Shadows in the North - A Sundering of Equestria Tale

Chapter Seven

“Léa! Can’t you make this thing go any faster?!”

“I can’t drive and fix the engine! Be glad I managed to get her going at all!”

“There’s another group coming from the left! Centurion, on point! Captain, target the centre of groups – they seem to want to flow together, it might slow them down! Major, get this thing in gear!”

“I didn’t have time to put the gears back on, Staid! Why doesn’t someone else drive while I bash the engine into working?”

“There’s more catching up on the right!”

“I’ll drive! I’m not helping by just standing here – just tell me what to do!”

Léa glanced briefly behind her. Butterscotch was standing by her shoulder, her eagerness to help clear on her face. Behind her, posable-armed-revolver in hoof, was Colonel Staid. He was standing in the centre of the Cart’s platform, giving out orders and firing when he could. Star-Strike and Defiant Arc kept switching between the left and right sides; Star-Strike to the places where their shadow-pony pursuers were further away, and Defiant Arc to the places where they were about to board the vehicle.

The Cart itself was barely going a fraction of the speed it had been on its first trip, a result of Léa introducing a new device to deliberately reduce and control the flow of power from the fuel-pump engine, but not having enough time to calibrate it properly before the shadow-ponies suddenly and unexpectedly attacked. They were barely travelling three times the speed on an ordinary pony, which, as it turned out, was about the same speed the shadow-ponies liked to travel at.

“This pedal makes it go,” Léa told Butterscotch, “This lever slows it down, so you don’t need to worry about that one. Don’t pull that one because we might explode. This thing turns it. The rest don’t do anything. Don’t hit any rocks, don’t slow down, and don’t take your hoof off of that pedal! Go!”

The griffon and the pony swapped positions. Leaving Butterscotch to do her best at the Cart’s controls – which, although very simple compared to the controls of a full Cannonade Cart, were still not designed to be used by a pony – the Major hurried to the rear of the Cart and grappled with the engine.

“They’re getting too close!” Star-Strike shouted, snapping a fresh, fully-charged crystal into her Starbeam rifle, “Centurion! Swap with me!”

“I’m a bit busy right now!” Defiant Arc yelled, swiping with his sword at several snarling shadow-ponies that were clinging to the side of the Cart, the jagged spikes that grew from their hooves stabbed into the wooden platform’s edge.

Staid swung his revolver around and blasted apart a number of the boarding shadow-ponies. “I’ve got this side covered,” he announced, “For the moment. Centurion! Swap with Star-Strike!”

While the two Equestrians swapped sides, Léa LeFeather, who had been desperately trying to adjust the makeshift regulatory valve (which did not seem to want to release any fuel on every third pump), shouted out in frustration.

“I can’t get this clucking valve to work!” she shouted, “Staid! I’m sorry – I can’t get the Cart to go any faster without stopping it altogether!”

“Then we’re in trouble,” Staid said quietly. Despite the wheezing of the engine, the sounds of battle and the crunching of the Cart wheels, everyone present could somehow hear his voice. “We can’t outrun these creatures forever, and the waypoint is no sure place of security-”

Suddenly Butterscotch shrieked and the entire Cart lurched. For a moment the entire group feared that the Cart was about to turn over, but by some miracle it did not.

“I think I just hit somebody!” she exclaimed in terror, jerking the wheel around to try and stay on course.

“Good!” Defiant Arc called out, stabbing the closest attacker through the heart with a quick jab of his blade, “The only things around here are shadow-ponies!”

“But shadow-ponies aren’t solid…” Léa began.

Butterscotch shrieked again. Léa and Staid turned around.

A face had popped up in front of her; a pale-orange-coloured face, with a tyre-track imprinted across its forehead, and an inane grin on its muzzle. The face was attached to a body dressed in bizarre, patchwork clothes, with a flapping, multi-coloured cape, and was clinging to the front of the Cart.

“Sgniteerg ot uoy lla!” the strange new unicorn exclaimed happily, as he climbed over the Cart’s front and onto the platform, “I ma Rorepmegnops Idlaviv ‘Yhtrowsotnem’ Flooc eht Htekac! Ereh ot pleh!”

