The burning soil of the Equestrian badlands sank between Scorpan’s feet with every step. The sun above him felt like a weight on his head and his back. Their camp was only a hundred meters away. Scorpan could see the rocky outcropping jutting out of the ground like a sore toe, surrounded by thorns.
My brother has to be here. We had agreed to meet here after going our separate ways into scouting Equestria. If Tirek was back here, he would more than likely have already stolen Equestrian magic.
I don’t want to do this. I love my brother.
But that was the reason why he had to stop him. For his sake, and for the sake of Equestria. His friend Star Swirl, who he had confided in, had pointed out that if his brother wasn’t stopped, now and before he became more powerful, it would be nigh impossible later.
If there’s any way for me to not do this, let me take the option. There has to be another way.
But there wasn't any other way.
I can see him now. He’s in the cavity of that rock, waving at me. I need to hurry up. It will begin soon enough anyway.
When he reached the blissful shade of the overhanging brown rock, he shed the amber cloak he had on and let it fall to the ground. “Tirek. You’re looking great.”
Tirek sat cross-legged at the back of the cave, enveloped on shadow. The centaur was twice as tall as Scorpan was, but Scorpan knew that it was only a fraction of the potential power he had. “I feel better than ever, brother. This land is doing wonders for me.”
No kidding, brother mine. This land has changed me as well. “How many ponies have you incapacitated so far?”
“I stopped counting after the three hundred mark.”
“You’re not one to stop at anything.”
“Oh, Scorpan! This is like nothing I ever anticipated. This magic...this power I feel coursing through my veins...it makes me feel fed and content. In the mountains near the Rada village, we were always hungry and starved. They would stave us off with their spears and their arrows and their axes. But thanks to my idea to take Equestrian magic, we crossed the land bridge to this land, and since I set hoof here, things have been going better than ever. Don’t you wish for this to never end?”
“Tirek. My brother. I feel…”
“Yes?” Tirek leaned forward intently.
I feel so nauseous by what I proposed Star Swirl I would do. “Stay with me here. This...what we’re doing here...this feels…” Scorpan lowered his head. “Wrong.”
“Taking what we rightfully deserve?”
“It’s the excuse the Noxxa use when they raid the Rada village for food. But you and I, and the Rada, we all despise those parasites.”
“Don’t compare me to the Noxxa, brother.”
“Who do you compare yourself to? The virtuous? What we’re doing is wrong! We take away the identity and the magic of the ponies that have done nothing wrong!”
“They are cattle, meant to be harvested.”
“You sound an awful lot like the Noxxa, brother.”
“It is true. The ponies in the valley don’t stand a chance against the Noxxa. There are more of the Noxxa, and they are more warlike and hate-filled. The Rada are no more than farm produce at this point.”
“And if some creature adopts that mindset about us?”
“Then we kill them.” Tirek leaned his head into the sunlight, and it glinted off his sweaty red skin. “Scorpan. I sense unrest in you.”
He’s right. I don't know if I can muster the strength to do it. “We have to go back.”
“What nonsense is this?” Tirek demanded. His voice, already deep and oiled, dropped an octave.
“We have what we came for. We came here for a form of power above all other power. I’ve discovered it.”
“Really?” Tirek’s eyes held a glint Scorpan recognized whenever he caught wind of something he could use. It appeared when he discovered roots and bulbs in the desolate mountain. It appeared when he found the raw remains of vulture’s rotting carcasses. And it appeared whenever he snapped the neck of some furiously struggling creature and sank his teeth into it. Scorpan swallowed when he saw it. “What, pray tell, is this power?”
“The power of acceptance. Of friendship. How about, instead of stealing magic and food and power, we make friends with the inhabitants, and they will give us all we need?”
“Then they have power over us. Becoming reliant on others for your strength is not strength at all.”
“But think of it, Tirek! Every day, we can have content and full bellies, in soft beds and warm rooms. We can talk with creatures apart from each other, for the first time in decades! We can be happy and safe, secure and loved! My brother, don’t you want that?”
