Twisted Paths

Personnel File: Star Swirl

Subject:  Concerning the new beam cannons

To: Queen Celestia

Sent: During the Lunar uprising (Approximately 670 years ago)

    To whom the stars obey, and the moon trembles, and who’s grace guides us all.

No doubt you have received my letter with the designs for the new anti-soul gun battery. This letter is merely sent you to describe the functionality of the cannon, usage recommendations, and design comebacks. Indeed no great thing is perfect.

Firstly, this weapon runs off of soul energy. This is an extremely difficult thing to acquire, though it is all around us. Secondly, it is impossible to use a small part of one’s soul to power this machine, it must be powered by the raw force of a completely extracted soul in order to work. This is where the first comeback lies; in order to fire the weapon, we must kill a sentient creature. However, it is not as simple as all that; the victim must be expired in the central chamber of the weapon no more than ten minutes before the firing process, or it will fail. It took me great pains to conjure up a solid metal that can contain such a force for so long. And so the death of one, serves another. Thirdly, this weapon is not complete, and was made to be upgraded. In the future we may yet be able to complete the soul extraction process months beforehand, and contain the power indefinitely, but that technology, at the moment, is out of our reach. In order to do that, we would need to be able to master plasma containment, and have this new anti-magic metal in great multitudes. Those are just the first steps. I am no doubt constrained by this era’s technology, and I am afraid I can do no better than this at this time.

I have included designs for hand-held versions of the cannon as well as explosives, batteries charged by soul energy, and protective barrier generators. Because of your immortal status and ever-abounding wisdom, you may yet be able to compete these designs in the future.

The cannon fires a steady beam in an exactly straight line and can be aimed or positioned using magic or artificial intelligence. The effects of the beam are as follows:

*Instant death to sentient or non-sentient life forms.

*Super combustion and explosive after-effects.

*Instant destruction to Death Notes.

*Concussive force of a controlled explosion approximately 100 megatons strong in a 20 foot diameter.

This said, the best way to use it is in dire situations with no other alternatives. Placement is recommended lining the inner wall of the castle with one every five miles. This would make four.  I have also sent the molecular specifications and structural tendency of the new metal I was able to forge. The substance itself drains excess magic. This means no unicorn can levitate or manipulate it. It also means that it can, in theory, contain a single Death Note entity.

    May your discernment lead us until the stars rain down from the heavens,

You humble servant,

Star Swirl

Written by Pegasynth Wyldcard

7/3/2014

Twisted Paths

Chapter Three:

The labyrinth of the Mind

If anyone has ever taken a ride in a roller-coaster, fallen into a whirlpool, been stuck in a turn-dryer, then slugged with a steel baseball bat all at once, they might understand how Twilight was feeling when she finally began to come to. The whole world seemed to have an addictive habit for turning and dancing - at this point she’d lost count how many times now that had happened. Dementia and confusion reeled in Twilight’s mind like a trapped canary on some form of drug. It was difficult to get a grip on any carnal data. Where she was, who she was, and what she was doing, were about as easy to answer as if she was a filly trying to master Algebra II problems.

Nothing made sense, and she kept drifting in and out of conciseness. Dreams and memories flew at her, mixing with reality to make a perplexing dance of images and emotions. Incoherent sentences were being emitted from her half-open mouth. Looking back on it later, Twilight even remembered making a vague comment on the heterogeneous chemical balance of salad. Slowly, very slowly, reality came back to her; things began to make sense and memories began to align themselves in their proper order.

She began to realize she wasn’t alone. One time, she’d thought someone was coming towards her, because she’d heard footsteps (and she was quite sure she was not the source). Then she’d noticed the steps never got any farther away from her, or any closer. This paradox was too much to take - how could someone make noises like they were moving, but not be moving in proportion to her, if she herself wasn’t moving? A wave of blackness overtook her, and she passed out again.

When she awoke again the footsteps had stopped, and she heard the gentle sound of water as though from a stream. Barely managing to half-open her eyes, she saw in the midst of fluid colors, and indistinguishable shades what looked like a bowl full of water. Not even giving a thought as to why it was there, or how, the half-incapacitated unicorn inched towards it. Never before had she tried so hard to do something so trivial. Using every muscle in her body that would cooperate, Twilight struggled and strained in the invisible shackles of confusion that held her captive. Almost reaching the bowl, she tried to raise her head to just touch the tip of it with her lips. But before she had even begun to do so, her body decided it was time to give up, and she once again fell into a deep slumber.