“What,” Léa said, her tone utterly deadpan, her eyes staring blankly at the newcomer in all his eccentric glory.

Staid said nothing, seemingly paralyzed by this strange sight. Butterscotch, Star-Strike and Defiant Arc were all much too busy to do more than glance briefly around and give some exclamation of surprise before getting back to the much more important work of not getting everyone on board killed.

“Eert srewop ETAVITCA!” the stallion shouted. His horn briefly blazed a bright orange, before an immense tidal wave of sawdust burst forth from the air above his head. Staid managed to shout out a warning before the sawdust swept through them, apparently to no effect. The shadow-ponies were still there, the Cart’s passengers had all managed to stay upright; the only difference being that now everyone was covered in extremely itchy sawdust.

Then the engine gurgled, chugged a few times, before the Cart suddenly sped up. The greater mass of the pursuing shadow-ponies were left behind them in a trail of engine-fumes, air-flung ice and, yes, sawdust.

“What-!” Léa repeated, staring at the engine in amazement.

“There’s still some clinging on over here!” Defiant Arc shouted, shaking his head to dislodge as much sawdust as he could, “I don’t know what the hay is going on, but-”

The strange unicorn jumped over to the Centurion. “Tel em pleh!” he exclaimed in his strange, backwards voice. He looked down at the shadow-ponies, with their clawed hooves stabbed into the wood of the Cart, and the stallion’s horn glowed once again.

The edges of the Cart that the shadow-ponies were hanging on to started to bend and, bizarrely, stretch out. Defiant Arc began to back away; it wasn’t just the edges with the shadow-ponies, but the whole side of the Cart. He spun around to see Star-Strike glancing up at him – the side she was standing by was bending and twisting too.

Before either of them could ask what in Equestria was going on, the sides of the Cart unfurled into two gigantic, bat-like wings, which quickly shook off the shadow-ponies lodged in them. Everyone on board, even Butterscotch, looked on in terrified amazement as the mighty wooden wings flapped once, then twice.

Within moments the Cart was flying, wings flapping, wheels spinning on nothing but air.

“WHAT?!” Léa shouted, overwhelmed by this insane turn of events, and at what had been done to her Cart.

The newcomer laughed. “Selims lla dnuora won!” he said happily, and did a little jig.

All five of his fellow, now-aerial passengers stared at him. The stallion stopped dancing and looked at them.

“Tahw?”

*

Somehow, Léa managed to get her transfigured Cart under her control – asking it politely seemed to have had more of an effect than pulling on any of the levers – and bring it down for a smooth landing at the base of the mountain that had been their original destination. The ice had initially seemed to be a problem but, to Léa’s vague unease, the Cart decided for itself to grip the ground with its new wooden wings, and that managed to slow it down enough to stop them crashing.

The passengers had all immediately disembarked without a single word spoken to one another, before hurrying to a reasonable distance away. Major LeFeather had paused briefly; long enough to have a fleeting glance over her shoulder at the strange new form of her vehicle. As she watched, the Cart folded its bat-like wings around itself and seemed to settle down, as if to await their return.

There was not a shadow-pony in sight.

The five companions were now gathered in an apprehensive circle around the newcomer. The strangely dressed unicorn was smiling somewhat stupidly at them, Léa thought; apparently he was completely unaware of the way the others, particularly Colonel Staid, looking at him.

“Let’s start with the basics,” Léa said, realising that no-one seemed to want to speak first, “Who are you, exactly?”

“I dlot uoy, I ma Rorepmegnops Idlaviv ‘Yhtrowsotnem’ Flooc eht Htekac,” the pony explained – although the bizarre tongue in which he was speaking made the ‘explanation’ perfectly useless. “Sa rof ym eciov – I saw desruc! Désruc!”

“Anyone know what language he’s speaking?” the griffon asked exasperatedly. Everyone shook their heads. “Staid? Anything you recognise?”

“This stallion is speaking complete gibberish,” Staid said coldly, “Worryingly so.”

