Chapter Twelve

A Finishing Stroke

“I’m serious, Equus,” implored Pinkie. “You look like you’re about to eat somepony.”

“I hate to say this, Pinkie,” Spike admitted, “But you look almost as nuts as him.”

Spike was right. Her hair was going flat, her pupils had shrunk to pin-points and the corners of her mouth were slowly curving upwards. If Rainbow Dash had somehow survived being attacked by Pinkie, she’d have nightmares about that face for months. Pinkie’s white fur made her look like a maniacal ghost.

Just like me.

That stopped me in my tracks. I had to take a breather.

Bicho pointed a hoof down the cave. “What are you waiting for? I can hear the screams!”

Twilight shot him a stern look and said, “Just give them a minute. Equus, you look a lot like when you stabbed Gilda. Are you sure you’re up to this?”

I want to break Quietus’s legs, to peel that chitin off his body like a lobster shell. He needs to scream for mercy that will never come.

“Equus?” Twilight waved a hoof in front of my eyes. “Hello?”

He needs to suffer the way he made me suffer.

I shook my head while taking deep breathes. Pinkie followed my lead, calming down with every exhalation.

After a minute of this, we both looked a little more normal.

Spike looked us over and gave both of us a thumbs-up. “Okay, you two aren’t creepy anymore. Let’s go bust some heads!”

Before I knew it, my mom was nuzzling my ear. “You had his eyes for a moment.”

“Huh?”

“When Ivory had beaten that mugger senseless, he had that same look in his eyes.”

I growled in frustration. “I’m not like him, Mom!” Who was I trying to convince? Her or me?

“True. You have more friends than he ever did. Or even wanted. Just don’t forget what your friends can do for you.”

“They know how to fight,” I replied defensively.

She put a hoof on my shoulder. “That’s not what I mean, Equus.”

Bicho stamped over to me and cried, “Do you want them all to die? Stop holding us up!”

In the last few days, I had been threatened, kicked, bashed in the head and tortured. Bicho had just stepped on my last remaining nerve. We all have triggers that lead to violence. One of mine was getting yelled at, a relic from the bad old days of school.

Before I knew it, I had swung my right hoof back. Bicho was going to get a dent in his skull. Or he would have if my hoof had not gotten gripped in a ball of red magic.

Vinyl’s horn glowed red as she yelled, “Hey! Dude! Time out!”

My hooves scraped against the ground as I tried to pull free from Vinyl’s magic. “Let me go!”

“Save your strength for the enemy, Equus,” insisted Octavia.

Bicho spit on the ground. “This pony is clearly as mad as Quietus.”

“Zip it, Bicho!” Vinyl snapped. “This guy’s been through the grinder. He was almost murdered. Cut him some slack, can’t you?”

In a low, simmering voice, Bicho replied, “I can’t hear my Queen anymore, which means Quietus destroyed her mind. Half my hive is under the thrall of that ancient lunatic. At least a hundred of those who are loyal to me and the Under-Queen have died recently fighting his army. Who’s cutting any slack for me!”

My mother held out a hoof, gesturing at Bicho. “Come here,” she asked, her voice as gentle as a spring breeze.

Whether he was too world-weary to refuse or if it was because Mom had a calming manner he couldn’t resist, Bicho walked over to her and sat down, shoulders slumped. She held him in a loving embrace, her hooves stroking his scaled back.

My mom nuzzled his hard cheek as she said, “I know what it’s like to lose everything you cherish, believe me.”

Vinyl tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “That’s a pretty awesome mom you got.”

“Yeah, I know.” No wonder my dad fell for her so hard.

Pinkie wrapped her arms around both of them. I could hear Bicho whispering to my mom. She stroked his head reassuringly, calming him as if he were a nervous dog in a thunderstorm.

After a minute of this, Bicho slowly pulled away from their mutual embrace. He looked at me, head hung low in shame. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Equus.”

I shrugged, feeling just as crummy about myself. “I’m even more sorry for almost clobbering you. We both know what it’s like to lose our mothers. I guess we have more in common than I thought.”

He smiled and said, “I wish Chrysalis discovered you ponies instead of that crypt. Things would have been so much better for all of us.”

Twilight said, “There’s still time to make things right, Bicho.”

“You’re right,” Bicho replied. “Now let’s go save those ponies.”

* * *

What disturbed me most about the screams in the distant shadows of the cave was how much quieter they had become in the last few minutes. Were we too late to save anypony at all?