“You’ve been spending time with them,” Tirek growled in his deep vibrato. “You’ve been pampered by these ponies to the point of weakness!” He stood up. From his vantage, he looked down on Scorpan and began to circle him like a predator. “My younger brother, always dependant on somepony else to give him strength. You’ve never even filled up that amulet around your neck with stolen magic, I bet.”
Scorpan took off the triangular golden amulet and held it in front of him by the string. “This amulet is meaningless to me. I will never use this to my advantage again.” He held it out to Tirek. “Take it away from me. I can’t stand to see such an object of destruction be in my possession.”
Tirek snatched the amulet out of Scorpan’s hands and draped it over his neck. “Fine, then. It will be put to better use in my hands!”
“No, Tirek. It won’t.”
Tirek laughed mockingly. “Are you planning something, traitor?”
“From before I can remember, we have been together, scrounging for scraps in the mountains to subsist. We have known nothing but pain and anguish from our isolation. And now, when a better option presents itself, all you can think about is your own greed and your lust for power.”
“It’s all I've ever known.” Tirek continued to circle Scorpan like a predator about to strike. “What more can you say to me to dissuade me, brother mine?”
“I will not make the choice for you. But if you choose wrong, you must be put down. For the good of this land.”
“That is where you are wrong! Only my power will be good to this land. These miserable equines have populated it long enough! It is time for us to rule as princes of the land. Every last pegasus, unicorn and earth pony will give their magic to us, and together we will have everything we ever want.”
Scorpan gritted his teeth. “Then...you will do it.” He looked his adopted brother in the face. “Without me.”
Tirek pointed at Scorpan. “You dare to turn your back on me?”
“My back is not turned yet,” Scorpan affirmed with a fist to his chest.
“So this is how brotherhood dies,” Tirek said deeply, clenching his fists. “With the promise of friendship.”
“Our brotherhood was broken when you decided it was broken. If you remain with me, we will still both be brothers.”
“I am the one that led you to the place you are in now. I fed you. I led you to the best hunting grounds. I kept you warm on the dark winter nights. I guided you to Equestria, when the idea came to me. And in return for all of that you decide to abandon me to pursue your own selfish goals!"
“Do not use guilt to sway me, Tirek. Your love for me is why I am giving you the chance to come with me. Come with me and I can lead you to a life full of promise and wealth beyond our wildest dreams. Ponies are not enemies. Nopony has to be our enemy at all. Friendship is the answer to our problem. Accept the power that I will offer you, and I promise you that we will never be alone or desolate again.”
Tirek actually had a look of thought cross his face. It was almost indistinguishable, but Scorpan caught it. Please, Tirek, accept the offer! This is your last chance! I don’t want to resort to fighting you!
Then Tirek scowled, and that glint came into his eyes again. It was so fierce it turned them orange.
“My younger brother,” he said slowly, mockingly, “thinks himself a ruler and a teacher over me. He leads me away with his foolish imaginations and his slippery words. He thinks I will follow him to a river and if he says for me to drown in it I will do it, simply because we’re brothers.”
Scorpan felt something lodge in his throat and drip into his stomach, making it burn and churn and rumble. Tirek hadn’t changed in appearance, but he was all of a sudden unrecognizable. Oh, Tirek, why must you do this to yourself!
“Not because we’re brothers,” Scorpan said. “Because I love you.”
“You and I have diverged,” Tirek boomed. He was now directly in front of Scorpan. “You are now no longer my brother.”
“Who’s the foolish one, Tirek?” Scorpan shook his head in remorse. “Who’s the fool?”
“Get out of my way, Scorpan! You mean nothing to me anymore if you choose to betray me to the ponies.”
Scorpan held up his open hand. “If you and I are no longer brothers,” he spoke, “then there is nothing to stop me from disobeying your words.” He crouched in a low battle position, holding his hand palm up. “I will do what I must.”
“You will try,” Tirek corrected with a growl. Tirek lunged forward.
Scorpan clenched his hand, and from under Tirek black skeletal fingers tore up the rock and clenched Tirek in its palm. There was now a massive black claw in place of Tirek’s position.
