Losing it. Third draft

Silverstream finally placed the unconscious alien on the final step of her long climb. Her mane was frazzled from her exertions and her wings were soaked with sweat. It had taken her a good two hours, if not closer to three, to get up the hill without the human falling and bashing his head. He had fallen once, and her heart had stopped beating again in that brief moment, but she had narrowly caught him despite the fact that she almost broke her wings doing so. Since that almost cataclysmic event she kept her wings up high in the air around him so he didn't take a tumble.

She looked around to see if anypony was watching her. Seeing no one, she spat on the stone. She stared at it and shook her head, trotting inside.

This crumbling castle of chaos used to be one of the bigger outposts of the entire movement, at least, it had been a few thousand years or so ago. Now it was an almost abandoned outpost in the middle of the forest of chaos which was far more commonly known as the Everfree. The entire skeleton crew that ran this outpost, that happened to sit directly in the center of more than a few ley lines, consisted of about fifteen members.

Her wings twitched; a few heart beats later they began to ache. "Wing cramp." She muttered to herself, relaxing them back down. For a few brief moment he remained on her back before the inevitable happened; gravity took over and forced the alien to the ground with a loud thud.

She sighed and turned around to stare at him. "Look..." She tried to find words to tell him that he should be okay with dying horribly. "Why am I even trying to talk to you? I don't even know if you are smart enough to understand me." She growled under her breath.

He shifted slightly in his comatose state. Her eyes looked at his misshapen excuse for ears and rolled her eyes. "Doubt he speaks common equestrian." She nodded at her logic and grabbed one of his legs in her mouth. Biting down around it lightly, she began to drag the surprisingly light necessary ingredient down the rough halls.

She tried not to show her general exasperation with the entire building when she walked into the shadowy pony's gaze. She was pretty sure that the pony on the throne had checked her out when she had walked in dragging the body behind her. Suppressing the shivers and the urge to run and hide from the disgusting filth that his gaze left one her, she turned to face him. "I brought him." She spoke in a blank tone.

The shadow pony leaped from the throne and landed in front of her. "It's about time. You've been gone for more than a few hours, pegasus." He spoke the proper term for her race like an insult.

She blinked. "Can I leave now?" Her nose still stung from where he had struck her. She looked at the few smears of mostly dried blood on the floor.

The shadow pony prodded the body. "Why isn't he awake? Or at least bound? He will need to be awake for the ritual, you know."

She didn't actually know that. She forced her rising panic back down her throat. "I was not informed of this. It was gorging itself on poison joke when I found it." She nodded at the blue stain from where it had drooled all across it's face.

The shadow growled at her. "Great." He shuffled around in an agitated fashion. "This will delay the ritual for more than a few days. And I am holding you responsible when the priests arrive." He turned and smirked, his masterful word choice placing all responsible on her.

Silverstream nodded at him. "As you are the pony in direct charge of my group and I, the blame still rests on you." She pointed out a flaw in his logic.

He groaned and walked over to his throne. "Leave me. I will think on how best to present this to my superiors."

The silver pegasus turned away from him before her face contorted in a face of extreme frustration. The abrupt personality change of her local leader was something that had never failed to raise her ire. She walked away and out the doors, her alien cargo remaining on the floor.

The shadow pony shut the doors behind her with a single wave of his hooves and galloped over to the body. A few small beads of sweat trickled off of his brow. "Now what do we have here?" He swayed a little on his feet and shook his head.

"I have the worst headache..." He muttered.

The second the doors closed Silverstream found herself tackled to the ground and a pair of very familiar lips pressed to her face. For a few briefs second before she figured out who it was her body went into full blown panic mode and she bucked the pony in the chest. The unicorn fell off of her and groaned with his hooves clutched to his chest. "Why'd you do that for?"

"Sorry Sunburst." She replied after a few moments of heavy breathing. "You scared me and that pony-" She pointed at the door. "Makes my skin crawl."

The other pony stood up and rubbed his horn. "I completely understand. It's such a shame that he was promoted instead of you. His head has swelled up like a balloon since then. Did you at least like my little surprise?" He kissed her again and giggled. “Let me clean you up.” His horn glowed and cleaned his orange coat clean of the dust from the ground. Her shining silver coat quickly followed in the removal of dust. His bright red mane was pressed against her face when he hugged her.

"Thanks... and of course I loved your surprise! I always love your surprises!" She took a deep breath in his mane, content to just be with him. She knew it couldn’t last and decided to keep talking. "So how has your part gone?" She asked.

"Do we really need to talk about work right now?" Sunburst said with a tiny edge to his voice. "Why don't we talk about other things?"

She dropped the subject almost instantly but made a mental note to press it later. "What do you want to talk about then, love?" She brought herself out of his hug and nuzzled his side.

He smiled at her. "Why don't we talk about our family? Have you converted your mother yet? The clock is ticking!" He said cheerily, and he thought it was too happy of a tone for that remark. His face dropped to a frown.

She frowned. "She still thinks this is just some odd cult that isn't going to go anywhere. Can you believe it? She won't believe her own daughter when she tells her that this is the only way to keep her safe. Still believes that Celestia personally cares for EVERY being in the whole of the world."

He frowned as well and shook his head. "Such a shame that she is so misguided. She will die..." He sighed mid sentence. "And we should make a memorial to her mistake later." He nodded and dropped the subject.

