Garry's Mod Vs. Equestria 2: War in the North

I sat in my too-small seat at the too-short table. I had one hand on a tiny, dull eating knife, and the other on a semi-automatic shotgun that lay across my lap loaded with eight flechette rounds and about fifty more shells in my pockets. The room was silent save for the occasional scrape of a knife or fork against a plate, or a restrained cough. The serving mares bustled quietly and quickly back and forth around us, either bringing  more food or drinks, or taking away old plates. The Iron Ponies at the table eating the food looked uncomfortable, to say the least; some of them looked outright terrified. The only ones not sweating from the tension in the room were Umbra and I. Umbra was too busy gloating at me with her smiling face to look uncomfortable, and I was too busy carving up the thing on my plate--it was a steak in the shape of a pony; I stabbed it repeatedly in the face area. I wasn't to concerned with eating it. Just stabbing it over and over again and splattering the blood from the steak across the table was enough for me.

I tightened and loosened my grip on the receiver of the shotgun in my lap in time with my stabs. With every stab I loosened my grip, and as I pulled my knife away I tightened my grip again. In truth, I didn't even notice I was doing this.

I scowled across the table at the mare who smiled back. I had been doing this for nearly an hour now, and I was beginning to think that the more anger I funneled her way, the better she felt. Of course, this just made me angrier, so I scowled harder until my face muscles began to hurt.

With every passing minute it felt like the air was getting thicker and heavier. The room felt like it was caving in. It was too hot. It was freezing.

I stabbed the steak pony harder. Shhck!... Shhck!... Shhck!...

That stupid mare was keeping me there. Like a pet. Did I amuse her? Was I a fucking clown?!

I stabbed the steak pony harder. Shkrck!... Shkrck!... Shkrck!...

Just fucking wait. Just fucking wait, you cum guzzling whore. I'll skin you alive and choke you with your own fucking entrails. I'll show you... I'll show you just what I am...

I stabbed the steak pony harder. Shcriek!... Shcriek!... Shcriek!...

You bitch. You smug, stupid bitch. I'll kill you. I'll kill you, and destroy everything you love. I'll level this mountain and turn this entire snow scorched hellhole to glass. I'll hunt down every member in you bloodline, and I'll throw them in a pit of fire. I'll carve out the hearts of everybody here and feed them to pigs. I'll reach my hand down your throat, grab your intestines, and turn you inside out. I'll-

"Ahem."

I plunged the knife down much too hard. It shattered the plate with a piercing crack and embedded the blade deep into the wooden table. Almost to the wood handle--which was now splintered and broken because of my death grip on it.

Everybody in the room flinched. Everybody except Umbra.

I turned to look at the little voice that made itself known. A serving mare, barely more than a filly, really. I bored holes into her with my eyes. "What is it?" I snarled.

The small mare shrunk back from me with a whimper. "I... I um... Do you... want something to drink?"

I growled at her, much like a wild animal. "Are you offering your blood?" I leaned down and grabbed her cheeks. "Because if you are," I said in a deranged manner, "I would very much like to drain you dry. Slit your throat and suck out every drop of that red, metallic sweetness."

She took in a shallow breath, her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and she fainted in my grasp.

I let her unconscious body thump to the ground and resumed stabbing the steak pony.

"Was that really necessary?"

I stopped in my stabbing and looked across the table. "Yes. It was."

Umbra gave me a disapproving look. "You should really be kinder to the staff here. After all, you're going to be here for the rest of your life."

I slammed my fist into the table. "No!" I spat. "I'm killing Celestia, then I'm leaving this shitty world forever!" I shook my head in anger. "I don't even know why I kept you hateful things in my Gmod any way."

Umbra sighed, "You Humans... I'll never understand where your kind gets the energy to be so angry. But then again..." She looked at me, not even attempting to hide her smugness. "If it weren't for that blind rage your kind was so famous for, killing your entire species would have been much more difficult."

I beat both of my fists into the table hard enough to crack something. Whether it was the table or my bones, I wasn't sure. I drew in a huge breath, and let it out in a scream loud enough to ravage my throat and vocal cords. "I'M NOT FUCKING ANGRY!!!!!! I AM PERFECTLY FUCKING CALM!!!!!" I swatted away my plate with the back of my hand. "I SWEAR ON EVERYTHING HELLISH AND UNHOLY!!!!!! IF YOU DON'T SHUT YOUR GOD DAMNED DIRTY FUCKING MOUTH I'LL KILL EVERY LIVING THING IN THIS MOUNTAIN!!!!!!!"

Umbra smiled at me. "I'd like to see you try."

I said nothing. Instead of responding I raised my shotgun in one hand, aimed it at the stallion sitting next to me, and pulled the trigger.