Tirek burst open the fingers by spreading his arms furiously, and the black bones shattered and dispersed into the air like swirling ash. With a roar, he fired at Scorpan with an orange laser between his tall twin horns.
Scorpan had disappeared through a black-ringed portal and had come out on top of him, landing on his back and grasping onto his horns. He attempted to split them apart like he was splitting a wishbone, but Tirek roared and hurled his head forward, throwing Scorpan so he was now hanging in front of Tirek’s face.
Tirek fired his laser again in glee.
Scorpan was thrown back into the rock and skidded along the ground in a deep furrow as the laser bulldozed him into the broken soil.
Scorpan stood up in the trench with a bellow of war and slashed his hand horizontally, and an arc of black energy whipped out and slapped Tirek in the face enough to raise a welt on his scarlet cheek.
Tirek disappeared with a pop before Scorpan could reverse the whip’s direction, and Scorpan wheeled around and caught a red fist to the face. Scorpan flew backwards again, and the energy surrounding his hand dissipated as he rolled on the ground and came to a stop. He weakly stood up. I need to put him off guard, he thought. He will kill me if this goes on too long.
“Foolish brother Scorpan,” Tirek laughed, pounding a knee. “Thinking you could best me-”
Scorpan pounded the ground with a warty, hairy foot and crossed his palms. “Sakra’ixi!”
He uncrossed his palms, and spikes of stone erupted out of the ground under Tirek, jagged and sharp. One of them skewered Tirek in the front leg, making him scream in surprise and clutch his knee. He breathed deeply as he stared down at the wound in rage.
Tirek looked up again, and murder was in his eyes, burning hotter than molten lava. “You will die!”
I assumed that, yes. Tirek, don't you think I don't know you?
Scorpan took flight with his wings and held out his open palm. A dark dish, like a runic dinner plate, appeared in his palm, and he gripped his fingertips around the rim and twisted it like a wheel.
Tirek managed to put up a spherical shield around him before a flood of dark power surged out of the runes in Scorpan’s hand and hit Tirek with the force of a hurricane. The black laser slowly pushed Tirek back like he was in a hamster ball, and when the last of the dark energy struck, it exploded against the shield with enough force to level a nearby rock tower in half.
Tirek lowered the shield and stared at Scorpan. Not with fright or rage, but with curiosity.
“When did you learn that?” he asked casually.
A gift from Star Swirl the Bearded, Tirek! Friendship does have its benefits! Scorpan shook his head; could Tirek still not see that he was hopeless?
Before Scorpan could elaborate his thoughts more than that, however, Tirek had grabbed him with a telekinetic aura, surrounding him with dark orange energy. Tirek glared at his brother for only a moment, then slammed him into the floor and plowed him through the rock and sand.
With a pop Scorpan vanished, and Tirek looked up, expecting him to drop atop his head. But a portal opened beside his head, and Scorpan, with all the force Tirek had been using to plow him through the ground, slammed feet first into Tirek’s head, forcing Tirek’s head back and his jaw to unhinge, his tongue flailing out.
Tirek fell on the stony floor, a vacant hole in his front knee, and put a hand to his face in pain. When he took it away, he could see a stream of bright red blood; Scorpan had hit him right on the welt on his face.
“Scorpan,” he growled. “You will pay for this!”
He disappeared with a flash of light and appeared directly above the hovering Scorpan. Grabbing on to his waist, Tirek held him in a lock hold as he pile-drove him into the earth.
Scorpan and Tirek were wrestling now in the center of a crater, Scorpan’s wings held against their natural position by Tirek’s crossed, meaty red hands.
With a mighty roar, Tirek uncrossed his arms, and Scorpan’s wings snapped on their joints.
Scorpan had felt pain before. Living as an orphan in the mountains, pain was something he had learned to endure. But feeling his wing joints snap, irreparably damaged and destroyed, was something he had never thought would happen.
