Crazy, Mad, Insane

"Was that something moving?"

The guard at his side stretched his neck a little further. "Nah, I don't think. But you can't see a damn thing with this rain."

"I know." The first guard kicked a small rock in front of him, which rolled down the slope and fell in the water. "Why are they even having us guard this fucking river? No one's going to enter from here anyway."

"No one's going to try to attack us in the first place, really. Who the fuck's crazy enough to try to mess with an alicorn?" The guard shifted around in place, trying to get more comfortable under the rain.

"No one." The first guard moved his mane out of his face. "But at least we have a job."

"I know, right?" The second guard turned towards the first one, only to stare at the bleeding inside of his neck, his head cut off and nowhere in sight. "Wai-What the fuck!" He turned around, running away, and opened his mouth to scream, but before he could warn anyone of the danger the back of his head was pierced by a ray of magic that exited through his mouth, killing him.

Shining walked past the corpse and headed towards the building, head held low.

"Hey, you!" one of the guards inside the courtyard addressed him, pointing his spear towards him. "Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here?"

Shining looked up at him, his mane moving out of the way to reveal his horn. "I'm Princess Twilight's brother, I'm sure she talked to you about me. I'm here to pay a visit to her," he cheerfully replied.

The guard hesitated and backed away from him a bit, unsure of what to do. "Captain!" he called, looking back.

A large pegasus landed near him. "What is it?"

The guard pointed his spear at Shining. "This unicorn, sir. Says he's Her Highness' brother. Heard anything about something like that?"

The pegasus walked up to the guard's hear. "I have. Her Highness says we should kill him on sight," he whispered. He then outstretched his wings, giving a series of light signals to the rest of the guards behind him thanks to a mirror held in his right one, and spoke to Shining. "We'd been waiting for you. I believe you would like us to lead you to your sister, correct?"

"Yeah, if you could, like, do that it'd be great, I don't want to, you know-" he lifted a hoof and gestured towards the large stone building "-go in there without knowing where to look and needlessly kill guards."

The captain took a step forward, buying more time for the rest of his guards to get in position. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid Her Highness is busy at the moment, so you'll have to wait for a while."

"Oh, sorry, I think I didn't make it clear." Shining turned, facing towards him, and threw the previous guard's head at his hooves with his magic. "It wasn't a request, it was an order." He smiled.

The pegasus looked at the head, then pushed it aside, unimpressed. "What the fuck kinda colour is that for magic?"

Shining sat down and pouted, looking to the ground. "It was supposed to be colour-coordinated with my wife's. Then she launched me off of a balcony and left me for dead. It doesn't really look that good in a world where we're not fucking each other." He looked up and pointed to the pegasus. "But you shouldn't have reminded me of that. I was going to go easy on you since I used to be a captain too, but now I think I won't."

The pegasus rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Well, it's been fun to meet a colleague." He gave a signal with his right wing.

Nothing happened.

The pegasus looked around, confused.

"Are you looking for those guys?" Shining asked, pointing a hoof behind the pegasus' shoulders.

The pegasus turned around to see the corpses of five other guards, cut up into pieces that had been rearranged to spell out the word 'turn' on the ground.

"Magic lets you do some really cool shit," said Shining's voice from behind the pegasus' neck, so close his breath was felt by the other.

The pegasus turned around with a jerk, and noticed how the guard at his side now laid dead on the ground, a hole in his chest. He tried to open his mouth but Shining's magic stopped him. Then, all at the same time, his bones were ripped outwards from his body, tearing through his muscles and his skin, and he was left to die as his body collapsed to the ground.

Twilight stood at the end of the large hall, quill in her mouth as she signed the document held in front of her. Tall windows lined one of the longer sides, the light entering from them that of a bright summer day despite the battering rain outside. A large red carpet covered most of the floor, save for the edges of the longer sides where groups of armoured guards were standing at attention. On the side free of windows, and on the one Twilight was on, purple banners decorated the tall grey walls, white images of Twilight's cutie mark on them. Other than the princess and her guards, the only other presence was a pony wearing a black cloak standing in a corner near the alicorn. On the side opposite of the one Twilight was on was a small wooden door, the only entrance to the room.

A couple of seconds later the door was no longer there, instead lying in pieces on the floor, shattered by a blast of magic from outside.

"Princess!" a guard shouted, rushing in, "There's a-"

He was cut off as one of his hind legs was grabbed by a glowing aura, and screamed as his body was dragged back towards the door, only to be silenced by Shining's sword piercing through his throat as he reached it.

The white unicorn looked up from the corpse. "Twily!" he excitedly exclaimed as he saw his sister, smiling and beginning to cheerfully trot towards her.

Immediately the guards at the sides of the room rushed towards him.

