Chapters Pick a card.
The seat Twilight sat on was cold. By her count, she had waited two days, hoping to bore the Card Master into letting her go. His games could be beat, Celestia had proven that, but whatever magic he had would work its way into her the same way it had for Celestia.
Princess, please. Even you can't count the hours forever. How long until you start skipping days, or forgetting weeks? The world will not be the same by the time I tire of waiting.
Twilight didn't react. She didn't want to give any sign that the Card Master was getting to her, but the darkness was maddening. The soil at her hooves felt like rough dirt, but it was impossible to tell what it was. Similarly, the walls of what she assumed was the Card Master's tent was shrouded in the same darkness.
Stand and stare all you want, just pick a card.
The Princess's eyes flicked to the center of the darkness. Just one card to pick from. Its edges glowed with magic, shimmering and pulsing like it was trying to call to her. She definitely couldn't avoid the fact that her cutie mark was replicated on the back of the card, while the front shifted its images second to second, never stopping long enough for Twilight to see what would come from the card.
"You're not a cheater, Card Master," she told the Card Master. "One card, with no equipment, that's not your usual game. If this is different, what are the rules?"
Tsk tsk, why spoil the fun Princess?
Twilight scowled at the way the Card Master addressed her. Not only did his voice permeate the darkness, his tone was calm and an intimate, his words feeling their way along her coat. "Don't 'Princess' me, you don't care about that status. I don't think you care about anything but your own games."
You're very wrong. Oh Princess, I wish you'd play. I've never pulled out this game before, even for your beautiful mentor.
"You don't get to say things like that." Twilight immediately became defensive, aiming her horn all across the darkness. "You changed her, altered subtle things that only ponies who truly knew her would recognize. You're sick, ensuring she'd only hurt the ones closest to her."
Pick a card. I promise, you captivate me far more than the radiant sun. You will stay in my game long enough for the fun to begin.
Twilight ground her teeth against each other. The Card Master was infuriatingly relentless, and she knew she'd only be able to handle another day or two before she completely lost all her senses. With the strongest reluctance, Twilight reached out with her horn and brought the card closer with her magic.
The Card Master said nothing, which Twilight instantly recognized to mean there was something more for her to do. It was the same silence Celestia gave her when she was very close to figuring out a spell, even if she didn't know it, and the same silence she gave Spike when he was on the brink of solving the morning's crossword.
She felt like a child or a doll, being played with by a higher power. Twilight glanced at the flashes of images on her card before reading it out loud. "The First Griffon War," read the card. Images slowed to a stand still, molding the scene into a battlefield of pegasi and griffons. She couldn't make out the the landscape, but Twilight knew she would see it in full detail.
In came the howling winds. They flowed through her mane with the coming tide. She smelled the sea breeze, distinctively Manehattan but with none of the bustling ponies and cluttered streets. The shoreline was littered in feathered bodies. Twilight sank into the rough dirt, slowly, until sand covered her hooves entirely. Wet, and soaked, her wings strained her muscles in an attempt to pull herself out.
A stone shot struck the beach and threw her back toward the land. War machines like that had not been used for thousands of years, this she knew for certain. Twilight decided to take to the sky and figure out her surroundings. No sooner did she taste the clouds than she felt another ballista shot plunge through the air. It nearly struck her, missing only by the force of luck.
She pondered calling out to the Card Master, but shut her mouth when she focused her sight on the ships that swelled on the waves toward the shore. Griffon banners, all across the sails, Twilight saw. Ahead of the galleys a small fort stood vigilantly, braving the storm and the wind.
"Why attack by sea?" Twilight asked herself. The card wouldn't lie. She knew the Card Master would find no amusement in simple dishonesty. She looked again, returning to land to avoid the howling shots. Of course, it was the land. The fort, Twilight turned her attention to it, and saw the difficulty the Griffons would have.
Pegasi defended their earth pony brethren to the death, dependent on the food they produced. The skies were as thick as the earth, bounded by storms clouds and claps of thunder, charged by the infinite power of lightning. Twilight understood that the Griffons could attack the skies, but like them, she understood war far better.
Ultimate victory would not be determined by those who could fight and win, but by those who could fight and win, and do it all with little effort. A surprise assault on the coast rendered the Pegasi defenseless. But Twilight knew just a little more than that fact. She had read the legends of the First Griffon War, and all tellings of the story did not end in Equestria's victory.
"If stopping war-hungry griffons is what I have to do, then so be it," she murmured, gliding low across the beach toward the fort that would burn under feathered talons. The gates were sealed by magic, a gift from the Unicorns who ate earth pony bread and drank earth pony cider. The symbols hummed and shook at the presence of an alicorn princess, erupting in power and forcing open the heavy wooden gates.
"Every pony has to evacuate!" Twilight announced. "The griffons will take this fort by nightfall!"
All bodies froze in the encampment, all eyes locked onto the purple messenger. Twilight stared back, anticipating their panic and listing all her methods to control the ponies. She was, after all, a princess of Equestria. One by one, they began to move frantically. Ponies packed their carts with food and filled their saddlebags with ammunition and weapons.
Twilight stepped forward, eager to lead the ponies to safety, even if they were only constructs of the Card Master.
Watch.
The word hit her in the chest, pulling the air out of her just for a moment. It was enough to give Twilight a jolt, but she managed to take the advice and focus on the ponies. They rushed, for sure. They rumbled across the trodden dirt with all things for war. But they unloaded them too. A few pegasi ferried carts from the fort, dragging weapons and ammunition into tunnels underground.
"Didn't you hear what I said?" Twilight cried out. This time, few even glanced her way. It was a spell, she was sure of it, a magic to make her unnoticed by the ponies, because the Card Master didn't want her to ruin his game. But they did react at first, Twilight thought. Why then?
A stallion rushed by, knocking over the princess without another word. More ponies ran by, ether trotting over her or stepping aside.
"Fine," Twilight whispered to herself as she pushed herself off the ground, "I'll find out what's going on by myself."
If it was an evacuation, she assumed the tunnels would be for supplies to the next fortress. She followed them, seeing where they were headed. No records were kept of the events between the major battles of the First Griffon War, but if she had an idea of where they would be, she could figure out a way to help them prepare for the battles she had read about.
"Hey you!" a voice caught her. A stallion's hoof blocked her way to the tunnel entrances before pointing to the top of the fort's walls. "We could use a helping hoof on the wall turrets."
Twilight turned to the weapons facing the coast, mounted along the top of the walls. Slingshots and trebuchets fired repeatedly, slowing the griffon fleet.
"I want to see where they're taking the carts," Twilight told the stallion, fully aware he was nothing more than a pawn for the Card Master.
He laughed. "Every pony wants to see the action. Trust me, the walls are the best spot to see the griffon fleet face pegasi warriors."
Whatever the card she was in had planned, Twilight guessed the whole point was to play along. It was the first card, after all, and she needed to know what she was facing. The stallion led her up to the top of the wall where earth ponies and even some unicorns were firing heavy stones from their own trebuchets.
"Load a rock in and let it loose," the stallion said, directing Twilight to a pile of rocks. He showed her the steps to reload once the stone was fired, and then took a spot at the weapon next to her. "Don't think about aiming, we just have to hold the griffons until the pegasi are ready."
Twilight didn't like the idea of hurling stones at others, but reminded herself with each shot it wasn't real. She wasn't sure if it was her morality or the magic of the card, but each stone that landed on the deck of a ship told her otherwise.
Finally, a horn blasted from inside the fortress, and every pony stopped working. The trebuchets were halted and every pony rushed up to the fortress to see how the pegasi fared.
"What's going on?" Twilight asked the stallions that led her to the top of the walls. "I don't see any pony, and an attack from the sky would just crash against the defenses on the Griffon ships."
The stallion just grinned and pointed at the shore. The attack came. It rose slowly at first, like the tide following the moon. Water reached up and split, and the griffons could not react in time to the spikes. Like flipped ships, the large shields of the pegasi erupted onto the surface of the sea. The soldiers under each shield working in sync. Locking together, the array of shields formed a wall, placing the spikes on their surface in the path of the griffons.
The cracking of wood could be heard even from the fort as dozens of ships met hundreds of shields, and from under those shields rose thousands of pegasi. Their battlecry, as Twilight heard it, rung around the world announcing that Equestria would not fall easily to any force. As the Griffons sank, the pegasi rose, flying up the sides of the galleys and slicing the throats of the griffons as they passed by.
"This isn't right," Twilight mumbled to herself. "Starswirl himself wrote a chapter on this battle, saying how the ponies lost."
"And you believe it, Princess?"
Twilight jumped aside at the Card Master's voice, spoken through the vessel of the stallion. She glanced around at the crowd surrounding her, but every pony at the fort was gone. The only thing that remained was the raging battle along the coast.
"What are you trying to do?" She asked him.
"I'm trying to tell you something about this place, Princess. You should listen harder."
She shook her head, pointing to the battle with a wing. "This never happened. Starswirl himself wrote what Celestia told him about the First Griffon War, and Celestia was around-"
"A thousand years ago, yes. And when she ascended to power, she heard from the elders and learned to lead the three races. Elders who heard stories from their parents, who heard it from their parents, who were once certain that their grandparents were here on this battlefield."
Twilight furrowed her brow, considering the possibility. The war was ancient, even before the earliest written documents, but that didn't mean what she read was incorrect.
"Please, don't be so proud, or worse, naive. Stories change from pony to pony. Do you think this is any different?"
"So how do you know what happened?" Twilight countered. "There's no way you could be so old. I don't even think Discord's that old."
"You're right. In fact, I'm not even as old as Celestia. I died here on this battlefield after the battle was won. A griffon, desperate to find honor and glory, fired the last ballistas on his ship. One shot went wide, and found me while I stood by my trebuchet."
It was a sad story, to have died for no reason, but it didn't explain anything to Twilight. "What does that have to do with cards or games?"
"That is the Card Master's business. I'm trapped here in my story, watching the end play out over and over."
The stallion turned away from Twilight and faced the coast. His eyes locked on to a ship in the distance. A single griffon soldier, surrounded by pegasi troops, slashed his claw across a row of ballistas, damaging the mechanisms. One shot went wide, and soared through the air.
"You don't have to let it be that way," Twilight said, moving to pushed the stallion aside. She took a step but moved no further, frozen by the will of the card alone, and tumbled backwards as the heavy stone eliminated the section of the wall.
That looked painful.
Twilight rolled off the floor, this time sure of the Card Master's presence, and faced the direction of the voice. She was back in the endless darkness, and felt the dirt below her hooves slip away and leave behind a cold, blank platform. In front of her was the Card Master, clad in a hooded robe and standing calmly in place.
I'm afraid that card can no longer entertain you and I, Princess.
"Who was that?" she asked. "He was speaking with your voice, but he acted apart from you."
The dead do not speak, even you should understand this. Instead, I must lend them my voice.
Twilight was taken aback by the subtle tone the Card Master had. Even she should understand? She understood perfectly well, and as a Princess of Equestria, she had a responsibility to her people. Why wouldn't she understand?
"What are you talking about?" she hissed at him. "I've never acted as if life does matter, or as if death isn't a reality."
But have you actually been through it? Have you seen death with your own eyes?
Twilight hesitated this time to retort.
Tell me, Princess, when was the last time you felt death? A friend? Family?
A hoof tugged at Twilight's right wing. "It's my mommy miss," squeaked a little voice. She whirled around with a jolt, staring at the little figure in front of her. A small unicorn, even younger than Sweetie Belle, looked up at her with desperate eyes.
"Can you help? It's what you do as our new Princess, right?"
Twilight wasn't sure how to respond. Her first reaction was to follow and see what the problem was, and figure out how to solve it. But if everything was going to be like the last card, then the events were set, no matter what she tried.
"What are you trying to do Card Master?" Twilight turned around and began drawing power to her horn, aiming it at the Card Master. At his range, she couldn't have missed, and she didn't. The bolt of magic struck the tree stump in the very center and shattered it, sending splinters across the edge of the forest.
The filly shrieked and jumped back, tripping on the roots of a tree.
"I'm so sorry!" Twilight said, catching the filly with magic before she hit her head on the ground. "Are you okay?"
The little unicorn just stared at her with wide eyes, and then at crater that once held a tree stump. "Luna, why did you destroy that stump?"
Twilight furrowed her brow. "Luna's the Princess of the Night, my name is-"
Twilight noticed her magic around the filly. Her magic aura glowed a different color. She placed the unicorn back on the ground and quickly cast a mirror image spell on herself.
Before them, a faintly glowing apparition appeared and formed into the mirror image of Twilight. Though it remained somewhat translucent, it was clearly not what Twilight wanted to see.
The filly stepped away slowly. "Are you alright Princess Luna?" She was right. The image was not Twilight's body, but Luna's instead. It was a younger form too, she noticed, with her size and mane not yet at their peak of power. Luna's mane sat still on her head, light blue and devoid of magic power.
"I'm fine," Twilight sighed, looking at the filly. Another pony from the past, she presumed. The very far past. "Didn't you say something about your mother? I'd like to see her."
The filly returned to her normal attitude and gestured down a road, leading to a small cottage at the top of the hill. "It's the nightmares. My mommy can't sleep."
Twilight felt uneasy doing Luna's work, even in a card's setting, but she followed the unicorn back to her family anyways. She didn't trust any of what the Card Master was showing her, but as far as she knew there was no other way. Even as she walked, Twilight could feel her own actions merge with Luna's, and though every action had a thought behind it, it seemed as if her free will was only an illusion within the card. Willing or not, she'd play to its rules.
They arrived at the cottage in a few minutes, and Twilight immediately got to work. The mother was hysterical, screaming in some kind of night terror and throwing pots and vases onto the floor.
"Get out! Get out!" she shrieked, frantically searching her home for more objects. "Get away from me!"
Twilight lifted her horn and grappled the unicorn mother with magic, suspending her in a field of magic to prevent her from causing further damage. "Does this happen often?" she asked the filly.
"It started just a few days ago, after daddy died," she said, then pointed to a scorpion tail mounted on the wall. "Some bounty hunters killed the manticore, but they couldn't save my dad."
It must be trauma, Twilight thought to herself. She knew what she needed to do, but the question was how. She'd only seen Luna join dreams once, when she had to chase down the Tantabus, and she couldn't figure out how the spell was cast. Furthermore, if she could even get inside the mother's head, how would she navigate the nightmare to fix it?
"Do you have anything to sedate her?" Twilight asked. "I need her to sleep."
The little filly nodded and scurried into the kitchen, kicking around the shattered clay and glass from her mother's night terrors. She returned seconds later with a jar of dried herbs from from one of the cabinets, miraculously untouched. "When I'm too scared of the dark to sleep, mommy mixes this with a cup of water so I can sleep better."
Twilight took the jar and moved into the kitchen, still focusing on holding the mother still in the other room. She brewed a strong mixture of the herbs, mostly with magic as the stove and oven were broken by a few bashes from an iron pan. Likely the mother's doing, Twilight assumed.
Once the tea was finished and the scent of the herbs filled the kitchen, she followed the filly to the mother's bedroom and prepared the bed. She set the mother down, swaddling her with two layers of blankets so that she could barely move, and slowly drizzled the tea into the mother's mouth.
"Here I go," Twilight muttered, tapping into her magic. Likely by the will of the card, she was able to create the dream spell to walk in the dream of the mother, though there was little to see.
The long corridor of locked doors was dimly lit, but with a little magic light, Twilight could just about read out the labels on each door. "Spiders," one read, while another had "Drowning" scribbled on it. They were the mother's fears. Twilight grappled with the first door, the fear of spiders, and broke the lock with relative ease.
Inside was pretty much what she expected, though it still shocked her nonetheless. Thousands of spiders, of varying species no less, invaded the room. Twilight could barely make out what was under the living layer, but saw the panicking figure at the center of the room just fine. The mother was less hysterical, but still very afraid. Her beams of magic kept the spiders at bay, but she was clearly exhausted from the strain.
Twilight herself was not overly fond of spiders, but luckily, her friend Fluttershy had gotten her over her qualms with the creatures. Confident she knew what to do, Twilight stepped into the room. First, there was a soft rumble and dozens of spiders moved in unison to crawl up her leg, but her limited reaction quickly drove off the spiders, even pushing them back to clear a path to the mother.
"I'm here to help you," she told the mother, reaching out with a hoof. "Come with me, and let me guide you."
"I can't, they're everywhere," the mother said, continuing shoot rays of magic around herself.
Twilight decided she couldn't work with her if she was so distracted by the spiders. She formed a shield around them pushing the swarm to the edges of the room, though not completely removing them. "Have you always been this afraid of spiders?"
She shook her head. "My husband, we were childhood friends even before our teenage years. He'd always drive away the really big spider, the kind that sometimes wandered from the forests. I've gotten used to having him around, and now, with him gone..."
"The fear comes back, doesn't it?" Twilight asked. The mother nodded.
Reaching out with magic, she got a feel of the dream's condition. Twilight touched the fear as is it was a physical form, but it was weak. There were insecurities for sure, but web around the mother's dream and mind was thin.
"Follow me," she told the mother. "This is your dream, you have control over it. You believe you can't handle your fears, but your husband only filled a place in your life you could fill yourself."
"Princess Luna, I'm not strong like you," the mother replied, "There's just too many things that I'm afraid off. I don't think I can be brave."
"You don't have a choice now," Twilight persisted. "Your daughter lost her father, and she needs you now, more than ever. Just because you have fears doesn't mean you can't be brave enough to face them. Bravery isn't about being fearless, it's about having fears but facing the challenge anyway. Can't you do that, even if it's just for your daughter?"
The mother paused, considering what her little one must be going through. Losing a father was bad enough, having a mother taken by fear was something she couldn't let her daughter live through. "Yes," she finally said. "I'll follow you. I'll let you help me."
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"Steady yourself, it can smell your fear." Twilight cautioned the mother, guiding her steps slowly towards the manticore. It was one of the strongest fears, and for good reason. Regardless, she had to confront the source of her fears, and Twilight knew exactly how.
She reached out with her mind, touching the mother with her magic. Manticores were deadly creatures, but not mindless killers. Twilight once saw them as a threat, and would have reacted to one as such if it weren't for her friend's display of kindness and charm. She showed the mother this, and fed the kindness into her heart.
"Don't try it Princess Luna," the mother warned. "After what it's done to my family, if I can't fear the beast I'll surely hate it."
The memory replayed, over and over like a broken recording. Trapped in its nest, surrounded by mountain walls, neither the manticore nor her husband had anywhere to go.
"Animals have fears too," Twilight told her, "no matter how big they are, they still act on fear, just as your husband did."
