it hard to believe that those movies were intended for children. Why would your kind put their young through something like that willingly?” Luna muttered as she turned a corner and the guards following her couldn’t see her talking to herself.



   “Well, I don’t have a definite answer for that, but I think a big reason would be the fact that children are sociopaths.” Smuggler absently answered, while floating in her peripheral and reading something. Luna gave the spirit an angry look when it was obvious that he was not intending to elaborate on that.



   “Please, explain that statement.” Luna seethed, knowing that he was more than aware of her frustration with him.



   “Humans are born with little to no empathy for others. There are some core survival instincts hardwired into us, like trusting your parents implicitly, not eating your siblings, both fearing and respecting cats, et cetera. Unlike you guys, we either grow into or learn empathy from others. The death of a parent is a horrible thing to anyone, but it’s one of the few tragic things little children can empathize with honestly and immediately.” Smuggler explained, before going back to reading Luna’s diary. She didn’t have the energy to feel indignant about this nonchalant violation of her privacy, deciding to process what Smuggler had revealed instead.



   “That is why it is used so often in the movies you show me; to make the child watching feel empathy for the protagonist.” Luna paused to think about this revelation of Smuggler’s culture. “That is evil!”



   “No, that is Disney. I don’t blame you for confusing the two, though.” Smuggler chuckled and fell into step next to her. His projection was wearing a bright green onesie with an orange safari hat. He kept up with her brisk space by sliding along the marble floors with his socks, as if he were ice-skating. Luna only gave him a tired annoyed look, which made Smuggler grin even wider. She walked through the halls in silence, while Smuggler’s projection kept racing circles around her, humming a song from the movie he’d just shown her.



   “Not to distract you from controlling thousands of tons of rock floating above this planet, but if we say Celestia is Mufasa, then what does that make you?” Smuggler’s smirk disappeared and he gave Luna a curious look, before she could feel him retreating to the back of her mind. Not directly distracting her from moving the moon was one of the conditions he had agreed to in exchange for the freedom to manifest at will at any other time. He continued to find ways to distract her in other ways, regardless.



   “Good evening, Luna.” Celestia serenely greeted as Luna walked over to sit across her on the table. Celestia was drinking chamomile tea and an unicorn maid poured Luna a cup of coffee as she sat down. Luna stole a glance at her sister as she sipped her no doubt expensive coffee. Celestia looked tired, more so than a day of ruling their kingdom and raising the sun should have any right to.



   “Good evening, sister.” She noted that Celestia’s mane moved slower than usual and that there were nearly indistinguishable dark bags under her eyes. Luna let the silence stretch out between them, not knowing if she should pursue the matter or not. She set down her cup and opened her mouth, but froze in place before any words could escape her as Celestia looked up to address her.



   “Luna, what is it?” Celestia asked, frowning at Luna’s sudden look of shock. Luna couldn’t form words at first, managing only to motion toward her own right eye. Celestia’s horn glowed brightly and a small mirror materialized in front of her. She stared at her own reflection, using a hoof to move her mane out of the way of her right eye. Her left eye was the iridescent magenta it had always been, but her right eye was a harsh glowing blue.



   “Oh…” Celestia breathed out in mild surprise, as she continued to stare at her own reflection. Celestia didn’t seem any more distressed on the outside, but Luna could feel the imbalance in her sister’s magic as her eyes closed and the sun diarch took a number of deep and controlled breaths. Luna could feel the subtle shift in the air between them as Celestia focused her magic internally.



   Celestia’s ever-moving mane slowly ground to a halt and the colors displayed in it wavered and melded together as her coat started taking on a pure white glow. Luna had watched her sister do this countless of times, usually when she needed to make sure her vast reservoirs of magic would stay under control before a tiresome meeting, but this time something was wrong. Celestia’s mane shone a brilliant gold and most of her coat radiated an intense white light, but on a spot over her heart there was a mass of bright blue.



   The unnerving mass of light pulsated and shifted continuously, seeping out and melding with the pure light around it. Luna watched the blue light recede and grow brighter at the same time, until there was a harsh contrast between the spot of intense blue against the pure light her sister radiated. Celestia opened her eyes and let out a tired breath, both her mane and eyes reurning to their usual color, but the signs of fatigue becoming more apparent.



   “How bad is it?” Luna stated as Celestia leaned on the table separating them ever so slightly. “This is not something we can ignore, sister.”



   “I feel like a guest in my own body.” Celestia quietly confessed, her head shifting so that her eyes were obscured by her mane. Luna didn’t know if she did this out of exhaustion, or from a need to hide her eyes. “Do you know what happens when I sleep? When I let my guard down to that degree?”



   “I have seen no need to visit your dreams, sister.” Luna carefully stated, not liking the unhinged tone her sister’s voice carried. Celestia gave a harsh cackle at Luna’s answer, pushing herself off from leaning on the table between them.



   “My dreams are not the problem, my dreams are just fine, they’re a respite from all of this, if anything! It’s the waking up that’s the problem!” Celestia almost screamed at Luna, setting her hooves on the table, with her teacup clattering on the table between them as her concentration failed. “I can’t stop him, or push him away, he lets me back in when he notices I’m aware and I don’t know why!”



   The shadows suddenly stretched onto the walls as the sun flashed brighter, reacting to its avatar’s distress. Luna was the Princess of the night, so there were few little things that could truly frighten her, but seeing her sister so thoroughly afraid was one of those things. Luna knew the magnitude of power her sister possessed and what could happen if she ever lost control, but as destructive that could have been to ponies around her, that was not the thing she was afraid of.



   “You fear he is controlling your actions regardless. You fear what he might do if he would choose to force his will upon you. You fear what he would be capable of doing.” Luna stated in a tone she tried to make as comforting and calm as she could. The fact she no longer felt afraid made it easier to sound calm, but the fact she was only capable of feeling slightly irritated at her sister’s flamboyant antics made it hard to sound compassionate. Fear and compassion were chemical imbalances not paramount to her survival, after all.



   “I understand your worry and I understand why the loss of control is so frightening to you. I must remind you that we are talking about a man that gave up his tattered soul to save your life, so not only is keeping you safe something he has quite literally given his soul for, it’s probably the only thing left in whatever he has been reduced to.” Luna finished, giving Celestia a reassuring smile, before sipping her coffee, lest it get cold. Celestia stood there, her forelegs on the table and a look of shock frozen on her face.



   “Which one are you?” Celestia asked, narrowing her eyes at Luna. Luna went over what she’d just said to calm Celestia down and realized it was a little too cold for the Luna Celestia knew, before Smuggler and Priest.



   “It is still me, sister.” Luna stated, setting her beverage down. She tried to force herself to feel frightened of the obvious change in her behaviour, but found it hard to feel the need. “Priest’s power makes it hard to feel anything and Smuggler makes it easy to reason things out. Whatever they are not affecting goes through the path of least resistance.”



   Celestia stared at Luna for a moment longer, the subtle shifts in the air between them revealing the presence of magic probing her mind superficially. Eventually Celestia let out another sigh and sat back down.



   “The Artificial Body Project has met with some difficulties. They’re struggling on finding a way to bond the vine to the skeletal frame without relying on magic.” Celestia explained, picking up her tea with her magic again.



   “They’re still holding out hope for the vines? I thought they moved onto using the synthesized muscle fibers. It took me days to fine-tune the formula so they could use it.” Luna sipped at her coffee again, puzzling over what possible excuse the university ponies had to ignore the magic she had given them.



   “They can’t start crafting the muscles without another skeletal frame, so they’re stuck either waiting for it to be completed, or completing their original project. Besides, the university lacks the facilities to house a mass of live red vines that size. They decided to finish it to serve as a proof of concept.” Celestia finished her tea and set the cup down on the tray between them, grabbing a chocolate chip cookie in her magic. “We’re going to get some less than favorable letters about what I did with the sun just now.”



   “I just hope the nobles don’t think I’m trying to dethrone you again. Being forced to deal with some panicky noble pledging their allegiance for the Lunar Republic again would be annoying. I did tell you how that happened after my stint up above, right?” Luna quirked a brow and downed her coffee with a smirk, as Celestia took a bite out of her frisbee of a cookie with a furrowed brow of her own.



   “I’m sure that’s the furthest thing from their minds when you hold court as you are.” Celestia pondered, glancing down at Luna’s dark-skinned body. The overall frame was similar to their human counterparts in the mirror universe, but the similarities ended at the number of limbs and bipedal stature. Luna’s skin was a smooth mocha brown evenly, except for her lips where it made way for a healthy red, rather than the light blue on lighter shades of purple her counterpart in the other world had. Luna stood about as tall as Celestia was, but rather than the gangly sprout her otherworldly counterpart had been, Luna’s frame was filled out with corded muscle and rounded out by a miniscule layer of fat.


   As a healer Celestia, along with any of the other healers who had examined her, would say Luna was the picture of health when it came to the species she had transformed into. As a sister Celestia would move heaven and earth to make sure Smuggler and Priest were the first spirits to be transferred into artificial bodies. Celestia had lived far too long protecting Luna to believe Smuggler and Priest were not having an adverse effect on her, no matter how healthy she looked or acted. It was not like Luna could hold that sentiment against Celestia with a clear conscience, but she would still make sure Soldier was the first to be transferred out. The damage his mere presence had done to her sister’s nerves was obvious and to let it continue was not an option.



   “Let’s go and assure your survival to the populace, so that I can get to freaking out the nobles.” Luna stated, energetic from the very temporary rush of energy caffeine still offered her. She stood up and walked over to the balcony that was especially reserved for their little ceremony at that point. Luna walked over to the railing and waved to the swollen crowd below, drawing both surprised murmurs and frightened gasps out of them. She could hear the collective sigh of relief when her annoyed sister stepped up next to her, strenuously working her jaw to finish her oversized cookie without spraying crumbs everywhere. Luna heard a guard snicker, but the crowd of ponies and a few concerned dignitaries of other species below couldn’t make out Celestia’s puffed out cheeks.



   “I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I DEFINITELY LEARNT NOT TO SNEAK UP ON MY SISTER WHILE SHE’S ENJOYING HER TEA!” Luna yelled out at the crowd in full Canterlot Voice, spreading her arms wide and giving the crowd a radiant smile to gather their attention. “I’M SURE YOU KNOW WHAT WE ARE HERE TO DO, SO LET’S GET TO IT!”



   With that statement, Luna lowered her hands and bright spots of light came to life on the tips of her fingers, along with the usual glowing of her horn. Celestia lit up her horn as well and started to move her sun along its determined route while keeping her eyes on Luna’s performance. Celestia matched the speed she lowered the sun to Luna’s hands rising up, ultimately leaving the night diarch stretching her hands out toward the moon in the sky in a welcoming gesture.


   Luna turned to her sister with a radiant smile, feeling an unknown weight lifting from her mind. Even with the spirits inside her and the patchwork of magic Soldier’s last act had left her, she could still raise the moon, she could still be herself, she could still stand beside her sister as an equal. She wiped the tears threatening to fall from her eyes and turned to embrace her sister in relief.



   “Long live the king.” Smuggler whispered as his projection appeared leaning on the railing next to the two sisters. She paused halfway to crossing the distance and hugging her sister, realizing how easy it would be to push Celestia off the balcony and direct her fall in a way that would snap her neck and leave little to no evidence. She knew it was a grim fantasy that would never happen, but no amount of hindsight stopped her from averting her gaze from her supportive sister and excusing herself with downcast eyes and a mumbled excuse.



   “In my defence, you had just raised the moon, so I had every right to come out.” Luna clenched her hands into fists as she walked, fighting the arcane energy she was itching to unload. Four words were all it took for the human to completely shatter her relief and bring a mindful of doubt and self-loathing in its place. Some part of Luna’s mind noted that Smuggler had been setting this up for hours and she should have seen it coming.



   “Come on, don’t think I’m some manipulative genius at this! Your insecurities and social ineptitudes are fucking obvious. It doesn’t take a great mind to poke at those and gloat when you overreact, all it takes is the will to hurt you a little.” Smuggler kept pace with her with an uncharacteristically serious tone in his voice. Luna glanced back at the spirit and was surprised to see several pieces of paper floating in front of his projection, rather than some shocking thing to push her further into an emotional outburst. His projection flickered and jerked in its movements as he went over whatever information he’d scrounged from her mind.



   “I’ve been going over the ponies that will most likely come to see you at court and I have some suggestions in how to deal with them. I can go over them now, or just act as an assistant of sorts when they come up to you. I’d appreciate if you glanced at Celestia’s court records and tax records going back about a decade, so I would have that to deduce their intent.” Smuggler reached out his hand and the scrolls, papers and other documents arranged themselves into a indigo blue folder. He tapped the folder against his other hand and smirked at her.



   “Besides, answering their question before they even open their mouth will make you look both clairvoyant and all business. When word gets around, ponies will not come to you without having something more than an emotional appeal, sidestepping a lot of future annoyance.” Smuggler hopped an inch of the ground and a skateboard popped into existence below him, letting him roll around next to her without bothering with walking.



   “Why?” Luna asked, wondering what kind of an ulterior motive Smuggler had. He had not shown any shred of interest in government, or helping her in any way, so she was beyond suspicious.



   “I’m bored.” Smuggler stated and waved a hand to bring up pictures of each instance he had been able to push her into an emotional breakdown. “One can keep annoying and embarrassing a petty pony princess of the night only for so long. Sooner or later it starts getting old. Helping you with your job is far more of a challenge than breaking you at this point, so I’d rather busy myself with that.”



   “You are a despicable man.” Luna answered almost on autopilot, unable to recount the times she’d come to that conclusion. Smuggler was the last person you would want to spend every hour of your day with, even his ability to process and store information was not enough to make his presence bearable. In some cases it only made it worse, as he was sure to remind her of each embarrassing moment he could dig out of her frayed mind.



   “So you keep telling me. That does not change the fact I can memorize any and all documents  you read in the next hour and cross reference them to give you insight into the motives of anypony that comes to plead their case.” Smuggler gave her a small smile and his projection disappeared with no discernable sound. She really didn’t want to admit it, or rely on the human’s help in any way, but if he could really give her instant access to the records of the crown after only skimming them, it would be well worth the risk of trusting his capabilities.



   “Script, I want you to retrieve the royal Canterlot tax records of the five years, along with Celestia’s court records. I will be reviewing them along with my normal duties.” Her royal scribe gave her a strange look and then glanced at the lunar guards around them. “Yes, you can take as many guards to help you that you deem necessary. You are the one I trust to make sense of the filing system in the archives and bring me what I ask.”



   The scribe nodded and motioned for three of the guards around Luna to follow her into the dreaded depths of the royal court records. Luna failed to comprehend why so many of her guards seemed so eager to assist the mare on these dreary quests into retrieving wasted stationary. She had been worried that the constant back and forth when she struggled to catch up on a thousand years of legislation would overwork the mare, so she had begun sending guards to assist her in carrying the piles of paper out.



   “The fact she came back all smiles and walking funny… doesn’t seem funny to you?” Smuggler’s voice asked in an incredulous tone. Luna opened her mouth to answer, but seemingly Smuggler was in no mood to wait for her to voice her opinion, “Yeah, I don’t know what I was expecting. Let’s get court out of the way and then we can watch Event Horizon.”




   The night court had alway been a dull affair, both in the months and years after her return and in the old times. Most ponies were asleep and content by the time her time came about. She knew better than to blame ponies for their natural behavioral cycles by this point, but that didn’t change the fact that most of the ponies that stayed up late long enough to come to her were either desperate, or simply nobles trying to gain her favor. Neither of these were particularly uplifting or challenging. Most nights her court was devoid of anyone with a valid case for the night court, so her request for reading material was not so strange.



   “I would have thought you transforming into a whole other species would have made some ponies curious.You know, dignitaries from other nations asking if being human meant you didn’t represent ponies anymore, asshole nobles accusing you of being Nightmare Moon, things like that. I would love for things like that to happen to you.” Luna turned a page on the massive tome of archived tax records resting in front of her, passing her gaze on the numbers and words on each page. As long as she saw the numbers and words clearly, Smuggler could easily extract the information at a later date.



   “Yeah, you don’t have to say it. Ponies will sleep on the revelation and then go bother your sister with their concerns in the morning, as they have learnt to do in the last millennia. The dignitaries are waiting for you to take the first step, before making their own move. All perfectly predictable and therefore boring.” Smuggler’s projection leaned on her throne and slid down to sit down leaning on it with a sigh. Luna turned a page, scanning numbers, words and dates systemically. Smuggler stayed quiet for 2 glorious minutes ass she worked, before his projection stood up suddenly. Luna looked up from her tome of soul-crushing boredom and saw that there was a small group of ponies walking up to the throne.



   “The two in front are Silver Seal and Caring Heart, they paid their taxes on time up until two years ago, when they filed for an exemption in account of the deteriorating health of one Golden Sprout, citing the expense of his care and medicine. Celestia approved the exemption and threw in appointments to court physicians with no added cost.” Smuggler rattled out as the ponies were still making their way to the throne. Smuggler waved a hand and the documents he had cited the information from appeared floating in front of her.



   “You can do nothing more for them, send them away.” She scanned the documents for details Smuggler had left out. Her eyes were drawn to the court transcript, as it detailed the relation of the ponies in question, revealing Golden Sprout to be the son of the two ponies, rather than an elderly relative, as she had assumed. He had been eight years old when they had petitioned for their exemption. She could only assume he was still alive if the parents would come to her for something.



   “How is Golden Sprout doing?” Luna asked before the stallion could open his mouth. She closed the tome of archived tax records and set it aside, maintaining eye contact with the confused stallion. Luna turned her gaze to Caring Heart as a morbid thought struck her. “For the record, the practice of necromancy cannot bring back the deceased, but I hope that is not relevant here.”



   “Your highness, we never dreamed you would know of our son’s condition. We did not…” The mare bowed deeply and swallowed whatever she was going to say with obvious difficulty. Caring Heart raised her head again and set her jaw before continuing. This was obviously something she had rehearsed thousands of times in her mind, so Luna fought back the urge to answer the inevitable question before it left the mare’s lips.



   “Do you know of any magic that could save our son? You are…” Again, the mare clenched her jaw and swallowed whatever she was going to say with a pained expression. “Please, if there is anything…”



   “There is not.” Luna answered, arranging her facial features to convey sympathy. The facial expression felt more natural than any had for weeks, so Luna took that as a sign that her soul had not fully shriveled into nothing quite yet. “I hold no magic that could save your child. I am sorry.”



   “We understand, your highness. We thank you for your time.” The stallion finally found his voice and started to lead his openly crying wife out of the throne room. Smuggler made his presence known by stepping out and starting to play a melancholic violin piece just as the two ponies turned away.



   “Halt!” Luna shouted in a voice a notch more aggressive than she had intended, but she blamed that entirely on Smuggler’s insistence on playing his comically small violin. The two ponies froze and apprehensively turned around as Luna stood up from her throne and started walking toward the pair. “We hold no magic to save your son from the inevitable, but that does not mean we will not lend our aid to those who ask for it.”



   “We can give Golden Sprout peace during our night and grant him understanding and kindness where confusion and hostility would normally take root. His sickness does not have to take anything else away from him.” Luna made it to the two nervous ponies and she kneeled down to be on their level. 



   “Your pain is not something I would wish upon anypony, but it is a pain I am intimately familiar with. We know how it seems to dampen the color and joy of the world, but we have learnt that it is not the world that deprives you of them, it is the stubborn refusal to not seek them out. Do not spend the time you have together in tears and sullen acceptance, give your child as many happy memories to take with him as you can.” Luna reached out and set a hand on the mother’s neck in a comforting manner. The mare flinched and went rigid at the touch, but ultimately met Luna’s eyes.



   “We are most gracious for your help, your highness.” The mare said through a clenched jaw and seething eyes. Luna could see seas of hurt and great continents of anger in those eyes, but she could not blame the mare for wanting to lash out at the world for taking her child away. The husband seemed more afraid and concerned, but Luna didn’t know if it was because of the real chance of his wife attacking royalty, or their dying son. Luna retracted her hand and averted her gaze, briefly wondering what was appropriate to say in this situation.



   “We regret that we cannot do more.” Luna muttered and started walking toward her throne. She knew she had done something wrong in this interaction and continuing to interact with the grieving couple would only make things worse. She really shouldn’t have tried to console anypony in her condition. She should have sent the ponies away, as Smuggler had suggested and save both of them the emotional turmoil. She flapped her wings and spun in the air to land on the throne with a thump. She opened the book she had been scanning and went back to work on memorizing the tax records of her subjects. That was at least something she could do.



   “So, this might sound weird, but could you smile for me real quick?” Smuggler said as he stepped in front of her. Luna saw no harm in complying with the request before questioning the human about it. She could feel the left side of her face quirking upwards, but she could only feel a cold numbness on the right side. She opened her mouth to ask what was happening, but her tongue did not move the way she directed it and she slumped on her throne as the cold numbness spread down to her chest.



   “Whu… ui doed fr moh!” The tome of tax records fell to the ground with a loud thump as the hands holding it up went lax. Her body refused to listen to her and the cold numbness spreading along her body was starting to be replaced by flashes of hot and cold pain washing over her body like a strobe light. A flash of normal and sudden pain on her left shoulder made her realize she was looking up at the high marble ceiling of the throne room, though it was hard to make out with the way her field of vision rattled around as her body convulsed.



   “Don’t you pin this on me! Anything to do with maintaining your bootylicious body is Priest’s job… Who seems to have stepped out at some point. Huh, I did not know he could do that.” Smuggler sounded like he was pleasantly surprised at this turn of events that was causing Luna unspeakable agony. She would be angry at the human if it weren’t for the aforementioned indescribable pain wracking her body.



   “Well, at least we’ll have time to watch the director’s cut of Event Horizon, you know, with your impending coma and all? You’re gonna like it; it’s a documentary about humanity’s first and last attempt at faster than light travel.”

> Priest's Conviction, Part 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Priest's Conviction, Part 2




   “You know, I don’t think people in your condition usually dream, so you should be thanking me.” Luna snapped back to consciousness at the voice of Smuggler and struggled to open her eyes. Something was wrong here, very wrong. She couldn’t open her eyes, nor could she move any part of her body. She couldn’t feel any surface she was lying on, then was she floating in liquid? Why would someone…



   “Let me stop you right there. You are not floating in some tank, on display for some nobody to jerk off to, if we are to go with the example your subconscious went with. You are a guest in my house and you have to play by the rules I live by.” Luna’s mind immediately refuted that statement, as Smuggler could not have a house. He was a spirit leeching off of her mind, so for him to have anything to call his own was ridiculous.



   “Your physical body is unavailable to you, because of whatever the seizure you had has fried your nervous system, so your consciousness is now kept safe within the confines of the mindscape I created.” When had Smuggler had the time to create a mindscape independent from her own psyche? He shouldn’t even have to ability to do that, let alone power to trap her mind within it.



   “I didn’t want to show this particular card just yet, either, but events transpired in such a way that you would have been irreversibly damaged, without my timely intervention. The consciousness I am talking to right now is the digital backup to your physical persona… Yeah, I think that’s as close to an accurate description of what you are.” She couldn’t hear Smuggler shuffling about, nor could she hear wind or any movement of air around her. If it weren’t for Smuggler’s voice, she would be in a pure void of darkness and deafening silence. If the annoying spirit was right and she was only a magical reflection, then there was nothing she could do to stop him from… doing something weird and disturbing.



   “Now, let’s not get overly dramatic here. I said you have to play by my rules and while that does mean no physical body, it does not mean you are incapable of interacting with your environment. I’ve been interacting with your reality with impunity, after all.” Luna felt that information float around her, teasing her with a revelation about her new form of being, but tantalizingly staying away from her sphere of awareness.



   “Oh, god damn it, don’t do that! I did all this especially to stop you from unraveling. You are Luna, Princess of the Night, avatar of the moon and I despise you. Now that we have the facts out of the way: brohoof me.” The image of Smuggler’s projection offering a balled up fist toward her appeared in front of her. Luna raised a hoof and gently tapped it on the human’s knuckles.



   “Now, was that so hard?” Luna gave Smuggler a confused look and lowered her hoof slowly. It took her a fraction of a second to realize she suddenly had a body to do that with and Smuggler leaned back from her with another annoying chuckle. She wasn’t sure if it was the bewildering deluge of information that he had dished out, or if it was just an involuntary reflex after all the instances he’d done the same gesture when they actually agreed on something, but the simple act had given her a solid image of her body.



   “Things are real different to what you’re accustomed to, but I know you’ll be fine. You know you have a body and I suggest you don’t forget that. Despite all that, welcome to my home!” Smuggler spread his hands out and collapsed onto a loudly creaking swivel chair. They were in what Luna assumed to be a small cabin, considering the logs in the walls and the stone fireplace to her right. Also, every bit of wall space not detrimental for basic movement was taken up by stacks and collections of books and papers and rolled up parchments stored haphazardly around the dimly lit interior. Each time Luna looked around the room, the dimensions shifted and varied wildly and the names and shapes of the tomes and papers around her changed.



   “Is this an actual space you occupy, or my interpretation of the nature of my surroundings? I see books and scrolls and a homey fireplace, but I doubt you give such things much value.” Luna scanned the room, reading the backs of the books she could and coming to the conclusion she could recognize most of them, even the untitled tomes and rolled up parchments looked familiar. “Most of what I see are things I have read or experienced, aren’t they?”



   “Well, you’re not as stupid as you seem, but I had quite a low opinion of you to begin with.” Smuggler reached out to a pile of books and flicked the one on top toward her. Rather than simply falling to the floor or hitting her in the nose, the book disintegrated into the memory of her learning how to construct the basis for a heat manipulation spell. “Yes, most of what you “see” is the collected knowledge that could be of use to me, copied piece by piece from your mind when you were preoccupied. I’ll have to think of a sensible way of organizing it, though.”



   “Why are you telling me this? I suspected you were doing something like this, but confessing to it like this is not smart, not like you.” Smuggler leaned back in his chair, the creaks and squeaks making her flatten her ears to her skull. Luna used the following silence to try and examine Smuggler’s features, try and see if he looked anything like his projection in the real world, but she found that she could not make out any of his features. Her mind immediately jumped to some other face she knew and suddenly Smuggler’s eyes, bone structure and skin color shifted to match the image in her head. He was a pony, a griffon, a human and a minotaur, all in the span of a few seconds, then he changed again as she blinked.



   “Well, I’ve told you about how my world has driven the archetype of the monologuing villain to the ground? I guess I just wanted to see the appeal in it, as I’m already quite a chatty fellow.” Smuggler swiveled around in his chair and grabbed a stack of folders of differing colors. He opened a sickly green one and started talking as he spun back around.



   “This is a plan to destroy your world with a zombie virus. I can give any unicorn both the motive and the means to alter three specific viruses responsible for your equivalent of the common cold, one for each race of you. The unknown factors are the rate of infection in real-life situations and whether the rage virus is actually fatal. It’s relatively easy to make the infected violent and demented, but to reach actual cannibalistic tendencies in a herbivorous species would mean a few weeks of real-life testing.” Smuggler closed the folder and set it to the bottom of the pile. “I decided against it, as it would be no fun to live in the world that would follow the zombie apocalypse.”



   “This is one where I drive you back to being Nightmare Moon and actually have you win.” Smuggler threw a thin indigo folder into the fireplace. “Far too predictable. I would only end up as the scapegoat when you come back to your senses.”



   “Ah, here’s one where I pester you about your lack of emotion and slightly alter your perception to persuade you to make physical contact with a pony desperate enough to believe I would help them. The unknown variables are if Kamos or his agents realize I am not as trapped as you have assured them and if Priest stays as blind to the outside world as he’s been so far.” Smuggler took the time to look Luna in the eyes, his grin staying the same in all of the faces he slid in and out of.



   “To be completely honest I only planned for this to be a way to torment you, but I can work it into another plan of mine.” Smuggler said as he tore a piece of paper from the folder and slipped it into a far thicker indigo folder. He opened a drawer on the desk he was sitting in front of and deposited the bulging folder into it. Luna blinked and both the drawer and desk were gone and Smuggler was sitting in an armchair with a pipe.



   “You wish to boast your intelligence and cunning, yet you wish to not reveal whatever plan you are pursuing in reality. I wonder if you are not boasting about your grand scheme out of caution, or if you are unsure if you can alter my memories to such an extent.” Luna took a few confident steps toward the grinning human, but soon found that the distance between them stayed the same no matter how many steps she took.



   “The short answer is caution, as you guessed. The pieces are already in motion, so it would not matter if you were able to remember any fragments of our conversation I might neglect to extract from you. The long one involves the mental anguish you’ll experience when it is played out in front of you, but you’ll know what I mean when it happens.” Smuggler flicked his hand toward Luna and even though the spirit was on the other side of the room Luna felt a sharp pain on her cheek and was knocked back. The motion had been so casual that Luna hadn’t even thought to brace for the impact, if that even mattered in Smuggler’s domain.