When for the third time Twilight woke up, things made more sense, and she could even open her eyes with relative ease. Of course opening her eyes was one thing, discerning what it was she was seeing was something else entirely. Everything was blurry and miss-matched. Almost as if one had taken a picture of a strange piece of art with a camera that did not focus well. The footfalls were back now, same as before. Only this time she realized she was moving. Slowly, as if floating in a stream that had almost no current. Her senses began to come back to her gradually, and she started to feel pain. The pain in her head was what hurt the most. She began to focus on the events that brought her here. Even though she felt considerably more awake than before, conjuring up the right memories, in the right time, for the right purpose, was still a difficult thing to do. She remembered the Queen in all her hatred; and how she had been left behind. She remembered walking away, feeling dejected, and she remembered the stream and the frog. Above all else, she remembered doubting herself, and her own words.

“I am a Unicorn! And I will not be brought to question my actions like a petty Equine!” She realized she had used the word ‘Equine’ with intense disgust and hatred. And then she remembered she had never actually met one before. Not only that, but she had hardly seen one, apart from catching a glimpse or two when one was unfortunate enough to earn his or her way into the torture chambers.

She remembered the memories, and her old self returning to her, then the dream about the rainbows, and the wings, and the destiny mark. She remembered running for her life, how tired and weak she’d felt, and how much she wished she could spread her wings and fly off once again into the infinite sky beyond, away from all this pain and confusion. Finally, she recounted facing the Death Note as a last ditch effort for survival. Nothing after that made sense. It was all a blur, and it hurt to think about it.

She decided to try and figure out what in Tartarus was going on. Staring as hard as she could until her eyes hurt, she began to understand what she was seeing. She was lying on her side, trapped in what seemed to be a crude net with two-inch-wide mesh that dug into her skin. She was in the middle of a grassy field with oak trees every few hundred meters or so apart. It may have been her stupefied, state, but Twilight believed that she had never before seen a landscape as beautiful as this one. And, even in a moment as awkward as this one, it gave her a small glimmer of hope and serenity.

Fighting back another wave of darkness, Twilight tried to identify what parts of her body would listen to her. Her front and back left legs seemed the easiest to move. There were painful indentation marks on her fur where the mesh rested and it felt good to move herself so the painful patches were no longer growing. Also her neck (or some of it) seemed to be ‘online’ again. Turning her face towards whatever was dragging her, she became aware that her face was wet. Then she remembered the bowl of water.

It was almost like self-wrought torture, but eventually Twilight managed to position herself so she could get a look at whatever it was that felt compelled to move her in such an unusual fashion. What she saw then was the most interesting and unexpected sight of her life.

Already, the mare had taken into account that, in most likelihood, she had been, well, ‘taken into account’. It was also likely that whoever had acquired her was planning on doing something with her. She had expected a unicorn guard, or a renegade who wanted her for some unknown purpose, or perhaps an equine who was going to bring her back to their camp. Of course, none of these were favorable, but what she saw was more bizarre than anything she ever could have imagined.

Walking just a few feet in front of her, carrying the net in which she lay, was a creature about 6 feet tall. It walked with two legs and seemed to have two appendages on its side for motivational usage. He appeared to take no notice of her movement, or at least it drudged on as if it didn’t care. Never before had she ever encountered a human before. Nor had she wanted to.

Stories about them were told with extreme prejudice and fear among the unicorn kingdom. Slender, wild creatures that will do anything for a price and would gladly rip you in half as quickly as they could glance in your direction. She had even heard rumors that they were originally non-sentient beings from another world that were conjured up by the Queen to expand her army.

Even though they can’t fly or use magic, it is said that they were among the most imaginative and intelligent species around. And that many of the modern weapons, tools, and structures the unicorns use to this day were based off of designs given by humans.

But wait, those two descriptions didn’t make sense together. How could they be wild and evil, if they were so intelligent and adaptable? Twilight decided to disregard any former knowledge she had about the beings, lest they lead her to misjudge them- something she would have never done in the past.

Twilight decided to try to communicate with it. Straining her throat she managed to utter a faint:

“Hello?” There was no response. So she tried again, and this time it came out louder.

“HELLO!” Much louder - the human froze. She didn’t realize it but she had put everything she had into saying ‘hello’, and when she finally did get the word out, she’d ended up shouting it at the top of her lungs. “Oops,” was all she could think. The captive unicorn noticed that the human had reached down and grabbed a contraption on his belt. In a split second, he whirled around and pointed something that looked a lot like a gun at her. He had turned around so fast that she might have missed it if she had blinked. It was a small, hand-held, black… thing. But she could see a barrel and a trigger clearly. She came to the conclusion that she should probably not interrupt him again. At her best guess, he looked like a young male. But the hair was long and black, and it came down like an unkempt mop over his forehead. It could have easily been a female; she didn’t know enough about them yet to tell. She would have had better luck identifying a dog’s gender.

