Dark Iron Kingdom

My vision swam as we impacted the ground. Reality faded in and out for a few second before my spirit seemed to regather itself. It was the second time I had experienced this horrid sensation. The first was when I was forcefully ripped out of my body by Death. To put it mildly it was extremely unpleasant and jarring and I had hoped to never experience that ever again. But that was right before the others fell right on top of me.

Reality soon quickly faded in and out even worse the third time. And I imagine if I was still in my body I was quite certain I would have lost a week's worth of meals in the span of a few seconds. But being I was not currently in my body, instead everything merely went dark and all I could do is listen to what was going on around me.

"Everypony alright? Ah shit Blood Moon is in wisp form," I heard a voice state.

"What?! What happened to Blood Moon?!" another voice blurted out.

The first voice chuckled before saying, "Relax Princess he's fine. We just smooshed him is all. He'll be back to his paranoid self in a couple-a minutes. Right Blood Moon? Yer fine. Heh he sorta looks like a heartswarmin' eve ornament with his life string dangling there."

I could then feel a slight shaking feeling before a distant third voice spoke up. "Stop shaking us you idiot! We're bound to him remember?!" the third voice protested.

The comment only made the first voice laugh harder, "Ah yeah ah remember. The terrible threesome and those other two poor souls stuck with ya. Ya'll comfy in there?"

Then not but a second later I felt another slight shaking right before a fourth voice snarled out, "Shadow Dancer! Give me my son!" before they added in a quiet soft voice, "It is okay. Mommy has you now."

And so, I suppose I more or less "existed" in that odd state for a short while and just like Shadow Dancer had stated I eventually reformed into my normal spirit. Though normal would not describe any of what had been happening to me. In turn I just fumbled around before I felt my mother and Twilight hold me still.

"Its okay Blood Moon. We got you. Just focus on keeping yourself together," my mother softly said to me.

"Thank you both, but I do have to state that this is horrible. How in the world do you spirits exist like this? This is extremely jarring," I grumbled out.

Then I heard a voice from the burning bracelet on my foreleg snarl out, "You did not give us a choice remember..."

"You got what you deserved," I snapped back before I added, "Anyway we wasted enough time as it is. We need to get back to the train and then get back to the castle to sort this disaster out."

In turn we located the train waiting for us outside the Tartarus gate and climbed onboard. Then after discussing a few things, my mother, Tactics, and Shadow Dancer opted to just relax in one of the empty train cars while me and Twilight recollected our bodies. However, when me and Twilight started walking further into the train to search, we came across an unusual situation. For in one of the larger passenger train cars, Rainbow Dash and Cloud Streak were sitting with each bracing their backs against two separate opposite room doors.

They had not noticed us luckily as we were still just spirits and they could not see or hear us, but we could certainly view them. But that is when it all started to take an...interesting turn. For they both appeared to be in a high state of arousal and breathing heavily.

"Dear sweet Luna, when are they getting back?! I'm burning up inside!" Cloud Streak nearly howled while running her armored hooves down her face.

"I told you the last twenty times! I don't know! How in the world did we end up getting stuck babysitting these two?! They sound like a couple of cats in heat! This whole train car smells like sex!" Rainbow Dash growled in reply.

It was then it dawned on me what was going on. And the problem did not lie with my body, it was Twilight's that was the main issue. It had been widely known that when we became advocates for the spirits of Life and Death respectively our bodies got altered. What was not widely known to most was everything that those alterations entailed. In Twilight's case her body gave off an unbelievable amount of pheromones. So much so she had to find a spell to dampen it because she kept causing whole towns worth of creatures to runt themselves exhausted anytime we visited anywhere. In fact, it explained why we, and especially her, kept getting reinvited and given all paid trips to certain kingdoms but I digress. For at the moment, it was quite obvious that Twilight's spell had worn out.

Twilight just glanced at me with a knowing look and an awkward smile. "What? It's not like I asked for that ability mister 'Don't put that spell on it makes everything feel amazing'," she snarked.

I just shook my head, smiled, and chuckled in response. "Well, it does. But anyway we better rescue our tag-a-long spirits and our captains of the guard before they burn themselves out from the inside," I replied rolling my eyes.

And so after listening in a bit further to the griping of both Rainbow Dash and Cloud Streak we discovered that Life and Death had purposefully separated themselves and needed help to stay in their respective rooms. Which to be honest was comforting that they did not use our bodies for their own desires without our permissions, but I had no illusions what we were going to find behind our respective doors.