The unicorn made a motion as though he was about to stand on one leg, but then stopped. He sighed, sadly. “I dluow etteuorip no eno gel, tub yletanutrofnu, ti dlouw eb yllaicos xuaf sap, sa llew sa gnieb a eil.”

“It sounds to me like he’s speaking backwards,” Star-Strike spoke up suddenly, “Not whole sentences, but maybe some of the words-”

“I think he’s a Discordian,” Defiant Arc interrupted, “Look at the way he’s dressed, and his stupid way of speaking. And that freaky magic earlier – that’s not normal.”

That would round off the group quite nicely, Léa pondered. A representative from nearly every group in the war. Or maybe even all of them. A quick glance in Butterscotch’s direction showed to Léa that she might well have been thinking the same thing.

“So what if he is a Discordian?” Star-Strike said, turning on Defiant Arc with an impudent look, “They are merely the innocent scapegoats of the Solar Tyrant, harmless cultists blamed for the assassination of the Princess to cover up the Tyrant’s role-”

“That’s a lie and you know it!” Defiant Arc shouted. Star-Strike opened her mouth to counter, but the Centurion was faster. “I’m not going to start arguing now about whether or not Princess Celestia was responsible – she wasn’t, and I’m not going to listen to your filthy slander – but you know as well as I do that Discordians are not harmless.”

The pegasus paused. “You’re right,” she said at last, “About the second thing. I was at the Battle of Fillydelphia. I know what they can do.”

The Battle of Fillydelphia, from what Léa knew, had been an attempt by the New Lunar Republic to take control the city of Fillydelphia, after a Discordian uprising had overthrown the loyalist rulers. The Republican forces had ended up completely (or nearly completely) destroyed; eventually the World Empire had shown up and, after a long siege, wrested the city from the Discordians, taking it for themselves. But that had been three years ago; if Star-Strike had been present then, how young must she have been? How young must she have been when she joined up?

“I was there too,” Staid said, in an oddly flat tone. Star-Strike looked at him in surprise, but the Colonel’s eyes were fixed on the smiling Discordian. “But that’s irrelevant. If this pony is indeed a Discordian, as he seems to be, then there is only one suitable course of action.” He spoke directly to the eccentrically-dressed stallion. “Are you or are you not a Discordian? Nod for yes, or shake your head for no.”

The pony nodded repeatedly. He didn’t seem at all embarrassed by it, nor affected by the hostile glare he received from Defiant Arc. Staid tightened his lips. The rest of the group shifted about uncomfortably.

“Look, Staid, I know Discordians are dangerous,” Léa said, trying to be reasonable, “But we can’t just turn him away. He’s probably starving, and he did save our lives – and this is coming from the girl who had her Cart turned into a giant wooden bat.”

“We can’t trust him,” Defiant Arc countered, “Discordians are crazy. We can’t take him with us. Sure this one saved our lives – if that’s even what he was trying to do – but the next thing you know, he’ll be tying us up and roasting us over a fire! ”

“I don’t think he’d do that…” Butterscotch said quietly, but no-one seemed to hear her.

“We can’t abandon him here,” Léa said, “The shadow-ponies would tear him to pieces!”

“Look, Léa, I hate to argue with you,” Star-Strike said, “But you haven’t been in a battle against Discordians. I’ve seen them do some awful things. Keeping this guy with us is just like… like keeping a wild animal around. Discordians might seem docile and silly, but they can flip out just like that.”

“Staid,” Léa said, turning to the group’s centre of reason, “Help me out here.”

“You all have some valid points,” the Colonel said, gaze still fixed on the Discordian, “but as I said, there is only one course of action we can take.” He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out his revolver. “We need to put him down.”

“What?!”

“I don’t want him with us, but there’s no need to kill him!” Star-Strike exclaimed, eyes wide.

Defiant Arc said nothing, his expression one of surprise more than anything else. Butterscotch looked panicky.

Colonel Staid raised his pistol and pointed it between the Discordian’s eyes. The stallion looked at it curiously – maybe he hadn’t ever seen one before, and didn’t know what it did – and gave it an inquisitive sniff.

“Ebyam dda emos nomannic?” he suggested.