The stallion didn't even have time to scream. In the blink of an eye he was there, and then there was nothing but a stump sitting in a chair. Everything from the middle up exploded in an almost comically gruesome hail of blood, guts and tattered pieces of body parts. The force of the blast knocked his chair back, and the shredded corpse rolled out of the seat. Blood pooled under the remains almost immediately, the crimson life juice spreading over the floor in gratuitous amounts.

Everybody was silent.

I looked at Umbra. "Say that again. I dare you."

She blinked at me. Then she spoke, slowly at first. "That was... very... interesting." She swallowed. "I... apologize, for anything I said that may have made you angry." She bowed her head slightly.

I looked her over. So powerful and so full of herself. But the second she feels threatened she's bowing down. I snorted and laid the shotgun back across my lap. "You could learn a bit of humility Umbra," I spat. "Keep talking to me like I'm some kind of idiot, Umbra. See where it gets you. Because I'm getting tired of your mouth. "

She twisted her face into a glare and shot me a dangerous look. "You could do the same!" she snapped. "You've done nothing but threaten me and insult me and my ponies since I've brought you here! And now you've even murdered one of them!" She rose from her chair and stomped a hoof on the tabletop in outrage. "You will learn your place, Human! And you will learn it before I decide to turn you into a mindless slave!" She gave me a baleful look. "I gave you a place in this temple. I accepted you into our ranks. I gave you a place on the winning side of the war that will come. I've given you everything you could ever have asked for. Why do you act as if I've done something wrong?!"

I shot to my feet, kicking the chair back and rattling the table. "I never asked for any of this!"

The room fell into silence once more.

Umbra no longer looked angry, or smug. She looked confused.

I scowled at her. But not a simple scowl to express my anger or resentment. I put all of my feelings into that one expression. "You're forcing me to fight. You're holding me here against my will. If you think I'm going to act like nothing's wrong; like the perfect little soldier, you're crazy." I gave Umbra a hateful look. "I didn't even want to come here! I had a good job! I had a nice house! I had a dog! And I even had a girlfriend for a while after I first got home from this shitty world!" I picked up my shotgun and threw it across the table. It landed with a clacking sound as a few of the shells came out of it. "I don't want any of this!" I screamed at her. I could feel my voice going hoarse. "I don't want these powers! I don't want to have the world at my fingertips! I don't want to live forever! I don't want to be some kind of god!" I spawned gun after gun, prop after prop, and threw them all across the table at her. "I don't want this! Any of this! I never did!" I took in a shaky breath as I looked into Umbra's shocked eyes. "I just want to be me!"

Umbra blinked. "If you didn't want to be here... Didn't want to have this... then... why do you...?"

"Then why do I want Celestia dead?" I finished.

Umbra nodded slowly.

I clenched my jaw. "She took her away from me."

Umbra blinked, looking more confused than before. "Who?"

I stared at her for a long time before answering. "I know it wasn't real," I said, looking down at the table. "I knew it wasn't real from day one... But..." I hung my head and sighed. "That was the first time I felt happy, in... in a long time. And I just..." I stared at the table for a long time. I thought about her. About her voice. About her smile. About how she made me smile... "Every time I tried to get a girlfriend back in my world, I would see her. Every time I would talk to one of them, her name would slip out." I chuckled humorlessly. "Even in bed I would see her. I would say her name..."

I punched the table and looked up at Umbra. "And Celestia took her away from me. She forced me there; she refused to send me back until I killed that dragon. And because of her, I-" I stopped myself before I said something I would regret. I swallowed down a lump that had been building. "It would have been better if I never met her. But because of Celestia we did meet, and I made the mistake of being happy." I sighed and shook my head, looking back at the table. "I was happy, and Celestia took that away from me. I don't care that I would have died. I would have died happy."

A heavy silence filled the room for nearly a minute, before Umbra spoke again. "Was it another Human?"

I shook my head as I looked into her eyes. Something there was different--like a new light was turned on. "No... She was... a mare." I let the image of her fill my mind until I could see her clearly, as if she were in front of my very eyes. "The most beautiful mare I've even seen," I said in a whisper, almost too quiet for even me to hear.

"Hehe, I bet she left 'im cus she couldn't handle the stink."

The room suddenly got very cold.

The mare stuck her hooves out farther, trying desperately to warm them on the meager fire. She was shaking violently, her teeth chattering and her very bones shuddering from the merciless cold of the Northern Equestria tundra. Her armor had been padded with whatever she could find to help keep out the cold, but there was little a few scraps of spare leather and balled toilet paper could do to protect against sub-zero temperatures. The glossy paint that once adorned said armor was gone, either eroded away by the punishing wind and snow, or blasted away by deadly magic.

She leaned closer to the fire, nearly losing her balance from the shaking and falling in. "Damn them all to Tartarus," sergeant Snow Shield cursed under her breath. She was barely clinging to the last threads of life, but she had enough energy to curse the ones that put her in her current situation.

"Save you breath, sergeant," said a weary stallion that sat beside her, leaning even further into the fire than she was. "The ice will freeze your throat shut if you talk to much."