Oh, my brother! You’re serious, aren’t you, about killing me? This is how I know you mean business! Dear...sweet Celestia! I can feel the blood pooling around my head and my shoulders from the joints you destroyed. You proved to me that I should not hold back!
Scorpan screamed, in his pain, “Worthen...axa’oni!”
A blast of dark power ruptured from Scorpan’s chest, throwing Tirek off him and beside him. Scorpan wasted no time in standing up again, and-
Oh, sweet Celestia. I don’t want to faint, not now, not here!
Scorpan created another disk of dark runes in his palm just as Tirek got to his hooves, wobbling on one leg. Seeing him charge his laser between his horns, Scorpan expanded the disk of runes to something the size of a very large wagon wheel by stretching the edge with his other hand, and braced himself as the laser fired.
Scorpan held the circular shield in front of him like a mythical knight bracing against the flames of a dragon. His position began to slip; the laser was too strong for him to hold back against. The pain on his back, in his wing joints, on his face, his ribs, his legs--Scorpan was surprised he could last this long against Tirek.
I don’t have the strength to keep this up. I need to find the unorthodox. Is there some invisible strength giving my knees the stiffness it needs? I feel like there’s an influence that’s making the pain dull. Who is helping me?
Finally the laser began to subside in power, and the orange flames died down enough so that Scorpan could see his opponent.
Scorpan swirled his finger around the border of the large circular rune, and typed on the center of it like he was inputting a command into the rune. On the surface of the final fingerstrike, a black bolt of electricity surged out and struck Tirek in the face, stunning him and sending him stumbling backwards.
Before Tirek could do anything more, Scorpan unraveled the circumference of the runic circle, dissipating the shield, and whipped the long string of spiky energy on the diagonal to Tirek.
Tirek leaped in the air just as the whip struck where he was and exploded in a plume of flame, and with a shout of rage fired a heavy laser of orange power at Scorpan.
Scorpan drew his finger up just before the laser struck him in the face, and as he unzipped space and the laser disappeared, he opened a portal behind Tirek to allow the laser to strike Tirek in the back of the head.
Tirek went sprawling, hit with the concussive force of his own laser. He caromed off a rock, plowed headfirst into the hot sand, and was motionless with his head buried in the sand. He lay like that and did not move for a while.
Scorpan summoned black flames in his clawed hands and went to Tirek’s side. The surge of raw energy he had felt before had left, making him feel drained of power. He stumbled, more than walked, as he finally went to Tirek’s side. Blood was still coming out of his wings, dripping down his back and hardening in the heat given from the sun above them.
“Stay...down,” Scorpan weakly demanded.
Tirek reared his head out of the sand suddenly, spraying some into Scorpan’s eyes and forcing him to blink. “Oh, I don’t think so!"
He backhanded Scorpan hard enough to make him fly backwards, but Scorpan backflipped in the air and landed on his feet, skidding on the dune and tearing the skin off his feet. The pain on his back very nearly made him black out. Where was that strength when he needed it?
Tirek fired his laser again, and Scorpan responded by shooting twin tongues of black flame out of his palms. The two powers collided between them with a concussive impact, shimmering in the already sweltering sun.
Scorpan thinned the flames to very narrow, but very powerful streams. Aiming both of them right down the middle of Tirek’s continuous laser blast, the narrow streams neatly split the laser in two, right to the spherical source between Tirek’s horns.
Tirek widened his eyes in shock.
Scorpan then spread his arms, and the streams of black fire made both the lasers coming out of Tirek’s horn erratic, and the streams of flame struck Tirek’s horns themselves.
Tirek bellowed as his horns caught fire along the whole length, and it looked like he might be incapacitated. But then he ignited his horns again, painful though it appeared to be, and absorbed the flame on his horns into the whirling sphere of energy between them. Then he released holding it in, and sent a beam of black fire back at Scorpan.
Scorpan created another disk of dark runes in his hand and absorbed all of the dark flames effortlessly, and hurled the disk of power at Tirek’s hooves like a curving frisbee. Tirek lept back from the explosion that followed, and Scorpan used the opportunity to cause tendrils of black, coiling energy to launch out of each of his fingertips.