“Discordianism is an infectious disease,” Staid explained coldly, “It makes a pony go utterly and irrevocably insane. The disease is conveyed both intellectually and through the air, in a miasma; even being near this creature carries the risk of our infection. To let him accompany us is suicidal; to allow him to survive, as unfortunate as it sounds, would be to risk others becoming infected. It is our duty to the rest of our appropriate species, and my duty to the World Empire, to end the infection wherever it is found.”

“Staid, listen to yourself!” Léa said, jumping forward and grabbing his outstretched foreleg. She tried to pull it down – to pull the pistol’s barrel away from the Discordian’s unknowing expression – but the pony’s stance was like iron. “Listen to what you’re saying! You can’t just kill someone because they’re a little bit mad!”

“There is no cure!” Staid exclaimed, a measure of distress finally showing through, “To let this stallion live is to risk ourselves and others degenerating into creatures like him. Permanently! It is terrible, I know, and I am sorry, but there is no other option. I have to do this. It’s for the greater good.”

Léa became frantic, looking around in desperation. Staid had always been the voice of reason, arguing with a firm voice and cool head for them all to get along – hadn’t it been him who had convinced Defiant Arc not to kill her, when the Centurion had his sword at her throat? She had known that the Imperials didn’t like Discordianism, but the griffon had never expected something like this. She couldn’t let Staid go ahead and kill this pony, regardless of the logic. But what could she do?

“Star-Strike, help me out here!” she blurted out, “You can’t let him go ahead with this!”

The Captain shook her head. “I’m sorry Léa,” she said quietly, “I’ve seen what Discordians can do. It’s… it’s the best for everypony.”

Léa desperately turned to Defiant Arc, but she knew immediately she’d get no help there. The Centurion was staring at the Discordian, eyes strangely devoid of malice. Those who called themselves Old Equestrians believed that one of their Princesses had been killed by Discordians, Léa knew; the Major was half-surprised that the Centurion wasn’t baying for the stallion’s blood.

Staid twisted his foreleg, causing his hoof to press against the revolver’s metal arm, and thus tightening the pistol’s trigger. The Discordian’s smile began to waver.

“Did I yas gnihtemos gnorw?” he asked, finally beginning to look worried.

Suddenly, Butterscotch leapt from her place cowering beside Star-Strike and landed in-between the Discordian and the gun. On her face was an expression of pure determination.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Staid exclaimed, his grip on the pistol wavering, “Get out the way, Miss Butterscotch! This is for the benefit of everyone!”

“Everyone except him!” the mare countered, staring down the old soldier, “This pony saved our lives – and even if he hadn’t, he deserves the same right to live as everyone else! He hasn’t done anything to harm any of us, while all we’ve done is complain about his magic, and talk about getting rid of him, and- and run him over! And what’s wrong with being a Discordian anyway?”

The rest of the group were extremely quiet, not daring to interrupt the confrontation. The space between Butterscotch’s determined glare and Staid’s duty-driven stare seemed to waver in some imagined heat.

“Miss Butterscotch,” Staid said quietly, “Please remove yourself from in front of the Discordian. Not only is your proximity to him a risk to your health, but your behaviour is starting to suggest that you might have been infected yourself.”

“So shoot me.”

Staid’s gaze wavered, but his pistol remained steady. “I don’t want to do that,” he said, “Please, Butterscotch, this is necessary for all our sakes. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

“Why is it necessary?” Butterscotch exclaimed, glaring around at the two Equestrians too – Defiant Arc met her gaze, while Star-Strike looked down at the floor, “Because you think he might be a danger to you? But you still go around with the Guardspony, even though he’s threatened to kill every one of us at some point! And you’re perfectly fine with me!”

Léa immediately became aware of where this was going. But the shock and tension in the air seemed to freeze her muscles; one sudden word, one unexpected movement, might shock the Colonel into firing. And his gun was pointed at Butterscotch.

“Why wouldn’t I be fine with you?” Staid asked, suddenly confused, “Civilians are not conventionally considered a danger. Miss Butterscotch-”

Butterscotch screamed in agitation, and was instantly enveloped in a bright green light. Everyone jumped back – Staid managed to maintain enough motor control to wave his pistol away before the surprise caused him to fire it, sending the bullet pinging off into the sky.