Fluttershy’s bats were sent ahead to investigate. When they came back, squeaking frantically, she said, “Oh, dear. They say only a few dozen ponies are alive, but a small army of grey changelings are guarding them.”

Vinyl pulled out her bolo saw and began to slowly spin it around her and Octavia.

Spike hopped onto Twilight’s back, popping his knuckles.

The swarm of changelings around us looked at Bicho in anticipation.

Twilight said, “Bicho? Can your people keep Quietus’s army off our backs while we free the prisoners?”

He nodded. “I’ll have a few fly them back to our camp. Just cut them loose and we’ll do the rest.”

“Good.” Twilight looked us over. “Ready, everypony?”

Pinkie pawed the ground impatiently. “Ready to roll.”

Applejack snorted. “Let’s ride.”

Twilight took a deep, calming breath. “Onward.”

A short run down the cave led to a cavern that was as big as an auditorium. I saw a tunnel near the back of the cave. A few hundred hooves ahead of us were torch lights that gave a yellow flickering glow to several long rows of wooden panels, some of which had advertisements for groceries plastered on. So that’s where Appleoosa’s wood went.

At first I thought that the grey changelings had set up a few fences. But then we ran past them. What we saw on the other side stunned even a career-hardened coroner like me.

It’s one thing to see wood-carvings of ancient torture in my family history book, but real gore always looks worse than what a drawing can convey.

Hundreds of dead ponies hung limp in their bonds. Cutie marks were missing. Wings were sawn off. Gut skins hung flaccid from disembowelment. Nails had been pounded head-deep into the hooves. Half the heads were skinned. Genitals were sliced away. In a distant campfire, I could see intestines smoke and sizzle in the high flames.

I looked at the ground. Troughs were dug between the rows. Blood trickled towards us, dragging skinned faces, organs and feathers away from the slaughter.

It was one thing to see one or more mangled bodies in my line of work. What lay before us was like seeing my eight years of working with the dead in one grisly bundle. Any good mortician or coroner knows how to distance themselves from the work, but how was I supposed to separate myself from this?

The ground squished under my hooves. It took a moment that I was standing in a pool of dirt-thickened blood. We all were. All of us leapt away towards drier ground as if the blood was electrified.

Octavia whispered, “Is that what the voice threatened to do to us?”

Vinyl grit her teeth, looking away from the nightmare. “Okay, these fucks need to die and they need to die bad.”

My heart thudded as the waves of pain I absorbed primed me like a gallon of sugary tea.

He needs to suffer the way he made THEM suffer.

Someone screamed up ahead. We all ran towards the sound as the changelings flew past us. We saw a few more rows of panels surrounding a large fire.

Grey changelings were so busy torturing screaming ponies, they didn’t notice us. Bicho led the charge as he yanked one changeling away and slammed him into a nearby stalactite. Several thick swarms of his army cleared the remaining greys away from their victims.

When the enemies were carried off to a corner of the cave, I turned my attention to the captives. I heard frantic squeaks, hisses and crunching sounds from that seething mass of insects, so I figured Bicho was giving as good as he got.

Only thirty ponies were still alive. Some sobbed and wailed from having their cutie marks sliced away, but were mostly unharmed. Applejack ran up and down the rows and skidded to a stop.

“Braeburn!” she cried.

I joined Applejack and saw that her cousin was crying and bleeding from having his cutie marks removed. Thankfully, that was his only apparent injury. Applejack and I untied him and eased him down to the ground.

Whoever imitated him did a bang-up job. I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was meeting him twice.

He wiped away his tears and squinted at Applejack. “Cuz? Is that really you?”

Applejack sniffed and wiped away her tears as she grinned. “Yep! Now listen, Braeburn. These here black changelings . . . ”

“Huh?”

She coughed. “These here black bugs are friendly. They’re gonna take you and the others someplace safe. We’ll be with you soon.”

After all the ponies were carried off to Bicho’s hideout, he examined the blood-stained panels and knives with shuddering revulsion. “Does this happen often in your world, Equus?”

“Not at this scale. Anymore. But my two jobs deal with a lot of murders and suicides. Love isn’t the only thing we ponies give each other.”

My mom quoted, “Death is our life.”

He scratched his head. “Strange phrase.”

“Family motto,” I replied.

Fluttershy’s bats zipped around her, squeaking. “They say Quietus is coming!”

From the cave I spotted earlier, we heard large, thudding steps and loud buzzing. A wave of grey changelings shot from the cave. They landed and waited. Quietus stepped into view, a bandage tightly wrapped around the back of his grey head.