Her husband did act on fear, launching stones with magic the moment he caught sight of the manticore near him. His eyes saw only gnawing fangs that shredded flesh, punctured veins, and devoured children. The beast felt the sting of the rocks, weapons used by a unicorn to attack its lair. The scent was minute, unknown even to some of its species, but this manticore knew the scent well.
The memory replayed, over and over with a bloody fear. A family of manticores, slaughtered by a unicorn hunting for hides. The smell of magic burned the air. A subtle aura, but noticeable by the young manticore who suffered the loss of its parents. From then on, magic meant danger, and the husband's rocks were plastered with the scent of his magical aura.
The mother watched the memory as it replayed, softened by the manticore's own suffering but still not entirely convinced. "What can I do? The bounty hunters killed the beast, but revenge hasn't brought back my husband."
"Forgive it," Twilight told her. "Your plague does not lie with the loss of you husband alone. Let go of your rage toward the the beast, and your fears of future danger will wash away with it. Understand that the world you live in is not always hungering for death, though it can seem so at times."
"I have to worry, for the sake of my daughter," the mother defended.
"And caution can only go so far," replied Twilight. "Do not hate the dangers you cannot control, or you'll never control it. Fight to know it, to connect with it, and then you will have nothing to fear."
The mother tried, and as she tried, the manticore seemed less and less. It shrunk and crawled away into the corners of the room, until every inch of the nightmare was cleaned.
"Good, just one more nightmare, and you'll return to your daughter," Twilight said. She teleported them out of the dream room, returning to the hallway. The final door was the largest, locked down with chain and metal bars.
"I cannot do this unless you are ready," Twilight told the mother.
The mother looked at the door for a while, gazing at the humming door nob, and took a deep breath. The chains slipped away, tearing off their locks, leaving the door hanging wide open. Twilight took the first step in, guiding the mother. The room was smaller than she expected, but still as dark as the other nightmares. In the middle of the room, a child. The filly looked like the mother's daughter, but at times it wasn't.
Twilight looked hard at the figure as it changed. She couldn't tell what it was doing, only that the filly looked different from time to time.
"It's me," the mother said.
Twilight looked again and the figure took its shape as the mother, only much younger. Like a ghost, it walked through them, kneeling beside two crumpled bodies. It rested its head down and cried with no sound.
Twilight looked to the mother for some explanation.
"I lost my parents in a house fire," she explained. "My husband's family, our families were friends back then so they took me in. This place, this was the room they died in when the burning roof collapsed on them."
"Does it still bother you?" Twilight asked.
The mother shook her head. "I honestly don't remember much from my youth."
While that may have been a simple fact, there was something that told Twilight that the mother wasn't completely sure herself, or was holding something in so deeply she wasn't completely aware of it herself. "Why do you think we're here?" she asked. "There's something about this that's been with you all these years."
The mother had a look of thoughtfulness for a moment. "I guess I've always been kind afraid to be on my own. I can do things by myself just fine, but the thought of not having a home with others around me is just... disturbing."
"What about your daughter? You're not alone, you have her." The image blurred, suddenly becoming the family's cottage. The daughter was the mother now, sitting in the middle of the home with teary eyes.
"Princess Luna, what would happen if I just gave in?" asked the mother. "I want to see him, my husband. If you take my daughter and raise her well in Canterlot, nothing's stopping me from being with my husband."
Twilight's eyes widened. "You don't mean..."
"He's been with me my whole life," she explained, "I have to do the same and be there for him."
"I can't take your child," Twilight said, the words coming almost of their own free will. "The castle's no place for a child. My sister and I, we're barely putting together the local governments, and the three pony races still have problems to resolve before they can work seamlessly together. She'd better off with you anyways. A daughter shouldn't be apart from her mother."
The nightmare slowly softened, and the mother sighed as if dropping a heavy weight. "Your right, family is family. I can't leave her."
Twilight smiled. "Good, that's the last of the nightmare doors." She turned and faced the hallway. "Time to get you back home." She raised her horn and shut off the spell, tearing herself out of the mother's dream.
The shock of coming out of the dream jarred Twilight, and she teetered on her hooves from the sudden exhaustion of the spell. They had been in the dream for hours, long enough for the sun to dip into the horizon. Instinctively, she rushed out of the cottage and began to raise the moon.
You deserve hot cocoa tonight. It's been a long day, and you deserve it. Twilight wondered if those thoughts were Luna's or her own. She was exhausted, not only from the magic but guiding the mother through her fears. Though, for all the insecurities she suppressed, the endeavor took less time than she expected. If nothing else, she could at least respect Luna a bit more for the power of dreams.
There was a shattering from the kitchen and a muffled scream. Twilight let go of the moon, setting it on its nightly course, and rushed back into the cottage.
Her stomach churned at what she saw. Two spots, red and splattered, and the little unicorn barely moving.
"What is the meaning of this?" Twilight roared with the unmistakable royal voice.
The mother didn't listen, though she clearly heard it. She reached with her magic and grabbed her child, and thrashed her against the last of the plates. Twilight's first instinct was to turn away from the sight of skin peeling from the skull. But if the mother wouldn't stop herself, some pony else would.
Twilight tackled the mother into a wall, breaking her attention long enough to levitate the unicorn to safety. "She's your daughter! I thought you were going to be with her!"
In the face of Twilight's rage and Luna's power, the mother was nothing but calm. "You don't see how dangerous it is outside the cities. The world's full of dangers and I can't protect her from any of them. I'll fail as a mother unless I do this. We'll be with her father again, all because of me. We'll be a family, because I became a parent for once."
"The threat is gone! Stop this before it's too-" Twilight was cut of as the mother prodded her eye with the tip of her horn. Even as she blinked the pain away, she turned around to face the mother. Her vision was blurred but the kitchen knife slashing the filly's neck was too clear. And then, it was too late.
All Twilight could do was ask. Herself, the mother, and even the Card Master. "Why?"
The mother looked to Twilight and smiled. Her last words went unheard. The blood gurgled in her mouth and spilled from her throat. The knife fell and all ceased.
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A whole family gone
Where did she go wrong
Lock after lock the doors opened the fears and the fears left so everything was fine Nothing was fine it couldn't have ever been fine
did she fail or did Luna or was it both of them who couldn't help what did the card try to say?
Get your head together Princess. You've only witnessed two deaths.
Twilight tried to stand, but her hooves shook took much to even balance. "You're sick. That's all their is to it."
Go on.
"I don't want to, I'm done."
I'm afraid that's not allowed.
"I don't care!" Twilight shouted, stomping onto the dark floor. "Whatever you're trying to tell me, I don't get it. I admit it, I don't understand your lessons."
Neither did the Princess of the Night. She did not know what went wrong.
Twilight gazed up at the Card Master standing in front of her. Despite the darkness, he could still be seen like he was in broad daylight. "I know Princess Luna. Something so terrible, she would have said."
Their lives outlive their memories. For the Princess of the Night, her own darkness took much of the past away.
"Why did you show me that card then?" Twilight asked, finally regaining her footing to match the Card Master's gaze. "It's just plain horrible. What could it possibly do to the world now?"
Did you honestly think you could slip in and resolve the problem? You were more than a perfect fit for the Princess of the Night.
"You said she didn't know what went wrong either," Twilight said. "What was it?"
Power. You know the saying, "absolute power corrupts absolutely."
"I'm not corrupt."
You trotted in blindly and forced the situation, like a god among ponies. You may not have ill intent, but your mind is clouded with power, as was the Princess of the Night's. The notion that magic and dreams can resolve that much fear and trauma is too much. Like the princess before you, it was far too easy.
"There wasn't any time," Twilight defended. "The dream couldn't last forever, and filly needed her mother."
She definitely got what her mother had to give. Tragedy.
"I don't believe you didn't have a hoof in this," Twilight growled. She was beginning to get irritated again at the Card Master's tone. "A mother wouldn't end her family because of a loss like that. She should have valued life for what it was, and appreciated what she had."
Can you judge what she felt? Is it so similar for every pony that you, oh great and powerful Princess, can generalize?
Twilight didn't answer, but glared at the Card Master.
Come now, save your energy and hate. You'll need it, you're going to war.
"Jeez, how long is it to this airfield?" Private Hardfield asked, shifting his spear from his left to his right. "I'm friggin' starvin'."
Private Half-Lance chuckled. "I tell ya, we get back home, you're all invited to my pa's restaurant. Best rigatoni you'll ever eat. I tell ya, the cauliflower's amazing."
"Lance, ye ain't quite right," mocked Private Peterstone.
"Ah shut up you country-colt," replied Half-Lance, nudging Peterstone across the train car.
Twilight looked down at her uniform, and then back at the other soldiers. 1st Infantry? They've only seen action when Celestia and Luna tried to free the Crystal Empire.
"Knock it off, this isn't boot camp." Sergeant Peregrine, who was talking the two soldiers back in line, carried an unmistakable Brass Coated W2 Half Spear, a weapon designed to work in the close quarter fighting experienced when engaging in blinding snow storms. It was discontinued after the disappearance of the Crystal Empire, after King Sombra's defeat.
"You look green. What's the matter Two Tail, ain't winters like this back in Vanhoover?" Private Hardfield spoke to Twilight.
"Uh, yeah." Twilight nearly choked on her new voice. It was a much deeper, coarser voice, like that of a stallion's. What did the Card Master do now? They barely spoke after the last card, and this time she didn't even notice the scenery slip into place. Twilight shuddered in discomfort as the biting wind blew into the train car.
To make the cold worse, a hole in the roof was kept open for the crystal operator. He sat in the suspended chair swiveling a conical crystal around, aiming the pointed end at every rock he saw.
"Look at all this snow guys!" the operator called down from his post. "I sure ain't in Fillydelphia anymore!"
"Well, you can be thankful for that ," mumbled the sergeant.
Twilight gripped the thing nearest to her, a Hoofington spear. The spear was much longer than the Half Spear, and made of a heavier wood core and coated with a denser metal. She tested its weight, and noted that the model was a Hoofington Wind Model, specifically designed to be thrown. It extra weight gave it more impact when it hit its target, though given the condition of the snow outside, Twilight doubted she would be aiming at anything anytime soon.
The operator took a crystal shard to the chest and dropped down from the roof. Hardfield was the first to rush to him, while Half-Lance rushed for the next train cars to call for a medic.
"Private," the sergeant shouted, pointing at Twilight. "Get on that crystal and give us some covering fire!"
The other soldiers opened up the doors on the train cars and returned fire at the attacking ponies with spears and magic. Twilight got out of the way of the incoming crystal shards being fired at the train and pulled herself up onto the operator's chair. She imitated the operator, placing her hooves on two horseshoe handles, and aimed at the ridge where the crystal ponies were coming from.
Activated by the sense of her touch, the conical crystal hummed with the magical power stored in it, and fired a rapid stream of beams at the snowy ridge. Twilight was jolted by the feedback of magic as it discharged, feeling herself invigorated with the crystal's power. She turned the crystal as it fired, peppering the snow with magic blasts.
Ahead, Twilight heard a message being shouted down the train from one train car to the next. "Brace! They cut the tracks!" the soldiers shouted to their neighboring cars. Twilight wanted to get off the train immediately, spreading her wings to flap to the sky before remembering that the body she was in had none.
Even though their train was headed for a sudden stop, the shards of crystals still shattered against the train cars, some finding their mark on a couple stallions as they fell off the train. Twilight kept firing, but she could barely hit anything. Between the thick storm and the fact that crystal ponies looked a lot like the glistening snow from afar, being able to aim in the vague direction of the enemy was all she could do.
The chair and crystal shook and swiveled the moment the train collided with the twisted tracks and thick snow. Twilight felt the cold against her face in every direction.
"Get up private," grumbled the sergeant. "Keep moving and keep your head low."
Twilight didn't have time to see where she was going, but she could hear the sounds of the crystal ponies whirling their slingshots. With the endless rain of crystal shards and the blinding storm getting worse, all she could do was follow the soldier in front of her, and even that was getting harder. She felt two shots bite her in the rear leg, lodging themselves and slowing her muscles down, but whenever she stumbled some pony behind her would push her forward to keep up.
"Get in the tunnel, hurry!" Twilight recognized the soldier's voice, Private Peterstone's, followed it until she slipped into a dark tunnel barely large enough for a single file march.
After a while, when the cold was warmed by the bodies of the soldiers, Twilight began to wonder where she was. The march was long and it gave her time to think. She laughed inwardly at herself, realizing how little she knew about the fight for the Crystal Empire before it disappeared. So many chances to read at the Crystal Empire's library, and still she knew nothing about the war itself.
"What's so funny Two Tail?" Peterstone asked.
"Nothing," she replied, trying to get used to her deeper voice. "Just thinking.... about how sorry the crystal ponies will be for messing with our tracks."
Peterstone gave a stunted laugh. "A war of liberation my ass. 'Reckon if the Shinies wanted their freedom from King Sombra, they wouldn't be fightin' us now would they?"
"Anyone tell you you're an idiot Pete?" Hardfield hollered from the back of the line.
"Hardfield, if we weren't stuck in this tunnel..." Peterstone began.
The argument died before it could even start. The cold began to blow in again from the tunnel's exit. As the soldiers filed out of the tunnel, the sergeants were planning their movement to the airfield. Away from the train tracks and on the other side of a mountain range, they'd have to take a long way around to rendezvous with the general, and even the shortest paths would take at least a day.
Sergeant Marsh and Peregrine agreed they needed to split up and take separate passes through the mountains. With the glaciers and snow being the perfect terrain for ambushes, grouping into one body would put the whole force in the sights of the crystal ponies. But the Shinies had smaller numbers, making it impossible to ambush two teams at the same time. With any luck, the sergeants hoped the crystal ponies would be so slow to react that neither of their teams would be ambushed.
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Twilight moved in the front with her teammates. They were supposed to scout out the pass ahead and make sure it was safe for crossing. Behind them, the third and forth company of the 1st Infantry marched, followed slowly by the 19th Engineers and their heavy equipment. Four 175 kg Crystal Cannons, sixteen 50 kg Crystal Guns, thirty spear ballistas, and two enchanted carriages, charmed to move themselves.
She wished she was with the heavy weaponry. Everyone save their crystal gunner, White Feather and his light 20 kg Crystal, was equipped with spears. Most were the heavy throwing spears, but that wasn't enough to comfort Twilight. The pass was narrow, and exposed to the icy ground above them.
Duck
Twilight tensed immediately at the Card Master's voice. She hadn't heard him for hours, and the lone word worried her. Beside her, Private Half-Lance passed by and looked saw the look on her face.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
Twilight turned to reply to him, to tell him that the cold was just digging in. She answered to razor sharp crystal in his face.
"Ambush!" she cried out, jumping into a large crack in the ice. The others did the same, pressing up against the walls of the pass to dodge the crystals fired at them. Private Peterstone raised his horn and shot up the warning signal, drawing the fire of crystal shards in the process.
"Move, I'll cover you!" Twilight told him. She pulled a spear from her back with her magic and launched it up at the first figure she saw. The pony wasn't very far away, and even with the thick snow the spear found its mark. The ambushers stepped back, taking cover from spears while the scouts ran ahead.
Twilight used her spears sparingly, taking shots when she was certain she hit, but even then the fight was brought to raw magic before long.
Hardfield was right behind her, aiming his last spear up at a crystal pony. "Don't get left behind Two Tail, hurry it up."
Twilight turned to run. She galloped faster than she ever though possible. Behind her, shouts from the Shinies echoed through the pass and it seemed as if every eye was aiming for her. The rest of her team was ahead, firing back to cover Hardfield and her as they ran. Private White Feather held them off the longest with the blasts of his crystal mounted on a fallen rock.
Once the squad had regrouped, they pressed along one side of the pass and kept moving. The sergeant turned back to White Feather. "Get that crystal up and move damn it!"
The moment he folded the crystal's platform up, the Shinies took the chance to launch their slingshots. Two holes opened up in White Feather's back, and he stumbled over. Hardfield was quick to react, and lifted the crystal up onto his back and fired as they moved though the pass. Twilight and Peregrine joined him, blasting magic up at ice and snow, occasionally hitting a crystal pony.
"These Shinies just don't give up!" Hardfield shouted over the deafening energy blasts from the crystal. The conical weapon was cracked and scratched, leaking more of its magic with each shot. The magic grew hotter on his back, and Twilight finally cursed herself for not seeing the opportunity sooner.
She picked up the crystal off of Hardfield and fired it from her back. "I can keep them off us, run up with the others."
With no time to argue, Peregrine and Hardfield galloped along the pass while the crystal ponies focused on Twilight. While they shot all they had at her and her crystal, she gripped it with telekinesis and began charging it with a beam of magic. Once the rest of her squad was at a safe distance, she flung the cracked crystal up in the air.
The moment it reached up to the Shinies, Twilight picked up the crystal shards scattered on the floor and shot them at the crystal as hard as telekinesis could throw. The crystal gun shattered, bursting with all its charged power, and all of Twilight's additional magic. She ran as fast as she could to stay ahead of the collapsing ice and snow.
Along with the bodies, chunks of permafrost and ice crumbled into the narrow pass, filling it with an impassable frozen wall. Twilight didn't stop to see if she had wiped out the Shinies or not. Either way, that explosion did what was needed to give her squad the time to escape.
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"The rest of the troops should be taking the other pass by now," Sergeant Peregrine told everyone once they lost the crystal ponies at a fork in the pass. "They're on this part of the mountains, so the rest of our boys should be safe. The Shinies don't have have enough fighters in this area to hold both ways."
"They should count themselves lucky," Peterstone said, wrapping a bandage around a cut a crystal gave him. "My brother's in the engineers. He's young, but even when we were kids, he really knew how to handle himself in a scrap."
"Too bad he's not here," continued Peregrine, "'cause we need to get ourselves through this passage before the Shinies figure out they missed us two miles back."
Smaller meant quicker, and the squad moved swiftly along the passage, stopping only when they heard crystal ponies running above them. Whenever that happened they'd duck into the cracks in the ice and wait them out.
A day late, but the airfield was in sight. The first signs were the pegasi flying in and out, either going to or returning from a raid on crystal pony encampments. The compound was built on a plateau, formed by a glacier that had cut the top of the mountain side. What remained of the glacier was a slope impossible to climb, even with the help of quality crystal climbing spikes.
Twilight had never heard of such an airfield near the Crystal Empire, let alone one made for wartime use.
"Whew!" Peterstone hollered, almost directly into Twilight's ears. "Never thought I'd be so happy to see a hunk of ice! How 'bout you Two Tail, ever seen a sight like that in Vanhoover?"
Twilight shook her head with complete honesty. She had never imagined such an airfield in her life. It was better in every way compared to what she'd seen at flight camps, Cloudsdale, and even the Wonderbolts Headquarters.
"Save your breath private, we're still a few miles off," Peregrine told him. "Alright ladies, let's pick up the pace and get a hot meal before sundown."