Shining simply paid them no mind, only staring at the alicorn and moving towards her as the guards tried to attack him. His sword, held in his magic, gave the impression of moving on its own as it blocked, parried, struck and cut, slicing tendons, severing limbs, opening throats and piercing hearts, leaving behind a trail of dead ponies.

The unicorn finally reached his sister, almost running and shaking with excitement, and practically jumped on her, almost making her fall to the ground as he hugged her. "Twilight! It's been a while, huh? Let me get a good look at you. Did you do something to your mane? It looks nice."

A guard tried to take advantage of Shining's apparent moment of distraction by assaulting him with a knife to his back, but Shining's sword disarmed him and then pinned him to the ground through his neck, his head looking up at the princess and her brother.

"It's always so great to see my sister!" Shining looked at the pony below him. "Twilight, do you think he has a sister?"

"Shining, ple-"

The sword twisted in the guard's neck, cutting off all remaining life with a croaking sound.

"He did!" Shining exclaimed as he turned back to his sister, as cheerful as he'd been since he'd entered the room, and finally let go of her.

Twilight adjusted her mane. "Could you please... not do that?" she asked, looking at the dead soldier. "It's unsettling."

Shining looked confused for a moment, then his face lit up. "Oh, you mean reading ponies’ last dying thoughts, right?"

Twilight gave a small, stiff half-nod. "Yeah. That."

Shining wiped his brow and breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness, for a moment I thought you had something against the gratuitous slaughtering of innocents!" He gave a brief look around the room, still smiling. "So what are you up to, huh? Conquering cities? Summoning demons? Brainwashing ponies?"

Twilight finished signing her documents, then set them down on the floor. "No, hypnosis isn't really my thing, we leave that to the vampires."

"Oh, right, I forgot, Wintermist doesn't read this so no FiMC references. Oops."

Twilight glared at him with a raised eyebrow.

Shining kicked at a wrinkle in the carpet, straightening it. "How are mum and dad doing?"

Twilight had a pause, then sighed and looked at the ground. "They're dead, Shining."

"Oh, really?" Shining looked up, faking surprise. "How did they die?"

Twilight breathed out through her gritting teeth, looking away from her brother. "I killed them," she finally hissed.

"You sure fucking did," Shining replied.

Twilight looked at him. "Are you happy now? Now that I've said it? You know this, Shining! That was years ago. Every fucking time we meet you always bring this shit up. Do you wanna hear it again? About how I murdered them?" Twilight turned to face him. "Wanna hear it one more time, huh? Oh, it wasn't enough seeing the corpses and the blood on my hooves and on the walls and the tea-"

Shining grabbed her in his hooves and picked her up, cutting off her rambling and bringing her face up to his. "Do you want to kiss?"

Twilight blankly stared back. "The fuck's wrong with you?"

"Oh, come on Twilight, do you know how popular the idea of us fucking is? It's not like anyone's going to see, we don't have the tags for that." He stared in her eyes.

Twilight tried to wiggle out of his grasp.

Shining pinned her to the nearest wall, then whispered to her hear. "Come on, Twily, do me a favour. Come to my side, go against Celestia, get yourself eaten alive by her. Die as a hero so I don't have to go through the trouble of murdering my fucking sister!" he shouted, letting go of her and turning around to look at the corpses.

Twilight took a couple of steps. "Shining-"

"How's the bitch doing?" he interrupted her.

Twilight flinched, annoyed. "Shining! She's still a princess, for fuck's sake. Learn some manners."

"Oh, sorry." Shining turned back towards her. "How's the harlot doing?"

Twilight snorted. "Cadence is doing fine. Wishes you were dead, but life's pretty good otherwise. Really, Shining, I don't see what the problem is. After all this time."

"No, no, of course you don't get it. You weren't there to see what I went through that night."

Shining's head was held low, but Twilight could swear there was something going on with his eyes.

"When you see that little waste of blood and feathers, tell her that I have plans for what I'll do to her once I find her." His voice was getting deeper, more guttural. "First I'm going to rip off her horn. Then I'm going to break every bone in her body, as many times as I manage to. Then I'll burn every single square centimetre of her skin, one by one, slowly. Then I'll rip her nerves from her flesh, hook them up to my horn, and fire magic in them, and I'll make sure that the only thing she feels is pain. Then maybe, maybe, I'll call the warm-up over and start making her pay back for the FUCKING SHIT THAT SHE PUT ME THROUGH!" Shining gave a few long, deep erratic breaths, staring dead ahead at the wall.

Twilight walked closer to him. "Want to talk about what happened that night? When you came to me the morning after I... I don't know, they'd told me you were dead, and then you showed up, and... that face. I still remember that face. I'd never seen someone look like that. What happened?"