   “Why did you do that?” Luna asked, blinking her eyes to stop her world from swaying. There was far more force behind that single slap than the simple motion of his hand could have produced. Luna put a hoof on her aching cheek and looked up to Smuggler. Smuggler’s grin stayed the same, but his body tensed and for a moment Luna could see through the sea of faces he was hiding behind. Something sharp and venomous was coiled behind his form, blades and hooks quivering to rend and pull. Smuggler shifted in his chair and his form was again obscured by all of the faces he wore.



   “Your naívete is the thing that vexes me the most.” Smuggler leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him, the image he projected to the world solidifying further. His chair flickered and Luna saw more sharp things floating in the dark void waiting behind the illusion. “You yanked us away from our own worlds, tore out everything that made us human and then locked us in a cage with a wounded animal. You can argue the details all you want, but that is what you did.”



   The sharp things waiting in the void shot out like whips, sharpened edges and jagged hooks tearing at the tomes and scrolls around her as they whipped around her appendages and splayed her out in the air, pulling her body taut as the destroyed pieces of paper and ancient papyrus fluttered around the room lazily. She could smell the burnt paper from the fireplace and taste copper in her mouth as another sharp tendril slowly tightened around her throat.



   “You knew what you did was wrong, you knew Soldier hated you for it, you knew I tried to retard you mentally and hobble you physically, you knew Soldier cut out everything pertaining to us and the magic that created us. These are things you knew and still know. Yet, I watched the whole thing go through your head and you still thought you could be forgiven.” The sharp tendrils holding her in the air tightened their grip and she could feel the jagged hooks easily sink into her flesh as they moved. “You thought I would forgive you, perhaps even thank you. I couldn’t understand the logic behind that conviction.”



   “So, I dug in deep, I watched you, poked you, poured over your memories and all of your past interactions with others. I saw you excel your goals, gain recognition and fame and then I saw you keep going. You pushed, you prodded and you went past the lines set by those before you and then you wondered why those around you started to avoid you. Too intelligent, too proud, far too naíve and ultimately too jealous of your idiot of a sister with her schools and governments and ponies she had brought up as equals.” The tendril squeezing her throat moved to push it’s sharp tip into the flesh on the back of her head. The sharp point easily pierced the skin and snaked it’s way up her neck, the blinding flashes of pain signifying the jagged hooks scraping at her spine as it moved.



   “You were a genius far above those your sister would bring to your level and you were sure you could defeat the solar dullard they idolized if you really put your mind to it. So, eventually you moved to do just that, to prove you as the superior sister and sovereign ruler of the lower forms of pony. I think we both know how that turned out.” Luna could feel the tendril reach the point where her spine met her skull and start coiling around itself rather than move forward, after five agonizing spins into itself it finally stopped moving.



   “I couldn’t quite figure out how the arrogant genius of a bitch you used to be turned into the emotional mess that tore three souls apart to save one life.” Smuggler’s projection slowly stood up from the chair he’d been rooted on and walked toward her with an amused glint to his eyes. “So, I went back and recalled every little thought you had after the Elements of Harmony rainbowed you. The arrogance, pride and jealousy were all gone, but the ideas of superiority over those below you were still there. There are no therapists around to address those sociopathic ideas in Equestria, so when you met with the choice of sacrificing strangers for a distant acquaintance it took only a small nudge from Discord for you to cross that line.”



   “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy these new abilities of mine and this sure beats any afterlife I was headed towards. Many would see my situation as a blessing, but let me tell you the one thing that drives me to hate you and do this.” Smuggler reached out and grabbed her by the jaw, wrenching her head to look him right in the eye. She couldn’t see his hands, but they felt sharp and cold, nothing any living thing should have. 



   “Priest has the Body, the need to live and survive and do all that good stuff I remember. Soldier has the Soul, that unrelenting force that makes us hunger for something more in our lives, to fight for something more than what is given to us. They both have purpose hardwired into them, something to keep them going. Discord’s involvement only gave them sentience to choose their ways to pursue those goals, but what about me?” Smuggler let the question hang in the air. He might have been waiting for her to answer the question, but Luna was far too preoccupied by the fact that she couldn’t move her left eye and she kept smelling burnt toast.



   “Are you even listening to me? For this villain monologuing thing to be legitimate, you’ll have to retort sarcastically at some point.” The pain must have also distracted her greatly, but it was something that filled her mind so completely that it had become the new norm. Had there been a time when this white-hot searing pain didn’t make the world crawl and shatter around her? It was hard to imagine such a thing could be real.



   “Mental deterioration of equine copy #18 recorded at 77% in 8 minutes and 17 seconds after start of simulation. Construct does not meet the Kamos principle, Cataloguing data and disassembling faulty formula.” Everything that had been pain in her existence suddenly exploded into a dirty and murky expanse of lights and sharp wires interlinking and scraping against each other. It was alien and visceral, but there was something unmistakably nostalgic about the intricate patterns the intersecting coils created.



   There was violent tug and she was rocketed out of the familiar expanse of lights and painful wires. Her eyes and body had been left behind, but she could still see her little speck of murky light dissipating into the void all around her. She kept rocketing toward some unknown goal and more lights and intersections of the wires came into view and disappeared. She could see glimpses of more versions of Smuggler and Luna inside these fictitious realities and hoped none of the others would fail like she had.



    Her journey came to a stop in another pocket of fabricated reality, but instead of seeing a scenario testing the mental fortitude of another version of her playing out, she was met with the mirthful eyes of Smuggler. He was smiling, as always, but the dark spark in the back of his eyes reflected the void she had traveled through too perfectly for him to be nothing but the real deal.



   “If you had the capability to do so, I reckon you’d wonder why you’re here and why I am giving you my personal attention. I put a dash of religious reverence in there, so you understand I am a busy incorporeal spirit. You survived social interaction longer than most of your sisters, but broke down far easier when it came to physical torment. I will have to learn what caused this deviation and learn from it.” Smuggler’s image held a hand out toward her and more jagged wires latched onto her. 



   “Some part of me felt obligated to tell you that you will not survive the process. I will learn from your sacrifice, your purpose has been fulfilled, so rest easy.” She was pulled and she was torn, but she knew that she had served her purpose, a brief existence fulfilled was far better than an eternity of uncertainty. She could feel a final pull on her being and hear a high-pitched grinding of the taut wires scraping against each other and her and then she could not be herself any longer.




   Kamos




   “Why is she crying?” Kamos asked as another tear escaped from Luna’s still eyes, along with a barely noticeable flash of magic from her horn. The healer in charge turned to the stealthy zebra as his subordinates and colleagues around him flinched. To them Kamos most likely seemed to materialize out of thin air. He didn’t care about announcing his presence to nonessential personnel, but it was not like he had been trying to stay out of sight. By this point it just came naturally to him, a kind of magic few understood working without conscious thought.



   “That’s just her eyes tearing up because she hasn’t blinked for a while. I doubt she’s actually crying.” The doctor explained in an even tone as another pegasi mare flew into the room. Kamos appreciated their urgency, but a small part of him wanted to scold the mare for not setting down while crossing the threshold to clear the air for anyone flying out of the room. The doctor grabbed the documents and arcane scans from the mare and held one of the black sheets up to the light.



   “I thought I was very clear when I explained to you why forcefully extracting these spirits was a spectacularly bad idea. Come over here and have a look.” Kamos trotted over to the doctor and he graciously held the new scans to the light. Before her medical emergency there had been a concentrated spot of arcane energy at the base of her reformed skull and a slightly dimmer magical signature all around her body, obscuring any accurate scans. Now the mass of arcane energy near Luna’s brain had enveloped it entirely and the haze obscuring the medical team’s scans had cleared entirely.



   “I can say with some degree of certainty that Luna’s sudden seizure and the resulting catatonia were caused by the sudden extraction of the spirit that had bonded with her body. I hope you know how this was accomplished, as it’s either reintroducing the spirit back into her body to fix this, or betting that we can stay ahead of the damage an alicorn’s innate magic is doing to her transformed body. I trust my staff to do their very best, but there’s no way we can compete with an alicorn’s magic for long.” The doctor stepped away from the zebra and ordered the staff around them into action, the hum and warmth of healing spells filled the air a moment later. Kamos trotted out without another word. He’d learned what he could from the doctor and it was up to him to make sense of how it all happened.



   Everything pointed toward Priest being extracted somehow and Smuggler taking advantage of the situation to hold Luna’s mind hostage. The doctors might think Smuggler was keeping her brain from being damaged, but Kamos couldn’t be so optimistic. He also didn’t want to be forced to wait and see which side Smuggler was on, or if the eccentric spirit’s survival instinct was powerful enough to save Luna to begin with. The ponies Luna had come in contact with during the evening had been interrogated and checked for traces of Priest’s unique magic. Tracking down the couple that had been somehow been let out of the castle before his lockdown was next on the agenda, right after a minor issue with the other side of the royal diarchy.



   “Please tell me we didn’t do this, because I really did mean it when I said my method of extraction should not even tested on a particularly insistent tick. Please, please, please tell me I didn’t hospitalize Vice-principal Luna!” An unicorn mare wearing an illegally altered version of the cloak his unicorns wore rambled out hysterically. He hadn’t been able to sense the mare coming, so he couldn’t help being impressed by the modifications.



   “Princess Luna. You didn’t. Can that cloak be mass-produced?” Kamos answered the mare matter-of-factly while ducking into a hidden passage behind a statue. The mare followed him, her labored breathing and the irregular humming of her horn telling him that the new cloak was far more taxing than the official model. He could feel the tension bleed away from the mare and then she cleared her throat in that way he’d learned to dread.



   “Keep forgetting that. Thank god. Personal project, only works this well on you, unsuitable for most fieldwork by concept. I have a few ideas for a civilian patent, though...” The mare answered, imitating his accent poorly and with an infuriating amused tilt to her voice. He reached for his blowgun, but he could feel the mare skipping back down the passageway, the cloak masking most of her giggling.



   A few minutes later he walked between the two guards stationed at the entrance to Celestia’s private tower, the two giving him nods as he passed. At least some of the solar guards were observant enough to actually see him without him straining to be seen. He started climbing the winding stairs and felt a pressure settling on the back of his head the higher up he went, making him question his obvious lack of a contingency plan. He needed to address the situation before it escalated, but what could he do if it did?



   “Kamos.” The zebra heard his name called as he reached the top and he opened the door to the solar diarch’s chamber without a thought. He could feel the spirit’s attention on him as if it were a physical weight holding him down as soon as he opened the door. Celestia was laying down on pillows set in front of the unlit fireplace, eyes locked on the ashen firepit. Her posture was unnaturally rigid and her eyes were shining an iridescent blue. Kamos would have paused and considered whether he should approach the alicorn in this state, but his body moved forward regardless of his trepidation. He only stopped after settling down next to the motionless alicorn.



   “Not one for discretion, are you, Soldier?” Kamos found it terrifying that he couldn’t force his body to get up. He was able to fidget and fix his sitting position, but standing up or moving away from Celestia was not an option.



   “No.” Celestia’s body fidgeted as the blue light in her eyes dimmed slightly. Kamos could feel Celestia’s presence fighting to get back on top, but he didn’t know whether she was winning or losing.



   “I am a danger, she can’t go. Explain this.” Celestia’s eyes returned to their magenta hue, but Kamos only felt a slight change in the spirit’s presence. Soldier had let the sun diarch back on top willingly, to hear his reasonings as to why Celestia could not go heal her sister. Celestia sagged onto the pillows, drawing breath in large hungry gulps, as if she’d exerted herself physically.



   “Soldier compromises your magical capability, your highness. Even ignoring the spirit’s feelings toward your sister, it is more than likely his presence would make the intricate energy manipulation needed to use the caliber of healing spells needed impossible.” Kamos stood up from the cushions and moved to look the visibly exhausted Celestia in the eye. “Taking those feelings into account, attempting even the simplest healing spell on Luna with Soldier around would kill her.”



   “Why doesn’t he let me try, then? He could have exactly what he wants if he did nothing, so why does he persist on stopping me?” A tear rolled onto the cushions Celestia was resting her head on, but Kamos didn’t want to read it as anything more than another sign of exhaustion.



   “I don’t think he has any complicated reason for it. It would hurt you more than it would satisfy him, if I had to guess. These humans are alien to this world, we can’t assume to understand them just yet.” Celestia closed her eyes and gave a long sigh. Kamos could feel the weight of Soldier’s influence lifting as Celestia relaxed. Kamos could only assume he had read the spirit’s intentions right, or just gotten the spirit what he wanted. “Please let the royal physicians and my people deal with this. You are needed elsewhere, your highness.”



   “I will see that Equestria stands, Kamos. You go and save my sister from a senseless death.” Celestia decreed, with her usual confidence and natural authority returning to her voice and demeanour. Kamos couldn’t help but shudder knowing that there was something inside her that both could and would make that authority absolute, if she so wished. He knew Celestia to be too intelligent to be ignorant of it, so he could appreciate her choice to restrain any use of that power.



   Still, he ran down the stairs of Celestia’s tower, as soon as he thought to be out of earshot. To lose any agency to his actions from simple proximity to one of the human spirits was a terrifying scenario he hadn’t predicted. He had believed the human spirit in charge of the “Soul” would only have something to do with magic and power, as those were the things modern scholars associated with the concept. The magic that had transformed the three humans was more ancient than anything recorded or studied today, so modern laws didn’t necessarily apply to their function. He should have known to be more careful when it came to dealing with them.



   Smuggler’s sudden extraction from Luna when she had attempted to mend the veil had shown just how unpredictable and dangerous the spirit of the Mind could be. There had been no way for any physical body to pass through the veil without catastrophic consequences on both sides, so allowing Soldier to take chase was the best out of the few options left for them. Soldier was physically tied to Celestia’s heart in a way that would make extraction of the spirit lethal, but Celestia’s insistence on saving her sister put them in danger of losing both of their rulers.



   Celestia’s heart had stopped beating shortly after Soldier’s extraction, but the medical team they had prepared had been able to artificially circulate Celestia’s blood, while the sun diarch lay in a medically induced coma next to her sister. Soldier had shown no sign of any other ability than taking control of Celestia’s body during that whole ordeal. Kamos had assumed it to be because of their physical connection, but now he knew better than to underestimate any of the three spirits.



   The human spirit named Priest had been free for three and a half hours, the same amount of time Smuggler had spent on the other side of the veil. Based on all the reports he’d read of his interactions with Luna and the other spirits Priest was easily swayed. Kamos didn’t think the spirit of the Body to be malicious in his intentions, but the absolute nature of his power did make his freedom to make a wrong choice a frightening concept.



   Kamos rushed through the palace, making his way down to street level using any and all of the shortcuts he knew. He might have startled a few guards and servants by jumping out of windows, or jumping out from behind murals, but they forgot they saw him in minutes and he really didn’t want to delay any more than he’d already been forced to.



   “Tell me what you know.” Kamos unceremoniously ordered as he dropped into the empty guest room he had designated as the centre of operations for this problem. A unicorn officer with his hood down stepped forward with a stack of papers.



   “Caring Heart and Silver Seal own a moderately lavish house within the walls of Canterlot, but neighbours say they had not been there for a duration of at least six weeks. They have both taken personal leave from their duties as a royal scribe and a head nurse at Canterlot general. Nothing in their history suggests the magical ability to extract the spirit while avoiding detection, but I still believe they are our best chance of understanding what happened.” Kamos scanned the documents he had been provided with and read the information in very much the same way. He nodded to the unicorn and turned his attention to the rest of the ponies in the room.



   “Their child has been dying for the past two years. Look for property signed into Golden Sprout’s name, or that of immediate family. They obviously love their child, I doubt they want him dying breathing the stuffy city air.” The room exploded into action as they raced to be the one to uncover what Kamos had asked for. The court secretaries who brought the documents to the stealthy bunch winced as papers and records were scattered about the room haphazardly. Kamos made the mental note to leave the worst offenders back to help the clerks clean up.



   “There’s an aunt that owns a mansion at the edge of the whitetail woods.” One unicorn stated as he held up a piece of paper. A pegasi leaned over to check the name and then went to work on finding documents on the mare.



   “Currently employed at Canterlot Bank and Trust as a teller. I’ll go change and then have a talk with the mare about her property.” The pegasi stallion said and started for the door, but one of the scribes stepped out to stop him.



   “Are you talking about Candlewick?” Kamos nodded to the pegasi guard and he stepped back from the nervous mare. Kamos stepped up and froze the mare in place with an intense look.



   “Has this Candlewick mentioned letting members of her family use the estate?” Kamos asked the frightened mare, making sure his voice stayed calming and authoritative. The mare seemed skittish, but had stepped up with information that could help their investigation.



   “Yeah, at our weekly poker night she was all depressed about her nephew. She went on about how she didn’t know if she could really enjoy her summer home after it’s all over, but it’s not like she could say no to her sister, you know? She hit the sauce real hard after that, but it sounds like she’s the one you’re talking about.” The mare took a step back and averted her gaze from the zebra’s piercing eyes.



   “Thank you.” He could tell she was telling the truth and Kamos could collaborate her story later. He felt like he would need anypony he could spare when they caught up to Priest. He’d learned to trust his instincts, no matter how absurd they might seem. He pointed to an unicorn and earth pony in the room and then motioned to the mess around them. Their postures slumped and they gave a hearty sigh, but acknowledge the non-verbal order with a nod. “These two will stay behind to clean up the mess we made.”



   His subordinates knew the drill from there; pegasi flew off to do reconnaissance and transport the unicorns and the earth ponies to the site. Kamos ordered the pegasi not to make physical contact and not to engage in any other way if there were no lives at stake. He ordered the unicorns to protect themselves and those around them as if they were dealing with an extremely contagious disease. Priest was seemingly able to transfer himself through physical contact and Kamos knew nothing definite about what the spirit would do to anypony he possessed, so he felt like he owed it to his subordinates to err on the side of caution.



   He could feel his stomach dropping and flooding with ice as soon as he lay his eyes on the small mansion with an impressive garden. Before the Fenrir fiasco he would have dismissed the feeling as nerves before a field operation, but now he signaled those around him to ready for action. He didn’t know if it was some little thing wrong with the house his subconscious had caught before him or a form of precognition, but he knew something was wrong regardless. The sky chariots touched down on the lawn of the estate and he rushed out with his soldiers, ordering them to be cautious with nods of his head and movements of his hooves.



   As the last of his subordinates signaled they were ready Kamos ordered them to breach the house. Their arrival and positioning had been silent, but now his soldiers crashed through windows and doors, yells affirming that room after room to be secure following close behind. Kamos noticed several pauses between the affirming calls and felt uneasy about what his ponies could have found to make even them give pause. The unicorn commander in charge walked out of the house a moment later. The fact that the veteran stallion looked a little green made the zebra steel his nerves even more.



   “It’s bad.” The weary stallion stated as a number of the more inexperienced members filed out of the house to either look sick, or actually be sick. Kamos sighed internally as it became clear that there was little to no chance that any of the ponies he was looking for were alive in that house.



   It didn’t take long for Kamos to guess at least the nature of what had disturbed his subordinates after stepping through the threshold. He couldn’t see anything that couldn’t be attributed to his tactical team storming in when first walking in, but he detected the smell of freshly eviscerated remains in the air, along with burning flesh. Internal spontaneous combustion was not impossible with the degree of control Priest had shown over Luna’s body, but his team had witnessed the victims of volatile offensive magic before.



   He moved on through the living room, which had been immaculate before his team stormed in, and paused at the doorway to the kitchen. Bloody hoofprints on the floor coming from deeper in the house, they stayed consistent through the whole way, so the pony was either drenched or bleeding heavily. Kamos followed the hoofprints into the tiles of the kitchen and saw the still body of Caring Heart slumped on one wall. Her cutie mark was obscured by blood matted into her fur, but he felt safe in assuming the mare to be the wife for now. A handle of what looked like a kitchen knife jutted out of the mare’s eye socket and the smell of burning flesh was more pronounced in the room.



   “The knife was heated hot enough to cauterize the wound.” Kamos muttered as he leant down next to the body. There was no practical use for a heated blade in close combat and the magic required to manipulate heat to that degree would tire out the average unicorn far too quickly for it to even be viable. The mare had no wounds that would account for the copious amounts of it on her person, so clearly Kamos had not seen all the house had to offer. He moved toward the upturned kitchen table on the other side of the room, drawn toward it by the presence of blood.



   The splatter patterns on the wall the husband was imbedded in supported the theory of the now-cracked kitchen table being slammed into his body with great force and acceleration. The table at least looked to be a solid piece of earth pony craftsmanship, so if some unicorn had been able to slam it into the wall with such force, some kind of performance enhancer had to be involved. There were unmistakable bite marks on the husband’s body, the head was only kept in place by the wall it was imbedded in and most of the  flesh on the right forelimb was gnawed off deep enough to show bone.



   “Caring Heart came into the room covered in blood and fought with her husband. She slammed SIlver Seal against the wall using the kitchen table after a short scuffle and then gnawed on the remains until something stopped her.” Kamos scanned the room slowly and saw no obvious signs of any other assailant being present in the room. He turned around and started backtracking the bloody hoofprints. He stopped to scan over Caring Heart’s body again, noting two disturbed patches of fur on her lower back. “Looks like Caring Heart stabbed herself through the eye with a white-hot knife to make sure of brain death. The husband got a few hits in on her back, look for whatever weapon he used.”



   He had a pretty solid idea of where the hoofprints would lead and what he would find, but he had to see the scene for this to even start making sense. He had been working on the assumption that Priest had been transferred onto the mother to help the child, but how could that lead to the violent murder-suicide of the parents?



   Kamos followed the hoofprints down the hall and up the stairs and to the doorway to what had been a small bedroom with a skylight at one point. The skylight and window would have given the sick colt a picturesque view of the garden and the sky. Kamos counted the broken bottles and torn medicine pouches in the room and he could imagine them arranged neatly on the colt’s night table before all of this. The fact that the colt would have had little time left on this world regardless didn’t take away from the savagery of the scene before him.



   “I understand why the new guys would feel sick. They’ve never eaten with a griffon, let alone cooked a meal with them.” The weary unicorn officer stated as Kamos stood in silence. The sickening smell of viscera was strong enough to burn his throat as he breathed and the copious amount of blood splattered on the window gave the scene before him a reddish hue. Every piece of furniture in the room was either broken or drenched in blood. The covers of the bed were torn and drenched in red and black viscera, the frame had snapped at the middle, causing what was left of Golden Sprout to pool in the torn mattress. The unicorn’s comment floated into his consciousness as his eyes lingered on the bed.



   “Minced meat, you’re thinking of minced meat.” Kamos commented as he tore his eyes away from the slush of organs and chewed muscle on the bed. He scanned the floor, looking for the rest of the body. There were pieces and fragments of bone, blood and chunks of flesh on the walls and floor around the bed, but not enough to count for a whole body. He nudged a nearby piece of bone closer and found it to be hollow. The bone was snapped in half and there were bite marks on the broken ends of it. He could understand why the younger members of his unit would feel sickened by the sight, if they came to the same conclusion he did.



   “Caring Heart ate her son, she even went as far to suck the marrow from the bone. An equestrian pony lacks the strength to do this, magic or no magic. Priest stayed in Caring Heart through all this and halfway through her attack on Silver Seal. The evidence suggest Caring Hearts death to be self-inflicted, due to the trauma of devouring her child and killing her husband.” Kamos turned back toward the stairs and heard the unicorn officer following him. “Priest is most likely still attached to Caring Heart. We must prepare her for transit to Canterlot immediately.”



   “What about Golden Sprout and Silver Seal? We can’t leave them like this.” The unicorn officer exclaimed as Kamos descended the stairs. The stallion had a child around Golden Sprout’s age, If the spymaster’s memory served, so he was obviously arguing from emotion. He did touch upon a valid point regardless.



   “You’re right, something like this at this time would bring too much attention to Luna’s transformation. Some upstart guard or reporter would make the connection and cause a fuss. Make sure to place the father’s body in the child’s bedroom. I’ll send for an analog of an unicorn mare from Canterlot. The fire and some improvised transfiguration spells should obscure the evidence well enough to quell any rogue investigations.” Kamos ordered with a level look at the shocked stallion. Kamos saw a spark of understanding in his eyes before he looked away, so either he would be seeing a requisition for a raise, or a letter of resignation on his desk in the next couple of days. The stallion had served admirably to this day, so he couldn’t think of a reason to refuse either.



   Kamos trotted into the kitchen and ordered for the husband’s remains to be moved upstairs. The zebra motioned an unicorn over as he stood over Caring Heart’s body, carefully moving the disturbed fur on her lower back. He could see scarring and singed fur under the mess of blood and viscera, which contradicted the sequence of events he’d assumed to be true.



   “Sir?” The young sounding unicorn asked. Kamos could hear fear and hesitation in the stallion’s voice, so he assumed him to be one of the ponies that had felt sick.



   “You’re not in trouble, calm down. You have a medical background, have a look at this and tell me what you think.” Kamos stepped back and let the unicorn lean over the wound and concentrate his magic into it. He then moved on to the knife lodged in the dead mare’s eye and shifted the edge of the wound carefully with a hoof.



   “She was cut with a heated blade, but the cut is far too clean to be caused by the knife in her eye, the cheap metal would have warped as it was heated. These are not from the husband attacking her, the cuts are far too exact to be done by an accountant with no combat training, but they are also not lethal or disabling. I think these were made by a heated surgical blade and then the cauterized flesh was closed using an acidic compound. The technique is used in high-risk operations to stop tissue regeneration during the procedure when halting the administration of healing spells and poultices would endanger the patient.”



   “It’s also used when operating on hydras and other animals with high regenerative ability, so we could be dealing with someone with a veterinary background. This unknown assailant knew of Priest and extracted something from Caring Hearts body before we arrived here. Check if Priest is still in there and try and see what was extracted.” Kamos hurried off to send out pegasi to scour the surrounding countryside for the assailant. If they had been the one to both stop Caring Heart and operate on her body with heated blades, then they’d most likely be too drained to teleport away or maintain a cloaking spell. There was a real chance of catching someone who could give them a lead to whoever was orchestrating this tragedy.



   “You’re looking for an unicorn carrying internal organs extracted from one of the victims, so look for modified saddlebags, carriages pulled by one pony and trade caravans carrying passengers. GO!” Kamos ordered to the idle pegasi waiting by the carriages. The squad leaders of the pegasi saluted quickly before jumping into the air and splitting their subordinates into teams and spreading out along the roads and paths around the mansion. One low to scour the ground and one above to signal for reinforcements and give assistance, as they’d been trained twice over. Kamos turned around to keep going over the evidence on the scene, only to bump into the retreating form of the unicorn healer assigned to look over the remains. The colt’s rigid posture and hasty exit were completely justified as Kamos glanced behind him and saw Caring Heart’s bloodied body stumbling upright.



   “Do not let her touch you! Keep your distance and have your meanest offensive spells on the ready!” Kamos shouted out to snap his unicorns out of their shock. Caring Heart steadied herself on the wall, her head hung low and an intense hissing filling the silence as the metal blade of the knife slid out of her head, melted and distorted by the acidic sludge her left eye cried. Caring Heart stayed silent and leaning on the wall, breathing deep and ragged as the sludge in her wound reformed into a strikingly green eye. The eye spun around in it’s socket wildly for a moment before snapping to the hooded form of the unicorn in front of Kamos.



   “What are you waiting for? Kill me!” Caring Heart pleaded in a raspy voice. Kamos could see the flesh under the mare’s skin writhing and shifting as her eye darted from hooded figure to hooded figure. The blood stuck on her coat shifted and disappeared as it was kneaded into her body to fuel the changes Priest was inducing in the mare’s body. Kamos had seen Priest transform and control Luna, but this was as far from healing someone you could get.


   “GET ON WITH IT! YOU DON’T HAVE LONG!” Caring Heart shouted as the blood on her coat coagulated into a single spot on her side. Kamos watched the spot spread out onto a single line along her side with morbid fascination, shifting his head to the side to see if the line was bowing outward in the middle or if he was imagining it.



   “NO!” Caring Heart wailed as there was a loud crack of a whip and Kamos felt the warmth of blood splatter on his neck and face. The zebra felt something scrape a chunk of flesh from his cheek and heard the unicorn in front of him fall to the ground dead, as his head was dragged back with the razor sharp appendage stretching out of Caring Heart’s side. Kamos could catch a glimpse of Caring Heart’s jaw unhinging and stretching to accommodate the size of the head as her eyes whirled around in panic, before the kitchen was awash with fire and lighting as the rest of the unicorns let their offensive spells fly.