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It was a long time before Twilight's thoughts truly turned from the war. She believed the card would release her after the deaths of the soldiers she fought with, but after securing the territory south of the Crystal Empire and eliminating the resisting forces, the war raged on. Sometimes, she'd appreciate what she was shown by the card. Early flight maneuvers done by the pegasi fighters were the same ones the Wonderbolts would later use, and she even saw the first use of the spears the royal guards in Canterlot were equipped with.
Regardless, the war continued and Twilight received another assignment. The commanders called it Operation Shatter, a plan to sail up the coast from Manehattan and land on the King Sombra's largest crystal mines. Without the mines, the crystal ponies would be cut off from ammunition and raw materials, shortening how long they could defend their territories.
Another campaign against the Crystal Empire, and Twilight was certain the card wouldn't release her until it was over.
The boat rumbled as the cold waves splattered ice against its hull. She stepped out onto the deck to check how close the coast was and ran into a sick Peterstone hurling his lunch into the sea.
"I wanna be back on my farm," he moaned.
"I don't know how those navy guys do it," agreed Hardfield, trying to keep his balance while holding his gut. He looked at Twilight, who barely felt anything from the rough waters. "Bet there's a lot of boats where you're from, right Two Tail?"
Twilight simply nodded to them and walked over to Sergeant Peregrine. He turned to the soldier next to him. "Radio to the T.S.S. Fire, we're in sight of the shore." Specialist Bloomings nodded and galloped to the communication room.
"Private, you got good eyes, take a look at this." Peregrine gave Twilight a pair of binoculars and pointed his hoof to the faint outline of the shore. "Once we get out of this fog, you can be sure those hills are gonna light up like a Hearth's Warming celebration. I need to you watch out for the Shinies and tell our mortars what to fire at."
From the front of the deck one of the soldiers looked out at the shore for himself. "Holy crap, they haven't fired. Did we really catch the Shinies off guard?" The soldier turned back and grinned at his friend. "Hey Blue Hoof, I owe ya twenty."
A sea mine exploded one of the boats next to them, taking out the front half and drowning the ponies on board before the lifeboats could drop. Every pony reached for their spears and crystals, aiming for anything in the sea that didn't look like water. Then the magic blasts from the coast began to pepper the hull of the boats. One crystal operator lost his face before dropping down to the cold water.
"Damn it!" Peregrine shouted, ducking under incoming fire. "When did they get charged crystals? Private Two Tail, you better spot those defenses!"
The cold fog on the ocean cleared up, the boats picking up speed to reach the coast before every pony died. It became easy for Twilight to sea where the crystal ponies were. They had small forts and bunkers, firing energy blasts with the same crystal cannons the ponies were using. She spotted the forts first, then the bunkers, calling out their position from the nose of the boat and their range.
Only one mortar missed, the bunker already taken out by another ship. But that didn't stop the sea mines from getting close to the boats. Distracted by the enemy shots, the soldiers couldn't catch every mine, and the first one to hit Twilight's boat was the only mine that had to in order to sink them.
She wanted to move for the life boats, but the ship gave out under her hooves and she slipped to the side, tumbling over the railing and into the sea. She could drown herself, perhaps end the card's plan and make her way back to the Card Master and get more answers. But even with those thoughts she couldn't make herself swallow a mouthful of water. She didn't want to die, not even in a fake reality.
"I got you buddy, I got you." Twilight reached out immediately at Hardfield's voice, grabbing his hoof and pulling up onto a lifeboat. "You're gonna be okay, we'll make it."
She blacked out on the way to the shore. All she could remember was the faint sound of soldiers running off their little boats and dying instantly from a remaining crystal gun. Even though their dying breaths weren't enough to alert her, another pony's shouting seemed to do the trick.
"There will be two types of stallions on this beach: those who move and those who die." Sergeant Peregrine grabbed Twilight by her uniform and dragged her onto the beach. "Wake up, Private, I still need you for this war."
"Watch the hills!" Peterstone shouted, sending a spear through the neck of a crystal pony. More followed down the hill, rushing from an exploded fort with spears and slingshots on their saddles. Twilight got up quickly and found a bundle of seven throwing spears. She sent two into the chests of the enemies and galloped to catch up with her squad.
All around her, more soldiers were gathering, simply running forward at the Shinies because there was no where else to go. An armored carriage rolled off one of the boats, enchanted and self-propelling. It drew all the attention from the crystal ponies but Twilight and her team ran for it, taking cover behind its steel casing.
"Barricades up ahead," Sergeant Peregrine told the squad, "cover the engineers while they clear it."
Twilight didn't need to be told twice to start throwing spears. It didn't seem possible for the engineers to get through and plant the explosive barrels, they were running strait into enemy fire, but the barbed wire and metal gates finally gave way to three explosions after a fierce fight.
The carriages lead the charge, two dozen moving inland followed by hundreds of infantry taking cover behind them. The facility was miles from the coast, protected by trenches and tunnels dug out by the miners to create an impressive fortress. While the carriages could only wait two miles away from the mines and fire on the defenses with blasts of magic, the soldiers flooded into the trenches and tunnels and stormed the area.
Twilight took point for her squad, clearing secret rooms of Shinies with their own weapons. The crystal ponies defending the mine was better equipped than even the ponies themselves. Stored all over the trenches were crystal spears magically charged like the crystals on the armored carriages. But, despite their light weight, the spears carried as much capacity and stopping power as a 50 kg crystal gun.
The weapon was a little harder to handle for Twilight, but it beat having to carry multiple throwing spears. In no time, the soldiers made it through the trenches to march on a maze of roads and watchtowers. Above them were snipers and heavy crystals, picking off any pony who tried to take the road into the facility.
"I got this," Peterstone said, creeping out of the trench and taking cover behind a pile of sandbags. "It'll be like picking apples off the trees from my room."
Peterstone picked up one of the crystal spears from a dead Shiny and aimed it through the sandbags at a sniper watching their road. He took one shot, and then another. Nothing was returned.
"I think I got him," Peterstone whispered, smiling at his team. He checked back at the tower and congratulated himself. "Now that's good shootin', show 'em how-"
A returned shot of magic put a hole in one ear and out the other. Twilight flinched back into the trenches with Peterstone's blood and brains splattered on in her eyes, ears, and mouth.
"Shit!" cursed the sergeant. "We're pinned as it is, now we're down a good stallion too."
"Two Tail's a better shot with the Shinies' weapons than any of us," Hardfield said, encouraging Twilight as much as he was directing the responsibility. Regardless, she grabbed a crystal spear, and on the sergeant's orders, eliminated the three snipers watching their position.
"Move," commanded Peregrine, leaping out of the trench and galloping down the road to a gate. It was locked, of course, but with the sound of the carriages bombarding the facility, shooting out the chains and locks didn't bring any attention.
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"Place those explosives at the support structures," commanded the sergeant. "Once we get all the slaves out of the mine, we'll blow this mine 'till it caves back into solid ground."
Twilight carefully placed the explosive barrels by the wooden support beams. The thick structures were the only things keeping the mines stable, and if one went off prematurely the whole mine would go and take her squad with it. It was supposed to be the job of the engineers to set up the explosives, but her team was sent as the last minute fix after the engineer platoon assigned to their section of the crystal mines got hit by a strong defense. Only two of those engineers made it out of the fight alive, and they were busy setting up explosives on the other side of the mine.
She tried to imagine what it was like for the engineer platoon. Not much was left up to imagination. On the landing at the beach, Twilight passed by more than her fair share of ponies dropping from stray energy blasts. There was no where to hide or run; the only option was to charge ahead into enemy fire, or find space behind an armored carriage. She shuddered at the thought of the same massacre happening again as the lucky survivors met a labyrinth of defenses.
Twilight finished her last explosive barrel and quickly galloped to regroup with her squad. She stopped only to tie the detonating wire to each barrel on her way out, unwinding it from her saddlebag as she returned to the sergeant. The engineers were waiting there too, taking hold of the wires as the rest of the soldiers returned, having completed their part of the mine.
"We'll be back in Manehattan for a few days after this," Hardfield said to Twilight once the engineers had taken all the detonating wires. "Looking forward to seeing a couple nice mares my cousin's been wanting to introduce me to. They'll be swooning over the war stories in minutes. You could tag along too Two Tail, if you're not scared. Between us, those ladies are sure to have a good time."
Twilight gave a disapproving looking at Hardfield, but dropped the matter entirely and let the stallion entertain his fantasies. She didn't understand how he could be looking forward to frivolity in a battlefield like this. Had he learned to drown out the violence, or was his dreams just an anchor to a life without war?
"Grab the tools and let's get out of here," Peregrine told every pony as soon as the engineers were ready with the wires. "We got ninety seconds once these suckers start burning, so if you need to catch a breath, do it outside. Now move!"
Twilight bolted the moment the engineers lit the wires with their horns. Ninety seconds didn't feel like a long enough time to run away from a crystal mine packed with explosives, so she gave every step a hundred and ten percent of her effort. She was relieved to feel the cold wind blowing into the mine near the end, but at the same time she felt a burst of warm air rush out from behind her. Without thinking, Twilight leaped forward and dove out of the mine, burying herself into the cold snow as the ground beneath her shook like an earthquake.
Once the explosions stopped, and the shooting around the mines ceased, the pegasi started landing, picking up the dead and injured and dropping off more spears and food for the troops. Twilight stayed buried in the snow for a time, laughing with her squad in relief. They had survived another fight.
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The funny thing about war was what ponies thought of it. Equestria's years of relative peace had taken most of the memories of war from its citizens. Twilight thought she knew what war meant, that every pony would hate the fighting and hate the death. But on the battlefield, she didn't have those resentments.
War was violence, and it was peace. After a hard fight, when the snow settled the shooting stopped, Twilight could feel the silence in the air. Surrounded by death, all she could think about was being alive.
Being stationed at a captured base would have been considered the easy job. It was in the middle of nowhere, far from any theater of war. Everyday Twilight would follow her routine, go out and patrol the hills for any crystal ponies. Sometimes there were fights, but never more than just a few Shinies with slingshots.
It was peaceful, but Twilight felt dead inside. All the quiet just gave her more time to think about the dead. How many were named? How many weren't? One day, after ambushing a couple Shinies, Twilight realized she hadn't even been counting how may she had killed. She looked at the young crystal pony lying on the snow, and thought back to her first fight. She remembered blowing the pass to stop the ambush, but not much else was as detailed.
The young Shiny was on the ground, his leg twisted from a bad fall. His face was burned with magic, and a spear burst his throat. Twilight couldn't look away. She stared at his eyes, still sparkling as if they were full of life, but gazing with a dead emptiness. His eyes were like stars, twinkling endlessly in space, and Twilight couldn't look away.
"Come on, it's disgusting," Hardfield told her. "Let's head back to base, it's getting colder out here."
Twilight just sat and stared at his burnt face and the spear that went through his throat. She noticed the cracks in his crystal complexion, some around his eyes like the trails tears left behind. Other cracks just looked like they were going to split the crystal stallion in two.
"It was him or you, that's how it is out here," Hardfield urged.
He still sparkled, especially his eyes, but he wasn't a Shiny anymore. The crystal pony wasn't shiny at all. The snow had already began to settle on his body, and soon he'd have a frozen burial with his comrades. They'd be buried, hidden away from light, and then their sparkling eyes would finally stop.
It's about time.
The snow melted away into darkness, though the floor Twilight sat on still felt cold. She didn't rise to meet the Card Master this time, only looking up slowly at his figure.
One month, twelve days, and three hours. I'm sorry to say the fun's gone after so long. Of course, it was much longer for you, wasn't it?
"What do you want?" she asked the Card Master. She couldn't think of anything else. It was the only question she still had.
Tell me, how long was the war?
"Too long," answered Twilight.
Lucky for you, that card survived. A young stallion from Vanhoover, went to war against Sombra and the Crystal Empire, then came back a hero. All for naught, it turned out, when Sombra cursed the empire to vanish.
"He wasn't a hero."
And what does that make you? The cards have their rules, but you still had come control.
"I'm not a hero either."
Fair enough.
The two stood in silence for some time. Twilight touched the floor with her hooves, feeling the darkness. She had forgotten her struggle with the Card Master because of the war. Two years she spent in that card, by her count, and she thought she'd never leave.
Don't make the same mistakes the soldiers made. Talk about it.
"Talk? Is that what you expect me to do?" Twilight furrowed her eyebrows. "You know your cards, how can you expect me to just talk after all that happened?"
So, no talking. That's fine. Some soldiers return home and no pony understands what they've seen. Some can't say a word about it, while others just don't have the right ponies to say it too.
"So you're the right pony?" Twilight asked. The Card Master walked up to her, so close that her breath blew against his face.
I don't think I'm a pony at all.
The Card Master let his baggy robes slide off of him, showing his spectacular nature. Twilight gaped, remembering what Celestia had once said about the Card Master. A pony's shape, like a manikin, but made from playing cards. They each glowed and hummed with magic, swimming along what would be his skin like fish in a tank. Twilight tried to look at a single spot of his face, and then his body, but nothing remained completely still.
So, talk.
Twilight answered. "I thought when Sombra cursed the Crystal Empire, Celestia and Luna were the heroes trying to save the crystal ponies."
And now?
Twilight continued. "There was so much more to that than just a few battles. It was a war, plain and simple, and it had all the things you'd expect from a war. Of course, I didn't know what to expect anyways, so that doesn't matter."
I'm glad you decided to play, Princess. Truly, I am.
"Don't mistake my exhaustion for a truce, Card Master," replied Twilight. "Free me now, and my hate won't become actions."
I'm afraid there's another lifetime waiting for you. A poor orphan pony when the Earth Pony Empire was at it's height. A time before empires of unicorns and pegasi, but I'm sure you wouldn't know anything about that.
Twilight's face twisted with rage. Living a lifetime in a forgotten world away from her friends was not on her agenda. Her magic lashed out before the card could change the scenery. The smell of pine trees and the sound of river rapids flowed in and out of the dark fog as the Card Master struggled to regain his composure.
Twilight didn't give him the chance, and stunned him with another beam of magic.
Princess! You don't know what you're doing!
"You wanted to change me," she growled. "I don't know to what end, but congratulations, you succeeded on that front. I would've negotiated with you for peace, but now it seems all you care about is death and war."
Do not continue-
Twilight launched a volley of magic bolts at the Card Master, but this time he was prepared. His body melted into the darkness, each card flying off like a flock of birds to hide in the fog. She couldn't see them, but Twilight could hear the fluttering of the cards. The Card Master materialized behind her but she met him with a force field to surround him.
This is fruitless, Princess.
The Card Master waved his hoof, and the fog began to dissipate into a wild forest. Twilight collapsed the field on the Card Master, crushing him under the force of the shield, and sending the environment back into the dark. The Card Master went with it, breaking into individual cards and flooding down into the ground. Twilight raced after him, but the fog blackened the ground and made it solid.
You'll push them too far if you do this Princess. The game will not have the happy ending you want.
"A game?" Twilight gasped. "You shut me in a war, in a body that wasn't mine, for two years! And still, you still throw that word around like it doesn't matter?"
Time is a fickle thing, Princess. It's barely been a month in my fog, and even less for your friends.
"Is that what you want, to torment me like a toy or a pet, then throw me off when you're bored?" The more Twilight accused the Card Master, the more she realized her anger was distracting her from the fog. Already a creek rose up from the floor, and the darkness began being pierced by rays of sunlight.
Do not struggle. We will have our fun Princess, you'll see.
Twilight lashed out in a cry of rage, but her voice was already some pony else's. It was young and shrill, like a filly's, and everything around her seemed to get bigger.
Don't worry, you get to keep your body, though at the sacrifice of something else. This time you won't remember anything until the end. No pent up rage to distract you.
Those words barely left his lips before Twilight felt her memories fade away. First went the pages of the books she read, the information she had learned over the years. Then left the names of every pony she knew. Her friends stayed the longest, but before long she couldn't name the pink one or the rainbow one.
"You can't do this to me Card Master!" she shouted, only to forget who she was shouting at shortly after. Nonetheless, he responded.
I'm afraid that's not true at all.
Twilight refused to forget everything as she shrank back into childhood. She charged at the Card Master, not understanding what he was, but acting only on rage. But her legs couldn't carry her far enough, and she found herself face first in a very shallow creek.
"I have to remember something. I can't lose it all." Twilight scanned her mind for even one thing to think of, but every memory she had seemed to go away. "Think Twilight, think!"
It wasn't much, but it was the last shred of herself that she could hold onto. "Twilight, Twilight, Twilight," she repeated to herself. Over and over, even when the meaning of the name had left her, she continued to whisper it to herself as she stumbled through the forest.
"Twilight, Twilight, Twilight."
She ate what she could, whether it was acorns or apples, or just stringy grass off the dirt. Thrice the sun rose, and thrice the moon followed, until Twilight couldn't walk any longer. She followed the sound of the creek and collapsed beside it, curling up under the cover of loose foliage, whispering to herself.
"Twilight, Twilight, Twilight."
"Wrong, fix your hoof work."
"That's not fixing, space your hooves out."
"No, that's too far apart, you look ridiculous. Get down, you're done for today."
Twilight hopped down from the brick wall she was supposed to balance on and glided over to her master. He was a heavily scarred earth pony, a living testament to how hard it was to live another day when working as a monster hunter.
If training was over, that could only mean studying was on the schedule for the rest of the day, and it wasn't even noon. Twilight loved to study on her own, and show her masters what she could do, but they were strict about professional training, an even stricter on professional education.
"Do I have to go to that old fart's lessons?" she pleaded.
Her master gave her a stern look. "No pony teaches better than Master Stonewood. And his fighting skills..."
"Can only be matched by a select few monster hunters," Twilight finished, rolling her eyes at the phrase she got tired of two years ago. "But I already know everything about killing Otherlings."
"That's not today's lessons Twilight," he replied. "It's history lessons this time."
Twilight moaned. "But Master Guerrier-"
"I don't want to hear it," warned Guerrier. "Go, before I make you run the Red Wall again."
Twilight sighed, but ran off for Master Stonewood's tower anyways. She had mastered the Red Wall before she reached adolescence, but that didn't mean she wanted to dodge its spikes and sandbags all over again.
The castle of the monster hunters was in disrepair, but not a lot of the remaining hunters wanted to repair any of its walls. Those who did rarely got anything done, leaving a mix of scaffolding and crumbling stone bricks to climb on. Twilight didn't mind, she liked the climbing practice.
Guerrier always teased her for using her wings to glide off the walls, saying that a normal pony would learn to climb down the walls, but she always made her point by winning any climbing race, up or down the walls. She wished she could just fly up and down and make climbing obsolete, but her wings wouldn't allow it. Flight, in accordance to basic logic, made her a likely target in combat.
