The Dead City

Part 10: TRANSFORM

…

Well played, my old friend. Very well played.

You were never an acquaintance of mine.

Don’t be so sure, comrade. In a past existence…

There has been no existence save for this one.

Such naiveté. Can you really be so brash?

You resort to petty insults? Is that the best you can do in the little time we have left?

Hardly petty. I am, after all, that which can defy you and live to see the dawn.

You have killed the dawn. You have killed too many.

You are no seraph, Entrail. Your crimes are as heinous as mine.

I never said they weren’t.

Do you not take pride, or at least some small hint of satisfaction, in the fact that you have exterminated races, planets, and even entire solar systems in your attempts to stop me?

Stop you? How could I stop you? I can hinder you no more than you can hinder me.

The Eternal Deadlock.

Indeed.

Yet still, we kill.

We kill.

Because we cannot kill each other, we kill others in the hope that they will kill us.

You wish for death?

Death has no meaning to me. Death is void. Nonexistent.

Now it is you that is naïve.

What say you?

To doubt the path of death is foolish. To believe in life everlasting is a crime against common sense.

I never figured you to be a promulgator of common sense.

Common sense would dictate that beings like us would not exist.

Do we exist?

We do.

And what of the game?

The game is still in play.

And whose turn is it?

Mine.

But it’s always yours!

You know the rules. You will wait your turn.

Very well. Then I suppose we have no further need of conciliation?

Was that what you invoked this gathering for? Conciliation?

No. I invoked this meeting to kill you, but you have spoiled my opportunity.

Indeed I have.

The knight draws closer to the Source.

He does.

The man has become the shepherd.

He has.

They will kill me.

They will.

We shall see about that.

I have decided.

Always were one for chess, correct, Entrail?

Always.

Then make your move.

I shall.

…

How interesting. How very, very interesting…

My horn is throbbing. That can’t mean anything good. I hear the crackling of a fire. I try to move, but something is holding me back. I open my eyes.

I am in a moonlit forest, bound by ropes to the trunk of an oak tree as a gaggle of ponies sit around a campfire in a small clearing in front of me. Their faces are masked by darkness, their forms hunched as if they were engaged in reclusive discussion. My throat is dry, too dry to form the words I want to shout out to the group. So I struggle and tug at the ropes that bind me until one of them, a pegasus with a mane of many colors, approaches me.

“Wait—I know you!” I finally manage to say. “You were at my wedding…you’re Rainbow Dash!”

I don’t expect the blow, and I cry out as her hoof connects with my cheek. When I look into her face I see an incomparable fire burning in her eyes, a fire fueled by some unknown rage.

` “Shut up, you dirty little worm! Don’t try to get friendly with me! I know what you are! We all do!”

“Wha…What?! I don’t understand. Rainbow Dash…”

“How much do you know? Is this her work?”

“Huh?!”

She isn’t making sense. I don’t know what’s going on. From the shadows behind her emerge two other ponies that I’ve never seen before, a big red stallion and a blue unicorn with a musical note for its cutie mark. Then to Rainbow Dash’s left appears…

“Twilight!”

But once again, she looks angry at me, as if I’ve done something terribly wrong.

“Don’t call me Twilight,” she growls, hatred layered in her voice. “We all know what you are.”

“Twili, what are you talking about? This is crazy! It’s me, Shining Armor!”

“No, it’s not,” says a voice from beyond the treeline. “You are not Shining Armor.”

“What?!” I cry, struggling. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

The speaker did show himself, and when he does, my heart takes a plunge into a vat of ice water. My hooves go numb and my head pounds.

No. It isn’t possible. It can’t be.

And yet standing there next to my sister, his narrowed eyes glinting in the firelight…

…is me. Shining Armor.

A creature stirs in a pockmarked plain, surrounded on all sides by the limp bodies of unconscious ponies. As he awakens, his olfactory senses take a beating as a tsunami of odors barrels into his nose, nearly overwhelming him. It takes several minutes for him to calm down, and when he does, the world opens up to him.

He can smell everything. He can smell the blood on the strange ponies’ bodies and can even smell their fear. The scent of death is everywhere, lingering in the air like a bad aftertaste. There are other scents. Smoke, bilge, filth, vomit, and a menagerie of horrid odors amalgamate and mix in his nostrils. Retching, he catches sight of a dirty puddle in a crater the size of a dinner plate on the ground. He crawls over to it, faintly aware that his legs are not working and that there is something on his back.

It all dawns on him as he crosses the crater’s threshold and peers into the dirty water.

Staring back is a dog with dark and light brown fur and bronze colored eyes. Its pointed ears move independently of one another and its tongue hangs out limply. As he inspects further, he catches a glimpse of his hand, or rather, his paw, malformed as if it had gone through a grinder. Staring behind him, he realizes that his entire body is slimmer and covered in brown fur, culminating in a tail that swishes lazily behind him. He reaches up into his mouth and feels sharp teeth, then runs his paws over his entire front, feeling only hair and fur.

It can’t be possible. Yet it has happened.

One of the ponies, the gray pegasus, stirs and awakens, blinking in the harsh sunlight. She catches sight of the bipedal dog.

“Hey, doggies don’t walk on two legs!”

She giggles, unaware that she is bleeding from the forehead. The other two ponies are still unconscious. The dog-creature turns to face the pegasus.

“I am no dog,” he says in a guttural voice. “My name…my name is…”

“Maddux?”

The dog-creature is taken aback. “What?!”

“It says Maddux on your collar, silly! Are you a Diamond Dog?”

The creature realizes that he is indeed wearing a collar, and on it, engraved in the silver tag, is the name Maddux.

“I…”

“Hi, Maddux! I’m Ditzy Doo, but everypony calls me Derpy! Nice to meet you!”

She stuck out a hoof, but the dog-creature looks confused, which in turn makes Derpy confused. He shudders, and Derpy frowns, fearing she has done something wrong.

The dog-creature looks at his paw in horror, then back to the bleeding pegasus. Sunlight glints off his bronze pupils as he stands there, confused and shocked, not a man and not a dog, but a hybrid. A shepherd. The shepherd.