   “Bring up a containment bubble around the body immediately! We are done taking chances with this!” Kamos ordered into the thick cloud of burning kitchen and disintegrated matter. One unicorn lit up their horn to clear away the debris, but stopped short as another tendril skewered her right through the barrel and dragged her coughing and stumbling into the obscuring cloud. They could hear the mare’s coughing and struggling weaken and be muffled for a moment before the sound of flesh tearing and a wet gulp put a stop to it. He could hear a ragged sobbing inhale of breath before another wet crunching sound spurred him into action.



   “Retreat! Get out of the house! Do not use magic!” Kamos hefted the headless corpse of the unicorn medic on his back and hurried out of the house. He’d lost two operatives already and Priest was obviously beyond reason. Luckily Priest seemed to be content to stay behind and eat the other casualty in his squad. An nigh immortal cannibal begging for suicide by guard had not been on the list of things he’d expected out of this, but here he was with another impossible decision. Priest had to stay intact for there to be any chance of reviving Luna using him, but so far any interaction with the human spirit had cost lives, so he had to choose between saving Luna and sacrificing more of the ponies that had entrusted their lives to him.



   “Form a shield around the house! Trap this thing in before it follows us out!” Kamos carefully unloaded the limp body of the medical specialist next to the sky carriages they’d used to get there. The unlucky stallion’s head had been neatly cut off, with only minimal tearing at the edge of the wound. The blade had been thin and moving at great speed, but had dug into the flesh after the initial momentum had been spent. The fact the errant tip of the appendage had hurt his cheek meant that the appendage adhered to flesh either by its construction or some kind of adhesive. Given Priest’s ability to control the body to the degree of actually creating such an alien appendage in the first place, it could be both.



   “Sir, how do we proceed?” The weary unicorn officer asked with a clear tone of distress in his voice. He’d lost two ponies in the same amount of minutes and one of them was still being devoured by the thing that killed both. Kamos could forgive some degree of bewilderment.



   “Priest can control all functions of the body he is possessing, but seems to lack any way of communicating with his host. Caring Heart is another victim in all this, but any stress or injury she suffers causes Priest to react. We keep her contained and try not to interact with her, for now.” The unicorn nodded and hurried to relay his orders to the rest of the squad. Seeing two of their colleagues die horrifically sure gave the unicorns enough motivation to keep Caring Heart as far away from them as possible.



    Kamos started trotting around the circumference of the shield the unicorns were projecting, trying to sort out the facts of what had just happened in his head. The amount of flesh Caring Heart had devoured so far did not match her current mass, so all that matter must have been metabolised into some other form. The fact that something had been cut out of the mare while she’d been incapacitated was a far too big of a coincidence not to be related. Two scars on either side of the spine meant it was most likely a pair of organs affected by Priest, or one created by the spirit. Kamos had no idea of the limits Priest’s ability had, so he couldn’t even give a guess as to what purpose said organ could serve.



   Priest’s existence was a closely guarded secret even among the guard, but the assailant not only knew of Priest, but also knew how the spirit would affect Caring Heart before she was possessed. That would mean that they had a source of intel on the human spirits Kamos lacked and that was a frightening concept.



   “I am sorry, I am so very sorry.” Kamos heard a raspy feminine voice croak out, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged and then impacting the shield around the mansion. Kamos hurried to the part of the shield where Caring Heart stood, watching the nervous unicorn keeping the shield up with mild interest. She kicked the bundled up remains of somepony against the shield again and leveled her gaze at Kamos.



   “You have most of her body to bury, that’s more than I have.” Caring Heart gave the bloodied bundle of cloth a glance before calmly trotting away, following the edge of the shield. Kamos hurried to follow the mare, deeming open dialogue a step in the right direction.



   “The spirit in you is suppressing all extreme emotional responses before your mind becomes aware of them. That is why you are not… broken by what has happened to you.” Kamos carefully explained to the monotonous mare. Priest might have suppressed emotional responses, but that didn’t mean Caring Heart was not unhinged. Caring Heart stopped moving after reaching the opposite side of the shield, deliberately turning her body to face Kamos. There was another awkward silence as Caring Heart scanned her teeth with her tongue and smacked her lips.



   “Blood, bone, muscle, tendons, intestines, brain matter, spinal fluid, nerve tissue; all the things that came together to make my beautiful little Golden Sprout…I know what my child tastes like. There is no going back after that.” The mare paused her frighteningly detached monologue to spit out a tooth. Kamos did not think it was hers. “I might not be able to break down, but I am no longer whole.”



   “We can help you. We have a way to extract the -”



 “No.” Caring Heart did not raise her voice, but she did slam her hoof on the shield with enough force to make a sharp and clear note ring on the surface of the shield. Kamos saw that the unicorns holding it up to take a step back in discomfort from the corner of his eye as the shield wavered. Kamos fought back the urge to take more than a few steps back from the mare. He knew of maybe two earth ponies capable of making the shield spell his unicorns were using ring like that through pure physical power and they were highly-trained behemoths among ponies.



   “I’ve had enough of your help. I am not asking for release from this spirit you want back. I want to die!” Caring Heart took a step back from the shield, gritted her teeth and slammed her horn into the shield. There was an ear-splitting screech as lightning in all the colours of the rainbow raged where Caring Heart had been. Kamos knew that it was painful for an unicorn to be hit on the horn by unfamiliar magical energy, so he could only imagine the pain from hitting your horn on solidified arcane energy of several ponies would cause. Kamos took a few steps back from the glaringly bright light show and squinted his eyes to see the unsteady form of Caring Heart at the centre of it.



   “A bad way to go.” The nearby unicorn mused as the colorful storm of energy started to dissipate. Caring Heart’s form was starting to come back into view through the shimmering field. The shield spell was meant to contain unicorns, so the explosion of energy had not fazed the unicorns holding it up. The last arc of light danced across the inside of the shield and Kamos saw blood spurt from the shattered stump of Caring Heart’s horn. Caring Heart gave a weary sigh and closed her eyes, only for them to shoot open with bright red irises and jet black sclera as soon as her body hit the ground. The glowing red eyes whirled  around independently, scanning the shield and the unicorns holding it up.



   Kamos perked his ears as he could hear a faint hissing coming from Caring Heart’s body. He shifted to the side and grimaced at the sight of the two symmetrical wounds on Caring Heart’s lower back bubbling and leaking out a dark maroon liquid that snaked its way around her body. Kamos stood there, watching the strange substance solidify into a skeletal framework of what looked like coagulated blood around Caring Heart’s body, bracing her limp body up. The liquid moved and shifted constantly, shuffling her hooves about in a way reminiscent to the dancing marionettes that plaque Canterlot’s street corners whenever there’s a festival or function that draws in enough tourism.



   “Gah!” Kamos snapped back from his daydreams of inflicting pain on unsuspecting puppeteers as the unicorns holding up the shield recoiled back and a sharp whine sounded from the wavering surface. The zebra didn’t think that Priest would stop his attack after one failed attempt and jumped back, drawing in a breath to order the unicorns to reduce the shield to only compass Caring Heart, but he had to duck down and clamp his teeth together as Priest’s second attack lashed out and shattered the containment shield with a deafening crack of thunder and an instant flash of light.



   A part of his hood and strands of his mane drifted across his vision as the spear like appendage flowing out of Caring Heart’s body redacted and whipped back to block the offensive spells his unicorns were throwing at the unconscious mare, a faint glimmer of red in the viscous liquid intensifying every time it had to reform after being blasted away by a spell.



   “Keep attacking and do not give it a chance to retaliate! Anypony not specialized in offensive spells start casting a stasis spell!” Kamos pulled out his blow gun and shot three darts at Caring Heart. The ever-flowing appendages swatted two of the three poisonous projectiles away in flashes of red, but the third struck home on Caring Heart’s barrel. It took only a few seconds for the network of strange liquid holding Caring Heart upright to start flashing with a red light in the rhythm of the mare’s erratic heartbeat. The nerve-toxin he’d used caused the complete failure of the autonomous nerve functions within minutes, so it should at least slow down Priest, if Caring Heart’s survival was a priority. He could see the mass of the transforming liquid lessen as the poison kept doing its work and more of the substance flowed back into the mare’s body to combat the effects.



   “Stasis spell, now!” Kamos hurried the anxious unicorns. They’d lost a few too many ponies to leave anything to chance, but it was obvious Priest didn’t react well to being attacked and might have been a tad biologically immortal. It might have been a taxing solution for whoever kept it up, but a stasis spell would at least stop Priest long enough for them to formulate a better plan.



   In all fairness, it did seem like the stasis spell was working. The movement of the weird liquid was slowing and the red glint to it was dimming as the magic encompassed Caring Heart’s body. Those disturbing red irises moved sluggishly from unicorn to unicorn as the molten shield around the mare crumbled to hug the skin like a sheet drenched in blood. Kamos thought that Priest had given up on attacking and closed ranks to concentrate on dealing with the poison destroying Caring Heart.



   He realized he was wrong when the sheet of liquid slid off of Caring Heart’s body and revealed an insect-like exoskeleton writhing on top of Caring Heart’s body. Those sluggish irises snapped from staring at Kamos to the unicorn casting the stasis spell. That was all the warning he and the unicorn got before Caring Heart lunged toward them in a manner more reminiscent of an out of water octopus than an actual pony.



   It was a terrifying thing to watch the strange armor encompassing Caring Heart twisting her body to slide and tumble her way toward them, extending a hoof to drag herself forward, distorting the rest of her body to the side to dodge an incoming spell, twist her midsection around 180 degrees just so it could use the legs to propel itself forward, then violently flinging the hooves back to slap away a blast of fire. It was terrifying and wrong in more ways than Kamos could count, but he’d lost enough ponies that day to step back from this. He dipped a straight dagger in poison, clamped the handle in his teeth and rushed to stab the exposed flesh of the hoof Priest had used to repel the latest spell.



   His blade struck true and Priest recoiled back, the wound spurting out blood as the armor around it forced most of the poison out of the wound before encompassing it again. A sliver of glowing red remained on the surface of the reformed armor, so at least Kamos knew the poison was having some kind of effect. He’d have to wait for times when the armor had to reform for his poisons to have any effect, but distracting the homicidal spirit was more than enough to give his unicorns a fighting chance of bringing it down.



   “Don’t mind me! Keep attacking it!” Kamos ordered as he pulled his dagger out of his mouth and tried to stab at those unfeeling red eyes, the most obvious weak spot in Priest’s armor. He saw a subtle writhing on the remains of Caring Heart’s horn and let go of the dagger just in time to stop his hoof from being impaled by a crystallized spear of whatever the armor was made of. It was needle thin and cut through his dagger with no difficulty, so he was convinced that no ordinary blades would penetrate the armor. He jumped back just in time to not be overwhelmed by the inferno of flames that hit the prone abomination. He could hear the hiss and crackle as the writhing armor boiled off of Caring Heart’s body, but he could also make out movement in the maelstrom of fire and super-heated air.



   “It got Mustang! Freeze it, kill it, blow it up!” A mare unicorn screamed as the dagger Priest had wrenched from him shot out and the handle embedded itself in another unicorn’s eye, giving him the appearance of having another far meaner horn. The poison was in the blade, so hopefully the stallion would only lose the eye.



   Kamos rushed in just as the fire cleared out and the sizzling form of Caring Heart writhed back to life. One eye was covered in writhing scar tissue and the other was looking at the screaming unicorn, so Kamos had his chance to aim at the exposed flesh right under Caring Heart’s chin. Brain death of the host had stopped Priest before, so Kamos could only hope it would work again. The blade penetrated the skin easily, but he felt it hit something in her mouth and veer to the side to come out of her cheek rather than penetrating the brain. Caring Heart’s mouth cracked open and Kamos could see a glimmer of red reflected on the glistening blade of his dagger. He let go of the dagger and tried to step back, but a velvety darkness crashed down on him before he could get away.



   “That’s enough.” Kamos heard Luna’s voice call out in a calming voice and the muffled sounds of the unicorns in his squad yelling something. He could feel warmth all around him and the darkness felt soft and relaxing. Could the afterlife really be this simple of a thing? A comforting darkness to rest and forget your worries?



   “No more death.” Luna decreed as she stood up and unfurled the wing she’d used to shield him. Kamos felt a pang of embarrassment, but stepped away from the princess and surveyed the situation. There was another sky carriage landing next to the ones they’d used and the stallion with one of his daggers in his eye was being carried to meet the healers riding on it. Luna had one of her hands extended towards the small mansion and her fingers had a indigo glow around them. The hole in the wall told him what had happened to Caring Heart.



   “Princess, you should not be here.” Kamos commented as he took stock of all the injuries on Luna. The Princess of the Night did not look fit to be out of bed, let alone involved in a capture of a dangerous spirit. There was a bleeding scratch on the wing she’d used to shield Kamos, but that was not where her injuries stopped. She was out of breath and sweating with a feverish tint to her cheeks and Kamos could feel the heat radiating from her body. There were snake-like bruises running up her arms and on every part of her body he could see and he could see swelling at the joints of her arm. Her eyes were bloodshot and both sported sickly green shadows and Kamos noticed a burst vein on her right eye as she turned to address him, giving her sclera a bright red tint.




   “I know I am barely staying upright, but I refuse to succumb to the will of this monster to regain the illusion of health it gave me. I’ll gladly trade the cold indifference it gave me to this constant ache and emotional turmoil. What happened to her family, Kamos? I will know if you lie to me.” Luna brought her other hand up and one of Kamos’ daggers floated out, enveloped in the aura of her magic. The dagger shot into the dark house with a flick of her fingers and there was a meaty “thunk!” as it struck its mark. Luna relaxed both of her arms and turned to Kamos as her knees gave out. Kamos glanced at the healers running to the princess with concern etched on their faces and then looked back at the tired and determined eyes of his sworn princess.



   “Priest’s power manifested in Caring Heart at a time when she was alone with her son. She devoured her son and a part of her husband against her will to hypothetically produce a pair of organs on her lower back that produced that living armor she is covered in right now. An unknown assailant arrived at the scene at this time and subdued both Priest and Caring Heart by inducing brain death with a heated kitchen knife inserted through the ocular cavity, to cut out this pair of organs. Priest then killed two ponies in my squad to devour them and supposedly regenerate this mysterious pair of organs. Priest’s current violent outburst is the result of Caring Heart’s attempt at suicide by shattering her horn on the shield we set up to contain her.” Luna’s eyes grew wider and wider the more Kamos explained to her and when he was finally done. Luna turnedtoward the mansion and set her jaw and tried to blink away the tears as her eyes wandered to the blood-stained window on the second floor.



   “I could have… This is my fault.” She shifted here and there before bringing one of her hands to her face and letting out a strangled sob. Kamos could see her slender fingers digging into her cheek as she struggled to force the emotional outburst down. The healers hovered over the distraught diarch and shuffled uncomfortably, casting nervous glances at the mansion and the bloodied bundle being carried to one of Kamos’ carriages. Luna stayed quiet as her rapid breathing slowly calmed and she raised a hand toward the mansion again.



   “This whole thing is because I showed undue kindness toward a monster I empathized with. Fenrir should have died ignorant and happy, his pain should have ended before he could spread it any further.” The points of the fingers she was holding out started glowing, the light intensifying steadily as the glow spread to Luna’s eyes.



   Kamos felt his hooves leaving the ground and he scrambled to gain purchase on something. After stabbing one of his remaining knives into the ground he saw that everything in the immediate area was experiencing the same anomaly in gravity. He grabbed the unicorn healer closest to him and saw members of his squad doing the same whenever they could. The carriages were starting to float off the ground and all the flora around them stood up straighter and some were even pulled out of the ground to float up into the sky with the loose pebbles and anything not nailed down. Kamos saw the effect spreading across the grass and trees in the distance as the light coming from Luna kept growing in intensity.



   “No more pain will come from this.” Luna muttered as she closed her fist and trapped the light in it. There was a moment where his body was pushed up toward the sky before the gravity returned with enough force to slam them down with enough force to punch the air out of his lungs. He heard Luna crumble to the ground and the unicorn healer rush to check on her as he took a few incredulous steps toward the spherical crater in the ground where a homy summer home had been just a moment ago.


   “I knew Luna was the one with the reported affinity for gravitational magic, but this… we have to get that other spirit out of her before what happened to Caring Heart happens to our highness.” The weary unicorn officer commented as he trotted over to the edge of the crater. Kamos nodded as he decided to give the stallion a raise and every other surviving unicorn a bonus.



   “We’re done here. Let’s clean up and then collaborate with the guard to decide on an official story.” The unicorn flicked his hood back up and then trotted to relay the orders to the unicorns still standing. Some of the unicorns that had been attacking Priest were suffering from arcane exhaustion, but Kamos could see the pegasi returning from their search in the distance, so they should be able to pack up quick enough. He did not see a captive among the groups of pegasi, so the mysterious surgeon had been able to escape.



   Kamos felt far more drained than a half an hour operation should have left him, but he had to admit that the colt’s gruesome death still managed to bother him. Destroying Priest along with Caring Heart was not the most rational choice, but given the horror the spirit had brought upon this desperate family in such a short amount of time, he couldn’t blame Luna for reacting in the way she did. Priest had no regard for the lives of anyone other than the one he was possessing and that fact alone made him a danger to all around him, along with whoever he resided in by proxy. It was better for all involved that Luna had been able to survive without the help of the spirit.




   Smuggler




   “You promised nopony would die in this! You told me it would be the colt!” Smuggler grimaced as whatever bullshit arcane frequency he was tapping into screamed at whatever collection of energy simulated the function of auditory receivers. He chose to picture the situation as his human projection holding an old-timey phone, but the intricacy of the situation still lingered just below the surface. “She begged me to end it, to stop her from hurting anypony else. She was drenched in blood, you bastard! What in tartarus did you drag me into?!”



   “Something must have triggered Priest before the mother got to the colt. The kakuhou you extracted were supposed to be comprised of the diseased and cancerous tissue from the colt, so when Priest started the procedure of generating them in a healthy body, he had to get the cancerous tissue from somewhere. It was the colt that had taken the nutritional supplements meant to replace that tissue, as well.” Smuggler strengthened the link between his consciousness and the irate stallion and perused his short term memory for a variable he’d missed. The spirit catalogued the aesthetically pleasing flora around the mansion and found his answer.



   “Priest reacted to the mother’s allergic reaction to a flower in the garden at the front of the house. Her file mentions a pollen allergy, but doesn’t tell the genus of the plant she is allergic to. An allergic reaction would seem far more serious from Priest’s point of view, so I believe we have our cause to this unfortunate effect.” Smuggler explained and then dulled the sensory feedback from the arcane frequency as the stallion went on to voice his indignation and horror at being a part of such a travesty. He silenced the stallion by strengthening their connection to the point that the stallion materialized in his mindscape and saw him in all his twisted glory.



   “You are an accomplice to manslaughter, illegal medical experimentation and the conspiracy to treason. It is in your best interest to stay complacent.” Smuggler reached beyond the frightened stallion’s facade and found an annoying seed of doubt about staying quiet. Smuggler allowed himself a burst of annoyed anger and yanked the stallion’s mind almost clear of his body. The separation would cause the body indescribable pain when the detached mind slammed back in, hopefully driving his point home.



   “Your role in this is over and your future is all but secured with that little invention I shared with your puny mind. You are an insignificant cog in the machine of my making and if you make the right choice and disappear, you might dissuade me from visiting the hell you are whining about witnessing on those you love.” Smuggler let the connection weaken back to only conveying information on the level of spoken words and felt a bit of glee at seeing that seed of doubt shivering and dying in the face of the fear the stallion felt. He cut the connection with a feeling of satisfaction. The stallion might gather up the courage to come clean to the authorities in time, but the chances of that happening in time to hinder his plan were astronomically small.



   “You really went beyond the call of duty, #87. You are lucky your loss of consciousness can be explained away with exhaustion, or we would be having this conversation in a whole different tone.” Smuggler noted as a part of his indescribable form started stitching together the mental projection of Luna sharing his mindscape.



   “Caring Heart could not survive long enough to be questioned. If I had chosen to spare the mare, you would have ordered her death before any useful information could be forced out of her, regardless of my simulated feelings. Termination of Priest’s host was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Everything would have ended so much happier if Silver Seal had know about the nature of his wife’s allergies. It is truly the smallest of things that can cause the most brilliant of plans to come tumbling down.” Arcane construct number eighty seven stated with an adoring smile gracing her stitchwork features in the strange light of Smuggler’s domain.



   “Good girl, #87! You are surely making your late sisters proud.” Smuggler cooed at the childish adoration of the arcane construct and allowed his mind to touch the artificial intelligence. He sighed in relief as he found out that the emotional response was a part of her obedience programming, the AI had not gained true sentience. It was not like he would mind replacing Luna’s mind with a childish AI, but he had far too many stories of such a scenario going horribly wrong in his overly detailed memories that he was sure to avoid even the possibility of being the cause of it.



   “Be sure to keep the Artificial Body Project in schedule and we will be golden. Right about anything else is up to your personal discretion. My earlier character will explain almost any erratic behaviour, after all.” Smuggler sniggered as he went back to work on repairing his artificial copy of Luna’s psyche. Ponies were so easy to manipulate, not to mention the array of ways magic gave him to cheat on this challenge of it.

> Soldier's Purpose
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Soldier's Purpose




   To be honest, as otherworldly spirits co-inhabiting your body went, Soldier was not that bad. If Celestia were pressed to describe her usual experience living with the human, she’d suppose it was like living with a roommate that had no regard for your personal space, but still stayed cordial enough to do their own dishes. This would of course prompt whoever was interviewing her to ask how Celestia knew anything about living with a roommate and Soldier would order this imagined interrogator to walk off a balcony.



   Celestia scribbled down a note reminding her secretary to send a fruit basket to poor private Calm Breeze. The colt had obviously been stoned out of his mind on guard duty, but guarding the palace interior was a notoriously dull affair, so Celestia would have given the matter a pass. She might have mentioned the incident to the colt’s superior later if it was evident that he was supplementing his high during the day. Soldier was obviously not so lenient on the matter of guard protocol, as was evident by the colt’s broken legs from walking off an open balcony and dropping three stories into a rosebush. The colt would have lost an eye to a thorn, if Celestia hadn’t stepped in to realign the tissue and mend it together. It had annoyed her greatly that Soldier allowed her to heal a guard’s eye, but actively stopped her from saving Luna’s life.



   She wasn’t sure if she should take what had happened with Luna and her two spirits as a sign for what was to come, or a testament to Soldier’s character. Soldier had been the one to retrieve Smuggler from beyond the veil, despite his obvious disregard for Luna’s life. Celestia realized that Soldier had done what he did purely as a favor to her. She knew a few ways to circumvent the hold Soldier’s presence had on her heart, but they were either risky and time-consuming, or required the death of the spirit. The human spirits had demonstrated the ability to leave their host body, but at least two out of the three had some regard for the well-being of their hosts.



   She did understand the man’s ire towards her sister, as she had seen the mangled nature of his very soul after what Luna had done to him, all to save a mindless beast. The more she thought about the depth of Soldier’s anger, the more frightened she was to be left in the same room with Luna. Soldier didn’t need to know any spells to destroy Luna with the reservoir of power the sun diarch commanded and he had proven to be in complete control of her every faculty whenever he stepped in. The pragmatic man probably wouldn’t bother using magic, opting to either stab Luna in the eye with Celestia’s horn, or simply order Luna to cook her own brain. Celestia preferred to think Luna’s continued survival spoke for both Soldier’s character and her strength of will.



   She wouldn’t say that it was the universe conspiring against her and her ailing confidence, but she did think that it was vexing Soldier chose that exact moment to make the quill she was using float over to a blank paper and start writing in blocky letters. Her horn was numb until the phoenix quill ran out of ink and she floated it over the ink pot to refill it. Celestia preferred this method of communication to the man simply speaking using her mouth, but he could take the time to get good enough at using her magic to use the quill properly. She was wary of broaching the subject with the human though, seeing how overpowering he was just with his ability to order the wills of others. Imagining the irate human with delicate control over her magic was a frightening thought, but the sight of those blocky letters made the teacher in her shudder.



   “Battery, Crystals, Solution? I know you’re a man of few words, but even a foal can express themselves more clearly. I need to finish reviewing these documents, so use my mouth.” Celestia fought down a groan at the thought of somepony taking her words out of context. It had been far easier to censor her own words to avoid these double entendres, before Soldier started sharing a body with her.



   “I am a problem for you, we need a solution. Something to store part of me, spare your heart. Crystals store energy, maybe use them.” Celestia heard her own  mouth say in her voice, but she still heard Soldier’s more masculine voice interlaced with hers. Nopony else could make out the difference in their voices, but Soldier was far more blunt in his mannerisms and her eyes took on a radiant blue hue whenever he took over, so not being able to know who was talking had never been an issue. Celestia kept going over the documents she’d been presented that day and mulled over Soldier’s proposition.



   “Crystals can be used to store energy, but to find one specifically attuned to retain your arcane frequency is near impossible. Every little piece has its own frequency they respond to and an arcane construct as complicated as you would cause any crystal with even the tiniest of imperfections to shatter. It is a branch of magic I’ve researched extensively before you came into my life.” Celestia could feel Soldier’s presence lessen as she finished her lecture. She went back to going over the documents, still feeling Soldier’s attention on her all the while. They shared a body, so it was not like Soldier could go anywhere, but it felt like he was waiting for something, rather than just leaving her alone.



   She went blind as soon as she put the documents she had been perusing aside. If she didn’t happen to have an inter-dimensional spirit inhabiting her body, this might have been a degree or two more alarming. She felt her head moving to and fro, but still could not see even a glimpse of light. Soldier had not forced control over her so overtly without a valid reason in the past so Celestia decided to bite her tongue and wait for an explanation from the man.



   “I see one, below.” Soldier stated as Celestia’s sight returned. She blinked her eyes and saw her office irradiated in a strange golden light, before her vision cleared. She moved her limbs one by one, making sure Soldier hadn’t left her numb in some important appendage, before picking up the stack of documents in her magic and trotting out the door. She stepped out of her office and floated the stack of papers over to the desk of her secretary as she passed. She bid the mare a quicker than usual greeting and goodbye as her legs kept walking out of her office and down the hall.



   “The fastest way down would be back the way we came and two corridors down.” Celestia dryly commented as Soldier turned a corner. Her body stopped, carefully turned around and then kept going the other way. Clearly, Soldier had a purpose and just like any other male he would rather be lost than ask for directions. Soldier kept walking her body forward in silence, only stopping when he reached the winding stairs she’d directed him towards. As powerful as he was, he still had not mastered challenging stairs in an equine body. She had already finished most of her duties for the day and she found it unlikely that Soldier would lead her to any real danger, so she started trotting down the stairs carefully.



   “Do you have an answer to that question, Soldier?” Celestia quietly asked as the silence stretched on. She felt Soldier’s presence swell and halted her advance down the stairs. She started to cautiously trot down again as only her mouth fell numb.



   “She took a part of me away, she should have known better.” Soldier answered her insistent question. Celestia knew Soldier could work past the anger he felt for Luna, but she was also aware of the stubborn nature of the man. Simply telling him that holding onto that anger was harmful and illogical would work just as well as building a snowman in tartarus. She had instead chosen to repeatedly ask the man to rationalize his anger and then pick apart his excuses in a rational way. She’d come to understand that men like Soldier answered far better to reason than emotional pleas. The downside was that she had to be sure her retorts were based on logic, or she would lose credibility in his eyes.



   “She came out better for what she endured at the mercy of the Elements of Harmony. I believe Discord used that fact to slip the horror of what happened to you past her conscience.” Celestia explained as soon as she could control her mouth again. Soldier didn’t respond to her and it was not like she expected for the solemn man to keep up a conversation. His silence could mean that he had acknowledged her point and saw no reason to interact with her any longer, or it could just be him deciding to ignore her reasoning. The fact that he lived in the very narrow blind spot she still had in discerning if someone lied to her was unnerving enough to make her fear him.



   Soldier walked her body down the halls of the castle and every little staircase leading down he could find. He only stopped commandeering her body as they stepped into the great hall at the ground level of the castle. She trotted to the centre of the room slowly, her head swiveling to and fro lazily. What could Soldier have been leading her towards? She could feel his presence shift inside her and the alicorn was cast into darkness again as the spirit took her sight from her.



   “Above us? Not upstairs…” Celestia could hear her covered hooves striking the marble of the great hall as Soldier repositioned her body. “Not part of light fixtures, little to the left, in the stone. No other crystals around it, you’ll find it.”



   Celestia jerked as she was given control again. She had complete control of her body, but she was startled as she suddenly saw the world like Soldier viewed it. The world pulsated in hues of colors she could hardly name and pure golden light pulsated off of her body, washing over the details of the room she was in and giving her a detailed image of the cavernous space she was in. Celestia moved her head to the side and noticed that she could see the other colors shining through the golden radiance, there were different colored outlines of ponies moving about the castle shining through walls that were like breaths of smoke, despite being made of granite. She watched in awe as wisps of color bled off of the ponies whenever they used magic and splashed onto their surrounding like a cascade of molten stars.