As he walked, another swirl of grey changelings poured out and crowded behind him.

When he saw us, he grimaced. “Marrow Mortis, I am very disappointed in you. If your husband saw your treachery he would be revolted.”

Mom scowled. “You and I know two very different versions of him.”

My gut did a flip-flop. Oh, crud. I might have felt energized from the pain this monster had brought about, but I also kept getting flashbacks of my cutie marks burning up in a fire. It felt strange to be angry and scared at the same time.

Twilight and Rarity lit up the cave with their magic.

Vinyl’s chainsaw was now zipping at high speed.

“I am going to enjoy taking you and your friends apart, Equus,” said Quietus, his hoof steps slamming the ground in anger. “A blanket made from all of your skins will keep me warm in Nightmare Moon’s eternal night.”

Fluttershy trembled.

Applejack lowered her head and gritted her teeth, spoiling for a fight.

“I’ll make sure you die badly, Equus. Once I break your mother’s legs and wings, she’ll be forced to watch as I slowly pull your guts out.”

Bicho landed next to Twilight. “What’s the plan?”

“Simple,” she grit her teeth as her horn charged up. “We beat him until he stops breathing.”

Quietus pointed at us and yelled, “Kill them! But leave Equus and Marrow to me!”

Twilight fired a hot beam of purple magic at Quietus, but several grey changelings swooped down and took the brunt of the blast.

Since that was good a call to attack as any, my friends and I spread out and around Quietus and his army.

Spike hopped off of Twilight’s back, took a deep breath and released a wagon-sized ball of green fire, incinerating several grey changelings. One swooped down and lifted him off the ground, but Spike punched his attacker with the brass knuckles.

Spike’s custom-made weapon could shatter stones. The changeling’s head exploded in a shower of green goo and grey skull-fragments.

He fell a few feet before Bicho caught him. They nodded and smiled at each other. When Spike pointed at another grey changeling, Bicho chased it down. I had never heard of fly-by punching before, but those two doled out a lot of damage together.

Vinyl’s chainsaw whined as it sliced in half every grey changeling that attacked them. The mares kissed, ignoring the constant splatters of green blood on their fur. It reminded me of their concert. Quietus’s army must have been so starved for love, they were willing to dive into certain death to get a taste.

Applejack was holding her own as her powerful rear legs bucked two grey changelings into a row of blood-coated torture racks. She grabbed a large skinning knife off a nearby table. When one changeling peeled itself off the drying blood, Applejack slammed the knife between it’s wings. It screeched and went limp. She then leapt onto the last changeling and mashed it’s head into a shallow pool of congealed blood. Only after it stopped struggling did she back away.

She didn’t have the same manic grin I once had, only grim determination. I couldn’t help but wonder if this would impede or improve her grief therapy.

Pinkie Pie was so busy using her wheelchair as a wooden mace to flatten her opponents that she probably didn’t notice her own giggling. The more grey changelings screamed from her crushing blows and side-swipes, the more her muscles seemed to grow.

Fluttershy was never much of a nose-to-nose fighter, but she aimed her bats at several changelings. When those animals got into the fight, they became two sets of teeth with wings.

Rarity’s dress-making job had honed her ability to manipulate multiple objects at expert levels. She used her magic to pull multiple spikes out of several corpses and used them like arrows. When her spikes fired through one grey changeling, it fell apart like a cheap toy when it hit the ground.

Twilight was firing long-range purple beams at any enemies that threatened to overwhelm her or any nearby friends.

That left me and Mom. Quietus’s horn glowed and shot a blast at me. I jumped . . . and kept going up. My mother had grabbed me by the barrel and was flying me out of danger. I turned my head and saw blue gossamer wings buzzing out of her back.

Mom whooped and hollered. “Ha! So this is what those pegasi are always going on about! Flying is great!”

Quietus stamped a hoof in frustration as he kept firing and missing us. A few grey changelings flew at us, but one was fried by a green fireball. I heard Spike hollering something about getting ten points. The remaining opponents were skewered to the ceiling by Rarity’s spikes.

My mom hollered over the frantic din of combat, “Can’t you use your Element against him?”

“I only used it in combat once, Mom. Come to think of it, I never really had any real training with it.”

“Rainbow said the same thing,” she pondered. “She also said that all the Elements must be fired at the same time to defeat someone like Nightmare Moon.”

“We’re in a mountain. I don’t think we can send this bastard to the moon.”