A few seconds passed in what Twilight thought must have been the most awkward moment in her life. The human was perfectly still, she detected not even the slightest waver of his stature or muscle movement. He was dressed in black clothes, clad with some kind of iron. He had what looked like small yellow glasses on one side of his face with a hexagonal pattern in them, except it covered a small portion of his cheeks. There were streaks of red on the armor of his legs and arms, and on the fingers of his claws. The effect was actually quite impressive, not to mention intimidating. It was strange - his fingers didn’t seem like claws or talons or anything else she had seen before. The only comparison she could think of was the claws of a bear, but these had opposable thumbs; and she was pretty sure that bears didn’t wear armored gloves.

“Um… Hi?” Nothing changed. “My name is…” She paused. She never gave a thought as to what she would actually say her name was. Even though she was free of the Queen, she still felt weird about giving her birth name. Especially to a person, like this.

“Midnight Shimmer.” She tried to make it sound as convincing as possible. It was the name she’d agreed to use in a hostile situation with Blaze. It worked well because it was similar to a combination of their real and fake names. Still the creature did nothing.

“A-are you… okay?” At this he raised his eyebrow. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes.” The answer came out suddenly and abruptly. It was a deeper voice; at least Twilight had guessed his gender right.

“Are you… are you alive?” Twilight cursed herself for asking such a stupid question. She did however, want to know if what she was dealing with could be reasoned with.

“Last I checked.” He was clearly surprised at the question. Twilight thought she could make out a tiny curvature on his lips that might be a smirk.

“Um… why are you, er, dragging me somewhere?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Can you let me out?”

“No.” His voice was solid and unchanging. Not monotone, but something more significant than that. It was clear that he didn’t take foolishness from anyone.

“I can walk.” She said, trying desperately to get out of the constricting net that was wrapped so uncomfortably around her.

“No, you can’t.” He said in his never-changing voice. She noticed the yellow thing on his face had moved over his eye and had little red lights flashing in it.

He put his gun away and turned expressionlessly to continue on his march.

“Wait! I…I...” Suddenly, Twilight was overcome by another wave of darkness, and she fell back into a sea of blackness.

For a fourth time, Twilight awoke. Now it was dark, late in the evening. She could use her whole body now, but her mind felt like scrambled eggs. The first thing she noticed was that she wasn’t in her net anymore; instead, she was lying on a bed of cloths and linens. The grassy plains that seemed so prevalent before were now gone. In their stead was a swamp. I wonder where he took me. She thought. Slowly getting up, painstakingly so, lest another blackout should fall on her, Twilight managed to get on her hooves with some difficulty.

There was a wood fire burning five feet in front of her, and on the opposite side the human sat staring at her. He seemed to be sharpening a knife that was made of a bright, silver metal. It was a cruel blade. It had a gap in the middle with one large edge and one short one on the opposite side; it was at least a foot long. This, combined with the dancing firelight, made him much look more threatening than before.

Twilight decided this would be as good a time as ever to at least get some information as to where he was taking her. Treading carefully, she walked over to the fire and sat down. The heat felt wonderful, particularly after being stuck in a net for who-knows-how-long.

“Thanks… for letting me out.”

Her weak icebreaker was met with a glacier glare. Obviously, he didn’t think much of her. After what seemed like an eternity, she tried again:

“Um, so who are you?”

“Hunter.” He said, still sharpening his knife.

“That’s um, an interesting name.” She said, trying to make it sound like she sincerely meant it in a nice way. However she soon got the impression that he wouldn’t care either way.

“It’s not a name. It’s what I do.” Now, that was interesting.

“You… hunt?”

“Yes.”

“What do you hunt?”

“You, at the moment.”

Getting him to talk was about as difficult as getting a mountain to move out of her way. Twilight began to wonder if ‘Hunter’ was trying to be difficult to keep information from her.

“Who do you work for?”

“Anyone but the Queen.”

This was a massive relief. At least he wasn’t trying to turn her in to Celestia. She let out a large sigh.

“That’s good to hear.”

“You don’t like the Queen?” The knife stopped in mid-air for the first time he started to show some emotion. He cocked his head sideways and looked at her as if he was trying very hard to understand her.

“Uh… no. Not after what she’s done.” OOPS! Whatever chance she had if he was really one of her spies was now gone. She winced and half expected him to pull out his gun and shoot her in that moment. But he never did.