Mutants were common enough among monster hunters, some with horns and other with wings, but only horns were considered useful tools for hunting. According to Stonewood's lessons, the first monster hunters with wings would fly into towns as heroes and saviors, only to be shot down by frightened local archers because the common ponies couldn't tell them apart from winged monsters.
So, as wasteful as it seemed, it became a tradition to cripple the wings of mutants so that they would never accomplish true flight. Gliding and other simple controls were still easily done, and Twilight was thankful for their ability to hold what hooves could not, but some tendons and muscles were cut and removed so that no amount of flapping would make a mutant take to the sky.
At least mutants never had to drink the potion that made all monster hunters infertile. To keep monster hunters from finding new lives and spreading their trade secrets beyond the castles of the monster hunters, those who survived the final trials had to drink a Potion of Infertility, forever making them hunters. Mutants, being naturally infertile, got to skip that horrid tasting concoction. Better still for all the male mutants, for every stallion who had drank the potion claimed they could not walk properly for a week afterwards.
Twilight was forced to pull out of her thoughts. Stonewood's library tower, the home of everything a monster hunter needed to learn, had more than enough loose stones for Twilight's hooves to grapple to and climb, but it was a long way up. Still, she loved to enter through the window and spook the other trainees, so she always opted not to take the stairs.
"Ah, here she is," Stonewood announced as Twilight pulled herself up into Stonewood's teaching room. "The great winged unicorn Twilight has decided to grace us with her presence."
She knew she was not going to have a good time. "Hey there, Master Stonewood. I was just on the wall showing Master Guerrier how my practice has been paying off."
"Yes, and then he sent you here for your hoof work, didn't he?" Stonewood was the oldest living monster hunter, and had seen every trick and lie the trainees could think of. Some of them he thought of himself as a colt, but most of them were from his experience as a master. He knew what his students meant, even if they tried to withhold information from him.
"Yes," Twilight grumbled. Lander and Highsight, the two other trainees at Twilight's age, snickered at her. They both were constantly bested by Twilight, whether it was magic, combat, knowledge, or drinking, and they were fond of all their challenges, but it still warmed their hearts to see her in a bad spot from time to time.
Stonewood nodded, expecting her answer, and then shot her a history question. "Since you claim to be a lover of books, perhaps you could tell me the teachings of the monster hunting philosophies?"
"Which one?" Twilight asked for clarification.
"All of them."
She gulped, but knew in her gut that she had each philosophy memorized. "The Dragon Arts teaches hunting and combat with heavy armor and heavier strikes. It's the oldest teaching, with hunter records dating just ten years after the first pony kingdom was established."
"And what is its preferred equipment?" Stonewood pressed further.
"Cleavers and explosives," Twilight recited. She continued without having to be asked. "The Murder of Crows teaches patient hunting. Those who master it often hunt one monster at time for days, using poisons and traps to weaken the beast while remaining hidden and unharmed until the final blow. For the kill, the preferred weapon is the throwing knife or the crossbow."
Stonewood raised a brow, and Twilight immediately added another fact. "The philosophy famously rivaled the Parliament of Owls, a philosophy that died three hundred years ago with the fall of the Orendrean Empire."
"Good, continue."
"The Hydra Philosophy," Twilight went on, "while the youngest philosophy, it is currently the most taught philosophy of monster hunting. It focuses on endurance, training hunters to outlast enemies. For this reason, many students of this philosophy do not hunt fast healing monsters such as Corpse Eaters and High Fiends. Their preferred weapon is technically the sword, though only because it pairs well with a shield. Aside from that, the philosophy also requires an absolute mastery of potion brewing."
"Very good," applauded Stonewood, "Lander here forgot about the Hydra Philosophy entirely when I asked him."
Lander tried to defend himself, but couldn't find any excuse. In defeat, Highsight laughed at him.
"Then there's the Discipline of Mutants," Twilight said, with a heavy breath. She hadn't realized she was holding it until then. "Commonly known by outside ponies as 'The Freak Army,' the philosophy studies arcane knowledge almost exclusively, and is also made almost exclusively of mutant ponies capable of magical feats."
Twilight didn't realize she did it, but she had looked up at her own horn and ruffled her wings when she said "mutant ponies." While monster hunters were welcoming of all kinds of folk, that didn't stop any of the trainees from shying away from the pony with too many parts.
Stonewood decided that was good enough. "I don't think you need to tell us about the School of the Cynogriffon, Twilight." It was their philosophy, and under it they trained relentlessly in all sections of combat. There wasn't any one thing particular about the School of the Cynogriffon, but Twilight didn't want to leave it unfinished.
"It's alright, there's not much to say about the School of the Cynogriffon," insisted Twilight. "It was founded by the remaining members of the Parliament of Owls, and teaches monsters hunters to be skilled in all areas of hunting. The preferred weapon is the sword, for its simplicity and versatility, along with basic spells and explosives. Adaptability is the most important aspect of the School of the Cynogriffon."
"And that's why you two brick heads need to start your studies earlier each day," Stonewood told the other two. "A dumb hunter's a dead hunter, no matter how many years he or she spends training."
He grabbed a thick encyclopedia of the histories of monster hunters, and flipped to the chapter detailing the thirty most revolutionary developments in monster hunting techniques. "Get comfortable with your peers Twilight, you'll enjoy this lesson, I'm sure." And he began to read.
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Guerrier drilled all the trainees even harder as their final trials began. All the trainees were reaching adulthood, which meant they'd either be initiated as true monster hunters, or die trying.
"You're leading your strikes with your footwork Lander," the master warned. "She'll see you attack before you even start."
Lander picked up his pace to prove Guerrier wrong, adding a series of spins and flips to confuse Highsight, but the moment he planted his hooves for a cut on her left, she parried him and knocked him on his ass.
Twilight laughed. "Maybe you should wait another year or two before doing the trials Lander. Burying you means we'll have to drag your corpse out of whatever cave you land yourself in."
"Why don't you get down here and fight?" Lander challenged.
"You really want to your butt kicked again?" Twilight leaped from her seat and stepped onto the sparring grounds. "Alright, but this time I won't-"
"Twilight, I need you for a moment," Guerrier interrupted. He knew how much Twilight enjoyed training, so she assumed he wouldn't have stopped her if it wasn't important.
"We'll do this later," she told Lander, leaving him to spar with Highsight again.
At the armory, Master Guerrier waited with a letter on the table. He looked at Twilight, then at the letter. Without a word, he slid the vellum in her direction. She picked it up with a wing and rad over it, though she already knew what it wanted by the first sentence.
The masters of Bach Kha'mohrgen, teachers of the Discipline of Mutants, request that you travel immediately to begin further training in your natural abilities.
Bach Kha'mohrgen, an ancient ruin settled by some of the earliest ponies, had become the stronghold that trained every monster hunter under the Discipline of Mutants. It was clear that Guerrier and the other monster hunters wanted Twilight to train there.
"Bach Kha'mohrgen's on the Far Coast," Twilight said. "It'll be a week's worth of galloping before we even reached the borders of their land."
Guerrier nodded. "A small king on the Far Coast asked the Mutants to eradicate the monsters in his forests, but the hunters that went in never made it into the heart of the forest. They've called on help from all the castles, so I'll be taking you with me to Bach Kha. After that, you'll have new masters to teach you."
"And what if I don't want to?" Twilight asked. "I'm ready for the trials, I don't need to learn more magic to become a monster hunter."
"These are not tavern tricks!" Guerrier snapped. "Compared to what they can teach you, we make sparks and sooth animals. It'll only be for a year, and after that you'll be better trained than any monster hunter to date. You'll come back to Bach Tor'al and take the trials then."
Twilight was furious, but if Guerrier wasn't going to accept "no" for an answer, she wasn't going to bother giving one. She took her sword and the letter and galloped out of the castle. Out in the forest, there was one spot where she could calm her emotions no matter what. A little creek ran through the clearing, carrying fresh water from the waterfall many miles away, stemming from a lake behind the castle.
She reached the clearing in an hour, and then simply dropped onto the soft grass beside the creek. Stonewood and Guerrier said they were hunting a wyvern the day they found her by the creek, curled up and beaten like a dying animal. Despite clearly having not eaten for days, she repeated a single word all the way back to Bach Tor'al, not stopping until they fed her a thin tomato soup.
"Twilight," she whispered to herself. From that day on it was her name, as well as a mantra. She didn't know what it meant or why she was saying it, but it calmed her down nonetheless. She considered what might happen if she did the trials and became a monster hunter without travelling to learn from the Discipline of Mutants. She was as good a fighter as any of the hunters, save for Guerrier and maybe Stonewood. She knew how to write glyphs and wards against specters, and cast charms on monsters to trick them. And no pony was better than her when climbing. She could easily become a monster hunter and leave the castles behind.
But no pony would allow it. Most of the other monster hunters never stayed long enough in the castle to really know Twilight, always coming and going from one job to another, and so most of them just regarded her as the mutant child Guerrier took pity on. Any chance to get her horn and wings out of their sight and would be well received, and even if she struck off on her own, the others wouldn't respect her as a student of the Cynogriffon. Mutants belonged with their own kind, or so many ponies have said behind her back.
Of course, Master Guerrier would just say it was for her own good. Learning to cast powerful spells probably made him feel better, knowing she was less likely to die to a lucky Mournwraith or Timberwolf. But as much as she appreciated his tutelage, she was done being treated as an apprentice.
"The same place again. How can you be so bad at hiding?" Twilight whirled around at Lander's voice, leaping off the grass into a fighting stance, only to slip on a wet stone and trip into the creek. Highsight and Lander both laughed. She expected Guerrier to follow her and drag her back to the castle, but not her friends. Well, associates now, since she could never stand be friends with the only two ponies who saw her screw up a simple stance.
"What do you two want?" she said, pulling herself out of the water.
"Other than to see your perfection tarnished? -ow!" Lander clutched his rib cage as Highsight drove her elbow into his lungs.
"Saw you running," Highsight explained, "we just wanted to know why."
Twilight didn't need to say it, she just showed them the letter so they could read it for themselves. They were both speechless, expected from Highsight but a pleasant surprise from Lander.
"Thinking of running away then?" Highsight asked.
Twilight nodded. "Once I complete the trials and become a monster hunter, I can do what I want."
"You know Guerrier's not going to allow that," Lander reminded her, "and the others..."
"I don't care what they think, I'm not an ordinary mutant they can snicker at," Twilight growled. "If I'm to look different, the least I can do is act the same. I'll not grovel under the rules the monster hunters set for me."
Lander and Highsight stood in silence. For a time, they all thought of something to say while the creek's water splashed along the rocks and frogs hopped about in the grass.
"No monster hunter's ever trained under two philosophies," Highsight finally said.
Twilight couldn't believe Highsight was proposing that she take the offer, but Lander was utterly furious. "You can't expect her to put off becoming a hunter just because some wizard in a tower wants to teach her how to piss acid and shit gold, or whatever it is that they do."
Lander, while entirely serious, got Twilight to laugh. He always acted outrageous when he lost his temper, and often it was for the better.
Highsight rolled her eyes at Lander and then spoke directly to Twilight. "Think about it; you're already as good as any of the monster hunters from this castle. They might one day come to acknowledge you, maybe respect you, but you'll never stand out no matter how many battles you win."
Twilight wasn't so sure about the last part. "What do you mean?"
"You can't be like them, no pony will let you blend in no matter what you do. Think of it like this: what's the difference between a Corpse Eater and a Grave Maker?"
"Everything." It was a strange question, and she hesitated to answer, but Twilight trusted Highsight had a point behind it.
"Exactly!" Highsight smiled excitedly, expecting Twilight to share the same revelation. "Come on Twilight, how can Grave Makers lead packs of Corpse Eaters when they are nothing like the pack? They might look different, but..."
Twilight waited for the answer before realizing Highsight wanted her to answer it for herself. "... they're far deadlier than the pack they lead."
"Corpse Eaters do the cornering, but Grave Makers are responsible for the tracking, hunting, and killing," Highsight continued with her comparison. "If you really want to be some pony special, you have to be like a Grave Maker pack leader. You have to be stronger than the rest of the monster hunters."
"Maybe she doesn't want to be that kind of monster hunter," Lander said, still trying to keep Twilight away from Bach Kha'mohrgen.
Twilight shook her head. "It's alright Lander. I don't really want to spend another year training, but it's time I stopped trying to impress the masters and do something worth recognizing."
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"Two bodies, recently deceased. One male, one female." Twilight looked around the lighthouse, recognizing the facial structures in the paintings on the walls. "The wife and husband."
The peasant farmers inland said a family lived and operated the lighthouse, before it went dark three nights ago. One mare said she once had tea with the mother, shortly after she had birthed two healthy twins, both colts. So, that left the two boys to be found.
"With any luck, they would have escaped whatever's on this coast, maybe I they could give some clues as to what I'm dealing with." Twilight sniffed around. Training with the mutant masters taught Twilight more than just simple spells. Her magic naturally flowed in her body, heightening her senses beyond the training of any other monster hunter.
"Spilled wine on the floor," Twilight noted. "There was a struggle when it happened." She went over to the husband's body to inspect the wounds. No claw marks on his bones, which eliminated the possibility of a thirsty vampire or hungry timberwolf. She felt the air for magic. There was some, probably from the monster lingering in the area, but not enough for a witches curse.
Still, some magic meant it couldn't be the corporeal sort of monster. It saddened Twilight, she hadn't fought a solid beast ever since killing a desperate ichneumon that was terrorizing a lord's farmland. It had been two months since that fight, a nice and easy one compared of the imps, demons, and djinn that troubled the nobility.
She looked over the husband's body a bit more. She found the source of the blood, a gash between two ribs that neatly punctured his right lung. Few monsters used any sort of weapon, and Twilight highly doubted a sentient beast like a succubus or a High Fiend was around a peasant port like this one.
She examined the wife's body. She was bruised, badly, on her face, stomach, and limbs. Oddly enough there wasn't a scratch on her coat or skin, despite clearly being in a fight. However, she was still unlucky enough to die of from the severe internal hemorrhaging. Domestic violence? Is this really what my work has come to?
Twilight felt disrespectful to dismiss it, the wife probably suffered a while before her death, but found a reasonable excuse in her tiredness. She went up to the stairs to light the lighthouse. A fight between the parents probably drove away the sons, and relighting the fire would at least bring them back. She'd leave it to the townsfolk to decide what to do then.
Twilight stopped short at the top of stairs and stared at the two small bodies laying on the floor. She sighed again at the sad sight. "Of course they're dead." She barely had to look at them to tell the cause of death. They reeked of a poisonous brew made from snakeroot and oleander flowers, both common plants around the village.
Judging by the mess, one colt died vomiting, a signature effect of the snakeroot. Domestic violence was something pretty common in the small villages and farms, but if there was one thing that ponies of the Far Coast valued, it was children. The murder of a child was the worst crime in the land, no matter what king set the rules.
Something wasn't right, that much Twilight knew, but she need to find more clues to get a glimpse of what happened. She searched around the cluttered mess of papers and books until she finally found something personal. The diary of the mother, with entries right up to the day she died.
I don't know what my husband saw or heard when he visited his family up north, but he hasn't been the same since he returned. He talks about weird religions, old tribal faiths once commonly practiced on these coasts. He asked me after dinner if I knew anything about them. As if I'm some kind preacher? I wouldn't know a thing! Oh, this is all very strange. I'll try to feed him some blackberries from the garden, maybe it's just sickness from travel.
Today I saw White Oak out in the gardens, pulling out weeds and scaring off the moles and rabbits that always try to eat at my crops. I don't know if his sickness is over, or if the mention of blackberries really brought him back, but he seems fine now. Hasn't mentioned any old faith to me today, not once. And what's better, he finally killed that fat rabbit who had been eating all my strawberries ever since they began to ripen.
Nothing's right. I heard him talking to the mirror this morning, talking about our sons as... I have to confront him about this, but not in front of my boys. Panicking them won't do any good. They have to clean the lighthouse equipment today, so I'll send them up before dinner and talk to White Oak then. Now, I just have to find where he stored those flowers. I can't let him poison my sons just for some kind of barbaric blood ritual!
"That explains the family's death." Twilight looked around the lighthouse top one more time, and then headed back down. She had to say it all out loud, if only to make it seem less like a nightmare and more like reality. "A father comes home with a sacrificial ritual to perform, a poison sacrifice, and he chose his own children. The mother found out and probably fought the father around dinner time, but by then the day had passed and the twins had already been poisoned by the father without them or the mother realizing it. It must have been a smaller dose, since they didn't die immediately."
Twilight felt like something had to be missing from the picture. It was too simple, and too bloody, to be accepted so easily. She just walked in on a ritualistic murder, something that probably had been planned long before, and all that was left to do was sit and speculate about the dead. But, that was how the job went, no telling what you could come across.
As she left, a chill washed over her spine from the lighthouse. Her sword was drawn immediately, and she whirled around to face the source. It was a mournwraith for sure, clearly resembling the corpse of the mother. Mournwraiths didn't show themselves until the time of their deaths, and only remained for no more than an hour. If Twilight wanted to uncurse the lighthouse, she needed to drive off the mournwraith first.
Her first reaction was to reach for her saddlebag, producing a large pot of caltrops made of night silver. Once the pot cracked open on the floor, the barbed metal flared against the mournwraith's natural magic, denying it power and, more importantly, making it corporeal. Twilight dashed forward and placed several cuts into the wraith before dodging out of its way.
The mournwraith was quick though, and charged at Twilight with a knife firmly clutched in its teeth. She ducked, rolling past it and over to the other side of the kitchen. She fired off two bolts of lighting from her horn to stun the wraith and struck again with a whirling blow. With the caltrops scattered too thin, the mournwraith manage to dissipate into a cloud and find its way around Twilight's defenses. A second too late and she would have been hit, but she managed to put a defensive field around her and deflected the strikes from the mournwraith.
Twilight pushed it back into a wall, burning wards and glyphs of forbidence into the wooden floor to temporarily trap the mournwraith in an inescapable bubble. Stuck and outmatched, the mournwraith took its leave and departed the lighthouse in a magic cloud, sending another chill through the building and extinguishing the symbols on the floor.
"Time to get the townsfolk," Twilight said to herself.
She took a boat downriver and reached the town that hired her just after sundown. The fishing ponies and mayor all awaited her return at the dock, with a bag of gold ready as pay. Twilight took the payment, but not before informing the locals on how to permanently drive off the mournwraith.
"It's wasn't an ancient curse as some of you suspected," she told them, "but rather a very, very unfortunate falling out between the husband and wife that managed the lighthouse. Husband came home a follower of some ancient religion and used poison to sacrifice his own sons. The mother found and confronted the husband, which probably lead to a fight that killed them both."