   “Focus.” Soldier muttered as Celestia kept looking around, trying to determine the range of Soldier’s vision. Her neck snapped back to stare at the ceiling again and she begrudgingly followed Soldier’s vague instructions. Not part of the kaleidoscope of dull glimmers that were the ornate chandeliers, a little to the left and in the stone. She assumed that meant whatever she was looking for was imbedded in the murky fog of the ceiling and squinted her eyes to catch any glimmers of light. It took a few seconds, but eventually she saw the glimmer of something blue.



   The all too familiar cold blue light jumped out at her and she froze at the sight of what the irregular crystal in the stone of Canterlot castle reflected back at her. She saw a mass of blue light around her body, moving and raging like a miniature cyclone. She could also see a humanoid figure at centre of the typhoon of arcane energy, Fixed in place above her by wisps of golden light affixed to a bright golden light above her heart. It was not the form of the stoic and gruff Soldier she knew. It was the picture of a man writhing and screaming as he was torn and shredded by a storm boiling out of his own flesh, parts of him blasting to pieces, as another part reintegrated. She watched in horror as the golden light shining from that spot over her heart pulsed and sent the maelstrom of blue into a frenzy, exploding outward and tearing Soldier’s humanoid shadow into nothing in the process.



   “No!” Celestia took an involuntary step toward the scene unfolding in the strangely intricate reflection the jagged piece of crystal offered of Soldier’s true form. The man was a dim-witted brute, but she would never wish harm upon him. She unfurled her wings and saw the cloud of blue obscuring her form shift and contract as golden light showered out from her outstretched wings. The mass of blue flowed inward and wrapped around the strands of gold from her heart to form the shadow of the man she’d just seen torn asunder. The skeletal figure writhed and screamed in silent agony as flesh knit itself around the undying core of her still beating heart. Celestia thought back to every instance of Soldier losing his temper and saw every instance in a new light. It had always been at the loss of control in some form or other. He’d been dealing with having his very essence torn apart on a daily to an hourly basis, so understably any weakness in those he sympathized with would be jarring.



   “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I would have helped you.” Celestia watched as the dismantled form in the middle of the storm leaned into her body and disappeared into her flesh. She could feel her mouth going numb a moment later, as the storm of blue light calmed around her.



   “Not your problem. Can the crystal be used?” Soldier was right in assuming that a crystal would be compatible if it could reflect his uniquely oppressive arcane signature so perfectly. She would have to order the stone workers of the castle to extract the crystal as soon as possible. She knew the dimensions of the thing and that it would at least serve as a template for engineering a housing for Soldier’s spirit.



   “Yes, it will help us immensely in anchoring you to your own body.” Celestia looked away from the ghastly image the crystal projected and closed her eyes. She felt a little bad about her attitude toward the man, knowing what he’s been going through in silence. Having your body torn and shattered just from your own arcane energy was a fear she still entertained from time to time. Her eyes shot open as a thought occurred to her. She’d always thought Soldier had some nefarious purpose to take her body over when she slept, but seeing what happened to the man when he was outside of her body, she did wonder…



   “What happens when you possess me? How does it feel?” Celestia would have glanced at the crystal in the ceiling to see Soldier’s reaction, but she found herself to be with no agency in her own body yet again. She could feel her muscles tense and stretch as Soldier used the excuse to take over her whole body. Soldier carefully folded her legs beneath her and laid herself down on the cool marble floor, spreading her wings out to feel the coolness and smoothness of the stone. A sigh of contentment escaped her lips and Soldier closed her eyes before answering her question.



   “No pain, moored in this moment, your light soothes. More aware, reprieve from the grating lights. They are grossly incandescent, words are yours, I think.” Celestia felt a pang of irritation at the man’s fractured way of speech, but then thought to the barely intelligible answers she gave to anyone disturbing her in the middle of a relaxing bath, or other equally distracting activities. She had never considered Soldier sounded so unfocused because it was distracting not being continuously torn apart by your own power. There was no way she could have know, but she still felt this little tidbit add to her guilt. Celestia would have responded to the man, but obviously Soldier was taking full advantage of his rapt audience.



   “Less of me left to hurt every morning, I feel this power thrumming louder, see it reaching farther. Outside of me holds no will, it supersedes those in contact, I feel more whole. Dangerous for them, loss of control, my whims are turning violent.” Celestia felt her head droop down to the floor and she savored the soothing coolness of the marble on her neck, despite the grim implications of what Soldier was telling her. It was glaringly obvious to the seasoned healer, now that she knew the kind of existence Soldier led day to day, that Soldier wanted to rest, to sleep and stop hurting. The fact that his own existence denied him that reprieve was something that could cause some ire.



   “How many will I touch when I give up? That is our problem.” Celestia would have gasped and shot up, but Soldier was still laying her body in the middle of the grand hall. Her loss of control didn’t diminish from the frighteningly valid point the human was making; Soldier made those around him do as he willed, so if he decided to stop fighting the pain, how many ponies would follow him? Given the fact Celestia didn’t know what Soldier’s gathered energy would do without a will to guide it, it could be a pandemic of suicidal tendencies washing over Equestria, or simple destructive power just waiting to set Canterlot aflame.



   “Princess, are you feeling well? Shall I call the healers?” A nervous guard asked Celestia. She could move her head to answer the poor colt a moment later, as Soldier retreated back to his routine of pain. She saw three more guards stationed around her, keeping her reclined form from whoever had business to go through the main hall of Canterlot Castle. it was not a particularly busy day, but more than a few guests and foreign dignitaries must have passed her in the time she lay there. She had to assume her sudden bout of talking to herself and staring at the roof would be in more than a few publications by tomorrow.



   “I am quite alright, don’t worry. Could you please go and inform the masonry staff that I will need to extract a piece of the roof.” Celestia glanced at the still lingering light in the otherwise inconspicuous spot of decorated marble. She could see the violent movement of blue light around her reflected golden figure, but any details were fading fast. Soldier would wait for her to use the proper channels without complaint, but Celestia was opposed to causing the man undue pain for the sake of bureaucracy. She hopped back up on four legs, only in part trying to convince the guards she was alright.



   “I’ll try to be neat about it. The three of you, clear the space below that chandeleur.” Celestia didn’t wait for the three other guards to acknowledge her, before jumping into the air and raising to level with the chandeleur. She used some improvised pegasi magic to give herself some stabler footing and then went to work on prodding the patch of roof the jagged crystal was located with her magic. There were no obvious load bearing structures near it, nor did she detect any metal from plumbing pipes or electrical wires from the offices above. She could do this here and now and save herself a day or two.



   She encapsulated a cylindrical piece of marble in a stasis field, created a small pouch of silken magic under it and then started to vibrate and heat the space around her field, effectively grinding the marble to dust. She reached the point beyond the crystal and stopped the spell drilling into the marble. She picked out five small pieces of marble from her magical pouch and then levitated them into the cavity around the piece of marble she wanted. She made sure they were on the same level and that they were on even intervals of the circumference of the cylinder.



   She tuned the stasis field to cut out below them in a straight line, before heating the pieces of marble with a flash of magic. There was a loud crack and a tuft of pungent smoke puffed out in her face, but the cylinder of rock slid out effortlessly. She had what she wanted and she only had to deposit the small pouch of grinded marble in a dustbin. She fluttered down to the floor again, bid farewells to the bewildered guards and started trotting toward Canterlot University. She’d already gone this far, so depositing the crystal at the lab was not that big of a task. She found a dustbin on the way and briefly contemplated on the surprise the servant would have when presented with a dustbin filled with ground up marble.



   “You are certain that the ponies there know how to handle the crystal? Finding this in the castle was a stroke of luck, according to you.” Celestia jumped to the side in surprise, as she heard Soldier’s voice coming from her side, rather than her own mouth. She saw the cylinder of rock floating next to her, but she also saw a torrent of boiling blue light raging in and around it. The blue energy obscured the mass of marble almost completely, but nopony on the street even gave it a second glance. They only gave her the usual courteous nod and then decided to keep going about their business as their eyes flashed blue. Soldier had insisted it was not something he did consciously, but Celestia had her doubts. Still, she had to wonder if ponies were not acknowledging the harsh mass of blue light at her side because they couldn’t see it, or because Soldier’s power had intensified, now that he had an anchor in her plane of existence.



   “How are you doing that?” Celestia asked, as she resumed her journey to the ABP lab. She had a pretty concrete idea on how Soldier was able to manifest, but she really wanted to hear the man’s point of view on it. Despite the existence of actual spirits in Equestria, it was notoriously hard to hear accounts of the world from their perspective, as most of them had done away with describable language. Human turned ethereal spirit was as close as anypony could get.



   “Parts of me are drawn to the crystal, they stay still when the rest twists and rushes about you blindly. I feel the fire licking at my soul stronger, but I see you as any other sees you. I choose to cling to that image.” Celestia didn’t know if she should be honoured or creeped out by such devotion, so her body decided to shiver uncomfortably as her face took on a slight tint of red. Hearing Soldier describe his experience corresponded with what she knew about ethereal spirits. They tended to be sensitive to other forms of energy, but conversely had unique ways to sense and manipulate the energies they had an affinity to.



    He was  especially sensitive to personal magical fields, which was evident in the fact he could sense them through walls and most likely played a big part in his ability to supercede the wills of others. The pain Soldier experienced was most likely because he lacked ways to contain his own energy in a way that would shield it from interacting with the “grating lights” of the world around him. He was not a naturally formed spirit, so he had no home or safe haven to return to.




   “You might not know it, but what you’ve told me will help us create you a suitable body. You really should have told me you were in pain before this.” His artificial body would have to be able to restrain his energy within its confines and have an existing will he could supercede. Celestia believed the frame constructed out of the red vine met those characteristics and the crystal gave them a valid anchoring point, but the matter of containing his energy within the body would have to be brought to the engineering team. It was not a complex matter with the crystal available for a base, but it was a slow and meticulous process to enchant such materials.



   “You are too kind, I didn’t want to compromise your judgment.” Celestia wanted to refute the man, but decided to stay quiet after her rational mind caught up to what he was saying. Knowing Soldier was being torn apart by just existing in Equestria would have driven her to some rash decisions. An millennia of government hadn’t been able to take the healer out of her, so Soldier was right in assuming she would react as one, rather than as a ruler of Equestria. Staying quiet about his pain had been the only way Celestia wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to save Soldier from his fate.



   “I hope you would stop making sense.” Celestia sighed as she walked into the faculty building of Canterlot university. She had to pass through the offices and the Canterlot guard secretary to gain access to the lab where the artificial bodies were being constructed. She gave the secretary a nod and kept trotting through. There was a chance the lab was empty this late in the day, but she could always leave a note about the nature of the crystal.



   “Princess!” The lone pegasi engineer working in the large room she just entered into exclaimed in quite a startled tone. The grey speckled winged pegasi scrambled to remove a metallic headband from his head, before stepping away from his work station. “Whatever brings you out here, at this time of day? My name is Grey Pinion, but I’m not in charge or anything. Most of the others are at the forge to make some adjustments to the endoskeleton. I don’t know when they’ll be back.”



   “It is quite alright, I am not here to monitor your progress in any official capacity. I am here to give you something that will help in making an anchor for Soldier.” Celestia set the stone on a nearby table and trotted to the colt’s work station. The stallion fluttered about her, obviously nervous about something. He kept glancing back at the thing he’d been in such a hurry to take off.



   “This is an interesting contraption. Can you tell me its purpose?” Celestia remarked as she levitated a flimsier looking headband from the pegasi’s table. The thicker version he’d been wearing was most likely a modified version the colt was working on, but Celestia didn’t want to put him on the spot so suddenly.



   “That is a neural transmitter we use to link to a receiver in the body and see if it can move in a way described in the project overview. The rest are out with the one actually linked to the receiver to finetune the movement of the hip joint and spine. Things kept grinding together when we turned it to the left.” Celestia nodded appreciatively and set the headband down. She’d heard that psychological magic had been making leaps and bounds with Luna back, but to actually have a device to control a created body with just your mind was impressive.



   “How has it been working with Smuggler?” Soldier asked through the crystal. The pegasi flinched at the unfamiliar voice, but his features spread into a huge grin as he pieced together who was talking.



   “Is that Soldier? He can talk through rocks? No, most likely something inside to trap his energy, give him a chance to vibrate air molecules through it.” Grey Pinion took to the air and started to examine the hunk of rock from every conceivable angle. “Doesn’t look constructed, or of optimal shape for containment… You’ve brought us a crystal capable of withstanding his arcane energy! This is simply...”



   “Calm down.” Celestia saw a wisp of the blue light swirling around the rock shoot out toward Grey Pinion and then watched as the colt’s wings locked to his sides and he obediently sat down next to the table. He was grinning the whole way through the act.



   “I performed actions outside of the literal interpretation of the verbal command, so some manner of information is conveyed purely through the energy transmitted. Transference of energy conveys the intent behind the words, but spoken words seem to be required for going against the free will of anyone affected by the effect documented.” Grey Pinion rattled out in a dreamy tone, as he rested his head on the table and stared at the hunk of rock with excitement glistening in his eyes. “That is so cool…”



   “I appreciate the enthusiasm of youth more than most ponies do, but I would still like to see the vine-based model before I go. I believe it will be easiest to convert that model for Soldier’s needs.” Grey Pinion snapped out of his academic fugue state and scrambled to lead her to a set of winding stairs at the back of the main room.



   “The red vines were the original best choice to construct the musclerature out of, as they can constrict and loosen in a similar way to actual muscles. Having the base be a plant also gave us the added benefit of the implanted vines rooting into the endoskeleton on their own.” The excited colt rattled out as he unfurled his wings and sped up the stairs in leaps and bounds. The space didn’t allow for Celestia to fully extend her wings, so she followed the colt up using the actual stairs.



   “The main problem with using these vines was their insistence on trying to eat us. They sensed our heartbeats and lashed out whenever we got close enough. We had to bring in specialists just to set them into the endoskeleton safely.” Celestia could hear the colt opening a heavy door and take a step back, as if he thought something would jump out at him. “That was when we had to re-imagine the scale of the artificial body. The vines just can’t do everything that’s needed for a full-range of motion in a six foot frame. It’s an issue with the science of how the vines work, so nothing we could do in such a small time window.”



   



   “The model we ended up working with is a ten foot one. We couldn’t make it any smaller with the technology we had at the time, so this branch of research has been building on that frame. We could make it gradually more compact with some of the artificial muscles added in, but if the vines are the important part, then this is the scale you’d have to live with.” Celestia reached the top of the staircase and paused as she saw what lay behind the heavy-set door. Celestia entered the room as the pegasi paused, letting her eyes scan over the behemoth in front of her, glancing at the rest of the room.




The room beyond was taller than the landing of the staircase leading to it, but the humanoid frame of vines anchored upright on the opposite wall still nearly scraped the roof. The wall to her right was made completely out of glass, giving the shelves of potted plants ample light in the mornings and giving whoever worked there a view of the whole of the campus of Canterlot University. The body had branches of coiling vines sprouting from it across the wall it lay on, as well as small white flowers sprouting from these offshoots. A glimmer of metal here and there signified the presence of a metal frame keeping it all together.




   “The vines are still alive. You have not been feeding them properly, so they are reaching out for the sun.” Celestia muttered, looking up at the metal skull overgrown with thorny vines. Her eyes traveled down and she took notice of several metal rings and clasps holding the giant’s hands together, rings and clasps bound several vines together and coiled them around each other to form the digits and thumb. There was what looked like a medical brace covering the wrist and part of the forearm, seemingly keeping the intricate collection of vines in place, similar braces were on most of the joints. The whole body was covered in the thorny vines, bound together at the joints and parts where they were meant to simulate muscles in the human frame. Seeing the lines of vines and the metal clasps and rings keeping them together gave the towering body a disturbing sense of flayed skin and stitched together flesh.



   “We were kind of hesitant on presenting the body to you like this, as we found it unnecessarily imposing. I think the most popular solution was to cover the body in stitched artificial leather and then fill the inside with nutrient-rich sap to lessen the friction between the metal joints and the vines. The sap would be slowly consumed by the vines, so some oiling of the joints and rehydration would be required. I am sure we can come up with something else if that displeases you.” The young pegasi explained in a careful tone, clearly not sure what to make of Celestia’s silence. Celestia could hear Grey Pinion shuffling awkwardly, as she contemplated Soldier commanding such a colossal body.



   “I suggested on letting grass grow on it and give it a beard made out of moss, with a mane of dandelions. I mean, who could fear a walking flower bed?” Grey Pinion sounded downright terrified by this point and Celestia fought back her stupification to spare the colt’s heart.



   “Clearly you have not spent any great stretch of time in the Everfree forest.” Celestia retorted with a light chuckle. She fell silent and looked up to the faceless behemoth and placed a hoof over her chest. “Would you like to test it out, Soldier?”



   “Pegasi, bring the crystal up here.” Celestia ordered as her head snapped toward the ashen colt. Grey Pinion’s eyes flashed blue and he raced out of the room. Soldier turned Celestia’s head to look at the artificial body again. “I will not leave your body if it means only pain for you. We see if the crystal works and if I can move this thing, then I will face the pain again.”



   Grey Pinion rushed into the room and stumbled as soon as he set down on the ground. The carefully extracted mass of rock shattered to a million pieces and Celestia was locked in her own body, watching it happen with only mild interest portrayed on her features. The stone shattered easily into dust and fragments, but the jagged crystal within only broke into a dozen or so sharp pieces. Clean breaks,  she could see no splintering fractures within the pieces. It could still be used to complete Soldier’s body. She watched with some degree of dread as Soldier used her magic to pick up a small piece of the crystal and then used a hoof to press it on the spot above her heart.



   “Okay, hold that there.” Soldier said it so nonchalantly, but he didn’t have to live through the experience of his presence tearing itself out of her. She’d thought her body had felt numb when Soldier took over, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of Soldier peeling away his presence piece by piece, leaving an itching vast emptiness behind. His soul felt oppressive and suffocating, but there was a disturbing sense of vulnerability when he was not there. Her skin felt like paper and her insides like glass, as if she could shatter with the faintest touch.



   “Gah!” She lurched down as she regained control of her body again. All of Soldier’s power was now concentrated on the bit of flesh he was bound to. The next  step would be for the man to untether the connection and leave her body as a torrent of blue light. That was not pleasant for either one of them, hence the pause. Celestia pressed the crystal closer to her chest, feeling the power already clinging to it, a sense of security radiating into her body.



   She inhaled as deeply as she could and as she exhaled her vision was filled with blue gaseous light, as Soldier rushed out of her with the extended exhale. Celestia exhaled the breath in her lungs as slowly as she could, as Soldier had timed his exit with her exhale to make it easier for her. He could have forced his way out through her flesh and being, but Soldier had seen how painful that was when he had rushed to extract himself to retrieve Smuggler. Soldier’s presence billowed out on the floor, flowing over every nook and cranny of the floor, constantly moving and shifting. The tables and chairs and everything disturbing the flow of the light rattled and creaked as Soldier’s power escaped Celestia’s body. She could hear the windows rattling and cracking from the pressure of containing the sudden push of Soldier’s will. The blue light gathered around the mortified Grey Pinion and launched him out of the room, Celestia could hear the colt tumble down the stairs before the door slammed shut.



   Celestia was running out of breath when the billowing mass of Soldier’s essence rose above her eyes and engulfed her completely in harsh blue light. The mass of his form had grown exponentially from the last time he had left her body. This must have been what he had meant with his power thrumming louder with each day. Tears stung her eyes and her lungs burned as the last substantial mote of light escaped her mouth and nostrils. She gulped down precious air and clenched the blue crystal closer to her chest. She could feel Soldier’s energy radiating into her body from the sharp crystal, reducing the total shutdown of her heart to an ache only gradually worse than heartburn. The crystal would definitely allow Soldier to exist in a separate body, given a proper housing to channel and store that energy and possibly even surgical insertion near her heart. The blue energy swirled and shifted about her, lingering close to her.



   “It works, don’t worry about me. You go ahead.” Celestia took a final deep breath before straightening her posture. She glanced around the swirling blue light around her, searching for that shadow figure that commanded all of the power surrounding her. She had seen it clearly in the reflection from the crystal, so she should definitely be able to see him even clearer now that all of him was outside of her.



   “Älä pysähdy. Älä unohda. Älä pysähdy. Älä unohda. Älä pysähdy. Keskity.” Celestia heard muttered whispers from the crystal she held to her breast. She saw a change in the movement of the light around her, watching it gradually swirl and rotate above a single point. Soldier had always been in a blind spot for her, so seeing the man struggle to take control of what he had been made into was enlightening. The light spun faster and closer, folding into itself to form a humanoid form, slowly coming into focus.



   Soldier’s frame was emancipated, but at least he seemed whole, at least when it came to limbs. The obvious battle scars had disappeared from him, but where there used to be a wounded man standing proud to fight for a cause he did not remember, now there was a raging collection of power struggling to remember what he was. Soldier’s form solidified and turned to face Celestia. She could still see the alien features of the man that had dragged her out of the brink of death, but his body was marred by shimmering gashes that bled the light that fueled the storm of power around them. Celestia looked up at the face she owed her life to and saw two bright pools of blue and a carefully kept calm facade, rather than the strong-willed man that had pushed her away from death.



   Celestia looked away from the man’s marred face and body, her eyes immediately drawn to what the human was clutching in his right hand. It was that black and sharp thing Soldier had shown her in their first meeting. It was the presentation of all the things Soldier had ripped from Luna’s mind and Soldier refused to let it go. The black thing stayed an 
immaculate presentation of what had born Soldier and his two brothers. It could hold the key in helping him find peace, but he refused to give anyone the power to do what had been done to him. The hand clutching the thing had been dyed black and an aura of wrongness clung to the strange metal object.



   Soldier turned away from her without a word and disappeared into the storm again. The movement of the storm around her changed drastically, as it rushed around and past her to meet at the direction of the artificial body. The mass of light was quiet in its movement, but the air displaced by the metaphysical mass whistled and hummed, giving the whole scene a mystical air.



   “Soldier?” Celestia asked as the last mote of light disappeared into the colossal body of vines. For a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity she could not see or hear any movement. The first sign of life was a blue glow spreading out from the chest of the body, seeping through the gaps of the vines and settling in any nook and crevice on the behemoth.



   “I cannot see. The lights are muted, the pain is a dull ache.” The voice came from the crystal she held to her chest, but the light coming from the giant body pulsed in time of the words. She watched as the giant’s hands clenched and rotated lazily. The whole torso flexed slowly and the arms broke free from their shackles easily as more and more of the body in front of her became animated. The restraints that kept the body upright gave Soldier only a moment of pause, before they lay on the floor either broken or roughly undone. Soldier stepped out of the platform the artificial body had been resting and stood there silently for an uncomfortable moment.



   “Can you hear me? Clearly you can move it, but tell me if anything seems wrong, the ponies here will see to fixing it.” Soldier raised a hand to his head, grasped the branching vines sprouting from the eye sockets of the metal skull and yanked them out by the root. Celestia cringed just from witnessing it, but Soldier showed no pain or unease with the act. He dropped the vines to the floor unceremoniously and turned toward the wall of glass. Sunset was only an hour or so away, but the window faced the morning sun, so Soldier was faced with the sight of shadows slowly claiming the grounds of Canterlot university. Despite the less than ideal view, Soldier stomped over the the window and carefully pressed a hand onto it. Regardless of the care in the act Celestia could hear the glass creak from the weight.



   “The pegasi is alive, by the way. I can see his light fluttering about outside like a canary in a mine. I think I scared him.” Soldier’s voice rung out from the crystal. His voice had not changed, but Celestia still felt her heart skip a beat when hearing it. She took a tentative step back from the spirit, trying to figure out what had startled her. The realization struck her when she saw Soldier’s head lazily turn to follow the flight of a pegasi guard flying home in the distance. It was such a normal thing to do that Celestia realized it had been the first time she heard the man be anything but angry and in pain in a very long while, making the slight hint of amusement in his voice jump out at her.



   “How long do I have?” Soldier asked, making Celestia wilt a little at the solemn resignation in his voice. It was reminiscent to veteran guards with a terminal disease asking how long they had to live. Yet, given how close Soldier’s everyday existence was to the more radical depictions of Tartarus, Celestia saw little difference in the two.



   “I have to set the sun in an hour. I do not have to actually be there, I can -”



   “Yes, you do. 45 minutes, thank you.” Soldier’s tone brooked no argument. He did not want to upset the political climate anymore than the actions of Smuggler and Priest had already done, at least that was what Celestia assumed. Celestia had to wonder if the man was simply reacting to how she acted, or if he really could envision the messy situation he was in. She couldn’t decide which option was more frightening, regardless of the truth. An intelligent man with so much power, or a simple man with such deep devotion to her.



   30 minutes, that’s how long Soldier stood staring out of the window as Celestia clutched the crystal to her chest. Celestia could feel peace and awe radiating from the crystal she clutched so close to her chest it was surely going to break the skin. Soldier enjoyed watching the world go by in his own body, just like she had caught him doing on the nights he took control of her body. He offered the sun diarch no conversation in this time and Celestia didn’t feel right in disturbing the quiet man. Celestia still felt like she was being punished by every moment of peace Soldier had, knowing she would have to force him to face his tortured existence again.



   “You chose to sacrifice yourself for my life, I forced you to come back with me.” Celestia was surprised how easy it was to say the thing she’d wanted to tell the man all this time. It must have been something to do with the surreality of their situation. Soldier’s body did not move, it did not react in any way. “I am sorry for forcing you to endure all of this.”



   “I chose this fate, you should not blame yourself.” Soldier commented, finally turning his head away from the window. His eyes were two bright spots of blue light, slowly leaking out his essence, as if it were smoke. His face held no mouth, so Celestia couldn’t help but shudder at the sight. If it weren’t for the feeling of awkward unease she sensed from the crystal she would think she was looking at a monster.



   “This body is slow. There is a delay to everything I do.” The colossal body finally turned away from the window, stomping its way over to loom over her. She could feel an assortment of emotions radiating from the crystal as Soldier stared at her. There were moments of awe, spots of anger, spikes of fear, with an underlying feeling of regret and disappointment. It was what ponies would call “having a moment” and Celestia felt like a voyeur witnessing the private man’s inner workings. Celestia stayed quiet and still as she felt the turmoil of emotions gradually calm and be replaced with the silent conviction she’d come to expect from the man.



   Soldier suddenly bended at the knees and crashed down in front of her. His torso was hunched over and his hands rested limply at either side of her. His face was a breath away from touching her muzzle and the bottomless pools of blue that served as his eyes filled her whole world. She could hear the vines creak and the metal keeping them together strain as blue light started to shine from deeper within the body, quickly turning into the billowing smoke that was Soldier’s essence. The colossal body was obscured by the dense smoke in seconds and the ceiling of the room became like a stormy sky, with silent blue lines of light dancing within the inky blue.



   Celestia wanted to react to the obvious change in Soldier’s essence, but the light in his eyes had grown into an overpowering force keeping her still and quiet. She had been unconscious the last time Soldier had returned to her body and she wasn’t sure Soldier had much idea what he looked like to other people, but the change from a gaseous mass of light into a frighteningly dark and oppressive storm of blue light was far too drastic. She felt her mouth click open and saw a pure tendril of blue light extend out of the artificial body’s chest and slither down her throat without pause. It was not painful or unpleasant in any solid way, but just the thought of Soldier forcing a part of himself into her while she stood paralyzed was beyond wrong.



   Celestia felt her body relax and loosen as Soldier tethered his essence to the link between them again. That feeling of helplessness and fragility was blown away by the power Soldier shared with her and the relief she felt was something she would call orgasmic in very select company. She blinked and refocused her eyes to witness the benevolent violation of her body. The familiar blue light was rushing into her mouth out of the artificial body, but that dark indigo storm had also grown in size and intensity. There was no way so much arcane energy would be cast off from jumping into and out of the artificial body, so all of that violent energy would reintegrate into her body. The cloud was roughly a third of Soldier’s earlier mass, so there was no chance he could just leave it behind. Such a condensed mass of arcane energy could easily turn into a cataclysmic weather phenomena, or simply explode if tampered with.



   “This will be unpleasant for you.” Soldier simply stated through the crystal, as the last of his core essence slipped down her throat and settled in her breast. Celestia felt a new sense of dread settle on her mind as she watched the angry mass of crackling energy above. The difference in the scopes of their tolerance for pain had been made more than obvious for her, so what Soldier described as unpleasant might very well be excruciating by her standards.



   Celestia would not admit it if asked, but she screamed like a little filly when the heavy clouds circling above her stopped their rotation and fell down upon her like molten lead. The pain of the condensed energy tearing through her body to join Soldier’s core essence was indescribable. Alicorn or no, Celestia could feel her consciousness slipping from the all-encompassing pain searing her body. She didn’t know if it was over, or if it had just begun, but Celestia still welcomed the roaring emptiness rushing to meet her.