She groaned. "All this talk of death and despair is annoying. Can we focus on the good parts? The end of days is soon to be here! We, and everyone else in the cult will become settlers for a new world order! Though order is not the right term." She hugged him again.

He smiled at her. "You mean the part where we get to pick what land we want to settle? I think the ruins of Canterlot would be an interesting place to make our home." His eyes widened and he nuzzled her again. "Imagine... our children could be alicorns!"

Her face brightened. "Do you really think so? Such a shame that all of our family have to die." Her sentence left a bitter sweet taste to the conversation.

He shook his head at her. "Don't look at it that way. The world is going to end if we don't do this ritual. They would die regardless.” He looked down again at the floor before righting his gaze back on her. A big smile graced his face. “But just picture us together on Canterlot's castle, sitting in the thrones of the sisters and doing whatever we feel like! No more being caught in the restraints of order. We would be leaders, no GODS!” He rose up on his hind legs like he was embracing victory and glory. “Gods of the citizens that will come after us! We will make a glorious nation that will prosper and we will refuse to let it stagnate!" He hugged her tightly to him.

She blushed slightly. "I could teach our kids how to fly and you could teach them magic." She twirled him around, her exhaustion fading. "Maybe this isn't so bad."

"And our new country will be fertile in knowledge to discover! And the ones who had to die? Earth ponies burn their fields every so often so that their crop grows better." He nodded at her and kissed her again.

She let it linger and locked eyes with him. Her nose was slightly crusted with blood.

His eyes narrowed at her nose. "Did he hit you?" He asked. "Did that over inflated idiot hit you?" He got out of her face and paced the halls.

She nodded. "I flew into his chambers to tell him that the human had stopped moving." She looked down slightly, not wanting to meet his gaze.

He growled. "That..." He cut himself off. "Well... I really can't do anything about it. You did break one of his rules... But... I guess I can't do anything about it besides report it to the elders as a abuse of authority." He paused and smiled. "Did you hear? Mindsplit himself is coming to observe the ritual!"

She smiled widely. "Really? That's great!" Her mood changed back to being happy.

He nodded at her and grinned. "Maybe I'll even take the case to him?" He smiled.

She shook her head rapidly. "We shouldn't bother him with issues of that nature. I imagine that he is a very busy pony. Besides, we only have to put up with Shadow for a week at most." She snickered.

He blinked. "Seriously, I have no idea what his parents were thinking. Name the completely black and purple pony Shadow. That is so cliche. What are we, some badly written adventure piece?" He burst out into laughter at the very thought.

She giggled along with him. "Maybe we shouldn't be talking about how bad his name is when we are by his door?" She asked, her brain finally deciding that it wasn't such a great idea to mock the pony while he could still easily hear them.

"That is probably true." He admitted and walked away.

"I am so glad you agree." She followed after him with a large smile on her face. The halls were filled in with hasty repairs from where sections of the walls had collapsed. At one moment they both had to jump over a large crack in the floor. There was a long silence filled with their happiness with each others company. She sighed, a few feet from their shared room. The door was a newer wooden door and fit into the frame snugly enough that they didn't need to worry about the sounds of anything they talked about or did slipping out. "What happened with your part of the preparations?"

He tensed and his gaze dropped to the floor. "I messed up..." He mumbled and opened the door for her.

She looked at him oddly. "It's not like you to mumble. I couldn't hear what you said." She walked in after a moment of waiting for him to continue.

He tore his gaze from the floor. "The two spell crackers with me died because I misread a spell rune." He let out a depressed sigh.

She narrowed her gaze. "What happened to them?" She sniffed the air around him. The faintest whiff of char and ash came from his form.

He licked his lips. "You know how the torches here are powered by a rune array, correct?"

She looked at him blankly. "Rune array...?"

He shook his head. "Turns out one of the chests of powdered moon stone that I was sent to get from the locked basement storehouse was keyed to a torch array. When they opened the first chest..." His horn glowed and light poured from it. He stepped into their room.

She looked at him. "Isn't moonstone that mineral the increases the power of a spell?"

He nodded at her. "The torch array set the entire chest off. They were vaporized on the spot. I don't even have bodies to give their families..." He trailed off and sat on the bed.

She winced. "Anyone we know? And it's not your fault." She shooed him off the bed. "Go take a bath before you get in this bed. We have hot water privileges for the night and you should make fair use of them."

He sighed. "They were both loaned from another outpost. A griffon and a unicorn. And how is this not my fault?" He started for the bathroom and paused at the door for her response.

She walked over to him and nuzzled him. "They wouldn't have been loaned if they weren't both good at spell cracking. If they died because you didn't see something than they had to have missed the same thing. Did you at least get a chest of moon stone for the ritual?"

He nuzzled back and smiled faintly. "I guess you might be right... They did run ahead of me. And I got a chest for the ritual. Actually..." He licked his lips again. "Would you like to join me in the bath?"

She grinned at him and lightly kissed his cheek. "That's the Sunburst I know and love." She walked into the bathroom, the walls cold stone and adorned with a single torch. "And of course I will take a bath with you."

He walked in after her and all signs of sadness seeped from his being. "And I love you, my silver gem." He shut the ill fitting door and went to spend some personal time with Silverstream.