"Truly sad, but Master Hunter, what's this got to do with the ghost?" The town's mayor looked concerned, but unlike the rest of the folk, Twilight could see in his eyes the woes of a business pony, calculating the costs to hire some pony else to work at a haunted lighthouse.
Typical leader, Twilight concluded. "Mournwraiths are created by ponies who die before being able to mourn for the loss of a loved one. Perform whatever rites you observe on the bodies of the two colts and their mother -together, that's the important bit- then desecrate the husband's body in whatever way necessary. That'll drive the it away."
"White Oak doesn't deserve that!" cried one fishing pony. He was a large stallion, probably twice the strength of any other stallion in town, and already a lot of the others were rallying behind him. "I'll not believe what some outcast mutant has to say about him. And even if it were true, to desecrate a body is a sin in the eyes of the gods!"
"There has to be another way," the mayor pleaded with Twilight, his reputation hanging on the line. Twilight knew neither stallions would do the right thing if they had a choice. Luckily, she wasn't giving them one.
"If you think you can appease the mother's spirit, don't bother," she said. "Mournwraiths aren't the souls of the dead themselves, despite their appearances. They're simply attracted to the dying emotions of those who suffer from grief. Giving the mother and sons their proper rites might be enough to spoil the mournwraith's interest, but taking revenge for what the husband did is the surest way."
"Aye," the mayor nodded. "Best to trust a professional."
The large stallion gaped at the mayor, but it was clear he valued a cleaned lighthouse over the opinions of the local fishing ponies. "Put your superstitions aside for once, boy," he scowled at the stallion. "Wraiths don't care about what's right or what wrong. This has to be done."
He thanked Twilight once again and gave her the gold, also offering a deal at the town's inn for all the hassle, but as tempting as a cool cider sounded, Twilight had other jobs to do.
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Like the monsters contracted to die, no monster was the same, and no experience hunting either.
"Why should I trust ye?" the farmer asked when Twilight rode into town. She was hired by a noble pony, a stallion of wealth comparable to a king, just without the royal blood, and she was to bring him the head of a monster who threatened the noble's holdings.
"The stallion who owns your lands sent me," Twilight said. "Monster's hiding among you folk."
"I might 'ave my debts, but that don't mean a mutant like you-"
A powerful voice interrupted the farmer. "Father!" His daughter came barging out of their cottage. "She's a monster hunter, clear as day. Look at that sword, shinin' like silver it is."
"She's a mutant Winter Holly, we can't trust her." The farmer turned back to look at Twilight with scorn. "Probably as bad as the thing killin' our folk and eatin' our stock."
Twilight shrugged. "They say monster hunters steal young ones to indoctrinate. You want to be right, or do you want your problem fixed?"
The two leaned to whisper, but it was clear when the father quickly left it was for a command from the daughter rather than a conversation.
"So sorry about him," the daughter said, "What is it you lookin' for?"
"A mare, barely older than you in fact, with a red mane. Possibly speaks with a Northern Far Coast or Woodland Bog accent. Know her?"
The daughter had a look of recognition that told Twilight before she even opened her mouth to speak. Nevertheless, it was useful to hear what folk had to say, it often gave useful hints about the monster's quirks. "I know we've complained about the monster killing folk, but killin' one of our own will only cause more trouble for the landlord's pockets."
Twilight raised a brow. "Is that a fact?" The monster had hidden well, and become liked in the village. She was almost jealous.
"It is," the daughter warned.
"Good. Not here to kill her, just need to talk to her." Twilight lied. She had learned to be so monotone even the most scrutinous observer couldn't tell the difference.
And though the daughter was clever for a farm pony, she didn't stand a chance. "Fine. Bell's farm's across town. Big field, but land's poor this season so you shouldn't have trouble spottin' her house. Bit of a trot though."
Twilight nodded and thanked the young mare before making her way over to the town's inn. The monster wasn't going anywhere, probably confident in its security over the past few years, so she wanted to take the time to go over her equipment. It was a long way from any major city, and it was almost impossible to find a blacksmith who did anything more than forging nails and horseshoes.
"You thirsty traveler?" asked the innkeep when she entered.
Twilight nodded. "I'll have what's popular."
The innkeep spat on the floor. "Well you can fuck off, you sodding mutant."
The word turned heads and pulled in stares from around the inn. From a table in the corner, four stallions, local guards armed with kitchen knives or farm tools, approached Twilight.
"You're pretty far from the cities," one of them observed, judging her velvet lined armor and night silver infused titanium shoulder plates.
Twilight took one look at the mud covered ponies and walked past them, seating herself on a stool right in front of the innkeep.
"Contract on the monster in your lands," Twilight calmly replied. "I'm the monster hunter the landlord of these farms hired."
The innkeep clenched his teeth, but took one look at her sword and let the topic drop. "Leave the mutant alone boys. If she's smart, she'll be gone soon enough." With reluctance, the stallions returned to their seats and resumed their drinking.
The innkeep served a tall wooden mug to Twilight and stepped back like she was a wild animal, not even making eye contact while he cleaned the mugs. Twilight drank heartily, the cider tasting about as good as she expected for a small village of farms. It was mostly water down, spiced up with some strong smelling herbs that please the nose but left the tongue only wanting more.
But real luxuries, as Twilight learned in the first few months after passing her trials, were not to be expected. In fact, she was pleasantly surprised at the innkeep's willingness to serve something that wasn't water. Barely.
The villagers watched Twilight carefully as she drank and worked on her weapons. She checked her bombs and potions, keeping them away from moisture and making sure their seals were tight. From her saddlebag, she produced a fine repair kit and cleaned the dirt and dust from her sword's handle. She couldn't levitate the weapon and cast magic at the same time, and if the dirt got in the way of the sword latching onto her horseshoes, then the weapon would be doubly useless.
When the handle was properly clean and locked neatly onto her sword wielding hoof, she moved to its blade, sharpening it and coating it with a layer of powdered night silver. Most monsters couldn't stand the sting night silver delivered to their magical flesh, but for the monster Twilight had been contracted to kill, she would need all the night silver she could muster if she wanted to make more than paper cuts.
A few faces around the inn turned sour when Twilight checked her bat poisons, strengthening it by boiling the mixture again with the dried parts of vampire fruit bats. The innkeep almost demanded she leave her establishment when she used magic to heat the vials of poison, but he couldn't muster the courage to drive out a pony with fire coming from her horn.
Finally, as the sun set, Twilight was pleased with what she had. It wasn't perfect, anything rarely was when hunting monsters, but it was better than other situations she had been in. Finishing her sixth mug of the inn's cider, she strapped her saddlebag on and left for the house where the monster had settled in.
"There she is capt'n," she heard across the village road. "A real beast of a mutant, just like I said." As a monster hunter, her senses were trained and refined to the limits of what a pony could detect. But, as a mutant with magic, she was able to expand that threshold. She focused her ears as she trotted for the edge of the village, tracking the steps of five individuals tailing her. One wore armor far heavier than the rest, and she heard it in his thundering footsteps and in the clink clank as he moved.
From their whispering voices, Twilight recognized them as the guards who had tried to confront her at the inn, and the fifth must have been their glorious leader who they intended to cower behind.
"You going to follow me all evening or can I get to work?" She turned around and faced the guards. Subtlety was not their strong suit. They crawled out from behind crates and barrels that could never fully hide their bodies. The only one of them who didn't need to reveal himself was the captain, who trumped the guards so much in muscle mass and armor he clearly saw no point in trying to hide.
While the guards were clearly farmers, and were built with the muscles to plow land and swing sickles, the captain had the look of a soldier. His plate armor was thick but only fully covered his torso. On his legs, the plate was secured by leather straps that strained to contain the mass underneath.
"Strait to the point then?" the captain replied, with a distinct accent from The High Mountain Kingdom. Definitely not a local, Twilight noted. "Good, this'll be easier then. As captain of the guard, place you under arrest for premeditated murder."
"You failed to notice a crucial fact," Twilight said. "No pony is dead. Yet."
Around her, the guards began reaching for their weapons. The captain steadied them, however, and explained the charge. "You came here claiming to be a killer of monsters, but a witness informed us that you planned to visit the widow at that farmhouse over there." He pointed to the lonely building in the distance, the same one the farmer's daughter had described to Twilight. "We suspect you plan to kill the resident widow, not the monster."
"Yea, and Winter Holly'd never lie to us, so ye best give up now mutant!" added one of the guards.
The captain let out a sigh, a signal to the guard to stop talking. "Your punishments will be lessened if you come peacefully, in accordance to the Far Coast's Law of the Land, article one, section two. For the murder or attempted murder of-"
"I know the law captain," Twilight interjected. "Only real power in the big cities. But we're not in the big cities."
The captain nodded sadly, as if he wished Twilight had chosen the easy option. "Then you should know that under article one, section one, municipal laws govern punishments for violent arrests. I cannot guarantee you safety." The captain nodded to his guards and trotted back to town, his head held low.
"'ear that? You're ours now," one of the guards grinned.
The talkative one stepped closer. "And we've the perfect justice for ye."
"S'it true mutants can't have little ones?" Another guard creeped behind Twilight, though with her hearing he might as well have stood right in her line of sight. "Better be, I'm done watchin' where I put it."
The guards laughed, and the fourth one piped up. "Bet she's ne'er been with a stallion before. We'll be her first, second, third, and fourth. Hah!" He spat at Twilight's hooves and snickered. "What's the point'n 'aving all those extra parts if yer important one don't work?"
She targeted him first. "Back off." Her words carried forward with her spell, striking the stallion back with a white flash. Suddenly taken over with Twilight's magic, he dropped all his actions, turned, and trotted home.
"Witch!" cried the guard behind Twilight. He slipped his hoof through his mace's hoof strap and charged at Twilight, only to be repulsed by a magic barrier. The talkative guard charged too, swinging his lumber ax at her head. Twilight crouched low and performed a pirouette, drawing her sword and tripping the guard in one fluid action.
"I'll 'ave yer 'ead!" shouted the fourth guard, attacking while Twilight had her guard down. He started with a wide swing, pulling the shovel from his back in a sweeping arc. Twilight stood with her guard down, but not defenseless. With her weapon in a Fool's Guard, she twisted her body, letting her sword defend her side and deflect the heavy weapon. With the point of the blade behind her and her back to the guard, she backed into his charged and drove her sword through him.
"Run damn it!" the other two panicked, sprinting for their captain. Twilight considered going after them, but it was already dark and it would have been pointless to stop them. She didn't plan to stick around once the vampire was killed.
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"Knock knock," Twilight said sarcastically. The vampire already knew she was coming. Twilight licked her lips, concealing the last signs of the scentless poison she drank. Even with her trained resistance she knew she had to fight the vampire fast and then take the antidote before becoming paralyzed by its effects. It was a risk, but a necessary one in case the vampire ever took a sip of her blood.
She opened the door to the house slowly, focusing her magic sight on every detail in the air. The vampire was an old one, powerful both physically and magically. Illusions, mind spells, and even invisibility were all simple tricks to the monster.
"Came a long way to meet you," Twilight taunted, "Diamond Carrot spent a lot to bring you back. Well, he mainly asked for the head."
She rotated as she paced through the house, keeping everything in sight. She turned left and entered the kitchen, then moved across the house to the living quarters.
"Maybe I could jot your memory? Sold his son for a hefty ransom, which he happily paid, and then killed the colt the moment the gold was in your hooves. Ran off and evaded his revenge ever since." Twilight looked up the stairs, seeing a plethora of ornate decorations. Money well spent, she thought to herself.
Then the response hit her in the chest. The vampire came like a gust of wind down the stairs, knocking Twilight through a grandfather clock. "And you're a brave hunter." Twilight got up and met the vampire's hungry eyes.
"How'd you get to be so popular? You're vicious." Twilight watched for any sign of overconfidence. Vampires were notoriously powerful, but with that power came a belief that they were superior to all things, especially ponies. If she wanted to survive, she needed the vampire to underestimate her.
"It was easy, really," the vampire explained as if Twilight were but a child. "The mare who lived here was loved by the farmers. She was the medicine mare who healed all their ailments, and her husband was the best carpenter any farm could need. So I melted my mind with hers, replaced her will with mine. Not even her delicious husband noticed the switch."
"Impressive," Twilight said, concealing the dread that filled her. "Transplacement's not an easy thing to do." That level of magic made the vampire an even deadlier specimen than she imagined.
"Oh, don't worry monster hunter," growled the vampire. She hunched over suddenly, contorting her body in unnatural ways until claws sprouted from her hooves and bat wings tore through her back. "There's plenty of monster left in this body to hunt."
Twilight's barely moved her sword before the first claw swipe tore apart her armor. A second hit came, and she narrowly avoided it with a barrier spell. If she had taken that hit, she would have died. But Twilight didn't count herself lucky yet. She rolled across the floor dropping bombs on her path. Each exploded with the same effect, filling the house with night silver dust.
The material sparked at the vampire's touch, and irritated her flesh until she collapsed in pain. Twilight didn't buy into it though. While a vampire still felt plenty of pain, it took much more to take it out of fighting condition. Twilight blasted glyphs from her horn, forming a web of magic that stuck to the vampire and caused the night silver to flare up even more.
The vampire lunged at Twilight from the pain, swiping up and sending her up into the bedroom. The attack was weaker and slower from the restraining magic, but the vampire was still leagues ahead of Twilight in power. Falling back down into the living room, Twilight spun with her sword and cut the vampire's skin, burning it with more night silver. She saw an opening and fired a fireball, but still missed by a lot.
The vampire spread its wings and bolted around the house like sound on the wind, striking Twilight from behind and retreating before she could do anything. Twilight shot a spell of pure force but missed again, recovering with a smooth pirouette and slashing the vampire again. It cut deeper, but still failed to phase the monster. To retaliate, the vampire slashed her claws against Twilight's face, sending flying into the kitchen.
"You're not the first hunter I've fought," the vampire said, rushing in and grabbing Twilight by the throat. "But thy were all smart enough to run back and drop the contract."
She paused to smell the aroma of Twilight's mutant blood. "If you were a stallion I'd mount you while I drained your body. But, I guess I'll have to do it the boring way this time." She hissed and sank her fangs into Twilight's throat, tearing through muscle and veins alike to draw every drop of the warm liquid.
The poison hit the vampire's system with a record speed. She stumbled back the moment the bat poison took its effect, turning her limbs limp and slowing all her movements.
Twilight got up and threw back the vampire into the kitchen's wall, using her sword to help her up. "We're alike then. You're not the first vampire I've fought. But, unlike you, I've never let mine get away."
She heaved her sword up and swung it down, chopping off a leg before the vampire could crawl away. Twilight stopped her with a bomb from her saddlebag. The little jar shattered, and the liquid contents inside it caught fire the moment they touched air.
She was sure the whole village could hear the screams as the vampire burned, and it was the middle of the night while every pony was sleeping. "Wouldn't want to wake some good folk," Twilight sighed, forcing herself to catch the dying monster and finish it early with a clean strike to the neck. And another, and another. It was messy work, cutting through the tough muscle of the vampire, but Twilight finished the job and left with the head before prying eyes came searching for answers.
A lifetime of monster hunting, nearly three hundred years of life thanks to the powerful magics that extended her lifespan and kept her alive in most fights against monsters, and now she owned a plantation.
Twilight looked up at the roof of her bedroom. The last of her gold spent on a plot of land near The High Mountain, building a plantation for wine and cider. The smell of apples and grapes greeted her as she slid out of to check on her family. Sometimes she couldn't believe it herself.
She was taught that mutants were hated, considered unnatural mistakes of nature. To fix the mistake, nature made mutants infertile. Somehow, she was the exception. A mutant with both wings and a horn, she had children with either wings or a horn. And then they found love of their own, and gave Twilight mutant grandchildren as well.
"Our little monsters," their father once said with affection. A kind farmer, not particularly special aside from his decency and fair share of looks. Twilight saved his parents from a dragon raid, and then killed the dragon and mounted the head above their door. On that day, Ripe Apple spent his days following Twilight on her adventures.
First from afar, admiring her as she completed contract after contract until the time came when Twilight was hired to clear a forest of High Fiends for a logging industry. She planned to fight one at a time but met her match when she hunted a High Fiend and its mate into their nest.
The fiends left her to die in those woods, and that was exactly what would have happened if Ripe Apple hadn't been there to pull her back to safety.
"Just repaying you for what you did," he explained, as if any pony would have risked themselves to save a mutant. It was an affection Twilight didn't think she needed, but coveted once she had it. She spent years living an independent life, free from the interests of stallions that Lander represented so well.
But, as Ripe Apple helped in her travels, he became a steady rock she would return to, whether he was waiting at a camp in the countryside or a tavern room in a big city. Monster hunters were travelers, with their castles as the closest thing to home. In this regard, Twilight was the same as every other hunter. But soon, she realized Bach Tor'al was just a place where she could winter out, while Ripe Apple and his family was a true home wherever she went.
"A line of fertile mutants," Twilight mused as she watched her grandchildren play in the vineyards. "What will the world be like now?"
She turned to her left, as if to receive and answer, but Ripe Apple had been dead for twenty years. He lived to see his children become adults, and they lived to bury their father. Twilight sat and watched, knowing she'd live to see them all pass, unless her magic failed and ended her extended life short.
Still, she was glad she didn't have to witness Ripe Apple grow too old. He had grays on his head when sickness took him, and without training to handle monster hunter potions, there was nothing Twilight could have done to cure him. Even if there was, there was nothing to stop him from growing frail and forgetful, and he would have withered away with age regardless.
She spurned mortality but respected it at the same time. She saw its purifying effects throughout her life as a hunter, but also felt its stings. When Lander was gored by a Mountain Dragon, when Guerrier was outnumbered by a Corpse Eater pack, and when Ripe Apple coughed his last breath and the life evaporated from his eyes, they all hurt like a fresh wound, and left scars bigger than any sword.
Twilight scoffed. "Bet Rainbow Dash would be strong and just tough it all out..."
The memories came back like a seizure, throwing Twilight off her seat. They came in sharp flashes as the old memories merged with the new as her old personality struggled to overpower who she was now. First the memories of the Card Master filled her head, and then one by one the cards themselves took hold.
Part of her didn't want to believe what she saw, but the other part -the stronger part- knew that her life was a lie. Her mind stripped bare and her body used like a toy in the Card Master's twisted game. But despite everything she knew, her life still felt as real as the rest. They weren't fake in her mind, no matter what the other memories said.
Welcome back Princess.
Twilight couldn't see through the images flashing in her mind, but she recognized the Card Master's voice. She recognized the black fog eating away at her world, drawing her back into the nothingness where the Card Master could taunt her. Her old self demanded her body back, rejecting the old memories as fabrications of a magic card. Her new self said it didn't matter, and her life was still hers.