The light covered Butterscotch’s entire body – and then, bit by bit, the light receded inwards, towards her centre, revealing only the extremities of her body at first.

Her hooves and legs were no longer bright yellow, but jet-black, and with a certain gleam to them that suggested not a coat, but some kind of polished exoskeleton. Holes could be seen twisting through her limbs, giving her a disturbingly organic appearance. As the light continued to pull inwards, wing-tips appeared, initially seeming to hover in the air – but these were not the feathered wings of a pegasus. They were the transparent, black-lace wings of a fly, scaled up the size of a pony.

Her body too was altered, changing to the same exoskeleton-like black carapace. The carapace disappeared around her waist, where a glowing, translucent thorax now appeared, resembling in part the body of a firefly, or the writhing, wormlike form of a maggot.

The light changed her head too. No longer was there a sign of the slightly off-centre button-like muzzle, the soft yellow coat, the reassuring large-pupilled eyes, or the salmon-orange mane. Now her head was covered in the same gleaming black carapace, with sharp, pointed features replacing her rounded muzzle. Strangely reflective, compound-like pupils now appeared in otherwise equine eyes, and a long, sickly-green mane that seemed to have more in common with the furry antennae of moths than any mammalian hair. A ragged tail of the same insectile fur sprouted from the other end. From her forehead reared a jagged black horn, composed of the same thick, carapace-like material that made up the rest of her body.

“My name isn’t Butterscotch,” she said quietly. For all that her appearance had changed, her voice sounded exactly the same.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Ch-changeling!” Star-Strike blurted out, “You’re a changeling!”

“And not just any changeling,” Defiant Arc added, drawing his sword, “A Swarm Commander!”

“Wait, wait!” Léa said, jumping in. She was as surprised as the rest of them, but at least she’d known that Butterscotch – or whatever her real name was – had been hiding something. And this was a big something. “She’s still the same pony as before, except she’s not, well, a po-”

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time?!” Star-Strike exclaimed, backing away from the changeling, tears beginning to form in her eyes, “Trying to- to gain my trust! When all along you were going to betray me?! I thought you were my friend!”

“I am!” the changeling said, pleading with the pegasus, “I am your friend! I never lied to you! I just never told you-”

“Enough of this!” Defiant Arc said, rushing forwards, sword readied for a fierce stab. To his sudden and immense surprise, the Discordian leapt out from behind the changeling and snatched the sword out of the air with his mouth. The Centurion stopped dead in his tracks and charged after him – the others, however, paid no attention to this.

“A changeling! This whole time!” Star-Strike was blabbering, clearly in total shock. She had now taken to the air, to get as far as she could away from the insectile creature. “I- I trusted you!”

“I’m still the same inside!” the changeling formerly-known-as-Butterscotch tried to explain. She took to the air too, on buzzing wings, but this turned out to be a fatal move. Her following words were drowned out by the pegasus.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Star-Strike shrieked, hovering away from her in terror, fumbling for her rifle.

Defiant Arc was wrestling with the Discordian, trying to pull his sword from the latter’s tightly-locked jaws. Léa LeFeather was jumping and flapping about, trying to get everyone to stop and calm down, to no avail. Staid seemed to be immobilised, staring with a bewildered expression at the space where the changeling and the Discordian had been standing earlier.

The one who had called herself Butterscotch, tears welling up in her eyes, cried out in despair and flew away. The buzzing of her wings quickly disappeared as she fled upwards and around the bulk of the ice-shrouded mountain.

At last Defiant Arc managed to pull his blade from the Discordian’s mouth, and seemed to be about to strike at him, when Léa swooped past and plucked it out of the air. Star-Strike was still hovering, somewhat erratically, gripping tightly to her Starbeam rifle.

Staid emerged from his stupor turned and looked around at them. “I…” he said slowly, “What… I don’t…”

He looked down at his still-smoking pistol. At last, a single coherent sentence managed to form out of all the confused thoughts swirling about in his mind.

“What’s wrong with being a changeling?”