In turn without much more delay I slipped through the door behind Rainbow Dash while Twilight did the same to the door behind Cloud Streak after the two of them talked about who was behind which door. And once inside I quickly discovered it to be a bewildering sight. For the room could have easily been described as a "warzone". Most of the furniture was heavily damaged and even the walls had deep hoof scrapes all over them. And finally in the center of the floor laid Death in my body, completely wide eyed and continuously grinding my body's teeth together.

Then after only mere seconds my body's black and red eyes glared right at me before my body nearly lunged at me. "You need to help me, Blood Moon! Everything feels like it is on fire! Something happened to your wife's body and we had to seal ourselves up in these damned rooms! We did not want to break your trust in us again, but it burns soooo badly! Death blurted out while he used my body to grab hold of my spirit and practically shake me violently.

My perception of the world quickly faded in and out a few times from him shaking me like a proverbial ragdoll before I got him to calm down. "Easy Death. I know what is going on. Twilight will dampen her pheromone production in a few seconds. Now let me get back into my body before you two rip this train car apart further," I franticly stated trying to get him to unhoof me.

Death however did not ultimately give me the option of gracefully slipping back into my body. No, he just grabbed me and stuffed me back in like a teenager cramming a piece of dirty laundry into a washing machine. In turn the world immediately became much more coherent and for lack of a better word "real" which also caused every single bodily sensation to flare back into my perception...with painful clarity.

"Ahh oh by the stars and moon that was unpleasant!" I croaked out before I sniffed and added, "Dear sweet Luna it reeks in here! It smells like the inside of a new recruit's gym bag, gah!"

Death however just merely commented that he normally had no point of reference to such things as he is usually a walking robed skeleton spirit. I just shook my head at that thought before I started banging on the room door.

"Rainbow Dash open up please! I am back!" I yelled.

"What the?!" she blurted out and I heard her fumble forwards on the other side of the door before she stated, "Sure you are! How do I know that isn't you Death just trying to get frisky with Life?!"

I banged my head against the door a few times in response before growling out, "You got turned by your marefriend after she sunk her fangs all the way to the gums into your neck from a tryst gone wrong!"

"Yeah, that's Blood Moon alright. I know that scolding tone anywhere," I heard Cloud Streak chuckle on the other side of the door.

Then after a few seconds of the sounds of a lock being undone, did the door open up followed by a heavy scent of pheromones that poured into the room I was in. It was like huffing pleasant smelling chemicals. The ones that make you dizzy and yet you feel just great for a few seconds or well longer in this case. Normally such an experience was accidental due to my past lab experiments but this time it was because a certain wife of mine did not have the chance to renew the pheromone dampening spell.

My body had reacted immediately as it got uncomfortably hot and bothered if you will. And upon gazing at Rainbow Dash and Cloud Streak they both looked ready to pop as well. I could not imagine the amount of fortitude they were burning through just trying to remain in the hallway with this nearly mind-altering cloud hanging in the air.

In turn I chuckled a bit at the sight of them. "You two look nearly as bad as I feel," I said before I pointed at one of the adjacent empty rooms and added, "You two better burn it off before you melt inside your armor. I will talk to twilight to get her body under control."

They did not even fight me in the least before their tongues practically lulled out of their mouths before they zipped off to one of the further rooms in near unison. In fact their room door just barely slammed shut before I started hearing interesting things on the other side of it.

A small grin crawled across my face as I shook my head in response. I then undid the lock on the train room door that Twilight and Life were being kept. But that was when I made the mistake of opening it. For a veritable cloud of pheromones spilled out of the room and slammed into me like a brick wall. But luckily through teeth grinding will and Death whimpering miserably in my mind did I finally walk in.

"Dear Sweet Celestia my body is burning up!" I heard Twilight groan out before she added, "I can't concentrate on the spell!"

To put it mildly Twilight's body was a mess. Her mane was a complete disaster and she looked like she had run multiple marathons with no breaks in-between. Their room was also somehow even worse than the one I collected Death and my body from. For while the previously mentioned room was heavily damaged, this one had hoof scrape marks on nearly every flat surface. Even the ceiling somehow. And what did not have scrape marks was either littered with what was left of the room's furniture or had rows of bite marks in various orientations all over it.