Twilight grappled with the decision to a standstill, even when the resurgence of her memories subsided and the card she had lived in faded away into the Card Master's body.
Mutants. What an age it was, so simple in their beliefs.
Twilight wasn't sure what the Card Master was, but every fiber of her being, both the old and the new, demanded she strike him down. He was like a mannequin of cards, with a blank face. She wasn't sure if he even needed to breathe, but she started with a chokehold anyway. Twilight took flight, pushing the Card Master until they collided with a wall of solid darkness.
Twilight beat his head into the fog, scattering cards onto the floor with each hit.
Are you done?
Twilight punched the Card Master across where his jaw should have been, causing cards to flutter off his face.
Ouch.
She grappled him, locking his head between two hooves and slamming herself on top of him, forcing her weight onto his neck. The Card Master relaxed his body and slipped out of the hold, sending his cards flying into the fog. He reformed behind Twilight, standing calmly and waiting for her next move.
Twilight's face twisted in frustration. She spun around, her horn blazed with magic, and lobbed a heavy ball of energy at the Card Master. He effortlessly swatted the attack aside with one hoof, still standing in a casual position.
"Why won't you just die?" Twilight asked.
Later, perhaps. For now, there's some pony I'd like you to talk to.
The Card Master waved his hoof in the air and Twilight felt the ground shift. They both stood still but moved apart, and the more Twilight tried to catch up, whether by flight or by running, the Card Master only seemed to get farther away. Once he was completely out of sight, the fog slipped away.
Twilight panicked, bracing herself for another card to ensnare her in its magic, but as she closed her eyes and waited, she didn't feel a change. She opened her eyes and saw she was in a hallway that didn't end. The walls looked like finely polished marble, and felt no different than the wall of fog. Stranger was the floor, decorated with a purple and gold velvet carpet, yet it felt cool to the touch and smooth like the stone.
"You took everything from me," said the Monster Hunter. The Princess turned around to face the pony.
"I didn't need you in my life," the Twilights said in unison.
The Monster Hunter scoffed. "You're a glorified janitor. You clean up messes and bow humbly to those who shirk their duties."
"So I should accept your life?" retorted the Princess. "You, who killed when you were paid and charged ponies for saving their lives from monsters."
"Could you have done what you've done if you weren't supported by the Crown?" The Princess hesitated and the Monster Hunter knew it had made a point. "The common ponies support their royals, who in turn support you. I skipped the middle-pony and claimed the gold directly."
"I'm a Princess of Equestria," she replied sternly. "No pony pays me taxes for what I do."
The Monster Hunter shrugged. "Of course not, they simply put their wealth into the royal treasury. And where does your money come from?"
"Fine." The Princess crossed her hooves. "That doesn't change the time you stole from me."
The Monster Hunter snarled. "And it won't give back the life you stole from me!"
The Princess snarled at herself. "You lived a lie! A fabrication of the Card Master's magic. You had my body and a blank slate for a mind, how can you justify that your life is better?"
"Sure," the Monster Hunter nodded. "I'm just the bad copy. The fake one. Of course a royal like you is better than some pony like me. I've seen the same attitude in all kinds of royals so it must be true."
The Princess stomped her hoof. "I never said I was better-"
"No, you just said I was worse," interjected the Monster Hunter. "Big difference, I know."
"So what now? Do you plan to take your life back and rob Equestria of one of its princesses?" She stepped back, aiming her horn to prepare a spell.
"As much as I would love to, I can't," replied the Monster Hunter. "The others are waiting."
The Princess nodded. She didn't know much about the Card Master, but she was clever enough to guess what she was in for. She followed the Monster Hunter down the hallway, passing door after door. Each was the same, twice her height and made of heavy bronze, lightly etched to look like fine polished wood, but marked with the memories they locked away.
She looked at one and saw a face, cut off and nailed to a wall. Another showed her a vision of a castle being founded on the tallest mountain in the world. One even showed a wedding, the bride in tears as the husband slandered her for impurity. Finally, the Monster Hunter stopped and pointed to her door.
"Here it is."
The Princess watched the door, but she didn't see what was behind it, she remembered it: Digging actual shit holes in the snow, shooting magic out of crystals, and watching friends die for nothing.
"One last thing I need to tell you," the Monster Hunter said. "It's about when you first became me."
"Go ahead, say it," the Princess replied. She waited for the Monster Hunter to take a breath, evidently having the thought for some time. "Go on, just get it-"
The Monster Hunter punched her. It was hard, right in the jaw, and it knocked her over.
"That's for losing your memory," she said.
The Princess grabbed her face and got off the floor, wincing at the pain as she felt a tooth loosen. "What was I supposed to-"
The Monster Hunter punched her again. In the exact same spot.
"That's for getting it back." The Monster Hunter gave a shallow bow to the Princess and stepped away from the door, letting the Princess recover in her own time. She coughed a bit and spat out a tooth, and when she was ready, the Monster Hunter unlocked the door and beckoned the Princess in.
"Go on."
The Princess gave a short glare at the Monster Hunter as she entered the room.
Inside was completely unlike the hall. It was a well equipped apartment, with space and a kitchenette. It wasn't as refined as the marble walls outside or the soft velvet carpet, but it felt more comforting to be in a modest home. A fireplace kept it warm, because outside the apartment window was a storm, and the rain hit so hard it could have been hail and it would have sounded lighter.
A stallion sat by the fire with a warm cup of tea and a magazine. He wasn't young, the gray hairs in his mane were creeping in, but he watched Twilight with a deep, youthful interest.
"Ponies think this is bad weather," he chuckled. "But we know bad weather, don't we?"
He had a degree of unfamiliarity with the Princess, but she understood what he meant. "Snow up to your knees, and every flake your body warmed and melted would just freeze in the night and cover you in ice."
"I hated it. Dunno why I thought I wanted to fight in the war, there are plenty of other ways to serve." He looked down at his cup.
The Princess watched and waited for a reply, but pressed her question when he seemed too lost in thought. "Do you regret it?"
The Soldier shook his head. "Of course not. I made friends up north, even if most of them are dead now. Remember them?"
The Princess nodded. Of course she remembered them, they were her squad mates through the war. White Feather and his crystal gun, Peterstone and his farmer's accent, even Half-Lance, who's body was probably frozen in a ravine in the ice.
"You missed the best part, when you left," the Soldier said. "Got a letter that I was relieved of my duties. Dad died back home and I needed to manage our shipyard. Equestria's navy needed its ships for the war."
"Was that the last time you saw them?"
The Soldier shook his head. "Peregrine stopped by a few times, Hardfield visited regularly before doctors found a tumor in his chest. We had some good times but for the most part we went back to our lives."
"I don't think the Card Master wants small talk," the Princess said, after a moment of thought.
The Soldier disagreed. "You gotta remember. Only way to do that is by talking."
"But I do remember."
The Soldier levitated his cane to his side and stood up. "I didn't talk about it when I got back. I was told my dad left me our shipyard, so I took control of it and made sure ships were built on time." With a slow hobble, he walked over to his kitchenette and pulled a bottle of wine from the top cabinet.
The Princess looked at him. "Should you be-"
"Try to stop me," the Soldier grumbled before continuing. "Anyways, I worked at the shipyard 'till I married a nice mare who wrote for the newspaper. She interviewed me, asking about the war, and I told her all the things she wanted to hear. She had a nice smile when I talked about the horrible things, like ponies getting shot the cold wind, so I kept telling her those things."
"You said you didn't talk about it."
"And I didn't," answered the Soldier, grunting as he twisted the cork from the bottle. "I told her what happened, the battles we lost and won, the shit food we ate because there was too much snow and ice to cook anything right. I told her all that but it wasn't the truth."
He poured the red wine into two glasses and looked over at the Princess. "How did you feel when you were in a fight?"
The Princess shrugged, thinking it over. "Scared, I guess. At least until some pony died. When Half-Lance died I felt angry. When Peterstone died I felt angry."
"Remember the base we defended?" the Soldier asked, and the Princess nodded. "The cold wasn't the worst part. What did it for you?"
"Ambush on a few crystal ponies. Saw a dead one close up for the first time."
The Soldier nodded and sipped from his glass. "Yeah, I remember that one." he gave her the other glass, and the Princess drank happily. "Wasn't what did it for me though. For me, it was watching a rookie die in a pile of shit."
The Princess looked at the Soldier with a face of disgust.
"It happened a few days after the ambush you talked about. A bunch of colts fresh out of boot camp came to the base, acting as relief for all of us who needed a break from the cold. Before we left, we had to show them how to do things right, so I took a squad out and showed them which hills were safe cover and which cracks had massive ravines under them."
"And the shit?" the Princess asked, still unsure if she wanted to know.
"We were out for a while so we stopped to dig a waste pit," he said.
"Hated those," the Princess added.
The Soldier nodded. "Made it really deep 'cause we were near Shiny territory, and we couldn't leave a trace. Once it was done we all went, waiting in line and giving what privacy we could to whoever was going. Finally we were all done and walked away from the stench and left the last guy to do his thing. We looked away, and before we knew it we heard a shout and splat."
"Shinies?" the Princess guessed.
The Soldier sighed. "Wet ice. I knew he was green, but I turned away as he sat right up at the edge and slipped head first into a pit of shit. Decided I had to pull him out myself, no magic included."
The Princess set her glass of wine aside, suddenly feeling a little sick. "Sorry to hear that."
"So am I," he replied. "But that's why we remember them, isn't it? We have to, it's only right. If we can't remember them, who else will?"
The Princess nodded. "No one. I didn't even know what the war was like before I lived it through your eyes."
"Good." The Soldier looked to the door to the hallway. "I think you're needed elsewhere Private."
The Princess followed his gaze and saw what he meant. Outside stood the Princess of the Night, cradling the body of a filly in her wings. She stood up and walked over to her, remembering only the mother and her daughter dying. Over and over.
"An endless loop," said the Night. "Good. We can start."
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"Why are we back here?"
The sun was shining and the wind blew through the wild grasslands creating waves like the sea. On a hill was a little hut, all collapsed and burned to a crisp.
"You didn't see what became of the cottage," said the Princess of the Night. "You have to see it, to understand why we failed."
The Night walked up the hill to two graves and gently placed the filly down in the smaller one. Twilight followed her and looked down at the mother's grave, but the body was unrecognizable.
"What happened to her?" she asked.
The Night nodded and raised her horn to the sky. Night conquered day as time flowed backwards, rebuilding the cottage and replacing the bodies. The Princess of the Night moved as well, taking her place in the house and staring at the mother's body in horror. The Night didn't touch anything or say anything, all she could do was turn away and escape, taking flight through a window.
Twilight tried to chase her, but time flowed again like a river drinking the rain after a long dry spell.
"She was a witch!" cried one pony.
"Burn the bitch's house!" shouted another.
Marching up the hill were ponies of every kind. Some were dressed as bakers, other were tailors and blacksmiths. Twilight noted that the larger stallions with axes, probably loggers, were carrying stacks of fresh firewood on their saddles. And then there were a few at the head of the march, dressed well enough to be considered the town leaders.
One of them stood out above all, an elderly stallion dressed in plain white robes. The march stopped outside the mother's cottage, but white robed stallion walked further ahead, almost touching the doorway. He was followed by a filly and a colt dressed in gray robes, who placed a podium and a book before the stallion.
"Colts, fillies, stallions and mares, thank you for coming out here tonight." For a pony his age he spoke with clarity and projected his voice until even those who stood at the back of the crowd could hear him as if he was talking to them face to face. "The Two Sisters know we live in trying times, and grace us with justice and mercy so that we may unite and fight the terrors in the wilds. But while all sins are forgiven by the caring light of the Sun, the punishments are clear."
He gestured behind him with one hoof, pointing to the body of the dead mother. "In death, this mother shall be tried by the Elements, for her crimes against Harmony. But in life, we must do what we can to aid the Two Sisters, and justly punish her for her sins."
The old stallion gave a gentle nod to the loggers to begin laying down their logs while the two grays carried out the bodies from the cottage. The colt dragged the mother along the ground to the loggers, where a pyre had been cobbled together, while the filly gently placed the young unicorn on the ground and began digging a grave.
Twilight wanted to stop the loggers and explain what happened, to give all the ponies the real story, but it was clear they couldn't see, hear, or even feel her. She stood and watched as a funeral was held for the unicorn filly while the colt in gray burned the mother's body like it was just another log on the fire.
When the fire died down and both bodies and been laid to rest, Twilight sat before the two graves in silence. The Night stood behind her.
"It sucks not being able to tell any pony what happened," she told her. "All I could do is watch. How do you do it Luna? You've lived for so long, how can you stand not telling ponies the truth when it's been forgotten."
The Night chuckled. "For a time, I did tell the stories. But that time is now, and whatever leader I am now, I will not be."
"Right, of course," Twilight said. "You're just part of the card too."
The Night knelt and embraced Twilight under her wings. "Not entirely. I was once part of your Princess of the Night, in some ways. Some of her memories even she had forgotten are interred in the cards."
Twilight looked at the Night. "You're part of the real Luna? Did the Card Master take you when she faced his game?" Twilight quickly took back her tone, regretting comparing the Night to the "real Luna," but the Night wasn't bothered and simply nodded.
"And you don't resent him for it?"
The Princess of the Night shrugged and stood up. "This is my now. It always was, even as I was part of the whole. Outside of now is not my concern, so no, I don't resent him."
"But what about Luna?" Twilight wondered, amazed that the Night didn't care about her real self. "If she had you back she could remember, and she could tell every pony-"
"She had her memory long before she played the game, the Elements made sure of that," the Night snapped at Twilight. "Why would she say anything when I am back with her after all the times she's avoided the truth?"
"But if you stay with the Card Master, what do you think will happen?" asked Twilight.
"His plan is known to us, Princess. Soon it will be known to you." The Night turned her head to the forest Twilight had come from when she first entered the card as Luna. "If you wish to know, this is not the now you need. Go, another waits for you."
"Luna, wait." Twilight reached out to grab the Night, clinging onto her wing with both hooves. "You're a princess too, you can tell me more."
The Night shook her head. "I can only lead you to one who can." Slowly, she dissolved into the ground as a black fog, and to Twilight's shock, dragged her along too. Twilight was formless in an instant, but didn't feel as dispersed as her form suggested. In the ground, she could feel the current of time, she could reach out like the roots of the Tree of Harmony and look around for where she was needed.
It was too tempting to explore every moment she passed. Despite her time as the Monster Hunter, she wanted to learn more, to know every story there was to know. But evidently that wasn't going to come true. She sensed the ground coming quickly, as quickly as the dark fog came, and she realized which "now" she was in. Still, she couldn't stop herself from reforming and crashing into a pile of rubble on the floor.
She heard the sound of slaughter on the walls. An earth pony was thrown from the top of the fort and landed next to Twilight with a disturbing crunch .
"When I imagined escaping my time loop, I also imagined a timeline that'd be... happier."
The stallion from the wall, the one hit by a griffon's last grasp at glory, lifted Twilight off the ground.
"You should be dead," Twilight gasped once she realized who he was.
He nodded and pointed to the walls of the fort and the sky above it. "And we were supposed to win." As he said it, a group of griffons swooped down and carried off a stallion in heavy armor, dropping him when they were high enough to make a splat .
Twilight's lip quivered with fear. "How is this possible?" Time was something not to be messed with, as she had learned the hard way in the past. The idea of another dramatic change such as this worried her.
It didn't take much effort to read her thought on her face. "You were a monster hunter. A fully fledged alicorn, in a time when unicorns and pegasi were considered more monster than pony. How could the card accept you without accepting the changes?"
"Changes?" Twilight didn't believe the Card Master had the talent for time travel. "His magic's only in the cards, he's not even a unicorn."
"There is magic in the land older than the trees itself, Princess." The stallion gestured around him, pointing to the air. "It's been here before everything else. Can't you accept that other beings beyond unicorns have magic?"
"But the other times haven't changed!" Twilight said, refusing what she saw. "I spoke to Two Tail and Luna, their cards didn't change like this one."
The stallion laughed. "Your kind thinks of time like a stream of water, always flowing toward the future. You treat every decision like a stone blocking the water, causing ripples for the rest of the flow."
He placed his hoof on Twilight's shoulder, guiding her out the fort and pointing her gaze to the sea, where griffon ships landed and flooded troops onto the beach. "That's the closest thing to time. A mass of water so vast you can never see the end, a churning tide with waves and whirlpools and currents that can drag you out so you'll never be seen again. Drop a stone in that, and the ripples die before they form something big."
Twilight shook her head, trying to wrap her head around the explanation. "If the ripples are so short, how did I cause this?"
The stallion reached out and flexed his hoof. Magic leaked into the card and distorted the space, until they had shifted from the hill down to the beach. "The tides of the sea are strong, Princess. If every action is a rock, then sooner or later that action will surface."
"So what I was, the Monster Hunter, that lead to all this?" she asked, awed by the invading griffon forces. Before, it looked insignificant compared to the trap of the pegasi, but once the front lines landed and crushed the ponies, the rear ships sent its own ocean, full of hungry beaks and lethal talons.
"No matter what happens, the your time will more or less remain unchanged," he told Twilight. "The way it was before, the griffons shut themselves off after the humiliating defeat. Now, they'll enjoy a few years of victory until an army of guerrilla fighters cripples their defenses and send them home. A few different deaths, but many will die, just for the same result."
Twilight turned to the stallion with a stern look. "Card Master has a plan, and so far nothing's been a waste of time. But you're saying ponies and griffons will die no matter what, something I already learned from the other times. What's your point?"
The stallion sighed. "I'm afraid I'm just the farewell message, a final lesson you must know about time. Not to worry, your now will stay as it is when you go back. Of course, that's assuming you don't accept the Card Master's offer."
"And what might that be?" Twilight raised a brow at the stallion.
Wouldn't you rather ask me instead, Princess?
"Just shut up Card Master."
I haven't said anything yet.
Twilight rolled her eyes and paced around him. "You take your sweet time being mysterious and wise." He was clad in his robes again, with a hood so large it shrouded his face and the cards that made it up. "But I'm not the one with the so-called 'grand plan,' or whatever you've been playing this game for. I can be patient, no other choice really, but you have a goal you want to see fulfilled."
Then we're both in luck. The game is over. You win.
Twilight's pacing stopped.
Really, we're done here.
She just looked at him expectantly, waiting for his elaboration.
Fine, Princess. You get a prize too for your efforts.
He flicked his hoof and a card shot from his sleeve. It nearly struck Twilight in the eye, stopping only at the last moment and hovering in front of her face. It was like the rest of his cards. Magic flowed through it, pumping like blood through the magic symbols that crisscrossed as if all the constellations in the night sky had converged into one point to overlap each other.