Each tip of the tendrils locked around Tirek’s horns--at the tip, at the base of his skull, at each spot where the horn curved. Tirek grasped at each of the tendrils, panic widening his eyes.
Scorpan clenched his fist.
Tirek bellowed and bowed his head, clutching at the tentacles with his meaty hands. Scorpan had his grip too tight for him.
Igniting his horns with the magic between them, he pulsed his will, and the tendrils dissipated all the way to their source, Scorpan, who was sent reeling. Tirek caught his adopted brother in his magic aura of orange power, and made him fly forward until his throat was clutched tightly in Tirek’s hand.
“Your power is great, little one,” Tirek observed, almost casually. “But you doomed yourself the instant you decided to fight me.”
Scorpan could say nothing. He pried at the thick fingers holding his windpipe shut and squeezed his teeth together. Tirek, don’t you see that I didn't want to fight you? And I didn't want to not fight you because you're more powerful than me, oh no. We’ve proven right here that I am your equal, at least. No, I didn't want to fight you because I couldn't bear to hurt the only creature who ever loved me before we came to Equestria!
“And the best part is, you could have used the powers of the amulet in your attempt. But you foolishly gave it over to me.” Tirek lifted the triangular amulet off his shiny red chest with a hand too big for it and grinned toothily at Scorpan’s struggling face. “And I will use the powers of the amulet to destroy you forever!”
He hurled Scorpan to the ground, and he landed on the broken wing joints, making Scorpan cry aloud and grab his back.
Tirek illuminated Scorpan’s amulet with his orange magic and held it up to his mouth. The spells and magic stored there were siphoned off the amulet into his mouth in a stream of fire, and Tirek grew noticeably bigger; he had grown a full two feet from the power the amulet alone held. When he was done the amulet bounced back against his iron-hard chest.
“You had your chance to follow me,” Tirek boomed. “And I will finish you once and for all!"
And Tirek leaned forward, as if he were making the motion of firing his laser.
When nothing came out, however, he made a grunt of confusion and tried again to summon his magic. No ball of energy appeared between his horns; no laser split the air asunder.
“What have you done?” Tirek asked in shock.
Scorpan glared back at Tirek in triumph. It was triumph tinged with regret, however. Tirek, if you had only listened to me, we would not be like this!
“HOW HAS THIS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED?” Tirek bellowed at Scorpan.
“You didn't know what was in that amulet, did you?” Scorpan asked.
“WHAT?” Tirek roared.
“A trap, my brother,” Scorpan spoke heavily, his wings still shaking involuntarily from the pain. “I gave you that amulet on purpose. It was the only way to beat you.”
“NO!” Tirek bellowed, raising a hoof to stamp Scorpan into oblivion. He brought it down, but Scorpan had created a portal of black swirls in front of him that the hoof disappeared into. Tirek hurriedly put his hoof out of the portal before it could close around him.
“It was the only way,” Scorpan spoke to him. “You would not listen. And I did what I had to do.”
Did I really do what I had to do? Was putting a magic-silencing spell in the amulet really the only thing I could have done? There could have been so many other possibilities now that I think about it. I could have alerted Celestia and Luna about him, and they would have joined the fight. I could have incarcerated him while he was asleep and taken him to the princesses.
But no, this is what I’m doing now. This is what I have to follow up with. There can be no turning back from this now. I have disavowed Tirek as my brother this way. And all for the sake of the ponies I’ve made friends with.
I hate this. I hate everything I've done.
Scorpan stretched out his pointer finger at the writhing Tirek. “Haltha.”
A bolt of electricity lanced out of his fingertip and struck Tirek in the chest. Tirek roared in agony and collapsed, succumbing to his injuries at last.
“This could have been avoided!” Scorpan screamed as he staggered to Tirek, rendered helpless by the jagged electricity coursing across his body. “All you had to do was accept the love I offered you! We could have had everything! Everything we ever wanted!”