The mare, sergeant Snow Shield, snorted derisively at the stallion next to her. "Give it a rest, Shining," she sighed dejectedly. She rubbed her hooves up and down her sides roughly to keep the blood flowing, before returning them to the fire's warmth. "Whether it's the cold, or that blasted Umbra, we'll be dead in less than twenty four hours." She breathed heavily on her hooves--that were turning purple slightly. "I would have been better off to stay and fight at the fort than follow you into this blizzard."

Shining glared at her, but realized that she was probably right. For all he knew, the rest of the Crystal ponies were drinking and laughing in victory back in the warm, cozy mess hall. But as soon as he thought it he dispelled the thought. When they escaped there were still at least a dozen Iron ponies in the fort blasting it to bits with destructive magic. One of the first buildings to go was the mess hall. That they--he, Snow, and a few dozen others that were camped around the two of them--had managed to make it out alive was nothing short of a small miracle.

"If we had stayed and fought we would have been blown to pieces before we even got within striking distance. And besides, even if we could have beaten them, that place is nothing more than ash and cinder now." He clenched his jaw as a particularly bad set of shakes wracked his form.

Snow closed her eyes and rubber her forelegs together. "You're probably right," she sighed. Then, changing the subject, she said, "What do you think happened to the psychopath?"

Shining gave her a hard look. "You know, he's an honorary Lieutenant in the Equestrian Royal Army. If we weren't about to freeze to death I'd lock you in the brig for talking about a superior officer like that."

She smirked at him, despite her cracked lips. "It's a good things we're freezing to death then, isn't it?" she joked.

Shining ignored the joke--which he thought was in very bad taste--and thought about her previous question. "I don't know. I'm surprised they didn't kill him, to be completely honest." He paused and thought about what he had just said. A month ago, before all of this had started, saying something like that would have left a bitter taste in his mouth. But now? Now... he had been through battle. And not the Equestrian standard of battle... The Human one. He shuddered, both inwardly and outwardly as he realized that Humans can commit acts like the ones he had witnessed and worse without even blinking. But, back to the topic at hoof. "I don't know. Maybe they plan to interrogate him; try to get information out of him about us?"

Snow didn't respond.

Shining's eyes widened in fright. "Snow?! Snow!"

"What?!" she snapped, looking at him from the corner of her eye.

His heart calmed, as did his breath. "You didn't say anything. I thought... Never mind it."

She rubbed herself down with her hooves again to keep the circulation. "I don't think they'd interrogate him. Too much trouble and too little gain. Besides, if they did he doesn't know anything." She made a thoughtful face. "Maybe she kidnapped him to use him as a novelty. Like as some kind of exotic pet? He's one of a kind."

Shining gave her a strange look.

She recoiled from him slightly. "I meant because Humans don't exist!" she defended angrily. If it weren't for the blizzard, her now-rosy cheeks would be very visible. "Maybe because he's the only one of his kind here she thought it'd be neat to have him like some kind of trained pet. Or a manservant. Or... something!" She hugged herself close, gazing almost longingly into the fire. "I hope Umbra isn't torturing him..."

It was at that moment that there was a tremendous, resounding BOOM from somewhere far off into the distance. The sound was so loud that the shock wave that followed a few seconds after had its own, smaller version of the earth shaking noise.

Shining looked first to where he thought the sound had come from, then to Snow. "What was that?" he asked in a panic.

Before she could answer, the eternal blizzard that plagued the entire North, stopped. There was no wind down, or even a few seconds of calming. It simply... stopped, as if a switch somewhere had been flipped.

Almost immediately after the blizzard stopped, a second, much, much bigger boom was heard.

Both of their heads, and the heads of those around them, turned to the source of the noise. They saw a mountain. But not just a mountain, but the Iron Mountain, the highest reaching point in Northern Equestria. It wasn't there anymore. The top was gone, and all that remained was a stump with a huge hole in the side facing them. The once-great mountain now looked like a giant, misshapen bowl that had been cut in half vertically. It also vaguely resembled a volcano, with the way the air surrounding the mountain was on fire and a huge mushroom of smoke was rising from where the giant hole was. Actually, on closer examination, it looked as if there were multiple of those clouds, all forming together to create one, giant mushroom of smoke.

Snow turned to Shining with an unnaturally large grin on her face. "Two guesses what that was."

Shining made to respond, but something cut him off. He looked around himself as the world around him seemed to shimmer and convulse. The others saw it soon after he had and they all watched in fascination as the world shifted colors and hue, twitched and pulsated, and at some points even collapsed upon itself and reformed anew. The phenomenon lasted for nearly a full minute before the entire world blinked grey, then black, then finally, into seemingly non-existence.

But before any of them could begin to panic, the world began rebuilding itself. And the first piece it rebuilt was the Crystal Empire, barely a days walk away from where they sat.