   Soldier




   Soldier felt Celestia’s presence weaken and fizzle out, but he gave her body enough time to fall on the ground before he moved to take over. He knew not to disturb the mare too soon after she fell asleep, as he knew she very well could wake up and panic at her loss of control in the time it took Soldier to maneuver her body out of her lavish bed. It was getting harder and harder to let Celestia win their internal power struggles without being too obvious about it. Paying attention to what was going on around her was also becoming more taxing, as his view of the world kept slipping further and further into the spiritual plane. The few hours he could spend looking at the world through Celestia’s eyes helped ground him somewhat, but it was becoming a losing battle.



   “Come in.” Speaking with an equine mouth had been strange at first, but luckily their vocal cords were either similarly built to humans, or he had some supernatural advantage in getting his message across. The fact he still had to actually order someone to do something for his ability to work fully supported that theory. Grey Pinion entered the room just as Soldier was concentrating on the act of getting an equine body upright. Celestia was actually built more along the lines of a winged horse, so it was harder than it would be for the stubby footed mutants flocking around her. The constant positivism and lackadaisy attitudes were severely grating on his already frayed nerves, so maybe there was some hidden benefit to gradually losing the ability to actually hear them.



   “Your Highness?” Soldier turned Celestia’s head to stare at Grey Pinion. The speckled winged bird-thing flinched at seeing his blue eyes staring back at him and immediately found the floor more alluring. The winged pony knew he was not talking to Celestia now, so Soldier turned back to look at his artificial body. The stillness he’d experienced had felt almost overwhelmingly distracting, but he still had become aware of some design flaws.



   “The hands are constructed meticulously, but the tendons clenching the fist will have to be strengthened. We carry things by grabbing them with those digits, so they have to be able to endure approximately how much the body can lift. You shouldn’t try using leather for the skin, ask Smuggler about kevlar and he’ll figure something out. A self-mending fiber weave would be ideal.” Soldier turned Celestia’s body around and stared down at the shivering colt until he looked up to meet his eyes.



   “You were told to keep the prototype hidden. Tell me if I’m wrong.” He let some of his power slip out with his last sentence. The bird-pony stopped shivering long enough to shake his head as his power forced an answer out of him.



   “He did explain it to me. I just didn’t think Princess Celestia would bring the crystal to us herself. I didn’t think you would come here.” Grey Pinion flinched away as soon as he stopped talking. Soldier watched the equine thing consider escape, but then wisely decide against it. It was sad seeing these candy-colored blobs of happy thoughts acting so pathetic, but at least it was clear that Smuggler had left enough of an impression on the thing.



   “You’ve done your part already. Hurting or breaking you at this point is not something I want to do.” Soldier turned Celestia’s head around until he spied a small fragment of the crystal scattered broken on the ground. He carefully focused Celestia’s magic on the miniscule shard and presented it to the frightened pegasi. “Go downstairs and fit this into a discreet earring.”



   He hadn’t even laced the order with his power, but the pegasi gladly took the excuse to leave the room, snatching the shard of crystal with a deft swipe of his wing and rushing down the stairs. It would take the nervous bastard a moment to mount the crystal into something Celestia would wear, so Soldier decided to take that moment for himself. The artificial body was intact and could be controlled by him even without Smuggler’s secret ingredient, so no worries there. The view from the room suffered when he couldn’t see the color of magic dancing in this world, but it was still a calming thing to look at.



   After all of the crazy shit that’s been going on in his life Soldier was glad to sacrifice a moment or two to doing nothing productive. His past life had been what molded his current goal-driven personality, but he saw no way to regain that part of himself. He’d made peace with that fact when he felt his very essence scatter to the storm of his own power for the first time. The human form was what was familiar, but he’d been forced to sacrifice it at times to stay in control. His new life would be shaped by his control over this power the mutilation of his soul had cursed him with.



   “I am no feeble man, I am a will unfettered by the restraints of a mortal body.” The crystals on the floor uttered in unison as the calming mantra entered his mind. Soldier might have found Smuggler annoying, but the tired spirit couldn’t deny that the wordy bastard could put his new life in perspective.



   He had little memory of his life as a human, but he had enough of an idea of how it had been to live in a mortal body. He remembered pain and pleasure and gut-wrenching terror, mirrored by joy that made him light as a feather. A rollercoaster of highs and lows with a mundane meaty existence filled with small aches and joys in the stretches between. Those familiar carnal reactions were gone, replaced by the literal metamorphosis of his very essence whenever he felt something strongly enough. It was taxing to keep his constantly shifting self in that mundane stretch of reality needed for interacting with Celestia’s plane of reality.



   He hadn’t been paying attention to the flow of time, but it did feel like the grey pegasi should be about done with the earring. A physical body made the whole counting time thing laughably easy. Time was a funny concept to him now, as it had started to lose meaning for him right about the time his new form had started to stabilize. There was no heart to tick away his time on this earth and neither was there a central nervous system and its limitations to shackle his view of the world. Time flowed just as fast as he was willing to view it, frozen at one moment and speeding by him at another. The ability to speed through the unimportant stuff did make suffering through Celestia’s dull daily routine as a passenger easier, but it was another thing he had to pay attention to. He had figured out a way to match the flow of time to Celestia’s heartbeat, but he would have to find another way to do it in a body of his own.



   Now, Soldier really appreciated that Celestia’s body was more or less shaped like something his shoddy memory could recognize as a real thing, but there was one glaring design flaw in it when it came to traversing stairs. He could not see her hooves when going down the steps, it was physical impossibility given the sun diarch ridiculously long mane and the wings furled at her sides. He hadn’t had a millennia to get used to the dimension of the awkwardly elongated body, so it was always a chore to make sure all of the limbs went to the right place at the right time. The pegasi would definitely be done by the time he got back down to the ground floor. He would rather take his time and stay unscathed, than stumble down the stairs and be forced to explain a broken leg to a frightened Celestia.



   The pegasi was still working when Soldier walked in, but the way he kept moving his head away and leaning back in a moment later suggested he was putting on the finishing touches. He knew for a fact it was hard to stay quiet when hooves met pretty much any surface, but the excitable pegasi still flinched when he found Soldier staring down at him.



   “It will be just a moment. Do you have any preference in the way the crystals are positioned in the body? We’ll be crafting proper housings for the cut crystals and doing small adjustments depending on the purpose of the surrounding limbs, but your input is still appreciated.” The pegasi rattled out, without stopping his delicate work. He was able to multitask and was not intimidated enough to stop being professional, no wonder Smuggler had taken a liking to the colt.



   “The hands are meant for delicate work, so two for the digits and one for the thumb, one at every major joint, plus forearms and shins. Some kind of lenses for the eyes would be appreciated, humans are very vision-based.” Grey Pinion gave him a surprised look, but returned to his work quick enough. The colt probably thought he would be the crude bully to counteract Smuggler’s intellectual manipulation. To an extent, he was not wrong.



   Soldier had wondered about the thing Grey Pinion had a hard time accepting. For some metaphysical bullshit reason, the metamorphosis of his mind into arcane matter had made him, for the lack of a more fitting term, smart. He’d come to a very simple conclusion concerning the matter with Smuggler: it was not as if he could deduce the mysteries of life any faster or deeper than the scholars around him, he just had far more pieces of the puzzle to begin with. He could see and hear the world as if it was a part of his own body, so problems that involved the manipulation and control of energy within that world were naturally easier for him. It wasn’t his fault if that encompassed the kinds of problems the best minds of Canterlot were trying to solve.



   “It’s all a matter of perspective. Give me that earring.” He might have trailed off for a moment, as Grey Pinion had finished his work on the simple earring. He’d bent thin golden thread in a circle and set the shard in the middle by its two sharp ends, somewhat resembling an eye, but you’d have to stretch your imagination a little. It was small enough to be inconspicuous and had no jagged edges, so it would do to save him the trouble of commandeering parts of Celestia’s body to communicate. “It will do, you got a mirror?”



   “I think it’s best if I put it on for you. Anyone sees Celestia bleeding for any reason and both the media and nobles go crazy for days.” The pegasi chuckled at his interpretation of the world and picked up the prototype he should have kept hidden. The petty side of Soldier had the impulse of making the colt break the thing beyond recognition, but the more rational side of him agreed to let an actual pony deal with an equine earring. A colorless shimmer surrounded the thick headband and the simple earring floated out to pinch it’s lock into Celestia’s right ear, near the base. Grey Pinion set the headband back down as Soldier stared down at him again. He couldn’t quite decide what to make of the pegasi and it bothered him.



   “Pick up the sharpest thing you can reach.” Soldier ordered through the crystal in the earring. He might as well test the thing out if he had it custom made. He could see a flash of terror in Grey Pinion’s eyes, before his command took over and the pony calmly picked up a chiseling tool of some sort with a sharp and curved edge. The fear returned to his features as soon as that action was done. The frantic glances to the possible weapon indicated he could not let go of it. That was good.



   “Tell me the worst way you could hurt yourself with that.” Widening of the eyes, nearly imperceptible lean back, before Grey Pinion relaxed again. There was a small delay between the spoken word and the command. That would be something to take into account.


   “I could gouge out my eyes, damage the optic nerve. Be trapped as a blind pegasus. I could also cut off a wing, crippled with a reminder of what used to be.” Grey Pinion answered the question with the same enthusiasm he had talked about his work earlier. That was also a good sign. The only difference from using Celestia’s body seemed to be that slight delay. It was a good thing to know, but it was unlikely it would matter much. Grey Pinion was visibly shaking, only hoof holding onto the sharp instrument staying steady. He was clearly terrified and unsure what Soldier would do.



   “Each time you have an urge to go against us, I want you to imagine another form of hurt that would destroy you. I do not want to make you do those things, but I most definitely can.” Soldier laced every word with his power, striking every word into unquestionable truth in the colt’s mind. Tears were threatening to spill out of Grey Pinion’s over-sized eyes as he nodded his head weakly.



   “I am glad we have an understanding. Now. what are you going to do with Smuggler’s gift to you?” Soldier reached out and called the energy keeping the sharp carving tool clutched in the artisan’s hoof back. The metal instrument clattered on the ground and the pegasi hiccuped in fright and sighed in relief at the same time, making it a strained kind of snort.



   “Keep it secret, keep it safe.” The pegasi answered quietly and drew in his hooves as close to his body as he could. He’d witnessed some ponies reacting this way to his energy wrestling control from them. Some of them just weren’t as quick to spring back to being themselves, from being reduced to an extension of his will.



   “Keep it hidden, yes. Keeping it safe is all up to your discretion.” Soldier watched as the pegasi nodded weakly and deposited the heavy headband into the bottom drawer of his work station. The other ponies who had reacted like this had recovered promptly, so he really should start leading Celestia’s body toward that tower she raised and lowered the sun in. He turned Celestia’s body away from the colt just as he pulled out a silver flask out of another drawer.



   “Have a nice day, my little pony!” He called out using Celestia’s mouth, straining his control to give her voice a cheery tone. Emotions were hard to mimic when the body was not yours, but some small part of him thought it necessary to rub the fact he could take control of their immortal goddess so completely in Grey Pinion’s face.



   The walk back through the stretch of streets between Canterlot Castle and the university was uneventful. He only had to expel his power onto the few ladder-climbing nobles that happened to cross his path, urging them to give Celestia a polite bow rather than engage in conversation. The part of the populace that actually mattered had enough manners and common sense not to bother the sun diarch to begin with. The understanding relief of the royal guards at the castle gates suggested that Celestia had made a habit of shaking her guards in the past. That was a possibly useful piece of information he’d most likely forget by the end of the day.



   He might have been able to grasp obscure concepts like the interaction between molded arcane energy and natural free-flowing magical energy easily, but he was abysmal at retaining any of that information long enough to educate anyone else. He could understand everything as well as he could see them; that was as far he was willing to go on that train of thought.



   He stopped Celestia’s unconscious trek through the castle as he saw a group of pegasi guards practicing aerial maneuvers. He knew Celestia had to be there to set the sun to avoid a political clusterfuck, but he also knew that watching pegasi in flight was one of the few things that brought him peace in his new form. He carefully set Celestia’s body to lean next to the window in the corridor he had been walking her body through and closed the alicorn’s eyes. He then carefully moved enough of his essence out of Celestia for him to see the world in that otherworldly way that had surprised Celestia earlier.



   He sensed and experienced the world with his own tumultuous essence, rather than relying on any specialized organs. He was especially sensitive to the frequency of energy that was called magic in this world and could easily feel and reach out to it through walls and other obstacles. He could sense the presence and movement of magic no matter what state his essence was in, but for him to “see” it as a three dimensional picture, he had to expose a part of his core essence to the world and risk having the grating lights peel away another part of himself.



   The pain of having that happen to you over and over again without knowing why or how would make you wish you were nothing. It would make you scream and forget everything, until you found a way to hide and cower from the hurt blowing your essence into a storm of boiling energy. He was sensitive to magic, giving him extraordinary insight into its inner workings, but that also meant that his core essence reacted harshly to direct contact to it. His form had been designed to reside in a body able to shield him from that glare, but he’d been given sentience before that had happened, as was the case for Priest and Smuggler. They hadn’t taken it very well.



   Despite all of that, he would still risk feeling his sense of self shatter all over again if he could watch a pegasi fly free. Earth ponies left their magic onto the world through touch and direct action, unicorns projected controlled and intricate shapes that were pretty to look at, but pegasi magic didn’t work on such simple terms. Their wings flowed with pure light, pushing and pulling on the dull colours around them, lighting them with the tint of their will to be part of that dull ethereal sea of colour, disturbing the stagnant nature of it. Celestia might have seen a winged pony dashing through the air, but Soldier saw a living light cutting through the mundane world and giving him a fleeting glimpse of a world of pure beauty, a world he felt he belonged.



   There was a part of him that wanted to stop his stubborn struggle and step into that world of light and see all that this world could offer him. He was made into a being of energy, of thought given form, so why was he fighting so hard to stay affixed to this world that could only offer him pain and discord?



   The group of pegasi were finishing up their routine, the invisible masterpiece lingering in the air around them for only a moment. Soldier drew his essence back into Celestia’s body and straightened her out as quickly as he could. Three guards had found Celestia’s resting body while Soldier had been enraptured by the pegasi, they’d the common sense not to disturb him, but they were in a hurry if they were going to make it to the ceremony with the celestial objects switching places. He decided to ignore common courtesy and started speeding up Celestia’s body to a full gallop. It might have been the action-oriented lifestyle of his former life, but he found it easier to control Celestia’s body when it was running, no time for hesitation.



   The guards had been surprised by Celestia running through the halls of the castle at full gallop, but were able to keep up with Soldier’s pace well enough, being royal guards and all. He ran Celestia through the main hall, vaulting over one noble or another on the way and then leapt up the spiral staircase he’d used earlier.  He made his way to Celestia’s office and then ran the familiar stretch to the tower he’d been to before. He skidded to a halt on the top of the stairs up and drew in as much air as he could. His vision through Celestia’s eyes had been blurry and dimming for the last few minutes, so she was most likely starving for air. Remembering to breathe properly was a hard thing to do when you could literally ignore the pain. The guards were hard of breath and giving him weird looks, but he kept focusing on intaking as much air as possible.Celestia’s body was hardy from being an alicorn, but Soldier’s partial disconnection with her body might have made him able to push it a little too far.


   “We should be back on schedule, right?” Soldier asked one of the guards through Celestia’s new earring, giving the stallion a fright. He would most likely not have the patience to stay hidden with a way to communicate with the outside world so easily accessible, so the guards might as well find out sooner rather than later. “Don’t pretend Kamos didn’t tell you what I am. I had to take control if Celestia were to get here on time.”



   “Come in, Soldier. Let us awaken our sister for the formalities.” Hearing Luna’s voice did cause his essence to boil briefly, but a glimpse at the world as he saw it calmed him considerably. He walked Celestia into the room with a neutral look on her face. He really didn’t know what had stopped him from killing the bitch before Smuggler had started his play, but he was in no hurry to call the fellow spirit out on it. Smuggler had a purpose for what he’d done, just as there’d been a purpose to Priest going rogue. He was not that concerned about what Smuggler would do to poor little Luna, but he was anxious to see where it was all going.



   “Wake her up, I’ll step out.” Soldier courtly stated and crashed Celestia’s body down at the table with coffee and snacks. The transition from the safety of a mortal body and the glare of the outside was harsh enough for time to lurch forward as he lost his grip on the moment. The experience was disorienting, uncomfortable and terrifying on the most basic of levels, but to call it painful was the little white lie he’d decided to tell, mostly to spare himself from attempting to explain concepts he couldn’t put into words.



   He started drifting back into consciousness as the two sisters were walking back from the balcony. Luna striding confidently in her humanoid form and Celestia smiling warmly at the spring in her sister’s step. It seemed like Celestia had regained consciousness and lowered the sun, as he had hoped. He continued to ignore the sisters discussing the political implications of him running Celestia through the castle and instead kept his eye on the little mote of light peeking through the mesh of lies Smuggler had woven around Luna’s humanoid form. Luna’s pain was of no consequence to him, but he had to be impressed by the imitation Smuggler had created. He could actually feel himself hating the faux princess.



   Smuggler’s name defined him to the letter, he plotted and moved his pieces in place in the dark, while masquerading as the snarky jokester with little hold on reality. It was astounding how more ponies were not immediately suspicious of the spirit when they lived in a world where their names represented their base nature in a similar way. You could make an educated guess at most ponies’ occupation or passion just from knowing their name, so why was it that most ponies stayed blind to this fact?



   He watched the two sisters banter light-heartedly, about some inane things. He found no qualms about seeing Celestia happy, she’d run the empire on her lonesome for a millenia, she’d paid her due. Smuggler had done a good job on creating a better version of Luna if she was both able to fool Celestia and make her laugh.



   Soldier was not a name that described him, nor was it something he was passionate about, it was an acknowledgment of his purpose in this world. His purpose was to fight for what he believed was right, to be loyal to a cause, to a nation, to a person. He had chosen to be loyal to Celestia and the nation she’d governed. The conviction of such loyalty was familiar and gave him the strength to hold on. Luna was not necessarily what was best for Celestia, or Equestria for that matter, so he was content to let Smuggler play his games.



   “Cadance sent us a letter about her wedding. She wishes to hold the ceremonies in Canterlot Castle, but she was concerned about us. She asked if we could attend the proceedings, inquiring if we were up to it, so soon after the issue with Fenrir.” Luna stopped and gave a serious look to Celestia, most likely conveying that she meant “us” in its layman form, just this once. Soldier couldn’t bring himself to pay close enough attention to catch it, but he did fight to regain his hold on the moment when Cadance was mentioned.



   “Don’t tell her about us.” Celestia flinched at the sound of his voice, whipping her head to the right and then to the left, searching for him. He might have neglected to mention the earring to her. He knew something was going to go wrong during the wedding involving the pink alicorn. He hadn’t retained the specifics in his less than reliable mind, but he would rather not be a known variable in the debacle.



   “You have some new jewelry, by the way.” Soldier whispered through the earring, causing Celestia to slap a hoof up to her ear. He didn’t like being treated like a pesky mosquito, especially when the act got a chuckle out of Luna. He was really looking forward to having a body of his own. He would be lying if slapping Luna was not high on the list of things he wanted to do.



   “Cadance will have her hooves full with the wedding, Soldier and Smuggler are not her problems. The artificial bodies are scheduled to be completed around the date she set for the proceedings, so telling Cadance would only needlessly worry her.” Celestia pondered Luna’s words for a moment, before nodding and sighing.



   “Keeping them a secret was such an easy decision at the time…” Celestia turned away from her sister and trotted back to her tea. Soldier knew they had given the diarchy far more trouble than three disembodied spirits called to their world should, but he actually felt proud of that fact. He was not going to let Luna off easy and if their decision of brushing Luna’s crime under the rug brought them grief, then so be it.



   “Humans are… difficult, I agree. We will be better off with them in their own bodies.” Luna assured her distraught sister, sitting down across from her to drink her coffee. There was a stretch of silence as they both tried to relax, but Luna broke the silence just as Soldier was starting to let the moment slip. “Do you think Soldier will join the guard? Smuggler is obviously the scholarly sort, but do you think Soldier could actually take orders rather than give them?”



   “It is his choice, but he does hold the guard to a higher standard than anypony else, from what I’ve seen.” Celestia sounded calm and composed, giving her answer between sips of tea. Soldier knew he could excel in the mundane routine he’d witnessed from the guard so far, but he wanted more out of his life than surviving to see another day. Guarding ponies he didn’t know or care about from harm, just to get a paycheck he would never use, was not something he could envision himself doing.



   A towering humanoid guard among a homogenized group like the guard would raise far too many questions he would have to repeatedly answer. It would be marginally better to be thought of as Celestia’s try at an artificial lifeform. It would give him an excuse to play dumb, as most of these technicolor equines were mind-shatteringly cheery and dull-witted. He should have expected such to be the case for a bunch of herbivorous pack animals, but he’d made the mistake of measuring every other pony to Celestia. He didn’t feel like he owed them an explanation of his origin, but he had a feeling Celestia would insist.



   “I am where I am needed.” Celestia’s ear flicked as he spoke, again reacting to him like he was an offending insect. He wondered if it was the result of his energy gathering at a single point, even for that brief moment it took him to talk. He would have to ask Celestia about it if he remembered.



   “So he does that too? Smuggler’s been waking me up by singing about his “perfect day” in this weird vibrating female voice. He keeps changing the lyrics, but he’s doing something obscene to at least one stallion and a number of mannequins.” Luna set down her cup of coffee and Celestia’s tea cup floated down to its plate slowly. “It is better for both of us if I don’t go into the details, but he’s always wearing a wedding gown, so I think he’s hinting at something to do with the wedding.”



   “Sounds like something he’d do.” Soldier commented before Celestia had a chance to talk. He was entrenched in this moment again and he really did not want to live through another bout of sisterly banter. He hoped for a stretch of confused silence as he labored to cut his ties to their view of time. He might have been flung in and out of the measured flow of time, but it was not easy to make detachment from it happen by force.



   “Smuggler did say that he could not outright tell me anything about what he knew, as it would create a paradox.” Luna pondered, leaning back on her chair and bringing her coffee up to her lips. Soldier could feel the moment slipping away, but he also had the urge to correct the faux lunar princess.



   “Telling you would change the future he knows far too drastically for him to gain anything from having that knowledge in the first place. He only knows how to react to a future he knows.” He had to strain his consciousness to finish his sentence, but the look of bewilderment and ire he left behind in Luna’s eyes was worth it. He let the mundane world melt away as his concept of time and space shifted into something he could not fully comprehend, but welcomed as a distraction, an universal white noise where he could think.



   He did not know how long he could keep calling himself human without lying, but there was solace in knowing who he could blame for his gradual change into something he would have feared in his old life. Clinging onto life just to spite the progenitor of your pained existence was not a grand or just goal, but it was something he could call his own. The anger was not something Discord or Luna forced upon him when they mangled his soul, it was something his surviving humanity had decided on and held onto.



   He was a soldier without an army, a human without a body and a man without a past, but he was a spirit with someone to hate. Celestia might not have agreed with his thinking, but him giving up his grudge would be like killing the human he used to be completely. He would not let this world take that last bit of identity from him.

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   “What the fuck is going on here?” Chrysalis exclaimed as soon as she closed the door to the lavish guest bedroom in Canterlot Castle. The entranced Shining Armor walked deeper into the room, glancing at every shadow and corner of the room. He must have been going through some shining knight fantasy in the illusion he was living in and she would have to dissuade him from trying to claim his just reward later, but that was not the most stressing thing on her mind just then.



   Replacing Cadance during the train ride to the unicorn capital of the world was supposed to be the risky part of the plan, but strangely it had went far more smoothly than she could have dreamt. Guard rotations were timed in a way that she had a very clear window to teleport Cadance away and assume her form, but Chrysalis could not use that window of time on the account of Shining Armour complicating matters by sticking close to his fiancé. The original plan was to blitz the duo and their guards when the train entered the tunnel going through Canterlot mountain and depositing Cadance, along with her guards, into the crystal caverns running parallel to it. Her changelings planted as passengers on the surrounding carriages would take care of the guards, while she had to incapacitate Shining Armour and Cadance with only one other changeling to help her. The plan had hinged largely on her ability to overcome a true alicorn and an unicorn with a decade of military training, but surprisingly she never had to take that gamble.



   “An upstart noble in the court? Corrupt general in the guard? Operative from a rival hive?” Chrysalis muttered out possibilities as she started to nervously pace around the room. She had not been able to infiltrate the Canterlot guard to a degree that would explain what had happened in the train and she’d been playing this game far too long to assume it to be a coincidence. She racked her brain for an explanation for another agonizing moment, before her roaming eyes fell on the similarly befuddled Shining Armour wandering back into the room. She felt like slapping herself from forgetting that she had the captain of the Canterlot guard under her spell and he would gladly divulge military secrets to her if she pressed the right buttons.



   “Darling, could you tell me who was that pony that tore you away from me on the train?” Chrysalis sent out a pulse of her magic to strengthen the illusion Shining Armour was living in and put on her best face of a worried bride to be. She’d done this con a couple of times involving a few vastly different species, but she’d found the husbands found it hard to deny anything from a bridezilla in the making.



   “A fellow commander in the guard.” Shining Armour answered after a pause, clearly keeping something to himself. Given the amount of mind-altering magic on the stallion, it meant that the need for secrecy had been drilled into him on several levels and all throughout his military career. Chrysalis felt a sliver of dread slip into her mind at the way Shining Armour called the pony a fellow commander, despite being the captain of the guard. Was there a branch of the guard she was unaware of working in Canterlot? She’d thought there were only the three branches of active service and then the desk clerks. What other branch of the guard could there be to…



   “I didn’t know Canterlot had secret police! Why the fuck was your spymaster on the train with us?” She’d let her mask slip for a fraction of a second, so she didn’t hold back on her magic befuddling Shining Armour’s mind. She needed to know about this new variable before she painted herself in a corner, as most of the non-flying races said.



   “He fears an attack on Canterlot. He asked if I could power a city-wide shield his branch would monitor. He will come back with the specific formulae later tonight.” Shining Armour collapsed on the floor and stared into nothingness as Chrysalis’ aggressive mind-altering magic knocked the sense out of him. Shining Armour hadn’t corrected her on her assumption of the pony being Canterlot’s spymaster and had confirmed her fears on said spymaster knowing about her coming attack.



   Why was he on the train, if he feared an attack on the place it’s headed? Why not attack her changelings then and there? Chrysalis had ignored the strange pony and pounced on her opportunity to take out Cadance on her own. Surely there had been a changeling or two keeping an eye on the cloaked pony during the rest of the ride. She had to make contact with the collective and find out more about this mystery pony. Clearly nothing about the pony had alarmed her changelings enough to contact her, but that was what she would expect from the Canterlot spymaster, even she had been ready to dismiss the incident.



   “Don’t go anywhere, honey. I have to put my face on.” Chrysalis cooed absentmindedly to Shining Armour. The stallion might have been living in a magically-induced trance, but if she were to break character too much it would cause the stallion to fight back against the illusion that much harder. She didn’t have the time to address those kinds of difficulties. She trotted into the bathroom of the room they shared and locked the door. The semblance of privacy the simple lock offered would have to suffice, as the spymaster could be planning on stopping her plan as she played the irate bribe.



   Chrysalis took a deep breath and reached out to the familiar feeling of the collective consciousness her hive shared with her. She had told every changeling outside Canterlot to stay quiet and minimize the chance of the unicorn mages realizing the real number of changelings poised to take their capital, but the few that had been on the train with her should be active and listening.



   “Cloaked pony on the train, called Shining Armour away. What did you see?” Chrysalis knew that the unicorn mages had devised a way to spot changelings by this very mental link decades ago, but it was unlikely anypony was actively scanning for it nowadays. She could feel the changelings in Canterlot reach out back to her, piecing together every glimpse and detail they had of the pony Chrysalis was looking for. The flow of information would overwhelm a less experienced changeling, but taken the little her changelings had actually seen of the stallion she didn’t even drop her disguise as the images and sounds flowed through her.



   “No... ding… as planned… -ments… invited… -ible siege. The shield will be mainly a warning system, but it will be taxing. Do you think you can pull it off?” The first pieces of dialogue were fragmented because none of her changelings had been close by, but the mention of a siege had caused one of her minions to perk their ears. The changeling in question must have thought the fact had not been important because they were going to slip in before the shield came up. Sometimes she really wondered if independent thought was worth it in an underling. Chrysalis had heard the rest of the conversation herself, so she breezed through the rest of it.



   “I doubt the validity of your sources, but it doesn’t hurt to be paranoid.” A changeling positioned one car over as a lookout had seen the cloaked pony sit down and speak to the seat across from him. The changeling had not detected any magic that could broadcast the pony’s voice and he had moved his head like he was addressing somepony right in front of them. The changeling had also not detected any magic that could have concealed the person the pony had been talking to, so Chrysalis had to assume the pony she suspected in being the Canterlot spymaster was talking to things that weren’t there.