That card is yours, Twilight. Should you choose to accept it.
"And if I do?" she asked.
Must we skip the elaborate explanation?
Twilight sighed slowly, blankly staring at him, and nodded. The Card Master lowered his hooded head, as if in sadness.
Very well. That card is mine. The Card of the Card Master. The one who possesses it is worthy of the title.
"A successor..." mumbled Twilight.
You have seen what needs to be done, though you may not know it yet. Accept it, and you will have the power to turn it into reality.
"What reality? Power over time? More games?" Twilight looked at the card. It was the same on either side, unlike the rest of the cards with a backing and an image of its world.
What needs to be done is this: kill Time.
Twilight furrowed her brows and stared at the Card Master the way she usually did; once again she thought he was insane.
Everywhere there is death. All things must die, and beings such as ponies and Shinies and griffons will suffer along the way. With you as the Card Master, that will all change. No past, no future, not even a present; stop the flow of time and all moments will merge into one, as they have merged in you.
"It'll be chaos!" she exclaimed.
It's already chaos! This will bring unity. Those who live, have lived, and will live, can exist as one, moving from time to time like you would a walk in the park. All mistakes to ever exist can be fixed, just by knowing all the moments in time at once. The world would be a paradise.
"I refuse the card," Twilight answered. "Meddling with time never ends well Card Master."
Because in the end, Time always remains the winner. It continues on and on no matter what. Few have ever traveled through time, and as you can attest, they all want to change something in their own perception of the world. Time walks away untouched. Not this time.
Twilight shook her head. "Not with me." She tried to imagine the Card Master's world but she couldn't see the good in it. She saw the wars that would always exist, the conflicts that could be forgotten always staying alive. Ponies needed Time so they could put things behind them and be done with it, and even if the past wanted to be remembered, it couldn't do so without suffocating the future. The Card Master kept his head low as he nodded wistfully.
I admire your conviction, Princess. It's far greater than the Sun's, of that I am certain. So please, understand that I do not wish to do this, even if I must.
The Card Master's card flared bright like the sun itself before Twilight could react. The blast of magic first blinded her, and then sent her sprawling on the ground with a burst of magic. Her vision blurred from the force but the Card Master was already on her. He dropped his robe, dispersed into a cloud of cards and reformed by her side, picking up Twilight and swinging her back into the cold fog ground.
Her horn sparked with magic as she groaned but she was already flying across the dark room. She heard and felt her back crack against the fog's barrier. She tried to open her wings to get away, but something was broken and the bone dug into her skin.
"Don't do this," she pleaded. "I'm no good to you dead."
There was no reply. Twilight scanned the room but she couldn't see anything but her own hooves. Even the blood dripping from her beaten face dripped into the fog and vanished. There was only her and darkness.
Only darkness and hoof steps.
"Sweet Princess, you're not going to die here." Twilight squinted her eyes at the darkness but couldn't make out the figure that spoke to her. "That would be such a waste. No, you're going to stay here with me, and you're going to learn to kneel to the Queen."
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Twilight's head throbbed like her brain was trying to escape from her skull. The last thing she remembered was refusing the card and being thrashed around by the Card Master. She tried to say something, even if only to hear her own voice, but she could barely muster a groan.
It wasn't until the pain in her head stopped that she realized her situation. She couldn't move; each hoof was fixed in place by two tight leather straps. "What is this?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Look around little thing, don't you recognize it?" Twilight still couldn't see where the voice came from but given her position she simply listened and looked at her surrounding. The Castle of the Two Sisters, standing in its original glory. "Why here of all places?"
The voice quietly chuckled. "I feel so alone. You don't even remember my voice."
Twilight swallowed her fear. "What are you doing here, Nightmare Moon?"
She saw why she couldn't see the Nightmare back in the dark fog. The night was dark and she was nearly invisible in it, her midnight coat blending in with her domain.
"This is my home, Princess," answered the Queen. She walked calmly up to Twilight, examining the structure she was strapped to. It was a simple wooden "X," propped up by two thick wood beams behind it. "You don't look comfortable. Let me cut you down from this." Twilight let out a breath of relief as the Queen produced a knife from under her wing and cut her hind legs free. She felt herself slide down, the remaining leather straps struggling to hold her in place.
"Then again, you did refuse the Card Master." Twilight winced as she drove the knife into her stomach, pinning her onto the cross again. Her face was twisted in anguish but the Queen didn't seem to notice.
Twilight tried to pull her hooves free but the Queen simply pressed herself up against her. For a long time they both said nothing. Twilight remained still out of fear and the Queen of Nights enjoyed watching Twilight squirm. "Such a pretty one, aren't you?" Twilight cried in agony out as the Queen gripped the knife with magic and twisted it around.
"Stop!" Twilight shouted through her teeth. "Please stop!"
The Queen simply smiled and obliged. She stepped back to look at the bloody handle sticking from Twilight's belly, slowly dripping out blood with each heartbeat.
"What did he ever see in you?" The Queen hissed and yanked the knife out, pushing it into her hind leg instead and tearing down through the skin. Twilight gave another sound of pain but her voice broke as her blood drained into the rest of her body, including her lungs and her throat. Whatever she did, the Queen didn't heed, simply taking the knife and slashing down her other hind leg in a similar manner.
Satisfied with her introduction the Queen of Nights waved her horn and unfastened the straps that held Twilight, letting her slide off the wood and crumple to the ground. She snickered at the young alicorn as magic seeped into her, healing her wounds and refilling the blood she lost. Twilight gasped once she had recovered, taking in the air and coveting it.
The Queen shook her head at Twilight and smiled to herself, imagining the torment she could inflict. "I was supposed to take his place," she told Twilight, who struggled to lift herself up from the ground. "The prophecy said some pony would, some pony born from the magic of the cards. So, when your Princess Luna came to stop the Card Master's games, he added her memories to the cards and made me, a card formed from the memories of the past."
"I don't want to be the Card Master," Twilight said, stepping back to distance herself from the nightmare before her.
Twilight immediate regretted those words as the Queen's face contorted into a deformed shadow. She spread her wings and rushed forward, striking Twilight in the chest with a hoof, driving her through the stone walls of the castle. "He chose a princess born without wings, an alicorn bastard given power and wings!"
Twilight scrambled to defend herself, using her wings to shield herself.
"Worst of all, you don't even want the honor of being his successor. Look at you cower, and here I thought there was a monster hunter in you." The Queen scoffed at her. "You're pathetic. After all he's done to turn you into the prophecy's chosen, you could at least stand and fight."
Twilight tensed as the Queen stepped closer. She could see all the possible attacks like a fighter, and the Monster Hunter yearned to take over and take one last monster to the grave, but the Princess overruled her. She didn't have the Elements, and without them she wasn't sure how to beat the Nightmare.
"I want to talk to the Card Master," Twilight finally said, halting the Queen's advance. "He's in charge, not you. I won't gain anything from fighting you."
The Queen laughed at the Princess's attempt at negotiation. "He left you with me, darling. You may not know this, but ponies who come here do not leave. Not alive, anyways."
"Celestia did," Twilight prodded. She watched as the Queen's eyes twitched at the mention of her sister.
"You would do well to remember who you are," she growled. "You do not shine as bright as the sun, and anything less than that will be consumed by the night. That's why you're here, left to rot by the Card Master. Plead to him all you want, you're mine now."
The Queen charged her horn to make her point, blasting a beam of magic. Twilight rolled out of the way and took to the sky, flapping her wings through the hole in the wall. She had a head start but the Queen gave chase, soaring after her faster than she would have expected. She twisted through the air, trying to lose her under and over the arches around the castle.
Despite her efforts, it was inevitable the Queen would catch up. She felt the burn of the magic knock her down from the sky, forcing her to crash through the windows of the castle.
"I'll prove I deserve to be his successor!" The Queen declared as she landed on top of Twilight, planting her hooves on her wings. "I can break you, and then you'll be nothing more than-"
She roared as Twilight blinded her with a bolt of magic, falling back to recover her eyes. "I hope you enjoy being trapped in here, because nothing you can do can match what the Card Master is capable of. He believes in what he should do, even if it will destroy the world as we know it." She spun around and bucked the Queen in the jaw, knocking her down to the floor. "You have too much of Nightmare Moon, and no control. He'll never let you have his card."
"No, I won't," the Queen sighed, "he's chosen you , and there's nothing you or I can do about it."
"I refused him," Twilight told her.
The Queen just spat blood at her hooves. "You dumb little bitch. You don't get to refuse the Card Master." Her horn glowed, commanding the black fog to seep up from the floor. "Accepting is always easier, but there are ways the cards can take you, and with their method's there's no resistance."
The fog solidified, like the fog walls that trapped Twilight with the Card Master, only they didn't form a room. Tendrils of the fog slipped up from the ground, coiling around Twilight and digging into her skin. They passed into her, incorporeal yet still able to manipulate, pulling her down to the ground, where she grunted and attempted to escape.
"I wanted you to myself," snickered the Queen of Nights. "It would have been so fun to see you submit to me. But I must carry out my duties as the Card Master commands." She twirled her horn and more fog rose up, wrapping around Twilight's legs and head, dragging her down until she couldn't help but taste the smooth stone of the castle floor.
Finally, once the fog had wrapped every part of Twilight save for her head, the Queen knelt down and turned Twilight's face to the side. "Still, I want to look at you and savor every moment of the change." She shot Twilight a wolfish grin as smaller tendrils of fog sprouted from the ground and creeped into her mouth, gripping her jaw and forcing it open.
With her job complete, the Queen of Nights happily stood back and watched. The air before Twilight crackled with energy and warped itself, whirling around like a whirlpool until a card popped from its magic. Twilight's eyes widened with recognition. The Card Master's card hovered at her lips, humming gently with power.
From it came another card, peeling off like a sticker. It stuck itself to Twilight's skin, burning with magic to permanently join with her flesh. She would have screamed if she could, but more cards followed, coming off the Card Master's card like stickers, endlessly spawning from its magic as if a whole deck was compacted into a single card.
All Twilight could do was wince as each card bit into her skin, until there wasn't a shred of her purple coat showing, and when the cards began filling her throat and lungs, there was nothing more she could do but thrash around and hope it would end. The cards were flooding out, each fighting to conquer her body and suffocate her with power. For once, the Queen of Nights watched the torture in horror, reconsidering her own ambitions to succeed the Card Master.
Twilight was certain she'd die of suffocation, the cards had removed room in body for even air, but the magic in the fog decided otherwise. Every moment Twilight felt close to death magic would revive her, refreshing her senses to the endless barrage of torture. When the cards cut and shredded her inner organs and muscles, magic seeped into her and healed them. When she needed air, the magic provided just enough. And so it went, on and on.
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Well done, Princess.
The voice woke Twilight to a mirror, back in the darkness of the fog. She didn't remember passing out, but she wasn't surprised. The cards forced their power onto her, and she couldn't have survived it for long.
But she looked fine in the mirror. No skin made of cards, no dark hooded robe to cover her face. She was still herself.
I wouldn't say you're exactly the same as before.
The Card Master's voice echoed around the room, but he did not show himself. Twilight paced around the room, keeping her guard up once again.
Princess, please. I am but a voice now. You control the powers of the cards, not me.
"Then why am I still here?" she asked.
I wondered that myself. It appears in your sleep your fears of your appearance summoned the mirror. If you want to leave, simply say the word.
Twilight gazed suspiciously around her, but having no other lead on what to do, she commanded the fog. "I want to leave."
You are the master. Your powers have no care for what you want, trust me on that. Don't tell them what you want, tell them what to do so you can get what you want.
Twilight reached deep within herself and boomed the command with her impression of Luna's royal voice, carrying her command to every part of the fog. "Disperse and let me leave."
It all went away. The mirror dissipated and went with the fog, clearing out into the floor boards of what slowly appeared to be a log cabin. It was unfurnished, effectively just a box made of logs and nails, and without the darkness it looked surprisingly small.
"Where am I now?" Twilight asked, expecting the Card Master to appear in his pony form, just as he did when he tricked her into his game.
But there was only herself. In her hoof, a key for the locked door with the etchings C.M. written on it. She didn't wait any longer to escape. Twilight stuck the key into the lock burst out the door for her first taste of freedom. Outside was the familiar surrounding of the Everfree Forest, albeit deeper than she had ever been before. Nail to a tree outside the door was a note, clumsily scratched onto the paper with a stick of charcoal.
Always remember. Your are born from the magic of the cards, far more worthy than the successors I have tried to create. Whatever your feelings, do not forgo the powers of the past. Time may not need to die, as you want it. Or maybe it must, as I want it. The cards grant power of hindsight, but you may have a gift for foresight. This is why the magic has passed to you, Princess. Only you have the judgement to harmonize the world once and for all. Whatever your choice, look to the past and always remember.
Above, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping. It was a nice day outside. Twilight thought to herself, considering everything that she had experienced, ultimately coming to the only reasonable solution.
"I should go see my friends."
"Ehar'thriil vaht tool'Um!" Twilight cast the words into the stone gateway and summoned a portal.
Both Highsight and Lander stepped back in shock. Magic at that level was rare, even among other mutant mages.
"Bet contracts come in every day," Lander said, whistling at the power of the portal. Though neither Highsight nor Lander could feel magic directly, their swords were forged with traces of night silver in the pommel, so they could feel the vibrations from it when they neared any strong source of magic.
Twilight shrugged. "Kind of, except I have to seek them out. After all, nobles can't tarnish their social standing by seeking out a mutant, and peasants fear a pair of wings and a horn just as much as a witch's curse."
"Yet you're famous from Far Coast to The High Mountain," Highsight added. "You must be doing something right."
"Speaking of witches and curses, what's the deal with this contract?" It wasn't uncommon for Lander to stray from the topic of the conversation, but he rarely strayed back onto the important things. "You wouldn't have asked us to travel here if it wasn't something important."
Twilight nodded. "I took a contract issued by a knight, a well decorated commander leading his king's campaign to unite the Far Coast. He marched all the way from the northern shore, and knew he wouldn't see home for another year or two. It's long but war's still war, yet, for whatever reason, he decided he didn't want to leave his fiance in the safety of his king's palace, so he brought her along."
"Adventurous youth," Lander chuckled, "never know what's good for them."
"Yes," Twilight said, "and this time it just so happened that a witch took a fancy to the knight's fiance. So, she kidnapped the poor girl and brought her to a cave sealed off completely by physical means. Now I'm here in place of the knight as the rescue party."
Highsight raised a brow. "So magic portals are the only way in or out? Damn paranoid, even for a witch."
"I figured she'd be dangerous, so after three days of preparations I went in." Twilight showed her friends her saddlebag. "Brewed poisons, potions, and elixirs just for the fight, and I still didn't stand a chance."
Her friends looked at each other with a moment of concern. "What made her so special?" Highsight asked.
"Well, her magic's stronger than any sorcerer I know," Twilight started, "and she also has a pet vurm with her."
"A vurm? Are you sure?" Highsight seemed skeptical. "Vurms haven't been around for nearly three centuries. Master Stonewood taught us-"
"-that the last vurm was killed two hundred and eighty years ago," Twilight finished hurriedly. "I know, Highsight, but I saw it myself. It fit the classification of a Guivre Vurm, a thick serpent body as thick as the base of a redwood tree and so long that both ends could not be seen."
Lander laughed nervously. "You're taking a piss aren't you?"
Twilight shook her head.
"So we're to kill this vurm, kill a witch that can control a vurm, and then find a probably dead fiance for a knight," Lander summarized with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. "Anything else?"
"The fiance apparently makes really good pies," Twilight added, "so... there's that."
"Perfect," Lander lamented, "now I just need to prepare my vurm killing kit."
Twilight was replied with two saddlebags stocked to the brim with poisons, potions, explosives, and even a few caramel apples with sugar cubes. "I got everything set for the fight. All we have to do is prepare our weapons and go for it."
The three of them quietly sat down and sharpened their swords on the grindstones Twilight had brought to their camp. She looked at the both of them. "So, good time to catch up?"
There was a pause from both her friends. "Sure, why not," Lander finally replied. "I heard Highsight has some good stories to tell. Maybe even the one about the wedding, if we're lucky." Highsight's eyes bulged at Lander, and he grinned back. "Word spreads fast when it's about a prince."
Now Twilight was interested. "Not sure about this fight. I want a good story to take with me if we don't win."
Highsight sighed, relenting to the pressure. "Had to kill a High Fiend that was hunting the apple pickers near The High Mountain. Winter was nearing then, and the king of the The High Mountain let me stay there 'till spring as part of the payment. He didn't mention he had a son who took a fancy to me, even when he was to be wed in a fortnight."
"Let me guess, it was your stunning personality?" Twilight teased.
Highsight shrugged. "My exotic accent he said, as if I appreciated being valued by how I talked. Also didn't know monster hunters are infertile."
"He found out?" Twilight raised a brow.
She shook her head. "I thought he knew until after everything happened."
"So, what'd he do?"
"Galloped strait of the wedding right before saying 'yes' and proposed to me outside the window of my room." Highsight laughed. "His fiance ran after him, begging him to come to his senses. He just started insulting her, saying how she never satisfied his 'adventurous spirit,' up to the point I rejected him. He didn't have much to say after that."
Twilight laughed along. "Breaking hearts and taking names. Guerrier would be proud."
Highsight raised an eyebrow and glanced at Lander. "Your turn lover boy, tell us about that time in Timbertown."
"Whatever you heard, I'm sure it was exaggeration." Lander paused to collect his composure. "Anyways, if you want to know what happened, just picture an injured succubus asking for help to flee the local inquisitors. Couldn't deny her, now could I?"
"Of course, you're so kindhearted." Twilight sheathed her sword after sharpening it and rubbing it down with draconic poison. "Hope this witch doesn't have the same effect."
"Oh, fuck off," Lander spat, shuddering at the thought. "That's disgusting Twilight, now you've got me thinking of wrinkly old skin and saggy muscles."
"Kill it and you can forget all about it," Highsight suggested. "I'm ready, how 'bout you two? Never too late to turn back if you're scared."
Lander stood with his sword in one hoof, gazing at the portal with confidence. "I'll show you both. I won't be the butt of your jokes any more after this."
"If we kill it, I'll owe you both," Twilight said, picking up her saddlebag and walking up to the portal. "Remember Stonewood's lessons on draconics?"
"Chapter sixteen of Scales, Tails, and Fangs. " Highsight recalled. "Vurms: venomous fangs, acidic breath, and it swallows you whole." She removed a flask of a thick murky liquid and poured the bitter mixture down her throat. Twilight and Lander both drank the antidotes too. Though draconics were famous for fiery breath, a multitude of venoms were just as dangerous for certain monsters, and since each monster could be born with any combination of the venoms, the monster hunter's antidote had to account for all of it.