She groaned in frustration. “Well, what are we going to do?”

Someone shoved us down. A black blur zinged past us, it’s dark hooves just missing my head.

“Oh! I’m sorry if I startled you!” cried Fluttershy as she let go and flew next us.

Mom said, “That one almost hit us! I thought the black changelings were on our side!”

“They are!” Fluttershy responded. “But we’ve hit a snag. Quietus’s changelings feed off of love, too. The longer we fight them, the stronger they get!”

A green blast pushed all of us sideways into a large stalactite with a massive thud. Marrow screamed as she lost her grip on me. There was at least two hundred hooves of distance between me and the ground. When half that distance closed in, Mom grabbed me again.

Fluttershy squealed in pain, trying to get her left wing straightened out. Another green beam slammed her into a wall, knocking her out.

Mom landed me next to the pegasus. I examined her and confirmed that her breathing was steady, but her wing had snapped at the carpal joint. It would take a month for that to heal.

But when I saw how healthy Quietus had become, I suddenly doubted any of us would live that long. His body had gained the sheen of black volcanic glass. The formerly miserable, tattered wings were healthy enough for Quietus to cautiously hover a few hooves off the ground.

He spotted Bicho in the distance. His now polished horn glowed green and shot him and Spike out of the air. Rarity caught both of them and guided them slowly to the ground.

“So this is the emotion that Chrysalis wanted so badly from me,” pondered Quietus as he admired his now-healthy body. “Perhaps my people should just lobotomize a few ponies until they don’t mind getting raped. That might produce healthier nutrients for my new army.”

Quietus grinned and pointed at Vinyl and Octavia. “It’ll be interesting to see how well that method works on sexual deviants like you two.”

The mares walked steadily towards him, the whirling saw dividing more changelings. “Yeah. Sure, pal,” Vinyl remarked with a sneer. “We’re the deviants. Riiight.”

Bicho was once again airborne with Spike in tow. “Is this all you can do, Quietus?” Fumed Bicho. “Dole out torture and death for your own use? And I thought my race was parasitic.”

“Oh, this?” Quietus made a sweeping gesture over the carnage as if it were an art gallery. “All that you see here is simply a means to an end. Such is the fate of the weak, to pave the way for the strong.”

He looked at me and mom with a resigned head shake. “Which is what the Mortis family once was and shall be again. But you two traitors will never be part of my family.”

Marrow stamped a hoof. “You aren’t family, you sick bastard! You’re just ugly history!”

His horn glowed again as his eyes gleamed with madness. “No, Marrow. I’m the future.”

Just as Quietus prepared to fire, Spike spit a green fireball at his head. In a flash, his blue hair and bandages burst into flame.

As he screamed, he spun around in a blind panic.

Vinyl and Octavia, spotting the chance to attack, charged at him. In a flash of red-tinted saw blades, Quietus’s front right leg had a gaping, slimy hole chewed into it. A few seconds of sawing later, the lower half of his leg was yanked away with a loud crack of snapping chitin.

Quietus whirled his left front hoof out in a wild swing and swatted Vinyl in the head, shattering her glasses. The rope chainsaw wavered from the sudden lack of magical control and spun away like a lethal frisbee. It bounced off a nearby stalactite and landed in some rocks.

Twilight snatched the mares away from him with her magic.

Octavia wiped away a trickle of blood from her lover’s brow. “Vinyl! Are you all right?”

“Ooogh!” Vinyl shook her head, trying to get both her eyes pointed in the same direction. “Feels like I got bashed with a frickin’ tree.”

Twilight cried out, “Everypony! He’s off-balance! Knock him over!”

Rarity tried to fire her beams at Quietus, but his changelings kept blocking her shots.

Bicho flew in a wide circle overhead, aiming Spike like a cannon. One fireball connected with Quietus’s leg-stump, making him topple sideways. They both cheered but stopped when Quietus righted himself with a few flaps of his wings.

“Oh, crap!” cried Spike. “I’m out of ammo, Bicho! Get us out of here!”

Pinkie Pie zipped over to Quietus, her wheelchair bouncing over the rocks. When she was next to him, she swung her chair around, connecting with his rear left leg. In an explosion of wood fragments, her right wheel shattered.

Now helpless and flat on her back, she could only scream as Quietus fell towards her. Then Applejack ran up, bit into her mane and yanked Pinkie way. A second later, he landed with a crunch on what remained of her wheelchair.

Pinkie hugged Applejack. “Just like the old days, huh, A.J.?” she beamed.