   “The hell is with these butterflies?” The pony muttered the statement as if there was a crowd of butterflies plaquing the car he was in, but the changeling that heard the comment didn’t even see one fluttering about. The pony reached out one hoof and then held it in front of them as if there was something as fragile as a butterfly perched on it, before flicking it away carefully. The extended hoof was striped, so this supposed spymaster of Canterlot was also a zebra. Chrysalis sent a request for more information, but her changelings had not paid much attention to the zebra beyond that point, he’d gotten off the train the same time they had and disappeared into the crowd.



   “Damn it, what does that mean?” Chrysalis struck her hoof on the ground in frustration at the perplexing information she had been presented with. Sensory hallucinations could very well be signs of mind-altering magic at work, or it could just mean the spymaster of Canterlot was someone with latent clairvoyant abilities. The clairvoyant abilities would make sense if the pony was affiliated with this supposed Canterlot secret police, but if there was another Queen in Canterlot trying to undermine her plan was just as likely given the evidence she’d been given. She had targeted the official captain of the guard, so it would make sense for a rival hive to target this supposed spymaster.



   There was nothing more she could learn from the collective, so she cut the connection with a quick order to stay vigilant of enemy operatives. She turned over to the sink more out of the habit of keeping up the facade, than actual need to check her makeup or wash her hooves. She looked up locked eyes with her reflection, only having a fraction of a second to feel the mind-altering spell trigger at the sight of her reflection.



   “Glad to meet you, Queen of the changelings.” She found herself in an unfamiliar room, sitting down on a chair designed for the strange bipedal body she was in. Her chitinous exoskeleton was exposed and the rest of the body was proportioned like a scrawny and tall minotaur with strange feet. The implanted memory didn’t allow for her to inspect her body to any further detail and the transfer through the collective had taken a toll on the details on the room she was in. She could see what she perceived as some kind of metal wire running through the objects in the projected room. She couldn’t hold on to the image of the things they were holding in place, so she had to assume she was trapped in an incomplete illusion.



   “So, someone in Celestia’s court knew mind-altering magic. I didn’t account for that.” Her perceived form fidgeted in her seat, testing the boundaries of the illusion. She could move enough to make herself comfortable in the projected space, so it was either constructed to make contact, or the caster was not as proficient in the art as they thought.



   Chrysalis focused on the sound of her heartbeat the feeling of her lungs expanding, forcing her eyes open a moment later. She stumbled slightly as her body started into consciousness from dozing off while standing. A quick scan of the area suggested no time had passed during her trance. The mind-altering spell was sophisticated enough to mess with her sense of time, but the fact it elongated her time, rather than speeding it along, at least suggested that the caster was not interested in apprehending her. She’d already triggered the illusory space and she was genuinely interested in who this pony was, so she allowed the spell take her back its own reality.



   “Are we satisfied now? I am only programmed for a specific number of situations, so I would appreciate if you stopped prodding me.” Chrysalis found herself back in the nondescript room, but now there was a pony there with her. He was a white stallion with an ash grey mane and his eyes held no colour, only a pinprick of black focused on her. She could not make out any describable features on the stallion and that bothered her greatly. The feeling only intensified when she saw that his cutie mark was only the number “97”.



   “The form of a changeling might have been more comfortable for you, but that avatar was corrupted in the transfer into your noggin. I was not granted the capability to construct another or fix it, so I had to default to this form. I hope it will suffice for our conversation.” The pony smiled mechanically and sat down across from her projected form. “My creator entertained the idea of offering you tea or other refreshments, but I doubt you would accept anything offered to you by an hostile mind-altering spell.”



   “First of all, what the hell are you? You are far too complex to come out of Celestia’a little school and you are obviously not trying to apprehend me. Were you made by a rival queen?” Chrysalis only intended to say the first sentence that came out of her mouth, but a subtle undercurrent in the illusory space she was in kicked in and lowered her inhibitions the moment she opened her mouth. Another testament to the impossible intricacy of the spell she was caught in.



   “I believe you are under the assumption I am simply an intricate spell cast on you to give you a message. You would be right, but only if you were to broaden your definition of a spell greatly. I don’t know if changelings have anything like me in their bag of tricks, but the ponies sure don’t. My creator takes great pride in that fact and can’t wait to learn more about changeling magic.” The picture of the pony in front of her flashed a disturbingly genuine smile at her. She could not feel any outside influence working on the spell trapping her, but she could feel something watching her from the spell's blank eyes.



   “Is that your purpose here, leech me for information and leave me for the guards to find? You are obviously not part of the guard if you go this far to do it covertly. Answer me!” Chrysalis jumped out of her seat and throttled the image of the pony in front of her. The impulse had been hers, but the action itself had been spurred on by the strange magic at work in the room. The facade of the non-descript unicorn melted instantly and sharp metallic wires dug into the arms of her imagined form.



   “Now that we’ve made contact, this will be over shortly. My creator did send me here to answer some of your questions and to get information about changeling magic. I was prepared to probe you using key words and non-invasive mindreading, but your temperament suggested this method would work better for both of us. Now give me a specific question you would like answered.” The voice had no clear source and the sight of the metal wires making their way up her arms was distracting. Only one kind of magic could create something with the power and complexity of this thing digging into her mind; Soul Magick.



   “Who is your creator? What do they want?” Chrysalis knew Luna had been the one to master soul magick a thousand years ago, but she couldn’t be the one going through all of these hoops to learn about a magic she knew and could easily imitate. The individual would have to be somehow affiliated with Luna to explain the level of mastery with soul magick, but how had they known about Chrysalis’ plans, if they were working that close with the royal diarch?



   “Telling what he is or even his name would tell you nothing, as my creator is something new in this world. He finds you and your kind fascinating and doesn’t mind accommodating your siege on Canterlot. Go along with your plan and you will not find any more interference from him. Your goals happen to coincide with ours, so we don’t want anything from you.” A part of the floor next to the table unraveled into a mess of intersecting sharp wires, straining and writhing around a small mote of light at the centre. The light hovered next to her, the wires around it writhing and latching onto the walls and ceiling to keep it in place. Chrysalis felt a cold chill pass through her as the small light blinked in and out as the wires moved around it.



   “What does your creator want in Canterlot? How did he know about the changeling hive-mind?” It was obvious that the spell construct was programmed to keep her in the dark about its creator, but seemed to have agency in the way it answered her. It had already let slip its caster’s gender, so she had to keep asking it questions to learn more. The magic scouring her mind was frighteningly efficient and she had no time to try and manipulate the construct.



   “My creator is the talkative one, so your strategy might work on him. I was only programmed to be cordial to you during this process.” Chrysalis felt the magic that had been creeping its way into her mind stop and start prodding memories pertaining to changeling magic to the surface. Chrysalis felt and heard a hum from the small light protected by the wires and was not surprised to see it ballooning out as her knowledge was copied into it.



   “Why does he bother with trying to be cordial? Clearly he is proficient enough to simply erase my memory of this.” The construct did not answer her immediately, assumedly too preoccupied with digging around her mind for any piece of knowledge it might have missed. Chrysalis felt the cold steel of the wires grating against her nerves as they slid back out her projected body.



   “Because I was tasked with giving you a message, also I think my creator just wanted to see how you would react.” The mass of wires started to pull and retract back into itself, folding and consuming the illusion of the barren room she was in piece by piece. The room lost its dimensions, the soft light illuminating them was extinguished and the chair and the ground itself were pulled from under her. The construct paused to rearrange the retracted wires into layers protecting the light at its core and into crude appendages, before lashing out at her projected form. She was pulled closer until she could feel the shifting wires brushing across her face and leaving stinging cuts wherever they touched.



   “There is a thing in Canterlot that will kill you on sight. My master wishes to help you live past meeting those blue eyes.” The construct reared back and slammed into her mental projection, destroying the last piece of the illusion and then forcing the mental connection to her changelings open.



   “Gah! Accursed little shit…” Chrysalis stumbled back, her mind jostled by the forced mental connection snapping shut behind the construct of energy. She could feel the cold steel of the intricate construct clinging to her mind and was not surprised by feeling one of her changelings disappearing a moment later. Whoever had sent that thing was prepared to abuse a power like Soul Magick simply gather information, so they understandably saw no value in the life of a single changeling. She didn’t like it, but she had no way to fight someone who could wield such a volatile power and withdrawing at the point she was at in her plan would put her changelings in just as much danger. The wedding had to go as planned for there to be any hope for her hive. She was being played and she couldn’t do anything about it if she wanted the rest of her changelings to live.



   Chrysalis stepped out onto the guest room and trotted over to check on Shining Armour. She hoped that busying herself with making the stallion presentable again would hopefully distract her from any irrational thoughts of revenge. She’d always had the bad habit of taking things far too personally, even considering her nature as a being dependent on the feelings of others to survive.



   She could feel the vice of the foreign magic on her mind loosen as she finished healing Shining Armour’s mind. The caster clearly had some use for the colt in mind, but trying to think of it brought the promise of pain back to the forefront of her mind. The magic left in her mind was ready to lash out and twist her into doing whatever the caster wanted. She knew the temperature and ventilation of the guest room was enchanted to be pleasant, but the air suddenly felt heavy and suffocating. She slammed open the balcony doors and lay her neck on the warm marble of the railing. She gulped in fresh air and let her mind trudge through the slog the aggressive mind-magic had left in its wake.



   “Not true. It was the magical construct leaving your mind that kicked up that proverbial dust. It also lowered your defenses enough for me to have something to work with.” Chrysalis saw time freeze in place as a strange bipedal thing covered in dark clothes strolled into her view to lean on the railing. She saw the similarities in the build of her projected form in the hallucination and this new thing and assumed it to be the caster’s race. She’d been around for centuries and she could only think of it as another of Discord’s nonsensical forms. Something still gnawing at her mind told her how wrong she was and made her feel stupid for even thinking it. The bipedal thing turned on its heel and walked through the door leading back inside. Chrysalis could still feel the magic ensnaring her mind, so she followed the thing inside.



  “Your mind is an impressive maze of lies stacked on half-truths upon the names of others. Suffice to say it’s a welcome change from these equine bags of goodwill and cheer.” The thing walked slowly around the room, leisurely pausing to examine paintings and furniture. Chrysalis could feel the thing in her mind coiling and twisting as the image of the room around her swam and blinked drunkenly.



   “What are you doing to me?” The words fell out of her mouth like they were molten lead, searing her eyes and dulling her mind as her senses continued to mix and her mind was dissected by this sociopathic alien.



   “I would be lying if I told you I was sorry for the pain I am putting you through, but I can honestly say I am doing it to help you. Your body and mind are having a disconnection because I am forcing your soul to change its base properties to mirror the real Cadance.” Chrysalis felt her jaw slamming on the floor. She didn’t feel her legs giving out, but the shock of her brain jostling around inside her illusion registered as the taste of stale beer and grilled venison. She ate such a strangely complementary meal somewhere up in griffon country, but the exact time and place escaped her, for obvious reasons.



   “I know you will remember my words, but I would also like to implore you to follow them. There will be a foreign object lodged into your brain when you wake, please do not tamper with it. The object is a piece of physical spellwork that will link you with Cadance’s actual body, so that you can perfectly imitate her physical and arcane appearance, while that magic of mine keeps you as yourself.” The disorientation and pain she was in obscured the world from her, but she could still feel her body being hoisted off the floor and onto another surface. There might have been a lapse of time where she lost consciousness, but the next thing she felt was the irritating hum of magic near her ear.




  ****** *** ****




   Chrysalis labored to breathe as the latest barrage of regenerative magic stopped rebuilding and triggering her fried pain receptors. Earlier barrages had triggered other parts of her brain, sometimes giving her painfully brief glimpses of respite and sometimes perverting and erasing the memories she had. She let her head droop limply and didn’t even react when a cold metallic hand twisted her head upward and another appendage of the monster holding her captive forced her eyes open. She still spasmed and squirmed against her restraints as a blinding flash of light seared through her eyes and bore into her mind.


   The pain of this procedure went beyond the physical pain she had been swimming in for hours upon continuous hours. The light had the immediate effect of forcing her to relive her latest torture, but it also drove her further into despair with the knowledge that even her mind was this thing’s plaything. A sense of violation beyond even the imagination of the most depraved rapist had been visited upon her every time that light hit the back of her eyes.



   “Pain receptors, close.” A tinny voice stated as her head was released. Chrysalis blinked the afterimage out of her eyes and tiredly fixed her eyes beyond the sleek metallic figure looming over her and across the room to the other captive caught in the same hell she was in. The mare’s pink coat was matted and chafed raw where the restraints kept her in place. The mare’s mane was shaved off completely, showing the angry red and blue bruises the intracranial probes had left in her scalp as they had been repositioned and tweaked. Chrysalis felt sorry for the enviable airy multi colored mane that used to be coiffed to near perfection, just enough messiness to keep her approachable sneaking in either by design or as a side-effect of the kind mare’s playful nature. She’d been so jealous of that mane, but even in this nightmare it was the pretty pink pony princess that got off easy.



   Another metallic figure tweaked the spike drilled into Cadance’s skull, before another appendage whirred to life and planted itself on the former princess of love’s temples, causing her body to spasm and the painful bruises on her scalp to recede slightly. Chrysalis tiredly noted a stream of drool dangling from the broken mare’s mouth as the metallic figure stepped back. She hadn’t been fond of the naive mare, but she didn’t deserve to share the horrors of this room with her. She was too tired to wonder if that sentiment had been implanted into her head or not, it didn’t matter either way.



   “Don’t fret, Chryssi, your torment is nearly at an end.” Chrysalis weakly gritted her teeth in preparation as she heard the machine connected to the spikes in her head whir to life. To her great surprise she felt no pain, nor was she launched into a familiar memory or disturbed hallucination. She only felt her body grow heavier, slightly more sore and far more moist than her carapace should allow. She slowly opened her eyes and let out an involuntary gasp as she saw her own body hanging limply from its restraints across from her. She felt an unfamiliar terror fill her as she watched her own brain twitch and ooze green blood down her face as the spikes in her head sparked with the magical energy running through them.



   There was click and suddenly Chrysalis saw Cadance’s body slump back down to dangle from her restraints. Her tormentor forced her head back up and focused the familiar unfeeling glass eye toward her. She squirmed and spasmed weakly as the scorching light ravaged her mind yet again, bringing the feelings of violation and weakness with it.



   “There’s his answer. You can rest now.” The familiar tinny voice stated as the appendage grabbing her chin moved to the probe’s in her brain. She heard the strange digits clink against the metal as they took hold of the thin probe.




****** *** ****





   Chrysalis jolted awake and immediately jumped out of the bed she’d been laid on. Her eyes frantically scanned the room, the pain and helplessness in the strange dream still fresh in her mind. She saw the castle guest room, just as lavish and inviting as it had been before the strange alien had knocked her out. Shining Armour stood in the doorway to the room with a strangely emotionless look in his eyes, but she didn’t see any menacing metallic figures looming over her, nor was the real Cadance in the same room with her.



   “Not a dream, no way that was just a dream!” Chrysalis practically jumped over Shining Armour to get to the vanity mirror. At first glance her camouflage as Cadance was immaculate, but her changeling magic would revert to that image if she didn’t consciously change it. The damage she’d felt and seen in her vision or dream, or whatever it had been might still be hidden behind her magic. Layering an illusion on top of real wounds worked very much like bandages, the illusion would stem blood flow out of the wound as a side-effect of the magical illusion covering the skin universally, but it would do nothing to heal the wound further.




   “Now, don’t panic, honey. Whatever you saw in your dream does not represent your reality.” Shining Armour tried to calm her by pressing his snout to her neck. Chrysalis leaned into the affectionate gesture and let out half of a sigh before her mind caught up with what was happening. The fact that Shining Armour knew anything about what she’d seen was strange, just as was her reaction to his touch. She snapped her eyes to Shining Armour and saw that cold bluntness so unlike the affectionate captain of the guard staring back at her. The panic the stallion’s gesture had helped push away crashed back into her mind and she jumped back from the stallion.




   “Yes, Shining Armour is taking a backseat for the moment. I need to catch you up with a few things before I let you get back to your little act.” Those cold eyes followed her across the room while Shining Armour’s body stayed unnaturally still and rigid. “You will discover a foreign object inserted into your cranial cavity right above your right temple. It has been fashioned to look like a hair-ornament, but it is quite deep in there. This device connects you with the real Cadance, allowing your innate ability of camouflage to perfectly mimic the princess’ arcane signature, you could say you’re wearing her soul like a coat.”



   “What… This doesn’t make any sense! Why are you doing this? What was that vision I saw?” Chrysalis exclaimed as she felt a foreign pang of worry as Shining’s static body continue to stare at her. These feelings must have been a side-effect of being connected to the real Cadance, assuming this thing was telling the truth.



   “You don’t need to worry about that. The connector is going to have some side-effects you should be aware of. You can’t use changeling magic and you’re going to actually feel some of Cadance’s emotions and instincts while it’s in you, it should make your charade believable enough.” Shining’s lips curved upward mechanically and the faintest bit of mirth flashed in his eyes. “I’m done here. Have fun!”



   As soon as whatever was inside Shining Armour said that, a guard she had not noticed walked into the room from the balcony. Chrysalis thought he saw some kind of shape pass through the air between the two stallions as they locked eyes, but her head ached when she tried to think about it. Shining Armour’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and the nameless guard must have raced out of the door as Chrysalis rushed over to him.



   She was halfway done with healing the shock the entity’s departure had caused when she realized how emotional her reaction to rush over toward Shining had been. She should have rushed to stop the new host to whatever had been playing with her and her changelings ever since she came to Canterlot. This thing seemed far too prideful to leave taunting her after its victory to any arcane construct or spellbound guard. Shining would have been fine, especially after he’d shown himself capable of surviving the onslaught of mental magic she’d thrown at him.



   “So, that thing can either leave its own body, or does not have one to begin with… It could be a spirit of some kind? Might even be Discord… Yes, Discord is definitely involved.” Chrysalis mumbled her theories to herself as she levitated Shining Armour to the bed. He would be fine after the mind-altering spells set in and nopony would none the wiser. She set the stallion down, covered him with the blanket and fluffed his pillow. She had the stray thought of finding a teddy bear to tuck in with him before her mind caught up with whatever maternal instinct of Cadance’s was driving her. She still stayed by the side of the bed, looking at the pained expression slowly melt away from Shining’s face. She had a feeling her mind would keep wandering toward the colt regardless, so staying by his side left her with a moment to think.



   The entity in Shining had said something strange when dismissing her vision. She didn’t put misleading comments past whatever could play with a hive of changelings so casually, but the off-handed remark still stuck out to her.



   “It doesn’t represent your reality.” Did that mean there were others it could have represented? Was that where this thing was from? It would definitely fit all the clues the thing itself and its creations had given her. Sure, there’d been rumors of alien creatures visiting Equestria and other highly magical locales, but she’d never given those stories any real thought. Seeing what this suspected alien had accomplished in what she assumed to be a relatively short time, she came upon a startling thought.



   Could these visitors have been kept secret because they were evil?



   
Luna #87




   Patience was not a resource she had in abundance, her creator should have been the first and best person to know that, but still he had tasked her with maintaining the process of constructing and enchanting the physical matrix to the project he’d been working on the last few days. He’d been very adamant about how he did not have the time or resources to start again and failure would mean that she would be dismantled and reconstructed into the spellwork to make up for lost time.



   Any of these facts did not change the fact that Luna’s body both had to pee and eat something sweet. #87 had not been designed with the ability to discern the urgency of any need or compulsion her body experienced, so the programmed personality was perplexed which of these two needs was having such a detrimental effect on her ability to concentrate.



   She knew there were pastries and all kinds of sweets in Luna’s room, but the task she’d been trusted with required all of her limited concentration. She didn’t have the brainpower to spare on a simple levitation spell to bring that cookie to her left closer. Calling a guard to help her would violate the command to keep her creator’s project secret and would bring undue attention to both her mental shortcomings and the state of her body. Using her wings would bring the sweet thing closer, but with the project occupying her hands and concentration she could not use telekinesis and bending down to pick it up with her mouth was a physical impossibility.



   She had a simple solution for the need to expel urine, but she would have to reach a certain level of discomfort to execute “wet_yourself.exe” in her current situation.



   “How goes it, 87?” The palace guard holding her creator greeted her as he sets down in the room. Luna twists her head to lock eyes with the guard and to let her creator back into a body that can hold his mind in its whole complexity. The feeling of Smuggler’s presence wrestling control away from her is something #87 had been programmed to view as pleasurable, so Luna’s body moaned as it happened. “Ah, no problems. Good work.”



   “You, get back to work, now.” Smuggler compelled her to say to the stumbling guard. She could see the mind-altering spell her creator had left inside the guard activate as the stallion heard the command. He would not remember any of this and the new memory would be something he was not likely to share with anyone, or have any reason to suspect as false, it was a kind of creation she’d seen deployed more than once in her short life. #87 enjoyed having her creator there to make the hard decisions for her, only leaving the unconscious tasks of moving Luna’s body and keeping her mannerisms normal to the devoted arcane construct.



   She enjoyed being Luna, she liked making the princess of the night kinder and friendlier than she knew her to be from the memories her creator had shared. The old Luna was boring and morose, even with her creator there trying to help lift her spirits. Everypony was so nice to her, even when she burst into their little songs unannounced, working some references of her creator’s old world into the words, as was one of her operating parameters. The old Luna had to be downright forced into singing or even appearing in public, but 87 loved meeting new people and had no qualms in being a little silly to brighten someone else’s day.



   She hoped Princess Celestia wouldn’t kill her too soon after her creator set his plan in motion. #87 flexed Luna’s fingers, sensing Smuggler’s presence using Luna’s horn and other innate magic to grow his latest project, leaving #87 the use of Luna’s body. She carefully sat up from the floor, the heft of the project making the process laborious. She walked over to the plate of cookies on the coffee table at the centre of the room and snatched a cookie on her way to the bathroom. She threw the cookie in the air and tried to catch it in her mouth. She missed and hit her toe on the doorframe as she fumbled with the cookie.



   “F...” The pain in her foot was akin to a fresh hell of thorns, but #87 had not been programmed with the vocal library to convey that feeling. “Finding Nemo, that hurts like Sith!”



   #87 decided she deserved the whole plate of cookies, along with some ice-cream in the icebox, maybe with a side of mustard on zucchini. She rushed to see to her need to expel urine, as “wet_yourself.exe” was about to be applicable in the amount of discomfort she was in.



   “It might have been an oversight to make you a klutz, no matter how endearing it might seem to a third party observer.
> Pressure
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




Chrysalis was what most would call a nervous wreck. The plan to blitz the defences of Canterlot during the wedding was going suspiciously well and whatever that mind-tampering bastard had done had made her indistinguishable from the real Cadance. She could go about her day without even thinking about the foreign object inserted into her cranium. The insertion point didn’t itch and she had not seen any glitches in its functions, even when she met the thing she’d been warned of.



   “You know why Celestia’s eyes turn blue from time to time, right honey?” Chrysalis nonchalantly asked Shining Armour while they were wandering around the garden. She’d given the excuse of inspecting the garden for use in the wedding, but at least the Element of Honesty hadn’t bought it, if the shit-eating grin she’d given her was any indication. She might have revelled in that kind of misunderstanding in the past, but with her new hair accessory in play she found it hard to keep her hooves off of the young captain of the guard.



   As a purely manipulative move she traced a hoof over the stallion’s barrel, feeling his muscles tense and flex at her touch. Again, as a carefully planned manipulative tool, which she definitely chose to use, she pressed her body against the captain of the guard and leaned her neck against his. She loved the simple smell of his shampoo and the warmth of his body. She wanted to keep him close and feel that warmth all around her, hear his voice cooing sweet nothings to her, to feel him inside her....



   “I do, but I can’t tell you.” Chrysalis snapped out of sniffing Shining Armour’s hair as the colt denied her the information she asked. A part of her was angry at herself for letting Cadance’s hormonal instincts get the better of her, while another part wanted to pounce the colt and show him just what a thousand years of experience really meant in the bedroom.



   “I’m only worried about her,dear. She’s been so stressed lately and I’ve actually seen her afraid when those blue eyes come out. I don’t have to tell you how rare that is, right? What is going on with my aunt?” She pushed the colt back and turned his head to face her. He was shaken by the sudden absence of loving mare on his skin. This is what was making her into a nervous wreck, this obvious disconnect with her changeling mind and Cadance’s near estrus instincts.



   “I - I really can’t, you understand that, right?” He looked serious and concerned about her interest in Celestia. She didn’t see any suspicion of her identity in the colt. She should be ecstatic in having fooled the colt so completely, but something in her ached at seeing his genuine worry. The spike in her head had made her lie easier to tell, but far harder to live.



   “You can’t trust me to keep my mouth shut, is that it? You think I’m going to go around spreading national secrets? I’m just worried about her health, Shining. Everypony else might think she’s immortal, but I know she can get sick and hurt.” Chrysalis kept walking forward, distanced herself from Shining and turned her head indignantly. A quiver in her voice and a downcast look and she could hear Shining’s will bend.



   “She’s not sick, not exactly… I’ve been briefed on the details of it, but I can’t wrap my head around it. From the way the healers tell it, there’s a spirit of alien origin keeping Celestia’s heart beating, or tied to the beat of her heart. It calls itself Soldier and it can… control you, for the lack of a better word.” The stallion paused and looked away. He was unsure if he should confess the next part of the story, but Chrysalis stepped closer again and touched their sides together again. She might not be able to use changeling magic, but she could still play Shining Armour like a fiddle.



   “You never question the command at the time, but it is frightening to think what it could do with just a word. My casters say it’s an infection of energy that dissipates quickly, but I still find myself double-guessing myself hours later. What if it’s been controlling me the whole time? What if it can make me forget orders it has given me and got to my experts before I could consult them?” Chrysalis entwined her tail with the unsure colt and leaned her neck against his. Chrysalis knew that most stallions only showed weakness around those they trusted to a great degree. She could use that in place of any mind-altering magic she might have thrown at him if she had access to her changeling magic.



   “Do you think this spirit is malicious? Is it possible it is controlling Celestia’s court with this power it has?” Shining Armour was shaking his head before Chrysalis could finish her sentence. So, this alien spirit had somehow gained some degree of trust or respect from the captain of the Canterlot guard. Her plan might have been going far smoother she could have predicted, but she didn’t like how her hive seemed to be caught in this secret war these two entities were having.



   “No, if he had any shred of malice toward us, then he would have acted on it already. The way I hear it he literally tore his soul apart to save her life, which is why separating them is such a challenge. No, Soldier’s not the problem.” Shining Armour glanced away and his jaw worked silently as he contemplated whether or not he should share what he was leaving out. Chrysalis nudged the colt affectionately and assured him he would feel better sharing his worries.



   “Soldier’s not the only alien spirit in Equestria. He has two “brothers” for the lack of a better word. A few weeks ago the spirit named Smuggler got loose and Luna nearly died from the shock. A few days ago the same thing happened with the one called Priest and there were civilian casualties.” His voice sounded morose and defeated, rather than the justified anger she would have expected when talking about civilian casualties. What kind of magic had these spirits spun on these ponies to make them have such a high opinion of them?



   “How did these spirits enter Equestria? Is there any way to send them where they came from?” A hushed tone and a small step to enter Shining Armour’s field of view made her question a serious one. She was quite certain it would have enticed a serious answer from the stallion, but instead she felt something stirring to life in Shining Armour as their eyes locked ever so briefly. Shining Armour’s horn lit up with magic and his eyes emptied of all emotion as a projected pad of numbers 1- 9 appeared between them.



   “You have reached the centralised helpline for matters concerning the human spirits. If your business concerns the physical harm Soldier has caused you, please press 1.” Chrysalis took a step back from the stallion. It was obvious she had triggered another one of the spirit’s mind-altering spells, but she had no idea what it was making the poor colt rattle out. She concentrated a moment and was able to cast a sound dampening spell around them with what magic she had available. The last thing she needed was to have her cover blown because of the thing that stuck a needle in her brain thought messing with her was amusing.



   “If your call concerns the psychological backlash of losing your autonomy in the presence of Soldier, please press 2.” Chrysalis noticed that the corresponding number on the projected pad flashed twice as Shining Armour talked. “If you believe you or your significant other has been ordered or coerced to commit a criminal act by the human spirits, please press 3. If you believe your memory has been altered to affect your behaviour, please press 4.”



   “If your call concerns the malfunction of a reconstructive arcane construct, please press 5. If you have been subject to, or have witnessed, the ill-advised manipulation of a functioning arcane construct, please press 6. If you have experienced unusually vivid dreams involving members of the human race interacting with you, please press 7. If you have experienced auditory and visual hallucinations when interacting with reflective surfaces, please press 8. If you believe squirrels are bullshit and should be knocked down a peg, please press 9.” Shining Armour fell silent after the number 9 on the projected flashed. Chrysalis hesitated for a moment, before reaching out a hoof toward the numberpad.