“Interesting.” He said. Whatever curiosity he had was now gone; he went back to his knife.

“Why did you come after me?”

“Because the Earth Ponies want you.”

She fidgeted - she didn’t want to meet them. Who knows what they might do to her? After all, she was the right-hand mare to the Queen!

“Why are you telling me this? I can just run away.” She said, half frightened and half curious.

“I’ll incapacitate you if you do.” His knife never missed a beat. It kept hitting his sharpening stone at exactly every half-second.

“What if I use my magic?”

“You can’t, I’ve disabled your horn... temporarily.”

“How temporarily?”

“Until I say so.”

Twilight was now thoroughly annoyed at him for being so vague - even more annoyed than scared. Who was he to barge in with her unconscious to disable her magic and hold her prisoner? This whole situation just seemed to be getting better and better all the time.

“Get some rest.”

“Why?!” She said, almost yelling. Her unicorn pride was revealing itself more than she would have liked.

“Because I’m not dragging you anymore. We leave at sunrise.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll keep watch.”

Even though she was glad to get some sleep, she still had one more bone to pick.

“Is it because I’m a unicorn you think a Horror Sprout will just come out of nowhere and attack? Or that I’ll try and kill you in the night? Just because I’m a unicorn??” she demanded, infuriated.

“Yes.”

This was as far as he would go conversation-wise. He put away his knife after thoroughly inspecting it and gestured to her ‘bed’. Any attempt at getting anything else out of him simply ended in him pointing at her pile of rags. Finally conceding the conversation, she walked - you could say limped - back to her pile and lay down. Closing her eyes, Twilight began to think about what she should do if he decided he was tired of her, or decided she wasn’t worth anything. Yet, before she could come up with any plans, she drifted off to sleep.

The Queen was not accustomed to being left to wait. She stood at her throne waiting impatiently for the news. Finally, the large gold and white doors at the front of the room glowed blue and opened. Her orange and red apprentice walked gravely in with two unicorn guards clad in gold.

“Leave us,” she commanded them; the guards promptly left the room. “Well? Am I supposed to wait a whole fortnight for you to complete a simple task I could get a mere page to complete?” Her voice resounded through the room as if it carried the sorrow and hatred of a thousand years in its wake.

“A thousand pardons, my Queen.” Blaze responded without so much as flinching. “Processing continues on schedule, and we will receive the new shipment of energy module within the week.”

“I did not command the construction of Dreadnaught to be given factors and estimates. Tell me of the operations.”

“The facility houses a large mechanical mass known affectionately by the workers as the “Rainbow Machine”. This device uses a trapped Death Note to drain the souls of potential victims. Once extraction is complete, the energy is concealed and contained in small capsules made of an alloy specifically designed to contain magic.”

“Enough.” The Queen looked like she was about to rip Blaze’s face off. Her expression was intense and her voice was escalating.

“Tell me of the workers.”

“The workers are brash, over simplistic, and disrespectful, but they do their work with brutal efficiency.”

“Fine, what of Sound Wave?” Her voice began to soften, and her face relaxed.

“She… is interesting. Sound Wave is determined to get the job done, but she can be overconfident and - quite honestly - annoying.”

“I don’t care about your personal feelings; do you think she can be trusted?” Celestia asked the question like she already knew the answer.

Blaze paused, and for a second considered the power in her hooves. With just one word, she could end Sound Wave forever. Then she would never have to put up with her again. The temptation was too great to resist.

“Well? I asked a question.”

“No, she can’t be trusted, I am sure of that.”

“You just said she was determined to get the job done.” Suddenly Blaze’s heart stopped beating. Celestia was smiling. Not kindly but with an evil, glaring grimace. “What changed your mind?”

“Your highness? I said she was efficient, I never said I trusted her.”

“Indeed.” Celestia began to circle Blaze in long, wide circles.

“My Queen?”

“You came here with the expressed purpose of causing the downfall of that Pegasus.”

“This is not so… AHHG!” Suddenly, her mind was attacked by a lightning bolt of energy. All her private thoughts and convictions sprang to the surface of her mind.

“I can’t have my own apprentice betraying my like this just because she feels like it.” She said with a wide smile.

“Please, no!” Her thoughts were being ripped out of her head and exposed for the Queen to see. Her hatred, desires, and even her warm affections for Dusk.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” The alicorn said it as if she had caught Blaze with her muzzle in a cookie jar. “What say you we remove this little glitch?”

Suddenly the pain intensified, and everything started to fall away. The Queen, the throne, and the massive doors all seemed to be floating into the distance, until they were gone. And then, there was nothing.