"By the stars it looks like a bomb went off in here!" I commented before shaking my head and adding, "However that is not important right now. With the spirit of Tartarus sealing Tartarus for us it seems now, we need to get Death and Life back to their respective realms. But we cannot do that with this pheromone cloud spilling out into every nook and cranny of this train. You need to get ahold of yourself Twilight."

"SHE SAID SHE CAN'T! I CAN FEEL EVERY SINGLE CELL IN HER BODY AND THEY ARE ALL PRACTICALLY SCREAMING FOR RELEASE!" Life's normal sing-song voice instead boomed before she snarled out, "WHY DID I INVENT CREATURES GOING INTO HEAT?!"

I recoiled for a second in response and I could feel Death in my mind do something similar but then something happened. The ringing in my ears seemed to block out all sound momentarily and while I was quite tired the temporary disruption jarred something in my memory. Something that Death had stated to me on the train ride to Tartarus. For he had said that being inside my body in the current situation was like somepony previously covering their ears and then uncovering them compared to when they indirectly take control of our bodies from time to time. In turn they can feel everything we feel with no filter. All pain, uncomfortableness, and potentially even...other things. Now being as they were going to have to go back to their realms soon for the balance of the world this perhaps was the only time we would be able to give them a parting gift for which they would truly remember for years to come.

So without a moment's hesitation my horned glowed shortly before I cast a very...interesting...spell upon myself. It was one of the few I could successfully do in my current mental and physical state due to sheer years of practice. And just when I finished casting I saw that Twilight was gazing directly at me before I nodded to her and she seemed to understand. For I knew she would not be able to cast the complex pheromone damping spell in her current state, but I had little doubt she would be able to cast the simple birth control spell that mirrored my own.

As such the two spells snapped into place within seconds of each other before I stated, "Life and Death. We had just cast the protection spells and are going to release control. We all know you two can feel everything currently and as such I believe we should give you two a nice memorable parting gift before you both go home if you will."

Life and Death were dumbfounded for a few seconds before I closed my left eye and gave my full sight to Death. After which I could feel streams of tears drip down my face for a few seconds before Death croaked out, "They...they are giving us control Life. After all these countless eons. We...we can finally touch each other without dulled senses. We..."

Death however was not able to finish his sentence as I felt a hoof to the side of my face before I heard the sounds of gentle sobbing directly in front of me. I then felt my body slowly lie back shortly before I felt twilight's body climb on top of me and begin kissing me.

It was truly a tender moment. And while I could feel every movement, every thrust, every sense of need and passion, both Twilight and myself kept true to our word and remain passive enjoyers of such things. And so after the better part of an hour when both Life and Death tired themselves out did I reclaim the usage of my left eye.

However while I was able to see again it took several more minutes to catch my breath before I stated in a ragged voice, "I hope you two enjoyed yourselves."

"You have no idea how long we have been waiting for that, Blood Moon," Life stated through gasping breaths before she added, "Thank you both for that. Your kindness will certainly be remembered by these two old spirits."

"Indeed thank you two for that. It was truly a deli-" Death started to say before he got interrupted by some muffled shouting coming from my right foreleg.

As such I looked at the strange burning bracelet Tartarus had given me before I heard the voices more clearly and made out who they were.

"Unhand me you damn idiots! They're finally done!" I heard Bright Sun shout.

"Ya did that to yourself pal. Me and Gloomy weren't gonna let you spoil a moment like that," Dusk Skulker snapped back.

"Fine yes whatever," Bright Sun growled before adding, "and why in Tartarus did you help them Brown Paw? And where were you, Deep Cut, when they pinned me down?"

"Because it was freaking hot," Brown Paw blurted out.

Deep Cut however just chuckled before he stated, "It was entertaining watching you get roughed up. Besides interrupting a business partner, no matter how unliked, during intercourse rarely does anypony any favors".

Needless to say after that exchange it was thoroughly determined that we would need to put some sort of shield upon that "delightful" bracelet. Especially, if me or Twilight were ever in the mood if you will and we still had to deal with our other tag-a-long spirits hearing us. Or well actually hearing us in general at times to be honest. One can never be too careful.

But regardless we got ourselves cleaned up and with Twilight's pheromone blocking spell up and running we were able to air out the train long enough to get moving back home. For we truly needed to get Life and Death home as well and we also needed to start planning our first moves and determine where to go next. But one step at a time I suppose. However, that was the last thing I remembered before fatigue finally caught up with me. Planning and the such would need to wait while both me and Twilight finally got some well deserved rest for once. And we in turn fell asleep to the sounds of the train moving along the tracks.