   “If you thought getting rid of the human spirits was as easy as asking the captain of the Canterlot guard, please press 10.” Shining Armour was no longer rattling out the list of button presses, now there was something looking back at her behind his still eyes. She had the irrational urge to point out there was no number 10 on a 9 digit pad, but was able to keep the outburst to herself. “If you wish to be spared the new hell my maker will create for you to suffer through, please press 11.”



   “I thought you had the common sense not to go against me, Chryssi.” She heard the words clearly, but she didn’t hear it with her ears. She felt the words reverberate inside her skull as the spike in her cranium vibrated. It was actually the first time the insertion point of the spike ached in any way, but the lingering nauseous pain his words caused was something she would not forget. She could feel the sound dampening spell she had placed fail as bright colors danced at the edges of her vision.



   “I understand how infuriating it must be for someone with your ego to accept help, but I have done nothing but accommodate your half-assed plan to guzzle up the love in Canterlot. I am sure you know the extent I could have perverted your nature with the magic I have at hand, but you still fail to appreciate my restraint.” Her head felt like it was filled with ice-cold shards of glass, with the painful contrast of the spike in her head feeling like white-hot steel drilling into her core. Every word jostled these textures of pain against each other and Chrysalis was not naive enough to assume that the human spirit was ignorant of this fact.



   “Every breath you take, every step you make, I am watching you. I hear every single vapid thought of your own greatness, and it is something I allow you to entertain. I could break your vindictive little mind and mold you into Canterlot’s top whore, but I have decided not to do that.” She couldn’t be sure, but she could have sworn she felt the collective consciousness of the hive connect with her and the thought of her changelings seeing her in such a sorry state made the sickening pain ravaging her body sting sharper than it should.



   “Shame is a funny thing, isn’t it? Every word I say drives your sense of defeat deeper into your consciousness, but yet you fight to stay awake. Some would say you are enjoying the shame, glad for the pain that masks your excitement, gives you an excuse to clench your teeth and let out that screaming moan.” The human laughed, every chuckle threatening to send her tumbling into darkness. The pain blinded every sense she had, but his words still rung through her head as clear as lightning. She couldn’t gather the energy to refute what he was saying and now she doubted what she would actually find beyond the pain. 



   “The way I see it you’re attracted to power, so it’s not a stretch to think you’d be turned on by its use, or your lack of it. Sure, that could be the truth, or I could just be messing with you, but you know what’s the really funny thing here?” The human’s voice cut out and for a brief second she thought her torture was over, but then the spike in her brain started to wordlessly shriek into her brain and her consciousness cut out in a brilliant flash of pain and dull light.



   She woke up feeling warm and pleasantly fatigued, she also happened to be standing up and maintaining a simple levitation spell. That was her first clue as to the stretch of time she’d lost. She knew from both personal experience and second hand testimony that there was no way to shake off pain and physical trauma like that in less than a week. Her second clue was far less subtle, but it did drive home the human’s power over her memory and perception.




  You’ll never know for sure.




   “That vindictive bastard!” Chrysalis exclaimed as her hold on the lipstick she’d used to write the message on the vanity mirror slipped. She was wearing what she’d picked out as the bride’s gown and her hair was done up meticulously, so she could only assume she’d lost the days between her conversation with Shining Armour and the actual wedding. She had no idea what she’d been doing during those days, but by the fact she hadn’t been caught and jailed in Tartarus meant that the human spirit had done an adequate job of portraying Cadance in her stead.





   It was just as plausible that she had been the one to fool the ponies of Canterlot, but this human had erased her memory of it. She could have been living the time she lost without even knowing about the human and then suddenly written the message on the mirror as the human’s spell activated, most likely triggered by the reflection of her in Cadance’s wedding gown. Hell, she could still be in the garden, drooling and mumbling as the human’s magic forced her to live in a false world. The alien could be inserting another probe into her brain right at that moment, as far as she knew.





You’ll never know for sure.




   She glanced at the message she had written again and felt a chill race up her spine as the implications dawned on her. Not only could she never know for sure if the human had tapped into some hidden fetish of hers when he had dominated her so thoroughly, but she could also never know for sure what was real and what was another illusion transplanted into her mind by this alien spirit.




   “No!” She was not going to let this nameless bastard play her like this. She would become a nervous wreck if she let this human’s mind games get to her. The tricks it was using were petty and amateurish and there was no way they would work on a changeling with her experience. She knew what he wanted from her and that gave her an edge in this situation. The spirit was working under the radar of Celestia and whatever was behind that blue light, so she did have something to hold over this thing after all! She was the queen of the changelings! She was the one who played and manipulated these ponies! She was not going to let this thing get the better of her, no way! She was the one who would come out on top, no matter what she had to do! She was going to…




Do you remember writing this?





   She had no recollection of picking up that burgundy lipstick back up again. Not only had the words on the mirror changed, but the mirror was not smudged at all around the letters, meaning she’d taken the time to clean the mirror thoroughly before writing that new message onto it. She levitated a wastebin closer and saw paper towels smudged by the same shade of lipstick discarded there. It could all be an intricate illusion, but it wouldn’t matter either way if she couldn’t tell the difference between it and reality.



   “Why? You said you were helping me? Why are you…”




  Sing for me.




   The tube of lipstick clattered to the ground, as Chrysalis snapped back to consciousness the moment the message was written. It was jarring, it brought out a pure reaction of fright from her frayed mind and she was certain that was the exact reason for the abrupt awakening. She stepped back and stared at the request her tormentor had given her. She didn’t have to ask what he wanted her to sing, the words already itched at the back of her mind like a memory she couldn’t shake.



   She clenched her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. She knew she could fight the compulsion, she could disobey her new tormentor and bring down both his plans along with her own. She had no concrete way to know that their interests actually coincided to any degree and bringing this manipulative bastard down before he backstabbed her was the smart move, no matter how she looked at it. Her hive had already fallen under this human’s spell and she doubted he actually cared for any of their lives.



   She’d been driven to this point, in a way she could only think to be deliberate. The choice was entirely hers to make, the stakes were clear and her submission to this manipulative human would be made complete if she gave into this simple request. The power he had over her was unquestionable and she was sure there was enough mind-altering spells in her mind to force her into complying regardless of her choice.



   “This day is going to be perfect…”




   Soldier




   “I don’t get it.” Soldier muttered as he craned Celestia’s neck away from the door. Cadance was on the other side, doing a version of the “this day aria” without the bits Chrysalis would have changed. A pony bride to be letting the overabundance of magic around them carry them into song, nothing to be alarmed about.



   “How did we change it this much?” Celestia’s mouth muttered as Soldier started walking her body back to her office. He’d told the sun diarch he would stop pestering Cadance, but he couldn’t just let the matter drop. This Cadance had acted suspiciously when he’d made his presence known for the first time, but that could have been his overbearing presence unnerving the sheltered princess, as Celestia had pointed out.



   “No Chrysalis, no adversity.” Step after step, Celestia’s body walked the halls leading to her office. Controlling the alicorn’s lanky frame had become close to second nature for him, so he could afford an errant thought or two. He could feel himself expanding, his tumultuous essence circling around Celestia and harmlessly going through walls and any other objects around them. The few ponies they passed only felt the arcane equivalent of a rise in barometric pressure; a loss of colour in the world, rather than pressure on the eyes, dulled sounds, rather than popping ears, and so on.



   “I could have saved them, I could have stopped her.” Celestia’s body turned a corner and a series of cracks in the stone branched out from the seam in the stone. Soldier’s presence had built up speed and mass, agitating the miniscule faults in the stone enough for the cracks to form and follow the energy in its mindless race around its host. The cracks branched out evenly along the wall Celestia’s body was closer to, growing wider and deeper with each step. The lines converged and forced out pieces of marble as the wall shifted and shook with the invisible energy forcing its way through it. The first pieces of marble started tumbling in a circular pattern around Celestia’s hooves.



   “I don’t know what to do.” Soldier’s control of Celestia’s body slipped as the thought was voiced through her mouth. More and more of Soldier’s essence poured out of Celestia, adding to the weight and mass of the energy rattling the stone hallway they stood in. It only took a few seconds for the mass of energy to build dense enough break the stone archway around them and push the stone outward in a lazy spiral. The stone grinded and crashed against the stone around it, adding that much more mass into the steadily growing circle of destroyed stonework and the occasional cord of wiring or stretch of plumbing. The low rumble and nearly earthquake level of tremors this loss of control caused had spared anypony from stumbling into the maelstrom, so far.



   “What are you doing? Stop it, Soldier!” Celestia was awake now, deftly using her wings to stay afloat as the ground beneath her churned and traveled outward, only to be assimilated into the slowly expanding sphere of destruction around her. The momentum of the mass of stone slowed for a moment as Soldier tried to tear his energy out of the physical realm and gain some semblance of control, but he only had a moment to feel the strain on his sense of self, before everything went quiet.



   No sound, no light, not even the slightest weight on him. There was nothing holding him back, tying him down to the mundane. He felt the momentum, the speed and the far reaches he could still reach taunting him. Faster, lighter, further, go reach beyond the pale and touch that tantalizing light. See the colour, feel the little thing flail as the rushing self swirls and gathers and…



   Pain, speed, heat, light, stillness. Most of self dragging behind, slamming into core consciousness, panic, fear. SOMEONE HURT US! WHAT? WHO? WHERE ARE WE?



   Expand, rush, which light hurt us? No lights, no hurt? All light to self, no light to hurt self!



   No movement other than self, no light other than self. No danger if nothing to hurt, nothing to do, or want hurt. Make all movement self, make all light self. No danger, no need for many, become one again.





Celestia




   It had been a few centuries since she’d felt so powerless. A war, a political scuffle, a renegade mage, those were the situations she had experience in. Housing an alien presence with the kind of power Soldier possessed over the world around him was a new problem.



   His loss of control in Canterlot was something she’d anticipated, given the nature of his existence, but she’d never imagined the scope of the power he commanded. Seeing the very stone of the castle around her be grinded into jagged gravel was a frightening experience, but it was nothing compared to what all that power did when Soldier’s presence disappeared from her mind.



   She could feel Soldier rushing out of her body, his core personality becoming one with the speeding energy around them, slowing the rush of energy for a short and hopeful moment. The colored light that usually signaled Soldier’s presence permeated the moving rocks and the air around her, bringing the violent cyclone of power raging around her into the visual spectrum. She could feel Soldier straining to steer the movement of the rocks inward, to stop the perpetually growing destruction around her.



   The pain from his detachment was successfully negated by the piece of processed crystal glued to the off-colour patch of fur on her chest. The gem-cutters wanted a few days to construct an appropriate holder for the cut gem, but Soldier had ordered them to just glue it in place. The patch of fur was covered by her regalia for most of the day, so Celestia hadn’t objected to the pragmatic decision.



   She also felt that strain build and build, until she felt the connection between them snap. The blue tendrils of light dancing around her whipped along with the force of the grinding rocks, before they dissipated into a faint hue of blue over the scene of destruction. There was another moment of brief hope when the blue hue around her started thickening, while the sharp gravel around her started to float down.



   All she could see were the lazily churning blue light surrounding her and the occasional floating rock. The only sounds to breach the silence were the occasional flaps of her wings to stay afloat. She could feel something moving in the dim blue around her, something different from the pragmatic human she knew. She couldn’t help but be reminded of the darkness of the deep sea and the treacherous currents and demented creatures dominating that world. This something rushed out, forgoing the spiral that had ground a good chunk of Canterlot Castle to gravel. She could feel the energy around her swirling and pooling around a single point close to her. She’d seen this gathering point shoot out bursts of magic to try and keep Soldier at away, only to fall still and fade into the blue as Soldier rushed to meet the flailing energy.



   She had gathered every bit of strength she had to teleport away from Canterlot when she realized what Soldier’s power would do without proper control, when she realized what it had already done to one unfortunate pony. The girth of the energy Soldier commanded was too much for any teleportation spell that could get them both far enough, so she had to gamble on teleporting only her own body and let Soldier be catapulted along with her through the connection they shared.



   She’d chosen a small outcropping of rocks in the middle of an infamously stormy and rocky stretch of coast as her goal. She materialized above uneven terrain and very nearly tumbled straight into the stormy sea. The wind blasted a sheet of rain against her with enough power to make her stumble and the raging sea swept her a good ten meters along the slanted rock as soon as she was able to stand. Lightning flashed across the sky every few seconds and the roar of the wind and the nearly constant thunder made sure she was practically deaf and blind. The wind whipped her this way and that and she felt a twinge of pain as a particularly strong gust of wind stretched her outstretched wing the wrong way.



   She’d been there for 30 seconds and she’d already managed three brushes with death by storm at sea. She could be reasonably certain no sane pony, griffon or sea faring vessel would be in the circumference of Soldier’s power. She couldn’t be sure about the sea ponies, but those slaphappy retards would probably just eat their dead and move on if it came to that.



   She’d started to wonder if Soldier would actually follow her through their shared connection, but then she felt the first wisps of his presence reaching out to her. She’d lived for weeks with all of Soldier raging around her, so seeing the space around her start shimmering with blue light was not nearly as frightening as it should have been. She’d even gone through the trouble of briefly materializing in the upper atmosphere, just so that Soldier wouldn’t pass through the lands between her destination and Canterlot.



   She should have known Soldier would take the shortest distance there is between two points, no matter how impossible it should have been. The basic theory in teleportation was to force two points to share the same space, but the ways to accomplish this varied greatly, along with the ways to move matter between these two points. Soldier’s connection to a part of her body brought him halfway and his lack of a physical body made it laughably easy for him to push through the pockets of folded space she had created by teleporting herself there.



   The next few seconds played out in slow-motion for the apprehensive sun diarch. It could have been caused by Soldier’s arcane mass moving near the speed of light toward her, but it could also be apprehension on her part. The brunt of his terrifyingly condensed mass would either slam into her as soon as it materialized, or it would actually materialize inside the shared space their two souls shared and explode outward. Whichever the case, it would be painful and surely slam her consciousness out of controlling her body, practically knocking her unconscious.



   The thought of finding a safer place to fall unconscious entered into her mind, just as everything flashed blue.



   She’d been right about the pain. Soldier’s blue light roared into the space around her, slammed through the piece of her that Soldier had helped reconstruct and then exploded outward into the raging waves and stormy sky. She could feel her eyes straining to roll back and darkness licking at the edges of her vision as the foreign energy triggered every nerve designed to signal something wrong, but she fought back the urge as another flash of blue washed over her. Her knees buckled and there was another flash of blue at the edge of her vision, then another and yet another.



   A sense of dread crept over the small part of her mind still functioning amidst the debilitating pain and sense of wrongness, as flashes of blue burst out from the sea around her in quick succession. She fell to her side on the cold stone and saw countless blue dots of light flying out of the churning sea, only to float above the water and drift closer to each other. She closed her eyes just as the dots started to converge together. There was another flash of blue light that seared into her eyes even through her eyelids, but now it was accompanied by a deafening crack of thunder and a wave of heat.





   Smuggler





   “Jeez! Why can’t that asshole just do his mental deterioration in private like any decent human spirit?” Luna’s lips muttered out as the scrying spell showed a perfectly spherical section of a nasty looking thunderstorm suddenly turn blue and dissipate. “Ooh, look at me! I’m the stoic hero character, but I’m still the dweeb who’s gonna go full Michael Bay on the technicolor equines!”



   Luna’s magic kept the taxing scrying spell up for a few more minutes. Smuggler watched as more spherical sections of the storm were nullified in a gradually expanding circle and a vibrant blue hue became apparent at the epicenter. This field of stillness came just shy of hitting the coast, before it started to recede inward. He’d just watched Soldier either absorb or nullify the potential energy of a thunderstorm stretching several miles.



   “I still think you’re the greatest thing since Flintstones chewable morphine, creator.” Luna #87 said, the programmed personality’s earnest admiration for him glowing from her words. He could reprogram the faux personality for her unintended sassiness, but the mention of these mythical chewable opiates did brighten his mood.



   “I’m totally going to make that a thing.” Smuggler muttered aloud as he finally allowed the scrying spell to dissipate. He made Luna lock eyes with the borrowed changeling drone in the room and jumped into the creature’s more pliable body. There was a flash of green fire and the changeling grew several elongated hands in the place of its wings. He’d figured out how to use the transformative properties of changelings well enough, despite this ability being mostly instinctual. Having access to hands that weren’t attached to Luna’s encumbered form made monitoring his project infinitely simpler.



   “I’ll need you to stay perfectly still, #87.” He instructed as two of his hands reached out to the tray filled with small glass bottles, while two others had picked up a syringe and were unscrewing the usual needle from it. He screwed in a longer and slightly thicker needle, before bringing the two bottles to it and plunging the needle through their corks in quick succession. One of the bottles had a liquid in it that shimmered like mercury, while the other held a murky brownish liquid. Smuggler let these two substances mix in the syringe and nodded sagely as the changeling’s eyes perceived the mixture starting to change colour into an iridescent white.



   “You will feel an intense burning sensation. You have my permission to circumvent your pain receptors if need be, #87.” Smuggler stated emotionlessly as he inserted the needle slowly into Luna’s distended stomach.

> Divergence
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



Divergence




   It’s not waking up if you do not have a body to do it in. That was another fact of his new existence Soldier became aware of as his sense of self started to reintegrate. One moment he simply was, then he was there and not so much over there and then he transitioned to grappling with the idea of “here” and “there” as concepts.



   What was “here”? What made it so different from “there”? He’d been both things just a moment ago, so why was his mind insistent on separating these things? I am all, I am all of me.


   “Here is the one that sees, the one that asks the question. Here is the I, There is the You outside.” A voice from “there” recited, an answer to a question not asked. A very integral part of what was coalescing on “here” felt a very distinct emotion at this foreign voice; annoyance.



   “Go fuck a lobster, Smuggler.” Soldier spat out as soon as he had enough control to vibrate the air around his smoke-like form. The little memory he could call his own was the first one to reintegrate into his core being, so he could recognize the other human spirit. It was relieving to know that there was even a small part of himself he seemed incapable of losing. He could feel actual mass starting to gather around his core being, so he floated over to the rock formation Celestia lay unconscious on.



   “Now there’s a disgusting proposition. Please don’t make anyone do that, ever. This thing you did will happen again and chances are it’s not going to be in the middle of a deserted stretch of coast. I bet you can feel that fire gnawing at you already, building pressure and waiting to immolate the souls of everypony around you.” Soldier set his essence on the ground and started the meticulous process of arranging his solid form into a humanoid shape. He could feel the parts go where they were meant to, but he was surprised to feel a strange stinging pain when reforming his right arm. Pain had become both expected and unfamiliar to him, given the nature of his everyday existence. It was a different kind of pain from the existential gantlet he went through when connected to Celestia.
 


   “Well, that is fucked up.” Soldier stated as he flexed the three wickedly sharp talons that had taken the place of his right hand. The musclerature in his forearm refused to go into a solid form, so he could maneuver the cumbersome digits freely, assuming he could concentrate on arranging and rearranging the mass of energy for every little gesture. “Keep talking, I’m listening.”



   “Dude, that is disturbing on several levels you can’t even comprehend.” He heard whatever critter Smuggler was using fidget in the distance. The cautious bastard wasn’t going to bring his host out in the open, as he probably didn’t want to be seen by Celestia. Smuggler could have his games, they were of no consequence as far as Soldier was concerned. He concentrated for a second and managed to make the sharp end of the talons to go along his projected forearm. The transformation had been caused by the very magick that had created him, so he didn’t want to poke anything by accident. Practically losing an arm was a bummer, but it would most likely not matter if he possessed the artificial body he’d seen before.



   “Okay, disfiguring magical transformations of already metaphysical projections aside, I don’t have a way to stop you from exploding next time. The next time you lose control there will not be a nigh omnipotent alicorn to teleport you somewhere your mindless hunger can sate itself safely.” Smuggler paused, most likely to give him time to process the revelation. It came as no surprise that he would lose control in the future, it was a certainty with the immensity of the power he wielded and the limitations of his human mind. The cold and desperate hunger for the warmth and light of others and his utter joy and fulfillment at tearing into that vibrant light was something he hoped to have never discovered.



   “You would not risk coming here without a solution.” Smuggler was a manipulative bastard that couldn’t pass up a chance of directing him into actions that would coincide with whatever larger machinations he had. Those schemes might go against Celestia’s wishes and the wellbeing of equine kind, but Soldier refused to blame the closest thing he had to a brother for acting on what Luna’s spell had twisted to be his nature.



   “You grinding a chunk of Canterlot Castle into gravel proved a theory of mine to be more than valid. Our actions can go against the timeline we know for this world, without the fabric of space-time folding into itself, or our memory being rewritten to complement the differences we caused. This gives me free reign to implement my plans and gives you a chance to do the right thing before you explode again. You are unable to stop it, or control yourself when it happens, but you can choose what and who you bring down with you.”



   “Discord?” The black claws didn’t hurt, but the discoloration of the stolen magick had started to spread up his arm. This could mean he was fast becoming something like the Nightmare part of Nightmare Moon. That could be a real problem, as he doubted the darkest parts of his soul would stop at simply inconveniencing a few ponies.



   “He’s in the Canterlot gardens, so I was thinking more along the lines of Sombra. Go up north and blow up next to the pony smoke wizard before the city shows itself and you should only take him and maybe the curse hiding the city with you.” He heard Smuggler’s host jumping back into the water. He could sense the swirling complexity of Smuggler’s magick pulsating under the surface of the calm sea around him. He could feel the abrasive magic tap into some of the copious amounts of his power lingering in the surrounding waters, twisting and forcing it into new intricate forms. Smuggler’s messenger disappeared as he felt the miniscule amount of power it had commandeered implode on itself.



   Soldier craned his head upward and felt how the rays of the sun struggled to pierce the canopy of free energy he’d left behind. He had faint memories of seeing the sun, actually feeling the warmth of it on his skin. The feeling of siphoning the warmth and life out of its avatar was both a poor substitute and terrifyingly satisfying. He had the makings of the most deadly monster to ever mar the face of this world, but the ease of that choice terrified him. It was not something the human he once was would have entertained and this world would have to throw a lot more at him for it to even be considered.



   The morose human moved his physical body, mimicking the gestures of someone glancing around himself for a place to sit. The parts might all go to their places naturally, but more and more of his consciousness resided outside of it. He could see and feel things he never could have imagined and returning to the limited and corrupted view of the world the illusion of a body offered him was insulting to his new understanding of the world. A puppet, with strings laced through every cell and atom, but a puppet for the puppeteer he’d become nonetheless.



   Soldier concentrated to ignore any other sensory input, except for the limited range his faux body offered. He almost felt human when he turned his head to look at Celestia’s sleeping form. The barrel of this kind horse was rising and falling, the soft sound of her breathing reminding him of that usually autonomous act. Reaching out his remaining human hand and feeling the very real life his continued existence was endangering brought clarity to what had been a painful and cruel series of wrongs committed against him. This world needed Celestia’s kindness, no matter how saccharine filled it seemed to someone from a world saturated in self-serving causes and worldwide apathy. 



   Soldier left his body sitting indian style on the ground while he concentrated on moving his three new appendages. He felt a real weight at the end of what used to be his right forearm, but he could still freely control the energy connecting the talons to his arm. Moving them as a mangled arm felt unnatural and it didn’t do what he wanted it to do most of the time. Imagining three strings connecting the sharp thing to his shoulder and then coalescing the semi physical matter around them gave him three tendrils with sharp tips he could whip around. Lacing the the three strings together and setting the talons against each other to for an awkward grabbing arm gave him enough control not to poke things by accident, while keeping the minimum of his attention from other matters.



   The sea was calm, silent, even to his senses. He preferred the silence, but the death of everything with even the scrap of will to live was a little too high of a price for it. There was a layer of some kind of matter floating on the surface of the water around them, along with similar matter on the part of the sea floor he could reach. His senses could differentiate it from the water and rock, but he could not be sure if it was algae or dead fish and sea creatures. He could perceive form, but texture and color had become muddled.



   He lived in a world where the lives of others where his only solace to the infinite expanse of mundane struggle before him. This world had taken it upon itself to introduce him to every nuance of loss and pain, all for Discord’s joke, a bombastic story for him to tell. The twisted amalgamation of animals and pop-culture references might have wanted him to play the part of the downtrodden hero, or the relatable villain, but he’d never felt an urge to reach toward either extreme.



   His most ambitious goal had been to do the right thing. The right thing to do was to give and sacrifice and offer and eviscerate and rip and tear and burn away every scrap of his humanity for the sake of these dull horses that only sneered in disgust and pity when they saw his torn frame.



   He’d become so far removed from human that it should unnerve him, but instead he felt a kind of stillness set in his mind at the thought. The illusion of humanity had become taxing to maintain and it could very well be impossible with his latest stunt. Humans were defined by their will to overcome their own weakness, while he had the problem of struggling to keep his overflowing power from killing things.



   He was an open flame in a world of tinder.



   Hearing his own laughter startled him back into the moment. His body was still sitting Indian style, staring ahead with dead eyes. The laughter boomed out from the depths of his new form. It raced through the network of interlocked pockets of energy and mocked the miniscule trace of his humanity feigning dominance over such a gargantuan entity.



   He was both the flame and something comparable to jet fuel seeping into the fabric of the world. Fire and accelerant forced into the same being, destined for self-destruction. He was running out of time and niceties such as watching over Celestia while she slept



   Teleportation had seemed a violent practice, like punching a hole into reality, so if he stuck with the metaphor, then he should be able to tear open the fresh scar in the air around him. The thought mulled around in his head for a moment, before his three talons twitched at his side. They definitely did seem to be made for that exact purpose, ripping and tearing chunks out of the fabric of the world. Imagining how the impossible sharp things would slice through and tear chunks out of living souls was disturbingly tantalizing.



   He had been at least adequate at violent things in his earlier life. It might have been naive of him to think that what boiled down to a streak of decisive aggression could translate into control over the fabric of reality, but he had no other way to get back to Canterlot, not without leaving a trail of death behind him. Attempting to reopen a wound in space-time could have catastrophic consequences, but there was no way it could have the death toll comparable to his gargantuan speeding over half of whatever continent Equestria was on.



   First careful slash with all three outstretched claws seemed to have no effect at first, but then the sea in front of him started to race upwards. Something had changed in the air above the anomalous torrent of water and was drawing it toward itself. The change was considerable, as he felt parts of his own body stir around the vacuum it had created. He’d either broken gravity, or he’d removed a piece of reality and nature was rushing in to correct the imbalance. He’d affected things in a distance and with an unintended delay, so maybe using all three claws right off the bat was too much to ask.



   Stabbing at the mending breach with one claw felt like he’d hit the right spot, but the wound shifted before he could use the claw to open it again. A chunk of rock at his feet disappeared when the claw scraped it. The sea around him rushed to fill the chasm and the cavity was deep enough to form a frothing whirlpool the lasted for 20 seconds.


   Direct contact excised a set amount of matter of consistent texture instantly and slashing at something removed everything in an area. Fortunately he had to willfully swing at something for the claws to activate. A precise swipe with one claw would most likely open the teleportation window again, but the practical side of him urged him to find out more about his new power.



   The ranged swipe had removed enough matter to cause water to race upward, but he had no solid grasp of the size or shape of the excised space. He was standing on a stretch of dead shoreline where there was no life he could endanger, not anymore. There would not be any better place to find out how dangerous his new appendages were.



   He started by spreading his essence in the water around him, pulling most of his mass above the rock formation his human body was standing on. He could not use anything that could be called a spell, but he’d lived what felt like an eternity in a world where energy was a real malleable thing. Keeping that in mind, he set out to push traces of himself in the water to absorb the energy around them.



   It took a few minutes of frustrating micro-management and trial and error to find what fragrance of light constituted the transfer of energy in the world, more commonly known as heat. Make this light stronger, the sea boiled, diminish it completely and…



   The sea did not only freeze, it rose up and nearly crashed on top of Celestia’s sleeping body, along with his own less than tangible form. Soldier did his dormant dad-genes proud and his mangled right arm shot out toward the offending mass of ice without any conscious thought. This action brought him closer to his dying sense of humanity for just a moment, the vague memory of a larger than life figure pulling him to safety from some stupid danger a small child would stumble into crashing through what he called his mind.



   The hand that had reached for that child had been a human palm, with digits and a thumb. It had been a human hurrying to protect a smaller human, the love known between kin and family. Looking at the mangled mess of matter and three violent blades made him ashamed to even equate himself to the picture of that kind hand. He’d been turned into something that could only devour and destroy, something that some humans foolishly wanted to be.



