Losing it. Third draft

“And on that day, he will walk unneeded on the field of order, and that alone will make the difference. And he will march unwilling, and he will fight another’s battle. He will rise. We will rise. He will fall. We will rise.” Book of Chaos, verse of the walker.

Fear. Fear is deadly. Loathing is as well, like hatred whisping in the wind. And we all know that hatred is poison, seeping through the ground. And what is worse than hatred?

Hatred isn't the opposite of love, you know.

That's apathy.

The land was apathetic. It was tired land. It had been repressed, beaten down with hundreds of hooves. The weather was weary. It no longer wanted to move itself, nor could it. It had been tired and weary for oh so long. So very long had it been since war had graced it, since chaos had reigned and it could finally breath life into the many shapes and souls that demanded to be freed.

The land was apathetic. The sky was as well.

The forest was alive. The forest was happy, the forest was undisturbed except by the brave few willing to look into it, and even they were rare. Rarer still were they that understood. They understood that the forest was the many, that the forest had needs, that the forest was happy.

The forest was happy indeed.

The forest was happy, for something oh so unfamiliar had graced it. Familiar too, something whispered, bringing back memories of the frozen times. Frozen battles, when winter went unwrapped up for years while everyone labored to destroy one another. That was a time of chaos.

The forest longed for the land and the sky and the weather to be free, just like it was.

Forever free, even.

Deep deep in the forest was a tomb, you see. A tomb filled with darkness. And bones. Naturally, you would know it to be a tomb by these things.

Something special about these bones, though. They have, or would have, or did have names engraved into them. Hundreds of bones, hundreds of bodies whose souls never found a place to rest. All of them scattered to the side like toys thrown by a child in a tantrum. Scattered. Nobody would ever piece the ivory together.

And in the center, the one bone unbroken and unmolested by rage, the one bone who may have truly found peace, or was finding peace, the one soul who might truly be the one to help the world...

There was a name on that bone. On the other bones, if they could still, walk, talk, play, eat, have fun, or love... they would speak about that bone.

“Why did you leave us? Leave us to die? Why did you kill us? Why did you lie?”

“Why are we alone now, traitor? Betrayal? That is who you are.”

And inscribed on the bone, if truly, the tomb did exist in, or ever had existed the heart of the forest that nobody dares venture far into, for the wind is free there, and the weather free to play havoc upon order, if the tomb really did exist, and the bone as well, there was a name on that particular lonely bone.

Valder.

I was flying. High. There was something peaceful about it, but below me was a wreckage of a battle, a true blemish on the cool crisp snow that covered the land. A few charred feathers, launched high in the air drifted down, a few bloodied ones drifted down in the same way.

Wasn’t hard to see that this was the way the land wanted to go when you could hear it sighing in the breeze. Out in a blaze of fire rather than the slow death of peace. A false peace, far worse the flavor. A quick agony over a slow agony,

Alas, this is not a story about the land, or the scenery, no matter how tragic. Back at hand, without the inglorious wording I have given to the land, we had Mark.

Myself.

It is at this point, I shall inform you, that I more than likely die before the end of this tale. I write this, so that, in the case that I have failed, or fallen off the path of retribution, maybe I will be written fairly in history, instead of being a cruel heartless villain, bleached black as sin by the passage of time. Maybe I am foolish to believe that people will be willing to forgive.

Maybe... Maybe I write this so that I will at least bring peace to one person.

Myself, at least.

“Guards.” An authoritative voice cut through my sweet slumber. I had been dreaming more of the same, more of snow and feathers, and of flying.

Hooves clopped against marble, the noise echoing slightly. It was not cold where I was, nor was it warm. A nice middle of the two.

I expected someone to start clapping, and a spotlight to hit me, honestly, when I realized my arms and legs were bound together. You know, first thing I do when I wake up is try to stretch out, and almost needless to say, after what I had gone through recently, I did try to stretch out.

Then I opened my eyes and saw her. Her being a white horse. With a horn. And wings, can’t forget that. The rainbowish mane just made me think I was tripping out. I wasn’t obviously.

“Greetings.” It was a command, of the sort that was soft, yet all knowing, and with the hint of hidden steel that told me that I was before someone who was not only used to getting their way, but had had to defend the right to get their way many times before.

Also, it was a good indicator that I was staring at a talking horse alicorn thingy.

“Uh. Hello.” I said, in my best attempt at not being threatening. I flicked my gaze around the room. It was a conference room, or done in that style. She sat at the head of a long table, and I on the other side. She also sat closest to the door. That’s against the style, I thought, at the time.

But I’m not really here to judge the plush red upholstery on each of the chairs, or the nice smell of lavender in the room. The brickwork was nice as well. All in all, it was a nice place, especially after what little I remembered from earlier. Except, you know. I was still tied up.

“Hello?” She replied, looking me over thoughtfully. Like a teacher lazily eying a student to see if he was chewing gum, or something like that. Oh, right. Forgot to mention. Girly tiara on her head, girly necklace on her... chest... front area on horses name I don’t know. I’ll go with chest. “Would you mind explaining to me why I found you running away from the scene of a crime with a known criminal?”

The way she said it, that light tone told me that while I could be in a whole lot of trouble with the pretty princess, I was not quite there.

I looked up. Lights were pretty nice here too. Were those purple candle? With purple flame? Might be lavender scented. “I have no idea what you are talking about in the least.” I forgot to mention this, but my voice was rough with disuse. Or something. Maybe I was hitting some sort of belated puberty? She was royalty. I was betting she was royalty.

“Really now. Quite odd, isn’t it? And here I was hoping that you were some nasty criminal I could tidy up, throw in a cell.” She shook her head, almost sadly.

She scared me for some reason. In a horrible, deep to the core, kind of way.