Shining's breathing had returned to normal. "Nah, not now. Maybe I'll tell you before I kill you." He returned to looking around the room, smiling. "How's Spike doing?"

Twilight looked away, her expression getting harder. "You killed him."

"I sure fucking did." Shining looked at his sister, smiling. "You didn't have to send him to die, you know?"

Twilight didn't look at him.

"I mean-" Shining walked up to her "-you could have killed him yourself. There was no need to experiment on him, pump him full of dark magic to make him grow bigger, turn him insane by torturing him and testing the new spells you came up with on his brain and then sending him to get killed by me." He placed a hoof on her shoulder. "You should have had the courage of killing him before this whole thing started. You knew he wouldn't have been able to take it. You knew he was going to snap. But he wasn't destined to die." He leaned closer to whisper into her ear. "So you let him live. Because you wanted to pretend the blood on your hooves was a necessity, and not a convenience." He leaned back.

Twilight didn't move.

"Hey, remember when we used to play together at the park?" Shining asked, suddenly very interested in cleaning a small bloodstain on the carpet.

"Yeah, I do." Twilight turned back towards him.

"And remember how mum used to make us dinner, then get angry and yell at us for staying out too late?" He looked back at her, smiling, satisfied with his work on cleaning that small section of the carpet.

"Yeah." Twilight smiled fondly at the memory. "And then she'd always drop the angry face as soon as we got back inside, and go back to being all lovely."

"Yeah." Shining ran his gaze along the edge of the ceiling, still smiling. "Remember when dad used to come home drunk at random hours of the night and scream about how much his family sucked?"

Twilight looked at him and questioningly raised an eyebrow. "...No?"

"Neither do I!" Shining proclaimed, "But those idiots at the bar believed that when I told it to them! Just like the rest of Equestria believed your bullshit when you four lied to us about what you were doing."

Twilight started to grit her teeth. "Oh, so that's what it's abo-"

"Not that it matters anyway." Shining turned around and looked up at the ceiling. "Isn't it how the song goes, too? We should die for the things we believe in, lose our lives to your lies and deceiving, in the dark all the world that we knew undone, and so they are, cold, dead, and gone," he singsonged.

Twilight stared at the corpses on the floor. "That's not even how the song goes."

"I have rules to play around." Shining distractedly kicked a head, sending it to slowly roll away. "How does it feel like?"

"Huh?" Twilight looked up.

Shining turned back to stare at her. "How does it feel to have all those innocents' deaths weighing down on your conscience?"

Twilight's expression went back to being a cold one. "I could ask you the same thing. How do you feel, Shining?" She looked from one end of the room to the other, the floor filled with the remains of her guards.

"Horrible." Shining looked at the alicorn, no smile on his face. "I no longer need to sleep, but I wouldn't do it anyway. It's the same for you, right? I can't even close my eyes without seeing them. Without hearing them. Do you know what it's like, to hear a pony's thoughts as they die? And there's nothing you can do to stop it, because it's screaming inside your head?"

Twilight took a couple of steps towards him. "Why do you go on?"

"For the same reason you do." Shining moved closer to her. "Because it's either them or me. Because I've gone too far to give up now. Because it doesn't matter if I kill them or if die instead, they won't be saved. No matter what I do, no one will be saved the next time. And I want to enjoy the time I have left, trying to do something I think is right." He smiled and hugged his sister again.

"I'm... sorry, that things had to go like this." Twilight hugged her brother back with her wings.

"Thank you. On the day it happened, I was out in the streets of Canterlot. There was a unicorn there. White or yellow coat, I can't remember, red mane with stripes, a crescent moon as her cutie mark. Never knew her name. It was the first time I heard it, and what she went through was horrible. Thank you for sparing our parents from that." Shining hugged her a bit tighter, then let go. "And... I'm sorry, too." He gave a small chuckle and coughed into his hoof. "So, huh, I guess we should go back to playing our part, no?"

"Oh, absolutely." Twilight turned away from him, her expression now uncaring and detached, and picked her documents back up, reorganising them. "Deal with him."

Shining was fast enough to bring his sword up. Still, though the blow missed his neck, it still left a rather long and fairly deep cut on his right cheek, from which blood was now flowing, and also chipped away some of his mane. His counter-attack, on the other hand, though ponies don't have hands as he'd previously pointed out, only hit his opponent's cloak, and while the piece of clothing now hanging from his blade sported a rather large hole not a single scratch could be seen on the pegasus light blue coat, nor on her multicoloured mane.

Rainbow Dash stared up at his eyes, the cutting edge of her falchion still pressing against the unicorn's cheek, though he was able to stop it from going any further.

Shining looked down at her eyes. "Oh, now this is going to be interesting."