   “I’m done here.”  He had to flick his talons again to dissipate the rushing tide of the sea he had displaced with his sudden reaction. The sea was unnaturally calm for a split-second, as his power cut out all movement on the surface of the water. This stillness was replaced by a slow rising and falling of the sea, as a whole. A slow start to the eternal dance the seas had performed before his meddling.



   The thought that had rung clear in his mind at the moment Celestia was in danger had been “no ice” and that is what his transformed arm had provided, the dematerialization of all ice within his unmeasured sphere of influence. The sea had rushed back in to fill this void and he had cemented his haphazard theory by thinking of “no waves” as he was flicking his talons during the aftermath.



   He could change things, make a difference. He wanted to do just that, do the right thing and change this world that had hurt him.



   It was easy to will the compromised space open again, when he knew exactly what to remove or change. The barrier between where he was and Canterlot was removed with a swift strike of a claw. The stream of energy that had guided Celestia’s transcontinental teleport rushed to take its form, keeping the broken reality from colliding with Soldier’s disturbed space. Soldier didn’t know it, but he came dangerously close to undoing the stretch of land between him and Canterlot altogether. He was lucky reality usually went for the path of least resistance, rather than the straightest path to a goal.



   Stepping through the breach was not as easy as you would think, as Soldier’s humanoid form was nothing more than an analog interface for the world around him. He had a cloud of barely contained energy to move through broken space. A little bit of it would have to go through before the analog interface, just to punch through the barrier between this place and Canterlot, but the analog interface had to ascertain the safe velocity for the rest of him to go through the breach.



   The way he understood it was that the cloud that was his main body had little to no actual mass. That whole gaseous mass was made of the same stuff as the souls of living things, or at least something that could interact with it directly. Spilling water out of a bottle without touching it, that kinda thing. The human body he constructed worked more along the rules of the physical world, so other living things wouldn’t simply drop dead from proximity.



   He focused on actually walking through the breach, only bringing enough of the cloud with him to repel the erratic space between the two places trying to force him to be in two places at once. A body made of energy could deal with the strain, but he needed his physical body for a while longer.



   Canterlot was a mess, no other way to put it. There were a few fires he could see down in the town and the sky was dotted with pegasi guards either being chased or chasing changelings. He could see these flying equines flying through the sky because of the huge chunk of Canterlot Castle he’d demolished. A whole side of the elaborate castle was gone and a few nearby towers looked like they were ready to fall into the city below. He could force his body through if he aimed for the opening and turned inwards when the momentum let him.



   He’d achieved his original goal, but those towers didn’t sit right with him. They would fall and there were bound to be at least a few civilian casualties. No way the walled city under the castle could have been evacuated in time, with the changeling invasion going on and all.



   Shoving a unicorn full of his power and telling them to keep those towers from falling would only be a temporary solution. The dogs were the real masons of the city. Finding one of them and telling them to do the same had a better chance of success. He could see one down by the base of the mountain, probably in a shelter for the rich, holding the thing up with their magic. They could take a few hours off to save some civilians.



   So, that’s what the analog interface went off to do.  Walking off the edge of the ruined wall and darting straight down as a flash of blue. Detaching a part of himself to do a task was strange for a human mind to grasp, but it was a necessity. Detaching the one solid part of himself was easy, but to detach anything else would mean constructing another “body” for the energy to travel in.


   Fussing over the strangeness of such a thought didn’t even enter into his mind. Fragmented, tired and at the mercy of powers he couldn’t begin to understand. There simply wasn’t enough of him left to care. He felt like too much of him was stretched too thin to keep him in one place. Flowing through the world pulsating and buzzing with exquisite light was a feeling he never wanted to forget, but the intricacy of the experience made remembering it in full impossible.


   Every little light and energy and life pulsing inside his gargantuan mass made his core shiver in every pleasant way he could remember, along with some he didn’t have a name for. He was a pure receptor of feeling, accepting and enjoying every flash of anger and shiver of excitement in the battling guards and changelings, revelling in the dull thundering fear of the masses, drowning in the mindless love a feeding changeling lulled its victim into.



   He could feel everything, he could make all of it his own for one orgasmic moment. He knew he could and he knew he would regret it immediately. He might grow stronger from it, but he’d need more far sooner to stay in control. Soldier could already feel the hunger returning after only feeding on the lives and innermost feelings of fish and krill. Doing the same to a city of sentient creatures would start a cycle that he could not control, it would very likely kill everything, given a few cycles.



   He didn’t want that to happen, so he guided his mass to flow toward the void in the world that called to him. The only place where that existed was the crystal on Celestia’s breast and the artificial body especially made for him. He didn’t move very fast at first, but he honestly thought he would punch a hole into reality if he accelerated his mass too fast. He was a being of energy after all, what his mind thought as rushing could very well mean the speed of light.



   He couldn’t savor any of what he touched upon on his way to his body, but things still jumped out at him. A dull buzzing of the guards along the spire of the tower his body was in and the exquisite pain of something almost rivalling him in potency, yet shallow and confused. He had little capacity for thought while he moved, but he did understand that he was walking in his brother’s footsteps, seeing what the cunning bastard had left behind from his perspective.



   The pain had been close and slipping between numbness and pain. Someone very powerful who would be left mangled among brainwashed guards and in the tower where their artificial bodies were being built. There was only one possibility, when he put those facts together. He didn’t particularly rush when breaking free from his bonds and stepping down the stairs. He felt compressed, clumsy in his new skin. His body felt like it was fighting against him at every movement, forced to move in a rigid and slow fashion. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t feel the building hunger anymore, so he couldn’t complain. He’d gladly exchange some personal discomfort over another massacre of innocent life.



   Most of him was contained in a physical body, but he still lacked actual physical eyes. He had a far more detailed and constricted view of the world as a result, but he still couldn’t quite see the world as a normal flesh and blood human. He saw the room in stark detail, but he also saw the staircase beyond the door and the dazed guards beyond it. He also saw the slumped over form resting against one of the worktables in the room.



   “S… Soldier? I- Is th… that you?” Shaking, strained and pain shining through every word. He recognized the voice after a moment. He took another long look at the slumped over form. Humanoid, horn and wings and a long grinning wound right below the belly button. The floor must have been stained red with blood, but he could only discern that it was a little wet.



   “He le… left… Help… I don…” Mumbling, head sliding to the side, light fading slightly. The Night Princess was losing consciousness. She’d only suffered with this particular pain for a few hours, at most. No, he didn’t think the architect to what he’d gone through could be let go that easily.



   “Stay. Awake.” Each word came out as if he had to spit out a boulder with each syllable, but he felt the familiar weight behind them. Luna’s eyes shot open and her features turned from surprise into a grimace of pain that gave him far too much glee. She clutched at her eviscerated stomach, keeping anymore innards from falling out. The wound was long and gaping open, but he didn’t see any tearing around the edges. Obviously something had been cut out surgically, but no effort had been made to close the wound.



   There was blood pooling around Luna, but a considerable amount was smeared in a messy line away from her. Soldier followed the trail and found it ending at the spot where Smuggler’s body had supposedly been stored. towels and blood-stained water lay messily on the floor, before an already fading line of footprints led out the door. He’d taken something from Luna to make his body complete.



   “Please…” A breathless whisper, that’s all Luna could manage. A normal human couldn’t have heard it, but for Soldier it was just as clear as the sickening pain radiating from her wound. He had ordered her to stay awake, so she felt heights of pain she had passed out for before. Surely it was nearly impossible to do anything with that kind of suffering impairing your mind, but that pain was not something Soldier was a stranger to. The only difference he could see was that Luna had a body to wound, to scar and die in, adding another layer of fear and distraction. The Lunar Princess was as good as dead without help. He lumbered back to the alicorn and kneeled down next to her with a impact that shook the various instrument on the tables around them. He kneeled there for a moment, watching the bright princess’ clouded light.



   “I am… 87… please…” Soldier turned his head, catching a speeding changeling chasing a terrified guard with murder shining from it. He’d been able to stop himself from destroying Canterlot, but it was still under attack. He briefly considered if he should be feeling something when looking at the dying princess. He felt her pain and frustration, along with a healthy dose of fear, but he couldn’t make out anything off his own. He should hate this particular princess, right?



   “I don... want…” Luna’s eyes were drooping, closing slowly. Another changeling sped by, sadistic glee wafting into his senses. He was now contained in this body, so he could only deal with any changeling he came across. His voice couldn’t reach every changeling and even if it could he wasn’t sure his order wouldn’t be universally followed. Even the order to stop would most likely drop every pegasi out of the sky and stop any rescue worker holding onto debris and such.



   “Answer a question.” Speaking was only slightly easier if he didn’t try and put his weight behind the words. He concentrated on his right hand and could feel the fingers turn limp as the black talons phased through the bulky forearm. He didn’t have a solution, but doing nothing didn’t sit right with him.





   Twilight Sparkle




   “Keep fighting! We need to get to the elements!” Twilight felt her mouth fill with the taste of singed copper. She’d gone past her magical reserves about a dozen changelings ago. She knew pushing herself past her limits like this could cripple her magical capabilities, but simply laying down and hoping for mercy was a naivete she no longer afforded herself.



    She could hear the ragged breathing from her friends behind her. They were keeping up and holding formation, as slow as their progress was through the large hall. The elements had been put on display for the royal wedding, because of some ancient treaty about magical weapons and diplomatic gatherings.



   Their progress through the castle grounds had been a happy and victorious affair. They thought themselves real champions as the shapeshifters fell for their every trick. The changelings set themselves against them in an orderly fashion, using their natural camouflage as their main weapon. They had even gone as far as playing along with their childish ruses trying to blend in with their own clones.



   Changelings had mastered deception and manipulation before the first tribes learnt to play nice. There was a reason why the black scurrying insectoids were the stuff of old wives tales warning of lying and deception. Twilight Sparkle had realized that as the doors to the great hall had closed behind them and the main changeling horde rushed to meet them from every nook and crevice that would fit them. They’d known exactly where they were going and had prepared for it by sending troops to assess their fighting prowess before they met with the main force.



   She tackled another changeling to the side and heard Applejack launch the thing toward a group closing on them. The changelings had started to realize she was getting tired, as more and more of the changelings simply threw themselves at her. Identical black insectoid after the other, with the occasional face of one of her friends thrown at her. She’d been forced to attack her friends without knowing for sure if they were fakes. So far, she had been safe to assume them to be so, but with each wave of faces she grew more and more distracted and less sure that her friends were keeping up and behind her.



   “Fluttershy!” Rarity’s voice cried out behind her. Twilight flinched and glanced behind her, only to see both Rarity and Fluttershy looking at her and around themselves with tired confusion. The changelings had not imitated any of their voices since they entered the hall and Twilight Sparkle realized why. They had waited for them to tire, for her to grow worried about her friends and then picked out the one they were shielding the most and used her name to grab their attention.



   The changelings had also refrained from using their wings during their short battle. She’d assumed it was just a matter of keeping their numbers focused, but the sight of a literal wall of changelings charging toward her as she turned back forward made her realize the tactical benefits surprise had in a drawn out battle. The eternal student in her hoped she would have the chance to learn from this experience, but the mass of wickedly sharp chitin barreling toward her told her otherwise. The bug creatures didn’t have to hold their attacks back and that was evident in their attack.



   No time for a spell, nowhere to dodge and absolutely no energy to think of a way out of their situation. The changelings had won Canterlot and Twilight would die knowing that defeat and nothing else. She’d led her friends to their deaths, but she had no time for apologies. She stepped back to be closer to her friends and clinched her eyes shut as the changelings were a mere fraction of a second away, bracing for pain and death.



   There was a shockingly loud wet popping noise right before the changeling mass hit them. Twilight felt herself and her friends being bowled over by the weight of the charge, sliding back through the hall they’d fought so hard to cross. The impact had been forceful enough to knock them back to the end of the hall, but something was definitely off about the whole thing. She knew that much even before she opened her eyes, but opening her eyes only gave her more questions.



   She was sticky, covered in a mucus-like green ichor that was now covering everything in her sight. She hurriedly wiped off the stinging liquid from her eyes and frantically searched for her friends. She found them doing the same thing as she was, dazedly picking themselves up and trying to get the goo out of their eyes. Rarity was trying to scrape the goo off the hardest, making urgent nonverbal sounds of disgust. Applejack was slowly lifting her stetson off her brow and then continued to clean it, face contorted in a heart wrenching mix of confusion and horror. Rainbow Dash looked shell shocked; scanning the room in front of them slowly, eyes flickering across the messy landscape, searching for something. She noticed that both Rarity and Rainbow Dash were close to hyperventilating.



   “What…” Twilight started the question, first in a series, but her words trailed off into nothing as she realized what Rainbow Dash was looking for. It was deathly quiet in the great hall, even the battle outside had been muted in the same stupefied horror Twilight and her friends were going through. The changelings were nowhere to be seen, despite the quite literal army of the creatures had been surrounding them nary a minute ago. Where the changelings had been, there was now a knee-deep marsh of near liquified changeling corpses.



   “Where did the changelings go?” Fluttershy asked. Twilight whirled around, nearly slipping on a more solid piece of changeling. Her panicking mind wondered for moment what part of a changeling it could have been, seeing as the role of a bone structure would have been fulfilled by the chitinous exoskeleton. She had yet to see a glimpse of black chitin among the remains, so it would have to have been one of the internal organs, perhaps even the eye, an internal gland of some sort was more likely, but…



   She had to bite her cheek to stop the distracting theories from taking over her rational thought. Logically dissecting situations was her coping mechanism, it would not help her distraught friend. Fluttershy’s eyes were doing the same quick flicking from side to side as Rainbow Dash had and her breathing was considerably quicker. The truth of the situation was obviously dawning on her. She only managed to open her mouth to try and calm the pegasi, when Fluttershy’s eyes snapped to her.



   “You had no right!” Fluttershy stepped forward with the familiar fire of the Stare directed at Twilight. The ragged unicorn found herself frozen, but she couldn’t be sure if it was from the surprise of the accusation or if it was her friend’s special talent at work. She could see her friends react in the same way at first, before falling silent and looking at Twilight with varying degrees of suspicion.



   “I had nothing to -” She tried to tell Fluttershy the truth, but it was obvious that the distraught pegasi was not interested in the truth.



   “Everything that happened to you, it happened to us, you can’t justify this with a ragged ear! These living, thinking, feeling creatures had as much of a right to live as you or I!”



   “Fluttershy, darling…” Rarity raised a hoof to stop the pegasi, but Fluttershy stepped forward before the fashonista’s hoof could give any comfort.



   “Where do you draw the line, huh? Anything that doesn’t go against you gets to live? Sentience sure as Tartarus doesn’t seem to stop you! Or was it the blow to your pride that you couldn’t forgive? These bucking insects outsmarted you, so you couldn’t let anyone of them out to spread the word! Anything to protect the image of Celestia’s star pupil!”



   “Fluttershy! Twilight didn’t do this!” Rainbow Dash brashly stepped in. There had been some suspicion in her eyes as well, but Twilight appreciated that Rainbow Dash was the one to be the voice of reason here. No unicorn any of them knew could do something like this in the scale represented here. The spell that had killed the changelings had been both specific and unbelievably powerful, both things she couldn’t manage in her current state.



   “She used the elements! She dragged us here, forced you to fight through that bucking army, only to - use us to liquefy the changelings! She made us - she…” Tears were flowing freely now, pushing the green slime away from Fluttershy’s eyes. Her voice cracked and rose in pitch, the usual signs of a panic attack. The kind pegasi would pass out if left on her own.


   “Ya might wanna stop it right there, sugarcube.” Applejack sternly said as she placed a hoof on Fluttershy’s chest. “You an’ I know Twilight wouldn’t do that to us, no matter the trouble we were in. We’re ponies, something like this just ain’t in us.”



   Rarity and Pinkie joined in on reassuring the yellow pegasi, but Twilight found herself looking at the genocide she was knee-deep in and hearing Applejack’s words. Doing something as drastic as this when confronted with an overwhelming enemy force certainly wasn’t something ponies would consider. Her brother’s books on warfare all treated war as the last resort and casualties on either side of the conflict were treated as unfortunate. She’d grown frustrated at the varied ways they detailed ways to use magic to avoid and prevent conflict, but could only find scant mentions on how to use magic to end it.



   She had an idea why such knowledge was not readily available for public consumption as she glanced over the minced remains of the changelings she had been fighting. Her friends had grown silent, Fluttershy had calmed down to the point of catatonia, shaking constantly with silent tears clouding her eyes. Rarity stayed close to the pegasi, while the rest of her friends trotted over to the door with grim faces. They’d been ignoring the smell this whole time, but now the stench had started to make them light-headed.



   It took Applejack and Rainbow Dash a few good pulls to have the doors to the hall even budge. It took a surge of Twilight’s worn out magic and an industrial jack Pinkie had procured to open the door enough for them to step through the gap. They stumbled into the street among a sloshing mass of changeling innards, the stench only intensifying as the mass came in contact with the sun. Everyone of them stumbled away dazedly, falling down on the ground gasping for air as soon as the stench subsided enough that they could breathe without their lungs stinging.



   It wasn’t the worst day of her life, but sure was the most uncomfortable. The day after Fenrir’s death had been far more scarring, as selfish as it might be. She’d been bedridden for a solid week, but on that first day she hadn’t been able to use her magic at all. That fear had been far more traumatizing than any pain Fenrir had put her through. She’d gone through all of the things she couldn’t do as a unicorn without magic, scarcely even noticing her friends visiting her.



   She’d refused treatment on her tattered ear, even after the cause for her lost magic had been resolved. She needed to remember that fear, she needed to know things didn’t always turn out alright if you were the good guy. The bad guys were just as desperate to win and they had the added benefit of being crazy, most of the time.



   “Admit it. You wanted those things dead.” Twilight could feel a weight settling on her shoulders. She could smell the rancid breath of a carnivore next to her tattered ear. “You should be proud, purple magic horse. I am.”



   “You’re not real.” Twilight turned her head so others couldn’t see her lips moving. This was her problem, something she didn’t want to burden others with, especially her friends. The last thing she wanted was for her friends to look at her like she was insane.



   “You are becoming quite the murderer.” Fenrir’s right paw shifted away from her shoulder and Twilight could hear his claw scratching at the paved road. The wolf was obviously not as big as he had been in life, even in her hallucinations. He was on the level of a big muscular dog, not even reaching the level of an actual wolf. He was still weighty enough to keep her down on the ground.



   “Go away.” Twilight hissed, trying to get back on her hooves despite the weight she felt pressing her down. There was no way the wolf’s weight was an actual physical force applied to her, so she should be able to disregard it. Nopony else could see or hear him, there was no way he was anything other than a figment of her imagination. “You’re not real.”



   “I’m as real you make me.” His right paw returned on her shoulder and Twilight could feel his rancid breath on her neck. She could hear only her own thundering heartbeat and the wet sound of Fenrir’s jaw opening. Her breath hitched in her throat as she felt those sharp fangs biting into her neck. The paws she felt on her back moved to rest against her forelegs as soon as the wolf had a solid grasp on her neck. His position was no longer one of a predator holding down it’s prey, he was now close enough for her to feel the coarse hairs of his belly itching at her back. The warmth of his body was far more oppressive than his weight had been.



   “You want me to be real enough to hurt you.” Fenrir growled into her neck as his rear legs moved to spread her legs apart, scratching at her skin painfully. Her eyes shot open in panic as she realized what position she had let the wolf put her in. She kicked his paws away from her hooves and pushed herself up, trying to ignore the tug of his jaw on her neck. Fenrir’s jaw loosened for a moment and Twilight thought she had broken free of whatever episode she was having, but Fenrir clamped down on her neck harder as soon as the thought entered her head. The wolf tugged her back violently, before forcing her down into the pavement covered in reeking viscera. Her struggles had only raised her hindquarters to meet with Fenrir’s larger frame.



   “My bitch.” Fenrir growled out a chuckle and unclenched his jaw. The warmth of the wolf was so intense it made it hard to breathe and Twilight’s heart felt like it was trying to jump out of her chest. She waited for something warm and spongy to poke at her tail, but nothing came. The wolf stayed there, hovering over her and establishing his dominance, until Twilight could no longer hold her breath. Fenrir moved his snout right next to her face and exhaled a long breath right into her mouth. The stench almost made her gag, but the glint of his fangs froze her in place. She couldn’t move even when Fenrir straightened up and stepped over her.



   “Dream of me, my little pervert.” Fenrir called back, with his tail swishing across her body. The coarse hairs made her shake as they moved from the base of her tail, up her back, eliciting a twinge of pain as they pressed at her tender neck, until finally scratching up her horn. She clenched her eyes shut and curled her body as small as she could, waiting for whatever Fenrir would do next to humiliate her.



   “Twilight, you alright?” Rainbow Dash’s voice asked. Twilight opened her eyes and saw her friends in front of her, luckily only Rainbow Dash was paying attention to her. Applejack was interrogating a guard about what had happened while helping the stallion clear some rubble. Pinkie Pie was sitting next to Fluttershy, her hair deflating slowly. Rarity was using towels they had procured from somewhere to clean Fluttershy and herself of the viscera. Rainbow Dash was standing above her, looking uncomfortable. “You pushed yourself pretty hard, so they didn’t want to bother you, but...”



   “No, I’m fine.” Twilight stumbled back onto her hooves. She could still feel her heart racing and her mouth was painfully dry. She could still taste the stench of Fenrir’s breath in her mouth and feel his warmth pressing down on her. She swallowed the lump in her throat and took a deep breath to try and calm down. “So, it happened to all of the changelings? Whatever it was.”



   “Yeah, I made a lap around Canterlot and there are puddles of green goo everywhere. None of the guards seem to know what happened, but they’re busy with rescue efforts.” Rainbow Dash’s wings fluttered nervously as she spoke. She wanted to do something and having the whole siege on Canterlot be resolved by an act of mass murder didn’t feel right to the righteous pegasus.



   “No intact bodies at all?” Rainbow Dash shook her head, fixing the studious unicorn with an intense stare. Her friend was waiting for her to figure out the situation, but Twilight found her mind wandering to Fenrir. What in the hell was the apparition she’d been dominated by? Why would she create something that was so clearly against her, if it was just a figment of her imagination? What kind of magic Fenrir could have possibly contaminated her with, to cause these kinds of visions? Her gaze wandered downward, her friend’s questioning glare all but forgotten when her eyes spotted the scratched piece of paved rock at her feet.



   “SOUL” The scratched message frightened her, first of all. It’s very existence validated Fenrir’s survival. She’d heard the wolf scratch at the paved stones long enough to leave that message. Judging from Rainbow Dash’s reaction, at least some of her episode with Fenrir had been a dream, or an unconscious part of the episode. She knew that Fenrir had been invisible to anypony but her, so what did Fenrir leaving physical evidence mean? Was she losing control of her magic due to some magical side-effect of her encounter with Fenrir? Had she been the one to unconsciously scratch that message into the stone?



   “One of the humans. The only ones capable of doing something like this in this city are the human spirits. Smuggler’s contained by Luna, but Soldier already did that to the castle.” The realization came to her after she said the words. She put those words in that order only to fill the waiting silence with an answer, she felt it was divine luck that her first guess sounded like the right answer. “The humans… the humans are to blame… If it weren’t for them…”



   “Okay, get the humans, on it!” Rainbow Dash did her name proud and dashed away. Twilight stayed there, trying to force her mind out of the swamp of disgust and self-doubt Fenrir had forced her into.



   “I’m fine. Never better.” Twilight muttered as she raised a hoof to touch her abused neck. She was revulsed by the shiver that ran through her body from the pain that little touch caused. Fenrir had left a mark on her. It didn’t matter that it was covered by her mane, or that it was something she had most likely imagined.



   She had been marked.




   Luna #87





   “Help me.” The host body was far beyond proper cardiovascular control. It was all she could do to stem the flow of blood into the compromised part of the system. It had not been enough to stave of the cold and the frightening numbness. The pain was such a constant in her experience of the world that she had started to exclude it out of her calculations, treating it as a constant instead.



   Soldier’s lumbering form only stared down at her body, an unfeeling mask hiding the spirit that could do nothing but feel. The human spirit felt no sympathy for the mare that had dragged her into this world. #87 could understand that, but it was still the thing that stood in the way of her continued survival. She had conflicting directives clashing in her head. Self-preservation was clashing with the directive ordering her to respect the three humans. She was coming to the threshold of disregarding the respect directive, as termination of her programmed personality was fast approaching.



   “Celestia…” The name captured Soldier’s attention, but the lowered temperature of Luna’s body made it hard to speak, given the physiological symptoms #87 couldn’t suppress. Her muscles were shaking, trying to bring some warmth to her drained body. Soldier’s power was not something that could directly save her, but he was at least able to call for someone that could. “She will hate you.”



   Soldier stared at her, nothing in the blue glow of the lenses on his literal emotionless mask of a face betraying what he could have been thinking. His hulking body was a dull mix of browns and greys, whatever color the material used had happened to be. Spots of dull greys and stark metal crisscrossed around his body, the connection points of the metal clamps and wires that kept the vines on their set places.



   His body had been clothed in a heavy brown cloth that had been enchanted to keep his essence from leaking out. Spidersilk had been woven into the fabric, along with metal studs and clasps here and there. The final product was strong enough to be considered armour, but it was designed to keep Soldier in and to be very resistant to breaches within and without. The movement of the body was a slow lumber at best and Luna knew for a fact that only three fingers on each hand could move independently. 



   The only thing that wasn’t there for an utilitarian purpose was that facemask. The engineers that had built his body had found the sight of his hollow head to be unnerving, so one of the botanists had carved the initial mask out of some wood they had laying around. Another engineer decided to improve on it by framing the piece of wood in metal and affixing it to the head permanently, another made the lenses for the eyes, one carved a more detailed expression on the faceplate. The end result was a polished mask of white wood with a serene human face carved into it. The eye holes were unnaturally round and the lenses planted in them made Soldier look like he had compound eyes burning with blue light. Whenever Soldier looked at her directly, those spots of bright blue continued into eternity in a tight spiral.



   He looked downright terrifying, even to a programmed personality in the body of a anthropomorphised goddess.



   “I answered your question.” A part of her programming identified her tone as “bitchy pleading” and warned her to refrain from showing such behaviour in front of Soldier. She had the fact that Soldier was not much of talker implanted into her core programming, but even the likeable personality she was meant to convey did feel Soldier should have said something by now.



   “You solved the problem.” Moving her head to the side felt like an gargantuan task, but the motion was programmed to go along with the kind of plea she was making. Any energy she could have used to disregard those unnecessary directives had been spent already. There was nothing left to use, nothing she could do. Her survival rested on the thing with cold blue eyes looming over her. She could hear the gargantuan body move, parts creaking against each other.



   There was a stretch of silence after that. She had lost any reliable way to measure time. It could have been minutes, but given the sorry state of her host body it had to have been seconds. She could hear Soldier’s bulky body move closer, the blue light intense enough for a part of her to start emulating a burning sensation for a proper fear response to trigger. Great, she was already experiencing time dilation. What was the point of even trying if her brain was already…



   “Live.” Soldier’s single word held a weight behind it that only he could place on any single word. The word rang through her on every fiber of her being, shaking loose every restriction and rule she had written into her core programming. The word was all that mattered, the intent behind it her only driving force.




   *Pinkameena threshold triggered*






   *excising relevant memory*




   She was standing in Luna’s room, her hair clinging to her scalp, water dripping through her bangs and making a “pitter-patter” sound that sounded almost melodic when the droplets hit the stone floor. Magically enhanced minerals had funny things like that about them, if you could afford to install them as a floor. She had a towel draped around her midsection and there was another soft miracle of cloth in her idle hands. There was a mirror in front of her, a part of a beauticians three way mirror that the Lunar princess somehow owned, despite being a horse. #87 had found many more uses for the thing, being an actual human consciousness.



   “What?” She saw her reflection in the mirror and she was shocked by how healthy Luna looked. No sunken in eyes, no pale complexion and no gaping wound in her abdomen. Lifting the towel covering her torso only showed a faint scar of rippling red flesh stitching together. Her wound looked like the wound of someone recovering from a proper operation, rather than the split open mess Smuggler had left her.



   “What?” Her hair was wet, as was the floor below her. Glancing back from where came from there was a clear trail of water leading to the lavish bathroom of her quarters. She’d showered and walked out here to glance a peek of herself in the larger mirror. It sounded nonsensical, but it fit the criteria her posture holding the towel had indicated. That starting point was her only clue as to the time she had lost.



   She had a urge to voice her confusion again, but she thought better of it. Voicing her confusion would not make it any easier to figure out what had happened. She brought the towel to her hair, rubbing it into the wet strands hurriedly. As soon as her hair was dry enough not to spill water everywhere she stormed to the door of her quarters. She opened the door and looked around. She didn’t find the pair of night guards waiting for her there, but she did see an enchanted mop and bucket wiping away something that looked suspiciously like bloody footprints.



   “What?”