It was thick and packed with herbs, extracts, and even a few animal and monster parts for good measure. It tasted worse than rotting apples, but they were forced to get used to it.
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The portal wasn't what surprised Highsight and Lander; the sensation of teleporting was like walking through a hurricane. It was the witch's cave that stunned them. Despite being nearly pitch black, Highsight and Lander drank potions of Sight, showing them every detail of the cave. Parts of it were still natural, like the stalagmites and stalactites, but most of it was dug out with detailed architecture.
"It resembles the works of Royal Griffins, but it's older than anything I've ever seen," Twilight told them.
"So the witch's a historian and a vurm tamer," Lander mused. "Impressive."
They passed the typical decorations of the witch's lair, quietly moving around the mutilated corpses of monsters and animals, and the glowing black pots filled with things they did not intend on identifying. Then there were oddities, like ancient silver relics that didn't match the designs of the architecture, or the finely painted portraits of a beautiful young mare.
They passed most of the upper cavern before they heard the crying of a young mare from below them, echoing from a poorly repaired stairway. Twilight glided down with no trouble but Highsight and Lander took their time walking down the loose steps.
Twilight whispered to Lander. "The knight's fiance can't be in here when the fighting starts. Get her to the portal and come back as quickly as you can. We'll scan the area for the witch or the vurm and cover if needed."
Lander nodded and dashed around the caves, which were now becoming less and less refined their construction, and searched for the mare. Some were clearly prisons, made with metal bars and locks, while others were simply pits with a heavy stone lid dropped on top. He found the mare in one of those pits, its lid cracked open as if the witch didn't care to close it properly.
"Shh, I'm a professional," Lander whispered to the knight's fiance. "Your soon to-be husband sent us to get you. I need you to stay quiet now or we may get caught by the thing that brought you here."
The mare continued to sniffle but Lander's warning seemed to calm her slightly. "Are you just another trick? The hag's been tormenting every day with her conjuring and casting. If you're lying, I beg of you, just leave me be!"
"Woah there, you gotta stay quiet," Lander responded, adding a great deal of fear to his whisper to scare the mare into silence. "I don't feel like dying to witch just because weren't quiet enough. No, I'm not a trick, but I have a feeling we might run into a few if you don't stay quiet and come with me, okay?"
Lander could hear the mare pull herself off the stone floor. "Okay."
He bucked the stone slab a bit, opening a gap big enough for his hooves and heaved the slab aside until the mare could squeeze out.
"I'll take you to the exit. Stay close and don't make a sound." As Lander snuck through the cave back to the portal, Twilight and Highsight trudged through the rough shifting terrain of the cave.
"Tell me more about this witch," Highsight requested, "you fought her once already, right?"
"She's got weird spells," Twilight said. "She can make copies of herself -real copies, not just illusions- to fight in her place. On top that she -wait, hear that?"
Highsight froze and listened with Twilight. "Your echoing voice?" Then she heard the skittering and scratching along the cave walls. "Wait, I do hear it. It sounds like..."
Thousands of rats. The floor came alive like a wave and rushed for Twilight and Highsight, but only met an energy shield.
"Oh no, I'm not doing rats," Highsight panicked, her voice shaking as more rats piled around the shield.
Twilight followed Highsight's queues and dropped the shield the instant she struck her hoof against the stone floor. Carved onto her horseshoes, the glyphs of fire flared with magic and spewed a stream of flames from the horseshoe onto the rats. Twilight added her own wards to the ground, carving the symbols with beams of magic into ground.
The wards and glyphs worked wonders together. While the glyphs of fire burned rats with magic of its own, the wards fed on the residual energy of the glyphs, recycling the feedback magic to clear the cave with its own spouts of fire. But the arcane forces were nothing compared to the swarm of rats. More kept coming, and Twilight realized more would keep coming.
"They're magic!" she shouted to Highsight ,over the sound of thousands of rats. "It the witch's trap, she's summoning them."
Twilight resumed focusing her magic into a barrier, expanding her focus until the energy shield blocked off both sides of the tunnel like the walls of a castle. Safe for the moment, she didn't take a moment to rest. Twilight was on the floor immediately, drawing overlapping circles on the floor of the tunnel the picture resembled a twenty-petal flower.
At the tip of each petal went a candle, and at the center Twilight sat. "Jur ren ye'Um la'ehar kavak mo'rthulais!" She recited the spell into the chalk, and from the symbol a surge of power flowed into the tunnel. Commanded by magic, the rats tensed up and faced each other. Slowly, hundreds of rats began to vanish, seemingly turned to ashes and absorbed by just a dozen of their comrades.
"You can show yourself," Twilight called out. "Don't try hiding in the dark, we can see you."
Highsight drew her sword, looking around at every stalagmite in the tunnel. The witch walked casually out of a cave wall distorting the illusion enough to reveal the secret laboratory. Twilight shifted into a defensive stance with her sword and circled the witch.
To call the witch an old mare would be generous. Her skin was cracked and wrinkled, revealing the slick, blackened flesh underneath. Damaged over time by the use of black magic, the witch twitched uncontrollably, a motion that often shook off flakes of dead skin. Whatever patches of fur she still had on her coat glowed red, soaked with chemicals mixed with blood. Her teeth chattered as her frail body shook, gnashing against what looked to Twilight to be a rat's tail at first, but turned out to be her dried, dead tongue.
The witch screeched into their minds with her magic. Returning with more meat, hunter? You only doom your comrades.
Twilight took the advantage to attack while the witch threatened them, tossing a bomb that doused the witch in tar. Highsight followed Twilight's attack with her glyphs, spraying fire until the witch wore flames across its whole body. Despite being covered in flames, the witch still cast a shockwave of magic knocking down them into the damp floor.
Twilight rolled to the side and dodged the second spell, a blast of lighting, and built her momentum up in her sword with a series of spins, landing the strike on the neck of the witch. Magic made the witch far stronger than she appeared, and while her blade landed, Twilight might as well struck a plate of steel or a granite boulder.
Lander could hear the battle break out even from the entrance portal. "We have to kill the witch. The portal will take you to the forest just outside your husband's encampment. The mare turned to Lander and gave him a gentle smile.
"My fiance," she reminded him. "And as much as he claims to love me, he's never rescued me from anything like this." Lander backed away from the mare's advances but she was on him immediately, kissing him up and down his neck.
Lander gasped as the mare attempted to undo the straps of his armor. "You might be safe, but my friends need my help. I don't think two monster hunters can handle this witch."
"You're right," she said, frowning. She looked deeply into Lander's eyes, and slowly tore her gaze away. "That's why you have to die."
"What?" Lander felt his lungs collapse to a burst of magic, made worse as his back struck the hard stone wall of the cave. The mare was on him again, but this time her coat was discolored, going from a faint pink to a pale gray. From her head, a horn split through her her skin, and she lifted him up with a levitation spell.
"That stupid monster hunter sent you to rescue the damsel in distress?" The witch scanned Lander's body from head to tail. "Such a disappointment. I would have preferred the female companion, but you'll have to do."
Lander let the witch lower her guard as she carried him over to one her many work tables. The witch had a plethora of ingredients messily splattered along the cave, and most of them only needed a spark to start burning. Lander waited, and once he was in range of the tables, he threw a bomb from his saddlebag.
Twilight and Highsight could hear the explosion from where they stood, and even the witch stopped to face the sound. For a moment, Twilight saw the witch's expression show genuine fear, before she turned back to them and fired off more magic. Twilight and Highsight both kept on their hooves, avoiding the places being transmuted into pools of acid by the witch.
In the burning wreckage, Lander wrestled the witch onto the ground with his sword. Her body was half burnt and covered in wood and stone shrapnel, but none of that bothered the witch more than the night silver in Lander's sword that denied much of her powers from taking shape.
Two pairs of hooves grabbed at Lander's saddlebag and dragged him off the witch. He slashed at them, but they let go in time to avoid the deadly cuts. Lander rose to face the witch's assistants, and his eyes widened at what he saw. He was surrounded by three copies of the witch, and any one of them could have been the real one. Or perhaps none of them at all, if the witch was fighting safe.
He charged forward and dismembered a leg off one of the copies, and he felt his sword vibrate to the touch of magic. He swerved around the bolts of magic from the other copies and decapitated a second copy. Again, his sword vibrated, this time with much greater intensity. The magic came from the bodies of the witch's copies.
Slowly, the bodies began to grow back, regaining their lost leg and head. As for the missing parts, they started to grow their own bodies, becoming replicas of the thing they had been cut from. Lander counted five, and knew it would only grow faster and faster if he continued to fight. Choosing the smart route, he slammed his horseshoe onto the floor and activated the glyphs. Magic built up for a second before repelling the witch copies with a funnel of air. He repeated the action, blasting back two copies and opening up an escape route to his friends.
Twilight could hear Lander being chased, but was occupied with helping Highsight out of the jaws of the witch. She delivered strike after strike against the witch's skull, but each cut like a butter knife against a pumpkin. Fire only seemed to agitate her further, as Highsight exhausted her glyphs attempting to burn in mouth of the witch.
"Hey!" shouted Lander, descending the precarious stairs, "I think I found -the fuck is that?" He saw Highsight struggling to pry her shoulder free and galloped into the witch, slamming his horseshoe into her throat. She went flying backwards into the tunnel, crashing into a wall of stalagmites.
"What was with that explosion?" Twilight asked Lander.
He answered by turning to the stairway and pointed to witch copies watching from the top floor. "Witch used an illusion to disguise as the kidnapped mare. Night silver didn't even pick up on the magic."
Twilight and Highsight traded glances. "Wait, if that's the witch..." Highsight began.
Twilight turned back to the pile of broken stones where their witch had landed. "Acid pools, biting, armored hide." She sighed with disbelief that she hadn't seen the signs. "Shit."
Above, the copies laughed at the monster hunters lamenting their situation. They stood helpless in the tunnel with her pet, readying themselves for a fight as if they stood a chance. The mutant had reason to have confidence, but nonetheless they were as much of a threat as the young mare was.
Chills went down Lander's back at the shrieks of a painful transformation, giving way to a growing mass. Highsight quickly reached for a potion to stop the bleeding from her shoulder.
The vurm slithered down the tunnel, still growing in size as it charged for the monster hunters. As the last vestiges of its disguise melted away, the vurm expanded more and more until the tunnel could barely contain it. With her magic ready, Twilight plugged the tunnel before the vurm could reach them. The magic flared as the fangs of the serpent scratched the shield and spewed acid and venom, but Twilight did not falter.
"You two kill the witch," she said to her friends, "whatever control she has over the vurm should stop once she's dead."
"This won't be easy," informed Lander, "she heals fast and her dismembered parts grow back into copies."
Highsight nodded, preparing the countermeasure for the witch. The copies didn't give them the chance to catch them off guard, each breaking into a swarm of rats and flooding rest of the tunnel. Highsight detested the rats, but held her ground until the witch copies returned to their original form. Then, she threw two bombs of thick, flammable tar.
Lander added to its effect with his glyphs, blowing the tar across all five copies with a gust from his hoof. From Highsight, she scratched her horseshoe against the walls and erupted a spout of flame. The glyphs were strained, working with a limited pool of magic, but even the thin stream of fire was enough to set the witches ablaze.
They all squirmed and patted themselves down to extinguish the fires, producing water from their horns to flood the tunnel until the flames stopped. Lander reacted while they were still panicking and launched another bomb at the copies. Painted with glyphs of ice, the bomb's magic activated with its explosion, freezing the water all the way to the horns of the copies.
Twilight screamed, her shield cracking under the rage of the vurm. "It's going crazy!" she shouted, straining to contain the feedback of magic as more cracks formed in the shield.
No sooner did Lander and Highsight raise their swords than the vurm broke through the shield. It poked its head into the cavern, biting at the monster hunters and they ran for the prison cells where Lander had found the disguised witch. But while the cavern space was like a castle to the monster hunters, the vurm found it little more than a playground. It moved along the edge of the space, blocking off all exits, and circled back to entrance from which it came, its tail still lost somewhere down the tunnel.
It raised its head and lashed at the monster hunters, spraying drops of acid that sizzled on the stone and formed small puddles of the deadly fluid. Twilight ran to the edge and stabbed the vurm in its body, grabbing its attention while not even scratching the metallic scales of the beast. As the vurm retaliated with a bite, she dodged out of it way, slashing its right eye with her poison coated sword.
The cavern shook as a dry shriek left the vurm's mouth, deafening the trained senses of the hunters. Twilight clutched her ears the hardest, but her senses were amplified by magic, and nothing could stop the blinding pain from the vurm's voice. It flicked her aside with a bash of its head before she could form a protective barrier, and Twilight crashed into Lander, who had just recovered from the ringing in his ears.
Highsight took her turn to attack the vurm, tossing bomb after bomb, each one filled with blinding powder, until her saddlebag was rid of them. The mixture of powders exploded into the air and dispersed around the its head. The vurm's head was like a crocodile's, with a long snout to catch every crucial scent. As the powders irritated its eyes, they filled the monster's nostrils and blinded its sense of smell. With sight and scent damaged, the great beast could not hunt its prey.
Lander and Twilight barely had to move out of the way to avoid the jets of hot acid from its fangs, and the vurm could not spot the bolts of magic Twilight fired until it was too late and it had been struck. Enraged by its prey, the vurm rushed across the cavern, stretching more of its body into the cavern.
It crashed into the stone walls frantically, shaking more and more rocks onto the monster hunters. If it persisted, it wouldn't have been the monster that killed them, but the law of gravity and heavy rocks. The vurm continued to knot itself around the cavern, passing the monster hunters over and over while they slashed their poisoned swords across the vulnerable flesh on its face. The monster's eyes stung from half a dozen cuts each, and the hunters had even managed to find the soft spot of the vurm, right behind it head.
The vurm had little choice left. It opened its jaws wide and roared at the monster hunters, not as a tactic to scare, but to unleash clouds of venom into the cavern. Their lungs stung and their eyes teared up, but inside their veins ran the antidote that refused to let the venom take hold.
"We have to get out of here Twilight," Lander said, being the blunt voice of reason for a change. "I've seen every cell down here, and only found the witch in disguise."
Twilight rolled out the way of another stream of acid and venom. "Where's the witch anyway?"
Lander pointed to a few broken bits of frozen witch on the floor. In all the commotion with the vurm breaking out of its transformation, the frozen witch and her copies had crumbled into bits, defrosting on the ground. Twilight noticed a couple legs lying on the ground wearing the wedding band the knight had given to his wife. There was no telling which was the original, but she had a feeling the witch was thorough in her duplication, and any would work.
"You two head up to the portal," Twilight said, "I'll be right behind you."
Twilight lifted a wedding band off of one of the frozen copies and ran after her friends, climbing up the stairs as they buckled from the frenzy of the vurm. Holding onto the nooks and loose bricks felt like climbing the walls of Bach Tor'al again. Behind her, the vurm squirmed and struggled as larger slabs of basalt and granite crumbled and pinned the vurm down until completely burying it in a rocky tomb.
Highsight and Lander waited outside the portal for Twilight, both lying on the floor with heavy breath and laughter.
"Another good story to tell," Lander smiled. "Guerrier won't believe his old ears when I tell him."
"Make sure to tell him about the falling rocks," Twilight added. "It would make a great lesson for future hunters: Lander's Treatise on Lairs and Vurms -Hunting With Rocks .
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"Her bracelet is all you brought me!" bellowed the knight, slamming his armored hoof against his dinner table. He was a strong fighter, a simple motion and the edge of his hardwood table exploded into splinters. But Twilight barely blinked.
"The witch is dead and so is her vurm," Twilight reminded him.
"As if I care about a hag and an overgrown snake," hissed the knight. "I hired you to find my fiance, the love of my life, and you come back with a trinket you yourself admit the witch could have duplicated!"
Twilight let the knight vent his feelings, he lost his loved one and had a right to be angry, but Twilight wasn't going to let him avoid paying her. "She was likely dead before I even entered the witch's lair. Black magic rarely leaves its victims alive, and to make a disguise even night silver couldn't detect it, the witch needed to perform a death ritual."
The knight's stare was unrelenting, and he didn't back down from his stance.
"At least she was avenged," Twilight said. It was clearly the wrong choice of words.
The knight's eyelid twitched just a split second before he exploded in a fit of rage. "No amount of avenging will bring her back! If that's your excuse for a job well done, then you can just fuck off!" He threw his shield across the meeting room and it lodged itself into the brick fireplace. "Should've known better than to trust a sodding mutant. Can't even do one job right."
"I'm not leaving leaving without my payment," Twilight pressed. "I risked my life just to look for your fiance, as did my colleagues. The witch killed your beloved and planned a trap long before we arrived, and it nearly worked. I would say I'm sorry for your loss, but clearly you're not a stallion willing to pay for the job, even if it was just to check if she was still alive. I told you from the start, not many live wen they're taken by a witch."
"Half," the knight finally said, though the utterance of his offer seemed to fight against everything he believed in. "For eliminating the witch threat."
Twilight firmly planted her hooves on the knight's table and leaned into his face. "All."
They could have stood off for the rest of the day, but the ponies around the camp were already nervous about the three monster hunters among us, and they needed to leave as soon as possible. The knight didn't want to loose half his forces to take down three hunters.
"The gold is in the cart outside," he said through his teeth. "I don't want to see you again. Ever."
Twilight nodded and walked out of the knight's command post. Sent ahead by the knight, a squire pulled the cart of gold up to where Highsight and Lander were waiting for her. Lander took one look and whistled.
"After a three way split I still think I could retire," he said, grinning as he placed his hooves on the bags of gold bars.
Highsight looked at him with a disgust. "That stallion was willing to pay all this for his fiance. He could buy an army twice this size armor and weapons with all this gold, but he spent it on love instead. Have to respect that dedication."
Twilight nodded. "Don't be so insensitive Lander. It's too soon to swoon over money."
"Of course, I'll pay my respect to dead. While I'm at it maybe I'll stop by each grave of every soldier killed in this war of unification." Twilight scowled at Lander, but he wore his sarcasm proudly.
But, he also his justification ready. "This is war, Twilight. Every pony has loved ones who'd do anything, or pay anything, to keep them safe. It's not our job to mourn for every single life not saved. We'd never be able to do anything else. You save some, you lose some, and that's how it is. For me, I'd like to take my hard earned gold, and go save some pony else on the next job."
Highsight and Twilight both looked at Lander, unsure where he pulled the unexpected wisdom from. Neither of them like it or agreed with it, but respected Lander's deeper opinion on the matter and just let him be.
Twilight turned her attention to the overwhelming cart of wealth, trying to find a place to focus her eyes. "Lets split up the gold then."