Tirek bellowed in pain again and turned his hateful glare at his adopted brother.
“All of this,” Scorpan said hoarsely, gesturing at him, “because of your stubbornness and pride!”
“Traitor!” Tirek managed to bellow in his pain.
“I loved you, Tirek!” Scorpan screamed back, pointing at himself. “Who’s the traitor!”
Then why did I try my hardest to kill him? In the name of brotherly love? I love you, so bam, you’re dead! Stupid!
But then a reassurance entered his mind, alien and intrusive, but just so near his mind that it seemed to have no voice at all: Only Tirek’s forced removal from Equestria will be merciful to both him and the ponies you have a friendship with. This temporary pain is better than the anguish he will cause himself later on.
Who are you? he screamed in his head. His face was contorted in panic. Who are you? Why are you here?
I am love, and patience, and solitude. I am all these and more, but most of all love.
Your name! Tell me your name!
I am Faust. The Goddess of heaven and earth. And I am the one who influenced you to do the will of righteousness. I planted the thought in Tirek’s mind to take Equestrian magic. I showed you friendship from Star Swirl the Bearded. I gave you the thought that Tirek needed to be subdued. I gave you strength in your fight with Tirek. And I am the one speaking with you now, telling you to deliver your enemy into the hooves of Celestia.
Scorpan took all this in with doubt. A goddess was the one who gave me strength? Let me get this straight. You forced me to formulate the plan to incapacitate my brother subconsciously? You forced us to come here like we were puppets? You forced us, every step of the way? You hardened my brother’s heart? You are responsible for forcing us to this tragic end?
I forced nothing. This course of action is the one you chose because you received a prompting in your head telling you this was right. I can’t force anypony to do what’s right. That’s not how life works. This is what you chose to do because it made the most sense at the time.
This isn't right!
This is what must be done. If it must be done, it is right.
This is what must be done! I know that! This is just the worst possible way to go about doing what must be done!
This is the only way that results in peace later on. I can see what will happen in a thousand years from now. What you are doing is the right thing, but in your limited view of the present, you think this is the wrong thing. You are not the only one to think that. Plenty of my servants have doubted me before, and they will doubt me again in the future.
Get out of my head, false goddess! I will not follow your influence any longer!
What are you going to do, leave your brother like this, writhing eternally on the ground? Your only option now is to take him to Celestia and Luna. They will take care of him from there, and you will be free from his influence. This I promise you.
All right, fine. I will follow you simply because this is the only option. But after that I will leave Equestria and get away from your influence. If you were the one that drove me here, if you were the one that forced me to betray my brother, if you were influencing me all along, then you won’t be a part of my life anymore. I won’t follow down this path anymore. I will go back on my path, if this is what you have in store for me. If you are the goddess of ponies, I must get away from the land of ponies.
I am not confined by the borders of Equestria, Scorpan. One way or another, you will be touched by my hoof again.
And the female voice departed. Scorpan was now left with only his grief and rage, and his helpless brother.
Scorpan had delivered the bound and chained Tirek to the hooves of the two princesses, right in their throne room. He curtly explained what Tirek had been planning, and what he had done, and turned custody of him over to the two surprised princesses. The amulet Scorpan had, originally to be used for siphoning magic for Scorpan’s use, was now dead and useless; a hunk of metal on a black string. Scorpan left the trinket on Tirek’s neck as a reminder of what they had once been.
After a brief nod to both of the princesses, and a grave farewell to his best friend Star Swirl the Bearded, he walked out of the front doors of the opulent Castle of the Two Sisters. He picked up a walking stick from the side of the road, and didn't look back the entire time he traveled.
He went north, to the land bridge connecting Equestria to the other continent to the east, and crossed it. After what he had done, and the reason why he had done it, Scorpan now felt like he could not stay in the lands of ponies.
He returned to his spot in the mountains, and lived alone. He lived a long time.
The voice of Faust did come again. A thousand years later, the voice of Faust came again.
Author's Note
Be honest here; did you enjoy this? This story is raw and thought up of on the fly. Did I do a good job?
