Call of the Illusionist: Hotheads and Dire Fates

Hotheads and Dire Fates

A legend of love that transcends the limits of the physical world.

"No! You don't exist, this is madness! I don't know you-I-I can't hear you!" Screams in the dark— endless pit of blackness descending into the deepest reaches of sight, scent, and touch. Nothing to see, but the encroaching insanity inside his own mind— Hothead fell to his knees with both hands clasped tightly over his ears. Sweat ran down his forehead and back— cold as a glass of cool water against the skin— running down his spine and shoulder-blades. "Please... I just want you to go away... please..."

He trembled. Both of his knees pressed against the loose pebbles that littered the stone floor of the cavern— stinging pain shooting up his nerves as the stones burrowed craters into his naked flesh, and the scent of moist earth reached his flaring nostrils.

"Oh, handsome. If we are not real, then what are you?" Soft, slender fingers gently pressed down on the back of his neck— sending tremors that rattled his self to the bases of his structure. Hothead gasped sharply— inhaling air and exhaling it in the manner that half-drowned men struggle for air after being pulled free of their watery grave. His eyes were gaunt shadows of once sharp utensils— dark circles underlining them as a blizzard does winter.

"Crazy?"

Hothead whimpered. Tears flowing as if they were streams— rivers or flowing canals of misery and despair. His eyes were shut tightly; his ears were ringing from having his hands pressed too strongly against them, and his knees bled from the pressure they exerted to the pebbles.

"You know I love you, Hothead. I don't want you to feel any pain." Laughing. Mocking. Sincere.

Hothead felt gentle skin and carefully trimmed nails drawing shapes on his back; trailing low archways and high roads down his back. A sharp intake of breath; a shudder, and a second hand under his chin. Hothead saw into a pair of eyes. Eyes as dark and mysterious as death; deep and lovely as the sea. Filled with the knowledge of Babylon's library; cruel as a rack, but filled with such intensity... it did not seem to matter.

"Please... please don't..." A whispered plea.

"You have no say on it, beautiful." She gently lowered her head— a faint smile outlined on her pale lips— white as a corpse. "Embrace me, dear. Take me, and make yourself free..."

He trembled. The hand on his chin fell to hold his neck; the fingers on his back rising to his hair, and pulling.

"I-I..." His arms limp to his side; face white as salt.

"Shush, lovely. Go to sleep."

The stone touched his nudity, eliciting a jolt of discomfort to fire across his nerves. He gasped at the coolness of it all. The stone, the air, the hands massaging his chest— it all pulsed through his body in waves of ecstasy and feelings he could not refuse, and the more he tried— the more he felt his reluctance wavering.

Hothead's pupils dilated; his breathing stopped, as his body was finally laid down in the darkness— pools of shadows danced beneath him in cold streams of tainted silver— a feeling that felt of sinking; of shrinking, and rising at the same time. He stopped seeing the world around him, as his senses all focused on her.

Her scent; the sight of her, and her naked flesh against his lonesome skin. He felt the rising heat of surging blood flowing to his face; heart beating harder. Her auburn hair hanging in front of her face...

Alone in the darkness of his mind.

"He has survived." Artificial light. "We don't know how, but he has done so. Despite the cold cell, no food, no water." Metal floors and walls; iron ceiling. "I have sent a firing squad down to his cell. Morale has grown low." Whispers filled with anxiety. "The soldiers think he's made pacts with demons... they say he speaks to no one inside his cell. Does strange rituals in the darkness."

A nod, and a pen moving against paper.

"Do what you think necessary. The war is over. We don't need him anymore." Chair pushed back, steps against the metal floors. "He's a relic of war. A war we all want to forget."

"Carry out the execution, sergeant."

Gunfire in the deep.

Princess Cadance sighed. The skies darkened high above— shrouding the land of Equestria in shadows of a night few wanted to see arrive, but none could stop. The air felt heavy around her— weighing her down and draining her muscles of strength, as the magic of the air seemed to grow thinner and scarcer with every fleeting moment.

She stood in the midst of her dining hall within the Crystal Castle–her home and seat of power within the northern empire of the crystal ponies-contemplating the world around her— her eyes weary and tired, as the events of the past days had charged her steeply.

"Please forgive me, Twilight... I'm just doing what I think is right." The words left her shivering mouth with trembling resolve, but with enough conviction. "I can't sit idly by... I just-I can't!"

Tears slowly emerged from her eyes, but her heart grew hard and armored. Her soul rose in strength, and whatever tremors may have been harbored within her, suddenly felt themselves melt. A warmth spread from deep within her self— a pressure that built up rapidly, as a meteor gathers speed before impacting against a moon's surface.

Cadance gasped— soul reaching out from her being and pulsing vibrantly with strength outside of the norm, as her hooves lost contact with the ground, and she levitated high into the night–eyes seeing the world in its entirety for a few breaths; skin burning to nothing; hairs scorched to the root; eyes melting inside her sockets... Death experienced in a hundred different ways at the same time–in the same span of brief moments–she contemplated the universe in its complexity. She saw the birth of stars; the death of galaxies, and she witnessed the eyes of creation. Immense pools of knowledge that went farther than time itself, defying the laws of reason and logic— shattering the ideals of normalcy with shimmering shades of color that do not exist; with sounds and shapes that could not ever hope to be seen by mortal eyes.

Cadance witnessed the end of it all, and its beginning— before falling back to Equestria faster and more furiously than a supernova. She slammed against the floor of her castle's courtyard— a massive crater filled with her blood left in her wake.