“Wait. You believe me?” I asked, incredulously. The rope was starting to itch against my legs. That, and they were still numb.

“Why yes, griffon. I do. You couldn’t lie to me if you tried, right now.” Her horn flashed brightly and a plate full of bread and some sort of delicious smelling pastry floated over to me.

Griffon. What. Who is she talking to?” I tried to flick my gaze around for a second. There was someone else in the room, unless griffon was some sort of name for outsider I didn’t know about. “My name is Mark, mi-” I stopped myself from saying milady. Wouldn’t do, I thought.

“Mark, hm?” She asked, then passed the tray over to myself. “I’ll just keep your little Earth life a secret then.”

I blinked. Uh... alright then. “Who are you?” I said, a little lost.

“My name is Princess Celestia.” She said, then nodded. There was a window I forgot to describe, mainly because it was shuttered and not as nice as everything else in the room. She opened it, and glorious glorious sunlight poured through. “I control that.” She pointed at the sun.

“If you’re the princess, where is the queen?” I asked, knee jerk.

“If you were a human, why are you not anymore?” She asked, cutting off that line of conversation. Though it seemed like it wasn’t because it bothered her, but more that she didn’t care to explain to me the answer.

I blinked again. This was to be a pattern. “Uh. What?” I said, eloquently.

“We found you as a human. In the past two weeks, you changed into a griffon. Explain that?” I was staring at her mouth, but the movements weren’t matching up in a way that made much sense at all. Her tone was clipped, as if she had better things to do.

I was probably just imagining things. “Again. I have no idea at all what you are talking about.”

She nodded. “True. That makes my decision all the harder.” She paused for a moment. It was a regal one, and it did nothing to halt the sudden fear that not only was I never going home, that I was about to die.

Her horn glowed again and she floated the tray over to me. “Would you like a bit of cake, before I tell you?”

I stared at the bread, and my stomach howled in delight. It kept right on howling after I realized that I was still tied to the chair, and that she was taunting more than anything.

Did I mention I had a problem with paranoia? I do.

“Sure.” I said, staring at the wonderful bit of food.

She wrapped it in magic, then pressed it to my mouth. I opened it, and she placed it inside. I felt my pride take a blow at a horse of all things feeding me. A horse!

Then just as suddenly, it occurred to me that my mouth was feeling odd, and I apparently lacked lips. Or... well... A nose. I tried flaring my nose, and there was most certainly not a response.

I moved on to my ears, and tried wiggling them. No response.

Wait. I couldn’t wiggle my ears anyway. Why’d I even try that?

I chewed it with... the odd teeth that were in my mouth that weren’t the same that I had gone to sleep with... and swallowed. I was rewarded with a feeling of satisfaction and stupidity.

She cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes. You aren’t human now.” She rolled her eyes, not that I knew that.

I flicked my gaze curiously over to her. “So, what happened?”

“While you were out, I took the liberty of taking a cursory glance through your mind.” She stated, like she was talking about the weather. “And that is the question, what happened.”

“To me.” I finished, more than a little confused. And bound to a chair, can’t forget that.

“Yes.” She said, seeming a little distracted. Her horn glowed again, magic wrapping around it in a beautiful azure shade which switched to a murderous red. A knife floated up from her side of the table and she spun it in her magical grip. “This is really quite the impasse, is it not.”

“Er... It is?” I asked. “Can’t you just... send me home or something?”

She shook her head simply. “It would be an easy matter if you were not in your present shape, Mark.” She used my name, and said that sentence with a hint of uncaring.

Right. I was still imagining it. Had to be.

“I can’t go home?” She had to be kidding. She was a talking alicorn horse thing. Taking me home would be the least weird thing that had happened to me lately.

It occurred to me that I was not that fond of the pastel ponies I had met so far in my stay, and that this was probably going to be a pattern that stayed with me.

Not sure why that occurred to me, but it did. Something in the middle of my head did that. No, not my brain, I mean, a literal feeling between my eyes, in the tuft of feathers there. Like a deep itch.

I closed my eyes at that point, trying to ignore the sudden bubble of fear that was rising in my head. A griffon. I was some sort of fantastical beast for the time being- and yet something else was whispering that it was going to last forever, my stay as being extraordinary.

“No. You cannot.” She replied with a calloused, practiced, tone. “In fact...” She shook her head.

“What?” I asked, desperate. Fear was still bubbling to the surface.

“The griffon king is presently within our borders.”

I blinked. Was that non sequitur or something? “I don’t follow.”

“You’ll need prey, and a steady supply of it... freshly transformed, I understand that the griffonkind has certain desires that do not end well when repressed...” She pulled out a large map. “Ah. Yes. Daughter of a minor duke is scheduled to journey to Ponyville.” She shot me a meaningful look.

“... I’m still not following at all.” Desires? What?

“You see Mark, you do resemble that of the ancient line of royalty. I imagine you look rather fetching with griffons.”

...What?

“...What?”

“So, it’s decided. You will be sent to Ponyville, and when that griffon shows up she will instruct you on the griffon life.” She clapped her hooves together.

“...What...?”

“Great! Glad to see you agree.”

“... For a princess, you don’t act exactly the way I thought you would.”

“Would you rather I direct you to the dungeons, as would I normally do so to a suspected criminal among my presence?” Her voice changed to a more prim and proper tone. I wondered if that was the tone she normally used, and if she had slipped or something in dealing with me.

“... No?”

She tapped her horn slightly with a hoof. “I just adjusted the translation spell I currently have on you. It’s translating my words into a style that you are more used to. Now, would you allow me to slip back to informal tones?” Less a question as much as it was an order.

Dang. I was talking to royalty like she was just another face in a crowd.

“Yes...”

“Good. You shall awake in Ponyville, and you will not mention that we had this discussion.”