Applejack hauled her onto her back, Pinkie’s rear legs dangling uselessly. “Yep,” she said. “Good times. Let’s get you outta here.”

I was so busy staring at what everyone else was doing, I didn’t notice my mom poking me in the shoulder.

“He’s down!” she shouted. “Now’s your chance!”

Since I didn’t want his large legs bashing me like Vinyl, I said to Mom, “Drop me on top of him.”

My mom lifted me up and over Quietus as he howled in pain and rage, struggling to get upright. His wings were frantically buzzing. That made them my first target.

When I was above him, I said, “Okay, right here.”

I landed with a thud on his side, his rocking body making my hooves slip over his glass-smooth shell. Without a second thought, I opened my mouth wide and bit down on his right wing. It was like biting into a large plastic candy wrapper. A shot of delicious, succulent pain flowed into me, giving me the strength to bite down and yank my head sideways.

With a loud ripping sound, his wing peeled away from his body. Quietus arched his back and shrieked.

Now you know how I feel, Quietus. This is your future. But not your absolution.

I spit out the severed wing and chomped into the other. Grunting as I pulled it out, I actually enjoyed the sound of his shrieks. The wing muscles snapped like cheap rubber-bands, which made me giggle as the wing was ripped off.

He managed to buck me off him. As I hit the floor, the remaining wing popped out of my mouth. That’s when my body began to glow green.

Quietus propped himself up on his leg-stump, his long neck craning around behind him. He had gripped me in his magic and pulled me around to face him. But he made the mistake of holding me close to his head.

I bunched up my rear legs and gave him a face-bucking that made him drop me in an instant. He screamed, holding his right hoof over his muzzle. After landing on my rump, which stung only a little, I got up and faced him.

Rearing up, I swung my front hooves down on his right leg, exposing his true face. Quietus’s right eye had swollen shut. Most of his front teeth had been knocked out. Green blood trickled from the hoof-shaped cracks in her right cheek. His remaining eye stared at me with the same fear one gives to an approaching tornado.

I know how to hurt you now. And I wish to keep on hurting you. I . . .

Quietus’s good eye squinted as he gave a short, phlegmy laugh. “It’s addictive, isn’t it?” he chortled.

“What is?”

“The pain of others, of course. Look at you. Giving me more damage than I gave you. I was wrong about you, Equus. You’re a Mortis after all. You’re just like me.”

“I’m nothing like you!”

He grinned a gap-toothed smile. “Really? You killed my assassin without a trace of remorse. You’re fighting me even with your destiny marks cut off, an injury that would have put a lesser pony on the sidelines. You tore my wings away, smiling all the while. But here comes the funny part.”

Raising a brow, I inquired, “Go on.”

“Aren’t you forgetting that I am the doorway between this world and the land of the dead? If you kill me, and let’s be honest, it’s the only way you can stop me, your mother dies, too!”

I felt like a ten-pound block of ice dropped into my gut.

He chuckled. “Murder and matricide in one day? Nightmare Moon would be impressed.”

Not too long ago, if I found myself doing something questionable, I would ask myself, “Is this something dad would do?” If the answer was yes, I’d stop immediately.

And I had been acting a lot like my dad lately. Only he didn’t have the luxury of drinking up pain like water.

I remembered something my mother said in a letter to Dad. “It’s almost as if you were already prepared for violence.”

I almost hit Bicho for simply yelling at me.

Pain energized me and even made me smile, the kind Pinkie Pie had when Nightmare Moon made Pinkie torture her friend to death.

Was I always going to be more like my father than I ever wanted to be, no matter what I did? Would I always have blood on my hooves?

Would history repeat itself, with even more bloodshed and pain?

Just like what Quietus wanted?

Even though this monster had hijacked an insect body, I could still see the tombstones in Quietus’s remaining eye.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from examining hundreds of murders and suicides, it’s that death comes to us all. But death is all Quietus wanted for Equestria. Because that’s all he knew.

I blinked. And looked at him with greater clarity.

As ruthless as this sociopath was, he had a very small life. Inflicting death and torture were the entirety of his talents and ambitions. Nothing else was allowed.

At least my dad knew what love was before Mom died. Before he let Nightmare Moon’s madness consume his life and made him into a monster. Into something I always feared I might become.

My father nearly killed a mugger to protect my mother.

That’s the Ivory Mortis I wanted to remember.

Would killing Quietus be something Dad would do?

If it meant protecting the many ponies that enriched my life in ways my dad would never have allowed for himself?

The many ponies that I loved?

I raised my hooves over his head.

The first blow crushed his muzzle, tooth fragments digging into my hooves.

Quietus shrieked, trying to turn away from me, but it was too late. My agony-charged body felt twice it’s size as I kept wailing on Quietus’s fragmenting skull, the green blood and chitin fragments flying all around me as I kept beating and beating and beating and . . .

“EQUUS MORTIS!” shouted my mother.

I snapped my eyes open, shuddering as if waking from a violent dream.

“Whuh?”

I looked down and saw a portion of Quietus’s jaw dangling from the top of his neck. Only a third of his skull was intact, the rest had been scattered all around his limp body.

My hooves were caked with green blood and dark brown viscera. They began to shiver as a low groan bubbled up my throat.

My mom took me by my shoulders and pulled me away from the body. My groans turned into racking sobs.

“It’s all right, Equus,” she assured me in a soft, maternal voice. I shivered in spite of her warm hug.

“M-mom . . . I . . . c-can’t believe I did that! I couldn’t stop! W-why . . . ”

Through the swirling fog of my grief, a disturbing fact came to mind.

My mother was still here, holding her only son. But I killed Quietus, so everyone he brought back from the land of the dead should have returned there by now.

That meant . . .

Pinkie screamed. When I saw that she was pointing behind me, I turned around. And stopped breathing.

Quietus smiled at me. His original pony body floated above Chrysalis’s body, glowing white with spectral energy.

“I told you before, Equus. When Nightmare Moon brought me back, I was less than flesh, but more than a mere ghost. I’ve absorbed just enough pain from this fight to stay in this world.”

He was giving off more light by the moment.

“I suppose I’ll have to possess you now, Equus. Then I’ll make you kill your mother. With your strength and my skills, it’ll take hours before she dies.”

The glow from within . . . no, from behind him suddenly flared brighter.

His hooves touched my head.

Then two silhouetted hooves reached out from the circle of light, wrapped around his throat and pulled Quietus away from me.

We all stared in jaw-dropped awe at the sight of a back-lit pony rising behind him. A mare. With a short, spiky, colorful mane.

“Gotcha!” she shouted. “Can’t hide if you’re a ghost, pal!”

Quietus thrashed and screamed with wide-eyed terror. “No! Let me go! I won’t go back!”

Applejack, with Pinkie still on her back, ran up and stopped next to me. Tears brimmed in their eyes.

“Dashie?” they asked together.

Clamping a hoof over Quietus’s mouth, Rainbow Dash looked at us and casually asked, “Hey, what’s up?”

When Applejack stepped towards her, Dash held up her free hoof. “Ah-ah! Sorry, guys. Where we’re going, you can’t follow. Not for a long time, anyway.”

Something moved behind Rainbow Dash. A tall, pointy-eared biped waved an arm at her, impatiently barking a language I didn’t recognize.

She blushed and snickered. “Oops! I’m spilling the beans again! Sorry, Anubis! Thanks for your help, Mrs. Mortis! Be good, everypony! Bye!”

Rainbow flapped her wings, yanking Quietus away from this world. A moment later, the light blinked off.

Changelings began to drop all around us. Quietus’s army, after a thousand year wait, was getting dragged back home. The doorway had closed for them.

My mother cried out and fell over.

Panicked, I scooped her up and held her close. My friends and Bicho gathered around us.

“You resemble your father more than you know,” she whispered.

My ears flattened. “I know. I’m a murderer.”

“That’s not what I mean, Equus. He knew what love was, even if he only had love for me. You have love for your friends. And you have made lots of those.”

Vinyl nodded. “Got that right.”

My mom began to tremble.

“Mom? Mom, please don’t die.”

She sighed as her eyes slowly closed. “I’ve been dead for twenty-five years, dear. But I had to come back.”

“Mom . . .”

“I had to come back to save you.”

“Don’t go.”

“I’m so glad I did.”

“Please?”

“I’m proud of you, son.” She began to flicker. “I love you.”

Suddenly I was bathed in green fire, but I didn’t burn.

Marrow Mortis was gone. A limp black changeling was all that remained.

“NO!” I hollered.

Tightly holding the insect in my arms, crying harder than when I was getting tortured, I had suddenly realized something.

I was the only pony in the world that had ever lost his parents twice.

Author's Note

"To Glory" by Two Steps From Hell is orchestral music that will make you bang your head. And read this chapter.